Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Agilysys Fiscal 2023 third quarter conference call. As a reminder, today's conference may be recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jessica Hennessy, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations at Agilysys. You may begin.
Thank you,
Josh. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining me Agilysys Fiscal 2023 third quarter 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 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 the effects of global economic factors on our business, our ability to continue profitable growth, our ability to execute required product development and other deliverables before our PMS system can be rolled out to Marriott, our ability otherwise to expand PMS market share, and the risks set forth in the company's reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a reminder, any references to record financial or 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 2023 third quarter earnings call. Joining Jess and me on the call today at our Atlanta headquarters is Dave Wood, our CFO. Let me first cover sales before discussing revenue and other details. We measure sales and our selling success based on annual contract value of sales agreements signed. Please note that the recent Marriott PMS selection that we announced a few weeks ago is not part of any of the sales and backlog numbers being discussed today. All the sales and backlog numbers being discussed do not have any benefit from that major win. I will come to the Marriott announcement a bit later in this commentary. During the last earnings call, we mentioned that after five consecutive solid good sales quarters, the July to September Q2 of fiscal 2023 was a great sales quarter.
That's what we reported last time. Well, October to December Q3 of FY 2023 was even better. Q3 was our best sales quarter since the current management team started turning this company around about five to six years ago. We reported last time that our sales trends had picked up significantly since the beginning of August. That positive trend has remained consistent even through the month of January so far. January is normally our slowest sales month of the year coming out of the holiday season. From a selling success standpoint, even with one more week remaining, this is already our best January by a fair distance, and even better than December, which is normally a good sales month for us. All that despite the APAC and managed food services sales verticals being well short of previous pre-pandemic peak levels.
The gaming casinos, resorts, and EMEA sales verticals are operating at exceptionally high levels. In Asia, the number of prospective customer meetings and product demo requests continue to be at good levels, but such positive activities have not translated to good sales results yet, mainly due to greatly delayed technology purchase decision-making. Many prospective and current customers in Asia are preparing for the expected upcoming travel surge and are looking at various software solution sets they need today and for the future, but continue to be hesitant to finalize purchase decisions. Given the long way we have come with our software solutions during the last three years since the pandemic started seriously affecting business in Asia, we think our business levels in Asia will pick up steam soon. We have not seen any significant effects of the recent negative macroeconomic environment.
In our view, the hospitality industry has been underserved with respect to world-class software solutions for a long time. This industry has lacked a technology provider who is willing and able to invest in end-to-end state-of-the-art cloud-native integrated software solutions, which can also work on-premise when required. Industry focused product innovation has fallen short of operator and guest expectations for far too long. The operators in the space are also facing escalating pressure from their guests, who are increasingly seeing the benefits of modern technology across many areas outside hospitality. They are enjoying the benefits of technology-enabled self-service and guest service across all channels, including mobile devices and integrated systems, wherein they don't need to enter the same piece of data multiple times. They now expect the same from hospitality as well.
Over and above this, hospitality operators are also faced with the need for integrated systems to make it easier for their staff to serve guests well across all amenities offered within their property. Creating great experiences and increasing guest loyalty now requires both a superior guest service staff culture and integrated technology and solutions which are easy to use. It is now all about the returns operators can get from creating better experiences for their staff and for their guests. From our viewpoint, those needs are now imperative and urgent in the hospitality industry and should overcome any macroeconomic headwinds.
Once they see relevant product demos and get to discuss future product plans with us, many customers seem pleasantly surprised by the breadth and depth of what we have to offer today, and how much our products and end-to-end integrated software solutions vision can help them operate more efficiently and serve their guests better now and in the future. We continue to operate in an enormous total addressable market relative to our current size. Now that we have made the required R&D investments and have done the hard yards to create an end-to-end set of state-of- the-art solutions, while keeping our focus entirely on one industry, we think we are well-positioned, and we have been seeing the selling success benefits starting around August last year. We remain cautiously optimistic in our expectations to continue to do well, no matter what The Wall Street Journal news headlines say each day.
During Q3 fiscal 2023, October to December, we added 18, 1 8. We added 18 new customers, of which 16, 1 6, of which 16 were fully subscription deals. The deal size per new customer sales agreement during the quarter was the highest we have seen and was more than 50%, that is 5 0, was more than 50% higher than the sequentially preceding Q2 quarter. Compared to a couple of years ago, new customers who sign up with us now have a lot more products they c ould potentially licen se from us, which meet their immediate and future needs. Many of them are using this opportunity to buy more from the same vendor partner, thereby reducing the number of vendors they have to work with and lower the cost of interfaces and deployment complexity.
This was our best quarter in six years with respect to total annual contract value of sales agreements signed with new customers. We also added 87 new properties which did not have any of our products before, but the parent company was already our customer. Business levels and the pace of technology investments among multi-property, bigger current customers are improving, but still not back to pre-pandemic levels. Of the 105 new properties added during the quarter across new customers and new properties of current parent customers, more than 85% were either partially or fully subscription-based. With respect to new product sales, there were 58 instances of selling at least one additional product to properties which already had at least one of our other products currently in use. These 58 instances involved sales of a total of 117, that is 117.
Sales of a total of 117 new products. With respect to overall competitive wins, which is a sum of new customers, new sites of current customers, and new products sold to current customer sites, in annual contract value terms, this was our best quarter for total sales value, surpassing Q2 by about 17%, and the next best previous quarter by nearly 8%. The average deal size per competitive win during the quarter was also the highest we have seen so far. We continue to have a long runway of growth available to us within our existing customer base through additional product sales. The number of products installed per customer property improved during the quarter, but it's still only at about two now. There were seven new core property management system, PMS, wins during the quarter.
We are now a credible presence in the PMS space and an increasing presence in most PMS RFP processes. We've had a solid presence in most point-of-sale, POS RFPs during past years, but that's not been true with PMS projects. Once included in the RFP shortlist, our end-to-end PMS guest journey product presentations increase our chances of winning exponentially. In addition, the number of credible reference customers on the newer state-of-the-art core PMS products and additional software modules has increased during recent months. Increasing property management system, PMS, sales will also help us sell more additional software modules because there are about four times more such modules available for PMS compared to POS. With respect to sales across product categories, October to December, Q3 fiscal 2023, was our highest ever sales quarter for services sales, software sales in general, and subscription software sales in particular.
Q2 and Q3 of fiscal 2023 taken together has been our best two-quarter, six-month period of subscription software and services sales. The high level of sales success this quarter also drove the combined product services and recurring revenue backlog back to record levels. Before moving to revenue and financial performance during the quarter, a quick note on the recent Marriott PMS selection announcement. As mentioned in the press release, we were selected for a majority of Marriott's premium, luxury, and select service properties across U.S. and Canada based on our participation in a global RFP for property management systems, that is PMS.
As one would expect, we went through the highest level of scrutiny and analysis possible across product, people, implementation support and other processes, culture, financial strength, and all other organizational aspects before being selected as the PMS provider for a majority of the 900,000-plus rooms across Marriott's luxury, premium, and select service properties in the U.S. and in Canada, replacing, for the most part, several proprietary systems which have been in use at these properties for many years. We think this selection was a commentary of not just the current state of our PMS offering, but also our ability to work with one of the biggest and most innovative hospitality operators, and execute well on their specific needs and overall future industry vision.
The product development effort during the next one and the half years or so, will include a mix of general features and Marriott specific integration and other needs. This is a transformational win for us and adds immense credibility to what we have been reporting to you all these years about increased R&D investments and enormous advancements in our PMS and related modules, making us an increasingly compelling player in the PMS space to add to our traditional strengths in the point of sale, POS, area. As we have mentioned before, our current PMS products are connected to approximately 300,000 rooms currently.
If Agilysys and all others involved in this Marriott project execute well during the next 18 or so months, along with all the other PMS market share expanse and expansion success we expect to achieve, we think there is a high probability the number of rooms connected to our PMS products should expand to about three times that size during the next three years. In summary, on the Marriott PMS selection topic, I cannot overemphasize the fact there is a lot of focused execution during the next approximately one and a half years that will be required from our product development services and other teams by Marriott and by other involved third-party partners that will have to go well before the system can be rolled out at any of the planned properties. That is, before this win can get translated to real and substantial subscription revenue for us.
Everyone involved in this project are working on it with the greatest level of diligence possible, and there is a lot to get done and get done right. Assuming all goes well, we expect this project to drive major subscription revenue growth for us beginning sometime during fiscal 2025. While we do expect to recognize services revenue directly attributable to this project during the next few quarters, it is possible that the extent of investment increases required to expand our customer support help desk, software monitoring tools, cloud engineering operations, information security, and other internal systems infrastructure to support the next phase of major revenue growth could happen ahead of the subscription revenue increase timeline. Which could reduce our EBITDA by revenue percentage profitability levels by 2 or 3 percentage points during the short term. On to revenue and profitability.
Fiscal 2023 Q3 revenue was a record $49.9 million. The fourth consecutive record revenue quarter, 26.5% higher than the comparable prior year quarter and sequentially 4.6% higher than Q2. We are on track to exceed our full fiscal year revenue guidance provided at the beginning of the year. We now expect full fiscal year 2023 annual revenue to end up between $195 million and $198 million. One-time product and services revenue combined was $19.8 million, that is $19.8 million, 38% higher than the comparable prior year period and 5.7% higher compared to the sequentially preceding second quarter of fiscal 2023. Services quarter revenue crossed the $9 million mark for the first time.
Services sales booking have been at a record or close to record levels during the past couple of quarters, making us cautiously optimistic about future services revenue and margin levels. Fiscal 2023 Q3 recurring revenue grew to $30.2 million, that is $30.2 million, driven by 28.8% year-over-year subscription revenue increase. Overall recurring revenue was 3.9% sequentially higher compared to Q2 and 20% higher than the comparable prior year quarter. We have now added more than $1 million in recurring revenue sequentially quarter-over-quarter for five consecutive quarters. Subscription revenue generated from add-on experience enhancer software modules, most of which were developed internally ground up during the past few years, constituted 17%, 17% of total subscription revenue this quarter, compared to 11% during the full previous year of Fiscal 2022.
These innovative additional software modules, which are becoming increasingly better integrated with the core POS, PMS, and inventory procurement systems, are driving additional sales from existing customers and expanding deal sizes with new customers and new properties. Based on Q3 FY 2023 numbers, it feels good that the overall revenue and total recurring revenue annual run rates are now reaching $200 million and $120 million levels respectively. We worked hard and smart to reach this stage from where we were five to six years ago, and in many ways are only getting started on the next growth phase now.
Like I mentioned before, while we remain confident that EBITDA by revenue for full fiscal year 2023 will remain better than 15%, one five, better than 15% in line with our annual guidance provided, there is a possibility of a bit of margin compression over the next few quarters as we increase resources across various support, internal systems, information security, and cloud infrastructure areas, getting ourselves well prepared for future major cloud subscription and other revenue growth. Our progress towards previously planned increased Adjusted EBITDA levels could get delayed by a few quarters. Such a margin compression may or may not happen, and even if it does happen, should not be more than 2%-3% EBITDA by revenue.
Though there could be a delay of a few quarters in our ability to get Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue levels into the 20s, the current reality makes that kind of profitability level a far greater certainty than before. Delayed, yes. Probably, yes. Probability of significantly higher profitability levels in the medium term, far higher. We will provide FY 2024 revenue and profitability guidance during our FY 2023 year-end and FY 2024 beginning earnings call around mid to late May. With that, let me hand the call over to Dave. Dave?
Thank you, Ramesh. Taking a look at our financial results, b eginning with the income statement. Third quarter fiscal 2023 revenue was a quarterly record of $49.9 million, a 26.5% increase from total net revenue of $39.5 million in the comparable prior year period. All three product lines increased compared to the prior year periods, with product revenue up 32% and professional services revenue up 45.7% over the prior year quarter. Recurring revenue was also up 20%, with subscription up 28.8% over the prior year period. Sales momentum continued into fiscal 2023 Q3, with sales up sequentially over Q2 FY 2023 and at our highest level for a single quarter in well over six years, including another record subscription sales quarter.
One-time revenue consisting of product and professional services increased by 38% over the prior year to $19.8 million in Q3 FY 2023. The product backlog decreased slightly compared to last quarter, but is north of 80% of record levels. Professional services revenue increased sequentially by 11% to $9.1 million, with sales and backlog at record levels. Total recurring revenue represented 60.4% of total net revenue for the third fiscal quarter, compared to 63.7% of total net revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2022. Increased revenue from professional services implementations and product revenue coming back into the business drove the change in revenue mix compared to the prior fiscal year. We are also happy with our continued subscription revenue growth, which grew 28.8% during the third quarter of fiscal 2023.
Subscription revenue comprised close to 50% of total quarter recurring revenue, compared to about 46% of total recurring revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2022. Add-on software modules comprised 16.8% of subscription revenue in Q3 FY 2023, compared to 11.5% in the comparative prior year quarter, and continue to be a meaningful contributor to subscription revenue. As previously mentioned, the penetration levels of add-on software modules still have significant room for growth within our existing customer base. Moving down the income statement. Gross profit was $30.8 million, compared to $24.7 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2022. Gross profit margin decreased to 61.7% compared to 62.6% in the third quarter of fiscal 2022.
The gross profit margin decrease was primarily due to product and professional services revenue coming back into the business, causing a shift in revenue mix. Combined, the three main operating expense line items, product development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses, excluding stock-based compensation, were 45.6% of revenue compared to 45.9% of revenue in the prior year quarter and in line with our FY 2023 plan. Product development has reduced from 22.8% to 20.6% of revenue. General and administrative expenses have reduced from 14% to 13.7% of revenue, while sales and marketing has increased from 9.1% of revenue to 11.3% of revenue due to our recent investments.
Stock-based compensation as a percentage of revenue in Q3 FY 2023 is 6.9% of revenue compared to 9.7% of revenue in Q3 FY 2022. Operating income for the third quarter of $3.5 million, net income of $3.4 million, and gain per diluted share of $0.13 all compare favorably to the prior year third quarter gain of $1.6 million, $1.1 million, and $0.04 per diluted share, respectively. Adjusted net income normalizing for certain non-cash and non-recurring charges of $6.7 million, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.26 compare favorably to adjusted net income of $4.9 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.19 in the prior year third quarter.
Fiscal 2023, third quarter Adjusted EBITDA was $8.1 million compared to $6.6 million in the year-ago quarter. Q3 Adjusted EBITDA was 16.1% of revenue and in line with our FY 2023 plan. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flow statements. Cash and marketable securities as of December 31, 2022 was $105.8 million compared to $97 million on March 31, 2022. We generated $9.6 million in cash during the third fiscal quarter. Free Cash Flow in the quarter was $11.7 million compared to $9.9 million in the prior-year quarter. The change in Free Cash Flow from the prior year is mostly driven by the increase in cash from operating activities, partially offset by the increase in capital expenditures related to the Las Vegas new office build-out.
CapEx expense of several million dollars for the new office build-out will continue into our fiscal Q4. In closing, we are pleased with our third quarter financial results and are trending above our stated revenue guidance of $190 million-$195 million. We expect our Q4 results to put us in the $195 million-$198 million range for revenue and Adjusted EBITDA slightly above 15% of revenue for the full fiscal year 2023. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Ramesh.
Thank you, Dave. In summary, the breakthrough inflection point we've been building towards during the past 5+ years, that breakthrough inflection point does feel like started becoming a reality during the second half of last year. We continue to run Agilysys with a healthy dose of paranoia and remain cautious and conservative with all our decision-making. Despite our naturally cautious nature, we do have many reasons to feel bullish about our future. We now have t he self-confidence to manage with optimism, cautious optimism, despite all the sobering macroeconomic headlines we read and hear about. Among the reasons for our bullish outlook are the following. One, we are operating in a total addressable market, which is huge relative to our current size.
Two, we think the hospitality industry has been clearly underserved with respect to its technology needs for a long time and is hungry for such solutions regardless of how challenging the macroeconomic environment gets. Three, our current record pace of selling success is a reality despite a few sales verticals like Asia, managed food service providers, and hotel chains not being back to pre-pandemic peak levels. Those verticals are also beginning to show good signs of improvement now. Four, we've created multiple growth paths for the future. Our recent expansion of sales and marketing continues to add a steady stream of new customers and new customer properties to the Agilysys family each quarter.
Operating expenses attributable to sales and marketing increased by about 60% during the first three quarters of fiscal 2023 compared to the first three quarters of fiscal 2022. The recent PMS selection-related partnership created with the world's biggest hospitality corporation gives us major subscription revenue growth opportunities in a couple of years from now. With more than 25 cloud-native state-of-the-art software modules in our bag now, which create high value for customers, and a current average presence of only about two such products in each customer property, selling more software modules to our current customers remains another big possible growth area for us. Five, our property management systems PMS journey is only in its first or second inning now, and these PMS wins come with the possibility of high deal sizes driven by the availability of many add-on software modules.
Six, our overall product services and recurring revenue backlog levels are again back to record size. Seven, we are now in the process of adding resource strength across various areas to ensure we take good advantage of the outsized growth opportunities in front of us. Eight, the competitive environment at worst remains the same as it has been for the past few years, and at best has possibly become better for us. Seems like we remain a fairly isolated example of serious investments in cloud-native, end-to-end hospitality-focused software solutions innovation. If anything, our R &D investments are underestimated given how cost-effective our current development efforts are. Nine, a solid balance sheet with no significant debt helps keep the door open for other possible relevant and appropriate growth options.
All that together, overall, in terms of the state of the business and future prospects, we just could not ask for anything more. It is not every day one comes across an enterprise software unit with this kind of revenue growth visibility across multiple future years. Despite all the pressures the current transformation brings, all great challenges to have, we remain a disciplined growth business unit. We will remain focused on customer partnerships across all customers around the globe to drive the business forward based on a solid foundation of great team members, compelling products, and world-class customer service. With that, let me open up the call for questions. Josh?
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please 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. Our first question comes from Matt VanVliet with BTIG. You may proceed.
Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Nice job on the quarter. I guess first question, as probably expected, a couple more clarifying, maybe comments on the Marriott deal. Appreciate all the color you gave and the potential for some near-term margin headwinds. Wonder if we could just dive in a little bit more there. How much of that should be sort of headcount related to build out the project to potentially deliver it from more of a services component? How much is sort of longer-term structural R&D or other components that, you know, presumably leveraged along the way?
Hi, Matt. Think of the Marriott deal, Matt, in sort of three major blocks. The first block of work is over the next 18 months or so, which involves a lot of additional development work, which will make the product a lot stronger. Also within that is a lot of Marriott-specific needs and services work preparing for the conversion that will happen at high speed once the first property goes live. The first block of work of development and services should be a profitable part of work for us, meaning the services revenue that gets paid for that work should make it profitable for us. No margin compression there with that block of work. The second block of the project, or call it phase II, is when after the property start going live.
There, of course, the subscription revenue will increase rapidly and, significantly, and the company grows along with that. That part is also profitable. Block three is preparing the company for being a much bigger cloud SaaS operating company. There's a whole lot of infrastructure build-up that has to get done in customer support, in helpdesk, in internal systems, in software monitoring tools. We just are going to a much higher level now in the next 18 months or so. That work could be margin compressing. The rest of the revenue growth that's gonna happen during the next, say, you know, two to six quarters should provide, you know, enough provision for that. We are just warning you that there could be some margin compression, 2%-3% of EBITDA by revenue, nothing more than that.
That margin compression may not happen as well due to the infrastructure and other build-up as we get prepared to be a much larger scale cloud SaaS company. Think of it as three blocks. The first block of work, development services, will be profitable. That's more or less paid, so that's not an issue. The second phase of work is once the go-live start, subscription revenue will grow up substantially, so no issues there. The third block of work is getting the company to be a far larger scale cloud company. That work may have to be done earlier, costs incurred earlier, before the revenue starts clicking, it starts coming through. That's what could cause a 2% or 3% margin compression.
Okay, very helpful. When you look at the 900,000 + rooms across their network, you know, what would exclude some of those rooms from moving to the Agilysys system? I guess, how much visibility do you have today versus maybe what you expect to gain further over the next couple quarters?
I think it's important, Matt, we don't get too far ahead of our, you know, skis in this. This was a global process for selecting a PMS product, but we were selected for a majority of luxury, premium, select service properties in the U.S. and in Canada. That's what we were selected for. For a majority of the 900,000+ rooms. That's what we've been selected for. That's where our focus is, and we want to keep our heads down, focused, and make sure we execute about as perfectly as any software project has been executed and keep our focus on that. These kinds of big customer partnerships don't happen every day, Matt. You know, you know that better than I do.
We are gonna focus on the task given to us, deliver on that as well as possible, and like all customer partnerships, we will see where the next steps go. Our focus currently is on delivering well on what we have been selected for.
Okay, understood. I guess on sort of the rest of the business, you know, you highlighted some areas of strength. You know, I guess, where do you feel like in terms of the recovery of business travel, is that impacting maybe the continued momentum, especially in the gaming and resort space? Or is this really just still kinda pent-up demand that's finally working its way through the system and it's maybe not as reliant on, you know, what could swing back the negative way if the macro impacts travel further?
In our opinion, Matt, the pent-up demand is more related to the fact that this industry has been underserved with the kind of integrated technology solutions it's always needed. The pent-up demand comes from there, not just from a temporary pandemic-related travel coming back or not coming back. This is a much larger story, is the way it is more and more looking to us as we do product demos and we see how customers react to that. A lot of the companies, a lot of the vendors who have dominated this space for decades have sort of not carried that innovation ball forward. That is the gap that we saw, which is why we invested so much in R&D, created an offshore development center. We did all of that because we saw that gap.
The pent-up demand in this industry, we don't think is just related to whether travel comes back or goes down. It is a much larger question. They desperately need the kind of integrated tools to keep their staff happier and provide for much better guest experiences. That's where the pent-up demand is, and that I think is long-term. That I think is here to stay regardless of whether travel goes up and down a little bit or not. Also, Matt, it's a big total addressable market relative to our size. Relative to our size, it's a huge total addressable market. What we are seeing now is the parts of that total addressable market that is hungry for these solutions.
There could be a part of that market that we are not seeing, where probably technology decisions are not being considered, but the part of the market that we are seeing is big enough for us. It's huge for us. We are seeing increasing opportunities, mostly driven by the fact we have improved our products. We have created, like, 25 to 30 software modules. We can now cater to end-to-end hospitalit y solutions. That's where the pent-up demand is coming from.
All right, great. Thank you. Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum. You may proceed.
Thank you. Ramesh, you gave a very compelling outlook relative to the number of PMS rooms that you will touch. You currently touch, we believe, around 300,000. You suggest that number could triple, which, by our math, would assume another Marriott size addition in addition to the Marriott room. With that as context, I wondered if you could talk about the pipeline outside of Marriott, anything that has changed relative to the discussions you are having with hotels. In particular, we're all pretty conscious of the fact that there are other large operators with proprietary systems that have been heavily criticized in terms of capabilities. Are those the kinds of targets you're talking to?
Hi, George. Our current number of PMS rooms, like you said, is 300,000, and we expect that to probably triple in the next three years or so. We expect a good portion of that to be based on the Marriott deal now. A good portion of that. There is also a whole lot of PMS deals we are beginning to win now or are being strongly considered in our traditional strength areas like gaming casinos and resorts. Many of them are seriously considering our PMS products. Remember, there are many of our current customers who are moving from the old products they were with, whether it is our own old products or, you know, other old products they've been using for a long time.
Those conversions to PMS is also beginning to happen more now that they see world-class PMS products that they can choose from. As far as the other large operators are concerned, I think they have been underserved with technology for a long time. As and when they come up for, you know, their own RFP processes, the good news now is there is a very high probability we will be included. Two years ago, there was a high probability we will not be included in those. Now, as and when those large operators come up with the next cycle of software replacements, we expect to be a player there, right? It would be very unlikely that we are not included in that.
Once we are included, we fancy our chances quite high because of the state of the products now and how impressive our demos are. This calculation of tripling our number of rooms connected to in the next three years is largely based on the PMS deals we are working on now, plus of course, the huge Marriott opportunity. That calculation does not take into account any possibility of another large operator running a similar RFP. Those will only be additions to the map.
Understand. I wanted to hone in on your block three spend that you referred to. You're effectively saying we are going to be a much larger organization. We need to build an expense base and capability base to meet that. I'm curious with this spend specifically, what kind of an ability it gives you to serve other customers in particular, and also to cross-sell modules into the Marriott and other bases.
Yeah. This block three spend that we talked about is to make us ready for being a far bigger cloud SaaS company than we are today. That is to make sure that the number of rooms connected to PMS, the number of terminal endpoints connected to our POS system, with most of them going to the cloud as a subscription-driven SaaS operation, that is going to be an enormous increase in our business, all towards subscription revenue. That requires taking our infrastructure level support, information security, for example, cloud monitoring tools. It takes a lot of those tools and beefing up our internal systems department. That is gonna be a combination of CapEx and operating expenses. To kind of finally take that transformation to becoming a true cloud SaaS big company, that requires an order of magnitude jump in our infrastructure.
Those are the expenses I'm talking about, and that prepares us not only for this Marriott hundreds of thousands of rooms going live, also for the rest of the business and also for possibly other large operators looking at us like you mentioned. It prepares the company to go to an entirely different level of a cloud SaaS-based software company. Now, the second part of your question, George, that has got nothing to do with, you know, selling more to Marriott. Like we are saying, we were selected for luxury premium select service in U.S. and Canada, and our entire focus is on that. It's a big partnership. It's a huge partnership. So far, there seems to be an excellent culture fit of the two companies working well together. Our focus is on executing what we have been selected for well.
What that leads to in the future, we have no idea, and that is not our concern.
All right. Congrats on the execution.
Thank you, George.
Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question comes from Nehal Chokshi with Northland. You may proceed.
Yeah. Thank you, and congrats on a strong quarter and the Marriott deal. That's incredible. With respect to Marriott, are you already seeing any halo effect from the validation that this win should bring?
Yes, Nehal. I mean, nothing, you know, nothing transformational, but the simple fact that we are getting included in PMS RFPs now that possibly before the announcement, we may not have been included in those RFPs. Now we have to be taken seriously in the PMS space as well when, you know, the world's largest and most innovative hospitality operator selects you. You ask the question, how can we not include them when we do a PMS selection? We are getting those kinds of inquiries that are more than it was before.
How is that going to impact your OpEx spend? Because presumably that's going to, you know, materially increase your opening pipeline here. You only had a 3% QoQ increase on your OpEx here in the December quarter, albeit your sales and marketing was up 11% QoQ. Just, how should we think about that from that perspective then?
Hey, Nehal. we don't expect a much of a increase in our sales and marketing spend if you're looking at it as a percentage of revenue. I mean, the way to think about the business is we'll stay in the 10%-12%. we don't think the halo effect or the increased bookings is gonna change that. I mean, obviously, the revenue number's going up, so the absolute dollars will go up, but we'll keep sales and marketing in the 10%-12% range. No major increase there.
Do you worry that you might be leaving demand on a table by not hiring more aggressively then?
Yeah. I mean... Go ahead.
No, you know, one thing just to keep in mind that we talked about, I mean, with the expansion of sales and marketing this year going from 9% up to 11%-12%, we still have a lot of capacity left on our sales team. We haven't hit any kinda capacity where we feel, you know, more than incremental hiring is necessary at this point.
Sales and marketing, Nehal, is gonna continue to expand. As a percentage of revenue, we think we'll stay in that range for now. That's how it seems like. I don't think we are leaving much demand on the table, Nehal, because we are constantly watching, right, the capacity level and how much the current sales teams are contributing. If we need to expand that, if it is very clear that we need to expand that, we will not hesitate to do that, Nehal.
Okay, great. Does the Marriott contract include the add-on modules? If not, why not?
This RFP, Nehal, was a global RFP for PMS, and that's it. In that RFP, our PMS product was selected for the set of properties that we already described. That's all this process was for. Therefore, we got selected for that product.
Got it. What is the opportunity to get your add-on modules included, and would it be on a per property basis, or, you know, would it be coming through a corporate mandate if that opportunity does exist?
We have no idea, Nehal. I mean, we have no way of answering that question. Like I said, this was a particular selection process for a particular product, PMS. We participated in it and did extremely well with it. That's all we know at the moment.
Okay. For the portion of the Marriott properties that are not on a proprietary built system that are on or in-house built system that are on a third-party system, most notably MICROS, I think they won the deal back in 2013, when does that portion of the Marriott properties come up for renewal and therefore presumably an RFP for you guys as well?
We don't know, Nehal. Right? We don't know. We were selected for hundreds of thousands of rooms across premium luxury select service in U.S. and Canada, and that's all we are focused on at the moment.
Okay. All right. Well, great. Congratulations again.
Thank you, Nehal. Appreciate it.
Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ramesh for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Josh. Thank you all for your continued interest in our progress. Our next earnings call will be in about four months from now, around the middle to end of May, when we will be reporting Q four and full fiscal year 2023 results and also provide guidance for fiscal 2024. Until then, please be safe, healthy, and happy. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.