TransAct Technologies Incorporated (TACT) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings. Welcome to the TransAct Technologies Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Ryan Gardella, Investor Relations. Thank you, Ryan. You may begin.

Thanks, Sam. Good afternoon. Welcome to the TransAct Technologies Second Quarter 2026 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 CFO, Troy Ingianni. Today's call will include a discussion of the company's key operating strategies, the progress in those initiatives, and details on our second quarter financial results. We'll then open the call to participants for questions. As a reminder, this conference call contains statements about future events and expectations, which are forward-looking in nature. Statements on this call may be deemed as forward-looking and actual results may differ materially. For a full list of risks inherent to the business and the company, please refer to the company's SEC filings, including its reports, Forms 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 the 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. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Ryan, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before I begin, let me introduce you to Troy Ingianni. I'm delighted to have him here. He's joining us as our new CFO and on the call for the first time. And let me just say, he's been great to work with. He's really exceptional at his job. And I couldn't be happier to have him on our team. And I think as shareholders, you'll be pleased as well with him. He's a great addition, and I'm really delighted to have him here. So thank you for joining us, Troy. And now let me begin my...

Thank you, John. I appreciate that.

You're welcome, Troy. Yes. So I'm pleased to report that TransAct delivered solid second quarter results that continue to demonstrate progress against the long-term strategy that we've discussed. Total net sales were $13.9 million. And as Troy will detail in a moment, this figure includes the impact of an approximate $1 million reduction to sales related to estimated customer refunds. These were driven by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on certain import tariffs. Excluding this tariff impact, net sales would have been approximately $14.9 million, up 8% year over year. And adjusted EBITDA was $514,000 during the second quarter, also impacted by $400,000 of the tariff adjustments. So for the first half of 2026, we generated $1.9 million of adjusted EBITDA, resulting in us raising our full year guidance to a range of between $1.5 million and $2.0 million. So, let me begin with a more detailed breakdown of the results and I'll start with Food Service Technology. We refer to that as FST, Food Service Technology. So if I say that, you'll know what I mean. Total revenue was $5.2 million, up 9% year over year, and up 10% sequentially. Our focus remains squarely on driving revenue growth in our Food Service Technology space, that's the market, with software as a primary growth engine. Our second quarter results are consistent with the strategic direction we have shared with investors to date. That's building a high-margin, more predictable recurring revenue stream that leverages a growing base of online BOHA! units. In the second quarter, we sold 1,900 BOHA! units, which means we now have sold 3,270 units through the first 6 months of 2026. Demand continued to be driven by upgrade orders from many of our large install base of older AccuDate and Terminal 1 systems. Customers are seeing the value of moving to the new terminal, and we are continuing to view this conversion cycle as a multi-year runway of opportunity. We continue to execute on our land and expand strategy and believe the revised go-to-market or GTM motions and revitalized sales and marketing teams that we have are just beginning to pay dividends in the form of increased FST sales. We ended the second quarter with nearly 22,000 online units, up about 33% year-over-year, continuing the steady growth of our install base. That growing online base is the foundation of the software opportunity we're now actively monetizing. Most importantly, our recurring FST revenue continues to grow. During the last quarter, the recurring FST sales reached $3.4 million in the second quarter, up 13% year over year. With that, software revenue was up 25% sequentially and 47% year over year, driven primarily by price increases that we began implementing earlier this year as part of an intensified focus where we ensure that we capture fair market value for the software offerings we have. And as I've said before, in the past, the company frequently bundled the software for free simply to close a hardware sale or to get the label business. This practice now is behind us. We control the source code for the software and the platform. We're deliberately seeking to shift the business model towards a higher margin, sustainable and predictable recurring software revenue model. So this should make pretty good sense, but later I'm happy to discuss this in detail for any of those who want to follow up. Our long-term aim remains to drive the FST install base toward $100 to $200 per machine per month in recurring software-related revenue. That level of monetization applied to the growing base of terminals has the potential to unlock significant value for TransAct. Labels also saw a strong quarter, contributing positively to our gross margin and enhancing retention within our customer base. We'll continue to lean into the label sales business as a key piece of our long-term FST strategy, as growth within the terminal base generally helps grow both the label and the software businesses. And the label business creates a stickier long-standing relationship with the client and creates a greater degree of intimacy there, so it's very important. On the technology side, as you've heard, we recently launched our next-generation enterprise-grade BOHA! SaaS, that's Software-as-a-Service platform, with the completion of our migration from our legacy hosted infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. This was a strategic move. It significantly enhances the platform's scalability, security, resiliency, and performance, allowing us to bring innovation and requested enhancements to market faster, deliver seamless integrations with other systems such as point-of-sale systems, and provide enterprise-grade uptime disaster recovery across large multi-location deployments. Combined with the control of the software, the new platform also gives us greater operational freedom and positions us to accelerate our software roadmap, including implementing AI-related workflows and additional applications over time. Internally, because people asked, AI is also helping us with the development teams. They can move faster and quicker, and it's more a function of having experts looking at code that's written by AI rather than having a typing pool that types things and we have to fix it anyway. We remain focused on the practical application for AI, but we feel confident that it will leverage our integrated hardware and software solutions approach in the future. Turning to Casino and Gaming, revenue in the second quarter was $7.3 million, down approximately 4% from the prior year. After adjusting for the tariff-related impact of the refunds, the casino and gaming revenue would have been approximately $8.3 million, approximately up 9% year over year. We saw solid contributions from key OEM customers, both domestically and internationally. And our relatively new Epic TR80 roll-fed printer continued to gain traction internationally in the gaming applications for betting kiosks and similar systems like that. And finally, moving on to our financial outlook, we reaffirm our full year 2026 net sales outlook of $57 million to $55 million. And as noted earlier, we are increasing our adjusted EBITDA outlook to a range of $1.5 million to $2.0 million. So we delivered solid second quarter results, continued to demonstrate real progress against our strategic priorities, sold 1,900 online BOHA! units, increased our recurring revenue opportunity. We posted software revenue growth of 47%, and we successfully launched the next-generation BOHA! platform on Azure. Recurring revenue continues to build, our installed base is expanding, and we remain firmly on track to deliver against our financial and strategic goals for the year. At the center of the strategy is to build out a high-margin software-led recurring revenue business on a growing install base. We are executing that transition with disciplined capital allocation and, frankly, the strength provided by a solid balance sheet. So those are most of my remarks. But before I turn it over to Troy, I wanted to provide some additional news related to casino and gaming. The Board of Directors recently initiated a formal strategic review related to the casino and gaming business. Management has engaged BofA Securities as its financial advisor, given their expertise within the casino and gaming market and their long-term standing relationship with TransAct. We believe that exploring potential options within casino and gaming, given the current strength of that market, is in the best interest of stockholders as they look to maximize value. While the review is focused on the casino and gaming business, the Board intends to evaluate a broader range of strategic alternatives to the extent the Board determines that doing so may further enhance stockholder value. As you would expect, the company has not set a public timetable for the review and there can be no assurance that the review will result in any transaction or other strategic outcome. We do not intend to disclose developments until our Board of Directors has approved a specific transaction or course of action, or until which time we otherwise determine that disclosure is appropriate or required. We have the right platform, we have the right focus, we have the right team to continue driving the software transition forward, while also focusing on strategic potential options for casino and gaming. So those are my remarks, and with that, I'll turn the call over to Troy for a more detailed review of the financial results. Troy?

All right, thank you, John. I appreciate the kind words, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. As today is my first earnings call at TransAct, I just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself. I bring to the company more than 25 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, I served as the VP Global Controller and Chief Accounting Officer at Barnes Group, which was a global public company that got taken over by a PE. I joined TransAct on July 1 because I believe in the BOHA! platform. I met with John. I could see that it represents a really compelling growth opportunity for the company. So I'm excited to partner with John, the team, the executive team that I've met here, and I think we're going to really be able to strengthen the financial foundation and support the company's continued success. So as you can tell, I'm very happy to be here. With that, let's turn to the second quarter results in a bit more detail. Total net sales for the second quarter were about $13.9 million, which were up slightly compared to $13.8 million in the prior year period. John mentioned this earlier. There was an impact on the financials related to tariff refunds that I'd like to spend a minute to discuss. Our second quarter results reflect the impact of a February 20, 2026, U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared certain import tariffs to be invalid. During the periods in which the tariffs were in effect, we collected both the actual duties and related service and management fees from our customers. These amounts were broken out as tariff surcharges on the invoices themselves that we had with the customers. As of now, we're in the process of reclaiming the duty amounts from the government. There's a portal that was set up, and we plan to return these amounts in full to the customers who requested and paid them, as these were pass-through collections from a tariff standpoint. On the service and management fees, we have decided to refund a portion of the previously recognized tariff surcharge and return those amounts to the customers while retaining a modest management fee to cover the direct costs that we incurred while administrating this process for our customers. As a result, in the second quarter, we recorded an approximate $600,000 reduction to cost of goods sold related to the tariff refunds from the government, along with a corresponding $1 million in estimated customer refunds, thereby reducing sales. Subsequent to quarter end and through the date of this call, we have received about $500,000 of the expected government refunds. This represents about 80% of the total. So we're still expecting some portion of refunds to go, but we are starting that process of returning the funds to our customers. Excluding this tariff impact, total net sales would have been $14.9 million, up approximately $1.2 million, or 8%, compared to prior year period. Sales from our FST business for the second quarter were $5.2 million, up 9% versus $4.8 million in the prior year period, and up 10% sequentially from the $4.7 million in the first quarter of 2026. John mentioned this earlier, but we did sell 1,900 BOHA! units in the second quarter, which was impressive. Our recurring FST sales, which include software and service subscriptions, as well as consumable labels, were $3.4 million in the second quarter. This was up 13% as we had $3 million in the prior year period. And John also mentioned software revenue was up 47% year over year, driven primarily by price increases. ARPU for the second quarter of 2026 was $673, down 15% from $792 in the second quarter of 2025, and down 5% sequentially from $709 in the first quarter of 2026. Now, recall that ARPU includes software, labels, and other sources of recurring revenue. So we are very pleased with our label sales. However, we also recognize that as our software and our installed base grows, this metric, ARPU, it becomes less indicative of true software growth. Going forward, we plan to share metrics that better reflect our contractual software side of the house. John, myself, and the leadership team are working through some key metrics now, and we plan to, as I said, share those with you in the future. Our casino and gaming sales were $7.3 million, which were down 4% compared to $7.6 million in the second quarter of '25 and down 13% sequentially from $8.3 million in the first quarter of 2026. As with our company-wide results, casino and gaming sales this quarter were impacted by the tariff-related revenue reduction that I mentioned earlier of $1 million. Excluding this impact, however, casino and gaming sales would have approximated $8.3 million, which would have been up $700,000 compared to prior year period. And then as it relates to our Epic TR80, that line continues to build momentum internationally in roll-fed gaming applications. Turning to POS. POS automation, sales of our Ithaca 9000 printer for the second quarter were $619,000, up 5%, compared to $590,000 in the prior year period. These sales remain in our normalized range of about $600,000 per quarter and we expect these results to remain similar going forward. It's a steady business, I'd say, at this point. Moving to TransAct Services Group, or TSG, sales. For the second quarter, TSG sales were $838,000, up 3% from $818,000 in the prior year. The increase was driven by higher service revenue related to legacy-based lottery printers, partially offset by lower spares and accessory revenue, as their legacy install base continues to just naturally wind down. Moving down the income statement, our second quarter gross margin was 50.2% compared to 48.2% in the prior year period. This was roughly flat sequentially from 50.3% in the first quarter of 2026. We do continue to expect our gross margin to be in the mid to high 40% range for the full year 2026. Our total operating expenses for the second quarter were $7.1 million. This is up 2% compared to the $6.9 million in the prior year period. And if I were to break down these operating expenses a bit more, our engineering and R&D expenses for the second quarter were $1.2 million, which is down 29% compared to $1.7 million in the prior year period. This reflects the capitalization of software consulting and R&D costs related to the in-housing of the BOHA! software, which John had mentioned earlier, we now have control over that source code. And we've now begun amortizing these costs that were capitalized in the third quarter of 2026. Our selling and marketing expenses for the second quarter were $2.7 million, up 30% compared to $2.1 million in the prior year period. The increase reflects new hires that we initiated in 2026, along with higher trade show, advertising, and also some commission expense. Lastly, our G&A expenses for the quarter were $3.1 million. This was essentially flat compared to prior year period. We had higher legal expenses related to the executive transition and other strategic items, but these were largely offset by lower bonus expense, so overall we ended up flat. On the bottom line, we recorded a net loss of $50,000. These were break-even results from a diluted share standpoint during the second quarter of 2026. And it's compared to a net loss of $143,000, or a $0.01 loss per diluted share in the prior year period. We recorded income tax expense of $30,000 as we continue to take a full valuation allowance against our U.S. pre-tax earnings. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $514,000. This compared to $478,000 in the second quarter of 2025 and $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2026. For the first half of 2026, our adjusted EBITDA was right around $1.9 million. And this is what allowed us to raise our full-year adjusted EBITDA to a range of $1.5 million to $2.0 million. Our balance sheet remains strong. We have $19.4 million in cash and cash equivalents. And as in past periods, we held only the minimum balance on our revolver with Siena, giving us the maximum financial flexibility going forward. We'll continue to closely manage the balance to ensure that we provide optionality as well as ensuring value is delivered to the shareholders to the extent we have the cash. Lastly, I'd comment that we have not repurchased any shares during the quarter. And again, thank you all. Appreciate you being on the call. Appreciate your continued interest in TransAct and all that we're doing, and appreciate the support. Happy to be here. I'm excited to work with the team. With that, I'd like to turn the call over back to the operator. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Greg Burns with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Maybe you could just help us understand your thoughts behind the strategic review. I know you had started a process in the past and discontinued it. What's changed? Why now? And, is it possible that you might be able to share with us the EBITDA of the casino business so we might better assess what the value of that business might be?

Well, on the last part of your question, my goal is eventually to share the specific EBITDA between the 2 go-to-market strategies that we have. When we ran the process before, it was in a really turbulent time for the company. We'd come out of the pandemic. We had supply chain scenarios where there was a shortage of supplies. We captured 100% of the market as gaming and casino OEMs. The guys that make the slots overbought. We had to work that down, so we had a real whipsaw on all that. And candidly, the gaming business hadn't stabilized and recovered, and it has now. The other thing is, if I contrast the 2 businesses, our role in the gaming industry is relatively small in a fairly large industry. The opportunity in the FST space is -- has a TAM, a total addressable market, depending on who you listen to, currently at least a $4 billion and maybe closer to $12 billion, expected to go to about $32 billion -- I'm sorry, going to about $18 billion in 2032, 2033. So as we look at cash allocation, as most of you know, the gaming business has been profitable, cash cow, as it were, in the traditional sense. And we need to figure out collectively kind of what's the best strategy with that unit where our strategy is pretty well baked with FST. We kind of know what to do. We have to execute, but with the gaming and casino business, you know, do we expand? Do we do this? Do we do that? And so now's a good time to do that. And as we commented on the call, we selected Bank of America Securities. I've known the team there for probably at least a few years. They know the industry well, and we thought they would be a really, really outstanding partner to help us figure out the best scenarios for how to monetize that asset.

Okay. When you think about monetizing that asset, the FST business is obviously this kind of emerging growth company. It's got the cash, I guess, cash backing of the gaming business. But if you sell off the gaming, where does that leave the FST business? Does it have enough capital to grow? Do you think you could get that business to break even from a cash flow perspective with the cash you have on hand?

I think the answer to that question is yes.

Okay. When we look at growing the software component of the FST business, are you now bundling a software package with the new BOHA! sales?

Well, that's correct. Now, as you know, we've got about 22,000 online systems, and many of those systems were sold back in the day when we really didn't appreciate the value of the recurring software business. And obviously, we've got that religion now. So part of what we're doing is we're going back to the old way to existing clients, and we have a really good book of business, and we're saying, "hey, you know, we put this stuff up on Azure, it's a better scenario. We're now paying for the hosting, delivering better support, reliability, etc." And this service, because these systems are all online and our clients can look at data, they can do reports, they can change menus, they can do things. I mean, we're delivering -- it's just like delivering an app, and there's a fee for that. And so we're negotiating and discussing with clients what that fee ought to be, and we're working on that. In addition to that, when we sell new systems, either to existing customers, additional systems to existing customers or if we sell new systems to new customers, we expect to bundle software packages. Now, we have a really broad offering. It's got a number of components, and some clients need some of it. Some clients need all of it. And some of them even need all of it, but they also want to integrate with other in-house systems. And we have the wherewithal to do that. It's typical in our space for units like this that might go into a QSR, a quick service restaurant, or a fine dining establishment or maybe in a facilities managed dining facility where the units generate $100, $200, $300 a month in recurring revenue. And candidly, we missed that opportunity in the early days because we were focused as a hardware company, mostly on moving the units. And so I guess the answer to your question is yes, we're focused on adding software components, offering bundles, and making sure that the software that we deliver, we capture fair market value for that. Again, that's been a transition period for us, very much like some of the other companies, like remember when Microsoft was selling disks and you paid for it once, and now you have Microsoft 365. It's sort of like that transition. We're going through it now, and we've got some pretty good results, and we're pretty optimistic about how it's going to work out.

Okay, so maybe you could help us understand the economics a little better. Like, how much -- like what would be, like, the average bundle on a new BOHA! system? And you sold 1,900 new systems this quarter. Would those -- did those all have a bundled software package? Or is that more something in prospective quarters where you start to attach software packages?

Yes. Well, in some cases, the customers already had software. And in some cases, if they're retiring an old machine, and some of those machines were online, but they were first or second generation, those licenses would go with. In some cases, they have 1 license or 2 licenses for 1 or 2 of the modules and we'd add the temperature-taking application or the reefer monitoring things for temperature outages or we might add checklists or one of the other applications and we sit down with the client and say, "What do you need? Are you expanding? What's your vision?" We work with them on that. So to answer your question, something very, very basic might be, you know, $75 to $90 a month for basic nutrition, food labeling, and date coding, and something simple like that. But it's also the case where some of the clients will buy all of the different applications. And candidly, we're a solutions vendor and we go in and we work with the clients over what are their challenges and every food service industry has different challenges. But some of the machines we sell, we sell to customers that already have licenses. Some of them we sell and we bundle a license with it. And some of them we take a license and then we ask them if they want more than just the basic stuff. And that's kind of it. And so, no, I'm not giving you a precise answer, but the reality is our sales team figures it out case by case, and it's working pretty well. As you know, we target the largest customers in the industry. There's 2 ways to go out of market, you can start at the top where all the money is, or you can start at the bottom and hope you work your way up. Because we got our start by helping design systems for McDonald's, we learn an awful lot about what a sophisticated client would want. So our products are best suited for large organizations that may have 200 or 300 locations or 1,000 locations. And so we get into conversations with those clients about what their future vision is. Many of the industry are going through digital transformation, something that many other industries went through a decade or more ago. The food service industry is under a tremendous amount of economic pressure today because of wage rate inflation, labor turnover, and safety, and things like food waste and food quality. So you know, we sit down with them, we talk to them and we find the right package, and that's what we sell. So sometimes there's not too much, maybe some basic stuff, and they pay $50 a month for a unit, or sometimes they might pay $300, $400 a month per unit. And I can't give you a specific because for 2 reasons. One, we got a lot of moving parts right now and we're just getting our sea legs relative to understanding all of the metrics. And as Troy pointed out, we're going to start giving you more and more of those metrics, but let's just say with the results that we've got so far, we're feeling really good about the uptake. And I think that's probably a really great harbinger of future times to come.

Okay. I might have missed it, but in past quarters you've disclosed new customer logos. I don't know if that's not some -- if you did disclose it, I might have missed it or if that's not something you're going to be sharing on a go-forward basis.

Well, we do share logos. One of the problems that we have with that metric, and I'll be the first to admit it, one of the things that you all know is once you start sharing a metric, everybody wants to know what it is every time because you try to compare. What we found with that is that we have organizations that deliver solutions in the food service industry. So, for example, if you take FSM, which is a food management company, they do food management for maybe 3 -- one division might do food management for 300 or 400 institutions. And when we win one of those -- when we win one of the food service management contracts with our food service management customer, they will place the units in dozens and dozens of different -- in different venues. So for example, I'm up here in Oregon on this call and I was doing some shopping at Fred Meyer. And Fred Meyer happens to be owned by Kroger. And it turns out that we do grab-and-go sushi for about 47 Kroger grocery stores. And so the question that we've got is, would it be better to talk about the breadth and the sort of the domination of this product as it moves through the market. Or if we say we won one customer, it's a food service management company. And it's one of these huge billion-dollar companies. So what I think we're going to do is we're going to start reporting unique food service venues. In other words, a new venue that we weren't in before, regardless of how we got in, because I think that speaks more to market share. But we kind of found out that in this last quarter, we were so very focused on developing the software business, we spent less time selling into net new customers. And at the same time, we basically overhauled our sales and marketing team so that the lead gen system is starting to really work well. And so that's lagged a little bit. And so we debated about whether we should talk about another number of new venues. We decided not to do either. So frankly, you're not going to get a report on this particular earnings call. But I do expect to talk about net new customers and I do expect to talk more importantly about new FST venues that we captured that we wouldn't have captured if it wasn't for some kind of partner or OEM that's going into those markets.

[Operator Instructions] We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to John Dillon for closing comments.

I'd like to thank everyone again for joining us. I appreciate your time and attention. And obviously these calls don't cover everything, and I look forward to talking to all of you and many of you during the coming months, during the remaining of the quarter, and look forward to talking to you again on the quarterly call at the end of the third quarter. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.