Toast NYSE: TOST reported second-quarter results that exceeded its expectations, led by record location additions, growth in recurring gross profit streams and expanding operating margins. Management also raised its full-year outlook while outlining plans to reinvest in artificial intelligence products, international, enterprise and retail expansion.
CEO Aman Narang said recurring gross profit streams rose more than 28% in the quarter, while GAAP operating income margin reached 26%. The company added a record 9,500 net locations during the period, bringing its total location count to about 180,000, up 22% from a year earlier.
“Our core business continues to scale, our new markets are growing rapidly,” Narang said, adding that Toast is developing an AI-driven platform intended to take on operational work for restaurant customers.
Quarterly financial performance
CFO Elena Gomez said annual recurring revenue grew 25% year over year, while recurring gross profit streams rose 28%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 38% to $221 million, with the adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 240 basis points to 37%.
GAAP operating income was $152 million, representing a 26% margin, while GAAP earnings per share reached $0.26. Gomez said recurring gross profit growth plus operating margin totaled 57% in the quarter on a GAAP basis.
Gross payment volume was $61 billion, up 22% year over year. GPV per location was flat, though management said core GPV exceeded expectations amid strong same-store sales trends and a modest benefit from the World Cup late in June.
- SaaS ARR increased 27%, supported by location growth and mid-single-digit ARPU growth.
- Subscription gross profit rose 32%, while SaaS gross margin increased about 240 basis points.
- Payments ARR grew 23%, and fintech gross profit increased 26%.
- Total take rate was 98 basis points, up five basis points year over year.
- Non-payments fintech products, led by Toast Capital, generated $57 million in gross profit and contributed nine basis points to take rate.
Toast said customer demand for capital remained strong and credit defaults remained within its expectations. The company attributed its underwriting performance to its data capabilities and disciplined underwriting process.
AI product strategy and Toast IQ Grow
Management highlighted Toast IQ Grow, an AI-powered marketing offering, as the company’s fastest-growing product launch to date. Narang said the product is on track to become Toast’s fastest product to reach $10 million in ARR.
Toast IQ Grow combines website, search engine optimization, digital ordering and social-media marketing tools. It uses restaurant and guest data to develop marketing campaigns and connect those campaigns to resulting sales, according to Narang.
Narang cited Spirits Food & Friends, a Louisiana-based customer, as an example. The restaurant consolidated more than 10 systems onto Toast and subsequently adopted Toast IQ Grow. According to the company, the customer cut monthly agency spending by 70% and generated more than $100,000 in marketing-attributed sales in just under two months.
During the question-and-answer session, Narang said Toast intends to extend its agentic-product approach beyond marketing into areas where restaurants commonly outsource work, including scheduling, payroll and tax, inventory management, bookkeeping and accounting. He also identified voice AI for restaurant phone and drive-thru ordering as a potential use case.
Toast said the current marketing product combines AI-generated work with human oversight from marketing success managers. Narang said customers using Toast IQ Grow have shown same-store sales growth, while Gomez said gross margins have already improved as the product has begun to scale.
Expansion beyond core restaurants
Toast continued to emphasize opportunities in enterprise, international and retail markets, which it describes as new total addressable markets. Narang said ARR across those markets is larger and scaling faster than the company’s core business did at comparable stages of maturity. The company expects ARR in the new markets to nearly double to $200 million this year.
The company announced several customer and partner developments during the quarter:
- Kung Fu Tea, which has more than 300 locations, joined Toast’s core business.
- Best Western named Toast an endorsed food-and-beverage vendor, opening an opportunity to pursue hotel restaurants across the U.S. and Canada.
- Toast expanded its relationship with TGI Fridays in the United Kingdom.
- The company entered fuel payments, onboarding its first gas station convenience-store customers.
In enterprise, Toast said it has momentum in restaurants, hotels and sports and entertainment venues. The company estimated the U.S. sports and entertainment opportunity at $500 million in ARR and said it roughly doubled its location count in that market over the past year.
In retail, Toast has doubled sales capacity over the past year and is targeting grocery stores, convenience stores and bottle shops. Narang said retail ARPU is closest to the company’s core business and that grocery offers particularly attractive GPV and ARPU characteristics.
Costs, capital returns and outlook
Toast’s hardware and professional-services gross profit was negative 11% of recurring gross profit streams. The company received an approximately $10 million tariff refund during the quarter that had not been included in its guidance. Gomez said Toast expects the refund to represent the bulk of anticipated tariff refunds.
The company is also managing higher memory costs through hardware and supply-chain actions, including using earlier hardware generations, shifting certain products to lower-cost memory and purchasing components in the spot market. Gomez said the company expects the impact on its profit-and-loss statement to be greater in 2027 than in 2026 because of inventory accounting, but management expects the optimization work to lead to structurally better hardware margins once the memory market stabilizes.
Operating expenses rose 19% year over year, excluding $29 million of bad-debt and credit-related expenses. Sales and marketing spending increased 22%, while research and development expense rose 23%, reflecting investments in location growth, new markets, AI products and internal AI tools.
Free cash flow was $130 million, down from a year earlier as Toast chose to acquire and hold more hardware inventory. The company expects adjusted EBITDA-to-free-cash-flow conversion to improve in the second half of 2026.
Toast repurchased more than 19 million shares for $486 million year to date, with about $100 million remaining under its authorization.
For the third quarter, Toast expects subscription and fintech gross profit growth of 22% to 24% year over year and adjusted EBITDA of $210 million to $220 million. For full-year 2026, the company raised its outlook and now expects recurring gross profit growth of 23% to 25% and adjusted EBITDA of $805 million to $825 million.
Gomez said the company plans to reinvest part of its outperformance, including the tariff refund, into growth initiatives and longer-term bets. Toast continues to target gradual margin expansion and said it remains on a path toward adjusted EBITDA margins above 40% over the long term.
About Toast (NYSE:TOST)
Toast, Inc 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.
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