PAR gets boost from $500M acquisition of California firm

NEW HARTFORD, N.Y. — PAR Technology Corp.  (NYSE: PAR), a provider of restaurant software, recently acquired a San Mateo, California firm that focuses on loyalty and guest-engagement products. 

New Hartford–based PAR acquired Punchh Inc. for about $500 million in cash and shares of PAR common stock. The acquisition was announced and closed on April 8. PAR’s stock price jumped 25 percent that day and kept most of those gains over the next two weeks.

Punchh will retain its name and brand under the PAR umbrella, Chris Byrnes, VP of business & financial relations at PAR Technology, tells CNYBJ in an email.

PAR says the acquisition will enable it to be a “unified commerce cloud platform for enterprise restaurants” and positions PAR to lead with integrated point-of-sale, back office, payment, and guest-engagement products.

With its Brink POS (point-of-sale) product, PAR has been a Punchh partner “for many years,” Shyam Rao, co-founder and president of Punchh, said in a release. 

“We’ve gotten to know them while jointly servicing customers and have always been impressed with their focus on their customer’s success,” Rao said. “PAR’s point-of-sale and back-office solutions combined with our loyalty and engagement platform give customers an end-to-end solution for top-line growth, profitable guest relationships and operational efficiencies. We’re excited to join the PAR team and further our offerings to the hospitality industry.”

Punchh had about 275 employees at the time of the acquisition, according to Byrnes. PAR’s total employee count is now a little more than 1,400.

PAR Technology, through its wholly owned subsidiary ParTech, Inc., services more than 100,000 restaurants in over 110 countries that use its point-of-sale hardware and SaaS software.

Financing the acquisition

PAR financed the cash portion of the purchase price through a combination of equity and debt. 

It included proceeds from the sale of $160 million of PAR common stock to PAR Act III, LLC and to funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. It also included a $180 million senior secured-term loan under a credit agreement with Owl Rock First Lien Master Fund, L.P., as administrative and collateral agent. 

Keith Pascal, Act III partner, joins the board of directors of PAR Technology Corporation and, Ron Shaich, Act III managing partner and founder of Panera Bread, also takes a board-observer seat, PAR said.

“We are thrilled to join this journey with PAR and Punchh,” Shaich said. “As a founder and long-time CEO of a large restaurant company, I understand first-hand the struggles of trying to power a large enterprise by gluing together disparate technologies from multiple vendors which results in silos of data, increased management costs and barriers to agile innovation. I believe PAR’s vision of a unified commerce cloud will enable more restaurant enterprises to compete effectively and efficiently in the digital arms race.”