PAR Technology (NYSE:PAR) reported first-quarter 2026 revenue growth and improved profitability, while management introduced formal financial guidance and emphasized its strategy around PAR Intelligence, the company’s AI-focused platform for restaurant and retail operators.
CEO Savneet Singh said the company is making a “purposeful shift” in operating strategy, with goals to materially improve profitability through operating leverage and use PAR Intelligence to expand its addressable market and long-term growth opportunities. Singh said PAR has “fundamentally been miscast in the public market” and said the company is now providing additional forward-looking financial guidance alongside its previously stated mid-teens annual recurring revenue growth target.
Revenue Rises 19% as ARR Reaches $330 Million
Total revenue for the first quarter was $124 million, up 19% from the same period in 2025. CFO Bryan Menar said subscription service revenue was $79 million, up 15% year over year, and represented 63% of total company revenue. Hardware revenue was $29 million, up 34%, while professional services revenue was $16 million, up 19%.
Annual recurring revenue exiting the quarter was $330 million, up 16% from the prior year. Menar said Engagement Cloud ARR rose 20%, while Operator Cloud ARR increased 12%. Organic ARR increased 11% year over year and was flat sequentially compared with the fourth quarter of 2025.
The company reported a net loss from continuing operations of $16 million, or $0.39 per share, compared with a net loss from continuing operations of $25 million, or $0.61 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP net income was $3.9 million, or $0.10 per share, compared with a non-GAAP net loss of $0.2 million, or $0.01 per share, a year earlier.
Adjusted EBITDA was $8.9 million, up $4.4 million from the prior-year quarter and up $1.9 million sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2025. Menar said adjusted EBITDA has increased sequentially for five consecutive quarters.
Company Highlights Cost Discipline and Operating Leverage
Management emphasized improved cost control as a key theme for the year. Singh said operating expenses as a percentage of revenue declined from 50% to 43% year over year, with sales and marketing at 9%, research and development at 16%, and general and administrative at 18%.
Menar said non-GAAP operating expenses as a percentage of total revenue improved 650 basis points to 43.3% from 49.8% in the prior-year quarter. He said the company’s realignment into two verticals and adoption of internal AI tools have allowed it to rethink its operating model. The realignment plan, focused on simplifying the organization and operations, was finalized at the beginning of the second quarter, with most of the phasing expected in the second quarter and remaining transitions in the third quarter.
Singh said PAR is using AI internally to improve procurement, identify vendor waste and increase development productivity. He said the company’s engagement platform roadmap this year is five times larger than last year and that time to ship is down more than 25%.
Guidance Initiated for Second Quarter and Full Year
PAR initiated formal financial guidance for the second quarter and full year of 2026. Menar said the company expects second-quarter revenue of $122.5 million to $127.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $9.5 million to $11.5 million.
For full-year 2026, PAR expects revenue of $500 million to $515 million and adjusted EBITDA of $44 million to $47 million. The full-year outlook includes about $10 million in subscription service revenue from the recently completed acquisition of Bridg, which Menar said is expected to have minimal impact on adjusted EBITDA.
Menar said the outlook reflects the company’s backlog and pipeline, continued momentum from tier-one rollouts and hardware refresh activity, and a lower cost base. He said hardware margins are expected to stabilize in the low 20% range as pricing actions offset tariff and component cost pressures.
AI Strategy and PAR Intelligence Take Center Stage
Singh repeatedly framed PAR Intelligence as central to the company’s future growth. He described it as “an agentic harness” across the PAR platform that unifies data, reasons on operator economics and orchestrates outcomes across the business. He said the platform is intended to move customers beyond dashboards and alerts toward recommendations and automated actions.
PAR Intelligence is live across nearly 1,700 retail sites, including deployments at Parker’s Kitchen and Cumberland Farms, according to Singh. The company is using real-world operator data to refine models and reduce hallucinations. Singh said the roadmap includes agentic program management, automated campaign creation and a future strategy layer incorporating external signals such as weather and market conditions.
In response to an analyst question from Mayank Tandon of Needham & Company, Singh said PAR expects to monetize AI this year, though it is not assuming “massive” contributions in guidance. He said the company currently expects initial pricing to resemble a SaaS model, consistent with how PAR customers are accustomed to buying its products.
“We look at AI as an incremental revenue stream that will happen in this year,” Singh said.
Restaurant, Retail and Hardware Momentum
In Operator Cloud, Singh said momentum was led by PAR POS and Data Central, with continued execution on the Burger King rollout and wins including &pizza, Tijuana Flats, Sarku Japan and Pizza Factory. He said the Burger King implementation is running at more than 400 sites per month, with a plan for more than 3,000 additional sites to go live this year.
PAR is also preparing for its Papa Johns implementation, which Singh said will begin late this year across U.S.-based restaurants for both POS and Data Central, with the full system expected to be live by the end of 2027.
Singh said nearly 90% of new operator deals in the first quarter were multi-product, while more than 80% of engagement deals were multi-product. In Engagement Cloud, the company managed planned exits of select legacy customers with unfavorable pricing. Singh said some of those customers had pricing at an 80% discount to standard subscription pricing, and Menar said the exits pulled forward more than 60% of expected churn for the year. Management said the process is now complete.
In retail, Singh cited launches with Stinker Stores, H&S Energy and Parker’s, and said the pipeline includes several tier-one enterprise brands in active negotiations. The company also released its TouchPoint self-checkout product with loyalty extension during the quarter.
Hardware demand remained strong, helped by refresh programs and expansion with legacy customers. Singh said PAR Wave continues to serve as an enterprise standard during a major refresh cycle and highlighted continued partnership activity with McDonald’s across hardware and services.
During the Q&A session, Singh said PAR continues to target mid-teens ARR growth without assuming large “mega deals.” He said new site count and upselling existing customers are the company’s main growth levers, with new customer sales still driving the majority of revenue growth.
About PAR Technology (NYSE:PAR)
PAR Technology Corp is a provider of enterprise software and hardware solutions for the hospitality, foodservice and retail industries. The company's platforms are designed to streamline front- and back-of-house operations, covering point-of-sale (POS) systems, kitchen display and dispatch, inventory and labor management, and reporting tools. PAR's integrated approach enables operators of full-service restaurants, quick-service chains, bars, hotels, casinos and retail outlets to centralize data and automate workflows across multiple sites.
Key offerings include PAR Brink, a cloud-native POS application that supports touchscreen, mobile and tablet devices; PAR Cloud Services, which delivers software updates, reporting and analytics through a subscription model; and hardware solutions such as payment terminals, handheld devices and self-service kiosks.
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