I'm gonna get started here. Thanks for joining us, everyone. For those who haven't heard me introduce myself today, I'm Chuck Nabhan, the payments and fintech analyst at Stephens. Joining me today from Cantaloupe are the CEO, Ravi Venkatesan, and CFO, Scott Stewart. Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Rather than do an intro to the company myself, I'll let you guys. I'll flip it over to you guys. Probably better to describe it from your in your own words. But just as a starting point, who is Cantaloupe? Tell us about the company and what you do, for those that aren't familiar.
Sure, and I'm Ravi Venkatesan, as Chuck introduced. Let me start by saying we don't sell fruit. You know, we're called Cantaloupe. We just decided that fruit companies in technology tend to do well, and if we are going to be one, why not pick a big fruit, right? That's kind of... But jokes apart, we lead technology that powers self-service commerce. So if you think about laundromats, car washes, parking, vending, any place where you can purchase a product or a service and do it unattended, without a store clerk helping you. So that means a couple of things: one, you're able to make the payment without anybody helping you, and second, there are smarts within that environment to tell that equipment to dispense a product or a service, and so that machine is able to do it.
So what we provide specifically is card readers that are tuned to accept unattended payments. We also do the payment processing behind the scenes, so we are a processor of payments, and we are a provider of telematics. And telematics is the layer of equipment or hardware, as well as software, that tells, on one side, a parking gate to open and close because a payment has been made, a washer to run a cycle, a vending machine to vend a product, or a car wash to run a cycle. So all of those types of things. So there is payment processing, there is telematics, and then we also provide software as a service that lets operators of these types of businesses, operators of breakroom, corporate experiences, vending machines, mini marketplaces, et cetera, manage their business.
So they are able to look at their entire supply chain, look at their warehouse, look at inventory at different locations, manage their resources that go out on the field to restock different locations, and so on. So it's the market-leading, vertical-specific ERP for unattended self-service types of businesses. So that's, in summary, what we do, in summary, what the business is. We lead the North American market in this space, and we've now embarked on international expansion, of which we are in the first phase, which is Europe and Latin America, where we've established a presence and have started growing it. In subsequent phases, we'll enter the APAC market, the Middle East market, and other geographies as well.
That, that's a super helpful intro, but I want to put a finer point on some of the things that you just touched on. Specifically, you talked about labor, you talked about inventory. In terms of your value proposition to investors, could you talk about how you help optimize inventory management and maybe in some cases, help alleviate labor cost challenges?
Sure. So I'll give you a couple of different data points around that. One is, what do we tell customers? And then I also want to speak to this audience, which is, what do we tell investors, right?
Mm-hmm.
So when we go to customers, we have two sides of our product offering that we talk about. One is on the payment acceptance side and the telematics side, and what we can offer them within a location. That location can be a corporate break room with, you know, a marketplace, which has a kiosk where you can grab, scan, pay, and go, or it can be an air vac machine at a gas station where you fill air in your tires and you make a payment, right? It can be any kind of these locations. And when we put our technology in there, same-store sales go up by 25%-30%. Proven over three decades, so we are able to rinse, repeat that.
So in any environment, if they have bills and coins as the way you can make a payment, and they put our credit card readers and our telematics, same-store sales go up by 25%-30%. That's on the sales side. Then, when they deploy our software to manage their operations, get real-time visibility to inventory, are able to dynamically schedule drivers to go out and restock different storefronts so that they didn't go there and find out that, you know, the shelves were empty and they lost two days of sales, or they were full and they wasted somebody making a trip there. When they optimize their workflows in their warehouse, when they optimize their workflows at every component of their supply chain, we see operational efficiencies of about 20%-30%.
More specifically, if there is, you know, an operator of break room experiences that has 10 routes, after they deploy our software platform, they go down to seven routes, so they're able to realize efficiencies in on the OpEx side. So that's the two things that we lead with when we go to customers and sell our products. From an investor perspective, there are two long-term secular tailwinds that drive our business. Number 1, labor shortages.... It's not getting better anywhere, in any geography. It's the reason why in Japan, you can get anything and everything out of a vending machine. That's exactly the reason, right? You've, you've been there, and you've experienced that. It's infecting the rest of the world. There is, you know, everywhere, aging populations, and, you know, so that's, that's one factor that drives it. The second one is consumer preferences.
People don't want to interact with people to buy stuff anymore, and certainly not Gen Zs and certainly not Millennials. I see some nods here, right? Those two long-term secular trends are going to be tailwinds for our business, for the, you know, foreseeable future.
That's great. And I think, you know, to expand on that a little bit, I know, you know, some might think of Cantaloupe as a processor for vending machines, which in the break room in many cases is very true. However, you've expanded into many other different markets, you know, whether it's massage chairs or laundromats. Could you maybe talk about some of the opportunity outside the traditional vending machine?
Yeah. I'll give you some color on the adjacent verticals that we are focused on. And I'd also like Scott to maybe add on, you know, he's our CFO, but many times he sounds more like our CTO in terms of his passion for additional product use cases and applications. So here's what we've seen. We've seen amusement grow very rapidly. So think of whether it's billiards tables or jukeboxes or arcade games, et cetera. And in all those, again, people are moving away from bills and coins and, you know, not satisfied with just app-based payments. They want. They want to see card readers. They want to see more technology being deployed. That's one alternate use case. And the other vertical that we are seeing start to grow rapidly is EV charging. So there are a number of EV charging stations.
In general, you know, the auto industry is moving to be more heavily EV, and what's happened there is very interesting. When all the charging station manufacturers started, they started with the assumption that you could have an app which is specific to them, and you could find the charging station using the app and pay using that app. Well, states are now, you know, starting with California, saying, "No, that's not good enough. You need an inclusive, open loop, regular payment system," translation: card reader, and we are one of two or three providers that can make that happen in those environments, right? So that's another growing vertical for us. And, Scott, any to add on that?
Yeah, it's and not just the growing verticals, too, but use cases are also changing, right, and growing. So when you look at, say, our micro market solution, you know, gyms is a perfect place where we're starting to see those pop up, and we're getting lots of interest there, to where they're selling protein shakes, protein powders, headbands, that type of stuff. You're also starting to see them in residential, like apartment complexes. So just the use cases for micro markets are endless and starting to grow.
The vending industry, as we used to know it, is also transforming. It's not the old, you know, coil-based snack and beverage machines that look like they are from the '70s, but now you have more modern form factors. They're dispensing cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, electronics, you know, all kinds of products that are higher value and, and that are more diversified in product mix as well.
I'll throw one more out there, too, propane tanks. So we just entered into a contract with Blue Rhino. So now when you go to get a new propane tank, you do it all, self-service. You tap your card, tells you which door to open up, and you pull out a new propane tank.
Blue Rhino.
Blue Rhino.
I've seen them.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
I used it then.
Do you benefit from a higher price?
Yes.
Yeah.
Very much so, with all these newer things.
Yeah. So overall, yeah, we get a percentage of the sale. So on a normal, traditional vending, say you're buying a Diet Coke or Gatorade, it's $2, we're gonna charge anywhere from, you know, 5%-6% on that, and that's what we recognize as our revenue. As those ticket prices increase, generally the percentage that we take decreases some. So like in Blue Rhino's case, it could be, say, 2.5%-3%, but our cost is a lot lower too, so our margins actually improve with a higher ticket price.
That ticket price is $25 from that much?
Blue Rhino is closer to 45.
Propane is expensive.
Is there any pass-through as part of that 5%-6%, or is that pure revenue?
It's pure revenue, but then there's COGS associated with that, so you have the interchange fees that go with it as well.
Got it. Okay.
Our margins historically were 8%-10% on that revenue line. Scott and his team have done a great job with routing and contracts and, you know, relationships on the acquiring side. So now they've been consistently in the 16% kind of range, so mid-teens to now trending towards the high teens, and we think we can get it up to about 20% over the next year or so.
Yeah, the past two quarters we've been in the high teens. We do think we can get it up above 20 in the next year.
Yeah. Great. Could you talk about the Cantaloupe One strategy and the economics there versus the traditional sales model?
Sure. Yeah. So overall, Cantaloupe One is, it's a platform, and it's a service that we have, where we're bundling together the hardware and the subscription, and giving it for one low price. And what that does is a couple things. For one, we still own the hardware, and so it's a three-year contract that the customer enters into, and that takes away the risk of hardware obsolescence from the customer, puts it on us. We're allowed to charge a premium for that. The other thing that we're seeing, too, is just with the cost of capital over the past years drastically increased. So a lot of customers are starting to lean more towards this offering because there's no cash upfront.
They pay one low monthly fee, $17.95-$20.95, depending on what services that they get with it, and then it's a three-year contract. We keep the asset on our books. We depreciate that over five years. Now, some customers might turn the device in after three years and get a brand-new one. Some might just keep on using that device. Devices overall are not easy to change out. You have to pay a technician to go out there. It's generally about $75 to have them go out to one machine and swap a device out. So we anticipate them keeping that same device more than three years. Now, we've priced it out to where we make our money back within the three years, so anything past three years is extra margin that we'll be getting.
Is that the CapEx?
That's right. That's, that's the best part of it. Yes.
What should CapEx look like going forward?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so there are two parts to the CapEx. One is the Cantaloupe One program. The other piece is internally developed software. The larger piece is actually internally developed software. So we're running about $1 million per quarter in CapEx related to our Cantaloupe One program, and then the rest that you're seeing is, yeah, internally developed software.
Yeah, and a little bit of context there may be useful. So historically, the company was spending, if you look at between 2013 and 2019, about $3 million-$5 million in CapEx for R&D, and, frankly, that was a little low. It created a little bit of an innovation deficit, and we fell behind. So the last couple of fiscal years, we've spent higher. We've spent $12 million in the last fiscal year, $10 million in the previous one, to launch a number of new products and almost catch up and then get ahead of the competition on the innovation front.
Now that we've done that, we are able to ratchet that back down a little bit, and this fiscal year, we expect it to be more around the $9-$10 million range, and then going forward, we think a long-term good number is somewhere in the $8-$10 million range for R&D and software. And of course, that varies a little bit. You know, we saw a lot of opportunities with AI this year, and so commissioned some new R&D and some new developments, which will drive growth in the future. So it varies based on opportunities that are in front.
Got it. So can you talk about the recent partnerships with AWS and Salesforce and what these bring to Cantaloupe?
Yeah. So we used to run our platforms on the Oracle infrastructure, which was okay at a certain scale and couldn't scale as we needed it to. So the move to AWS has really helped us be more resilient on the infrastructure front. We now have over 1 million storefronts connected to us real-time, and we monitor them real-time, we report on them real-time. So it's a, it's a very significant scale. In fact, we happen to be the largest commerce transacting IoT network on the planet. And just to give you a perspective of our scale on the payment transaction processing, at peak, we do 2,000 transactions per second. You know, some of the large card networks that you're familiar with do 4,000 globally, right? So it's, it's very high scale, even though it's small-ticket transactions for the most part.
Mm-hmm.
So to run that type of a network, we needed a very resilient partner. AWS ended up being the best in class. The second benefit of AWS is, as we replicate our platform internationally in Europe, in, you know, Latin America, in Asia, and other places, AWS gives us a very nice, easy path to replicate those with their extensive network of data centers and ability to just point, click, and replicate environments. So that's been a big benefit for us.
Mm-hmm.
The Salesforce, and in fact, I'll add on to that NetSuite, you know, those enterprise platforms have really led to a lot of efficiency, a lot of automation, and a lot of improvement in our internal systems and processes-
Yep.
- which has helped us keep G&A, you know, flat to even declining, while revenues have kept growing, leading to much, much better operating leverage, right? And I don't know, Scott, if you had anything to add there.
Yeah. Yeah, with overall Salesforce and NetSuite, the combination of those two together just made our processes a lot more efficient. Able to get information a lot quicker, able to go from the whole quote-to-cash process in a matter of a day, to where it used to take, you know, three days to run the full cycle, to take an order, process it, and ship the equipment out. So it's really cut down on that time and cut down on the labor needed for it.
Great. You'd mentioned the international expansion earlier and AWS as sort of a facilitator of that strategy. You entered the UK recently. You touched on a couple of other markets that are on your radar. Can you talk about how much of the business is currently international and what it could potentially look like over the next three to five years or so?
Yeah. Right now, it's less than 5%.
Mm-hmm.
What I have shared through our earnings calls and through our Investor Day is that this fiscal year, and our fiscal runs from July to June, so it'll end in June 2024, we aspire to that number being higher than 5% on an exit rate basis. So think about the fourth quarter being in that range.... Right, and as we execute in the next couple of years, by fiscal 2026, aspirationally, we've said we expect it to be in the 20% range. So there is a fairly rapid, steep climb on the international markets front, and a lot of it is driven by different strategies in different markets. So it's not a one-size-fits-all.
Right.
Europe, for example, is a place where we've led a lot more with the software side. Latin America, we've led a lot more with the payment acceptance and telematics side, and it all depends on the relative penetration of different technologies in those different markets.
In terms of the go-to-market, though, is it direct or through channel partners or a combination?
It's a combination-
Yeah.
But it's heavier channel partners in international markets compared to the US or the North American market. And that's partly because of just, you know, as we looked at this, we wanted to copy and replay the Verifone playbook. And, as context, you know, our Chairman, Doug Bergeron, was Verifone's CEO, who spun it out of HP and grew it to a, you know, from, I think, $50-$60 million to $3 billion in revenues, and then sold it to Francisco. So he has that experience, and then he helped us recruit Jeff Dumbrell as our CRO, and Jeff ran his international business and grew it from almost nothing to close to $1 billion, right?
We are kind of replicating that playbook, leveraging all those relationships, and that's why the channel strategy is being more effective for us than direct sales.
Can you talk about competition and, you know, who you go up against domestically, as well as if that dynamic changes in some of your newer international markets?
Yeah. So the competitors we have domestically and mostly they are the same in international markets-
Right.
Although there are some smaller players who are present in different, you know, specific markets, right? So the main competitors we have are a company from Israel called Nayax, and Nayax competes with us in the telematics and payment acceptance space.
Mm-hmm.
And then there's a company called Crane, and they are now part of a public company called Crane NXT.
Okay.
Crane NXT used to be extremely active, and we would consider them our main competitor and Nayax kind of secondary. Now, that's flipped over the last 2-3 years, where Nayax is, who I would say is our primary competitor in that space, and Crane NXT is almost a secondary.
Mm-hmm.
And then in what we call micro markets, which in simple term is, you know, a little mini marketplace where you can grab the product, go to a kiosk, scan, pay, and go. In that space, our main competitor is a company called 365 Retail Markets, and they are out of Michigan. They are private equity-owned. Providence Equity has a majority stake in them.
Mm-hmm.
They are actually the market leader in that space. We are kind of the second, you know, after them in terms of market share, and we have grown also through some acquisitions. We did an acquisition of a company called Three Square Market last year, Yoke Payments the year before, and then developed on top of that.
I was actually gonna ask you about micro-market merchants, so that's a good segue. I guess just on a high level, if we think about your, your revenue exposure by customer tier, how big is micro-merchants? What are some of the other pieces of that mix, and how do the unit economics vary or not vary between micro-merchants, middle market, et cetera?
So I'll give you some color on how the market is segmented, and then Scott maybe also share some information on unit economics, margins, et cetera, and the trends around that. So, compared to our traditional verticals, which are, you know, whether it's laundromats or car washes or whatever, the micro-market space is newer, faster growing. It's growing 30%-50%, in terms of CAGR in the last four or five years. And in general, the revenue per location and the margins per location are both better, and they are better across, both the equipment as well as the subscription revenues that we derive from them. Our subscription revenues tend to be our most profitable, revenue stream, right?
Yeah.
Scott, do you want to add on to the profile of margins or unit economics?
Yeah, sure. So overall, with micro markets, it's generally selling higher dollar ticket items. So the revenue that we get off of one micro market, on an annual basis equals about 10-12 vending machines, 'cause you're selling higher ticket dollar items. And the margin profile on the equipment side is higher because it's, it's a lot of custom items. You have custom cabinetry, custom shelves, and so we're able to charge a little bit more of a premium on that, and the kiosk as well. So it generally runs around 25%-30%, to where the normal devices on, you know, a payment device generally runs around 10% now. Company historically used to sell devices at almost a loss or breakeven.
Over the past year, we've been able to increase that up, and now we're averaging around 10%. Just to give you some comparisons. So for the micro markets, it's over around 30%. The transaction processing is right along the same margin profile and same with the software. It's about high teens, like we talked about a little earlier on the transaction processing side, and then on the software, the monthly subscription, it runs around 85%-90%.
So on the topic of subscription revenue, you know, in 2024, you called for an increasing mix. How much of a contributor is subscription to revenue today, and how should we think about some of the drivers of that component going forward?
... Sure. So right now it's about 25%-30% of our overall revenue. As micro markets grow and as we've put this effort on growing subscription revenue, not just through micro markets, but through other add-on modules like our Remote Price Change, which is RPC, that allows customers to change the price of stuff in the vending machine, sitting from their office rather than sending a technician out to do it. We also have other add-on modules as well, like, Ad Management, Card-Linked Offers. So we've been really pushing hard over the past year to increase that subscription revenue. Right now, it's at 25%-30%. Aspirationally, by the time we get to 2026, we're looking for it to be around 35%-40%.
Could you achieve that organically, or is M&A still part of the ongoing strategy there?
M&A is always going to be part of our strategy. The outlook that we've put together, and that we talked about in our last investor day is all organic.
Got it. Okay. Sort of on a related topic, I wanted to ask about capital allocation and how investors should think about your philosophy towards that strategy, as well as, you know, any comments you could make on leverage as well.
Yeah, look, we are a, you know, we're a company that was only valued on a, I would argue, on a growth multiple, if you turn the clock back 3-5 years. Now, we have pivoted to being valued on a combination of an earnings multiple and a growth multiple. We've actually gone from burning cash to being cash flow positive, to... We grew EBITDA at 80% the last fiscal year. Our guide this year calls for a 70% growth in EBITDA. So the earnings have now started becoming meaningful, and get to that level, right? So that's one part of it.
On the capital allocation side, but we are still enough of a growth company to where, you know, we don't see, like, we see enough opportunities to use that cash to either do tuck-in M&As or to, you know, in some cases, tactically, maybe retire some debt, given the cost of capital right now. But our priority is always going to be growth-driving initiatives, product development, M&A first, followed by, you know, any considerations around retiring debt or, you know. And, and I would, I would put third and, like, third by a far margin, any kind of share repurchase, et cetera.
Got it. Okay. Just turning to payments, if you think about the growth algorithm there, is it more about revenue per device versus—can you maybe give us a breakdown of the drivers between new devices as opposed to same-store sales, for lack of a better metric?
Yeah, I think it would be good to provide a little context on the strategy behind this.
Yep.
and then the numbers, right? So there are historically, the company had only one metric, which everything was driven by. It was connections. You know, how many connected endpoints do we have? And that is the only metric that used to matter, and it was driven that way. We've changed that in the last couple of years, and we've really taken a look at what is the real revenue coming out of each one of those connections, and what is the margin that's coming out of each one of those connections, right? So with that context, I'll let Scott take you through, like, over the last couple of years, where we've brought average revenue per connection, which we now believe is a very important metric for investors.
Sure. So if you look back eight quarters ago, so two years, our average revenue per connection on an annual basis was $123. Now, we're up to $185. If you took, say, two years ago, if a customer bought everything that we offered at our rack rate, our list rate, it'd be $245 per connection. We've now, with the add-on modules that we've added on, so like the RPC that I mentioned a little bit earlier, ad management, card-linked offers, that type of stuff. If someone was to buy every product that we offered, they'd now be up to $395.
Got it. I have to ask the obligatory macro question. You know, people are going to eat their snacks, including myself, need your caffeine in the afternoon, including myself, but at the same time, there's a discretionary aspect to your end market as well. So could you maybe talk about the macro and how that impacts or doesn't impact your business?
Yeah. So let's think about it from a normal times, recessionary times, et cetera, and we've got data from, you know, the last couple of recessions, right? Whether it's 2007, 2008, or the 2000, that timeframe. Food and beverage, especially lower cost, tends to be very recession resistant, and that's true for our marketplaces also. Things like air vac machines, laundromats, they all tend to be very recession resistant, right? So those are all... Generally, they tend to do better or equal during recessionary times. Now, there is another factor that has a direct impact on our business, which is how many people show up in offices and work on a day-to-day basis. How many people show up in warehouses, show up in factory shop floors?
So that does impact, and if there is a recessionary environment, that can go down, and that can be a negative impact for us. At the same time, if that leads to a change in the equation between employer and employees, and employers start having more employees come to work and return to the office, you know, three days instead of two days, four days instead of three days, that's a positive for our business. So sometimes those two factors can even balance each other out.
Where are we in that? I mean, this is your third year, or my third year at this conference, and third year since, for you guys, and since you've been here. And it seems like, you know, the narrative change is coming out of COVID, in terms of going back to the office and back to work. Have things stabilized from your perspective in terms of, like, employers bringing employees back, or are we still, you know, is that still a bit of a tailwind?
It's a slow crawl back to where it was. What we are seeing is blue collar came back pretty quick, right? So, you know, factories, warehouses, those came back pretty quick, and in fact, they are now... If anything, their challenge is labor shortages. There is a severe shortage of labor, and so they have not been able to come back to 100% because of that, and that's why you're also seeing more leverage and more bargaining power, whether it's in the union negotiations or whatever else, right? On the white-collar side, it's still, you know, we gradually went from the average being two days back in the office to three days back in the office, and it's still, you know, we're still not seeing it come back to four and five days yet.
Yep.
Yes, 'cause we are continuing to see the trends in that direction, right? It's just very slow. So I think it's really the bargaining power or the leverage that employers have versus employees have, and it's not shifted as fast as anybody predicted, so it's really slow. And to your point, you know, maybe 5% never comes back. Yeah.
There was just a study out that showed revenue growth is faster at companies with hybrid employment than fully back in office.
So we may never get 5% back. Our data shows that there's about 15% that's not yet back-
Right.
in terms of...
And some of it's industry specific as well. I, I think on the finance side, you're seeing a lot of banks now that are starting to come back, but like developers, be hard-pressed to get them back in the office.
I guess as an offset to that, though, are you still seeing price inflation in terms of, you know, the products your customers are selling? And to what degree is... I mean, I would view that as an offset, but if you could just maybe talk about the trends you're seeing there, I think that would be helpful.
Sure. So if you look at a year ago, the average ticket price was $2.38. Today, we're seeing about $2.56. Now, there's two things that are driving that. One is being inflation, which is probably about 50% of that. The other is you're starting to see higher ticket items being sold-
Mm-hmm.
within the traditional vending setting. So you're starting, you know, you go to the airport, and you see $80 headphones that, that you get out of the vending machine now. So that's also driving that average ticket price up. What we've seen over the past several months is the inflation factor has really slowed down and almost come to a halt.
Got it. That's helpful. I want to go back to payments and just get a better understanding of where you sit on the payments value chain, and the leverage you might have on the cost side with some of your processing partners or sponsors.
Thank you for the question. On the payment side, I think it's useful to understand that the types of payments that we handle are very unique in terms of small ticket and a lot of transactions. They require special agreements with the card networks and special routing as well. The agreements are not that hard to get, but that routing and that engineering that it takes to build a platform to do that is much harder.
Yeah.
Which is why a PayPal doesn't compete with us, or a Square doesn't compete with us. So it's, there's a pretty big moat against getting into this space, particularly after Durbin and after small tickets being such a unique space.
Right.
That's one. In terms of where we fit in the value chain, we make and sell the point of sale devices. So we own the hardware and the software that goes on those.
Mm-hmm.
We own the connectivity. It's all wireless, using SIM cards-
Yep
... with various carriers, and it comes through a proprietary network using proprietary protocols. So it doesn't come through a traditional retail payment network that a traditional retailer would have. And so we've done all the engineering for that, and then we also run the payment gateway that processes the transactions. Behind us, we work with various acquirers, like Global Payments or Fiserv or Chase Payments, et cetera-
Mm-hmm
... to actually authorize and settle those transactions and so on.
Is there any acceptance of alternative payments, such as Apple Pay, Apple Pay?
A-absolutely, yes.
Are we able to enable that if-
Yeah. We are actually on the leading edge of acceptance of that. In fact, when originally that was launched, our Chief Marketing Officer was on the stage with Tim Cook, and we were one of the earliest adopters of enabling Apple Pay. So, not only Apple Pay and Google Pay and all kinds of touch, tap, and swipe, but many closed-loop payment systems, not just open loop-
Yeah
... including campus cards, employee badges, you know, payroll deduction. So we do all kinds of closed-loop payment types as well.
Got it. Okay, that's super helpful. Question?
Oh, yeah. Penetration. Could you talk a little bit about the industries where this is, or even more than that, is going to be large application versus where you can educate, potential customers with the trends, AI, something similar?
Yeah. So in a space like micro markets, it's very, very early days, so there's tons of white space. And the white space is not so much in terms of penetration as in how many places has it, but it's more in terms of what comes out of traditional retail and goes into automated retail, right? So for that, the sky's the limit because, you know, those things can go into, as Scott mentioned, we are already putting them into fitness centers. They can go into train stations, they can go into car dealerships, they can go into apartment complexes. There's a ton of white space there. In terms of more mature markets, like laundromats or car washes or vending, the penetration of the telematics and the payment acceptance is at around the 65%-70% mark in North America. It varies by geography.
The penetration of our software, the software as a service product, is around the 20%-25% mark.
That drastically changes if you go outside of the U.S.?
Yeah. Varies, you know, it's very, very different in different geographies.
What work you do there in driving adoption, or is it just behind you and-
No, we do a ton of education, and we do a ton of outreach. And, also, I'm on the board of an organization called NAMA, the National Automatic Merchandising Association, and as a trade association, you know, that represents a $35 billion industry, and we do a lot to educate and drive the acceptance of automated dispensation of products and services across a very wide variety of use cases. We also work with legislators and, you know, do a lot of advocacy to sort of push that forward.
Last one.
Yeah. No, no.
How are you dealing with the shift for some of the resorts and details? You cut out of that?
No, we are not cut out of that. We don't directly partner with them, but we partner with those types of companies in a lot of cases to enable the last mile of automatically dispensing a product or a service, where we might go plug into their back-end systems so that all their payment and reconciliation eventually lands up in the same place.
You may not get the fees, but you get the subscription.
And the subscription to manage that being there. Yeah.
I guess just to expand on that, if, let's say, Shift4, for example, is operating an amusement park or a zoo, they handle all the point of sale, where but you may have a relationship with a vendor that's placing a vending machine in there. Could maybe talk about how that relationship works, you know, from a financial standpoint as well as from an operational standpoint.
Today they are fragmented.
Yep.
So today it's like completely two different systems, two different sources of information, reconciliation, payments landing up in somebody's account. But as this evolves, particularly in those types of use cases, resorts, amusement parks, campuses of any kind-
Yep.
We do see those starting to converge with the back-end systems getting integrated.
Okay.
So it'll happen at the accounting and ERP system level, while the flow of funds may still happen through different rails.
Got it. Okay. Okay. Any other questions?
The micro-market, you cite that unit opportunity versus the vending machine.
Sure. If you take a vending machine on an average, you know, it could be selling $500 worth of product. A micro-market, on an average, would sell $3,000-$5,000 worth of product, and it can get as high as $20,000-$30,000, depending on the location. So-
That's on a monthly basis?
Vastly different. On a monthly basis.
On a monthly basis.
Thank you.
And what about the units at this point? As micro-markets is growing, I guess, but-
So in terms of units, are you talking about the total market size? So in the North America market, there's about 75,000 micro-markets total.
Seventy-five?
75,000, and it's growing at 30%-50% the last 3-4 years. Frankly, it would grow 100% if the theft issue gets solved more elegantly, which we have some products that we think will do that.
Well, we don't have any questions further. Do you have any closing remarks or anything you'd like to convey to the investment community?
Yes. You know, I think some of you have actually followed the story for a while. Some of you are new to it. I think a couple of historical facts here. This company was, you know, it went through a spot of trouble in the 2018-2019 timeframe with accounting irregularities and getting delisted from the Nasdaq and so on. So at that time, Hudson Executive came in as a hedge fund that's activist and put in a brand-new board and a brand-new leadership team, which Scott and I came in as part of, and we've kind of fixed all of those things and then articulated a strategy last year around earnings growth and around revenue growth, and subscription revenue growth in particular, as well as the international expansion.
We've now had, you know, four quarters of really doing what we said we'd do, and the market's responded well. You know, our stocks is double where it was same time last year, and we think there is still considerable upside based on what we've articulated. So if you have questions, you know, thank you for your interest, first of all, but if you have questions and want to connect with our investor relations team and set up more time, we'd be happy to take you through more details.
Thank you.