TransAct Technologies Incorporated (TACT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the TransAct Technologies Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] 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, [ Tash ]. 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 DeMartino. 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 will then open the call to participants for questions. As a reminder, this conference call contains statements about future events and expectations which are forward-looking in nature. Statements on this call may be deemed as forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially. For a full list of risks inherent to the business and the company, please refer to the company's SEC filings, including its reports on 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 call and webcast will include non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. When required, reconciliations 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 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 8 quarters, beginning in Q1 2 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 foodservice technology -- of $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 why it's down a little bit. However, we believe that our improving results ultimately will offset the loss from that 1 client, unexpected as it was. I'm not happy about it, but 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 market [ is a ] direct result, 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, 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 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 Hissho -- 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 installed 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 6 new accounts. Not lots, but it's good. And however, I'll point out that these 6 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 is the strategy, and the 6 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 4-quarter pipeline numbers remaining consistent and constant. So the pipeline is 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 2 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 Epicentral due to our new relationship with CasinoTrac. CasinoTrac sells Epicentral as part of their SlotSUITE product offering on a subscription basis. So we receive, if you will, recurring revenue per month per unit per basically per slot going forward. And this 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 SlotSUITE, and we're a component of that, which helps us as well. We believe that 2025 will be a positive year-over-year casino and gaming sales. However, it's incumbent upon me to add that that business, we call it C & G, 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 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 midterm 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 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 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 $0, 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 the FST side of the business, including the 40-plus percent compound annual growth rate in terminal units placed in the last 2 years. We've got a strong balance sheet. We've 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. And 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 foodservice 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% compared to $16.3 million in '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 includes software and service subscriptions as well as consumable label sales for the fourth quarter, were $2.7 million. That was down 15% 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% compared to $11.1 million for the full year '23. Our ARPU for the fourth quarter of '24 was $875. That was down 6% compared to $926 in the fourth quarter of '23, but it was up 25% 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 have 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% as 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 '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 2 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 estimate that this initiative will produce operating expense savings of about $3 million on an 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 the 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 the full effect from this 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% to $1.6 million year-over-year. For the full year '24, these expenses decreased by 30% to $7 million compared to '23. Our selling and marketing expenses decreased 3% 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 rightsizing 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 2 largest trade shows, G2E, which is for the casino and gaming market, and NACS, which is for our FST market, which both occurred 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 noncash 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 pretax loss over its previous 3 fiscal years, which for us was 2022 through 2024, and a pretax loss in its most recent fiscal year, 2024 for us. Note that the accounting rules place significant weight on past profitability, that is, the 3-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 $0 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 carryforwards and R&D credit carryforwards, 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 pretax 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 pretax income or loss will also be our net income or loss. On the bottom line, we recorded a net loss of $8 million or $0.79 per diluted share for the fourth quarter compared to a net loss of $62,000 or $0.01 per share in the year ago period. For the full year, we had a net loss of $9.9 million or $0.99 per diluted share compared to net income of $4.7 million or $0.47 per diluted share in '23. Just as a reminder, our fourth quarter and full year '24 numbers include the $7.3 million noncash charge to 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 Siena Lending during the fourth quarter, extending the term for 2-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 borrowings 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. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Jeff Martin from ROTH Capital Partners.

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 -- we're still dealing with the mute button. Steve -- 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 an up to the right year in 2025, is that -- is the anticipation that you have the same relative 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 a 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 though 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. We have to go and get them one by one, but we do expect to close more in '25 than '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 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? I just want to confirm that I understood you correctly, expect a growth year for the segment over 2024 during 2025. And then if you could also give an update on the international side of that market?

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

Yes. 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 is 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.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from George Sutton from Craig-Hallum.

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 ex that [indiscernible].

Yes. Yes, we previously disclosed, George, I believe that it was about $3 million to $4 million annualized in a year. So about half of that was in '24. They finished up about halfway through the year. So about half of that is what fell off.

Got you. Okay. John, you mentioned the process is way more complex than we may think. I understand you're selling 2 -- you're effectively selling 2 different businesses. What else would be complex about this that we might not be thinking about?

Well, 2 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 2 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 2 businesses are very different. We've got -- [indiscernible], 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 $1 billion. 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 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, do you want to tackle that one? You're closer to the TR80 -- then that's the replacement for the 880.

Yes. 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 had -- we've been out of the market for a couple of 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. It was 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. So I think that's -- I think it's got a lot of potential.

Okay. 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 many of you that are going to be there, I'm happy to take a one-on-one meeting or 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 today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.