Karen Sammon
Analyst · Howard Brous with Wunderlich Securities
Thanks Bryan. Now the report on our segment performance in the quarter and business highlights starting with our government segment. Throughout 2016 and continuing forward, we are focusing on growth through high margin, high tech contract in the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance business and increased mission systems contract as a prime. Through new contract wins, we’ve increased software development and systems engineering direct labor talent to our team. Over the past 12 months, we’ve added new and expanded contracts with the air force research lab, NSA and DARPA that achieve our goals of higher margin revenue in expanded focus areas for Research & Development. Increased adoption of situational awareness technologies were PAR functions as the prime integrated have spurred complementary projects and revenues, and we are promoting the tech solution including PAR’s value-add tech connected platform to federal [technical difficulty] agencies. The mission systems business is successfully transitioning from a portfolio based on small business credentials to a more expansive portfolio that leverages our reach history of operations and maintenance excellence software and systems engineering and program management success. In the last quarter, we announced new contract award supporting the U.S. Air Force in Puerto Rico and in Intel solutions contract with the AFRL and DARPA. Turning to our restaurant retail segments. To ensure that we maintain a leadership position and growing the recurring revenues portion of our business. We are investing in our innovative solutions portfolios in the customer success. In this recently ending quarter, our software as a service revenues grew 87% over the fourth quarter last year and software related service revenue increased 36% led by the increasing demand of Brink. Our Brink solution continues to outperform our expectations and restaurants continue to embrace cloud solutions as their next-gen in-store technology engine. Our Brink solution that includes software as a service hardware and associated revenues grew 4.7 million in the fourth quarter from the same period in 2015. The MRR grew 122% over the same period in 2015. The ARR for Brink totaled 4.5 million versus 2 million at the end of 2015. We increased the number of deployed stores by 32% over Q3 as we completed the implementation of 482 new sites with Brink. As of December 31, 2016 the aggregate number of restaurants installed with Brink totaled 2,453 sites. New bookings in the quarter totaled 1.2 million in ARR. The backlog of ARR as of December 31, 2016 including all concepts awarded, but yet to be onboarded, represented over 10.6 million, up 1.6 million from the 9 million reported in Q3 2016. Since our last call we announced several new customers that include a high performing fast casual restaurant organizations including MAD Greens, Erik's DeliCafé, and the Qdoba Grill. We've line of sight to achieve our Brink implementation goals of 2,500 restaurants in 2017 and are focused on doubling this number to achieve 10,000 total deployed sites with Brink by the end of fiscal year 2018. We continue to build out features to the software, the newest release contains kiosk management, improved delivery capabilities, expanded EMV and gift card support and advanced conversational ordering. We're executing to our Brink strategy which in 2017 includes QSR and Tier 1 opportunities. We successfully contracted with our first Tier 1 Brink customer and are currently in the field test phase. This total opportunity includes 5,000 sites in the U.S. with software, hardware and services which we expect to start implementing in 2018. PAR's SureCheck platform is gaining momentum as we focus on asset management, automated temperature capture and business intelligence for grocery along with the checklist management features that yields larger operational efficiencies. We have expanded our industry targets and are seeing specific segment initiate pilots including contract food, sea store and food manufacturers. In Q4 we won new SureCheck customers including a multinational ready to assemble furniture retailer. This company is using SureCheck for their in-store restaurants and food concepts. Two other new customers include Silicon Valley based companies that are using SureCheck in their domestic corporate campus dining facilities. We're seeing an increased demand for IoT, the Internet of Things, with nearly every SureCheck opportunity and discussions regarding the role of SureCheck with omnichannel in markets of all types and sizes is expanding. IoT is evolving with the convergence of multiple technologies including wireless communication, real time analytics, machine learning, commodity centers, and embedded systems all communicating with each other through a common network of solutions. For SureCheck the Internet of Things creates an opportunity to measure, collect and analyze an ever-increasing variety of statistics. We believe that SureCheck will be key to omnichannel success as our solution enhances order fulfillment by utilizing its RFID technology. Food category such deli, produces and dairy will have predetermined checklist loaded that will verify items were picked correctly, bagged to standard and temperature checked to FDA regulated law to ensure FSMA compliance, waste reduction and consumer demands. SureCheck is currently installed in 7,000 sites and to-date users have completion 26 million observations and noted 82,000 exceptions. SureCheck pilot projects cross several industries and include over 21,000 sites. In the fourth quarter, we deployed a proprietary SureCheck advantage hardware solutions to Wegmans' market. We are currently in the final stages of deploying 845 devices to their 92 store networks. SureCheck and Brink together continue to be key components of our overarching strategy of annuitizing our business by increasing margin rate [ph] software recurring revenues for PAR. Our focus and execution strength has influenced the growth on a recurring revenue portions of our business. In this last quarter, our company grew total software recurring revenues significantly, 36% over the prior year’s quarter and grew 33% in fiscal year '16 over 2015. As of December 31, 2016, recurring revenues totaled 8.8 million. In 2017, our priorities include the expansion of our Brink and SureCheck portfolios leveraging our infrastructure to achieve our financial objective and transitioning our major accounts into additional new business opportunities globally. We continue to diversify the business and reduce dependence on our hardware service accounts. Our focus on software led solution is important to PAR, not only to smooth our revenue, but to increase margins and shareholder value. Diversity also addresses the fact, the POS hardware will continue to be commoditized and there will be more points to sale that reduce the demand of POS hardware including tablets, kiosk and bring your own device. We’ve been planning for these changes and executing to our strategy with notable achievements. Growing our recurring revenues will reduce the impact of this eventual disruption, as such we continue to focus our efforts on expanding our customer base and our business outside of restaurants where we have traditionally competed. Through the efforts and accomplishments of our employees in 2016, our company enhanced our product platforms increased our development capabilities and focused on ensuring that we have a productive global organization with a strong balance sheet. We invest time and energy into cultivating a cautious culture that attracts, retains and engages the best talent in our industry. One of the most valuable achievements was to create clear, well-developed core values that service as the foundation upon which we higher, recognize and reward PAR people. It is an exciting time for PAR. We finished the year on a positive note and had significant business opportunities in front of us. 2017 is an important year as we execute change increase efficiencies and reduce costs while investing in our strategic initiatives that will improve our overall performance and profitability. As I conclude, I want to recognize the significant efforts of my executive team and all PAR’s people who are making a difference as we strive to transform PAR and achieve our strategic goals. We focus on core values as they defined how we promise to act, represent our character, drive our behavior and work to ensure that our stakeholders inclusive of our shareholders are successful. Thank you for participating in today’s conference call. That concludes our formal remarks and I will now turn the call over to the operator to start the Q&A session.