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spk09: Good day and welcome to the Transact Technologies fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ryan Gardella, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
spk01: Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Transact Technologies fourth quarter full year 2021 earnings call. Today, we'll be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after market close. Joining us from the company is Chairman and CEO Bart Schulman 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 our fourth quarter and full-year 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 made different 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 the call. Today's call and webcast will include non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. When required, reconciliation of all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP can be found in today's press release as well as on the company's website.
spk02: And with that, I will now turn the call over to Bart. Thank you, Ryan, and thank you to everyone for joining us on the call today. Our fourth quarter results demonstrated strong momentum in both the food service technology or FST market, as well as fantastic results from our casino and gaming market. We experienced an almost 22% sequential increase in sales of our industry-leading casino and gaming products in the quarter and continue to see demand outstripping supply as the international bounce back begins and domestic strength continues. We also saw another quarter with over $2 million in recurring FSD revenue, and I will expand on both these points shortly. Our preliminary fourth quarter and full year 2021 total net revenue were $11.1 million and $39.4 million, respectively, gains of 43% and 29% from the year-over-year comparisons. Our fourth quarter revenue also represents a sequential acceleration of 5% from our third quarter revenue, which, as we mentioned, had been our highest revenue number since the fourth quarter of 2019. Our total FST revenue set another all-time record in the fourth quarter, up 25% year-over-year to 3.5 million. Our FST recurring revenue, which includes software, subscriptions, labels, and service, posted its third consecutive quarter of over $2 million, coming in at 2.1 million, which was a 124% year-over-year increase. For the full year of 2021, we generated $7.4 million in recurring FST revenue, which was above our guidance expectation of at least $7 million. Breaking this down a bit, our BOHA software sales were impacted in the fourth quarter as we decided to accommodate an overseas customer and provide a credit due to their BOHA terminals being inactive from COVID during the year. This resulted in an R pool of $965 in the fourth quarter, a $51 decline sequentially. Moving on to our terminal install base, as we have previously stated, hardware sales and the number of paid terminals in the market are the lifeblood of our recurring revenue stream. As we increase the number of terminals in the market, our recurring revenue will grow, fueling a predictable stream of FST revenue. In the fourth quarter, we added an additional 1,069 terminals for a total of 9,818 terminals, at the end of 2021. While we are slightly disappointed in the final number, it is worth noting that this number was affected by supply chain constraints with our customers. The opportunities for BOHA terminals and workstations remain high, and I am so happy to announce that a restaurant company with over 1,500 stores has just approved our BOHA terminal, allowing franchisees to replace our older 9,700 food safety terminals. We expect to begin shipping some BOHA terminals during Q1 of this year and will work with their franchisees as they convert to our BOHA enterprise online system. This is an exciting project for Transact as the customer is working with us on a special label design that will be used as a marketing tool for the grab-and-go items. Once the label is designed, completed, and sponsored by the corporate office, we believe all 1,500 stores could eventually need our BOHA terminal to print out this special marketing label along with the typical food safety labeling needs. This opportunity is right in our wheelhouse. We have two other large restaurant opportunities we are working on right now, and we also continue to have opportunities centered around fresh food in the convenience store market. There, the need for labeling remains high as they build out their fresh food programs. We continue to build the opportunity funnel across the spectrum of our different FST markets. While we do have additional large opportunities in the restaurant market that are progressing forward, I must reiterate some comments on the labor and food shortage situation that we have spoken about previously. We are still hearing from many prospective BOAC customers that we have been working with that they simply do not have the personnel right now to work on new technology installations as they work to improve their supply chain situation and their labor shortage and wage issues. However, we remain positive that when this situation begins to improve and as the country continues to open up, we are well positioned to capitalize even more on these opportunities as our technology is being evaluated, and that's our BOHA workstation and BOHA terminal. With the labor shortage, as we just noted, has been impacting the testing and deployment of new technology, At large restaurant companies, we have seen some great progress within our SMB sales group, basically in the small market, store market. These opportunities are typically quicker to close, and small chains have no choice but to continue operations as fast as possible as they face the difficult macroeconomic headwinds. As we announced last week, in the fourth quarter, we sold 44 workstations and terminals across 26 different small chains and franchisees, with the total opportunity for up to 900 more workstations and terminals for just these businesses alone. There is no restaurant too small to benefit from our go-live technology, and we continue to see success momentum in this SMB space. An additional initiative we started in our SMB sales group was the call on and answer calls from franchisees directly as they need technology to offset their labor and food shortage challenges. While the corporate office has their own personnel issues to address, we are proud to be assisting these franchisees in streamlining their processes. This initiative has proved successful so far, and not only are they buying our BOLAR technology, but they are helping to promote our technology into the corporate office. As this part of the market grows, we will continue to add to our inside sales team. As I said, I'm very encouraged by the many opportunities in our FST pipeline despite the labor and food shortage issues in the market and continue to be impressed with our relationship with Apple as we both work to win the restaurant market. Together with our friends at Apple, we are working on a clear message to the CIO office, highlighting both our technologies and how we can streamline their operations and demonstrate the cost benefit of the Bohart technology over individual solutions. We are also working on doing more customer and sales events together as the U.S. starts to open up. Hopefully, we will have more to say in the future. Before I end our discussion about the FST market, another bright spot for Transact is in regards to our POS printers we sell to the front of the house for restaurants, mainly McDonald's. I'm very pleased to report that we experienced growth in our POS market in 2021. but want to make a special note to our investors regarding this year. We are embarking on a special project for McDonald's, and coupled with our competitors' issues with manufacturing printers for them, we expect to double the sales in our POS market in 2022. Now let's move on to our casino and gaming market. Revenue in the quarter was $4.9 million, up 84% year over year, and revenue for the full year was $15.3 million, up 39% from the full year 2020. We are seeing very strong demand continue in the domestic market, and we are pleased with the recent rebound of the international market, which was up 100% sequentially. As more markets around the world open up from COVID-related closures, we expect to see demand continue to accelerate as we move through 2022. Finally, I wanted to make a few broader comments about our business and the macro environment we are in. We are incredibly proud of our team at Transact for navigating through a challenging environment, but certain effects of the worldwide supply constraints and ongoing COVID pandemic have started to impact our business. In the third and fourth quarters of 2021, we benefited greatly from having a very good inventory level. But unfortunately, as I have spoken about before regarding the word decommit, As we ended 2021, we found ourselves dealing with decommitments of the chips and print heads that were ordered and needed for the production of our hardware in 2022. Not only is sales rising, but we experienced higher sales in 2021, so we need to replenish our inventory. Chip shortages cannot be avoided, and delays in the production by our suppliers have impacted our ability to build back our inventory positions. Going forward, our hardware sales will be hand-to-mouth in every market in 2022. While not ideal, there are plenty of silver linings here. First, we believe we are well ahead of our competitors in terms of managing our supply chain. We have even seen instances where customers of our competitors are replacing their products with Transact products as we are able to facilitate the delivery of hardware in a timely fashion. I can tell you one of our competitors has not been able to deliver a printer to a certain customer for over six months. Second, the demand pipeline continues to be very strong. Every unit that is produced either already has a buyer or will soon have a buyer. In fact, we currently have orders going all the way to the end of 2022, which is not typical for us. You need to know we are working very closely with our chip manufacturer who has really responded to our needs, as they are helping us to align our company with their latest chip technology. We are doing this so we utilize their mass production chips to ensure better availability as we end 2022. I cannot thank our engineering staff enough who have committed to complete the necessary board and firmware redesigns, some hardware that will go through two different redesigns, to meet all demands in 2022 and beyond. Our investors should know the chip shortage issue is no joke, and worldwide demand easily continues to outstrip supply. I can point to a major car manufacturer who recently announced cutting production by 500,000 cars in 2022 due to the chip shortage issue. Finally, in order to combat rising costs and inflation and having to ship our hardware by air, we are implementing our second across-the-board price hike on our hardware. This price increase will allow us to absorb the vast majority of the increased cost pressure we are facing. I am pleased to say we are not seeing any pushback from customers on this new pricing level. They need our hardware, and by working hard with our suppliers in the market and flying in the products, they can continue to purchase from Transact. To close out, I wanted to discuss our guidance for 2022 and our rationale behind it. First, we're expecting to add another 6,500 to 7,500 paid terminals in service for the year. Unfortunately, as we deal with the supply of chips and wafers to put in our products, we felt it proven to guide to a level that we feel confident in our ability to produce rather than sell. Should that situation abate quicker than expected, we'll revisit that number. Similarly, we're guiding between 10.5 million and 11 million in recurring FST revenue for the full year 2022. As you know, our FST recurring revenue is largely a function of the number of paid terminals in service. Despite all these headwinds in chip and processor supplies, and hopefully the beginning of the end of the pandemic, you can see we're excited about the future of our business as we transition our company into a software and service organization. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our President and Chief Financial Officer, Steve DiMartino, for a comprehensive rundown of our fourth quarter and full year numbers.
spk08: Thanks, Bart. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Let's turn to our fourth quarter and full year 21 results in more detail. Total net sales for the fourth quarter of 21 were 11.1 million, which was up 43% year over year, and net sales for the full year were 39.4 million, which was up 29% from 2020. Sales from our food service technology market, or FST, were 3.5 million in the fourth quarter of 21, which was a 25% increase over the fourth quarter of 2020, and 12.6 million in the full year of 21, which was up 63% from 2020. FST hardware sales in the fourth quarter were down 24% from the prior year due to the timing of orders, but were up 33% for the full year versus 2020. Our recurring FST sales, which include software and service subscriptions, as well as consumable label sales, were $2.1 million in the fourth quarter and $7.4 million for the full year, which were up 124% and 95% respectively over the comparable prior year period. The increase was due to strength across all three components, but particularly from strong label sales as restaurant and C-store activity resumed a more normalized pace in 21, and we placed over 4,000 additional terminals into service during 21. 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 too will our label sales and other recurring revenue. Our ARPU for the fourth quarter of 21 was $965, which was down from $1,016 in the third quarter of 21. As a reminder, we calculate ARPU by annualizing the quarter's recurring revenue and then dividing that number by the number of paid terminals in service at the end of the prior quarter. Given that we're still in the early stages of building out our installed base of terminals, our ARPU will likely fluctuate quarter to quarter based on the size of individual orders and the timing of terminals shipped. Our casino and gaming sales were 4.9 million in the fourth quarter 21 and 15.3 million for the full year, which are increases of 84% and 39% over the comparable COVID impacted prior years periods. As Bart touched on, we continue to see great improvement in the domestic market. And during the fourth quarter, we also finally began to see a pickup in our international casino markets, which were up 100% over the fourth quarter 2020 and 32% sequentially from the third quarter 21. POS automation sales, which consists mostly of sales of receipt and line list label printers to McDonald's, were $1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 21 and $4.8 million for the full year. That was up 23% and 28% over the comparable prior year periods, respectively. Demand for printers for use at McDonald's stores continued to increase throughout 21 compared to the COVID lows of 2020, and we expect this trend to continue into 2022. Printrx sales were 200,000 in the fourth quarter and 631,000 for the full year. As Bart mentioned, we made the decision to end-of-life our Printrx products, which resulted in some large final sales to customers in the fourth quarter of 21. Going forward, we don't expect any future sales of Printrx products. Moving on to Transact Services Group, or TSG, sales. TSG sales totaled $1.3 million in the quarter and $6 million for the full year, which is up 3% and down 14% respectively from the year-ago periods. As a reminder, TSG sales include legacy POS paper and service contracts on legacy banking printers and spare parts for lottery printers, which we are no longer focused on. We expect TSG revenue to continue to decline over time. We believe the slight bump in the fourth quarter may have been due to part shortages causing customers to repair their existing printers due to limited availability of new printers for purchase. Moving down the income statement, gross margin in the fourth quarter was 39.7% compared to 30.6% in the fourth quarter of 2020. And for the full year, 21, was 38.7% compared to 42.3% in 2020. Despite 29% higher sales year over year, our gross margin for 21 was lower, mostly due to higher costs of our hardware as well as shipping costs, both resulting from part shortages, which were significantly higher than in 2020. Unfortunately, we expect these elevated shipping and part costs to continue for the foreseeable future. However, as Bart mentioned, during the first quarter of 22, we've instituted an across-the-board price increase on all of our hardware products. We expect these price increases to at least cover our cost increases and protect our gross margin around the current level. Our operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 21 increased $1.8 million, or 37%, to $6.9 million, and for the full year increased $3.7 million, or 17%, to $24.8 million. This increase can mostly be attributed to higher selling and marketing expenses as we hire new sales and marketing staff expanded marketing programs to support BOHA and incurred higher sales commissions and travel expenses as trade shows resumed and travel began to return to more normalized run rates throughout the year. Also included in this increase were higher engineering expenses as we hired additional software developers and incurred higher expenses for BOHA software development projects paid to our third-party development firm from whom we licensed the software. Breaking this down a bit further, In the fourth quarter, our engineering expenses were up 32% to $1.9 million. Our selling and marketing expenses were up 102% to $2.5 million. And our G&A expenses were up 4% to $2.4 million. And for the full year 21, our engineering expenses were up 31% to $7.5 million. Our selling and marketing expenses were up 25% to $7.7 million. And our G&A expenses were up 4% to $9.6 million. We incurred an operating loss of $2.5 million, or 22% on net sales in the fourth quarter of 21, which compares to an operating loss of $2.7 million, or 34% on net sales in the fourth quarter of 2020. For the full year of 21, we incurred an operating loss of $9.5 million, or 24% on net sales, which compares to an operating loss of $8.2 million, or 27% on net sales in 2020. As I mentioned last quarter, our full year results include the $2.2 million PPP loan from the SBA under the CARES Act, which was formally forgiven in the third quarter and shows up in our other income line item. Additionally, in the fourth quarter 21, other income includes the recognition of a $1.5 million gain from the Employee Retention Credit, or ERC, under the CARES Act. On the bottom line, we recorded a net loss of $735,000, or $0.07 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2021, which compares to a net loss of $1.9 million, or $0.22 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2020. Excluding the employee retention credit, our adjusted EPS was a net loss of $0.19 per share for the fourth quarter of 2021, which compared to a net loss of $0.22 in the fourth quarter of 2020. For the full year 21, we recorded a net loss of 4.1 million, or 45 cents per diluted share, compared to a net loss of 5.6 million, or 72 cents per diluted share in 2020. Excluding both the PPP loan forgiveness and the employee retention credit, our adjusted EPS for the full year 21 was a net loss of 81 cents per share, which compares to a net loss of 72 cents per share in 2020. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 21 was a negative $2.1 million, which includes removing the impact from the $1.5 million employee retention credit, which compares to negative $1.7 million in the year-ago period. For the full year 21, adjusted EBITDA was negative $7.6 million, which includes removing the impact from both the ERC and the forgiveness of the PPP loan, which compares to negative $5.9 million in 2020. And lastly, we ended 2021 with $19.5 million in cash and no outstanding debt. And at this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Bart for any closing remarks. Bart?
spk02: Thank you, Steve. As always, what a great job. Before I open this call to questions, I'd like to send our company's thoughts and prayers to the Ukrainian people. Our shareholders might not know, but we have a programmer in Kyiv who has helped us with the design of our technology. We found out he evacuated Kiev about a week ago trying to get out of the country. We hope and pray he is safe. I also want to thank the employees at Transact who have had to endure and have worked through the most difficult of times, first getting us through the pandemic and now the parts shortages we face. You are an amazing team, never giving up, and finding solutions to move our business forward. I'm truly thankful for your dedication. There are not enough words to say how grateful I am. And finally, I invite our shareholders to the Roth Capital Investor Conference next week, where I will be doing one-on-ones on Monday. My calendar is getting quite full, but I will make time for you before or after the one-on-ones on Monday to meet with you should you decide to attend. Just let me know.
spk09: operator it's now time for questions thank you if you'd like to ask a question please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad and if you're using a speakerphone please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment again press star one to ask a question and we will go first to George Sutton of Craig Hallam thank you uh Bart first you suggested that your guidance
spk06: reflected some of the supply constraints and labor constraints, but correct me if I'm wrong, you didn't give guidance. So I just wanted to make sure we could quantify these two items, supply and labor, in terms of how they're impacting what you would expect results to be.
spk02: Well, you know, what we're saying is we, you know, at this point, we're looking to do 6,500 to 7,500 terminals or workstations based on the availability of chips. So should that change, we'll be happy to come back and look at that. And based on some of the opportunities, one that we just got the other day and the other two that we're working on and then the many that we're working on in the convenience store market, should we find ourselves in a better chip situation, we'll advise differently.
spk06: Okay, I apologize. So then if we went to those numbers, can we talk about how much impact you think you're seeing from those two constraints? I know it's a hypothetical question, but how significant?
spk02: Yeah, George, this has been just an amazing time. You know, as we ended the year, expecting the shipments of these CHIPs You know, these are purchase orders that we placed over a year ago. So Steve and his team look out 12, 18 months and place orders for things like chips and all the specialty components over a year ahead of time. And as we were expecting delivery, we started getting word from our – we actually buy through a distributor, but it's our major manufacturer that makes them – that they were having problems. Some of it had to do with COVID-19. China shut down certain areas of the country where these chips are actually made, and therefore they couldn't be made. And then, of course, there's a worldwide supply shortage. The three restaurant companies that we're working on, one's for 1,500, the others will add up to probably another 8,500. So that would be 10,000 alone. Realizing that we have existing customers that will keep ordering from us. You know, 7-Eleven will continue their order, and most of our customers continue to place more orders with us as they expand. We're working very closely with each customer to try to get a hold on when exactly they want deliveries and all that, and then working very closely with our chip supplier to find out what we can get. What I can tell you is, I actually called the CEO of a major, major chip manufacturer myself. And then I also got one of our largest customers to write a letter to get their attention to the need for those chips. And I can't be more thankful to the CEO and his team for looking at us as an important customer. There is granted that there are a lot larger customers than us out there and actually starting to supply the chips that we need. We're actually... getting into a better position, but we just can't call it yet. But I am pleased with the work that my head of operations, Andy Hoffman, did, our purchasing department, our engineering team, because our chip manufacturer said if we move to a different chip, that's the one they're mass producing now. I think it's mainly driven by the car demand, the car manufacturer's demand. And they were very helpful in getting us the design specifications so we could We write our firmware and redesign our boards. In some cases, we're designing printers twice to get to the end of the year where we'll finally implement these new chips. So, you know, the demand is rising. There's no doubt, George. You know, I don't think I have to tell you about the headwinds facing the restaurant companies. I talked to one restaurant CEO just the other day who said it's not the labor shortage as much as every time he hires somebody, literally within a month or two, they get an offer for a dollar more and they jump to a different restaurant. You know, I think today the unemployment has four and a half million jobs that are more than the employed. The numbers today were amazing in regards to the amount of job openings there are. So, you know, we're coming out of the pandemic. We're working with our restaurant companies closely to understand. Like I said, we've got three restaurant companies right now, one that's told us to go ahead and We're now putting our product into their system and working with them on this nice label design. You know, this QR code stuff is pretty cool. And the ability for them to communicate to their customers almost real time when they get a grab-and-go item is what's driving the demand for the terminal because in the headquarters they can make a design change on the label instantaneous and get it down to all their stores. So we're energetic. We're positive. The upside is there. Sad to say that we could be limited by chips and timing of orders.
spk06: One other question, if I could. Supply and labor constraints aside, when you look at how you are performing your go-to-market in terms of sales management and quota carriers and partners, can you just give us a broad update of How successful do you view that to be? Are you where you'd like to be in terms of touch points?
spk02: In one area, yes. In one area, no. Our small-medium business has been a real success for us, I think. And in fact, the reason why we got this one restaurant company is we started working with some of their stores directly because they were actually calling us for help. And through that and the back channel that was going on, we won this order. We won this business. I wouldn't say it's an order. It's an agreement to go forward and get these terminals out in the marketplace so they could do this marketing. We direct sell, right? We have sales managers in the field. It has been difficult to find people, and we could use some more. Also, as most of you know, we don't have a head of sales for FST, but that looks promising in regards to finding somebody But that's the one area, George, that we could use some more people. The good news is our customer success team that we built is actually full of people. And where necessary, they fill in for a sales presentation or a video presentation or answer some questions about our technology. But I would like a couple more salespeople, George, there's no doubt.
spk03: Bart, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Sure. Thanks, George.
spk09: And we'll go next to Chris Howell of Barrington Research.
spk03: Thanks. Thanks for taking my questions, Bart and Steve.
spk05: Hi, Chris. Hey, the 6,500 to 7,500 paid terminals, There's a lot of supply chain constraints going on. Can you talk about how we should think of the mix of terminals this next year? Because of the supply chain constraints, would you think the mix of terminals favors the second half of the year as perhaps chipsets become more readily available for you?
spk02: I'd like to answer it in two ways. First of all, we actually have two products that we sell, the the boha terminal and the boha workstation um we you know where we're seeing the in certain restaurants the boha terminal is the one that they're looking at because it's kind of a standalone it's all included but the beauty of the workstation with the help of apple you know as apple continues to sell their ipad into restaurants all we have to add to the equation other than our software is the workstation itself. It's the unit that has the two printers and a stand for the iPad. And that makes our sales offering, our product offering quite inexpensive because they already bought the tablet. So it's going to be interesting to see how the mix goes because Apple is even getting more aggressive now in helping us in the marketplace as the market opens up and they actually get the okay to travel again. I do think that the second half is going to be bigger than the first, and that's because of the chip supply. There's no doubt. And also, if you look at the order, this project that we just won, I think it's going to probably take three or four months to finish up all the work that we're doing for them on the label design and getting it right for them and then teaching them how to use what we call the command center, which actually can talk to all the terminals in the marketplace. And that's going to probably take us another couple of months to do. However, they are starting to buy the terminal. We expect orders to come in next week or the week after as we enter in our information into their system. But I would say that the second half will be bigger than the first due to the chip issue.
spk05: That's excellent. Very helpful. And can you talk about terminal allocation? There's a lot of puts and takes here. You have the 1,500 stores as it relates to the restaurant company. You have your S&B initiatives that are generating success for the company here. You also have a large convenience store that continues to roll out. it's terminals. How should we think about the different buckets as you decide where to place terminals this year?
spk02: You know, what we, what we told our sales force is pretty simple. Chris, he who places the order gets the product. You know, what that, what is, what it's doing is it's forcing our customers to kind of think ahead and say, when do we want them? When do we need them? And to lock it up. And, This just happened at Christmas time. We were expecting ship shipments the first week of January when we were literally told that they weren't coming in. And the sad part is we were given no heads up to this. Thankfully, we were able to get on the phone and with the necessary people to get there turned around. But we are telling our customers, first come, first serve. It's hard for me to reserve product for a customer when our pipeline of opportunities is growing. So it has put a little pressure on our sales force to talk directly to the customers to say, you know what, make your commitment. And I think that's good for us. If you saw our backlog of the casino industry, I mean, they're in. I mean, the orders are in. They're trying to lock up our supply as quickly as possible. So we could see that also in the restaurant market.
spk05: Okay. You led me right into my last question, and then I'll give some others a chance. The casino and gaming industry, you're seeing a quick sequential pickup on the international front. It also sounds like you're picking up some market share in this environment, as you mentioned, some of the logistical issues that persist. in the market space. Can you talk about what you're seeing there? And perhaps once we normalize out of this, casino and gaming looks better than it's ever been.
spk02: Yeah, so let's break it down into the three markets, Chris. We have the U.S., we have Europe, and we have Asia. Asia is still dead. Asia is still a problem. China has a zero-tolerancy program where should something break out, they shut everything down. Macau is still very slow. We do have some pockets of business. The Philippines, we get some business out of, and then there's Laos and Cambodia. I don't think everybody knows how many different countries we sell to, but the biggest market is Macau, and that's still pretty soft. Europe is what came back, and it's been nice, and we continue to see the orders. Our biggest customer there is trying to lock up production for their slot machines through the year. Maybe Steve can talk about that some more in regards to what's coming in. And clearly the U.S. has picked up and there is no doubt that we have one market share where either our competitor could not ship or we believe that they're going back to an older printer to be able to ship and customers are telling us they don't want to do that and coming to us. Now that's put a little extra pressure on us. You know, the one thing that that happened as we ended Q4 was all these orders coming in and nobody forecasting it ahead of time. People started to get desperate based on the issue. In the point of sale market, our biggest competitor hasn't been able to ship to our customer in over six months. I mean, think about that, Chris. Imagine if I told you I couldn't ship for six months. But, you know, it was all a surprise to us, and a lot of it came to light when they wanted to do this new project where they're going to buy a lot more printers from us for their stores. And we realized the problem that they were in. I can't thank them enough for working with us and helping us through the issue. So, yeah, we have picked up some market share. I don't know when we'll see Asia come back. I'm in constant contact with our sales manager out there, as well as Tracy is our head of sales. to get some, we've got a project on the board that if they could open the hub or get close to opening up, we'd see a fair amount of printers shipping into Asia because we've won the business. But right now we have no visibility to that.
spk03: Okay, thanks for taking my questions. Chris, thanks for your help. Thanks for you.
spk09: And we'll go next to Jeff Martin of Roth Capital Partners.
spk07: Hey, good evening. Bart, I wanted to get a sense of – hey, Bart. Thanks for all the details. It's very helpful. It sounds like you're working through extremely difficult conditions, and it sounds like you're handling it well, so congratulations there. On the engineering side, it sounds like you're having to do a lot of reengineering on product. Is that both on the gaming and casino side as well as the FST side? And if so, where are you in the phase of that? And did you have any of that in Q4, or is that really starting to happen in Q1?
spk02: Yeah. So, Jeff, I got the call probably, Steve, what was it, a day or two before Christmas when we got the call? Yeah, right around Christmas. Yeah. So that's when we got the call. Probably the toughest Christmas I've had when you find out that, product you're expecting, um, was being pushed out months and, and, and, and, you know, we had to go to, we, we worked all the way through Christmas and New Year's to get that reversed. Um, Jeff, every hardware product that transact is being redesigned right now. Um, luckily and thankfully our chip manufacturer found some chips for us so we could keep going, but told us, you know, if you look at our products versus what some of these chips do, We don't need all the bells and whistles, right? We need to move motors, print on a piece of paper, have a sensor tell us whether we're out of paper and all that. But our chip manufacturer said those types of processes, while they're not into licensing it, there's just not going to be a lot of production of it, and you should go to our latest. And then got us in touch with their engineering team to help our engineering team understand the design criteria. It's not a horrible project. It's one that our engineering took on with a lot of... This is what they're hired to do. They love this stuff. Let us go to work and design in some latest technology. It's just work. It's a different chip. It's a different platform package. That means the board's got to be redesigned and then the firmware's got to be redesigned because You know, each one has different IOs and how many IOs. We literally have it down in detail, Jeff. If you saw what we were doing, we literally have it laid out by month when products go to the next version and then go to the next version. As it stands right now, we have weekly meetings almost three, four times a week on where we are. I'm pleased to say that we're right on schedule, if not ahead of schedule, where we need to be. The real issue is going to be just getting the chips. I think on the engineering side, we will get that done. The team is very excited. They're working with the latest and greatest chip technology, even though we probably won't use half of it, even though they'd like to use it and tell me that they can get the printer to sing when we don't need it to sing. But every hardware product at Transact will be redesigned by the end of this year so we can get on the new platform and we can be in the high production area.
spk07: Okay, great. And then I wanted to ask you about the two large restaurant organizations within the pipeline that could be an additional 8,500 terminals. that would exceed your guidance of $6,500 or $7,500 for the year. And I would imagine as we progress throughout 2022, you're going to see other large restaurant organizations look to move forward at a faster pace than they are currently. I just wondered if you could kind of help shape the perspective, maybe give some observations over the last three, four, five months in terms of any shifts and mentality. I know you talked about the issues of the labor shortages and the things that they're focusing on having to put their attention to, whereas technology implementations or evaluations are still on hold somewhat. But just curious if you could comment with respect to the 8,500 in those two opportunity pipelines, and then relative to anything shift in sentiment or engagement level from the larger restaurant organizations?
spk02: Yeah, great question again, Jeff. Thank you. So if I kind of break it up, if a restaurant like this one that we just got the commitment for, where they saw the need for technology, not only for the back of the house, but to help drive demand for their product, their marketing messages and things like that, they've got to get away from the old technology that's out there. They can't do it with like our 9700 and some of the older terminals out there. So they're driven to, you know, to use the latest technology. In most of the applications that we're working on, it's being driven by the need for labeling. Some of the restaurants where you talk to them about labor savings and you've got this inflation going on, If they don't have a real need to go do it right now, such as the one customer that we just won where they want to do this labeling on their grab-and-go items, they've put everything on hold. We're getting emails. We apologize. We're still going to test it. But we've got to get through the labor issue. We've got to get through our food shortage issues. We've got to get through the inflation issues. And we understand that, right? I mean, we're going through our own parts issues. So we understand that. So where there's a real need for the technology, that's being driven forward. And so when you combine that in a certain part of the restaurant market that's doing that, and then you look at the convenience store market where each one is looking at fresh food initiatives and in the need of being able to print the right nutritional information and grab-and-go information, that's what's driving our business forward right now. If you looked at the standard restaurant business where we can go in and do timers and temperature checking and temperature sensing and all that, if they don't have a real need right now to accomplish something other than, hey, you know what? We can save labor. We can help you automate. We can help you streamline the operation. They look at us and go, but I can't get labor in. Or every time I bring somebody in, I've got to pay a dollar or two more. And we're just juggling that. So where we see the need for the technology, a real need right now, that's where we're hunting. That's where we're going because they need our technology. So, you know, while we have this two other opportunities in the restaurant market, we have many opportunities in the convenience store market too. So we've just got to manage through that. We've got to manage through their expectations. We got to manage through their trials and evaluations. And also, you know, not scare them about the technology, you know, and the chip issue, but work with them closely to say, you know, if you want to roll this out at a certain time, let's make sure that we're in tune to that so that we can provide you the technology. While we're also supplying our existing customers, you know, we heard from one of our customers that they might buy another 200 terminals. So we got to make sure that we're on top of all that. I actually meet with the sales team every week. Monday mornings, we go over it. We go over the demand and making sure that we effectively let Steve and his operations team know what we're seeing.
spk07: Very helpful. Thanks, Bart. I look forward to seeing you next week.
spk03: Yeah, yeah. Hey, live and in color. It's fabulous. About time. About time. It's about time.
spk09: And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll go to Chris Sakai of Singular Research.
spk03: Hi. Good afternoon. I had a couple questions. With recent inflation, have you guys increased your label pricing for BOHA customers?
spk02: Oh, yeah. Chris, across the board, we are implementing our second price increase. And one of the things that we're doing to help our customers, because nobody likes, you know, PPV going up. So what we're doing is we actually split on certain products. We split the price increase into two parts. One is to help us pay for the air freight and that doesn't go to their PPV and one for the inflation that we're experiencing. So we're actually helping our customers so that, you know, look, One of our customers shared with us the inflation that they're facing. It is just amazing to see the millions and millions of dollars that they're facing in regards to inflation. We're nothing compared to some of the other stuff that they're facing. But we were pushing through our second price increase. Steve, what, four months? I think we did the last one September, October? Yep. Yeah, so we're pushing through our second. I've been CEO of this company for quite a while, and all we did was lower our prices or hold our prices. We never had to raise prices before. It's not fun to have to do, but I got to tell you, when you talk to the customers and share with them, we're very open. We're very transparent with them with what's going on. They go, we understand. We're seeing it across the board. We expected you to raise our prices.
spk03: Okay. Great. Well, thanks for that. We're just wondering if, can you shed some light on the ARPU for BOHA units in the fourth quarter? And, you know, what do you think that'll be for 2022?
spk02: I, you know, I still believe that our average revenue per units can be between $1,000 and $1,200. Every project that we work on is right around there. In the fourth quarter, as I said, we, we took a credit to help our overseas customer who hadn't used the terminal all year. They've been shut down and this customer is very important to us as they also buy our casino printer. So the right thing for us to do was to help them out. And in times like this, you can build relationships when even you have to take a credit and give them back some money or give them credit. You actually can help build on the relationship when you do something like that. But they're too important a customer for us to have said no. So it impacted our ARPU. That's all. It's okay. Okay.
spk03: How many FOHA unit installations do you guys believe you can achieve in 2022? I think we said that. 6,500 to 7,500.
spk02: You know, one thing I don't think our shareholders realize is we have almost 60,000 terminals in the marketplace today. Now, realize we were first into the restaurant market with a food safety terminal, or let's call it a BOHA terminal. We have 60,000 terminals in the marketplace. Now, our 9,700 didn't come with recurring revenue and all that, but they're out there, right? They're working. They're working every day at many restaurant companies. This recent one that we won is we won it because they want to do more than just food safety labeling, which drove them to our terminal. We worked with them on solving that issue of being able to print out a marketing label for them for grab-and-go. But our shareholders should realize we have almost 60,000 terminals in the marketplace today.
spk03: Okay, great. Thanks.
spk09: And, yes, we do have a question from a private investor, Richard Dusansky.
spk04: Yes. Hi, Bart. Hi, Bart. I just want to tell you how impressed I am, how informative and transparent the call is. I almost feel like I'm talking to, you know, someone sitting next to me. So in advance, I'm just – a lowly shareholder for probably the past 10 years. And I'm impressed with the detail and how the company jukes and jibes to help its customers and you calling CEOs on behalf of, you know, to get chips and stuff like that. And I'm also impressed with all the SEC filings I'm seeing about, you know, the board as, you know, by either buying more stock or granting stock options, so there's obviously a faith in the future. But my question is, what is being done for the shareholders? The price of the stock is my barometer. As much as I'd like to be impressed by everything that's going on, I just feel that every call I listen to it's sort of the same shareholders, and we're each telling the same story to the same people. How do we broaden, hire a PR company, some company to help broaden, tell this great story that you're telling today?
spk02: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the question. You know, when we did the two capital raises over the last year or so, year and a half, One of our goals was to expand our shareholder base, which we believe we have. You know, it's been difficult in regards to, you know, we couldn't attend VESTA conferences and things like that, where I think we can tell a great story and meet face-to-face with the shareholder and explain what we're doing. Thankfully, Roth will be our first. I could not thank him enough for deciding to go live. You know, so, you know, the goal is, you know, to drive the stock price up. You know, in all fairness, it's just been headwind after headwind. You know, you launch restaurant technology in the middle of 2019 and wake up in March of 2020 with, you know, orders coming in to a massive pandemic that shut our business, you know, shut our customers down. I like to say that I've been in the casino market for probably 25 years and never saw a casino close before, and we watched casinos around the world all close for months. But the big thing for us is to stay positive and focused, which we are. The chip shortage came out of nowhere in Christmas. We weren't expecting it, but you handed the cards you handed, and we went to work, and we worked all through the holidays to turn that around. I think our strategy is spot on. I think what we're doing for convenience stores is helping them out. I think we got to close a couple more. The Salesforce knows that. I think we're finally starting to see restaurants open up their pocketbook. This latest one is a good win for us. I think we're going to get a couple more. And then we just got to focus on the business. We really do. We got to focus on growing it. And, you know, if you kind of go out a couple of years and start thinking about 7,000, 10,000 terminals going out and hopefully more, you start thinking about the recurring revenue, and you get up to 30,000, 40,000 terminals out there, you start talking about 30,000, 40,000 recurring revenue. So we're very focused on that. I'm very pleased to see the casino industry coming back. It's a very profitable business for us, and that also helps us. And clearly the surprise was our point-of-sale business. You know, as much as we're focused in the back of the house, we do have a front-of-the-house business. And, you know, I do think it should double this year as long as we continue to get the chips in. So it's up to us to stay focused. We do have an investor relations firm, probably the best on the street. ICR could not be more happy with them. Truthfully, they're just wonderful, the best we've ever had. They know that we've got to get the story out. They know the challenges we've had the last two years, and they've been very helpful. Unfortunately, they had a conference in January that had to get canceled at the last minute. Omicron set us back a lot in December, January, and February. But I think ICR is just a wonderful firm in helping us out tremendously.
spk03: Thank you.
spk09: And it appears there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Bart Schulman for any additional closing remarks.
spk02: Thank you, operator, and thank you, shareholders, for being on the call. I do send my thoughts and prayers to Ukraine. Like I said, we have an engineer out there, and we just hope he's safe. I also thank our shareholders for all your support. I thank our employees who have just have gone through the ringer the last two years. I do hope that some of you come out to Roth. Let's get together. Let's shake hands again. Let's see each other face-to-face again. Let's talk about what we're going to do as a company, but let's just say hello to each other again. So hopefully I'll see a bunch of you out at Roth. I thank you for listening on the call. We'll talk to you again. Thank you.
spk09: And this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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