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spk02: Good day and welcome to the Transact Technology First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ryan Gardella, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Transact Technology's First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. Today, we'll be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after market close. Joining us today from the company, our Chairman and CEO, Bart Schuldman. and President and CFO Steve DiMartino. Today's call will include a discussion of the company's key operating strategies, progress on these initiatives, and details on the first quarter financial results. We will then open the call to participants for questions. As a reminder, this conference call contains statements about future events and expectations which are forward-looking in nature. Statements on this call may be deemed as forward-looking and actual results may differ materially. For a full list of risks inherent to the business and the company, please refer to the company's SEC filings, including its reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q. Transact undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. Today's call and webcast will include non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. When required, a reconciliation of all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP can be found in today's press release as well as on the company's website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bart.
spk08: Thank you, Ryan, and thank you to everyone joining us on the call today. 2021 is off to a great start, as the momentum from last year continued with an excellent first quarter. Our food service technology, called FST Market, continues to pick up considerable steam, and we added over 1,300 new paid terminals in the quarter for a total now of 7,009 paid terminals in the market. In addition, I'm extremely pleased that we achieved over $1.2 million in FST recurring revenue in the first quarter of 2021. With existing software contracts and orders already received in our second quarter of 2021, I expect Q2 will continue to exhibit very positive growth of our recurring revenue. Our industry-leading BOHA solutions continue to demonstrate their unique value proposition and are driving promising results and significant opportunities as the headwinds of the global pandemic continue to subside. As Steve will discuss in detail shortly, our preliminary first quarter total net revenue was 8.3 million, and we recorded an EBITDA loss of 2.5 million and adjusted EBITDA loss of 2.2 million. I am pleased our quarterly gross profit margin rose to 38.4% versus 30.6% in the fourth quarter of 2020. Now, speaking specifically about our food service technology market, revenue in the first quarter was 2.7 million, up 100% from the same period last year. Our recurring FST revenue, which includes software, subscriptions, labels, and service, was 1.2 million, or if you annualize that, 4.8 million on an annualized basis. As a reminder, on our last call, we got it to between $5.5 and $6 million in recurring revenue, FST revenue, by the end of 2021. Hardware sales and the number of paid terminals in the market are the lifeblood of our recurring revenue stream. And as we increase the number of terminals in the market, our recurring revenue will grow exponentially. As I mentioned, we had a tremendous first quarter in this regard, with hardware sales up over 100% from the year-ago period. This equates to an additional 1,321 paid terminals running on our system at the end of the first quarter of 2021, bringing the total to 7,009. On our last call, we got it to between 10,000 and 11,000 paid terminals in the markets, by the end of fiscal 21. As our paid terminal base expands, our recurring revenue will also grow, fueling consistent results in a predictable stream of FST revenue. In particular, I want to call out our label sales as a beneficiary of this effect. As our terminals become more prolific, not only will our label sales increase correspondingly, but we'll see that revenue smooth as the impact of large orders from our big customers become less apparent on a quarter-to-quarter basis. As you know, we have a strong relationship with the convenience store chain 7-Eleven, and this quarter was no different, with more terminals being installed at 7-Eleven stores. 7-Eleven is focusing on expanding their store's fresh food capabilities, and our BOHA terminals are an important piece of that expansion. Each store requires a new construction bill to add fresh food capabilities and the installation of the BOHA terminal. We estimate that 7-Eleven will convert approximately 2,000 additional stores to enable fresh food in 2021. As of the end of Q1 2021, we have installed our BOHA terminal in approximately 2,650 stores and still have about 7,350 more to go. I also wanted to quickly call out our press release from April 7th in which we announced a large existing BOHA customer would be adding another software module, our BOHA Temp App, to over 1,000 locations by the end of fiscal 22. With a total contract value of over $450,000, this upgrade deal demonstrates the growing land and expand opportunity afforded to us by increased penetration of our BOHA systems and the reason we focus on getting as many paid terminals in the market as quickly as we can. Cross-selling additional apps to existing customers is a classic SaaS sales motion and provides a significant runway to grow our revenue with existing customers. We believe this will generate long-term value for the company and is a vital step in our growth strategy. In addition, I wanted to talk a little about our relationship with Apple and the sales effort there. First, I would encourage each and every shareholder to watch both videos on our Transact website homepage. One video is a customer testimonial regarding their use of BOHA ROP, Restaurant Operations Platform. You will hear from the chef and also an executive of the restaurant company speak to the value that BOHA ROP brings to the restaurant back-of-house operations. The second video is an interview with Ray Walsh, our vice president of global sales, and Chris Lawson, who heads up the Apple sales and strategy team for the restaurant vertical. As you will listen, Ray explains, once our BOHA systems are in place, customers experience a 56% decline in food safety incidents and about 16 hours of labor savings per location per month. And as Chris from Apple mentions, What Apple values the most is our combination and seamless integration of hardware and software. In order to quantify this a bit, there are about 100 Apple salespeople on the restaurant sales team who can promote BOHA to the market on their end. This is a powerful testimonial about the important work we are doing and the partnership we have with Apple and shows they are behind our mission of improving food safety and streamlining restaurant back-of-house operations, saving labor hours, and empowering back-of-house employees to do their best. Now, in looking at our pipeline of opportunities, which we value over three years, which is the typical length of contracts we sign, we have over $140 million in our pipeline right now, with Apple-related customers being approximately 50% of that pipeline. We are extremely pleased with how the relationship with Apple is going, and the opportunities they bring continues to grow. As the global economic recovery continues, it is easy to see why we at Transact are incredibly optimistic about the FST opportunities in front of us, both this year and the long term. Now moving on to our casino and gaming market, revenue in the quarter was $2.9 million, down 42% year over year, but up 7% sequentially. The international market continues to be challenging. However, the domestic rebound is beginning to pick up some steam. We continue to expect progress in the recovery of the worldwide casino market over the course of 2021. In the U.S., we continue to see casinos reopen, as well as the capacity limits for already open casinos inching upwards. As guests return, we are seeing a slight acceleration in investment on the gambling floor, and we are cautiously optimistic that gambling floor capex spend will continue to improve throughout 2021. After hitting a horrible sales low from the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020, our revenue has increased sequentially every quarter thereafter. And while we experienced some stagnation from the virus winter onset, we are seeing conditions gradually improve and new projects beginning to gain momentum. Transact is well positioned to capitalize on the recovery trend in the gaming and casino market. With that, Steve will review our first quarter 2021 results, after which I will make some summary remarks before opening the call to questions and answers. Steve?
spk05: Thanks, Bart, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's turn to our first quarter's results. Total net sales for Q1 were 8.3 million, which was down 19% from 10.2 million in the first quarter of 2020. However, sales from our food service technology market, or FST, were up 100% to 2.7 million from 1.4 million in the first quarter of 2020. Our FST hardware sales increased 104% to 1.5 million from 755,000 in the year-ago period, And as Bart discussed, we ended the first quarter of 21 with 7,009 paid terminals in the market, which was an increase of 1,321 units during the quarter. Our recurring FST sales, which include software and service subscriptions, as well as consumable label sales, came in at 1.2 million, which was up 96% from the 616,000 we reported in the year-ago period. Last quarter, we discussed the 1,200 terminals we shipped right at the end of December from our large sushi chain customer. Now that those terminals are all operational, we expect label sales and recurring revenue to rise accordingly. As Bart mentioned, our recurring revenue is a function of how many paid terminals we have in service, and as those numbers continue to climb, so will our label sales and other recurring revenue. Our ARPU, or annualized recurring revenue per terminal, for the first quarter of 21 was $688. Given that we're still in the early stages of building our installed base of terminals, our ARPU will likely fluctuate quarter to quarter based on the size of individual software label and service orders and the timing of terminals shipped. In addition, we believe our ARPU is still being negatively impacted by reduced transactional volume at our customers' businesses resulting from the pandemic. As the effect of the pandemic subsides and our customer's transactional volume returns to pre-pandemic levels, we expect our ARPU to rise over time and reach $1,000 plus. One other item to note related to our ARPU calculation. When a terminal ships towards the end of a quarter, we don't get a full quarter's worth of the recurring revenue from that terminal, while we still include that terminal in our ARPU calculation. These late quarter deployed terminals have a real impact on our ARPU As a way of filtering out this impact, we could alternatively use the number of paid terminals in the market at the end of December, the prior quarter, to calculate the ARPU for the first quarter, as those terminals have been producing revenue for the entire first quarter from January 1 through the end of March. Using this method, our ARPU would be $847. Turning to casino and gaming, our casino and gaming sales were 2.9 million, a decline of 42% from the first quarter of 2020. As mentioned previously, the speed of recovery domestically is proving to be dramatically quicker than overseas, as domestic sales were down only 23% year over year, versus 62% for international sales, all due to the pandemic. We expect both domestic and international sales to continue to recover as casinos reopen and conditions improve throughout 2021. POS automation sales were down 25% to $1.2 million from $1.6 million in the prior year period. The decline was mostly due to lower sales of our Ithaca 9000 printers to McDonald's due to the continued COVID-19 impact on their business. Moving on to Printrex oil and gas printers, sales were up 36% to 159,000 from 117,000 in the prior year period. Though we continue to de-emphasize Printrex sales, we still expect to receive additional orders from our legacy customers as the industry recovers from the impact of COVID-19. Finally, Transact Services Group, or TSG, sales were down 40% to 1.4 million from 2.3 million in the prior year period. This decline resulted from lower sales of aftermarket items for our legacy products, including spare parts for our legacy lottery printers, consumable products such as inkjet cartridges and POS paper rolls, and service contracts on our legacy banking printers. Since we're no longer focusing on the products in this market, we expect our TSG revenue to continue to decline over time. Moving down the income statement, Our first quarter gross margin was 38.4% compared to 48% year-over-year, but up sequentially from 30.6% in the fourth quarter 2020. Our gross margin in the quarter was negatively impacted by the 19% overall sales decline, as well as increased BOHA hardware sales and lower casino and gaming printer sales. As a reminder, we've decided to reduce our margin on BOHA hardware products in an effort to accelerate the growth of our installed base of terminals to drive more lucrative FST recurring revenue such as software subscriptions, service, and labels. Though this may have a short-term impact on our gross margin as we build out our installed base of terminals, we should see a favorable impact on gross margin over the longer term as higher margin recurring revenue grows to become a larger percentage of our overall sales. Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 21 were $5.9 million, which was a decrease of $358,000, or 6% from the year-ago period. This decrease was largely due to a drop in our selling and marketing expenses, which fell 35% to $1.4 million from $2.2 million, as travel and promotional marketing expenses remained very low and trade shows continued to be either postponed or canceled. Our first quarter of 2020 reflected a pre-pandemic level of spending, and we expect a gradual ramp-up of selling and marketing expenses as we move through 21. We continue to invest our engineering design and product development, which was up 30 percent to $1.8 million from $1.4 million in the prior year period. This increase was mostly attributable to additional outside software development for our new iOS-native BOHA restaurant operations platform, and the all-new BOHA workstation with iPad. G&A expenses were essentially flat year-over-year at $2.6 million for the first quarter of 2021. Lower travel expenses were offset by higher legal and professional fees, resulting in a drop of less than 1% year-over-year. We incurred an operating loss of $2.7 million for the first quarter of 2021, or 32.1% on net sales, compared to an operating loss of $1.3 million, or 12.6% on net sales, in the year-ago period. And on the bottom line, we recorded a net loss of $2.2 million or $0.25 per share in the first quarter of 2021, which compares to a net loss of $1 million or $0.13 in the year-ago period. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2021 was a negative $2.3 million compared to negative $1 million in the year-ago period. And lastly, looking at our balance sheet, we ended March 21 with $8.7 million in cash and $2.2 million in long-term debt, all from the PPP loan that we expect to be forgiven. At this point, I'd like to give the call back to Bart for some closing remarks. Bart?
spk08: Thanks, Stephen. What a great job. You know, in one way, it's hard to believe where we were just a year ago when the worldwide pandemic hit. But here we are. almost 14 months later, with an exciting future ahead of us. I want to thank the Transact employees for their commitment through the most challenging time in the company's history. I also want to thank our shareholders for your loyal support. Thank you. At this time, operator, I'd like to open the call to questions.
spk02: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment.
spk09: Again, please press star one to ask a question. Our first question today comes from Chris Ho of Barrington Research. Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, Chris, how are you?
spk06: Good afternoon, Steve. First off, fantastic quarter. You're making my job much easier with these results. I have many questions here. I'll start first off. The restaurant order that we announced in conjunction with the previous quarter's results. Can you talk about the progression there as to your rollout? Is that still on schedule for year end? Yes. Okay, okay. Next question is just, you highlighted the upgrade opportunity and module expansion. Can you provide some more color on this I know the rollouts continue to happen, but I wanted to focus on your existing customer base. This seems like it could be a good opportunity for you moving forward.
spk08: Yeah, so great question, Chris. Thank you. You know, if you look at our early sales, our early sales were terminal and label software. And the way we presented BOHA to all the customers at that point was you have all these other apps that you could add to the system to do temperature taking, temperature monitoring, task list, checklist, timers, things like that. So the base of customers that we have today that are using what's called the BOHA terminal are all ripe, are all in the market. They're all opportunities for us to add additional apps. A lot of them are looking at temperature taking and temperature sensing. If you look at our new technology that we're putting into the marketplace, which is BOHA ROP with our workstation, there we sell the bundle. So the software sales will be higher because they buy the whole bundle and they get all the apps in a single portal type arrangement. But all the original sales that we did were all on the terminal and are all there for the for selling them additional apps. The one that we closed in the first quarter is a really interesting story because they're not only doing temperature taking, but they're actually doing other things regarding monitoring of their food. And this gave us an opportunity to do some customized software for them, which we charge them for, and then we'll roll it out. So that was an exciting opportunity because not only did we get temperature taken, but we did an additional function for them. And, you know, once all that software is done, we'll begin to roll out that software. And the nice thing about it is it's just software sales. So once they're ready to go, you just start downloading the software over what we call, you know, over-the-air OTAs. Everything just goes over the air to each one of their terminals and the new software gets loaded onto their terminal.
spk06: That's great. That's very helpful. And I'll ask one more and then I'll hop back in the queue. Your terminal growth is outstanding. You placed over 1,300 terminals in the quarter. I assume that will continue, especially, well, here we're doing a full reopening, but on a domestic basis, It seems things are rapidly returning to normal quicker than other geographies. As we look at that, the different economic scenarios that are in front of us now, how should we think about your capital allocation to the business?
spk08: Oh, okay. Yeah. So clearly, you know, look, you know, in my opening remarks, we have over $140 million of opportunities in front of us. Some of them are very large opportunities. There's no doubt that the restaurant market has woken up to the fact that the pandemic is a bit behind us now. Openings are occurring. And there's a real issue facing the restaurants, which is labor. And we could all get into the discussion of the labor issues that restaurants and people like Uber and Lyft are facing. But this is a real issue as restaurants try to reopen and open up their dining rooms and have to bring in more people and struggle to find people. And that's where the back of the house, where our software will save on labels and make training a lot easier. So we are seeing a pretty dramatic increase in opportunities that have been presented to us, both through our relationship with Apple, which really covers the restaurant industry, but also on the food service side of our business. We're actually with one large customer, very large customer. Apple has been a great partner as they knew the customer also. We've got to remember that once we get involved with the customer, it does take time. There's a whole onboarding process and a trial and an evaluation and all that. But our pipeline is literally sitting at over $140 million of opportunities right now. And that has grown considerably since this pandemic started to subside a little and restaurants start thinking about opening again.
spk06: Yeah, definitely some positive optics ahead of us. I'll hop back in the queue. Thanks, Bart.
spk08: Yeah, thanks, Chris. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.
spk02: Our next question comes from Mitchell Sachs of Grand Slam Asset Management.
spk04: Hey, guys. Congrats on nice growth in units that quarter. Thank you. Thanks, Mitch. Thanks, Mitch. In your prepared remarks, you were talking about the 7-Eleven installations, and I thought I heard you say that they have another 2,000 stores on tap for this year. Is that correct?
spk08: You know, based on what we... See in front of us, we're going to do 2,000 for the year. And I don't break out how many we did in the first quarter versus, but we have plenty more to go this year and plenty more to go in 2022 and probably 2023, you know, based on their construction schedule.
spk04: So for the unit guide of 10,000 to 11,000, you know, 7-11 is going to get you a good part of the way there. That would be a proper way to look at it, correct?
spk08: Look, we're being quite conservative in our terminal count for this year. You know, what we don't want to do is get ahead of ourselves because, you know, 7-Eleven is kind of an interesting company. They work with us in what their construction schedule is, but they don't place an order for the year. So I don't want to get ahead of ourselves because should for some reason they decide in the fourth quarter not to do something in that quarter. It could go into the first quarter next year. I can say, though, that the forecast could be on spot or could be quite low based on some of the projects we're working on right now. Some of the projects are quite large, Mitch.
spk04: And then Steve talked a little bit about the average recurring revenue per terminal. as we'd used the fourth quarter of 847, and it was 688 actual due to, I guess, the timing of rollout. Do you guys track what you expect, what I'll call average revenue per unit or ARPU, to be per terminal based on the average contract, or are you just really waiting to see how actual usage kind of runs because there's some variability in there?
spk08: Well, if you divide the business into two kind of sub-businesses, right, you've got the food service technology side, which is a big labeling market, right? We have one customer, Mitch, that uses a 2x12 label. So as long as that business keeps picking up, the label sales are going to be wonderful because it's a very expensive label and they use a lot of them. On the restaurant side, Mitch, as we close more restaurants, there the label sales will be less, but the software will be higher. So it will be a lot more predictable because by contract, they will subscribe to a three-, four-, or five-year contract with us. So there the software is going to be a lot easier to project because we'll have that by contract. The only real issue that we faced in 2020 – was the ups and downs of the economy. As things opened up in the summer and then kind of crashed in the winter, we saw the label sales kind of follow that kind of pattern. Now what we're seeing, Mitch, is we've had a very good software quarter. We've had a very good label quarter. And I can tell you that Q2 is starting out much stronger than Q1. So if that continues, we'll have a very good Q2. And now what Steve was trying to explain about the terminals is even if we put a terminal out February 15th, we have to count that whole terminal in that annual revenue. But at best, it's going to give us six weeks of software revenue and six weeks of label, even though we're counting in all 12 weeks. So eventually, where the incremental terminals, let's say we get to 30,000 or 40,000 terminals, if we add 1,300 and a quarter, it's not going to matter that much. It's just, if you think about it, Mitch, we went from, call it 5,600, 5,700 terminals at the end of Q4 to 7,000 in Q1. That's a 25% increase. But a lot of those terminals didn't go in January 1st, right? So... it's just a function of timing. And what we were trying to do, what Steve was trying to do in saying, look, if we just look at the end of Q4, those terminals will have been in full service for Q1, and we did $1.2 million in recurring revenue, and bam, there's your $847 in recurring revenue. So, you know, as the base of terminals grows, The incremental won't have as big an effect on our ARPU because of this issue of timing, of when the unit goes into the market and when we start collecting our software, our service, and our labels. It's pretty simple. Okay. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
spk09: You got it, Mitch. As a reminder, please press star 1 to ask a question.
spk02: Our next question comes from Jeff Martin of Roth Capital Partners.
spk07: Thank you. Hi, Bart. Hi, Steve. How are you guys doing? Hey, Jeff. Wonderful. How are you? Hey, I made my first trip to Vegas.
spk08: Made my first trip to Vegas to see what's going on out there. It was pretty interesting. How was it? Tough. There's no Uber drivers. There's no Lyft drivers.
spk09: That would be tough.
spk08: Very tough.
spk03: So, Bart, congratulations on the pipeline bill. $140 million is a nice number, obviously. Any ballpark? Can you give us a sense of ballpark, how many terminals that would translate to?
spk08: What, our backlog? I mean, not our backlog, but our pipeline?
spk03: Your pipeline, yeah, your pipeline. What would a $140 million pipeline translate into terminals?
spk08: I do. We don't give that out. But I can tell you that some in the pipeline are quite large. But, you know, we don't break out, like, how many terminals that need.
spk03: It must be a big number. That's what I'm getting at. Okay.
spk08: Jeff, the good thing about what we see, though, and I've got it in front of me, is Most of that pipeline are restaurants. One of them is food service. The top seven that I'm looking at, six of them are restaurant companies, and that's software. So that's where this whole change to the business where food service is more labels and restaurants more software, six out of the seven large opportunities in front of us are restaurants.
spk03: Restaurant companies. That's great. Great to hear. Any idea of when pilots are going to start from the Apple Salesforce? Do you have any visibility or line of sight on that relative to basically starting the process, I think, in January or February of this year? Still pretty early, but just wondering if you have any line of sight there.
spk08: We do. I would say more than 30% of those opportunities are in path.
spk07: Great.
spk03: And then I think you had your first ROP sale last quarter, or you at least discussed it on your last earnings call. I was curious if since that time you've secured additional ROP customers.
spk08: Well, yes, we've actually won some very small customers that we didn't put out press releases because of COVID. restaurants with four chains or three chains or two chains, you know, we, we won't, we won't put out a press release for that, but we'll put out a press release for every customer that, you know, you would like to see. So no, there was not, I mean, there was very small additions to our, um, companies or restaurant companies that are using our system. Um, but not enough for us to put out a press release. We, it's, But we will put out a press release once we close one that you would want to know about.
spk03: Right, right. Okay. And then just curious on the inventory level, component supply chain, there's obviously a shortage of certain components, I would imagine. Just curious if you could give us an update there, and are you ordering to be prepared for that? Sure.
spk07: Oh, yeah. I can take that one. Yeah, take it, Steve. Yeah, good idea. Thank you.
spk05: Yeah, so, Jeff, we've been able to stave off a lot of the problems because we've had pretty large inventory levels, and we did that on purpose. to make sure we had enough on hand. So we've been able to kind of avoid the issues that many companies are facing or have faced recently. I think it will or could cause us a small problem coming up because we can't avoid what everybody else is avoiding, right? Everybody's going after the same circuits and passive components and their shortages on raw materials like copper and metals. It's all starting. So I don't think we'll be able to avoid everything, but we've done a good job so far. I think it could begin to have a small impact in the next quarter or two. But we put our orders out well ahead of time. So most of our orders, we go out typically at least six months anyways. So it's not like we're just in time sort of place. You know, we have contract manufacturers, so we're forced to put the orders out ahead of time, which actually helps us in this scenario.
spk03: Okay. You feel comfortable that you can get the 10,000 or 11,000 units out for this year without any supply constraints? Is that fair?
spk05: I think it's relatively low risk on the FST side. Yep.
spk08: Yeah. Okay. Especially on the BOHOT side. Especially on the BOHOT side.
spk03: Yes. Well, it certainly sounds like the ROP is getting a lot of interest. Happy to see it and wish you luck. during the quarter and the balance of the year.
spk08: Thanks, Jeff.
spk02: Again, please press star 1 to ask a question. There are no further questions at this time.
spk08: Okay. Well, we thank everybody for attending the call today. I do hope that you and your families are all safe and healthy and getting through this horrible pandemic. That's the conferences that we're going to be doing at the end of the month. So if you need to find out about it, please call our IR firm at ICR, and they'll help guide you to which conferences we're doing. We do look forward to continuing our conversation with the shareholders and keeping you up to date on what's going on with this exciting business. very much thank you for attending and also thank you for your support especially during what was clearly the toughest time in the company's history last year thank you and we'll talk to you again ladies and gentlemen that concludes this conference call we thank you for your participation
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