TransAct Technologies Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Pivot to Software-Driven FST Growth After BOHA! Source Code Acquisition

Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the TransAct Technologies fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Ryan Gardella, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Ryan Gardella, Investor Relations, TransAct Technologies: Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon. Welcome to the TransAct Technologies fourth quarter and full year 2025 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 forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially. For a full list of risks inherent to the business and the company, please refer to the company’s SEC filings, including its reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q.

TransAct undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the call. Today’s call and webcast will include non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. When required, reconciliation of all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP can be found in today’s press release as well as on the company website. With that, I’ll turn the call over to John.

John Dillon, Chief Executive Officer, TransAct Technologies: Thanks, Ryan, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I’m pleased to report that TransAct closed 2025 with a strong fourth quarter, building on the momentum we established earlier in the year. This performance positions us well heading into 2026 as we focus on driving revenue growth in the FST, that’s Food Service Technology vertical. We expect software to serve as our primary growth engine, going forward, supported by targeted and disciplined investments across the business, particularly in marketing and growth initiatives. I’ll share some of those details shortly. In the fourth quarter, we sold 1,434 BOHA! terminals, bringing the full year total to 7,317, which is a 36% increase year-over-year from 2024 when we sold 5,371 units.

On day one, my top priority was to improve our go-to-market and sales motions. There is always still work to be done, but given the success we’ve had placing new terminals, it’s clear to me that we’re moving in the right direction. The growth underscores the effectiveness of the land and expand strategy that we use as we continue to increase penetration within the customer base. It’s a large customer base, so that’s good. Units sold continue to be the best leading indicator of our sales organization’s performance, so I report that every quarter. It is encouraging to see strong retention across our install base, which is one of the metrics I’m hoping to introduce probably in the next quarter or two, as we discuss the different KPIs, key performance indicators that we report and we use to measure internally. I’m gonna report those publicly.

Before going into the quarterly highlights, let me update you on strategic priorities for 2026. As many of you know from our discussions, we’re evolving our focus towards revenue growth, of course, but particularly in FST, food service. We’re funding that expansion through the steady cash flows from our casino and gaming vertical. We believe that software is unequivocally our growth engine going forward, and that this is where we’ll drive not just revenue, but also, margin expansion. In 2025, we took an important step forward with our acquisition of the source code for the BOHA! software, and in 2026, we intend to leverage our control of the code to enhance the offerings, introduce new applications, and capture higher margin recurring revenue. That’s ARR, annual recurring revenue in that software.

We expect to deliver positive adjusted EBITDA for 2026 while making targeted investments in sales and marketing to support the growth without compromising our fiscal discipline. This includes strengthening our sales team with a sharper focus on the software-led solutions and prioritizing the upselling of software modules into the existing customer install base. We are refining our go-to-market strategy with emphasis on competitive pricing, some strategic partnerships, and targeted outreach in high potential subverticals such as the QSR, which is quick serve restaurants, convenience stores, grab-and-go sushi, which has turned into a really strong market for us, and corporate food services. Those are our people that do, say, a stadium or a campus, a college, university, or a hospital, organizations that under contract will provide the food services, and we are having good success in that market, sub-market as well.

These initiatives will require measured increases in spending, including selective hires in key roles, expanded digital marketing, and continued investment in our product roadmap. We plan to maintain a disciplined cost management regimen to target positive adjusted EBITDA and preserve the strength of the balance sheet. You should hope we’re gonna do that, and we are. On that note, the transition following our acquisition of the BOHA! source code is progressing smoothly. We’ve made tangible strides standing up our own fully operational version, and we continue to expect the launch targeted for mid-year 2026. This ownership not only provides operational freedom, but also enables us to accelerate software innovations, like exploring an application store model for our terminals, for example. This could allow users to opt into new applications directly on the hardware. It would drive additional software revenue streams as well.

It’s still a future project, but one we’re excited about as we shift from a hardware-centric focus to a software-driven solutions provider environment. We’re also working on migrating existing customers to a public cloud platform, which will enhance scalability and open up more cross-selling opportunities for us. Longer term, we’re aiming to get our installed base up to something like $200 per machine per month. That would be ARR or actually MRR, monthly recurring revenue. It’s a great thing if we can do it, and that’s where we’re targeting. This would unlock significant value given our growing installed base. I think right now we’ve got some 18,000-19,000 online terminals in the marketplace, and we’re adding more every day. That’s an important opportunity for us.

For context, data from comparable SaaS software service models shows that this level is very achievable, and we’ll emphasize this through our sales team’s software-focused pitches, the GTM, the go-to-market enhancements, and the sales training. That’s an area, a key area of focus for us in 2026. Now turning over to the FST highlights for the fourth quarter, total FST net sales came in at $4.8 million, up 12% year-over-year, fueled by hardware placements, expanding software adoption, and record quarter for labels. Recurring FST revenue reached $3.4 million with the ARPU, that’s the average revenue per unit, at 756 per unit. Labels hit an all-time high at $2.6 million in the quarter.

While label sales can be lumpy, they’re not only margin accretive, but they also help us build sticky, no pun intended, sticky long-term relationships with our customers. By providing best-in-class, cost-effective labels that help operators with compliance, branding, and efficiency, we’re fostering greater retention and hopefully opening doors for future software integration sales in the future. Customer intimacy is really important, and this allows us to be a key part of the customer’s, if you will, business operation. We enjoy that, and it’s a good relationship, and we have a degree of confidence that none of the other vendors that might be in the marketplace do. Our BOHA! Terminal 2 rollouts from prior quarters continue to progress as expected.

Our installed base of roughly 40,000 legacy, these are offline terminals, the AccuDate and the first-generation BOHA units, remain a prime opportunity for additional upgrades. We saw solid conversions and expansions throughout 2025, including further deployments with our large global QSR and also within the C-store customer base where our Terminal 2 is boosting efficiency, reduces waste, improves margins for our clients. In the fourth quarter, we had three new logo additions with about 600 potential future units, and we’re confident in our new logo pipeline for 2026. As I mentioned last quarter, we’re also excited about two potential new revenue levers in the BOHA. Near term, the labels business, as I mentioned, continues to perform well with potential for label-only deals where customers value our quality, expertise, pricing edge, and our label design software.

Longer term, the app store concept I mentioned could transform our terminals into platforms for third-party applications, significantly boosting software revenue and frankly stickiness. In accordance with our public disclosure obligations, we’ll keep you updated when appropriate as these initiatives develop, but we’re improving sales and GTM strategies placing heavy emphasis on these software opportunities. Before moving on, let me touch on our new Chief Marketing Officer, Dana Loof, who joined us recently to lead our marketing and growth initiatives. While it’s still early days for Dana, she has hit the ground running, and it’s been an absolute pleasure working with her so far. Her priorities will include competitive positioning, messaging, a press release drumbeat, and lead generation. Of course, all of the content that we generate and that we create will find its way to refresh our somewhat lackluster website presence.

It’s been a kind of a thorn in my side. I want that website to tell our story and tell it effectively, and we’re gonna get there pretty soon. As well, I expect to complement that with an active investor outreach program beginning in Q2 to tell the story, sell the strategy, share the strategy along with our plans for growth. We’re looking forward to the impact she will have on our business, and we’ll keep you all apprised of progress against these initiatives. Shifting to casino and gaming, we recorded net sales of $5.3 million for the quarter, up 13% from last year, and 2025 sales of $26.9 million, up 32% from 2024.

While we did see some sequential softening in domestic demand towards the end of the year as anticipated due to macro headwinds in Las Vegas and broader casino performance, for some reason, the international sales continue to be strong. Our new domestic OEM win, which we talked about in the last few quarters, gave us significant momentum in 2025, which has begun to taper off a bit as they work down their inventory while they wait for the next jurisdictional approval for new rollout. Although casino and gaming business is highly cyclical, I want to emphasize that there is always significant free cash flow generated from it, and we do not expect that to change in 2026. Different topic in gaming and casino are relatively new Epic TR80 in the marketplace.

The thermal roll printer is gaining traction in sports betting kiosks and video lottery terminals, and we anticipate it to become a more meaningful contributor this year. Overall, this vertical remains a reliable cash cow, funding our FST investments while we explore expansion like charitable gaming and deeper Epicentral integrations for recurring revenue. Moving on to financial guidance for 2026. The company expects 2026 net sales to be between $55 million and $57 million, with an adjusted EBITDA, the company expects that to come in between $800,000 and $1.5 million positive. I’m optimistic about the direction of the business in 2026, particularly around our FST software initiatives and Dana’s priorities for the year. We’ve delivered consistent BOHA! growth, recorded solid label performance in the fourth quarter, and achieved both our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for the year.

Our enhanced sales team and GTM, that’s go-to-market strategy, will emphasize software upsell, partnerships, and targeted sub-vertical expansion to drive this forward with measured incremental investments intended to keep us above that adjusted EBITDA break-even line and to protect our balance sheet. We believe that our casino business provides stability regardless of where we are in the cycle of the market, and controlling our software unlocks tremendous potential for the recurring revenue growth. Our focus remains execution, fiscal discipline, and creating shareholder value through prudent growth, and we look forward to updating you on progress in that regard. To sum it up, this was a turnaround. It’s been a lot of work. There’s been a lot we have to do. A lot’s been done, and we believe we’ve now turned the corner.

The original opportunity is still in front of us, and we’re ready to go get it and deliver on the promise. Lots of work ahead, but now it’s all what I call good work. With that, let me pass the call over to Steve for more detailed review of the numbers. Steve?

Steve DeMartino, President and Chief Financial Officer, TransAct Technologies: Thanks, John, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Let’s turn to our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results in a little more detail. Total net sales for the fourth quarter were $11.5 million, which was up 12% compared to $10.2 million in the prior year period. For the full year 2025, total net sales were $51.5 million. That was up 19% compared to $43.4 million in 2024 and within our increased outlook range for the year. Sales from our food service technology market, or FST, for the fourth quarter were $4.8 million. That was approximately flat sequentially, but up 12% compared to $4.3 million in the prior year period. For the full year, FST sales were $19.3 million.

That was up 20% compared to $16.1 million in 2024. We sold 1,434 terminals in the fourth quarter and ended the year with 7,317 terminals sold, which represented a 36% increase from the full year 2024. Our recurring FST sales, which include software and service subscriptions as well as consumable label sales for the fourth quarter, were $3.4 million. That was up 24% compared to $2.7 million in the prior year period. For the full year, recurring FST sales were $12.2 million, and that was up 14% compared to $10.8 million for the full year 2024. Our ARPU for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $756.

That was down 14% compared to 875 in the fourth quarter of last year and down 5% sequentially from 792 in the third quarter of 2025. As a reminder, we continue to sell BOHA terminals to a large customer with no recurring revenue attached to them to start. While we expect to begin the process of changing the selling model to this customer in 2026, for now, it represents a drag to our ARPU number. Our casino and gaming sales were $5.4 million, and that was up 13% from $4.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, but down 25% sequentially.

As John highlighted, we began to see a demand slowdown in the fourth quarter as a large customer reached fully stocked status and is awaiting approval for rollouts to begin, which we currently expect will be sometime later in 2026. For the full year, casino and gaming sales were $26.9 million. That was up 32% year-over-year. While we expect fluctuations quarter-to-quarter in our sales, overall, we expect casino and gaming sales to continue to contribute positively to our cash flow during 2026. POS automation sales for the fourth quarter increased 47% from the prior year to $606,000. For the full year, POS automation sales were $2.2 million, and that was down 34% from $3.4 million in the full year 2024.

Overall, Ithaca 9000 sales remain in our new normalized range, and we expect results to remain similar going forward in this market. Moving to TransAct Services Group or TSG. TSG sales were $658 thousand for the fourth quarter, and that was down 13% from $759 thousand in the prior year period. Sales were down across all portions of the TSG market, including legacy consumable business, which consists mainly of sales of cases of thermal POS paper rolls and inked ribbons, which we’ve decided to exit. We expect slightly declining TSG sales sequentially going forward. Moving down the income statement, our fourth quarter gross margin was 47.6%, and that was down from 44.2% in the prior year period. Our full-year gross margin was 48.6%.

That was down just slightly from 49.5% in the full year 2024. Going forward, we expect our gross margin to be in the high 40% range for 2026. Our total operating expenses for the fourth quarter increased by 19% to $6.6 million. For the full year, operating expenses were $26.4 million, and that was up 5% compared to $25.1 million in the prior year, largely due to higher sales commissions, incentive compensation and share-based compensation resulting from our improved results in 2025. These increases were somewhat offset by savings from cost reduction initiatives we initiated in late 2024. Breaking down our operating expenses a bit, our engineering and R&D expenses for the fourth quarter were flat sequentially at $1.7 million and up by 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.

For the full year 2025, these expenses decreased 4% to $6.7 million. Our selling and marketing expenses for the fourth quarter increased 3% sequentially and 6% over the prior year’s fourth quarter to $2.2 million, largely due to severance charges. For the full year, selling and marketing expenses increased 3% to $8.4 million. Lastly, our G&A expenses essentially stayed flat sequentially at $2.8 million for the fourth quarter, but increased 41% compared to the prior year’s fourth quarter, mostly on higher incentive and share-based compensation. For the full year 2025, our G&A expenses were $11.3 million, and that was up 14% from the full year 2024.

For the fourth quarter, our operating loss was $1.2 million or 10.1% of net sales, and that compared to an operating loss of $1 million or 10.3% of net sales in the prior year period. For the full year, our operating loss was $1.4 million, and that compared to $3.6 million in 2024. On the bottom line, we recorded a net loss of $1.1 million or 11-cent loss per diluted share for the fourth quarter, compared to a net loss of $8 million or 79-cent loss per share in the year ago period. For the full year 2025, we had a net loss of $1.2 million or 12 cents per share, and that compared to a net loss of $9.9 million or 99-cent loss per share in 2024.

As a reminder, both our fourth quarter and full year 2024 numbers included a $7.3 million non-cash charge to income tax expense to record a full valuation allowance against our deferred tax assets. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $499,000, and that compared to negative $705,000 for the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year, our adjusted EBITDA was a positive $1.2 million, and that compared to negative $1.5 million in 2024. Our full-year adjusted EBITDA result placed us above the midpoint of our 2025 outlook range. Lastly, turning to our balance sheet, it still remains solid. We finished the year with over $20 million in cash, which was up $6 million from our cash balance at the end of 2024.

In terms of debt, we had only the minimum required $3 million of outstanding borrowings under our credit facility with CNL. With that, I’d like to turn the call back over to the operator for questions. Operator?

Operator: Thank you. We’ll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you’d like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two 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. Thank you. Our first question is from Jeff Bernstein with Silverberg Bernstein Capital.

Jeff Bernstein, Analyst, Silverberg Bernstein Capital: Hey, guys. Maybe you can address the AI question. How do you see AI programming tools actually helping you guys with the business? How do you see them potentially increasing competition, or reasons why they shouldn’t do that?

Steve DeMartino, President and Chief Financial Officer, TransAct Technologies: Yeah. Thanks for the question, Jeff. We use AI internally. You know that we have the code, the source code for the BOHA! software. Within the things you can do with some of the application tools is you can run the code through it, and it can look for problems with the code. It can look for dead ends, it can look for circular references, and it can actually give you a summary of what the code actually does. It’s making us more efficient in that regard.

On a somewhat tangential issue, there are many applications that are in the food service industry and a couple in the gaming industry where we will add AI tooling, nothing sophisticated, but just enough to help the clients make better decisions to optimize around the data they’ve got to decide on this strategy or that strategy or inventory management and the like.

John Dillon, Chief Executive Officer, TransAct Technologies: You’ll see our products over time engage with various AI technologies to improve our customers, you know, interaction with the software and the results they get. Relative to competition, I think that I heard that story said, I think it’s a lot of hype. It still takes a lot of smart people to create applications that delight users. It’s not lost on any of us that large language models allow you to write stories very quickly. Normally, what happens here is the AI systems can do a lot of the pedestrian work, kind of just basic coding, but you need somebody with user experience, a user engagement model to be able to understand what’s the flow. It’s sort of like making a movie.

You’ve got all the computers that can do the CGI stuff, but the reality is somebody has to build the storyboards to figure out what is it we’re gonna do, why do we do it, why do we do it this way? There’s an awful lot of that. It takes more senior expertise in the building, where what we’re doing is we can gradually cut back on the lower-level programmers that do kind of the rote work, and we can have more brilliant people kind of focusing on delighting customers. We see this as an opportunity, not really a threat.

I know the marketplace has taken a downturn a little bit on the software companies, but we’re all engaging with the technology, and I don’t think it’s gonna give some startup company some opportunity to roar in and magically build a brand-new system overnight that competes with a lot of the existing software. The reality is that what we’re doing is we’re delivering enterprise-grade solutions. It involves hardware, software, telematics, networking, whether it’s, you know, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, you know, LTE, mobile. All of that stuff has to go together in a way where the customers that we serve are on the high end, and there’s everything that is involved with that. It’s not really commodity stuff, I guess, is what I’m saying. We think that that differentiation is something that’s pretty sustainable.

Jeff Bernstein, Analyst, Silverberg Bernstein Capital: That, that’s great. Thanks for the answer.

Operator: As a reminder, if you would like to ask your question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the floor back over to John Dillon for any closing remarks.

John Dillon, Chief Executive Officer, TransAct Technologies: Well, first, let me thank you for your time and attention today. We appreciate it. I’m looking forward to speaking with any of you. Some of you have scheduled calls, but as calendars align, if any of you wanna follow up, feel free to reach out to me or Steve. Thanks again. With that, we’ll sign off, and we’ll hopefully talk to you soon. Have a good day. Bye-bye.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you again for your participation.