Hello everyone, and welcome to Nayax second quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing Star and Zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Virginia Stuart-Gibson. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and everyone for joining us today on this call. With me on the call today are Yair Nechmad, Nayax Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Sagit Manor, Chief Financial Officer. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for the question-and-answer session. Our press release and supplementary investor presentation are available on our investor relations website at ir.nayax.com. As a reminder, during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements on our call today are based on assumptions and therefore subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. We have no obligation to update these statements except as required by law. You can read about these risks and uncertainties in our earnings press release issued earlier today and our regulatory filings. In addition, today's call will include a discussion of non-IFRS measures.
These measures should be considered as a supplement to, and not as a substitute for, IFRS financial measures. Reconciliations to the nearest IFRS measure can be found in our earnings press release issued earlier today. All key performance indicators are intended to evaluate our business and properly measure factors in the macroeconomic environment to guide and support our decision-making. These key performance indicators may be calculated in a manner different from the industry standard. Finally, please note that all figures in today's call will be reported in US dollars, unless stated otherwise. Yair will start the call with a view of the business and then provide operational and strategic highlights. Sagit will go through the details of financial results for the quarter. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Nayax CEO, Yair Nechmad. Yair.
Thank you, Virginia, and thank you to everyone for joining us on our Q2 earnings conference call. First, I'd like to point out our second quarter results and how we demonstrate the continuing resilience of both our team and business model, and the ability to deliver another quarter of strong revenue growth and operating results, even with the backdrop of global macro uncertainty from inflation concerns, rising interest rates, worries and fears of broader recession. In the face of continuing volatility in financial markets and changing economic and political landscape, the Nayax team has remained focused on what we can control and staying committed to executing against our growth strategies, elevating our value proposition to our global diverse customer base, and strengthening our competitive position as the preferred technology provider in the global unattended commerce market.
While we do not have a crystal ball to predict economic outcomes, we know for a fact as we listen to our customers, that the demand environment for our technology and comprehensive solution remains robust, with no evidence of changing sentiments. I also want to underscore and remind everyone that our comprehensive proprietary platform addresses the entire unattended commerce value chain, including a global payment infrastructure, a commerce software suite, a consumer engagement platform, and integrated POS devices. This ownership of the entire value chain puts Nayax in durable and unique position and continue to be a key pillar of our success that allow us to endure through various market cycles in good and challenging macro environment. In Q2, revenue grew over 30% year-over-year, driven again by another record level of recurring revenue at $25 million.
This excellent recurring revenue growth trends delivered an increase of 47% over the same period last year, accounting for 61% of total revenue compared to 55% of total revenue in Q2, 2021. Our customer loyalty, as measured by net retention rates, remained high at 132% for the quarter, reflecting the high satisfaction and confidence our diverse customer place on Nayax end-to-end platform and solution. These metrics are key indicators that our business remain healthy and Nayax's solution is the preferred method of paying, which continue to be strongly in favor of digital over cash. Based on the secular trend that continue to provide Nayax with strong tailwinds, the world of payment continues to evolve with noticeable shift towards cashless and digitalized payments.
We see the digitalized payment shift from the rise of contactless, with many new payment technologies such as digital wallets coming into the market. These changes are due to both advances in secure payment technology and consumer demand for safer and more personalized payment methods. Cashless society is truly becoming global, and the world will continue to move toward a cashless society. This payment shift continue to be a major contributor to our near-term growth trend and will also be an important part of our long-term growth aspiration. In Q2, demand for our platform and solution remained strong as we added an additional 42,000 devices, bringing the total number of our devices to almost 600,000, and we processed 360 million transactions, an increase of 70% over the prior year quarter.
Consistent with past quarters, the strong growth was a combination of continued new customer additions and increased transaction processed volume as we expand our footprint across the world. Our strong track record of winning clients was further evidenced in Q2 with the addition of 4,000 new customers spanning multiple markets and verticals, ending the quarter with an installed base of almost 38,000 customers, an increase of 58% over the prior year quarter. Let me also emphasize here the impressive growth that we continue to see in our SMB category, which accounts for about 74% of our installed base and remains a key focus of Nayax. This customer category remains healthy from both a sales pipeline and backlog perspective.
I would also add that our customer base is today more diverse than ever before and is another reason that our business model and financial performance continue to be resilient despite the macro uncertainty. While SMB is a larger percentage of our customer base, we are rapidly adding or expanding our reach with large enterprise customers such as Compass Group, one of the world's largest contract food service company. I will provide more detail on this later in my remarks. We are also diverse across geographies. Nayax already has a global presence in key regions that can be seen in our revenue mix. For Q2 2022, 40% of our revenue was derived from Europe, 39% from North America, 11% from rest of the world, and 10% from Australia. The US market continue to be bright and offer great expansion opportunities.
An example of our key wins in this market is our expansion with Compass Group. Compass Group is the world's largest contract food service company and Canteen, and an existing customer is its US subsidiary, which manage approximately 200,000 unattended point-of-sale devices. In July, we announced our expanded relationship with Compass Group beyond the existing 50,000 POS devices that Nayax manage for a longer contractual period, choosing Nayax as their preferred technology provider. Our focus of expanding into new markets and extending our reach globally has always been part of Nayax's growth plan that we have previously outlined and will remain an ongoing strategic focus. While establishing our presence in markets that are still poised for growth, such as Japan and New Zealand, as they transition to cashless and accept more digital payments.
I would now like to provide an update about the ongoing global supply chain challenges. As we've continued to communicate on our earnings calls, the global component shortage is still ongoing and remains a challenge. Despite the challenges, we were able to report revenue growth in the second quarter from our POS devices of 14% compared to the same quarter last year, and a sequential increase of 33%. This growth was driven by our ability to close orders from our previous backlogs while efficiently managing the shortage to meet our marked manufacturing schedule. We still expect this dynamic to continue for the rest of the year. However, we will continue to carefully manage the situation to supply the growing backlog of orders for our products and focus on what we can control and implement necessary action as the situation evolves.
Let me now provide an update on two of our strategic initiatives. First, an update on the acquisition of OTI. We successfully closed the OTI acquisition in June, and I'm delighted to welcome the OTI team to the Nayax family. It is worth repeating that this acquisition support our long-term growth plans to gain market share in strategic growth markets and accelerate our growth drivers in a attractive region such as Japan. Additionally, I am pleased with how the integration is proceeding and the collaborative approach by the team. Sagit will provide some additional color later on the call about how we view the financial contribution of OTI as part of Nayax going forward. Second, an update on our US listing progress. As previously disclosed, we continue to take steps to list our ordinary shares on the US exchange in addition to the TSX.
The timing and completion of our U.S. listing remain at our discretion and is still subject to factors such as the completion of the SEC registration process. As a result, we cannot provide any certainty when this process will be completed and if at all. To wrap up, we had a strong second quarter and first half of the year. While global macro concerns continue to dominate the headlines, Nayax has been able to execute and deliver consistent results because of a number of factors, including a global and expanding customer base, execution on the strategies that we continue to outline, and support our customers with excellent service and product enhancements. As we look ahead, we remain confident in our ability to execute against our midterm and long-term growth aspirations. With that, I will now turn the call over to Sagit. Sagit?
Thank you, Yair, and good morning, good evening, everyone. Q2 was another excellent quarter in terms of execution and growth, and our outlook for the business remains strong. Let me start with an overview of the revenue performance in Q2. Total revenue for the quarter was $41.2 million, an increase of 33% from Q2 2021, and 21% compared to last quarter. Recurring revenue, which is comprised of our SaaS subscription and payment processing fees, grew approximately 47% over Q2 2021 to reach a new high of $25 million in revenues and accounting for 61% of our total revenue, in line with our expectations. Recurring revenue on an annualized basis or ARR reached $100 million, another great milestone in the company's history.
I want to reiterate that we expect this revenue source to continue to drive the majority of growth going forward as we consistently grow our customer base. As a reminder for those new to Nayax revenue model, our three main revenue pillars are derived from point of sale or POS devices, monthly SaaS subscription, and payment processing fees. The POS revenue for the device itself has a one-time fee recognized when the device is shipped. The devices we sell are the enablers, the engine for growing the number of our managed and connected devices, and in turn, create recurring revenue from SaaS and payment processing. The revenue generated by sales of POS devices tends to be sensitive to cyclicality. The monthly SaaS subscription for connection allows for access to the telemetry and software management platform. This includes the management suite, connectivity, telemetry, and support services.
Payment processing services are determined by the percent charged from the total transaction value per month. Recurring revenue from SaaS and payment processing represents the core value our customers derive from our platform and the value add they see from increasing sales on the one hand and cost savings on the other end. With every incremental device that we sell and connect, we establish long-term relationships that help fuel highly profitable recurring revenue stream. Now let me turn to the financial highlights for Q2. Starting with our global and diverse customer base, we again reported strong customer growth of 58% over the prior year quarter as we extended our customer base to 38,000 at the end of the quarter.
With the large market opportunity ahead of us that remains under-penetrated, customer expansion remains one of our key growth drivers and is an indicator for our successful execution in expanding internationally and entering key growth markets for cashless payment solutions. Turning to the growth of our devices. Managed and connected devices showed healthy year-over-year growth of 38%, ending the quarter with almost 600,000 devices. Another key highlight in Q2 2022 was the significant increase in transaction dollar value, which almost doubled to $600 million compared to the $344 million in Q2 2021. This metric remains a key contributor to recurring revenue and recurring revenue gross margin, which was 51% in Q2, mostly reflecting higher payment processing than SaaS revenue.
This financial performance proves that even in an evolving macro environment, Nayax business model can deliver a combination of growth and increasing scale. Turning to gross margins. Q2 gross margins were 34% compared to 38% in Q1 2022, tracking in line with the direction we had communicated on our last earnings call. Our gross margin was impacted mainly due to the mix of higher hardware revenue, which has lower gross margin. Additionally, affected by the higher cost of goods sold resulting from the ongoing global component shortage, as well as the increase in operating expenses from investment in talent acquisition, customer base expansion, and product innovation. All of these investments support our strategic growth as we become a much larger company.
Looking at the like-for-like comparison to Q2 2021, adjusted EBITDA, excluding product cost increase due to the global component shortages and excluding a bonus plan for non-sales employees that was introduced in Q3 2021 for the first time. The adjusted EBITDA on a like-for-like basis improved to a positive $1.3 million. Let me now discuss the impact of the macroeconomic environment as it pertains to the strengthening of the US dollar in the second quarter. Sales and revenue, we did not see any material impact from the exchange rate fluctuation. However, as it relates to operating expenses, we did see a favorable impact from the foreign currencies exchange rate conversion of approximately $1 million compared to Q1 2022. With the closing of the OTI acquisition in June, we added approximately 80 employees to the Nayax team, ending the second quarter with more than 700 employees worldwide.
As we discussed last quarter, and it is still true in the second quarter, 2022 is the year of disciplined investment to drive future growth and support the scale we anticipate in the business. We run the company for the long run and our investment strategy is guided by this principle. As Nayax continues to show strong growth and increased market share, we need to reinvest in the business to extend our market leadership and capture the growth opportunities we see ahead. Since its inception, Nayax has always focused on driving efficiency with the investment we are making. We have stayed disciplined when allocating our investment resources to build the necessary infrastructure to support the growth today, as well as the growing scale we expect in the future as we become the company of choice that we aspire to build.
These strong results further reinforce our conviction and plan, as we previously stated, to achieve profitability as we enter 2024, if not before, while we continue to take advantage of the significant market opportunities in front of us. Lastly, we ended Q2 with cash and cash equivalents and short-term deposits of approximately $48 million. As a reminder, our use of cash is part of our capital allocation strategy to reinvest in the business. The cash in the quarter was mainly used for ongoing operations as well as actively purchasing component inventory to secure prompt delivery and increase inventory levels to supply the growing backlog orders of our customers. As Yair mentioned earlier, we successfully closed the OTI acquisition in June. We consolidated OTI's balance sheet with Nayax as of June 30, and the assets and liabilities are not material to Nayax.
With the closing of the acquisition during the month of June, we do not expect a meaningful revenue contribution for the full year 2022. We expect to consolidate the OTI operations in the second half of 2022 and provide the contribution as we head to fiscal year 2023. Moving to our outlook. Based on our strong second quarter and first half results, our higher recurring revenue and continued business momentum, we are reaffirming our midterm annual revenue of $220 million and our growth rate of 35%. This does not yet consider OTI contribution to the overall outlook. We continue to expect that customer growth, increased market penetration, and continued expansion of our platform will serve as the main growth drivers.
As for the long-term outlook, gross margin in the long term is expected to reach 50% by providing leasing options for IoT POS and by growing the recurring revenue. Our long-term adjusted EBITDA margin guidance is set around 30%. In the near term, we expect to continue seeing margin pressure compared to pre-COVID levels. I would now like to turn the call to the operator so that we can take your questions. Operator?
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Once again, to join the question queue, please press star then one now. Our first question comes from Dominick Gabriele of Oppenheimer & Co. Please go ahead.
Hey, great. Hope everybody's doing well. I just wanted to talk through the gross margin trajectory, gross profit margin trajectory of the software and payments business. If you could talk about, you know, where we are today on the adjusted EBITDA margin, you know, focus and how we should think about the eventual path to the 30% long-term target. Thanks so much.
Hey, Dominic. Thank you for being here and for your questions. Gross margin on the gross margin-wise, especially on the recurring revenue, as you've asked for the SaaS and processing fee, we actually see them very stable. As you know, processing from gross margin is in the 30%-32%, and SaaS is around 78%-80%. That stays the same. Usually the difference when you see the recurring revenue gross margin is based on the mix between the two. The more processing we have, and this quarter was very strong on processing, the lower gross margin we will see on the recurring revenue base. That's also from trajectory, we don't see any changes to those numbers.
On the adjusted EBITDA, we actually stayed stable if you compare that to Q1 and as we planned for Q2. As we continue to plan for the rest of 2022, which as we've talked many times before, this is the year of investment. This is the year where we invest in talent acquisition and automation and infrastructure to really create the right infrastructure for the growth that we would like the company to achieve in the next years to come.
Thanks so much.
Sure.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. To join the question queue, please press star then one now. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Nechmad for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, everyone for joining us on the call. I want to thank the Nayax team for their incredible dedication and consistent execution in delivering on our strategic priority and advancing our vision of simplifying commerce and payment for our customers while driving growth, optimizing their operation, and enhancing customer engagement. Thank you for the question, and thank you again for your interest in Nayax.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day