Par Technology Corp Q2 FY2023 Earnings Call

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to PAR Technologies’ Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised, today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Byrnes, Senior Vice President of Business Development.

Thank you, James, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for PAR Technologies second quarter 2023 financial results call. Our earnings press release was issued at the close of market this afternoon and is posted on our website. With me on the call today are Savneet Singh, PAR’s Chief Executive Officer; and Bryan Menar, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. After preliminary remarks, we will open the call to a question-and-answer session. During this call we may make statements related to our business that would be considered forward-looking statements under Federal Securities laws, including projections of future operating results. Due to a number of factors, actual results may differ materially from those set forth in such statements. These factors are set forth in the earnings press release that we issued today under caption forward-looking statements, and these and other important risk factors are described more fully in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We encourage all investors to read our SEC filings. Additionally, non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this conference call. A reconciliation for the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is also available in our second quarter 2023 earnings press release and investor presentation, which can be found at www.partech.com in the Investor Relations page. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Savneet Singh. Savneet.

Thanks, Chris, and good afternoon. In the second quarter, PAR again delivered strong results. Restaurants of all types and at all stages are using PAR as their growth enabler, leveraging our offerings to create a more seamless, cost-effective, and simpler infrastructure. In my position as PAR CEO, I have the privilege and opportunity to sit down face-to-face with our customers and our top integration partners regularly. The message I’m hearing is remarkably consistent. Again and again, I hear that large enterprise restaurants are focused on creating consistent customer experiences across multiple ordering channels. But in today’s world, they are also trying to reduce costs, mitigate risk, and convert cost centers to profit centers. For years, they viewed technology as a capital investment, and today, they are coming around to the idea that software is now a key investment in the OpEx line of their P&Ls. We believe PAR is well situated to take share with these dynamics. At the end of Q2, subscription services revenue increased by 31.2% from last year’s second quarter and ARR topped $122.5 million, a 24.3% year-over-year increase, demonstrating the continued growth and scaling of our subscription services engine. Contracted annual recurring revenue ended the quarter at $140.2 million, a strong 7% sequential increase from Q1. Importantly, we are keeping operating expenses flat from our Q4 2022 run rate. Operator Solutions ARR grew 38.4% to $50 million in Q2 compared to the same period last year. Even more impressive is that Operator Solutions ARR increased 11% from the sequential prior quarter. During Q2, Operator Solutions added 115 new stores and new bookings totaled approximately 1,100. Churn continues to be extremely low at 3.6% annualized for Brink in the quarter. Brink continues to be our land and expand product, and this expansion is demonstrated by an increase of over 14% in ARR per site for Operator Solutions from Q2 last year. With opportunities in table service continuing to surface, and interest from the largest of quick service restaurant organizations increasing, the new customer pipeline for Operator Solutions continues to drive new business. The Operator Solutions weighted pipeline continues to be at an all-time high. Payments is an important part of our growth for Operator Solutions. Rolling out new payments customer sites returned to the pace we had expected and was much faster than Q1. We continue to offer a compelling and transparent pricing model along with a strong set of integrations, coupled with the ease of doing business with PAR that is winning for our customers. We saw momentum in the second quarter, which resulted in record quarterly activations and gross processing volumes, along with customer adoption across our in-store, online, and loyalty platforms. This is highlighted by the full rollout of our one-tap loyalty solution powered by Apple Pay with Salsarita’s in Q2. We are confident this momentum will deliver strong results for the rest of the year. Moving to guest engagement ARR that includes our leading customer engagement at Punchh and our digital ordering platform MENU. Guest engagement ARR grew 14.5% in Q2, compared to Q2 2022 in total approximately $61 million. We continue to work hard to deliver in our current environment and are hyper-focused on delivering scalability and innovation at the same time. In the quarter, we successfully kicked off the deployment of a 2,400 unit fast casual chain, and we launched our new subscriptions product. Active store count on a year-over-year basis increased by 13%, and we believe business will continue to improve as the year progresses. We accomplished this during the quarter, where we saw record campaign usage on the Punchh platform well beyond anything we had ever seen. Usage has increased four times in just the last 12 months, creating both tremendous opportunities and challenges for PAR. This growth has challenged us to scale up our infrastructure quickly while also thinking through the optimal long-term business model for Punchh. We are humbled by the trust given to us by our customers and are committed to helping them drive ROI from our products. MENU continued its migration to the United States this quarter. We have been impressed by the early response MENU has received from prospective customers this year. We are signing customers at a brisk pace, and I’m pleased to report that we are in the final stages of signing three additional brands this quarter that will more than double the number of stores signed to date. As we scale up our operations, I expect the logo and store count to grow meaningfully. These early signings validate our investment thesis with MENU, and the product features and functionality that are driving this early success will continue to give us the opportunity to unify our customers' ordering channels. MENU is a special product and we believe it truly is the next generation ordering, allowing us to grow our footprint outside the store and set us up for the expected proliferation in ordering channels to come. As I mentioned last quarter, we have aggressively started tooling the business for the U.S. domestic market, and we expect revenue to start particularly in Q3. We feel more confident now than we did at the same time of the acquisition that MENU will grow into a dominant product line; as a result, we increased our infrastructure investments in the quarter. We are doing this methodically by focusing on customers that we can take live sooner, balancing our desire to build more for customers with our belief that we should first deliver on today’s promises. Demand isn’t the problem as our existing customers see the power of MENU coupled with Punchh. So it is on us to build up our operations, support and service teams to deliver on those trusting us today. Back office and data center delivered a strong quarter as well. Reported ARR of $11.6 million in Q2 was a 25.3% increase from last year’s Q2. We had activations of 221 stores in the quarter and now have more than 7,200 active stores. Before handing the call over to Brian to review the financials, I wanted to touch briefly on our gross margins in the quarter and specifically margins for our subscription services business. We reported lower than normal adjusted gross margins for subscription services at 61% for the quarter and 65% year-to-date. This decline was driven by two factors. First, as mentioned above, we made a large investment in MENU and PAR payments in advance of the revenue we expect to take live later this year and throughout 2024. These investments, while short-term painful, are needed in order to build out our pipeline and then future revenue. We believe we are at the peak of that spend and investments to moderate from here. Second, as I referenced, we experienced a dramatic growth in usage across our products and in particular, Punchh. This usage was beyond anything we had planned for and resulted in us having short-term disruptions, which led to one-time customer credits to certain customers. To ensure we can support this new baseline of usage, we have ramped up spending and we are importantly tooling so that we don’t encounter these issues again. As CEO, unplanned spending is not enjoyable, but I’m confident this investment is more important in part being able to deliver for our customers. And I believe we will make up for it many times over, as I believe we are likely the only player in our category able to deploy at such a large scale. To summarize on margins, we expect consistent future growth, as PAR payments and menu revenues continue to scale. While it is challenging to have given out credits, those are one time in nature, and we are going all-in on our infrastructure to enjoy the benefits of 2024 and beyond. Our spending and margins will normalize as we deliver on core investments that will again increase our efficiency. In summary, we are heading into the second half of the year with significant momentum and a strong pipeline, and we will approach 2024 with the same focus, ambition, and values that have shaped our company. Bryan will now review the numbers in more detail.

Thank you, Savneet, and good afternoon everyone. Total revenues were $100.5 million for the three months ended June 30, 2023, an increase of 18.2% compared to the three months ended June 30, 2022, with growth coming from both restaurant retail and government segments. Net loss for the second quarter of 2023 was $19.7 million or $0.72 loss per share compared to a net loss of $18.8 million or $0.70 loss per share reported for the same period in 2022. Adjusted net loss for the second quarter of 2023 was $14.1 million or $0.52 loss per share compared to an adjusted net loss of $9.8 million or $0.36 loss per share for the same period in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2023 was a loss of $9.9 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $5.8 million for the same period in 2022. Hardware revenue in the quarter was $26.4 million, a decrease of $2 million or 7% from the $28.4 million reported in the prior year. Sequentially, Q2 hardware revenue was flat compared to Q1 and ahead of our forecast as we continue to see strong hardware sales, both with our Tier 1 legacy customers and across our Brink customer base. Subscription services revenue was reported at $30.4 million, an increase of $7.2 million or 31.2% from the $23.2 million reported in the prior year. The increase was substantially driven by increased subscription services revenue from our Operator Solutions business of $3.3 million, driven by a 21% increase in active sites and 19% increase in average revenue per site. The residual increase of $2.9 million was driven by increased subscription service revenue from our guest engagement business, driven by a 13% increase in active sites, a 7% increase in average revenue per site, and $0.5 million of post-acquisition menu revenue. The annual recurring revenue exiting the quarter was $122.5 million, an increase of 24.3% from last year’s Q2, with Operator Solutions up 38%, guest engagement up 14%, and back of house up 25%. Professional services revenue was reported at $12.8 million, an increase of $0.2 million or 1.1% from the $12.6 million reported in the prior year. $7.1 million of the professional services revenue in the quarter consisted of recurring revenue, primarily from our hardware support contracts. Contract revenue from our government business was $31 million, an increase of $10.1 million, or 48.2% from the $20.9 million reported in the second quarter of 2022. The increase in contract revenues was driven by a $12.6 million increase in government ISR Solutions product line. The increase was substantially driven by continued growth of counter SUAS task orders. Contract backlog associated with our government business as of June 30, 2023 was $297 million, an increase of 61% compared to the $184.5 million backlog as of June 30, 2022. Total funded backlog as of June 30, 2023 was $96.6 million, a 102% increase compared to the funded backlog of $47.9 million for the prior year. Now turning to margins. Hardware margin for the quarter was 19.2% versus 14.7% in Q2 2022. The increase in margin year-over-year was due to an inventory charge in Q2 2022. We continue to expect hardware margins of 20% as we go forward. Subscription services margin for the quarter was 43.3% compared to 53.9% in the second quarter of 2022. The decrease in margin is reflective of a continued growth within our early phase products. In addition to increased hosting costs resulting from significant utilization of our guest engagement products, we made additional investments to ensure the quality of our customer’s experience was not impacted. Sequentially, subscription services margin during the three months ended June 30, 2023 included $5.3 million of amortization of identifiable intangible assets compared to $5.7 million for Q1. Excluding the amortization of intangible assets, total adjusted subscription service margin for the three months ended June 30 was 61% compared to 71% in Q1. Professional services margin for the quarter was 7.7% compared to 16.8% reported in the second quarter of 2022. The decrease in margin was driven by one-time charges. We expect professional services margin to transition back to the mid-teens for the second half of the year. Government contract margins were 4.3% as compared to 11.1% for the second quarter of 2022. The decrease in margin was related to lower mix in direct labor associated with the Counter-UAS revenue. We expect contract margins to trend back to higher single-digit margins as we progress through the second half of the year. Regarding operating expenses, GAAP SG&A was $25.6 million, a decrease of $0.8 million from the $26.4 million reported in Q2 2022. The decrease was driven by lower acquisition costs and corporate expenses. Net R&D was $14.9 million, an increase of $4.8 million from the $10.1 million recorded in Q2 2022. Backing out MENU and non-GAAP adjustments, the growth in R&D is $2.4 million or 24%. The increases relate to personnel hired as we continue to improve and diversify our product and service offerings. Sequentially, net R&D expense of $14.9 million in Q2 was up $0.6 million from the $14.3 million reported in Q1. Total non-GAAP operating expenses were $36.9 million, an increase of $4.2 million versus Q2 2022. MENU accounted for $3.9 million of the increase as we indicated at the end of 2022, we will continue to manage the growth of our business while keeping operating expenses flat during 2023. Net interest expense was $1.7 million, compared to $2.5 million recorded in Q2 2022. The decrease was driven by increased interest revenue from our short-term investments in 2023. Now, to provide information on the company’s cash flow and balance sheet position. For the six months ended June 30, cash used in operating activities was $12.8 million versus $31.6 million for the prior year. Operating cash flow for Q2 was $4 million net positive due to efficient management of our network and capital needs. Cash used in investing activities was $6.2 million for the six months ended June 30 versus $5 million for the prior year. Investing activities during the six months ended June 30, 2023, included capital expenditures of $3.2 million for internal use software, $2 million for developed technology costs associated with our restaurant retail software platforms, and $0.9 million for reinvestment of short-term investments. Cash used in financing activities was $2.5 million for the six months ended June 30 compared to $1.8 million for the prior year. Financing activities for 2023 were driven by stock-based compensation related transactions. Day sales outstanding for the restaurants and retail segment increased from 53 days as of December 31, 2022 to 62 days as of June 30, 2023. We expect DSO levels to come back to historical levels within the lower 50-day range. Day sales outstanding for the government segment decreased from 55 days as of December 31, 2022 to 52 days as of June 30, 2023. I will now turn the call back over to Savneet for closing remarks prior to moving to Q&A.

Let me wrap up with a few key messages before we open the call for Q&A. PAR’s business, organizational model, and growth strategy are strong, resilient, and reliable. I believe this is most demonstrated in our ability to continue to maintain our growth without growing operating investments. This fine balance is a result of a deep focus on operating efficiency, recruiting top talent, and an expectation that we can do more. While there is always a chance end markets could continue to be volatile, we feel our growth engine is on strong footing. We are excited about the opportunities in front of us. Whether it be unification of their tech stack or vendor consolidation, our customers continue to look to simplify their lives, and we believe PAR is well-positioned to help. As I said in Q1, we believe that the M&A environment is also ripe to enhance our value creation. Today, we are pushing on a number of opportunities, all of which we believe add new products and talent to PAR while increasing our financial profile. M&A has been a strong value driver for PAR, and it will continue to be as we go forward. I look forward to keeping you up to date on our progress. Lastly, I wanted to pass on an employee update. While we work to drive results for the customer, alongside this focus is also a desire to drive a fulfilling and rewarding work experience. Earlier this year, PAR was named by Energage as a Top Workplace in 2023 for the technology industry. Their survey touched almost every employee at PAR, and we are humbled by the employee response and motivated not to stay static and improve from here. As always, I would like to thank all of PAR’s employees for their dedication and effort over the past quarter. With that, I will open the call for Q&A.

Thank you. Our first question comes from.

Hey, guys. It is actually Sam on for Mayank today. Thanks for taking the questions here. Wanted to start on Operator Solutions, which saw really nice growth this quarter. Can you guys just unpack what drove some of the strength here, and how we should think about growth in the back half of the year?

Yes. It is a relatively simple growth algorithm. I think we have got a continued nice addition of sites, as we talked about, 115 went live. But also, growth in Brink ARPU is very high alongside the attachment of payments. Our goal is to land with Brink at a higher price than we have historically, and then bring in our payments business. I think what is impressive is, just in the last year, the total base ARPU has grown by about, I think, 14%. And that is with a large portion of our base at the very, very old contract price. And so it is moving up nicely. Payments being the biggest driver followed by the list price of Brink moving up throughout the last year or so.

Got it. That is helpful. And then appreciate the color you gave on the subscription gross margins there this quarter. I guess, could you talk a little bit more about how we should think about gross margins in the back half of the year and maybe into 2024? And maybe dive in a little bit more into how we should think about those investments that are being made in MENU and PAR payments.

Absolutely. So we will expect to call back some of that next quarter. As I mentioned, some of this is one-time in nature, and that will come back to us next quarter. Like I said, I think this is the peak of the investment spend on MENU in particular. And PAR payments is growing faster than our base, and so it brings down gross margin because it is still not at the SaaS gross margin level it will be at. So I think you will see us from this quarter on claw back on gross margins. And then, as we get to 2024, we will get back to low seventies hopefully, and then higher. The key aspect here is that these investments we are making really help us recapture the gross margins that we should be at and set us up to have higher gross margins once we get past these investments. It has also forced us to think about how we price our product, how we charge for our product given how much usage we have, which are all things that I think down the road we can leverage. I think we will see gross margins climb next quarter, the following quarter, and in subsequent quarters going forward as we get back to our historical base of the low seventies.

Our next question comes from Jeremy Sahler from Jefferies.

I guess maybe first on the three chains that you signed for MENU; can you maybe talk about what drove those wins and then were these existing customers? Are you replacing an existing solution?

Sure, and we have signed more than three chains that I was just highlighting that we have got three more that are in the hopper. They are about to sign and will double the store account we have already. It has been very exciting. I think what is driving this is a few things. The first is when you partner or couple Brink with MENU and Punchh; it is a really strong solution. The integration is tight. Obviously, the interactions between our products are very strong, and our teams and there is real value to the customer overnight, and they see that. The second is that MENU fundamentally we believe is the best product in the market. The best way to show that is by demonstrating the product. When we show demos to our customers, it is always a little bit like, wow, how did you crawl into my head and know exactly all the challenges I have with my existing solution? Our demo is why we win. I mentioned this in the last call; we won a decent chunk of business without really driving hard on the sales initiatives like we do on other products, and that will come. The product itself is winning, and that partnership with Punchh is very powerful. As far as who we are displacing, we are displacing the legacy online ordering companies that have existed for a long time. There are a couple big players that we see in pretty much every logo. It is very exciting because we are just starting and this will become a snowball over time. One point I should mention is, I believe, I’m pretty sure every single online ordering deal we sign also includes payments, and so it is a nice two-for-one deal, if you will.

And can you maybe provide an update on table services? Are you targeting any specific customer sizes and where is the product now? Any features that you still need?

Yes, so, one of the things that is really exciting about the Brink business is just how much it has pulled in for this year, but the large table service chains that we won at the end of 2022 are actually going live, as I mentioned on the last call, in 2024. We have been able to continue this momentum and Brink without those, but specific to your question, we continue to see deals inbound from the very largest chains on the table service side to smaller and medium-sized chains. Our pipeline is growing really nicely with very high ARPU, and it continues to highlight the fact that Brink is even in the RFPs; I think this highlights the product-market fit that we have started to hit with our customers.

Our next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street Capital Markets.

Yes. I wanted to first focus on the guest engagement. You are obviously making a pretty substantial investment in your emerging business lines. You talk about a second-half scale-up. Is that in anticipation of winning business or servicing business you have already won?

We have already won. MENU has won a number of deals in Q1 and Q2, and then we expect a couple of nice ones this quarter. So it is very much deals that are signed that we need to get out the door.

And then on the Operator Solutions side of the house, curious to know if the pipeline tempo. Are you seeing any change in the rate of progression for some of your up-funnel conversations?

I don’t think we see any change. I think it just continues to be high. What has been exciting about this year is our engagement with some of the largest changes in the world, coupled with a focus on the emerging chains that we have always been very strong with. I don’t think there has been a change; it just seems very consistent. There is not one sense of slowdown because of the macro at all in that business. I think what is starting to click is that consistent bundling of payments with Brink. Not only creating tons of value for PAR but also creating more value for our customers.

Our next question comes from Will Nance from Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to ask on the Punchh business. I know you said exceeded your expectations; that seems to be a little bit of an understatement. It looked like it was pretty substantial sequentially. Just wondering if you could talk about the sustainability of this pace of activations in that business and just how you are thinking about the remainder of the year?

As we message on Punchh, I think we are kind of getting our footing here. We've spent a ton of money scaling the platform. The usage on Punchh, as I mentioned, is kind of crazy, but the usage of the platform is up four times in just one year. It was already a really big base of usage. While we have grown into that, we have definitely got some bruises through that. However, it provides a great moat for us because we are not aware of any other organization that has the ability to deploy at the scale that we do. While it is painful to make investments in this environment, it is also exciting because there really isn’t anybody that can step into that scale like we can. It is a long-term strategic advantage, and the pipeline looks better now than last quarter. It also looks better than when, if you had asked me two quarters ago. We see nice momentum; I just met with one of the sales leaders a couple of days ago. The pipeline looks strong for Q3 and Q4, but we have to close that business. We have to win that business and make sure we pull it into 2023.

And then I know you mentioned a little bit of investments on the payment side. I’m just wondering if you could revisit attach rates there and any updates to the expectation for $10 million to $15 million of ARR exiting the year?

We feel very good about hitting that target on payments. You can see just the big jump we had this quarter. I expect us to hit that range. I also think that by the end of the year we will have a very strong backlog for 2024, given what we see today. The attach rates of payments in Brink is still very high. It is 80% plus, is my guess. I will come back to you with the actual number, but it is very, very high. When we get a new customer, we are usually successful in attaching payments because it creates a ton of value for the end customer. It is generally more cost-effective, simpler, and provides a single point of contact for servicing. If for some reason we don’t win the payments business, it is generally because they are in an existing contract with somebody else that doesn’t have a buyout clause. Then we will wait around the quarter for that opportunity to come back to us.

And you’re seeing how that attachment is high too through the ARPU increase, right, in Operator Solutions? Because it is in essence attached through there on top of Brink. So the ARPU per site that has now both for Brink and also the payments is driving that increase.

Our next question comes from Patrick McIlwee from William Blair.

Hey, guys. I’m on for Stephen Sheldon today. My first one, given some of the one-time expenses and profit that came in a little bit late this quarter, how should we be thinking about the trajectory for profit adjusted EBITDA over the rest of the year? Is it fair to expect we kind of return to pretty steady progress towards breakeven?

Absolutely. I think this quarter, getting on the gross margins, but the OpEx lines were exactly where we wanted to be, and our growth was strong. I think growth will continue to be strong through the year. The key for us hitting our profitability goals will be getting to the high end of our guidance from the beginning of the year. Like I mentioned earlier, I think we feel confident we are going to claw back some of the gross margin next quarter, the following quarter, and moving forward. There is no doubt profitability is around the corner. If we can deliver on the high end of the revenue side, I think we will get there. If we don’t, we will miss. But it is on us to execute fast as we can to get there. I think the trajectory is very clean from here.

I think with security administration, we have reset, like on the subscription margin. We ended this quarter at low 60s. We are seeing visibility for mid-60s and then to higher 60s as we go to Q3 and Q4, getting ourselves back to that 70% margin that we were at the end of last year before we put the pedal to the metal regarding the investments in the younger products.

What I think is interesting there is that most of that is coming back from a little bit of efficiencies, but also just revenue turning on for these investments we have made, particularly MENU, which starts adding revenue this quarter, and this quarter being Q3 and then really in Q4. What that growth that Bryan talked about doesn’t take into account are the actual investments we are making in Punchh, Brink, and so on. This year has been the story of holding out that flat while maintaining growth. I think next year will be a deep focus on trying to get the best-in-class gross margins while maintaining growth.

Okay, great. And at Punchh, or guest engagement, I should say you had 3,400 activations in the quarter, but only saw about a $1.5 million step up in ARR sequentially. So I just wanted to ask, is that step up as expected or have you seen any pickup in churn related to some of the budget headwinds or some of the capacity issues you had this quarter on that front?

So, I think it is as expected. I think there is always some churn quarter to quarter, but not anything meaningful or concerning on our end. There has definitely been churn in the quarter for Punchh that offset some of that activation. As you suggested, there were at least one-time issues that impacted it. But no, as you can see from the sites versus the ARR, Punchh pricing is up a little bit, so there is no discount or anything like that.

But it is what we forecast or looked at and may call it in the beginning of the year; we were expecting some churn in the first half of this year. This was the year that we kind of had that pivot reflection with Punchh. We are right on forecast and those expectations, primarily site growth is driving the ARR growth.

Our next question comes from George Sutton from Craig-Hallum.

This is actually Adam for George. Savneet, it was great to see the growth in ARPU this quarter. I was hoping you could provide a little more detail on exactly how high you are thinking about ARPU going in the future?

It is going to continue to trend upward. What you are seeing is the results of the new deals we have been taking live plus payments. As more and more of these new concepts and stores go live, it will continue to move upward. The deals that we have in the pipeline today, and when we win them, are at meaningfully fair prices. I think it is just our base catching up to what we have been doing the last year or two. So we expect ARPU to continue to trend upward for a long time here. You can see it across all products. You see it even in data central, obviously within Operator Solutions. It is super meaningful, but even Punchh a little bit. So I think we feel pretty good about that lever now.

And just one follow-up question from me. With the acquisition of MENU, you brought along some international accounts with that acquisition. I would love to better understand how you are now thinking about the international market and how you are managing those international accounts, given that you have been primarily focused on the U.S. up to this point?

It is a great question. So we made this strategic decision at the beginning of this year to not focus on those international accounts and business and retool the business to the United States. This is why the cost structure is so high; we are kind of operating in two different geographies. Think about it as support teams, sales teams in different geos plus DevOps infrastructure in different geos; this is why it is so expensive. We did that due to demand; it was clear how much demand there was for this product in the United States. Instead of waiting for it in Europe, we thought we should bring it here and take advantage of that. You also see the cost structure flip hopefully nicely the other way as the revenue turns on here that we have booked and signed. We are focusing on delivering for customers that need what we have, and that is where our emphasis is now. In time, I think we will eventually go back and build that out.

Our next question comes from Adam Wyden from ADW Capital.

Obviously, we are seeing the investment in Punchh and MENU and there seems to be a little bit of a stopgap between the revenue being turned on in the next couple of quarters and the investment on the front end. But you made a comment that basically said no one else can do what you do, right? I mean, Toast is a big company, but no one else is really out there winning these large logos. Based on our channel check work, there are two Tier 1 customers; one being Burger King Restaurant Brands that is doing an RFP for their entire tech stack in North America, which could be 15,000 units and then Wendy’s with 5,500 units. Is this your way of saying that you have got all the products; no one else has the direct integration and the ability to service the customers and that this is sort of investment in customer service and support because you anticipate winning these big logos and sort of an acceleration in your growth? Is that a fair way to think about it?

Let me first comment on my comment. What I was suggesting was on the Punchh side. We made some big investments in the DevOps infrastructure, scaling the platform. What we realized was given how large Punchh penetration is—I think it is 45 or 46 of the top 100 restaurant chains in America—it has been very hard for people to compete with us to deliver the sheer volume of campaigns that we deliver to our customers. Punchh is clearly invested, I believe near the top or the most. For someone to come in and put that investment down, I just don’t see that happening. We are building a scalability moat along with the product mode and the service mode we want to improve on, and that will be very hard for our competitors to come in and undercut us or to attempt to win large restaurant logos. So it is going to be hard given the sheer infrastructure investments we have made. I think will create a nice gap. The second part of your question is that we believe that in the enterprise restaurant category, there are not a lot of players that can deliver what we do, especially when you put it under the lens of being cloud-first and providing a full solution with high-quality products. We feel well situated to start breaking into that market. I think as we hopefully win one of our large next logos, we will be able to then go to the next one with that proof point.

Is it fair to assume that we can expect the company to grow revenues at a faster pace in 2024 and 2025 and this is the short-term pain for accelerated revenue growth in the future?

I hope so. I mean, I can’t talk about customers we haven’t disclosed publicly yet. The math is pretty simple, right? You win one large Tier 1 deal, and it is equivalent to half our revenues. It is an enormous step function. Our goal is to continue growing as we are. Based on what we hope and expect, we want to win those types of customers that create that step function upward. On the margin side, we will make that happen whether we win a large deal or not. That is just blocking, tackling, and getting it right, making those investments.

Can you comment on the tuck-in M&A? Obviously, you did MENU, which was sort of a technology investment that you are basically growing internally. There are plenty of companies now that are sort of orphaned in the VC world that are doing anywhere from $10 million to $40 million of ARR that might be able to leverage your public company costs and be acquired accretively. Can you comment about what you said on the call; look, data central was good, Punchh was good. Those were sort of tucked-in acquisitions. They are growing nicely and generating positive contribution margin. How do we think about that next layer of products and getting scale that way as well? Is that something that is a possibility in 2023? What is the quantum of M&A you think you can do over the next 12 months?

Yes, I would say without question, I expect us to be acquisitive. Now, things can change, and we won’t be, but we are excited by that opportunity. I don’t think we would look to buy something to offset public company costs; we have to find things that create synergy within our existing product suite, within our customers. That is where we will get the operating leverage on sales, marketing, and R&D over time. We see a number of deals that are very interesting to us, and I think we are very interesting to the sellers. You will see PAR active there, and I do expect that to happen. It is hard to break these things, but I think you will see us very active. As far as dimensionalizing the sizing of that, we believe in the economies of scale here, and as we show that, we are good at leveraging our operating expenditures to grow. We prefer larger assets because we can push them through; they are established, and the product is more developed. I don’t think you will see us acquire science experiments or things that need a ton of R&D projects. We will likely focus more on mature assets where we believe there is synergy for our customers and we can create a good home for those teams. You will see us very active here; it is a core focus of mine.

Our next caller is Andrew Harte from BTIG.

Obviously it sounds like PAR Pay was a big driver of the Operator Solutions ARPU jump. Is there anything else you would call out there benefiting? I think table service will come into play next year. Bigger picture on PAR Pay, how penetrated is it within the existing base today, and what will PAR Pay gross margins look like once it reaches a more mature level?

Great question. The other big drivers are just price. We have taken price on Brink nicely. I hate to say we are taking price; I think we are getting the value that we deliver to our customers. As you know, a large portion of our initial Brink customer base was very underpriced because it was a startup trying to get in business and build the logos. The other major driver is just pure pricing; I think our customers transparently know exactly what we are charging. We are not trying to sneak anything by them; we want to be open and show them the value we drive. We don’t lose on price, and we are not the cheapest product in the market. As for payments, they are not even 10% penetrated in the Brink base yet, and it is already a meaningful measure of the Operator Solutions revenue. There is a lot of white space within the Brink base for payments. I am gearing up for these renewals that are coming up where we can showcase what we have with PAR. What is fascinating is we are processing meaningful amounts of volume every month now. We are well over a billion dollars of annual gross processing volume, and as that business scales, it helps the cost structure because as we process more volume, our rates come down, allowing us to expand margins.

And then something you have talked about in the past of kind of Operator Solutions and back office offsetting some headwinds and guest engagement. But guest engagement, at least on the activation side, seems like a really strong quarter and kind of ahead of our expectations. Do you still feel that is the dynamic for the back half of the year where back office and Operator Solutions carry a lot of the weight, or is guest engagement holding in better than we were thinking about a quarter ago?

I think we expect it to keep saying it will get better, and it keeps getting better every quarter. I think it is a grind up. You can’t take a business that generates $61 million of revenue and flip it in a quarter back to $30 million, but it is climbing. Operator Solutions has great momentum, and we expect to see continued growth.

At this time, I’m showing no further questions. I would like to turn the conference back to Savneet Singh for closing remarks.

Thanks everyone for joining us. We look forward to updating you next quarter.

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.