Carter's Inc. (CRI) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary
Carter's Inc. (CRI)
Q2 2026 Earnings Call· Fri, Jul 31, 2026
$38.29
+1.32%
Carter's Inc. Q2 2026 Earnings Call Key Takeaways
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Carter's Inc. Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good afternoon, welcome to Asure's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's call are Chairman and CEO, Pat Goepel, Chief Financial Officer, John Pence, and VP of Investor Relations, Patrick McKillop. Following their prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session for analysts and investors. I would now like to turn the call over to Patrick McKillop for introductory remarks. Please go ahead.
PM
Patrick McKillop
Investor Relations
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Asure's second quarter 2026 earnings results call. Following the close of the market, we released our financial results. The earnings release is available on the SEC's website and our investor relations website at investor.asuresoftware.com, where you can also find our investor presentation. During our call today, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe to be useful to investors in understanding our business and exclude the impact of certain items. A description and timing of these items, along with a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to their most comparable GAAP measures, can be found in our earnings release. Today's call will also contain forward-looking statements that refer to future events and, as such, involve some risks. We use words such as expects, believes, and may to indicate forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC for additional information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. I'll hand the call over to Pat in a moment, I just wanted to take a moment to remind people of some of our upcoming investor relations activities. On August 26th, we will attend the Three Part Advisors IDEAS Investor Conferences in Chicago. On September 10th, we will attend the Lake Street Conference in N.Y. On September 22nd, we will participate in the 19th Annual Barrington Research Virtual Fall Investment Conference. On November 17th, we will participate in the Craig-Hallum Alpha Select Conference in N.Y. On November 18th, we will attend the Stephens Annual Investment Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as the Roth Conference in N.Y. On November 19th, we will participate in the seventh annual Needham Virtual Tech Conference. Investor outreach is very important to Asure, we'd like to thank all those that assist us in our efforts to connect with investors. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded, and it will be made available for replay via a link available on the investor relations section of our website. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Pat Goepel, Chairman and CEO. Pat?
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Thank you, Patrick, and welcome everyone to Asure's second quarter 2026 earnings results call. I'm joined on this call by our CFO, John Pence. We will provide a business update for second quarter 2026 results, as well as our updated outlook for the remainder of the year. Our second quarter revenues came in at $37.1 million, representing a growth of 23% compared to second quarter 2025. Our growth was broad-based across our business lines. Our past investments in technology products and AI are showing real returns. Our organic growth rate for second quarter 2026 was 5%, compared with 1% in quarter two 2025, an improvement of 400 basis points and down slightly sequentially compared with 7% in quarter one 2026 due to seasonality. We continued to receive positive responses to our platform. We believe we will deliver double-digit organic growth as we move through the remainder of 2026 by driving expanded cross-sell of our products and go-lives of previously booked business on our Enterprise Payroll Tax management platform. On the Enterprise Payroll Tax management platform, we're pleased to share an important milestone that was recently achieved. As you recall, we signed an agreement with Vensure Employer Solutions. We are glad to announce that 2 million of their supported employees are now live on our payroll tax management platform. Our pipeline of opportunities remains robust. We're excited about the future. However, for competitive and confidentiality reasons, we are limited in our ability to share details. AsureCentral continued to progress nicely during the second quarter. We now have a majority of our 30,000 direct clients on the platform, as we forecasted on our prior call. We are increasingly well-positioned to accelerate cross-sells and attach rates through the second half of 2026 and beyond. The number of clients purchasing multiple products increased by 6% versus quarter two of 2025. We remain focused on moving clients from an average of two products per client relationship towards four or more products per client over time. Now, a brief update on AsureWorks, our administrative services outsourcing offering, which allows clients to delegate key payroll and HR compliance processes to Asure. The positive trajectory we saw at launch has continued to grow into the second quarter. Our pipeline keeps growing. We've added new clients. The reception across our target buyer types Small hotel chains, restaurants, HVAC companies, among others, remains very strong. These are main street businesses that need payroll and HR compliance support, but lack the internal resources to manage it themselves. We're training additional sales reps on AsureWorks every day and building out the dedicated team beyond our original pilot group. AsureWorks remains strategically very important. Clients who adopt managed payroll and compliance services typically represent up to five times the revenue of a payroll-only client. Importantly, AsureWorks is not a PEO model. We're not taking on co-employment risk. For clients constrained by the cost of rigidity of traditional PEO, we believe AsureWorks is a compelling and flexible alternative. On the sales force front, we are working very hard towards our goal of 150 reps by the end of 2026. This isn't just about headcount. We're being deliberate about the types of sales reps we hire. We want full solution sales reps. People who can sit down with the business owner and sell the entire product suite, not just a single point solution. That's a fundamentally very different skill set than traditional single product selling. It's core to how we drive both our new logo acquisition and multi-product cross-sell within our existing base. Historically, we hired more transactional small business sales professionals suited to selling point solutions. Now, that we're selling the broader platform, and especially with AsureWorks, it's a more consultative needs-based sale, and we've been disciplined about bringing in sales reps who fit that profile. The good news is those reps are ramping faster than what we've historically seen. Today, our existing to new customer logo split is approximately 53% to 47%, which is an improvement from last quarter, and we're still targeting a 35% new logo, 65% base expansion mix over time. On the M&A front, we did not complete any reseller acquisitions in the second quarter, but we continue to actively evaluate opportunities, and I would expect to see us complete a few deals in the second half of 2026. Our new sales bookings for core human capital management payroll grew 14% over quarter two 2025, and our contracted backlog remains at approximately $80 million. We expect to convert approximately 41% of that backlog over the next 12 months. Our client base, primarily small and mid-sized businesses in payroll-intensive, compliance-driven industries, remains strong. We continue to conservatively model for our clients to have flat headcount growth in our forecast. We haven't seen any meaningful shifts in sales cycle length or competitive intensity during the second quarter. I also want to take a moment to reiterate our thoughts on AI and what it means for our business. We've discussed this on prior calls, but we feel it's important to remind investors of our view here. Payroll and HR compliance isn't the type of workflow software as a generic AI can replace. We hold money transmitter licenses across the country, interface directly with the IRS and state and local tax agencies, and manage compliance obligations where the margin for error is effectively zero. That regulatory complexity, combined with high switching costs and a consumption-based revenue model, is what makes Asure a system of record and our expertise with enormous moats. At the same time, we continue to see AI as a meaningful accelerator for us as we're already far along in the AI evolution journey. We witnessed an over 30% increase in platform adoptions with Luna, our AI agent, since the first quarter, and the number of interactions with Luna has increased by approximately 38% versus the first quarter. Additionally, 147,000 voicemail calls have been transcribed and about 196,000 emails have been screened for sentiment analysis, extending our capability to capture sentiment analysis from both voice into email. We continue to replicate the automated Luna-powered model that is generally available for our Canadian tax solution across U.S. payroll, U.S. tax, and HR compliance, bringing our AI capabilities into the flow of work and from human check to AI verified. The same foundation underpins AsureWorks and continues to sharpen our sales intelligence and our support operations. We remain confident in both the durability of our system of record model and the opportunity AI creates for us going forward. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to John to discuss our quarter two financial results in more detail and provide an update on our 2026 guidance. John?
JP
John Pence
CFO
Thanks, Pat. As Patrick noted, several figures discussed today are on a non-GAAP or adjusted basis. Reconciliations are available in our earnings release and our investor presentation at investor.asuresoftware.com. Second quarter total revenues were $37.1 million compared to $30.1 million in Q2 of 2025, representing growth of 23% year-over-year. Recurring revenue for Q2 2026 was $34 million, compared to $28.6 million in Q2 of 2025, an increase of 19% year-over-year. Recurring revenue represented approximately 91% of total revenue in the quarter. Professional services hardware and other revenue was $3.2 million in Q2 2026, compared to $1.5 million in Q2 of 2025. The increase was mostly driven by increased hardware sales from our Lathem acquisition. As a reminder, we are in the early stages of transitioning Lathem to a hardware-as-a-service model, and we are forecasting a headwind of approximately $600,000 to revenue during the first half of 2027. As that shift progresses, you'll see more of this revenue move into the recurring line with some of the corresponding pressure on the non-recurring line. A mixed shift that is good for the long-term health of the business. We should enable us to deliver better customer experience while improving total customer value. We expect Lathem will continue to have hardware-only customers for the foreseeable future. Growth revenue was relatively flat in Q2 2026 compared to Q2 2025, and we no longer are forecasting any further rate cuts this year based on current market sentiments. Gross profit for Q2 2026 was $25.1 million, compared to $19.9 million in Q2 of 2025. GAAP gross margin for Q2 2026 was 68%, compared to 66% in Q2 2025. Non-GAAP gross margin for Q2 2026 was 73%, unchanged versus Q2 of 2025. Net loss for Q2 2026 was $4.4 million, compared to a net loss of $6.1 million in Q2 of 2025. EBITDA for Q2 2026 was $4.6 million, compared to $1.4 million in Q2 of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for Q2 2026 was $7.7 million compared to $5.2 million in Q2 2025, an increase of 48% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margins for Q2 2026 was 21%, compared to 17% in Q2 2025, an increase of 400 basis points. For the full year, we continue to expect to generate positive levered free cash flow in the mid to high teens range, which we calculate by taking adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint of our guidance range, less software capitalization of approximately $15 million and approximately $6 million earned cash interest expense. We ended the second quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $19.7 million and total debt of $68.9 million as of June 30th, 2026. Based on the current positive momentum in our business, we are updating our full year 2026 guidance and providing Q3 guidance. We expect revenue of $159 million-$163 million for the full year of 2026 and adjusted EBITDA margins of 24%-25%. For Q3, we anticipate revenue of $38 million-$40 million and adjusted EBITDA of $8 million-$10 million. We expect our cost structure, including capital expenditures and capitalized software development costs, to remain relatively stable on a dollar basis. With that, I'll turn the call back to Pat for closing remarks.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Thanks, John. Stepping back, I think quarter two tells us a clear story. We're growing. We're becoming more profitable as we grow, and we're doing it on the back of a platform strategy that's all coming together. AsureCentral has reached the majority of our client base. Luna is doing real work for us and orchestrating real work on behalf of our clients. AsureWorks is gaining good traction in its early days, and we're being disciplined about building a sales force that can sell the whole solution, not just a piece of it. We have truly leveled up from a year ago. In quarter two, we grew revenue by 23% in the second quarter and adjusted EBITDA an impressive 48%. We also expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 400 basis points with increased scale in AI and efficiencies. We did all that while continuing to invest in the platform and the team. That's the model working the way we designed it to. As you know, we will typically receive revenue tailwinds in the second half, and we expect that trend to continue. With continued acceleration from this point through the rest of 2026 and into 2027. We are increasingly optimistic about 2027 as our initiatives continue to take hold with increasing adoption of ASO, Luna-enabled automation of U.S. payroll and tax, and more. We remain on track for our medium target of $180 million-$200 million in revenues, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 30% or better. Our longer-term vision, which we've discussed with investors, reflects the potential for margins to expand well beyond 30% as we achieve scale. AI continues to reduce our cost to serve while simultaneously expanding our revenue opportunities. We're proud of the progress this quarter and even more excited about what's ahead. Thank you for your continued support and for joining us today. I will now turn the call back to the operator for questions and answers. Operator?
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would 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 yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we pull for questions. Our first question today will come from Richard Baldry with Roth Capital Partners.
RB
Richard Baldry
Analyst · Roth Capital Partners
Thanks. In your wrap-up comment, you sort of hit on what I wanted to go a little deeper on in terms of the ability of AI to cut costs and drive revenue. Could you maybe break that into the two pieces and talk about where you feel you're at now in terms of the cost-cutting or efficiencies you can gain with it, and how much still lies ahead? Also in terms of your ability to monetize either new features, tools, or modules built upon these AI abilities that previously wouldn't have been available. Thanks.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah. Rich, I think, first of all, I'll start on the revenue side. As we get more to intent data and trigger data, AI is really helping us quite a bit in just having customer data available, Luna and/or the data's available to us to help cross-sell. A couple of examples, and I've brought this up before. When a company has 20 employees versus 19, they're now subject to have COBRA, and they have to have COBRA. We can now, with that intent data, ask them if they'd like us to provide COBRA services on their behalf. It can be an employee that has a new hire, would they like to have a 401 savings and/or continue to, when there's a raise, invest more in the 401? All of this intent data with AI, with Luna, is going to really tee up those opportunities for revenue. The other aspect of it, if you think about the marketing, the sales motion, there's a whole series of kind of data available that would lead it to be very predictive, where they use AsureWorks, where they want a system done for them, but maybe they're not ready to go into a PEO. We think there's a lot of revenue opportunities that I just talked about that are really, we're putting them into use cases as we speak. On the cost side, where we see opportunity, and Luna's been very active on it, Luna's already taking some of the calls or some of the data that would go to people, and some of those easy answers or some of those what if questions are being answered with Luna as opposed to getting into a queue or getting into customer service. What that allows our customer service folks is to build a much more strategic relationship with the customer as opposed to a transaction one. John, I don't know if you have some ideas on this, but those are some, Rich, that we have in place right now.
JP
John Pence
CFO
Yeah. I think you were asking kind of where we are in the journey, I would say really early days, but it's pretty interesting stuff. Here's an example of one use case that the ops team is using right now with AI. They've done sentimental analysis on all the calls coming into the customer service center, and they can tell based on they transcribe them, and then they have key trigger words, and they can tell you, "Hey, here's a customer that somebody needs to reach out to because they had a really, they were amplified in their language." So we can proactively go out and deal with customers that might have had a bad experience. Again, early days. Is that a cost-cutting? Not necessarily a cost-cutting, but it's definitely going to, I would think, hopefully impact retention over time and customer satisfaction over time. Early days of the cost out, but obviously you can start to see some of the examples on implementation and some of the other areas of the business where we're going to get a lot more efficient.
RB
Richard Baldry
Analyst · Roth Capital Partners
Great. Last for me, if you think about you've been adding to sales on a pretty steady basis. Can you talk generally about your overall sales productivity levels? How good you think they are now, how much they could improve, and what do you think the implication for that for, let's say, a medium-term sustainable growth rate for the company on an organic basis? Thanks.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah, Rich. As I even look at the second half, we believe there will be double-digit recurring revenue on an organic basis, some of that is laying the foundation of salespeople that we've already done. That being said, if you look at productivity, our productivity around attach rates, about having more dollars available to sell and getting at the right level with a software model or we'll-do-it-for-you model, we think we're in the early innings. We've had some really good success of productivity. I would think that next year, we'll be targeting 25% plus productivity, especially in those year one to year two sales reps. That will work through an overall productivity at a later date. Those are the things that really excite me. I think what's happening, if you look at it, you have an area of bringing all these products together with AsureCentral, layering out AsureWorks, adding salespeople, adding training to that, getting up to the business owner as opposed to an office manager. All those things are really good for productivity. From a growth rate perspective, we're going to be relentless on getting to double-digit organic growth. We think that's really important part of the model, layering in tuck-in acquisitions, especially where we already own the platform.
RB
Richard Baldry
Analyst · Roth Capital Partners
Thanks. Congrats on a good quarter.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Thank you, Rich.
OP
Operator
Operator
Next, we'll hear from Jared Levine with TD Cowen.
JL
Jared Levine
Analyst · TD Cowen
Thank you. First, I want to dig into some of your commentary in terms of expectations of hitting double-digit organic growth in the second half. I guess if you look at the midpoint, it suggests closer to 7%. Would you attribute that to conservatism or anything else to note here?
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
What we're trying to say, Jared, is if you were to look at last year and the composition of the revenue, I think we had some pretty healthy non-recurring professional services, specifically with some of the large tax deals. The way we've got the back half of the year currently forecasted and modeled is, those are going to be negative from a compare, so we're going to lose some of that non-recurring revenue on a compare basis. We think that that's going to be offset by the growth in recurring organic side of the business, which again, it's healthier, it's better, but yeah, we have a little bit of a compare on the non-recurring from prior year that's causing that overall revenue growth to be a little bit muted, because of that.
JL
Jared Levine
Analyst · TD Cowen
How's the-
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Jared, I'm sorry, Jared. Just a lot of the motion is already in place, so we feel real confident in getting to those kind of outcomes.
JL
Jared Levine
Analyst · TD Cowen
Yeah, understood. I was hoping you could dig into some of the ASO offering traction here. We have seen a number of your competitors roll out managed service offerings too, and I guess how you expect to differentiate versus some of the competitors out there in terms of these ASO managed service offerings as well.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah. I think if you think about our history, we really had managed payroll as part of our core offering before competitors thought it was cool. I think we have that opportunity, and what we've been layering into AsureCentral is really we have the software to run a business and keep them compliant, keep them efficient, et cetera, but we can also do it for them. If you think about Luna, we introduced Luna a couple of years ago, and for her to really do a lot of the work around workflow and AI, but then also not only do the work, but orchestrate it, from a team approach, whether it's payroll, benefits, general ledger interface, et cetera, there's a lot of things that get coordinated. We built AI into our product and into AsureWorks. We also, if you think about our core customer base, the average maybe company hires an HR professional at about 80 employees or so. We're there every day, helping people do work where we've already done it at the payroll manager level. Now we're extending it out through managed services. We feel that this is really a core offering where we have quite a bit of a lead in, and we think the competition kind of looking at that model will really help us because they're starting fresh, and they'll draw more attention to the space. We feel that this is right in our core competency.
JL
Jared Levine
Analyst · TD Cowen
Got it. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Next, we'll hear from Vijay Homan with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.
VH
Vijay Homan
Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group
Hi, guys. This is Vijay on for Jeff Henry. Just first question on the sales heads. I know you guys have set the goal, I think, to be at 150 by the end of the year. I was wondering just, do you give any update there whether you're on trend? I know last quarter, I think you had been a little bit below.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah, I'd say, just we're at 150 for the year here. We're probably still about 10 where we want to be. If I look at kind of the bridge, in a number of cases, we've top-skilled or up-skilled the sales leadership. Those leaderships bring people along in many cases. About half our resources are manager-led versus, let's say, a recruitment. The recruitment, we have kind of added a couple of recruiters in that space and think we have a really good traction from a pipeline. From a selectivity perspective, we are building an efficient kind of adding who we want to select, et cetera, with the criteria. Also, we're in a position where we can be a bit choosy and we're in a position as well that we're selling the whole solution as opposed to a point solution. Some of those muscles are different than historically. We feel like we're doing a really good job in getting the salespeople we want. We can see the productivity, and we feel confident that we'll be at 150 by the end of the year.
VH
Vijay Homan
Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group
Got it. That makes sense. Just as far as the multi-product kind of attach rates, you guys obviously had success getting customers to two products. I guess, what's kind of standing in the way of getting people to three or four that you kind of alluded to there in the remarks?
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah. I think, well, first of all, we're getting a lot of traction in our HR area combined with payroll and 401(k). We see just increasingly confidence. Both of them are really building up units each and every quarter that, in a lot of cases, are records for us. That's really positive. Those two obviously tie in with the acquisition of Lathem and the integration. We feel those four products will really be the core to some of payroll. Tax filing is always part of the offering. When you think about depending where you are in a cycle of hiring, our recruiting solution, from a benefit perspective, we've invested in broker of record as well as HSA, FSA, COBRA. We're really rounding out the offering. I'll tell you, just the two to four, simply put, time and attendance, HR, and 401, we have really good line of sight to those being added to our core offerings.
VH
Vijay Homan
Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group
Got it. Thanks for taking the questions.
OP
Operator
Operator
We'll move on to Joshua Reilly with Needham & Company.
JR
Joshua Reilly
Analyst
Awesome. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just starting with the 5% organic growth number in the quarter. Would you say that it's fairly balanced in terms of the contribution across product lines, or did the large enterprise tax deal have an influence, a little bit outside the influence on that? Along with that, you mentioned that the seasonality impacted the quarter-over-quarter change in organic growth from 7% to 5%. Can you just give us some more color on what that dynamic was there?
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah. A couple things. First of all, the tax. We've been busy, as John mentioned, around installing a base of large customers that we've had in the background with tax. We think that there's potential, and I think you'll see some activity in the second half of the year around new logo acquisition and new partner acquisition. Field pipeline's really strong. As it relates to the second quarter, the reoccurring mix that John talked about, where we're very confident in the double-digit reoccurring growth that's organic in the second half of the year versus the one-time mix. That leads us to a lot of success here in the quarter, which was small business-related. I talked about some of the attach rates around 401 and around time and attendance and HRC or HR compliance offerings. Those are the things that have led our growth, combined with payroll. I think you'll see more of it as the reoccurring revenue builds here in the second half. Tax filing, I think, continue. We're very excited about the story. We accomplished a lot in taking Vensure over 2 million live. There's more to come in that area, and you'll see that, but that didn't have any outside influence in second quarter's growth.
JR
Joshua Reilly
Analyst
Got it. That's super helpful. Then, as we think about the AsureCentral now having, what was the number, 30,000 direct clients on it. Curious, there's always been the opportunity there for cross-sell and increased attach rates, but are you actually seeing it now that you have a bigger sample size in pocket? What are you seeing, I guess, in terms of the near-term trends? Or is it still going to take-
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah, I mean
JR
Joshua Reilly
Analyst
a few quarters to kind of build awareness?
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
It absolutely. It'll build on itself exponentially as we continue throughout the year. In the quarter we had a 6% improvement in cross-sell. We're just getting started. Feel really good about that. Then as we are layering in different cohorts from some of the reseller acquisitions in the past, after a year, we layer them in. Those historically were one or two products. Now they have the ability to continue to cross-sell all the offerings. As we layer AsureCentral to the multi-product family, we talk about some of the intent and trigger event analysis. This only is going to continue. I'm very pleased with the transactions that have been sold around time, 401 and HRC. I think that'll build in the second half. As we increase the trigger event opportunities, we believe that'll be more of a standard than an incremental approach.
JR
Joshua Reilly
Analyst
Got it. Last question from me is if you go back to the enterprise payroll tax pipeline, I know you can't discuss any specific deal because of competitive dynamics, but is the pipeline up year-over-year, would you say, in terms of the opportunities? Then I just wanted to confirm, first of all, is there any large deal potential that could be signed in the second half of the year? If so, have you factored any of that stuff in that you haven't won yet, or how are you thinking about that relative to guidance? Thank you.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah. No, great question, Josh. I would say the emerging pipeline is extraordinarily strong. As far as when that turns into revenue, sometimes they have shorter and longer term cycle, but we're very pleased with the opportunities available to us in that area of the business. As far as forecasting it, John talked a little bit about the one-time revenue. We didn't forecast a ton of PS work. Maybe we're being conservative there. Whether that falls in 2026, 2027, or frankly, even 2028 will remain to be seen. Our guidance does not have a lot of tax in it. Although, I think you'll see over the next quarter or so, that you'll see some press releases that'll reflect growth opportunity in the business.
OP
Operator
Operator
Next we'll move to Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street.
EM
Eric Martinuzzi
Analyst
John, I wanted to ask about the adjusted EBITDA margin midpoint. Looks like you tweaked things a little bit higher, so you raised that low end of the adjusted EBITDA margin guidance, and I was just curious to know, is that a result of the mix that you're assuming in the revenue, or is there something going on with your cost of goods?
JP
John Pence
CFO
I think it's more of just what's already in the barn, right? I think we've had pretty strong quarters already. We've put up in terms of adjusted EBITDA, so we feel pretty steady state that we can hit that bottom line. We wanted to tighten up a little bit because we felt like it was pretty achievable. Nothing structurally has changed dramatically. It's really just had pretty strong quarters these first two of the year and wanted to take it up a little bit based on where we think we're going to land.
EM
Eric Martinuzzi
Analyst
Okay. Then second question, you've owned Lathem Time now for a year. I think that closed in the beginning of July in 2025. If you could comment maybe first of all on the retention that you forecast versus what you've been able to hang on to, and then the opportunity for cross-sell, whether that's a second half 2026 or more like 2027.
JP
John Pence
CFO
I think the retention, that business has been around 100-plus years, was really consistent in terms of their retention, very similar retention stats to ours. Nothing's really changed post-acquisition. It's really been very consistent business, performed at or a little bit above our expectations when we bought it in terms of the revenue production. We've been able to realize most of the cost savings that we had planned for, if not a little bit more. It's performed as good as we hoped for from that perspective, then I'll let Pat kind of talk about cross-sell.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah, culturally, great fit. Bill Lathem did a great job from a family perspective, and then our GM, Lance, has done a great job with Lathem and the culture of the two companies, the profile of the current customers, et cetera. It's just spot on. We're continuing to evolve kind of the thinking. Whereas Lathem was more of a standalone time on the smaller end, we're integrating, but we're keeping those key relationships from a standalone perspective, but then also we're integrating the go-to-market strategy. John talked about, in some cases where the time clocks, et cetera, are going to be HaaS for the first time, or Hardware-as-a-Service. In the first half of the year, that'll impact the revenue about $600,000. It aligns the value proposition, the offering, with an integrated approach with payroll, et cetera. Long term, it's about a $2 million positive just at the current numbers. We think the opportunity with AsureCentral, what we're trying to accomplish with AsureWorks, that really fits us really well. We have a product that's plug and play, and now we're aligning the pricing strategy for both of them. We believe that we're just getting started there. Boy, if you'd told me a year ago where we'd be with Lathem, we've hit really almost every milestone, and we have a lot more to build off in the future.
EM
Eric Martinuzzi
Analyst
It sounds like more of a 2027 for cross-sell opportunity with Lathem?
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Well, I think there's certainly more in 2027, but we've been pretty pleased with the payroll opportunities that we've gotten, and we're pretty pleased with the attach rates of time and attendance. We think some of the pricing around reoccurring time will continue to build. No, I think when I look at it, the second half and even the first half of this year have been real strong on the cross-sell opportunities. It's just going to build, and we'll continue the momentum through 2027 and 2028.
EM
Eric Martinuzzi
Analyst
All right. Thanks for taking my questions.
OP
Operator
Operator
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1. Next, we'll hear from Greg Gibas with Northland Securities.
GG
Greg Gibas
Analyst · Northland Securities
Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. In your prepared remarks, you mentioned expectations to complete a few M&A deals in the back half, I believe, just wondering if there's any incremental color you can share around those expectations, and perhaps if anything's included in guidance.
JP
John Pence
CFO
No, there's nothing included in the guidance right now on the back half. It'll be incremental if we do take some down. We've been, I think, pretty discerning. We've had some deals come across, either for price or whatever reason, we've decided not to do them. Don't have anything imminent, but we'll continue to look. Nothing in the guide right now for acquisitions.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Yeah. As you know, Greg, the reseller will be active in that area and continue to be active. We've been working on a couple that we believe could happen. I believe you'll see some of that, more to come when it does get finalized. I think you'll see some of it in the back half of the year.
GG
Greg Gibas
Analyst · Northland Securities
Fair enough. Wanted to follow up just regarding the kind of composition of recurring versus non-recurring strengths that you had year-over-year as we head into the back half, and kind of how that can, within your guidance, that does imply kind of more recurring strength. Just wanted to get a better, more comfortability around kind of what your expectations are in terms of the drivers there, right? I guess if we do have that muted dynamic related to non-recurring dropping down a little, where do you kind of have confidence in the recurring side?
JP
John Pence
CFO
Yeah. Right now, again, our current guide, let's say I look at last year, in the back half of the year, we probably had about $9 million of non-recurring. I said, big chunk of that, obviously, we had the Lathem hardware coming in, but a lot of that $9 million was some professional services work with regards to some large tax deals. Right now, we don't have those focused. I think it's fair if you're thinking about your model, probably in that $5 million-$6 million range is kind of what we're thinking about on non-recurring in the back half of the year, as opposed to $9 million from last year. When you start to do that math, that really shows you where the growth's coming from. It's coming from recurring. We don't have any acquisitions imminent. We're lapping Lathem. That's where we go back to that beginning comment about most of the growth in the back half as we've currently guided it, is coming from the recurring organic side of the house.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
More specifically, 401, HRC, time and attendance combined with payroll are the leading products that we're cross-selling, that last year we had, let's say, a 70/30 of new logos to customer. Now it's closer to 53/47, and that additional kind of products and additional dollars are building up and lead to the recurring revenue that's growing in the second half. We think it's a very predictable story. We think investors appreciate the predictability. If we do have an acquisition or we do have some professional services dollars, that'll be additive. Right now, we feel really, really good about where we're at as a company.
JP
John Pence
CFO
Yeah. I just went back and looked at my notes. Actually, it was $10 million last year in the back half of the year, I think, for non-recurring. Yeah, I think that's where you're seeing the transition.
GG
Greg Gibas
Analyst · Northland Securities
Got it. Appreciate the color, guys. Thank you.
JP
John Pence
CFO
All right. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back to Pat Goepel, Chairman and CEO, for closing remarks.
PG
Pat Goepel
Chairman
Well, I sure appreciate your time today in previewing and in viewing the second quarter results. We feel like we have a lot of momentum. We talked to you about the predictability of the results going forward. Feel good about where we're at, and we always take stock at halftime, and then look forward to a strong second half and the beginning of 2027. We appreciate you as an investor and look forward to talking to you again real soon. We'll do some outreach here with different conferences in third quarter and fourth quarter. Hopefully we'll see you soon. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.