TransAct Technologies Incorporated

Greetings and welcome to the Transact Technologies fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Should anyone require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ryan Gardella, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Tasha. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to the Transact Technologies fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. Today we'll be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after market close. Joining us from the company is CEO John Dillon and President and CFO Steve DiMartino. Today's call will include a discussion of the company's key operating strategies, the progress on these initiatives, and details on our fourth quarter and full year financial results. We'll 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 10-K and 10-Q forms. Transact undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the call. Today's column of tasks will include non-GAAP financial measures and the meaning of SEC Regulation G. When required, reconciliations of all non-GAAP financial measures and 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 website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Ryan, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. So I'm pleased to announce what I consider a relatively strong year at the end, particularly for FST. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $10.2 million, highlighted by the sale of 1,639 BOHA terminals. It's the highest quarterly number we've recorded since 2020. And in fact, I did some math, and over the last eight quarters, beginning in Q1, two years ago, 2023, we've seen a 40% plus 42% combined annual growth rate in our quarterly BOHA terminal placements. That's compounded. And this demonstrates, in my opinion, the improvements we've made in our go-to-market, the GTM strategies, and our internal sales motions. They are, in fact, working well to improve the business. We are also pleased that the momentum is here, and we believe that terminal placements will continue to trend upward throughout 2025. So let's review some of the other fourth quarter and full year results. For the fourth quarter, we generated total FST revenue, that's food service technology, 4.3 million. It's approximately flat sequentially and down about 8% to 9% year over year. And recurring FST revenue of 2.7 million down almost 15% sequentially and 5% year over year. For the full year, we recorded FST revenue of $16.1 million and FST recurring revenue for the year was $10.8 million, down about 1% and 2.9% respectively from the prior year. As a reminder, we stopped receiving recurring revenue and additional hardware sales as previously discussed from a large client in the third quarter of 2024. meaning that much of our third and all of our fourth quarter recurring revenue results include only a de minimis contribution from that client, but our year-over-year comparisons do. So that's wiped down a little bit. However, we believe that our improving results ultimately will offset the loss from that one client, unexpected as it was. I'm not happy about it, but, you know, it is what it is. It happens occasionally to any company. So we're working our way past that, and the numbers, I think, show that. The growing success in FST markets direct results, as I pointed out, of the reorganization, refocusing the FST sales team and marketing teams during the past 18 months. We acknowledge and understand that there's still work to be done. This is a recurring and improving process, you know, constant improvement. But I'm pleased with the progress so far and the growing momentum in the FST side of our business. It's still going to be lumpy. But we expect overall the trends will be upward and to the right, which is where you want them to be. We're also seeing good conversion stream, a good conversion stream coming from the existing customers who are using either our AccuDate terminal or earlier terminals that we provided in the past to the new BOHA Terminal 2. And this is including from our large QSR customer who refuses to let us use their name. However, they're continuing to roll out the Terminal 2 as planned. In addition to our large QSR and a large sushi customer, this is Hiso, we have a major convenience store chain customer that has begun to upgrade about 1,400 of their old workstations to the new BOHA terminal. As a reminder, we discontinued our prior generation Accudate 9700 at the end of 23, which also makes the AccuDate install base of about 40,000 units a potential target for upgrades to the Terminal 2. And we're gradually targeting that and finding a successful opportunity there. For the quarter, we landed six new accounts. Not lots, but it's good. However, I'll point out that these six accounts represent future potential opportunity for about 6,000 units over time. We tend to use a bit of a land and expand strategy. It's easier to get the first bite of the apple, as it were. And then the goal is to get the rest of the camel's nose, not just the nose, but the rest of the camel into the tent. And that's usually what happens with us. So land and expand the strategy and the six new accounts are an excellent opportunity for us in the future. Additionally, the new pipeline remains solid, new business pipeline. With quarter-over-quarter difference in the rolling four-quarter pipeline numbers remaining consistent and constant, so the pipeline's holding up good. I'll point out that when I took over, the pipeline discipline was pretty weak. The discipline around vetting the pipeline and making sure you know what's in it and what's going to close and what's not going to close has improved significantly since we began the GTM overhaul last year. Moving on to casino and gaming, we recorded revenue in the fourth quarter of $4.8 million, up 13.5% to 14% year-over-year, and approximately 5% sequentially. We're pleased to see the continued normalization of this market. As we predicted, there is evidence of improvement in the demand side of the market, with our first quarter this year trending a bit stronger than the fourth quarter last year so far. And on the inventory side, we believe we now have all of our major domestic OEM partners back in buying positions after working with them, and in some cases to reconfigure existing inventory they had so they could sell it in other markets. So that's worked out well. I'd also like to highlight two pieces of news that we think will be important for 25, and that's first we have completed the rollout of our Epic TR80 thermal roll printer, This printer is used in sports betting kiosks, some video lottery terminals, and other non-casino games. And it's going to be something that's going to complement some of the other systems that we already sell in casino and gaming, so we're happy about that. We expect it to fuel additional sales more or less throughout the year. And second, we are again encouraged by the increased sales traction we're seeing with Epic Central due to our new relationship with CasinoTrack. CasinoTrack sells Epic Central as part of their slot suite product offering on a subscription basis. So we receive, if you will, recurring revenue per month, per unit, basically per slot going forward. And it basically helps encourage players to expand their play, play longer, improves the average daily play. So this is exciting. They've got a really nice solution with slot suite, and we're a component of that, which helps us as well. We believe that 2025 will be a positive year, over a year of casino and gaming sales. However, it's incumbent upon me to add that that business, we call it CNG, but casino and gaming, it's still recovering from the pandemic and the exuberant post-pandemic rebound. And now it's in a bit of a hangover. I mean, everybody came back to the casinos and everyone went crazy when the pandemic was over. And now the casinos are sitting there figuring out, well, what's steady state going to look like? However, all in all, we see no systemic problems in the midterm for our C&G business, but our clients are still dealing with some amount of day-to-day market uncertainties. But again, we feel that the industry is back and it's going to be in good shape. I know some of the casino stocks are down a little bit and some of them have posted down results, but we don't see any slowdown in the long-term or the mid-term situation. relative to those industries. Next, I want to provide you with an update on our strategic review process. We began that only just a year ago. We started it, we announced we were going to do it in Q4 of 23. We began in earnest in 24. The process is active and it's ongoing. Our management team and our board of directors are focused on the process, believe me. And collectively, we're determined to consider any and all options that increase and or deliver shareholder value. We don't have further updates right now, but the process, when the company determines that a disclosure is appropriate or required, you will hear about it immediately from us. Many of our shareholders have said, well, it seems like it's taking a long time. Believe me, the process is way more complex than you might think. suspect from the outside, but we're working very hard at it. You can trust me on that. We're not turning away any opportunities that might come our way. We're looking at everything, and I believe that the process is doing the things that most investors would want us to do. Finally, before I turn the call over to Steve, let me provide our 2025 financial outlook. For total revenue, we're expecting a range of between $47 million and $52 million in top-line revenue. And for adjusted EBITDA, we're expecting a range of zero, which is breakeven, to about a negative $2 million in EBITDA. These ranges assume we see continued recovery in casino and gaming throughout the year with no disruptions in either supply chain or demand. While we believe this will be the case, we felt it was important to provide that additional color commentary. Overall, we are pleased with our momentum on AISP side of the business. including the 40-plus percent compound annual growth rate in terminal units placed in the last two years. We got a strong balance sheet. We got enough working capital to weather a potential downturn in the economy, which we don't expect. However, we're prepared if needed, and our casino and gaming business is recovering. While we're continuing to press forward to grow our success in FST, we also simultaneously will vigorously pursue Our strategic review focused on maximizing and returning value to shareholders. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve for a more detailed review of the financials. Steve?

Thank you, John. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Let's take a look at our fourth quarter and full year 24 results in a little more detail. Total net sales for the fourth quarter were $10.2 million, which was down 23% compared to $13.3 million in the fourth quarter of 23%. For the full year 24, our net sales were 43.4 million, which was down 40% compared to 72.6 million in 23, and within our revised outlook range for the year provided on our third quarter earnings call. Sales from our food service technology market, or FST, for the fourth quarter were 4.3 million, which was about flat sequentially and down 9% compared to 4.7 million in the prior year period. For the full year, FST sales were 16.1 million, That's down 1 percent compared to 16.3 million and 23. As John said, we sold 1,639 terminals in the fourth quarter and 5,371 terminals for the full year. And we ended the year with 13,961, so just shy of 14,000 net new terminals installed in the market. Our recurring FST sales, which include software and service subscriptions, as well as consumable label sales for the fourth quarter were $2.7 million. That was down 15 percent compared to 3.2 million in the prior year period. For the full year 24, recurring FST sales were 10.8 million. That was down 3 percent compared to 11.1 million for the full year 23. Our ARPU for the fourth quarter of 24 was $875. That was down 6 percent compared to 926 in the fourth quarter of 23, but it was up 25 percent sequentially from $700 in the third quarter of 24. Our casino and gaming sales were 4.8 million. That was up 14% from the fourth quarter of 23, primarily due to a recovery in the demand for our printers at the major slot OEMs. For the full year, casino and gaming sales were 20.3 million. That was down 51% year over year. As John mentioned, we've seen the expected return of our major domestic OEM partners to buying positions after helping them reconfigure and liquidate their existing inventory. POS automation sales for the fourth quarter decreased 74% from the prior year to 411,000. For the full year, POS automation sales were 3.4 million, and that was down 51% from the full year 23. The decline was largely a result of difficult comps as we experienced unusually high sales in 23 due to our competitors' inability to supply product. In addition, we believe the competitors in this market are now fully back online, and we're experiencing a more competitive environment. As a result, we're taking steps, including adjusting our pricing, to respond to the new dynamics in this market. Moving to the Transact Services Group, or TSG as we call it, sales for the fourth quarter were $759,000, which was down 73% from $2.8 million in the prior year period. This was primarily due to unusually high sales from final buys of legacy lottery spare parts in the prior year that didn't repeat in 24. For the full year 24, TSG sales were 3.6 million, and that was down 56% from the full year 23. Moving down the income statement, our fourth quarter gross margin was 44.2%. That was down from 48% in the prior year period. Full year gross margin was 49.5%. That's compared to 52.9% in the full year of 23. This comes as a result of lower overall sales volume and competitive price adjustments as well as significantly lower casino and gaming sales, somewhat offset by favorable overhead cost absorption. Going forward, we expect our gross margin to be in the mid to high 40% range in 25. Our total operating expenses for the fourth quarter decreased by 1.3 million, or 19%, to 5.6 million compared to the fourth quarter of 23. And for the full year of 24, Operating expenses declined by $7.6 million or 23% to $25.1 million compared to the full year of 23. The year-over-year declines came in large part as a result of savings achieved from two separate and successful rounds of cost reduction initiatives totaling $5 million on an annualized basis. In late third quarter of 23, we initiated our first round of broad-based cost-cutting efforts. We estimated that this initiative would produce operating expense savings of about $3 million on the annualized basis, and we experienced the full effect of these reductions throughout 24, including the fourth quarter. We then instituted a second cost reduction initiative in June of 24 that focused largely on further reducing headcount and other external third-party resources. We estimated that this second initiative would generate an additional $2 million of annualized cost savings over and above the $3 million of savings from the first round. We also experienced a full effect from the second round of cost reductions during the fourth quarter of 24. Now, breaking down our operating expenses just a bit, our engineering and R&D expenses for the fourth quarter were down 27 percent to 1.6 million year-over-year. For the full year 24, these expenses decreased by 30 percent to $70 million compared to 23. Our selling and marketing expenses decreased 3 percent to $2 million for the fourth quarter on a year-over-year basis. For the full year 24, our selling and marketing expenses were $8.2 million, and that was down 18% year over year. The decrease was largely due to right-sizing changes related to our FST market made during the latter half of 23, including reductions in headcount, trade show, and overall marketing spend. As expected and noted last quarter, we saw a slight sequential increase in our marketing spend due to the timing of our two largest trade shows, G2E, which is for the casino and gaming market, and NAX, which is for our FST market, which both occur in the fourth quarter. This is consistent with prior years, even as we have reduced our marketing spend on all of our trade shows. Lastly, our G&A expenses decreased 26% to $2 million for the fourth quarter, largely due to lower bonus expense, share-based compensation, and lower bad debt expense. For the full year 24, our G&A expenses were $9.9 million, and that was down 25% from the full year 23. Note that our 23 G&A expenses included a $1.5 million severance charge related to the resignation of our former CEO. For the fourth quarter 24, our operating loss was $1.1 million, which was 10.3% of net sales, and that compared to an operating loss of $522,000, or 3.9% of net sales in the prior year period. For the full year 24, our operating loss was $3.6 million, and that compared to operating income of $5.7 million in 23. On the income tax expense line, we incurred a $7.3 million non-cash charge in the fourth quarter of 24 to record a full valuation allowance on our deferred tax assets. This charge was made in accordance with the applicable accounting guidance, which generally requires a company to provide a full valuation allowance when the company reports a cumulative pre-tax loss over its previous three fiscal years, which for us was 2022 through 2024, and a pre-tax loss in its most recent fiscal year, 2024 for us. Note that the accounting rules place significant weight on past profitability. That is the three-year look-back period as a predictor of future profitability, and less weight on the company's future projections of profitability since they're not certain. Therefore, this charge does not necessarily indicate that we don't expect profitability in the future. Though we have written down the value of our deferred tax assets to zero for accounting purposes on our balance sheet, we believe these assets still have monetary value to the company. A substantial portion of our deferred tax assets consist of net operating loss carry forwards, and R&D credit care affords, both of which have indefinite lives under current tax laws. At such time when the company returns to profitability, we will be able to utilize these fully reserved assets to offset any such future pre-tax income and essentially pay no cash income taxes until they're fully utilized. Looking forward to 25, we expect to continue to provide a full tax valuation allowance until we're able to demonstrate a consistent pattern of profitability. As a result, we expect to record no income tax expense or income tax benefit during 2025, which means our pre-tax income or loss will also be our net income or loss. On the bottom line, we recorded a net loss of $8 million or 79 cents per diluted share for the fourth quarter, compared to a net loss of 62,000 or one cent per share in the year-ago period. For the full year, we had a net loss of 9.9 million or 99 cents per diluted share, compared to net income of 4.7 million or 47 cents per diluted share in 23. Just as a reminder, our fourth quarter and full year 24 numbers include the $7.3 million non-cash charged income taxes. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $705,000 and that compared to positive $587,000 for the fourth quarter of 23. And for the full year, our adjusted EBITDA was negative $1.5 million and that compared to positive $10 million in 23. Our full year 24 adjusted EBITDA result places us at the midpoint of our 24 outlook range that we provided on our last earnings call. And lastly, turning to our balance sheet, it still remains solid. We finished the year with 14.4 million in cash, which was up from 2.1 million at the end of 23. And in terms of debt, we successfully renewed our credit facility with Ciena Lending during the fourth quarter, extending the term for two plus years through March of 27. As part of that extension, our minimum required borrowing amount increased from 2.25 million to $3 million, which is where our outstanding borrowing stood at the end of 24. We believe our cash on hand and the available borrowings under our newly extended credit facility will provide enough liquidity to fund our business for at least the next 12 months. And that completes my presentation. So with that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator for questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. The first question is from Jeff Martin from Ross Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good afternoon. Wanted to get a sense, John, of in terms of the FST terminal installations, in the quarter and maybe for the year, how much of that was concentrated with the large QSR customer and how much of it was replacements and how much was from new logos? I don't know if you can get that granular, but if you could, I think it would be helpful.

Sorry, a little bit of mute. We're still dealing with I can't give you the breakdown on the net new clients offhand, but Steve can give you the breakdown in aggregate relative to the large QSR and the rest of the terminals.

The large QSR was a decent chunk of the number, Jeff. It wasn't more than half, but it was a good chunk.

Okay. And in terms of your outlook for and up to the right year in 2025, you know, is that, is the anticipation that you'll have the same relative, you know, contribution from the QSR, or are there other clients coming into the fold here?

Other clients, but obviously the large QSR is big. It's an enormous entity, as it were, and we're going to continue to sell into that for the foreseeable future. but I'm more encouraged by the net new business. And it's net new business and it's expansion into an existing customers and it's replacement of some of our older terminals that is the most exciting for us.

Jeff, just to be clear, we do expect the business with the large QSR to expand in 25 versus 24. We're going into multiple jurisdictions with them. We get more and more approved as we go here. As you know, it's a license to hunt, so we have to go and get them, you know, one by one. But we do expect to close more in 25 and 24 as we expand our presence with the QSR.

Actually, Jeff, let me add to what Steve just said. We are winning new business in geographies where we didn't have business before, overseas and other venues where, you know, we just didn't have a presence, and we're winning that presence now. And that's really great. We almost treat it like a new account. from an excitement standpoint, because this might be a country or a region that we just didn't have a presence, and now we're getting it now.

Got it. Could we switch over to casino and gaming? Just want to confirm that I understood you correctly. Expect a growth year for this segment over 2024 during 2025, and then if you could also give an update on the international side of that

Steve, you want to speak to that? You're closer to that than I am.

Yeah. All the domestic OEMs, Jeff, are back to buying, so that's a good sign. There was one that was a laggard from last year. They're now back as well, so everybody's back to buying, so that's good news on the domestic side. On the international side, there's still a couple of OEMs that are still working through inventory, but the others are all back to buying. So I think it's good news on both fronts. We expect both, even those, even both of those OEMs that are currently still working inventory, I think they're going to come back to buying too, but probably in the latter half of 25. So we do expect to have a stronger year in 25 overall, both domestic and internationally.

Great. I'll pass it on. Thanks.

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1. The next question is from George Sutton from Craig Hallam. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Steve, if I took out the revenues from your C-Store customer that exited from the numbers in 24, how much in revenues would that have been? I'm just trying to think of comparisons year over year.

Yeah, we previously disclosed, George, I believe that it was about three to four million annualized in a year. So about half of that was in in 24. They finished up about halfway through the year. So about half of that is what fell off.

Gotcha. Okay. John, you mentioned the process is way more complex than we may think. I understand you're effectively selling two different businesses. What else would be complex about this that we might not be thinking about?

Well, two businesses is part of it because somebody who would partner with us or would be of strategic interest to us, they look at each business relative to the markets they might serve. So that's a complexity. And then internally, I mean, we're not a large company, so we operate the two businesses very much as if it's one that just has two verticals. And so the ability to... take a close look at the economics relative to each is complicated. You can't just hit a button and get a spreadsheet that says, here's the P&L, here's the people that work here and there. And so in terms of a conversation we might have with someone relative to resources we might apply to a strategic opportunity is complicated. It takes more time. And so that's a degree of complexity that occurs. And then the two businesses are very different. We've got the cannon, you know this. We have the casino and gaming business, which is steady state. It grows. It's in a relatively small TAM, total available market. But we're in a duopoly. It's profitable. And then we have a more rapidly growing opportunity over in FST. where the TAM is well over a billion dollars. It's an underserved market at this point, and we're still early days, and the opportunity is great, but that's not the part of the business that's contributing to the bottom line from a positive and constructive standpoint. So, you know, it makes for complexity if you're talking to somebody about how do we want to work together with you. And so, I mean, all those things basically come into play And I'm not trying to make an excuse. I'm just saying it's more complex than probably most people from the outside might presume.

One other question on the Epic TR80. Can you just talk about what the size of that market opportunity is? That would be an expanding new part of the market for you?

Steve, you want to tackle that one? You're closer to the TR80. That's the replacement for the 880.

Yeah, that's our roll fed printer, so that's really attacking the sports betting market, George, which is large and growing, especially in Europe. It's got a large market potential for it. We were in the market with a previous product called our 880, but we've been out of the market for a couple years, so now it's a matter of just reestablishing our relationships and getting our product back out there. We've had good interest so far since we have got it back out in earnest really in the last quarter of last year. This is probably the first quarter where we're really going back at the market hard, and we're starting to get good interest for it again. I think it's got a lot of potential. Okay.

Thanks, guys. That's it for me.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to John Dillon for closing comments.

Yes. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining. I appreciate your time and attention. I'm always willing to take a call personally, and I want to point out that we didn't do this call today, Thursday, because we're in a hurry. It's because I'm going to be at the Roth Conference on Monday, and for any of you that are going to be there, I'm happy to take a one-on-one meeting or an after-hours chit-chat, if that's appropriate. So, anyway, thanks very much for being here, and I look forward to seeing you at the conference.

This concludes this teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.