TOST
Toast just kept the grill hot
Toast came in with a Q2 beat on both earnings and revenue, which is the kind of combo that usually gets investors doing a little happy dance. The company posted 26 cents per share versus the 20-cent consensus, while sales hit $1.908 billion, also ahead of estimates.
The bigger flex: the business is still expanding
CEO Aman Narang basically sounded like a proud parent at recital night. He said recurring gross profit streams grew 28%, operating margins expanded to 26%, and Toast added a record 9,500 net locations. That’s not just growth — that’s growth with some muscle on it.
A few details stand out:
- New customers included BWH Hotels, Kung Fu Tea, and an expanded TGI Fridays partnership in the UK
- Toast IQ Grow is now the fastest-growing new offering the company has launched
- Management is leaning hard into AI as a way to make the platform stickier and more useful
Analysts looked at the plate and wanted more
The post-earnings reaction was classic Wall Street: same company, fancier math. Piper Sandler kept an Overweight rating and lifted its target from $32 to $39, while Needham kept a Buy and bumped its target from $35 to $45.
Toast shares were down 0.3% to $33.70 in premarket trading, which is a reminder that even a good report doesn’t always mean an immediate moonshot. But for investors, the takeaway is pretty clear: Toast is still winning customers, widening margins, and convincing analysts the runway is longer than they thought.
Big picture: the restaurant tech story is starting to look less like a scrappy startup and more like a platform with real staying power.