AGYS

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Agilysys 2026 fourth quarter and full fiscal year conference call. As a reminder, today's conference may be recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jessica Hennessy, Vice President of Operations and Investor Relations at Agilysys. You may begin.

Thank you, Victor, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining the Agilysys 2026 fourth quarter and full fiscal year conference call. We will get started in just a minute with management's comments, but before doing so, let me read the safe harbor language. Some statements made on today's call will be predictive and are intended to be made as forward-looking within the safe harbor protections of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding our financial guidance. Although the company believes that its forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially.

Important factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from these forward-looking statements include our ability to achieve the provided guidance levels, increase implementation and operational efficiencies, the company's ability to maintain retention rates, utilize AI to continue to increase competitive advantages, and the risks set forth in the company's reports on forms 10-K and 10-Q and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a reminder, any references to record financial and business levels during this call refer only to the time period after Agilysys made the transformation to an entirely hospitality-focused software solutions company in fiscal year 2014. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Ramesh Srinivasan, President and CEO of Agilysys. Ramesh, please go ahead.

Thank you, Jess. Good evening. Welcome to the fiscal 2026 4th quarter and full year earnings call. Joining Jess and me on the call today at our Alpharetta Atlanta headquarters is Dave Wood, our CFO. Fiscal 2026 Q4 was an excellent overall business quarter for Agilysys, including with respect to sales, revenue, and profitability, each of which set a new quarter record. We measure sales and selling success in Annual Contract Value terms, and fiscal 2026 fourth quarter was the highest sales quarter on record. All sales and backlog values mentioned here for Q4 and full fiscal year 2026 do not include anything from the Marriott Property Management System, PMS project. Fiscal 2026, the year ending March 2026, was a record global sales year overall.

It was a record best sales year and well more than double the previous year's sales level for the, managed food services, FSM vertical. A record best sales year for international sales. A record sales year by a good distance for subscription SaaS sales, 29% higher than the previous best prior year, including gaming subscription sales, which were 27% higher than the previous best gaming subscription sales year.

It was a record high sales year for both point of sale, POS, and POS-related modules, and for property management systems, PMS and PMS-related modules. While the PMS side of our business obviously continues to make great progress, fiscal year 2026 was a particularly excellent year for POS, making a fantastic recovery from the challenges faced during the previous couple of years, and finishing as the best year for the POS product set in our history.

With the modernized and unified POS ecosystem now working well at hundreds of sites, we are back to being a very strong POS player in hospitality with growing product-driven competitive advantages. Addition of AI-driven voice and chat ordering features, which are context-aware, like ordering inside Microsoft Teams for our business and industry customers in FSM who serve corporate cafeterias with support for Slack coming up soon.

Ordering through Amazon Alexa for our senior living customers. Ordering on a concierge app or tablet for hotel guests. Such additions are bringing home with greater emphasis the competitive advantages of a unified POS ecosystem. Fiscal 2026 full year retained recurring bookings. Annual 12-month value of SaaS fees, plus maintenance for perpetual licenses sold during the year, net of ARR lost through customer churn.

This net number, which is a crucial leading indicator of future recurring revenue growth and a metric we constantly monitor internally, was an all-time record by a long distance during fiscal 2026, exceeding the previous best prior year by an impressive 43%. While our recurring fee sales bookings are at the highest levels we've ever seen, the customer retention rate also being at better-than-world-class levels makes it a virtuous double benefit combination, driving recurring revenue levels forward at an excellent rate.

Overall, the January to March period, fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, was a blockbuster best sales quarter ever, beating the previous best level, which was achieved during Q4 last fiscal year. It was the highest ever sales quarter for the managed food services FSM vertical. Gaming sales during the quarter improved sequentially by nearly 60%. That is 60.

Improved sequentially by nearly 60% over Q3 of fiscal 2026, and was also an excellent sales period for every other sales vertical. This was an excellent overall business quarter in various ways, breaking records all over the place. However, it is always best to judge our business progress on an an annual basis. There is no guarantee that each upcoming quarter will be a record. We can, however, state with a fair degree of certainty that next year, fiscal 2027, is well-positioned to be a record best year for sales, revenue, and profitability.

This is a business that should be judged on annual results and full year guidance levels. With respect to signed sales agreements during January to March Q4 fiscal 2026, we added 20 new customers, excluding Book4Time. These new customer deals averaged seven products each, and 19 of the 20 were subscription-based.

We also added 85 new properties during the quarter, which did not have any of our products before, but the parent company was already a customer. Of the 105 new properties added during the quarter across new and current customers, excluding the 22 new customer properties who purchased Book4Time, 103 were either partially or fully subscription software license-based. There were also 129 instances of selling at least one additional product to properties already running one or more of our other products. These 129 instances involve sales of a total of 345 products. Both these numbers, 129 new product wins and 345 new products sold in those wins, are quarter record levels.

There is ample evidence that our business levels and market share gains are operating at the best levels we've ever seen. To reiterate, while this was a record quarter in many ways, the more crucial fact is fiscal 2026 was a record year. It is best to judge our business on an annual basis. Sales win-loss ratios remained remarkably impressive during the quarter and during the entire fiscal year. The record sales performance during fiscal 2026 reflects the compounding competitive advantage of our product ecosystem, and AI has become a powerful accelerant on top of that solid foundation. The AI-based capabilities we've introduced during recent months, and those planned for deployment in the quarters ahead, are only possible because of two durable, hard-to-replicate assets.

A modern cloud-native product ecosystem built over the last several years and deep hospitality domain knowledge accumulated over decades as the industry's trusted systems of record for mission-critical business operations. This distinction matters. AI tools are widely available. What is not widely available is the combination of AI, domain expertise, and a comprehensive, trusted data foundation structured by the governance, information security, and personally identifiable information, PII controls that are critical for hospitality enterprise operations.

In an industry where guest identity, preference, and transaction data flows across every touch point, from check-in to spa to dining to golf to activities to loyalty promotion systems and much more, data privacy and governance are not just compliance checkboxes. They are the basis of guest trust and, by extension, operator trust in us.

Our AI strategy is built on that foundation, responsible, governed, and grounded in real mission-critical hospitality data. We have defined four distinct pillars in understanding how our customers will use AI: agentic AI, multimodal interfaces, hyper-personalization, and intelligent revenue optimization. We have now crossed an important threshold.

Our systems of record are becoming intelligent systems of action. We are in the process of introducing an AI-powered Revenue Intelligence layer woven across the full product ecosystem that converts transactional data from across the entire hospitality enterprise into proactive real-time operational decisions. What makes this possible is not just the intelligence layer itself, it is the architecture beneath it. Our ecosystem is not just a collection of integrations or marketplace solutions. It is built with interoperability by design, from PMS and POS to spa, golf, activities, and inventory.

That architecture allows us to optimize for what matters most at the property level, total revenue per guest. Not just room revenue in isolation, not just F&B revenue as a separate metric, but the full economic value of every guest interaction across every department. That is a fundamentally different optimization target and value proposition, which requires the kind of last-mile system-of-action products that only a natively integrated ecosystem can deliver.

We are also deploying AI agents directly inside our products. The front desk agent in our PMS, for example, functions as a digital twin of the front desk employee, handling routine operational tasks so that the hotel staff are freed to focus entirely on the guest in front of them. That is the philosophy underlying our agentic AI pillar.

Not automation for its own sake, but removing the cognitive overhead of routine operations so that hospitality professionals can deliver the human experience guests remember and will come back for. At our recently concluded Inspire customer user conference, which saw record customer attendance and featured eight main stage sessions led by customers sharing measurable operational gains achieved through use of Agilysys products, we launched two entirely AI-native modules: Revenue Intelligence and CRS.

The first beta implementations of these modules at customer sites are expected to happen later this fiscal year. The Revenue Intelligence tool has been designed to enable true operational intelligence across all sections of a property, and is not just about room rates. Such a tool can only be built on top of a modern ecosystem of software solutions that covers the entire gamut of property operations.

We also believe that a well-integrated CRS PMS set of solutions will become vital for hotel operations in the future, and we are well on our way towards making that possible. As the initial launch of these modules is only for current customers, these two solutions may not play a major part in our $300 million-$500 million annual revenue growth journey that is becoming increasingly more visible and real for us now, but could play a major role in future years as we work through the growth path from $500 million-$1 billion annual revenue level.

What would historically have taken years to develop will now get delivered in a matter of months. Like other enterprise software companies, we are seeing meaningful AI-driven improvements in development efficiency, but our situation carries an additional multiplier.

The ecosystem foundation, the domain logic, the shared data fabric, the interoperability built across every product acts as a compounding base that amplifies those efficiency gains with each release cycle. The result is an accelerating innovation velocity, and one that supports our ability to sustain product pricing at levels that are both fair to us and to our customers. While on the subject of pricing, our software licensing models have never been user-based.

They are based on parameters like number of hotel rooms, number of POS terminal endpoints, number of spa treatment rooms, golf courses, dining venues, retail outlets, and sites, each of which do not decrease when user efficiencies improve through use of AI or due to any other reason. With that, onto a few details on revenue and profitability. Fiscal 2026 fourth quarter revenue was a record $82.9 million.

This was the 17th, one seven, consecutive record revenue quarter. Q4 subscription revenue was a record $36.9 million and grew by 24.1% from the comparable prior year quarter. This was the 18th, one eight, consecutive quarter of year-over-year subscription growth of at least 23%. Q4 subscription revenue was also a record 68% of total recurring revenue. Overall, recurring revenue, including maintenance fees for perpetual licenses, was a record $54.4 million and 65.5% of total revenue. Fiscal 2026 fourth quarter subscription revenue pertaining to POS and POS-related modules increased by 19%, that is one nine, year-over-year, while subscription revenue pertaining to PMS and PMS-related modules increased by 34%.

Add-on modules across both PMS and POS, including Book4Time spa, constituted 38% of total subscription revenue. Fiscal year 2026 Q4 services revenue of $18.2 million was tied with Q2 as the best services revenue quarter so far, despite a significant decline in services revenue pertaining to customer-paid product development efforts. Those development projects have, for the most part, gone past the product development stages and are in the deployment phase now.

Fiscal 2026 Q4 was the highest services quarter with respect to revenue only from software implementation services. The sum of product services and recurring revenue backlog levels grew to record levels despite a record implementation services quarter and the volume of installation success during the quarter because it was an even better sales success quarter. We continue to exclude the Marriott PMS project from our backlog numbers.

We are starting fiscal 2027 with excellent visibility into the year. Total subscription ARR installed during fiscal year 2026 was 32% higher than during fiscal year 2025. The increased velocity of project implementations and resulting recurring revenue growth has a lot to do with the modernized products becoming exponentially easier to implement, greater use of AI tools to improve implementation efficiencies, and higher staffing levels compared to the past. We are currently, for the most part, sufficiently well-staffed in various business areas, including product development, sales, and professional services, to fuel continued business expansion during the short and medium term.

After starting the year with a full year revenue guidance level of $308 million-$312 million, full fiscal year 2026 revenue ended up at a record $319.3 million, 15.9% higher than the previous full fiscal year, despite one-time product revenue consisting of perpetual software licenses and hardware resold remaining flat year-over-year at $41.2 million. We expect one-time product revenue to remain at these levels as customers continue to augment traditional hardware needs with consumer market-available mobile devices, taking advantage of the modernized POS terminals that allow it, and their preference for cloud-based SaaS software solutions continuing to dominate demand and reduce need for perpetual software licenses.

Lack of growth in the product revenue bucket is, in fact, a good positive indicator of our growth as a cloud-native, SaaS-based enterprise software business unit. Full fiscal year 2026 services revenue was a record $72.2 million, 12.4% higher than the previous year. Traditional implementations related services revenue increased impressively year over year. We expect services revenue to remain on a steady growth path each year. Full fiscal year 2026 revenue included a record $205.9 million in recurring revenue, 21.1% higher than the previous year. Of this recurring revenue, subscription revenue was a record $137.1 million, 30.2%, that is 30.2% higher than the previous years, well ahead of the beginning of the year guidance level of 25%.

Fiscal 2026 was the fifth consecutive year of organic subscription revenue growth of at least 25% and total subscription growth of at least 27%. Fiscal year 2026 full-year maintenance-related recurring revenue was a record $68.9 million. Our subscription revenue growth continues to come from, for the most part, from new customer, new site, and new product sales success and is not dependent on cannibalization of annual maintenance generating on-premises installations. The Marriott PMS project continues to make good progress and is on plan. All personnel involved in this complex technology transformation project across all parties involved continue to do great work and execute extremely well.

We are proud to be associated with this project, one of the biggest and most complex, if not the biggest, technology transformation project ever undertaken in this industry. Having been effective thus far in contributing to the success of such a massive project, we have good reasons to believe that no future achievement in this hospitality industry will be beyond our reach. We expect full year fiscal 2027 revenue to be in the range of $365 million-$370 million, with product revenue remaining flat and steady growth in services revenue. We expect fiscal year 2027 to be the third consecutive year of subscription revenue growth of at least 30%. That is three zero, of at least 30%.

Apart from increasing the pace of competitive product differentiation of our hospitality-focused software solutions ecosystem, sweeping AI-related changes across the entire organization are also helping us improve operating leverage across several business areas. We expect adjusted EBITDA by revenue to grow from 21.2% in fiscal 2026 to 24% in fiscal 2027.

Q1 is always a heavy cost period for us, with several one-time expenses happening during the quarter, including the high-cost customer user conference. We expect adjusted EBITDA by revenue during Q1 to be only 16%-17%. That is one six to one seven. We expect adjusted EBITDA by revenue during Q1 to be only 16%-17% and build upwards from there, as was the case during fiscal 2026. We expect to exit fiscal 2027 at a rate well above the annual expectation of 24%.

A 30%, three zero, a 30% full-year adjusted EBITDA by revenue profitability level is not too far off for our business now as we continue to shift the product mix increasingly towards recurring revenue and also improve operating leverage, thanks to various factors, including judicious use of AI to increase efficiencies. Fiscal 2027 should be the first year when product development-related operating expenses, excluding share-based compensation, should be down to the high teens after being around the 22% mark a few years ago. With that, let me hand over the call to Dave for further color on our financial results and operational execution.

Thank you. Thank you, Ramesh. Taking a look at our financial results, beginning with the income statement. Fourth quarter fiscal 2026 revenue was a quarterly record of $82.9 million, an 11.7% increase from total net revenue of $74.3 million in the comparable prior year period. As a result of the continued momentum in our business, we are pleased to see 15.9% total revenue growth compared to fiscal year 2025. During fiscal 2026 compared to the previous year, professional services increased by 12.4%, and recurring revenue increased by 21.1%. Fiscal year 2026 was another great year regarding all aspects of our business. Sales, backlog, and operations continue to perform at an extremely elevated level.

With or without the large PMS rollout, backlog and sales are exiting at record levels and plenty strong enough for our FY 2027 plans. Professional services increased over the prior year quarter to $18.2 million. Professional services revenue continues to perform well. We are also happy to see professional services gross margin return to slightly north of 30%. Total recurring revenue represented 65.5% of total net revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter and 64.5% for the full year, compared to 62.2% and 61.7% of total net revenue in the fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2025. We continue to be pleased with subscription sales and revenue growth levels. Subscription revenue grew 24.1% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 and 30.2% for the full fiscal year.

The large PMS roll-out contributed to about 0.2% of the growth for FY 2026. Subscription revenue outside of the large PMS rollout was 30% for the full fiscal year, well above our original expectation of 25% going into FY 2026. Subscription sales during the year, along with excellent customer retention levels, have us set up well for our FY 2027 plan. Moving down the income statement, gross profit was $53.4 million compared to $45.1 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. Gross profit margin was 64.4% compared to 60.7% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. For the fiscal year, gross margin was roughly flat at 62.6% compared to the prior fiscal year.

We are extremely pleased to see us exit the year at 64.4% gross margin as product mix in the P&L catches up to sales. We have finally entered the beginning of the gross margin expansion part of our journey. Combined, the three main operating expense line items, product development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses, excluding stock-based compensation, were 38.7% of revenue in the fiscal 2026 fourth quarter compared to 41% of revenue in the prior fiscal year. Excluding stock-based compensation for the full fiscal year 2026, product development decreased to 18.6% compared to 19% of revenue in the prior fiscal year. General and administrative expenses reduced for the year from 12.6% to 11.2% of revenue. Sales and marketing increased slightly from 11.4% of revenue to 11.8% of revenue. Combined, the three main operating expense line items, product development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses excluding stock-based compensation, were 42% of revenue this fiscal year compared to 43% of revenue in FY 2025. Operating income for FY 2026 of $43 million, net income of $38.8 million, and gain per diluted share of $1.37 are well above the prior year gains of $22.6 million, $23.2 million, and $0.82.

Adjusted net income normalizing for certain non-cash and non-recurring charges of $50.8 million compares favorably to adjusted net income of $43.8 million in the prior year, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.79 compares favorably to $1.55. For the 2026 fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA was $21.5 million compared to $14.8 million in the year ago quarter. For the full year fiscal 2026, adjusted EBITDA was $67.7 million compared to $53.8 million in the prior year. We are pleased to see our profitability levels end up well ahead of our original FY 2026 plan, with adjusted EBITDA coming in at 21.2% of revenue. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flow statement.

Cash and marketable securities as of March 31st, 2026 was $116.9 million, compared to $73 million on March 31st, 2025. We remain comfortable with our current levels of cash. As it relates to free cash flow, we are pleased to see an increase for the full fiscal year. Free cash flow in the quarter was $35.4 million compared to $26.5 million in the prior year quarter, and $68.1 million for the full fiscal year compared to $52.3 million in the prior year. As we've said in the past, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow after normalizing the impact of CapEx continue to be good proxies for the health of the business on an annual basis.

Full fiscal year 2026 free cash flow was $500,000 greater than adjusted EBITDA, mostly due to timing of working capital adjustments. For our fiscal year 2027, we expect revenue to be in the $365 million-$370 million range. We expect product revenue to remain flat and to continue to trend around $10 million per quarter or $40 million for the year as customers continue to choose consumer-grade devices and a larger portion of our business becomes PMS. Professional services should grow in the 5%-10% range as well. As a reminder, this year, professional services revenue will not have any significant benefit of large development projects as the ones we are working on in the past are now well into their rollout phases.

Recurring revenue will continue to grow around 20% inclusive of subscription revenue growth north of 30%. Subscription revenue growth in the fiscal Q1 should be similar to the FY 2026 Q4 exit of around 24% and then increase from there throughout the year as we accelerate the large PMS rollout we continue to make good progress with. Adjusted EBITDA will increase to 24% of revenue as we begin to see margin expansion from our current sales momentum and large project rollouts.

As a reminder, fiscal first quarter profitability will be lower due to the beginning phases of the large PMS rollout and timing of our user conference expenses. We expect profitability to be in the 16%-17% range in the first quarter and then increase sequentially, exiting Q4 at nearly 30% of revenue.

Adjusted EBITDA excludes stock-based compensation, which will continue in the 5%-7% range. Free cash flow and adjusted EBITDA will continue to be comparable proxies for profitability after normalizing for CapEx, which is not a significant portion of our business. In closing, we are pleased with our FY 2026 financial results and the solid business fundamentals for future revenue growth and profitability growth. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Ramesh.

Thank you, Dave. In summary, we are now about as bullish about our business as we've ever been. Our timing has been impeccable these last few years. Unlike other technology providers in the industry, we made the tough decision to rewrite and modernize every product in our ecosystem a few years ago. We future-proofed the system with the expectation that we would be ready to leverage the next wave of technology changes when they came.

We have rapidly made AI an integral part of everything we do, and the pace at which we are creating AI-based features has served as a good validation of the previous technology modernization efforts. The industry firmly believes in what we are doing, and this is reflected by the fact that demand for our product ecosystem remains high. The high sales win ratio continues to point to increasing product superiority competitive advantages.

Sales levels, particularly pertaining to subscription SaaS sales, continue to get higher. Our customer retention rates remain world-class. A combination of selling more recurring fees and retaining them at such levels will continue fueling good levels of recurring revenue growth. The product mix is improving with a consistently increasing tilt towards recurring revenue, which should continue to push gross margin levels upward.

Our operating leverage continues to improve as well. AI is making it easier to meet and exceed the long-pending and underserved hospitality industry innovation demands, which currently very few technology providers are in a position to or are interested in serving. The modernized product ecosystem has settled down well in the field and continues to be a big competitive advantage. However, beyond all that, what gives us the most optimism and satisfaction is the increasing number of customer success stories.

Instances of customers seeing meaningful improvements with revenue generation, operational efficiencies, and guest satisfaction levels enabled by the Agilysys integrated ecosystem of modern solutions. Software development is one thing, but creation, maintenance, and enhancement of a complex ecosystem of interconnected, innovative, robust, and configurable software solutions that can create meaningful, measurable value for a widely diverse world of customers, each one using the product sets in a different way, is an entirely different level of challenge that we are making great progress mastering. Such customer success stories are increasing, both in terms of quality and quantity, and that is the progress that is now giving us momentum.

When customers are willing to get up on main stage in front of hundreds of other current and prospective customers, as has happened in two consecutive user conferences now, to talk about the real, tangible, measurable improvements they have gained from switching to Agilysys systems, we know we are doing a lot of things right. We remain very bullish about our short, medium-term, and long-term prospects. With that, Victor, let's open up the call for questions.

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon from Needham. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good evening. Congrats, Ramesh, Dave, and Jess on the quarter. Ramesh, I wanted to start with any updates on the large PMS rollout in terms of how it's progressing. I know it's early days, but if you could share any feedback on how that's going. I don't know if you can, but I would definitely wanna ask you, are you able to share any expectations on the ramp and what's embedded in the guidance? Lastly, is it expected to be done mostly in FY 2027, or do you think it's going to be a multi-year rollout?

Hi, Mayank. The project is progressing well, Mayank. By all accounts, it is progressing well. The customer is doing a fantastic job with the project, and so are all the other vendors involved. Like I said, we are extremely proud to be associated with it. It continues to progress well. However, I would be careful not to expect perfect rollout cadence. There are always future variances possible. Even though the technology that the properties are shifting to is common, the technology and the products they are shifting from is not all exactly the same. There are various sets of products that are being used today that are being converted to these modern technologies. It's progressing well now, but I would be careful about, you know, not expecting a perfect rollout cadence because there are various phases to this. Future variances are possible.

We have included it in our guidance for FY 2027 to a careful extent. We have been, you know, reasonably, you know, not too aggressive with anything. Whatever cadence we are expecting, we have included that in the FY 2027 guidance, but it is not gonna be a single-year rollout for sure. It is gonna be at least two years or possibly more than that. I would not assume it to be a one-year rollout under any circumstances, Mayank. It could be two years, hopefully, or a little bit more than that as well. So far going well, but I would be careful about not expecting a perfect rollout cadence.

Got it. That's helpful. I had to ask you, appreciate the response there. Just in terms of the momentum that you're seeing, obviously, as you said, very broad base and strong momentum coming into fiscal 2027. If there is upside and you have delivered upside in past years, where would that come from? Is that gonna come from potentially the large PMS rollout, maybe ramping up ahead of schedule? Do you think it's gonna come from some of your other areas that you called out in terms of gaming casinos, managed services? Just would be curious in terms of where you think the levers are in the model to drive potential upside to your initial guidance for 2027 fiscal.

Mayank, we always provide guidance based on realistic assumptions of where we see the year going. I would be careful not to get ahead of ourselves and already start thinking about. We are in the early stages of the year. The guidance we have given is based on what we are seeing in the market and what our current momentum is. The upsides we will see, right? If our sales levels continue to increase, our sales team is now under Joe's leadership is doing an excellent job keeping our focus on various areas, keeping the focus on bigger customers, making sure at the same time we also focus on our sweet spot, multi-amenity resorts.

We also have started focused attention on select service, the smaller properties, and we are also beginning to focus on the individual products because our individual products can also be sold as standalone now, and there are competitors who are running big businesses just based on those individual products. We have focused attention on all area of sales, and we think our business will continue to do well. We have taken all that into account while we gave you the guidance for this year.

Great. Appreciate all the color. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayank.

Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Matt VanVliet from Cantor. Your line is open.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess first, curious on where you are today in terms of total implementation capacity. I know that's been a focus of adding headcount over the last few years and building a lot of efficiencies, whether it's from AI tooling and other processes in there. With another record bookings quarter and year, curious on how you feel about the capacity there and the speed at which you're gonna work through the backlog going forward.

We feel good, Matt, about our implementation services capacity. I think we are in good shape for at least the rest of the fiscal year. AI is obviously helping us improve the efficiencies. The other factor also, Matt, is that the products, the modernized products have settled down well. The implementation speed of the products has really picked up now because these products have been in the field for anywhere from, say, one and a half to four years.

That also is improving implementation efficiencies, and AI is obviously contributing to increasing it further. We are in good shape. We expected this kind of sales momentum. As far as fiscal 2027 is concerned, at least we are in good shape with respect to most of our headcount, not just implementation services, also sales, also R&D. We are in good shape as far as our current headcount levels are concerned.

Quick follow-up on the discussion around the guidance. Last year, you started the year at about 25% subscription revenue growth expectations. Obviously, stepped that up this year to 30%+. Maybe how much of that is just the better bookings performance that you have seen and the overall momentum in the business? How much of that increase in growth rate is attributable to the Marriott PMS rollout expectations that are embedded in the guidance?

Yeah. Hey, Matt. In FY 2026, the increase from 25%-30% wouldn't be related to the large PMS rollout. It was almost exclusively related to, you know, much better sales than our initial expectation and much better operational efficiency than we've seen in the past. I mean, a lot of what Ramesh talked about with installation, you know, getting better with the modernized product and using the tools for configuration. It wasn't related to large PMS rollout. It was really related to sales being a lot better than expected and conversion of the backlog better than it's been in the past.

The retention rates are also world-class.

Yes. The retention rates.

All right. Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Matt.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon from William Blair. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks. Congrats on the strong end to the year. First question here on gross margins. They took a very strong step up this quarter, so would love more color on what drove that. I think, Dave, you might call that mix as a big factor, but anything else to call out there? How should we think about the gross margin trajectory in fiscal 2027? You know, I think you talked about expecting an exit rate of 30% or more, I think, for adjusted EBITDA margins. Are you expecting the same trend in gross margins where the exit rate should be stronger than what you average for the year? Just any detail on how you're thinking about the gross margin trajectory.

Yeah. Hey, Stephen. No, I think you're right. I mean, it's mostly product mix related. I mean, I think just generally when you think about the EBITDA margin expansion for the year, it's about half of it is gross margin related based on mostly product mix, half of it is OpEx leverage throughout the year. In both scenario, it's kind of really a tale of two halves. Gross margin in the first half will be kind of more similar to our Q4 exit rate, we should be exiting the year kind of in the mid to high 60% range, and all of that's product mix related.

Kind of the same story for OpEx, where it's kind of marginally better for the year, but it'll be significantly better in Q4 on an exit rate basis. I would think of most of our kind of journey from the 17% in Q1 to the 30% EBITDA exit rate is half gross margin improvement and half operating leverage.

Got it. That's really helpful. Just as a follow-up, you know, with the two new products that you announced at Inspire, you know, it sounds like it might take a while for those to kind of get traction and start to move the financial needle. Would love any early customer feedback you had on some of those new capabilities. Especially the Revenue Intelligence piece. I mean, I think that I would assume that a lot of customers out there don't have a similar solution. I guess most have a central reservation system already in place. Curious what the feedbacks look like for those two new products.

Stephen, we discussed the two new products in detail at the customer advisory board meetings that happened before the Inspire, and the feedback was positive, with a few customers volunteering to be beta sites, to be the initial sites for the implementation. When you think about product ecosystem that you've seen the entire set of products around POS and PMS, these were always two gaps that we had.

One was CRS and one was Revenue Intelligence. When AI came along and the tools got really better, it gave us an opportunity to build these two. Now, the Revenue Intelligence is possible only because we have the ecosystem. AI alone does not get it done. We have the data. We know exactly what is going on with the guest across the resort.

Currently, the tools are just all about room rates, is what they normally are about, and they're also not necessarily all real-time. This is a tool that can be real-time. It really gives you all the switches, all the configurability by which a resort can say that include this in the normal numbers, but don't include it in your Revenue Intelligence. All that is possible.

The short answer is, initially, we are targeting it only to our customer base who already have the ecosystem. It will be of great value to them. As we go along in the future years, we will work on making it stand alone and all that. To answer your question, well received so far. We already have customers who volunteered to be the initial sites for this, and we do expect both these products to be live before the end of the fiscal year at least a few customer sites.

Good to hear. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Allan Verkhovski from BTIG. Your line is open.

Hey there. Congrats on the strong close to the year here. Ramesh, it's hard to see it in the numbers, but I wanna ask you about AI anxiety, which seems to be everywhere to some extent. I'm curious, what are you seeing today around the topic of AI anxiety being in your conversations with customers, and how is that playing out in sales cycles? I've got a quick follow-up for Dave.

Allan, I wanna be careful answering questions about AI. I wanna make sure I don't sound tone deaf about what is going on. It is transformational. It's gonna make a huge impact, we are determined to be AI disruptors. This is not just a matter of defending a moat or anything like that. AI is available to us as much as available to anyone else, we are determined to be AI disruptors, and AI is all over our company. Having said that, we are not seeing any significant AI anxiety among our customer base. Based on the results you're seeing now, definitely, it is not slowing down or making it more anxious or anything like that.

Again, I wanna be careful not to sound tone deaf in this world, but we are not seeing that among our customer base and in our sales cycles. If anything, it is working the other way. Because of all the AI-enabled features and the fact we are an aggressive AI user, if anything, it's actually shortening the sales cycle for us. We had really good results in Q4 because the customers are curious.

I wouldn't call them anxious. They're curious to know what we are doing with AI. Now that we have the power of the ecosystem already built, when we are showing customers what we are currently already doing with AI, what we are gonna be releasing within the next three, four months, not the next three, four years, it's coming up right now. That is actually shortening sales cycles, if anything, for us.

I wanna sound realistic with you, but AI so far has been our friend as far as sales levels are concerned because we are doing real work with it. This is not just hype. We are actually using AI in our products. There are 30+ features that have been released or in the process of being released within the next three, four months. We have two entirely AI native modules that are gonna fill up our ecosystem. Customers see that it is actually helping our sales progress.

Got it. That's really helpful. Dave, can you just give us some guardrails on how to think about what the revenue contribution from the Marriott rollout for FY 2027 is as part of that 30% subscription revenue guide? What we should keep in mind for how it can ramp beyond fiscal 2027 into fiscal 2028 in order to prevent what could be a pretty wide range of estimates from our end.

Yeah. I mean, we're not gonna break out our organic revenue growth. I mean, I think we set the guidance this year at north of 30%, which obviously includes a lot of Ramesh's narratives around or commentary around non-Marriott doing better. It also, you know, improves, you know, allows us, you know, if the Marriott rollout continues on this pace. We don't have a plan to break out the revenue, so we left the guide at north of 30% that, you know, that has a pretty conservative estimate of the Marriott rollout.

Okay. Thanks, guys. Congrats again.

Thank you, Allan.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Schwartz from Oppenheimer.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions this afternoon. Ramesh, now that the large PMS rollout is progressing well, do you expect that the progress that is happening to unlock a faster cadence to sales cycles with other hotels and resorts that may have been waiting to see that large PMS rollout proof points before choosing Agilysys?

Brian, if customers are waiting to see that, it has not yet reached the stage where it is entirely visible. What I will tell you, this Marriott PMS project is helping us, it's definitely put us on the PMS map. No question about it. We are now included in most of the major PMS RFPs. It's given us visibility. It's given us credibility. In terms of that becoming like the halo effect, it's not yet there. The properties have only gone live for two, three months. There is a lot of good news coming out of those properties, but that's gonna take time to become an even bigger light. I know you're not asking that, Brian.

On the other hand, actually some of the big POS installs we have done with Marriott have actually been good reference, you know, one or two of them have been good reference customers for us. Overall, all this gives us big credibility. People are watching it, but in terms of it having a direct effect, it is tough to attribute it to start with, but that will take some more time, Brian.

Okay. I have one follow-up for Dave. How much of the fiscal 2027 subscription revenue growth outlook relies on continued strength in the international markets and verticals like food service, which have recently outperformed versus, say, the core hotels and resort business? Thanks again for taking my questions.

I mean, managed food service continues to do well, and we think it'll continue to do well. That's pretty embedded in the guidance. As far as international, it's similar to the way we've guided in the past. I mean, we have really large deals we win, you know, on a time to time basis, but we remain pretty conservative on the singles and doubles type deals, and we mostly build the business around the big deals, which are closing pretty regularly now, but not every quarter, and they take a while to roll out. You could take the managed food service as just a pipe, you know, a pipeline and momentum that we feel like is gonna give us a good number every quarter, and that's baked into the guide.

You could take the international kind of as what we've said in the past. We think we'll keep winning the big deals, but they're large deals, and they take a while to roll out. We're a bit conservative on the international side.

Even with respect to gaming, there is a lot of potential there with current customers buying a lot more. Both in FSM and HRC, our hotel resorts, our market share is quite low now, and a lot of our growth comes from market share gains.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Nehal Chokshi from Northland Securities. Your line is open.

Yeah. Thank you. Congrats on a great quarter and strong guidance. The Central Reservation System that's being introduced, who do you see as being your typical competitor in this space, and what do you think is gonna be required to have success there?

To start with, Nehal, we think a tightly integrated CRS and PMS is going to be reasonably crucial in the coming years. Let's call it two to three years, where availability, rates, inventory is controlled and managed in either place and the two systems talking to each other. We've always felt that a tightly integrated PMS and CRS is going to be fairly crucial, especially to the SMB market going in the future.

We've always had an eye on CRS, and AI gave us the opportunity. Initially, it is gonna be mostly for our PMS customers who can get the benefits of a tightly integrated CRS PMS. Then we will continue improving the product, and then we will see, right, where it takes us in terms of a real CRS presence in hospitality.

At the moment, it is directed towards our PMS customers for whom we can give a benefit of a tightly integrated CRS as well. There are many aspects of the CRS, like a booking engine and all that we have already had in our other products. We are in a good position to drive the advantages forward. This is the early phase. It is focused on integration with PMS, and then we will see in two years where it goes.

Okay, great. For my follow-up question, I know it was already addressed on the call, but I missed it. Could you just re-repeat the bookings color for the March quarter and how that has trended so far in the June quarter?

Did you say bookings? Are.

Yeah, the ACV bookings.

Exit basis or an annual basis?

I'm sorry, say that again.

The bookings for the quarter were a record for the quarter and the year. Obviously, Ramesh gave, you know, other commentary around. I mean, pretty much everything in our business exiting the year, whether you look at a quarter or a year, was, you know, at record levels.

What about, as far as the year-over-year growth numbers, how did that trend relative to prior quarters in terms of the bookings growth?

Yeah. This was an annual sales record, Nehal, and this quarter was also the best quarter, beating the last Q4 of last year. Both of these were record sales numbers for us, both the quarter and the year.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of George Sutton from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Logan on for George. Thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on a nice quarter here. Ramesh, if I caught the comment correctly, you mentioned that a 30% adjusted EBITDA margin is not too far off now for the business and obviously you're guiding to nice expansion this year. I wondered if you could just walk through the steps to getting there a bit more and maybe help us understand sort of your ability to do that while also investing in, you know, the new products like Revenue Intelligence and CRS and kinda going on the aggressive AI roadmap.

Yes, George. Hi. We guided the year adjusted EBITDA by revenue to 24%, and we also cautioned you because Q1 is where we incur a lot of the annual one-time costs. Also, of course, the user conference happened during Q1, which is a very costly event for us. We expect Q1 to be like 16%-17% in that range. We are confident about the year being 24% profitability, EBITDA revenue, which implies, and it will continue to pick up every quarter. We expect to finish the year Q4 exit rate profitability to be somewhere close to 30%. That's one fact.

When you look at our recent record, when you just look up the last several years, you will find that within a couple of percentage points, our exit rate in a fiscal year of profitability is a reasonably good proxy for profitability the following year. That is the way it has been. It's a reasonably good proxy for what will happen next year. Now in terms of what we need for these two products and what we need for expansion, that's where AI comes in handy. We are able to do a lot more with the R&D team we have.

There could be some minor increases here and there, but for the most part, with the R&D strength we have now, we are able to accommodate the development of two new modules as well because it's a lot more efficient with a lot more usage of AI. This is where AI comes in handy that improves our operating leverage even better. Gross margin continues to improve because our product mix is tilting more and more towards recurring revenue and subscription revenue. That increases gross margin. I think we are not too far away in terms of becoming a normal enterprise software profitability run rate of in the 30s. Yeah.

Got it. Helpful. Then just as my follow-up, I wanted to kinda go back to when we were talking about sales cycles. I mean, you mentioned customers being curious about using AI products. Are you seeing that show up in budgets as well? Are customers making room for spending on some of these new AI capabilities? It seems like, you know, the ROI conversation tends to come up when we talk about AI adoption. I'm just curious how you'd sort of frame that relative to some of the new stuff that you're coming out with.

If they find value, George, they are inclined to buy, like with any of our add-on modules. They come to us for one product, and then they buy. Our deal sizes are high. They tend to buy six or seven. It is mostly replacing the other products they have. We have now embedded AI features into our products, not necessarily separately monetized each time.

Some of these innovations are within the product itself. It gives them a greater reason to buy the product as it is. Yeah. They always have budgets for that. The AI specific products, AI native products, in terms of separate AI monetization, that's going to happen in the future, and we'll see how that works out. If a customer finds value, George, they are, you know, finding the room for that.

Remember, we are dealing with the middle to higher end ranges of resorts that have always wanted these kinds of innovations to serve their guests better. Like the AI guest insight that you saw in the user conference, that is AI driven. Those are all very handy, high value things for them, and they are willing to pay fair pricing for that.

Okay. Thanks for taking the questions.

Thank you, George.

Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions in the queue. I would like to turn it back over to Ramesh for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Victor. Thank you all for participating and for your interest and support. We look forward to catching up with you again in a couple of months from now when we'll be reporting on fiscal 2027 Q1 results. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.