Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Par Technology Fiscal Year 2023 Fourth Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Byrnes, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. Please go ahead. [technical difficulty]

Thank you, for your patience. I do apologize for the difficulties this morning. I'll just start right from the beginning. We are welcoming everyone to the call this morning, fiscal 2023 fourth quarter and year-end financial results call. This morning, we did release our financial results. The earnings release is available on the Investor Relations page of our website at partech.com, where you can also find the Q4 financial presentation as well as in our related Form 8-K furnished to the SEC. During our call today, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe to be useful to investors and exclude the impact of certain items. I'd also like to remind participants that this conference call may include forward-looking statements that reflect management's expectations based on currently available data. However, actual results are subject to future events and uncertainties. The information on this conference call related to projections or other forward-looking statements may be relied upon and subject to the safe harbor statement included in our earnings release this afternoon and in our annual and quarterly filings with the SEC. Finally, I'd 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. Joining me on the call today is PAR's CEO and President, Savneet Singh and Bryan Menar, PAR's Chief Financial Officer. I'd now like to turn the call over to Savneet for the formal remarks portion of the call, which will be followed by general Q&A. Savneet?

Thanks, Chris, and thank you all for joining us on today's call. 2023 was a foundational year setting us up for a value creation flywheel; we think takes flight in '24 and hopefully years to come. The acceptance of our products by the industry's largest customers and the building blocks of an M&A muscle we intend to use regularly are now in place. I'll touch on these ideas later and begin with our results. For the fourth quarter, subscription ARR grew by 23% when compared to Q4 2022. Our growth came across our products and was delivered without relying on the exciting customer wins we touched on last quarter as that revenue will begin later this year. Operator Solutions ARR grew by 45% to $60.2 million in Q4 when compared to the same period last year. Operator Solutions ARPU increased by 15% from the same period last year due to higher value deals, API monetization, price increases and power payment services go live. We expect this trajectory to continue. Churn was 4.8% for the year in 2023 for Brink. Operator Solutions growth is being driven by increased win rates at Brink, and we believe accelerated market acceptance of cloud solutions and a pivoted way from legacy providers. This come down in Q4 as we announced the signing of Burger King, by far our largest Brink and now MENU customer, with our products to be rolled out across our 7,000-plus stores in North America. This deal validates our Tier one enterprise reach and sets us up nicely to win traditional Tier one projects with similar scope. From where we sit today, the deal pipeline for Brink is the largest and highest quality we have seen since beginning the PAR turnaround in 2018. While pipeline is just pipeline, we see a real…

Thank you, Savneet, and good morning, everyone. Total revenues were $107.7 million for the three months ended December 31, 2023, an increase of 10.3% compared to the three months ended December 31, 2022 with growth coming from subscription service and contract revenue, partially offset by hardware and professional service revenue. Net loss for the fourth quarter of 2023 was $18.6 million or $0.67 loss per share compared to a net loss of $13.5 million or $0.50 loss per share reported for the same period in 2022. Adjusted net loss for the fourth quarter of 2023 was $9.3 million or $0.33 loss per share compared to an adjusted net loss of $7 million or $0.26 loss per share for the same period in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2023 was a loss of $4.5 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.8 million for the same period in 2022, driven by reduction in professional service margin and increased R&D investments in advance of our large customer ramp, partially offset by increased margin contribution from subscription services. Now for more details on revenue. Hardware revenue in the quarter was $24.4 million, a decrease of $5.2 million or 17.5% from the $29.6 million reported in the prior year. Q4 2022 was a historically strong quarter, however, quarter for us to lap. We continue to be optimistic of our hardware business as we launch new products to address demands from legacy hardware customers as well as attach hardware sales within our expanding software customer base. Subscription Services revenue was reported at $32.9 million, an increase of $5 million or 18% from the $27.9 million reported in the prior year. The increase was primarily driven by increased subscription services revenue from our Operator Solutions business of $3.9 million, driven by a…

Thanks, Bryan. Let me wrap with a few key messages. What's clear to me is that as we bring our products closer together, our ability to cross-sell is increasing. The tight integration with menu, as an example, has led to 70% of MENU Deals including PAR Pay, while even more interesting, every MENU Deal has come from the existing Punchh or Brink customer. Historically, words like consolidation and bundling have had negative compensations, and I think for the right reasons. Prior attempts to consolidate were not done around industry-leading products. It requires customers to trade off functionality for simplicity. This is explicitly what we are not doing at PAR. Our products must stand on their own, be best-in-class integrated and when unified deliver surprise and delight. As the years move on, I think we'll see a standardization around the platform that will then allow development to come on top of that system of record, hopefully increasing innovation and true technical outcomes. As mentioned in the opening, we think the shareholder value creation flywheel is a notion. I believe the flywheel starts with the land and expand with the car platform within our current category, followed by the cross-sell of additional products and then followed by the addition of accretive M&A to bolster our platform capabilities and expand our TAM. Each new product and acquisition allows us to drive higher returns on capital because we can leverage our existing go-to-market infrastructure. The acquisition of Punchh and MENU were table setting. Now we're ready to get the machine in notion. As we scale, it allows us to invest in more integration and thereby continue to have best-in-class products starting the flywheel all over again. 2023 is where we saw a real evidence of the first step in this flywheel, landing our platform…

[Operator Instructions] our first question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon from Needham.

Thank you. Good morning. Savneet, great to see all these new logo wins outside of BK as well in the last several months. I wanted to start with -- I know you're not giving formal guidance, but just based on your comments, I wanted to get a sense of your expectations for ARR growth. Can you sustain the current levels in '24? Or should we expect some acceleration given you've had these new wins, most notably, as you mentioned, Bob Evans, Hooters, et cetera. So just want to get a sense of your expectations for 2024.

Yes, I think we feel confident we'll maintain and potentially grow a lot of it depending on as we get the Burger King rollout going, the sequencing of that rollout. We don't have that today. But even without that and assuming conservative numbers there, I think we feel really good about the growth maintaining and growing. And I think we'll do a great job on that rollout. And so I think there's opportunity for it to get even better. But once we get that data, we'll report back to the market because obviously, it will be very, very influential for us. But I think we feel very good about it and I think we've got more wins to come that we'll announce. And so we've had a lot of these announced wins, but none of the revenue for that yet. And so I think what's exciting is the growth we've had in '23 didn't come from any logos we've announced the last three to 6 months.

Let me just ask you this way. I think in the past, you've said you can grow ARR between 20% and 30%. Is that still the target model for the company? And on that note, so subscription revenue follow the ARR growth trajectory. Is that a pretty good correlation, the way to think about it?

Yes. I think that's a good way. And then as I said, once we get the timing of Burger King, I can come back and say, do we think it will be 30% or 25%. I think we just need the details of that, which we don't yet have.

Got it. And then just as a quick follow-up in terms of the leverage in the model, great commentary around that. So just based on what you said, is it reasonable to then think that you could potentially reach EBITDA profitability at some point in 2024 or given some of your comments, is it going to be maybe in 2025 given the timing of some of these sort of leverage points in your model?

It'll all be depending on Burger King because we've ramped up cost meaningfully to support that launch both in MENU and in Brink. Can we get at the end of the year? I think so unless Burger King decides to not roll out as -- do all the rollout in '25, which is extremely unlikely. And so we feel really excited. And then I think the exciting part I like to try to mention on the call, which is we've absorbed so much cost from menu was the vast majority of our loss in '23. That revenue itself is coming live. Today, we just took another large customer. And so I think there's a lot of optimism on the bottom line because we've been taking the hits on cost to get the rollout built out for both of these change. And both these products, which will reverse in '24. But short, I'm going to give guidance, I think, on the next quarter once I have details on Burger King and kind of got you exactly where I think we'll be. But that has such -- that changes the model tremendously.

Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon from William Blair.

Hey, good morning. Lots to dig into here as always. Just on Burger King, as we think about that, what are some of the key milestones we externally should be thinking about for that implementation? It sounds like there's still quite a few moving pieces. And then what are the biggest risks to that process in your view that you're concerned about? And I guess asking that another way, what do you absolutely need to get right as we think about the implementation?

So everything is on track, I'd say, going better than expected on the far side, so we feel great about it. So no concern. To me, it's the only thing you're tracking is stores that go live. It's pretty simple. And so we haven't started the rollout, which is -- so a lot of it is we'll see when we go live. But we feel real really good. We're in a couple of hundred stores now as sort of tests, they're going great. And so to me, it's just the store is going live. And like I said, I think we feel really good. It's a 2-year rollout, so it's going to be very, very quickly. It's just going to be about how much is in '24 versus how much is in '25. And we don't have those details yet. But just like any other large organization, I think, they understand that we don't want to do everything back in because it will put a lot of stress on everybody. But until we have that, I think we're going to sort of be conservative till in. But the metric to track is just how many stores go live because that's the only metric that matters.

Got it. And I guess related for Operator Solutions, you had a really good bookings quarter there, I think, 3,400 net new site bookings there. Is Burger King in that at all? I guess is that the majority of it? Did you have a lot of good booking activity there outside of Burger King? Just any detail on how much of the new site booking for Burger King versus others?

Burger King is almost none of it, like maybe 100 or 150 I mean it's all other logos.

Okay. That's great. And then, I guess, sticking with Operator Solutions, just one more. The step-up in ARR per active site seems like that was up 7% to 8% sequentially. Just curious if you can give some more detail on the moving pieces there. I guess the payments adoption is a big part of that, but any notable benefit from pricing uplift or just anything else you can call out?

It's about 50-50 payments and price uplift, and you're going to -- that's going to continue. This is the exciting part of the model. The size of the deals we're in are much larger than before and also a higher ARPU. And so that's going to continue. So we feel really good about the pricing of Brink, the premium product is getting rewarded from premium products and deals, and that will continue. But I think it's right now, it's about 50-50, call it, modules, modules being primarily payments but also API monetization and the other half being two price increase.

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

Yes, I wanted to dive in a little bit more on the transaction due diligence that $2.3 million number caught my eye for your M&A work. I'm just curious to know, obviously, you're talking about some point solutions that you can tuck into your platform. But are these appointed in any particular direction as far as Engage versus Operator Solutions versus back office?

So obviously, we've been -- from numbers, it's clear we're deep in the M&A process, and that's why we disclosed it because it's meaningful now. As far as where that M&A is happening, it's -- I'd say within the Guest Engagement and Operation Solutions where we have most of the deals, Guest Engagements where we're seeing the most activity right now. But M&A is opportunistic at times and so we'll see where stuff picks up. But the deal flow is the highest, but what I think is exciting today is the strategic fit, both from a price perspective and a product perspective is great, which is why we ramped up cost so much, which is we're pushing hard to get these done.

And you did say that those were cash positive targets or is it kind of post-acquisition, they would be --

No, these are all very profitable. I think every company we look at is a real 40 independent and so far, it will be better. And if they're not real 40, they're closer to real 40, we can take it real 40. So we're really focused on that. And I don't suspect you'll ever see us buy something that's money losing. We made these investments MENU, which has obviously been a headwind to the cost. But once we have the platform, which we have the platform now, everything on top of it needs to be cash generating increase the flywheel that I mentioned.

Our next question comes from the line of George Sutton from Craig Hallum.

This is Adam on for George. Savneet, on the last earnings call, you mentioned that there are three additional large QSR brands that we're taking a pretty meaningful look at Brink. Just curious if you had an update on those specific potential customers?

So, I can't comment any until we announced the press release, but I'd say the number is now more than three that the pipeline has really gotten far bigger than anything we've seen in the past. I think we've got -- we see three logos that are sort of what we call near term within our funnel and then another 4 that are sort of medium term. So that the funnel is large and it's real. And one thing in particular, this is on the POS side. POS funnels, RFPs are really robust processes for a big customer we work with generally their hiring consultants. They spend hundreds of thousand dollars on consultants on surveys. And so when it gets to the near term, the decisions do come because they've already spent a ton of money to get to the point of making that decision. So it is usually a great sign as it relates to business provided we win that business.

Great. And then with respect to MENU, can we just get an update on where that product is in terms of development of features as well as the integration path? Are you 90% done, 80% done? Anything else you could offer would be great.

We're there. So we're not making investments. In fact, we've cut costs meaningfully just in the last month there as we hit the product parity we wanted to get to in the United States. And so we took the cost basis down there pretty meaningfully just like I said, two weeks ago because we kind of hit the goals we needed to. As I mentioned, we had our first U.S. go-live at Beef O Brady's two weeks ago. You can download the app, check out the website and I think you'll see how innovative and beautiful product it is. We had our second customer go live today. I'll talk about that later because it's not public, but a really impressive 700, 800 store team. So it's coming. And I know it's been people because we know what kills me is the core business is running so much more efficiently. We haven't added headcount in a long time. It's the MENU where we have the major loss. And like I said, that's reversing in '24 as we have revenue coming on for MENU to offset that impact plus these cost up that I mentioned.

And then one final question for me. With respect to the Burger King rollout, did most of the scaling from headcount and cost perspective come during Q4 or should we see that continuing in Q1 as well?

You'll see some of it in Q1, but a lot of it was in Q4. We're scaling up, call it, 140 people. Now these are -- this is short term. This is not -- they're not going to stay apart forever, but think of it as inflation limitations, dev teams to finish the integration. And so it's a meaningful amount of cost. Again, that cost isn't perpetual because once we roll out, we don't need those costs, and those will come down over the next two years. So we've taken a lot of it now. It will scale us way back down. The way I like to think about it is, call it, two scrum teams, two and half scrum teams for some short period of time. And then it's primarily support professional services and that's about it. And so it's not -- like I said, it's people to absorb that for a couple of quarters before we get any revenue from it, but we will get it back very, very quickly and then those costs will rationalize themselves back down.

Our next question comes from the line of Samad Samana from Jefferies.

Maybe first one, I mean you guys have done a great job in terms of matching the cost structure and where the business is at. And in today's slide deck, it looks like there is a new disclosure about sales and marketing and R&D as a percentage of ARR. And I look at the gross margins, I was at those percentages. It kind of looks like the subscription part of the business is now actually profitable, even factoring in expenses. Am I getting the right read on that? Is that a signal that you were trying to send with that disclosure? And then I have a follow-up.

Yes. So I think disclosure is really to give you a lot more transparency on how fast we're rationalizing the cost base is on that side. And that's why we also do it ex menu because I said menu is the majority of our loss. It's just more to sort of track how fast we're going to get there. And then as I said, as we get M&A done, you'll see that take step functions. But it's really more just to provide transparency and that we're going to get there quickly.

Yes. And Samad, it doesn't include that slide referring to does not include the G&A, and that is from a -- looking at it from a noncash perspective.

Okay. Perfect. And then you've called out kind of the impact of menu and payments on gross margins. When do you expect these investments to last? Do you expect something of a permanent headwind to gross margins from payments as the mix shifts? Or do you expect that to get back up to the 70s, just how should we think about that?

We're definitely in getting the 70s and then higher over time with that question. So we recognize payments on a net basis. So our payment gross margins will be near our software margins because we are super conservative in term of doing the net versus the growth. And so the payments won't be the issue. MENU will take a couple of years to get to renew to, but it's not going to be a permanent headwind because the rest of the business is also growing nicely. And so if you remove out those products, we're kind of back to exactly where we were in the past, a little higher. So it's just the growth of those two businesses. MENU has been the major headwind because you've got such a major cost without really any revenue. Like I said, we just took our first customer live in the U.S. We've got another big one going and that's before the Burger King revenue turns live there. And so you'll see a nice movement there this year and then the outer get there. But all of our products need to get to mid-70s and higher gross margins. It's sort of the mandate we're going to drive towards.

Our next question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti.

I'm just curious in terms of -- you said you said the sort of cloud transition from prem has accelerated. Do you think -- I mean aside from wanting to get to tech stack is there a security aspect to this?

So I think implicit in all of it, there's essentially that's a secures, but that's not the major driver. I think the major driver is the legacy guys are giving up share more rapidly than in the past. I think this is being driven by a bunch of different factors, but I think the biggest one is that if you were on an old product, even an old product that's on the cloud, your ability to innovate and take on these innovations that are driving the restaurant of the future, you were really limiting your experience. And obviously, the simplest way to do this is look at the stock chart of the restaurants that have made these major investments in technology, Chipotle, Cava, McDonald's so on and so forth. You can see the actual returns that they've had and then look at the ones that haven't. And so I think it's more about the functionality you're getting from a modern product. And of course, security is part of that.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Hart from BTIG.

When we're thinking about 2024, kind of the different components of ARR growth, obviously, Operator Solutions with Burger King should be the key driver of it. But Savneet in the past, you've kind of sized up relative growth of Guest Engagement and back office compared to Operator Solutions. Can you just help us on how you're thinking about the growth of kind of the other pieces there in 2024?

Yes, absolutely. So I think we'll have an acceleration from Guest Engagement driven by Punchh and MENU, sort of Punchh has won a bunch of logos in the back half of '23. We're going to announce more in the next month or two here. And so we'll have an acceleration on Punchh. MENU will have revenue growth. We haven't really had any growth there because of this move to the U.S., and so we'll see growth there. I don't think that business grows 30% just because of the size, but I do think we'll see a nice uplift from where we are today. On the back office side, which is the smaller part of our business, that grew, call it, 19%, 20% this year. I think there's -- that business will also have an ability to move up this year with the bundling within Brink. And I think we'll see some interesting acquisition opportunities that come out of there, too. And then we've talked about Brink already, but there's just a lot of pipeline there. I think the key part though is that Brink landing allows everything else to grow faster. And so at Brink land, almost every bring customer we signed in 24 added another product. And so that will drive everything, which is why we continue to consolidate the units together because as we land Brink expansion is getting easier and easier.

And then I appreciate the comment on kind of ramping up your M&A capabilities. I guess on kind of the other side of that question, can you just kind of update us strategically about how you're thinking about the government business here?

I look at the disclosures in the dock.

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

Thanks, everybody, for your time. Look forward to ping you next quarter and feel free to reach out with any questions.

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