Toast Q3 2024 Earnings Report

Toast EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.07
• Consensus EPS: $0.01
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.06
• One Year Ago EPS: -$0.09

Toast Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $1.31 billion
• Expected Revenue: $1.29 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$17.98 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Toast Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2024
• Date: 11/7/2024
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Toast (NYSE:TOST) (NYSE: TOST) is a technology company that builds a cloud-based platform for restaurants and other foodservice businesses. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Toast offers integrated point-of-sale (POS) systems and a suite of software and hardware designed to streamline front-of-house and back-of-house operations. The company went public in 2021 and has positioned itself as a vertically integrated provider for the restaurant industry.

Toast’s product portfolio includes touchscreen POS terminals and handheld order-and-pay devices, kitchen display systems, and peripherals tailored for high-volume foodservice environments. On the software side, the platform provides order management, menu management, inventory tracking, reporting and analytics, and workforce management tools such as scheduling and payroll. Toast also supports omnichannel sales through online ordering, delivery integrations, gift cards, loyalty programs, and marketing features, and it processes card and mobile payments through integrated payments services.

Primarily focused on restaurants, cafes, and bars across the United States, Toast serves a wide range of customers from independent operators to multi-location chains. Its go-to-market approach combines subscription software, hardware sales, payment processing fees and value-added services such as lending and professional services, aimed at increasing efficiency and reducing friction for hospitality operators. The company’s platform-first strategy emphasizes interoperability so operators can run essential aspects of their business from a single, cloud-based system.

Toast Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Toast delivered a strong Q3 with 7,000 net location adds, 35% year-over-year growth in recurring gross profit streams, $113 million of adjusted EBITDA (30% margin) and raised its full-year guidance.
• The company’s four strategic priorities—scaling core U.S. restaurant locations (now 14% penetration), expanding product offerings, entering new adjacencies and driving operating leverage—remain on track.
• New guest-facing products branded native apps and SMS marketing are already driving engagement, with app users 4× more likely to reorder and restaurants reporting thousands in incremental sales.
• Addressable market expansion is progressing via Food & Beverage Retail (now accepting EBT/SNAP), international roll-outs of Toast Now and enterprise wins like deploying across 400+ Potbelly locations.
• Operating leverage continues with disciplined cost management (G&A down 8% ex–bad debt), ongoing share and warrant repurchases, and margin improvement toward long-term targets.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is Paulie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Toast's Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call will be 45 minutes. I'll now turn the call over to Michael Senno, Senior Vice President of Finance. You may begin your conference.

[Michael Senno, SVP of Finance at Toast]

Thanks, Paulie. Welcome to Toast's Earnings Conference Call for the Q3 ended September 30, 2024. On today's call, our CEO and co-founder, Aman Narang, and CFO, Elena Gomez, will open with prepared remarks, which will be followed by our Q&A session. Before we start, I'd like to draw your attention to the Safe Harbor Statement included in today's press release. During this call, we'll make statements related to our business that may be considered forward-looking within the meaning of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements, including those regarding management's expectations of future financial and operational performance and operational expenditures, location growth, future profitability and margin outlook, anticipated impact of our restructuring plan, warrant repurchase and share repurchase program, expected growth and business outlook, including our financial guidance for the Q4 and full year 2024.

[Michael Senno, SVP of Finance at Toast]

Forward-looking statements reflect our views only as of today, and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language in today's press release and our SEC filings for a discussion of the risks and uncertainty that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including but not limited to non-GAAP subscription services gross profit and non-GAAP financial technology solutions gross profit, which we refer to collectively as our recurring gross profit streams. These are the basis for our top-line guidance. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for detailed reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures.

[Michael Senno, SVP of Finance at Toast]

Unless otherwise stated, all references on this call to cost of revenue, gross profit and gross margin, sales and marketing expense, research and development expense, and general and administrative expense are on a non-GAAP basis. Finally, the press release can be found on the investor relations website at investors.toasttab.com. After the call, a replay will be available on our website. And with that, let me turn the call over to Aman.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thank you, Michael, and thank you, everybody, for joining us this afternoon. We've delivered another strong quarter. We added approximately 7,000 net locations. Our recurring gross profit streams grew 35% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $113 million, and our GAAP operating income was $34 million. I'm really proud of the team, and I'm confident we're well positioned to finish out the year strong and bring this momentum with us into 2025. Our mission at Toast is to help restaurants delight their guests, do what they love, and thrive. We proudly serve nearly 127,000 locations today, and our long-term ambition is to scale this impact across new geographies, new market segments, and new verticals.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

As we think about not just the coming years, but what's possible over the next decade, I firmly believe we can serve many multiples of our current customer count by both increasing market penetration in our current market segments and continuing to expand our addressable markets over time. Over the past year, we've been focused on making disciplined investments that align with our most important priorities and support our long-term vision. And we have so much to be proud of. While the progress over the past 10 years has been tremendous, we're still early in unlocking the full potential of the opportunity that lies ahead. We've increased our outlook for the full year based on our performance in the Q3, and we remain focused on the four strategic priorities we laid out earlier this year. Number one, scaling locations and market share in our core business.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Number two, expanding our offering for restaurants with products customers love. Number three, expanding our addressable market into new adjacencies. And finally, number four, setting up the company to deliver ongoing operating leverage as we scale. First, scaling restaurant locations and gaining share in our core business. Over the past three years, we've more than doubled our market share in the US, including recently signed mid-market brands Metro Diner, Giordano's Pizza, and Earl Enterprises. We're still only at 14% penetration. Our purpose-built restaurant platform and local go-to-market engine creates a flywheel effect as we increase density in local markets, driving approximately 7,000 net adds in the quarter. Our customers continue to choose Toast as they expand locations, solidifying our position in the market as a choice for growing successful restaurants. Here's a story that speaks to this momentum.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Cultivate Food & Coffee is a full-service restaurant and coffee concept in the Atlanta area that recently opened their third location with Toast. Cultivate uses a variety of Toast products to increase speed of service and reduce errors across their locations. For example, servers are able to process orders in half the time, with 80% fewer errors using our Toast Go handhelds. And even though Cultivate's new location has more complex payroll needs than before, managers are able to save time and process payroll in just minutes through Toast, these time savings add up. We heard from Cultivate that the efficiency gains from Toast free them up to create a positive environment for staff and memorable experiences for guests. It's stories like this that inspire us and our team to keep innovating.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

All right, moving on, our second priority is expanding our offering for restaurants with products and experiences customers love. To help our customers drive demand, we've recently released two new products to help restaurants reach their guests: Branded App and SMS Marketing. First, our new Branded App allows our customers to build best-in-class native app experiences for iOS and Android, including integrated digital ordering, delivery, loyalty, and more. This helps our customers level the playing field with much larger brands at a fraction of the cost and has been particularly successful with our multi-unit SMBs and mid-market customers. This builds on our website product released earlier this year as we round out the guest-facing products included in our Essential, Premium, and Pro tiers of our Digital Storefront Suite.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

With multiple offerings at various price points, we now provide options for a variety of different businesses and show our customers how they can expand with us as they grow. Our customers are already seeing increased guest loyalty through our Branded App-powered experience. For example, guests who order through the app are 4x more likely to be repeat customers than those who order through a restaurant's website. Pita Way, a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant with 37 locations across the Midwest, saw orders from their newly launched branded app make up almost 15% of their digital sales since they've launched. Second, we added a highly requested capability in SMS marketing to our marketing suite to help our customers reach their guests directly and generate more revenue. Our customers will be the first to tell you SMS marketing just works.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Spaghettini, a full-service Italian restaurant in California, attributed over $11,000 in sales to SMS Marketing in its first month alone. It's a critical tool when business is slow. For example, during a quiet period, Spaghettini sold out of their Surf and Turf special after promoting it with the text campaign. But we're not just expanding our offering by releasing new products. Our Vertical SaaS strategy goes deep and focuses on a wide range of unique restaurant-first capabilities, what we refer to as our thousand little things. This fall alone, we released over a dozen updates across products like Toast Now, Benchmarking, Kiosks, Toast Tables, and Payroll in response to direct customer feedback. Switching gears, our third priority is expanding our addressable market into new adjacencies, including food and beverage retail, international, and enterprise. These new verticals represent meaningful TAMs where we see a right to win.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Our investments in these areas position us to drive sustained location growth over the long term. We continue to see great signal across these market segments, which has given us even more conviction to increase our investments in these areas as we head into 2025. In food and beverage retail, we've expanded product functionality to now accept EBT SNAP benefits, which opens up more of the grocery and convenience store TAM. We're proud to be able to serve the over 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP, including customers at Gangnam Market, a 28,000 sq ft market in Chicago that does over $10 million in sales annually and manages over 15,000 SKUs. Gangnam Market's owners knew Toast would be able to meet their needs of this new concept because they had already used Toast in their restaurants in the past.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Next, in international, we're continuing to see momentum with our month-over-month gains in attach for our guest products that we rolled out earlier this year, which is helping us drive our unit economics and sales productivity. Customers in the UK, Ireland, and Canada can now also access Toast Now, our mobile operator app, where they can view real-time data about their restaurant. As we continue to invest internationally and see the attach rates of our products improve, we have even more conviction in what international markets represent for Toast as long-term growth drivers. And within enterprise, I'm excited to announce we've won Potbelly Sandwich Works and we'll be deploying Toast across their 400+ locations in the US Our pipeline entering 2025 is really strong, and we continue to make progress across our rollouts with Marriott, MTY Group, NBC, and many others.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Lastly, our fourth priority is to continue to deliver ongoing operating leverage as we scale. In 2024, we reshaped our cost structure, positioning us to invest behind our priorities we've laid out to drive durable growth over the long term while continuing to expand our margins towards a target we presented at our Investor Day. I'm confident in our team's ability to make the right trade-offs and set us up for the future. As I wrap up, I'm so confident in our team, the plan we have in place, and the opportunity ahead of us.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thank you to every Toaster for your dedication and passion for our mission. There's no question we wouldn't be here without you. Thank you to our customers. It's an honor to serve you. To our investors, thank you for continuing to believe in us and our potential. Now I'll turn the call over to Elena to share more about this quarter's results.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Thank you, Aman, and thank you to everyone for joining. I also want to thank our employees whose hard work and consistent execution led to another successful quarter with top and bottom-line results exceeding expectations. In the Q3, ARR increased 28%, and total fintech and subscription gross profit, our recurring gross profit streams, grew 35%. Our strong top-line growth is complemented by our efficient and disciplined approach to scaling the business, resulting in Adjusted EBITDA of $113 million, a 30% margin on our recurring gross profit streams, and GAAP operating income of $34 million. Q3 results came in above our expectations, driven by strong top-line results, including a higher contribution from Toast Capital and upside to SaaS revenue. We added approximately 7,000 net locations in Q3, increasing total locations to nearly 127,000, up 28% year over year.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

The combination of our purpose-built platform and localized go-to-market motion continues to drive our momentum. With our strong performance year to date, we remain on track to deliver more net location adds in 2024 versus 2023. SaaS ARR grew 33% year over year, driven by strong location growth and a 4% increase in SaaS RPU on an ARR basis. Subscription revenue increased 44% year over year, growing faster than SaaS ARR due to ongoing focus across the organization to improve our ARR to revenue conversion. Part of that improvement is sustainable going forward, and part of the increase in subscription revenue was a one-time benefit. Payments ARR grew 23%, and fintech gross profit increased 27% in the Q3. GPV was $41.7 billion, growing 24% year over year, with GPV per location down approximately 3% versus last year.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Net take rate was 56 basis points, with a core net take rate of 45 basis points. We made targeted payment pricing changes for a small cohort of customers in September. It had minimal impact in the quarter, and we expect a small benefit to net take rate in Q4. As we've discussed, we are building a motion for ongoing small targeted price adjustments and view pricing as one lever to complement our primary growth drivers over the long term. Gross profit from non-payment fintech solutions increased to $43 million, driven by healthy demand for Toast Capital. Defaults remain in line with our expectations, and due to continued optimization and the addition of forward flow, bad debt associated with Toast Capital is down relative to prior year, even as we scale the program.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Let me share one story that shows how customers value the fast, low-friction access to capital to grow their business. The Bond Group, which owns the popular speakeasy and ice cream shop UES in New York City, used Toast Capital to help with early operations for a new concept called Champagne Problems they opened earlier this year. The quick and seamless access to funding allowed the owner to maintain strategic control of her business while avoiding the time and complexity associated with traditional loans. The Bond Group considers Toast to be an ideal partner for growth, given Toast's unique visibility into their financials and business operations, and plans to use Toast Capital to help with future expansions.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Shifting back to the P&L, total operating expenses, including bad debt and credit-related expenses, increased 11% year over year in the Q3, accelerating versus the first half of 2024 due to the planned investments in our highest priority areas. Sales and marketing expenses were up 25% year over year in Q3 as we made targeted investments across our TAM expansion areas, upsell, and US go-to-market channels to increase market share gains. R&D increased 5% year over year in the Q3, reflecting investments aligned with our product strategy. As Aman mentioned, we recently announced SMS marketing, branded app, and over a dozen new features across our platform, reflecting the continued innovation to further differentiate our offering and provide more value for our customers. We're also investing behind our TAM expansion areas.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

In retail, we're adding more product integrations like accepting SNAP EBT payments in our grocery and convenience segments and deepening our retail inventory management offering. Internationally, we're rolling out more products, including Toast Now, gift cards, and expanding third-party integrations. Excluding $18 million of bad debt and credit-related expenses, G&A declined 8% year over year. We expect to continue operating leverage in G&A as we maintain a focus on driving efficiencies, including through automation and global diversification of our workforce. Adjusted EBITDA was $113 million in the quarter, and margins expanded 17 percentage points year over year to 30%. The strong Q3 results reflect a healthy top-line growth and our commitment to prudently scaling the business while balancing investments in more nascent areas like food and beverage retail, international, and enterprise to lay the foundation to deliver durable growth for years to come.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Our Q3 margin also benefits from typical payment seasonality. GAAP operating income was $34 million in Q3, reflecting our strong operating performance and disciplined approach to managing stock-based compensation expenses, and free cash flow totaled $97 million in the Q3. Moving to capital allocation. Year to date, through the Q3, we repurchased over two million shares for $56 million for an average price of $23 per share. Early in the Q3, we also repurchased a warrant representing five million shares, reflecting our focus on reducing dilution. We will continue to be opportunistic based on market conditions and act judiciously in support of building long-term shareholder value. Turning to guidance for the Q4, we expect total subscription and fintech gross profit to grow in the 32%-35% range year over year and Adjusted EBITDA to be $90 to 100 million.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

The sequential decline in Adjusted EBITDA and margin compared to the Q4 reflects typical seasonal decline in the Q4 of GPV per location, as well as our planned ongoing reinvestments to set ourselves up for sustained healthy growth in both 2025 and over the long term. For the full year, we now expect 32%-33% growth in fintech and subscription gross profit and $352 to 362 million in Adjusted EBITDA, representing a 26% Adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint, marking an approximately 20 percentage point improvement in margin versus last year. Thus far, in 2024, we have delivered meaningful Adjusted EBITDA outperformance and significant margin expansion after resetting our cost structure at the beginning of the year and aligning our investments with our highest priority areas.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

As we exit the year, our strong financial profile enables us to invest in the business to position us for both a strong 2025 and long-term durable growth. We will focus on balancing growth with modest margin expansion as we march towards the 30-35 million medium-term goal we laid out at Investor Day. To wrap up, we are executing across the board and extremely proud of what we have accomplished so far in 2024 and in our position heading into 2025. Now I will turn the call back over to the operator to begin Q&A.

[Operator]

Thank you. And at this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. And your first question comes from the line of Josh Baer from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Josh Baer, Executive Director and Software Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks for the question. And congrats on a nice quarter. Question is on location growth ahead. Your TAM is expanding, execution strong. You benefit from more efficiency in your density markets. And you're talking about bringing the momentum from this year into 2025. Does that mean that you can add more locations in 2025 versus 2024? Is it a similar number? Just wondering how you're thinking about the trajectory of location additions.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Hey, Josh. You know, look, I'll start by saying we've had a great quarter, and we had 7,000 net adds. You know, I think overall for the year, we've got strong net adds in 2024, and it's really led by our flywheel markets and our core business. You know, these flywheel markets continue to drive strong productivity and stronger productivity than our other markets, and the number of flywheel markets continues to increase. In parallel, we're seeing good early momentum in CBG retail and our Horizon One international markets, and that does give us more conviction to invest more in those businesses next year. We also had a great win in Potbelly enterprise. We're continuing to see momentum there as well, steady momentum.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

And if you just zoom out and think about the next decade before we talk about next year, like we recognize that it's critical, like to both scale and drive, you know, market share in our core US business now while expanding our TAM across new verticals and new market segments. And so overall, we're confident in our ability to continue to drive location growth in our next year.

[Josh Baer, Executive Director and Software Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Okay. Got it. Thank you.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thanks, Josh.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Samad Samana from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[Samad Samana, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Hi, good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. Great to see the strong results. Maybe first I'll start on some of the newer items that you mentioned. So like the branded app and the SMS marketing, other ways for you guys to continue to add value that are not just kind of core inside of the restaurant. Just how are we thinking about the upsell or cross-sell motion of those products? Is it a different type of sale? And how should we think about maybe attach rates? And then just Elena, is there a different gross margin profile for those revenue streams?

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Yeah. Thanks, Samad. I can start. Elena, you can jump in after. You know, the branded app and the SMS marketing tools, they're really nice additions to our guest suite to help our customers drive loyalty and demand. And the early feedback from customers has been great. And we're seeing, especially our mid-market and our multi-unit SMB customers really pick it up. You know, I think as we think about our longer-term growth strategy, it's both driving locations. That's what we're talking about, driving locations in our core business as well as expanding the TAM and continuing to invest in our product innovation and continue to make the existing products better. And so this is just one more step to help us continue to make our guest suite an even stronger product in the market.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Yeah. Samad, to the point on the gross profit for those products, it's too early, but I can just tell you the discipline that we've seen, that you've seen us really execute against and the focus on unit economics and payback periods, that doesn't change as we add more products to our platform. So we'll keep an eye on it, but nothing to report. It's too early.

[Samad Samana, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Great. And then just a follow-up on the price increases. You guys, you know, let us know very clearly that it was going to be very targeted. And I think there's some chatter out there on the magnitude that maybe some people have experienced. I'm curious how long we should think about that rolling through the whole base. Is this something that'll take several quarters? Is this something that will take several years? And when should we, what, any kind of expectation on what the tail end will be when it's fully baked into the install base?

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Thanks, Samad, for the question. So just to frame how we think about pricing, you know, Aman alluded to it a little bit just a minute ago, but as we think about the growth algorithm of the business, right, we think about locations and ARPU as the two primary growth levers. And pricing really complements that alongside. And the way we think about it is, you know, we're going to make targeted pricing adjustments and build this muscle over time.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

And so what you saw us do in Q3 was make very targeted price changes for a small cohort of customers. It went into effect in September. So that's why we comment minimal impact in Q3, some small impact in Q4. But I would think about pricing as something that is, you know, going to be with us for, you know, a long time. You know, think about it more of as a long-term strategy, and occasionally we will make targeted pricing adjustments where it makes sense.

[Samad Samana, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Great. Thank you again.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Sure.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thanks, Samad.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Stephen Sheldon of William Blair. Please go ahead.

[Stephen Sheldon, Research Analyst at William Blair]

Hey, thanks. And also big congrats on the strong quarter. So one of the really encouraging win with Potbelly's and enterprise. So just curious how that enterprise pipeline is building. I know it usually takes a lot longer to convert deals there. And for customers that you've won up market, what are some of the bigger factors that have helped you win versus competitive solutions?

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thanks, Stephen. You know, Potbelly's a great win for us. You know, I've actually got one down the street from me in Massachusetts where I live. I've always loved their food and their bottled peppers. So it's a great brand. You know, excited to partner with them to get them rolled out. You know, as we think about just our enterprise pipeline, you know, I think every year the thing that I see is we continue to build on the previous year, which is a really good sign in terms of just the scale we're getting, the types of opportunities we're seeing, the scale of the opportunities.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

That's really a testament to, of course, our go-to-market execution, but even more importantly, the investments we've been making in our product to continue to support and build out the capabilities up market, whether it's enterprise config management, some of the capabilities we offer above store to help restaurants manage at scale. I think, you know, the other piece of it is just there's some custom capability that each of these has. So building out that capability as well is something we're working on. I think the way I think about this is enterprise, as we think about the next decade, is an important growth vector for us, but it's going to be steady alongside some of the other growth vectors we've talked about in international and enterprise, international and retail, and of course our core US SMB business.

[Stephen Sheldon, Research Analyst at William Blair]

Great. Thank you.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Dominic Ball of Redburn Atlantic. Your line is open.

[Dominic Ball, VP of Equity Research at Redburn Atlantic]

Hello, Aman and Elena. Great job as usual. I mean, really impressed upon software ARPU expansion. Can you speak a little bit more towards where the such sharp acceleration quarter on quarter has come from? And then going forward into 2025, how does this also change as you start to win even more retail, international, and larger merchants?

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Yeah, sure. So the comment to answer your question is what happened with the step-up in SaaS revenue this quarter. So really proud actually of the team's execution here. There was a focus in the organization to improve our ARR to revenue conversion. The team focused on more specifically improving the billing infrastructure and looking at the end-to-end quote-to-cash process. And so that resulted in more ARR converting to revenue. And as I commented, some of that is a one-time benefit. We'll see some a little bit more in Q4 on a one-time basis. But the way you should think about the future is in Q3, we saw ARR revenue conversion higher than we've seen historically. So we shouldn't expect it to be as high as Q3, but certainly higher than historical levels.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Yeah. And Aman, just to build on that, you asked about, you know, some of the new segments and what they mean. You know, we've seen slightly higher ARPU so far in CBG retail than our core US SMB business and smaller ARPU international markets. But across both of these businesses, you know, Elena and team and all of us are really carefully looking at the unit economics and contribution margins as we scale them. And if you just look at this year, one of the things I'm really proud of is we've been able to grow these businesses while driving margin expansion this year, which is because there's so much overlap across the core platform and what these new market segments need.

[Dominic Ball, VP of Equity Research at Redburn Atlantic]

That's great. Thank you so much. If you don't mind, we should ask them one more. I mean, can you give us any numbers in terms of location wins for international and retail for this quarter?

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Yeah, just continued momentum really from our Investor Day. You know, I think we had shared some numbers then. And you know, the progress we're seeing across both has been really positive. In CBG retail, you know, we're seeing good progress across all of the, whether it's grocery or convenience or bottle shops. And then international, we're continuing to add more and more of the products, which is improving our unit economics and our productivity. And so just continue to see really good momentum going into next year. And next in 2025, we expect to invest more in these businesses based on what signal we're seeing so far this year.

[Dominic Ball, VP of Equity Research at Redburn Atlantic]

Cool. Thank you.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Timothy Chiodo from UBS. Please go ahead.

[Timothy Chiodo, Managing Director at UBS]

Great. Thank you for taking the question. I want to dig in on Toast Capital a little bit. So this business is a key advantage of you being the system of record. And it's not just about the SaaS and the payments, but clearly this is another advantage that you have. You're in sort of that pull position. This topic has become more topical with investors given Clover is somewhat leaning into their Clover Capital business. Square Capital has been delivering good growth for Square. So with all that as a backdrop, when I look at your volumes as a percentage of GPV, it's sort of in the below 1% level.

[Timothy Chiodo, Managing Director at UBS]

And the program's still relatively nascent compared to Square Capital. Clearly, that's a very different business, right? Different vertical distribution, merchant size, et cetera. But they're more in sort of the 2.5% range. And I just wanted to see if we could talk a little bit about where you think you might sit longer term. Is it in that 1%-2% range? Could it possibly be higher? And there are certainly good arguments on both sides. Thanks.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Tim, for the question. It's a fair question. Like, first of all, let me just start by saying the team's execution here has been excellent. And I think the demand for the product is very clear, right? Customers are valuing the fast, low-friction access to capital. And you saw the performance this quarter getting up to $43 million. And the best thing is we continue to optimize the program. Default rates are where we expect them to be.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

So all in all, it's a really healthy program. As we think about the long term, we're going to continue to grow it in a balanced way. You know, other companies have different profiles of customers, so you got to take that into consideration. But over the long term, there's no reason why we couldn't grow the program through more attach. I think we just want to make sure we do that in a very balanced, risk-adjusted manner, but we feel really confident where the team is executing today.

[Timothy Chiodo, Managing Director at UBS]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Dan Dolev from Mizuho. Please go ahead.

[Dan Dolev, Senior Analyst at Mizuho]

Hey, guys. You know, really amazing results here. You know, just want to ask like kind of, you know, bigger long-term strategic question in terms of sort of next year. I know you had the Analyst Day, but you know, is there, you know, in your discussions, have there been any sort of reprioritizations into the different, you know, initiatives that you're going to take, whether international or any other products given the recent, you know, involvement of the last few months? Thank you.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Yeah. Hey, Dan. You know, I think a lot of it's consistency with what we outlined at Investor Day. You know, we've seen a really good year in terms of progress against all of our efforts to drive location growth and ARPU growth. And that's, you know, continuing to get more markets into the flywheel and continuing to expand our product portfolio in ways that have impact for customers. And you know, that's really the foundation. As we think about all the future growth opportunities we have, scaling in our core business and driving towards market leadership is foundational. That's the most important thing.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

As we think about the future, you know, one of the most important things over the next decade is, in addition to scaling our core, investing to open up the TAM in areas where we see really good opportunity, where there's a right, where we think where there's a right to win and where we think there's great unit economics and overlap with our platform. And so I think the team's done a great job of finding some of those areas, right? Like with international, with some of the key markets there, with CBG retail. And we're going to invest some more go-to-market capacity in those areas next year. We're going to keep investing in enterprise business and also keep investing in product expansion to make the products that we have better to drive attach rates. And so really the strategy is consistent with what we outlined at Analyst Day.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

There are also a few things that we're doing that are further out, right? So we do take some part of our investment in our R&D product, in our R&D portfolio. And we're looking, we're investing in things that are further out where we're looking to see is there any signal. And those are things that are, you know, where the team's learning, whether it's, you know, other categories, other subverticals, other international markets. And we'll share more as and when it's appropriate.

[Dan Dolev, Senior Analyst at Mizuho]

Got it. Well, great results and amazing stuff. Thanks.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Andrew Bauch from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Conan Leon, VP of Equity Research at Wells Fargo]

Hey, guys. This is Conan on for Andrew. Congrats on the strong quarter. I had a quick question on SaaS ARPU. You know, on your own metric, it was up 4% year over year. And just looking at subscription revenue, it was up 12%. Can you go a little bit into what the, I guess, differences between the two?

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Yeah. Sure. You know, at the highest level, there are differences at times between ARR and revenue based on timing, based on concessions or credits, things like that. And so that's the primary driver between the two. When we talk about SaaS ARPU, we're talking about on an ARR basis, so just keep that in mind. And in terms of the 4%, you know, the execution of the team has been strong. And we view ARPU, as Aman mentioned, as one of the key growth levers alongside locations. So that's how we think about it.

[Conan Leon, VP of Equity Research at Wells Fargo]

Great. Thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Will Nance from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Will Nance, VP at Goldman Sachs]

Hey, I appreciate you taking the question. A lot of calls going on tonight, so I'll just ask one. But I wanted to ask about the retail push. It's really exciting. We've kind of seen it out in the wild. I've heard some great feedback on it. And I'm just curious if you have any incremental thoughts on just how you're thinking about structuring go-to-market, how you're kind of weighing the, you know, the benefits of, you know, on the one hand, getting scale out of the existing Salesforce versus having a more verticalized or kind of specialty Salesforce for that product. Thanks for taking the question tonight, guys, and nice results.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Yeah. Thanks, Will. Yeah. As you said, we continue to see great momentum in retail, you know, across all the subcategories we're playing in. And, you know, if you look at 2025, it's giving us more confidence to invest. And, you know, I think part of it's, yes, like investing strategically with a team that is very focused on retail. But part of the benefit that we also have is we've got, you know, all the sales reps throughout the country that can help drive top of funnel and lead flow. So we're thinking through what is the best approach to maximize growth. And that's something we're tweaking and testing.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

But at the highest level, thinking of the progress and the signal we've seen so far, this gives us conviction to lean in and invest some more next year to see if we can build on the momentum from this year. And thank you for the report that you shared. Our team appreciates that.

[Will Nance, VP at Goldman Sachs]

Thanks, guys. Appreciate you taking the questions.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thanks, Will.

[Operator]

Your next question is from the line of Nick Setyan from Wedbush. Please go ahead.

[Nick Setyan, Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush]

Thanks for taking the question and congrats on a great quarter. You know, the restaurant industry trends seem to have troughed in July, and we've seen an uptick, you know, month over month all the way through October here. And so the question is, what could that potentially mean for GPV per location? Could that have troughed in Q3? And could we see, could we start to see an improvement going forward?

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Yeah. Thanks for the question. So GPV per location was down 3%, you know, consistent actually with Q2. And it's been relatively consistent over the last several quarters. As we head into Q4, it'll be in the same range. And that's what our guidance reflects. And we're monitoring, obviously always monitoring the macro. It's a tight band. We always say it's going to stay within a tight band. We still continue to believe that. And as we, you know, consider, you know, the kind of over the next couple of quarters, we expect it to be in that similar trend.

[Nick Setyan, Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush]

Thank you.

[Operator]

We will now take our last question from the line of Jason Kupferberg of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Jason Kupferberg, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Hey, this is Melissa on for Jason. I wanted to just ask about the net new adds of 7,000 this quarter. Are they fairly balanced between new restaurant openings and competitive takeaways? Or what can you tell us about the mix there? And a quick question on churn, is it still in the slightly above 10% range on an annualized basis, or are there any updates to that metric? Thanks.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Sure. Yeah. We're, you know, I think with the 7,000 net adds, it's largely been consistent in terms of the trends we've seen in the past. Good mix of new openings as well as existing restaurants that are switching as they upgrade. And the great thing is our go-to-market team does a great job in either case. You know, we've got some reps hitting quota with more NROs and new openings and some with existing restaurants. And so can compete either way. And in terms of, you know, churn, it's largely aligned with what we've shared historically. When we do see churn, it's typically smaller restaurants. And so the impact of ARR is smaller. And our churn metrics are just in.

[Elena Gomez, CFO at Toast]

Yeah. Similar range. Yeah. Yeah. We'll update there. All right. Thank you, everyone.

[Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO at Toast]

Thank you, everybody.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining.

Participants

Executives

• Aman Narang, Co-Founder and CEO
• Michael Senno, SVP of Finance
• Elena Gomez, CFO

Analysts

• Nick Setyan, Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush
• Josh Baer, Executive Director and Software Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Will Nance, VP at Goldman Sachs
• Conan Leon, VP of Equity Research at Wells Fargo
• Jason Kupferberg, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America
• Dan Dolev, Senior Analyst at Mizuho
• Stephen Sheldon, Research Analyst at William Blair
• Dominic Ball, VP of Equity Research at Redburn Atlantic
• Samad Samana, Managing Director at Jefferies
• Timothy Chiodo, Managing Director at UBS