UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM 10-K
x | Annual Report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 |
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2018
OR
¨ | Transition report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 |
Commission File Number: 001-35580
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
Delaware | 20-2056195 | |
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) | (I.R.S. Employer Identification Number) | |
ServiceNow, Inc.
2225 Lawson Lane
Santa Clara, California 95054
(408) 501-8550
(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrant’s principal executive offices)
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
Title of each class | Name of each exchange on which registered | |
Common stock, par value $0.001 per share | New York Stock Exchange, Inc. | |
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:
Not applicable
__________________________
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of Act. Yes ¨ No x
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days: Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of Registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer x Accelerated filer ¨ Non-accelerated filer ¨ Smaller reporting company ¨ Emerging growth company ¨
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes ¨ No x
Based on the closing price of the Registrant’s Common Stock on the last business day of the Registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, which was June 29, 2018, the aggregate market value of its shares (based on a closing price of $172.47 per share on June 29, 2018 as reported on the New York Stock Exchange) held by non-affiliates was approximately $21.0 billion.
As of January 31, 2019, there were approximately 180.5 million shares of the Registrant’s Common Stock outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Portions of the Registrant’s definitive proxy statement for its 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (Proxy Statement) to be filed within 120 days of the Registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2018, are incorporated by reference in Part III of this Report on Form 10-K. Except with respect to information specifically incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K, the Proxy Statement is not deemed to be filed as part of this Form 10-K.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Item 9A | ||
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Index to Exhibits | ||
PART I
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” contains forward-looking statements regarding future events and our future results that are based on our current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about our business, our results of operations, the industry in which we operate and the beliefs and assumptions of our management. Words such as “believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “would,” “could,” “should,” “intend” and “expect,” variations of these words, and similar expressions are intended to identify those forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual results may differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in this Report under the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Item 1A of Part I and elsewhere herein, and in other reports we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). While forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable expectations of our management at the time that they are made, you should not rely on them. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law.
ITEM 1. | BUSINESS |
ServiceNow, the company that makes work, work better for people, is a leading provider of enterprise cloud computing services that define, structure, manage and automate digital workflows for global enterprises. We deliver digital workflows that help our customers create great experiences and unlock productivity. Our Now Platform enables enterprise-wide experiences and productivity by simplifying and streamlining processes across systems, functions and departments. Our product portfolio focuses on delivering better information technology (IT), employee and customer workflows, and enabling our customers to build any workflow application that makes sense for their business.
Historically, our focus was on solving challenges found in enterprise IT departments, and we pioneered the use of the cloud to deliver IT service management applications. The digital workflow platform we built to solve these challenges has applications throughout the enterprise. In addition to our IT service management applications, we now provide digital workflow products for customer service, human resources, security operations, integrated risk management (including compliance, risk, and audit) and other enterprise departments where a patchwork of semi-automated and manual processes had been used in the past. Using our cloud services, users can easily request business services from these departments, actions and responses can be automated within the enterprise, the quality of service provided by these departments improves, and overall the business runs more efficiently.
All of our cloud services are built on our proprietary platform, the Now Platform®, which features one code base and one data model. It enables customers to easily create, by themselves or with our partners, their own service-oriented business applications across the enterprise. We primarily deliver our software via the Internet as a service, through an easy-to-use, consumer product-like interface, which means it can be easily configured and rapidly deployed.
We market our services to enterprises in a wide variety of industries, including consumer products, education, financial services, government, health care, IT services and technology. We sell our subscription services primarily through direct sales and, to a lesser extent, through indirect channel sales. We also offer a portfolio of professional and other services, both directly and through our network of partners.
We were incorporated as Glidesoft, Inc. in California in June 2004 and changed our name to Service-now.com in February 2006. In May 2012, we reincorporated in Delaware as ServiceNow, Inc.
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Our Products
Our portfolio of products supports critical aspects of our customers’ digital transformation process. These products, when implemented alone or together, deliver value to our customers across three workflows: IT, Employee, and Customer. As shown below, certain products that are applicable throughout the enterprise may be purchased by customers to support multiple workflows.
The Now Platform
All of our products are built on a single platform, which is the foundation for all of our cloud-based services. Our platform allows our customers to create a single system of record for their systems and workflows, and it is the foundation of our ability to deliver specific enterprise applications and services. Our single system of record also allows customers to complement their other vertical applications and achieve various business objectives such as better data integrity, faster updates and better responsiveness to user needs.
Among the most popular services that our platform supports are workflow automation, electronic service catalogs and portals, configuration management systems, data benchmarking, performance analytics, mobile experience, encryption and collaboration and development tools.
Our Now Platform App Engine also enables developers across the enterprise to create, test and deploy their own applications within an integrated development environment while leveraging the single data model and common services of our platform.
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Information Technology (IT) Service Management
Our IT Service Management (ITSM) product suite defines, structures, consolidates, manages and automates IT services that are offered to an enterprise’s employees, customers and partners. Among its capabilities, our ITSM product suite records incidents, remediates problems and automates routine tasks. For example, we enable our customers to provide service portals where their employees can request IT services, order software and hardware, and submit IT incidents.
IT Operations Management
Our IT Operations Management (ITOM) product suite connects a customer’s physical and cloud-based IT infrastructure with our applications and platform. It identifies a customer’s IT infrastructure components (e.g., servers) and associated business services (e.g., email) which are dependent upon that infrastructure. It also maintains a single data record for all IT configurable items, which allows our customers to exercise control over their on-premises or cloud-based infrastructures and orchestrate key processes and tasks.
IT Business Management
Our IT Business Management (ITBM) product suite enables customers to manage their IT priorities, including the scope and cost of IT projects, the development of software related to those projects and the overall management of the customer’s IT project portfolio.
IT Asset Management
Our IT Asset Management (ITAM) product automates customers’ IT asset lifecycles with workflows, tracking the financial, contractual and inventory details of IT and non-IT assets throughout their lifecycles.
Enterprise Development Operations
Our enterprise development operations product provides solutions across a developers’ toolchain and integrates with the leading solutions to provide a single dashboard of planning, development, testing, deployment and operations.
Security Operations
Our security operations product connects with third-party and other sources of security alerts from a customer’s infrastructure to prioritize and respond to incidents and vulnerabilities according to their potential impact on a customer’s business. Security operations management capabilities include security incident management, threat enrichment intelligence, vulnerability response management and security incident intelligence sharing.
Governance, Risk and Compliance
Our governance, risk and compliance product creates a common set of policies and controls to help our customers meet the requirements of an ever-expanding regulatory environment, and allows our customers to monitor risk and compliance events in real time to take action to remediate and mitigate risks.
HR Service Delivery
Our human resources (HR) service delivery product defines, structures, consolidates, manages and automates HR services related to employee requests. HR service delivery capabilities include HR case management, employee self-service, knowledge management and management of employee lifecycle events across multiple departments such as onboarding, transfers and off-boarding. For example, tasks that start in HR but require action from other departments, such as new hire equipment selection and fulfillment, can be easily automated and orchestrated.
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Customer Service Management
Our customer service management product defines, structures, consolidates, manages and automates customer service cases and requests. It allows common customer requests such as password resets to be automated with out-of-the-box self-service, and for other cases it routes work from the customer service agent to field service, engineering, operations, finance or legal personnel to resolve the underlying issues.
Field Service Management
Our field service management application allows field service agents to be effectively assigned, deployed and managed on the same underlying customer service management platform that created and managed the customer incident.
Professional Services
Our professional services help drive our customers’ business objectives and derive value from their ServiceNow investment. Our professional services include customer success management, which provides advisory services to our customers for a fee, and also include process design, implementation,configuration, and optimization services. We also offer strategic services to customers embarking on significant business transformations to reimagine their service management strategy and roadmap – from first insight to final implementation. Our network of partners also provides professional services and training to our customers.
We provide an expansive portfolio of training and certification programs across IT, HR, customer service, and other departments. Flexible training options, plus topic- and role-based content, help engage our customers’ employees, optimize business processes and enhance efficiency to increase the value customers derive from their use of our services.
Customer Support
As part of their subscription, customers receive support 24 hours a day, seven days a week around the globe, from technical resources located in the United States and internationally. We also offer self-service technical support through our support portal, which provides access to documentation, knowledge base articles, online training, online support forums and online incident filing.
Our Technology and Operations
We designed our cloud-based services to support global enterprises. We operate a multi-instance architecture that provides each customer with its own dedicated application logic and database. This architecture is designed to deliver high-availability, scalability, performance, security and ease of upgrading. We have a standardized Java-based development environment, with the majority of our software written in industry-standard software programming languages. Our cloud infrastructure primarily consists of industry-standard servers, networks and storage components. Our operating system and databases are Linux, and MySQL and MariaDB.
Our data centers operate in paired configurations to enable replication for high-availability and redundancy. We currently operate data centers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and continuously evaluate our data center operations and capacity in existing and new geographies.
We offer customers the option to deploy our services on dedicated hardware in our data centers. Our architecture also gives us the added flexibility to allow customers the option of deploying our services internally or under contract with a third party to host the software in order to support unique regulatory or security requirements, and, while there are some limitations on agility and flexibility as compared to our cloud offering, a minority of our customers have elected this alternative. The customer support we provide for self-hosted customers is similar to the support we provide to customers deployed in our own managed data centers.
Sales and Marketing
We sell our services primarily through our global direct sales organization. Additionally, we sell such services indirectly through resale partners, particularly in less developed markets.
Our marketing efforts and lead generation activities consist primarily of customer referrals, Internet advertising (including via our website), trade shows, industry events and press releases. We also host our annual Knowledge user conference, webinars and other user forums where customers and partners both participate in and present on a variety of programs designed to help accelerate their success with our services.
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We are continuing to expand our sales capabilities in new geographies, including through investments in direct and indirect sales channels, professional services capabilities, customer support resources and implementation partners. In addition to adding new geographies, we also plan to increase our investment in our existing locations in order to achieve scale efficiencies in our sales and marketing efforts.
Customers
We primarily sell our services to large enterprise customers. We host and support large enterprise-wide deployments for our customers. As of December 31, 2018, we had approximately 5,400 enterprise customers. Our customers operate in a wide variety of industries, including consumer products, education. financial services, government, health care, IT services and technology. No single customer accounted for more than 10% of our revenues for any of the periods presented.
Backlog
Total backlog consists of unbilled backlog, deferred revenue and customer deposits. Unbilled backlog is an operational measure representing future unearned revenue amounts believed to be firm that are to be invoiced under our existing agreements and are not included in the deferred revenue or customer deposits on our consolidated balance sheets. For information regarding our total backlog, please refer to the section entitled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations–Key Business Metrics–Total backlog” in Item 7 of Part II in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Research and Development
Our research and development organization is responsible for the design, development, testing and certification of our solutions. We focus on developing new services and core technologies and further enhancing the functionality, reliability and performance of our existing solutions. We focus our efforts on anticipating customer demand and then bringing new services and new versions of existing services to market quickly in order to remain competitive in the marketplace. We have made, and will continue to make, significant investments in research and development to strengthen our existing applications, expand the number of applications on our platform, enhance our user experience, and develop additional mobile, automation and machine intelligence technologies.
Acquisitions and Investments
In addition to continuing to invest in our own research and development efforts, we have made acquisitions and investments in the past and will continue to assess opportunities for strategic acquisitions and investments to complement our technology and skill sets and expand our product reach. We are focused on building out our platform and products through both acquisitions and investments that will satisfy growing customer needs.
Competition
The markets for our solutions generally are rapidly evolving and highly competitive, with relatively low barriers to entry. As the markets in which we operate continue to mature and new technologies and competitors enter such markets, we expect competition to intensify. Our current competitors include:
•large, well-established, enterprise application software vendors;
•solutions developed in-house by our potential customers or using integrations with other tools;
•large integrated systems vendors;
•infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service providers;
•established and emerging cloud vendors; and
•vendors of products and services for development operations.
Many prospective customers have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to implement and integrate their current enterprise software into their businesses and therefore may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate away from their current solution to an enterprise cloud solution. Accordingly, we compete with both cloud-based and traditional enterprise application software vendors. Our competitors vary in size and in the breadth and scope of the products and services offered. As we continue to expand the breadth of our services to include offerings for service domains outside of IT, we expect increasing competition from platform and application development vendors focused on these other markets.
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Various factors influence purchase decisions in our industry, including total cost of ownership, level of customer satisfaction, breadth and depth of product functionality, security, adherence to industry standards, brand awareness, flexibility and performance. We believe that we compete favorably with our competitors on each of these factors. However, many of our competitors have substantially greater financial, technical and other resources and may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards, customer requirements and buying practices. An existing competitor or new entrant could introduce new technology that reduces demand for our services. Acquisitions, integrations and consolidation by and among other companies in our industry may allow potential competitors to offer integrated or bundled products, enhanced functionality, or other advantages, which may impact our competitive position. In addition, some of our competitors offer their products or services at a lower price, which has resulted in pricing pressures. Some of our larger competitors also have the operating flexibility to bundle competing products and services with other software offerings, which may enable them to offer such products and services at a lower price as part of a larger sale. As competition intensifies, we expect pricing competition to continue or increase.
Intellectual Property
We rely upon a combination of copyright, trade secret, patent and trademark laws in the United States and other jurisdictions as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual restrictions, such as confidentiality and license agreements, to establish, protect and grow our intellectual property (IP) rights. We also enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements with our employees, partners, vendors, consultants and other third parties and control access to our IP and other proprietary information. We also purchase or license technology that we incorporate into our products or services.
We continue to grow our patent portfolio and IP rights around the world that relate to our platform, applications, services, research and development and other activities, and our success depends in part upon our ability to protect our core technology and IP. We have over 600 U.S. and foreign patents, including patents acquired from third parties, and over 500 pending patent applications. We do not believe that our proprietary technology is dependent on any single patent or other IP right or groups of related patents or IP rights. We file patent applications to protect our IP and have in the past and may in the future acquire additional patents, patent portfolios, or patent applications. However, we cannot be certain that any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will result in patents of value or applicability. In addition, any patents that have been or may be issued or acquired may be contested, circumvented, found unenforceable or invalidated, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing them.
Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or obtain and use our technology to develop products and services that provide features and functionality that are similar to our solutions. Policing unauthorized use of our technology is difficult. The laws of the countries in which we market our services may offer little or no effective protection of our proprietary technology. Our competitors could also independently develop services equivalent to ours, and our intellectual property rights may not be broad enough for us to prevent competitors from utilizing their developments to compete with us. Reverse engineering, unauthorized copying or other misappropriation of our proprietary technology could enable third parties to benefit from our technology without paying us for it, which would significantly harm our business.
Our industry is characterized by frequent claims and related litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights. From time to time, third parties may assert patent, copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights against us, our channel partners or our customers. In addition, based on our greater visibility, expanding solutions footprint, and market exposure as a public company, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims from third parties. For example, in 2016 we settled two patent-related litigation matters and recorded a one-time charge of $270.0 million related to aggregate legal settlements. See “Risk Factors–Claims by others that we infringe their proprietary technology or other rights could harm our business” for additional information.
Employees
As of December 31, 2018, we had 8,154 full-time employees worldwide, including 1,835 in cloud operations, professional services, training and customer support, 3,061 in sales and marketing, 2,080 in research and development and 1,178 in general and administrative roles. None of our U.S. employees is represented by a labor union with respect to his or her employment. Employees in certain European countries are represented by workers’ councils and also have the benefits of collective bargaining arrangements at the national level. We consider our relations with our employees to be very good and have not experienced interruptions of operations or work stoppages due to labor disagreements.
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Available Information
You can obtain copies of our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other filings with the SEC, and all amendments to these filings, free of charge from our website at www.servicenow.com/company/investor-relations/sec-filings.html as soon as reasonably practicable following our filing of any of these reports with the SEC. The SEC maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. The contents of these websites are not incorporated into this filing and our references to the URLs for these websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.
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ITEM 1A. | RISK FACTORS |
Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. You should consider carefully the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes, before making an investment decision. We have identified the following risks and uncertainties that may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and future prospects. Our business could be harmed by any of these risks. The trading price of our common stock could decline due to any of these risks, and you may lose all or part of your investment.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
The markets in which we participate are intensely competitive, and if we do not compete effectively our business and operating results will be adversely affected.
The markets for our enterprise cloud solutions are rapidly evolving and highly competitive, with relatively low barriers to entry. As the market for service management matures and new technologies and competitors enter the market, we expect competition to intensify. Our current competitors include:
•large, well-established, enterprise application software vendors;
•solutions developed in-house by our potential customers or using integrations with other tools;
•large integrated systems vendors;
•infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service providers;
•established and emerging cloud vendors; and
•vendors of products and services for development operations.
Many prospective customers have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to implement and integrate their current enterprise software into their businesses and therefore may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate away from their current solution to our enterprise cloud solutions. Many of our competitors and potential competitors are larger, have greater name recognition, longer operating histories, more established customer relationships, larger marketing budgets and greater resources than we do. Further, other potential competitors not currently offering competitive products may expand their services to compete with our services. Acquisitions, integrations and consolidation by and among other companies in our industry may allow potential competitors to offer integrated or bundled products, enhanced functionality, or other advantages, which may impact our competitive position. We have expanded the breadth of our services to include offerings in the markets for IT operations management, customer service management, security operations management, HR service delivery and use of our platform by developers of custom applications. As a result, we expect increasing competition from platform vendors and from application development vendors focused on these other markets. Our competitors may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards, customer requirements and buying practices. In addition, some of our competitors offer their products or services at a lower price, which has resulted in pricing pressures. Larger competitors with more diverse product and service offerings may reduce the price of products or subscriptions that compete with ours or may bundle them with other products and subscriptions. We expect that smaller competitors and new entrants may accelerate pricing pressures, including in the IT service management market, which is our more mature offering and from which we derive the substantial majority of our revenues. For all of these reasons, we may not be able to compete successfully, and competition could result in reduced sales, reduced margins, losses or the failure of our solutions to achieve or maintain market acceptance, any of which could harm our business.
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If we do not accurately predict, prepare for, and respond promptly to rapidly evolving technological, market and customer developments, our competitive position and business prospects may be harmed.
The markets in which we compete continue to evolve rapidly, and the pace of innovation will continue to accelerate, as public and private cloud solutions and infrastructure, massively scalable databases, mobile, workflow, consumer product-like user experiences, social, collaboration, machine learning, artificial intelligence, internet connected devices, robotic automation, security, cryptography, development tools, and other digital technologies increasingly become the basis for customer purchases. At the same time, our customers and prospective customers are either facing their own competitive imperatives to adopt digital technologies, or have been built on fully digital, modern IT technologies, resulting in the ongoing disruption of almost every sector of the global economy. Acquisitions, integrations and consolidation by and among companies in our industry may further accelerate changes in the markets in which we participate. Accordingly, to compete effectively in our rapidly changing markets, we must: identify and innovate in the right emerging technologies among the many in which we could make investments knowing that we cannot make substantial investments in all of them; accurately predict our customers’ changing business needs and priorities, including their technology infrastructures and buying practices; successfully deliver new platform and database technologies and products that scale to meet these needs and priorities; efficiently integrate with other technologies within our customers’ digital environments; profitably market and sell products to companies in markets where our sales and marketing teams have less experience, including to fully digital companies built on modern IT technologies that have historically not been strong buyers of ITSM and ITOM products like ours; and effectively deliver, either directly or through our ecosystem of partners, the business process planning, IT systems architecture planning, and product implementation services that our customers require to be successful. If we fail to meet any of these requirements, our competitive position and business prospects may be harmed.
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Global economic conditions may harm our industry, business and results of operations.
We operate globally and as a result our business and revenues are impacted by global macroeconomic conditions. Global financial developments seemingly unrelated to us or the software industry may harm us. From time to time, the United States and other key international economies have been impacted by geopolitical and economic instability, high levels of credit defaults globally, international trade disputes, falling demand for a variety of goods and services, high levels of persistent unemployment and wage and income stagnation in some geographic markets, restricted credit, poor liquidity, reduced corporate profitability, volatility in credit, equity and foreign exchange markets, bankruptcies, international trade agreements, trade restrictions and overall uncertainty with respect to the economy. These conditions can arise suddenly and affect the rate of information technology spending and could adversely affect our customers’ ability or willingness to purchase our services, delay prospective customers’ purchasing decisions, reduce the value or duration of their subscriptions, or affect renewal rates, all of which could harm our operating results. In 2019, for example, the growth rate in the economy of the EU, China, or the US, trade relations between the US and China, political uncertainty in the Middle East and other geopolitical events could directly or indirectly affect our business. Additionally, in connection with the June 2016 referendum by British voters to exit the EU (Brexit), the United Kingdom (the UK) and the EU announced in March 2018 an agreement in principle to transitional provisions under which E.U. law would remain in force in the UK until the end of December 2020, but this remains subject to the successful conclusion of a final withdrawal agreement between the parties. In the absence of such an agreement, there would be no transitional provisions and a “hard” exit of Britain from the European Union (hard Brexit) would occur on March 29, 2019. Although the terms of the UK’s future relationship with the EU are still unknown, it is possible that there will be a serious disruption of the E.U. financial services leading to global economic consequences and increased regulatory and legal complexities, including potentially divergent national laws and regulations between the UK and the EU. The UK’s exit from the EU may also cause disruption or create uncertainty surrounding our business, including affecting our relationship with our existing and future customers, suppliers and employees and resulting in increased costs or operational challenges.
In addition, the effects, if any, of global financial conditions on our business can be difficult to distinguish from the effects on our business from product, pricing, and other developments in the markets specific to our products and our relative competitive strength. If we make incorrect judgments about our business for this reason our business and results of operations could be adversely affected.
If we or our third-party service providers suffer a cyber-security event, we may lose customers and incur significant liabilities, any of which would harm our business and operating results.
Our operations involve the storage, transmission and processing of our customers’ confidential, proprietary and sensitive data, including personally identifiable information, protected health information, financial information and, in some cases, government information. While we have security measures in place designed to protect customer information and prevent data loss, these measures may be breached as a result of employee error or third-party actions, including unintentional events or deliberate attacks by cyber criminals, and result in someone obtaining unauthorized access to our customers’ data or our data, including our intellectual property and other confidential business information. In addition, third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce employees, contractors, or users to disclose information to gain access to our data or our customers’ data, and we may be the target of email scams that attempt to acquire personal information or company assets. Additionally, because we do not control our third-party service providers, or the processing of data by our third-party service providers, we cannot ensure the integrity or security of measures they take to protect customer information and prevent data loss. Moreover, computer malware, viruses and hacking, phishing and denial of service attacks by third parties have become more prevalent in our industry, and have occurred on our and our third-party service providers’ systems in the past and may occur on these systems in the future. Because techniques used to sabotage or obtain unauthorized access to systems change frequently and generally are not recognized until successfully launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. We devote significant financial and personnel resources to implement and maintain security measures; however, as cyber-security threats develop, evolve, and grow more complex over time, it may be necessary to make significant further investments to protect data and infrastructure. A security breach suffered by us or our third-party service providers, an attack against our service availability or unauthorized access or loss of data could result in a disruption to our service, litigation, the triggering of service availability, indemnification and other contractual obligations, regulatory investigations, government fines and penalties, reputational damage, loss of sales and customers, mitigation and remediation expenses and other significant costs and liabilities. In addition, we may incur significant costs and operational consequences of investigating, remediating, eliminating and putting in place additional tools and devices designed to prevent actual or perceived security incidents, as well as the costs to comply with any notification obligations resulting from any security incidents. We also cannot be certain that our existing insurance coverage will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover the potentially significant losses that may result from a security incident or breach or that the insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim.
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Further, in most instances, our customers administer access to the data held in their particular instance for their own employees and service providers. We offer tools and support for what we believe are best practices to maintain security utilizing our services, but customers are not required to utilize those tools or follow our suggested practices. As a result, or for other reasons, a customer may suffer a cyber-security event on its own systems, unrelated to our own, and as a result of that event, a malicious actor could obtain access to the customer’s information held on our platform. Even if such a breach is unrelated to our own security programs or practices, that breach could result in our incurring significant economic and operational costs in investigating, remediating, eliminating and putting in place additional tools and devices to further protect our customers from their own vulnerabilities, and could also result in reputational harm to us.
As our business grows, we expect our revenue growth rate to continue to decline.
We have experienced significant revenue growth in prior periods; however, our longer-term, revenue growth rate is declining, and we expect that it will continue to decline into the foreseeable future. We also expect our costs to increase in future periods as we continue to invest in our capacity to support anticipated growth. These investments may not result in increased revenues or growth in our business. You should not rely on our revenue for any prior quarterly or annual periods as any indication of our future revenue growth. If we are unable to maintain consistent revenue or revenue growth, our stock price could be volatile.
We may continue to incur losses in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) during future periods.
Although we have recent reported quarterly results that were profitable on a GAAP basis, we have incurred net losses in all fiscal years since our inception. Even if our revenues continue to increase, we may incur losses in accordance with GAAP during future periods due to increased costs such as non-cash charges associated with equity awards, business combinations and other expenses. Additionally, we may encounter unforeseen operating expenses, difficulties, complications, delays and other unforeseen or unpredictable factors that may result in increased costs. Furthermore, it is difficult to predict the size and growth rate of our market, customer demand for our products, customer adoption and renewal rates, and the entry of competitive products or the success of existing competitive products. As a result of these and other factors, we may not maintain profitability in the future, our gross margins and ability to generate cash flow from operations may be negatively impacted. If we fail to increase our revenues sufficiently to keep pace with our growing investments and other expenses, our business, operating results and growth prospects will be adversely affected.
Delays in the release of, or actual or perceived defects in, new or updated products may slow the adoption of our most recent technologies, reduce our ability to efficiently provide our services, decrease customer satisfaction, increase our vulnerability to cyber attacks, and adversely impact sales of additional products to our customers.
We must successfully continue to release new products and updates to existing products. The success of any release depends on a number of factors, including our ability to manage the risks associated with quality or other defects or deficiencies, delays in the timing of releases or the adoption of releases by customers, and other complications that may arise during the early stages of introduction. If releases are delayed or if customers perceive that our releases contain bugs or other defects or are otherwise difficult to implement, customer adoption of our new products or updates may be adversely impacted, customer satisfaction may decrease, our ability to efficiently provide our services may be reduced, and our growth prospects may be harmed.
Various factors, including our customers’ business, integration, migration and security requirements, or errors by us, our partners, or our customers, may cause implementations of our products to be delayed, inefficient or otherwise unsuccessful.
Our business depends upon the successful implementation of our products by our customers. Increasingly, we, as well as our customers, rely on our network of partners to deliver implementation services, and there may not be enough qualified implementation partners available to meet customer demand. Further, various factors, including our customers’ business, integration, migration and security requirements, or errors by us, our partners, or our customers, may cause implementations to be delayed, inefficient or otherwise unsuccessful. For example, changes in the functional requirements of our customers, delays in timeline, or deviation from recommended best practices may occur during the course of an implementation project. As a result of these and other risks, we or our customers may incur significant implementation costs in connection with the purchase, implementation and enablement of our products. Some customer implementations may take longer than planned or fail to meet our customers’ expectations, which may delay our ability to sell additional products or result in customers canceling or failing to renew their subscriptions before our products have been fully implemented. Unsuccessful, lengthy, or costly customer implementation and integration projects could result in claims from customers, harm to our reputation, and opportunities for competitors to displace our products, each of which could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
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Disruptions or defects in our services could damage our customers’ businesses, subject us to substantial liability and harm our reputation and financial results.
From time to time, we experience defects in our services, and new defects may be detected in the future. For example, we provide regular updates to our services, which frequently contain undetected defects when first introduced or released. Defects may also be introduced by our use of third-party software, including open source software. Disruptions may result from errors we make in delivering, configuring or hosting our services, or designing, installing, expanding or maintaining our cloud infrastructure. Disruptions in service can also result from incidents that are outside of our control, including denial of service attacks. We currently serve our customers primarily using equipment managed by us and co-located in third-party data center facilities operated by several different providers located around the world. These centers are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, power loss and similar events. They may also be subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism and similar misconduct, equipment failure and adverse events caused by operator error or negligence. Despite precautions taken at these facilities, problems at these facilities could result in lengthy interruptions in our services and the loss of customer data. In addition, our customers may use our services in ways that cause disruptions in service for other customers. Our customers use our services to manage important aspects of their own businesses, and our reputation and business will be adversely affected if our customers and potential customers believe our services are unreliable. Disruptions or defects in our services may reduce our revenues, cause us to issue credits or pay penalties, subject us to claims and litigation, cause our customers to delay payment or terminate or fail to renew their subscriptions, and adversely affect our ability to attract new customers. The occurrence of payment delays, or service credit, warranty, termination for material breach or other claims against us, could result in an increase in our bad debt expense, an increase in collection cycles for accounts receivable, an increase to our service level credit accruals or other increased expenses or risks of litigation. We may not have insurance sufficient to compensate us for the potentially significant losses that may result from claims arising from disruptions in our services.
Our operating results may vary significantly from period to period, and if we fail to meet the financial performance expectations of investors or securities analysts, the price of our common stock could decline substantially.
Our operating results may vary significantly from period to period as a result of various factors, some of which are beyond our control. For any quarterly or annual period, there is a risk that our financial performance will not meet the financial guidance we have previously given for that period, or that we may otherwise fail to meet the financial performance expectations of the securities analysts who issue reports on our company and our common stock price, or of investors in our common stock. There is also a risk that we may issue forward-looking financial guidance for a quarterly or annual period that fails to meet the expectations of such securities analysts or investors. If any of the foregoing occurs, for any reason either within or outside of our control, the price of our common stock could decline substantially and investors in our common stock could incur substantial losses. Some of the important factors that may cause our revenues, operating results and cash flows to vary widely, or cause our forward-looking financial guidance to fall below the expectations of such securities analysts or investors, include:
• | our ability to attract new customers, retain and increase sales to existing customers, and satisfy our customers’ requirements; |
• | changes in our mix of products and services, including changes in our mix of cloud and self-hosted offerings; |
• | changes in foreign currency exchange rates and our ability to effectively hedge our foreign currency exposure; |
• | the rate of expansion and productivity of our sales force; |
• | the number of new employees added; |
• | the cost, timing and management effort for our development of new products and services; |
• | general economic conditions that may adversely affect either our customers’ ability or willingness to purchase additional subscriptions, delay a prospective customer’s purchasing decision, reduce the value of new subscription contracts or adversely affect renewal rates; |
• | the amount and timing of operating costs and capital expenditures related to the operation and expansion of our business; |
• | seasonality in terms of when we enter into customer agreements for our services; |
• | the length of the sales cycle for our services; |
• | changes to our management team; |
• | changes in our pricing policies, whether initiated by us or as a result of competition; |
• | significant security breaches, technical difficulties or interruptions of our services; |
• | new solutions, products or changes in pricing policies introduced by our competitors; |
• | changes in effective tax rates; |
• | changes in the average contract term of our customer agreements, changes in timing of renewals and changes in billings duration; |
• | changes in our renewal rates and expansion within our existing customers; |
• | the timing of customer payments and payment defaults by customers; |
• | extraordinary expenses such as litigation costs or damages, including settlement payments; |
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• | the costs associated with acquiring new businesses and technologies and the follow-on costs of integration, including the tax effects of acquisitions; |
• | the impact of new accounting pronouncements; |
• | changes in laws or regulations impacting the delivery of our services; |
• | our ability to comply with privacy laws and regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (the CCPA); |
• | significant litigation or regulatory actions relating to claims of intellectual property infringement, violation of privacy laws, employment matters or any other significant matter; |
• | the amount and timing of equity awards and the related financial statement expenses; and |
• | our ability to accurately estimate the total addressable market for our products and services. |
Changes in our effective tax rate could impact our financial results.
We are subject to income taxes in the United States and various foreign jurisdictions. We believe that our provision for income taxes is reasonable, but the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our financial statements and may materially affect our financial results in the period or periods in which such outcome is determined. Our effective tax rate could be adversely affected by changes in the mix of earnings and losses in countries with differing statutory tax rates, certain non-deductible expenses, the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities and the effects of acquisitions. Increases in our effective tax rate would reduce our profitability or in some cases increase our losses.
Additionally, our future effective tax rate could be impacted by changes in accounting principles or changes in U.S. federal, state or international tax laws or tax rulings. The U.S. enacted significant tax reform under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the Tax Act). The U.S. Department of Treasury has broad authority to issue regulations and interpretative guidance that may significantly impact how we will apply the law, which could affect our results of operations in the period issued. Many countries and organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are actively considering changes to existing tax laws or have proposed or enacted new laws that could increase our tax obligations in countries where we do business or cause us to change the way we operate our business. Recent global tax developments applicable to multinational businesses and increased scrutiny under tax examinations could have a material impact on our business and negatively affect our financial results. Any changes in federal, state or international tax laws or tax rulings may increase our worldwide effective tax rate and harm our financial position and results of operations.
In addition, we may be subject to income tax audits by tax jurisdictions throughout the world, many of which have not established clear guidance on the tax treatment of cloud computing companies. Although we believe our income tax liabilities are reasonably estimated and accounted for in accordance with applicable laws and principles, an adverse resolution of one or more uncertain tax positions in any period could have a material impact on our results of operations for that period.
Our financial results may be adversely affected by changes in accounting principles applicable to us.
We prepare our financial statements in accordance with GAAP, which are subject to interpretation or changes by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the SEC and other bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. New accounting pronouncements and changes in accounting principles have occurred in the past and are expected to occur in the future, which may have a significant effect on our financial results. For example, in May 2014, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2014-09, “Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606),” which became effective for our interim and annual periods beginning January 1, 2018. Refer to Note 2 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information on Topic 606 and its impact on us. If modifications to our accounting systems and internal controls implemented for the adoption of new accounting principles such as Topic 606 are insufficient, our financial position and operating results could be adversely affected.
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Foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations could harm our financial results.
We conduct significant transactions, including revenue transactions and intercompany transactions, in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar or the functional operating currency of the transactional entities. In addition, our international subsidiaries maintain significant net assets that are denominated in currencies other than the functional operating currencies of these entities. Accordingly, changes in the value of currencies relative to the U.S. Dollar may impact our consolidated revenues and operating results due to transactional and translational remeasurement that is reflected in our earnings. It is particularly difficult to forecast any impact from exchange rate movements, so there is risk that unanticipated currency fluctuations could adversely affect our financial results or cause our results to differ from investor expectations or our own guidance in any future periods. In addition, the announcement of Brexit adversely impacted global markets, including currencies, and resulted in a decline in the value of the British pound, as compared to the U.S. Dollar and other currencies. Volatility in exchange rates and global financial markets is expected to continue due to a number of factors, including uncertainty surrounding Brexit and the recent political and economic uncertainty globally.
In 2018, we began using derivative instruments, such as foreign currency forwards, to hedge certain exposures to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. These hedging contracts may reduce, but cannot entirely eliminate, the impact of adverse currency exchange rate movements. Further, unanticipated changes in currency exchange rates may result in poorer overall financial performance than if we had not engaged in any such hedging transactions. Moreover, for a number of reasons, including our limited experience with these hedging contracts, we may not seek or be able to establish a perfect correlation between such hedging instruments and the exposures being hedged. Any such imperfect correlation may prevent us from achieving the intended hedge, and could and expose us to a greater overall risk of loss than had we not undertaken the hedging strategy.
Lawsuits against us by third-parties that allege we infringe their intellectual property rights could harm our business and operating results.
There is considerable patent and other intellectual property development activity in our industry. Many companies in our industry, including our competitors and other third parties, as well as non-practicing entities, own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets, which they may use to assert claims of patent infringement, misappropriation or other violations of intellectual property rights against us.
Moreover, the patent portfolios of most of our competitors are larger than ours. This disparity may increase the risk that our competitors may sue us for patent infringement and may limit our ability to counterclaim for patent infringement or settle through patent cross-licenses. From time to time, our competitors or other third parties, including patent holding companies seeking to monetize patents they have purchased or otherwise obtained, may claim that we are infringing upon their intellectual property rights. For example, we recorded charges for aggregate legal settlements of $270.0 million in our consolidated statement of comprehensive loss during the year ended December 31, 2016. The charge covers the fulfillment by us of all financial obligations under settlement agreements with BMC and HPE, with no remaining financial obligations to BMC or HPE under either settlement.
In any intellectual property litigation, regardless of the scope or merits of the claims at issue, we may incur substantial attorney’s fees and other litigation expenses and, if the claims are successfully asserted against us and we are found to be infringing upon the intellectual property rights of others, we could be required to: pay substantial damages and/or make substantial ongoing royalty payments; cease offering our products and services; modify our products and services; comply with other unfavorable terms, including settlement terms; and indemnify our customers and business partners and obtain costly licenses on their behalf and refund fees or other payments previously paid to us. Further, upon expiration of the term of any third-party agreements that allow us to use their intellectual property, we may be unable to renew such agreements on favorable terms, if at all, in which case we may face intellectual property litigation. The mere existence of any lawsuit, or any interim or final outcomes, and the course of its conduct and the public statements related to it (or absence of such statements) by the courts, press, analysts and litigants, could be unsettling to our customers and prospective customers and could cause an adverse impact to our customer satisfaction and related renewal rates and cause us to lose potential sales, and could also be unsettling to investors or prospective investors in our common stock and could cause a substantial decline in the price of our common stock. Accordingly, any claim or litigation against us could be costly, time-consuming and divert the attention of our management and key personnel from our business operations and harm our financial condition and operating results.
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Our intellectual property protections may not provide us with a competitive advantage, and defending our intellectual property may result in substantial expenses that harm our operating results.
Our success depends to a significant degree on our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand under a combination of patent and other intellectual property laws of the United States and other jurisdictions. Though we seek patent protection for our technology, we may not be successful in obtaining patent protection, and any patents acquired in the future may not provide us with competitive advantages, or may be successfully challenged by third parties. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain. Any of our intellectual property rights may be challenged by others or invalidated through administrative process or litigation. Effective patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret protection may not be available to us in every country in which our services are available. The laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be inadequate. We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights. We have initiated, and in the future may initiate, claims or litigation against third parties for infringement of our proprietary rights or to establish the validity of our proprietary rights. Any litigation, whether or not it is resolved in our favor, could result in significant expense to us, divert the efforts of our technical and management personnel and may result in counter-claims with respect to infringement of intellectual property rights by us. If we are unable to prevent third parties from infringing upon or misappropriating our intellectual property, or are required to incur substantial expenses in defending our intellectual property rights, our business and operating results may be adversely affected.
If we are unsuccessful in increasing our penetration of international markets or managing the risks associated with foreign markets, our business and operating results will be adversely affected.
Sales outside of North America represented approximately 34% and 33% of our total revenues for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively. Our business and future prospects depend on increasing our international sales as a percentage of our total revenues, and the failure to grow internationally will harm our business. Additionally, operating in international markets requires significant investment and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, political and economic risks that are different from those in the United States. We have made, and will continue to make, substantial investments in data centers and cloud computing infrastructure, sales, marketing, personnel and facilities as we enter and expand in new geographic markets. When we make these investments, it is typically unclear whether, and when, sales in the new market will justify our investments, and we may significantly underestimate the level of investment and time required to be successful, or whether we will be successful. Our rate of acquisition of new large enterprise customers, a factor effecting our growth, has generally been lower in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America and other markets in which we are less established and where there may be increased operational and intellectual property risks, as compared to North America, Australia and areas within Western Europe. An increasing proportion of the large enterprises that are not yet our customers are located in emerging markets where we are less established. We have experienced, and may continue to experience, difficulties in some of our investments in geographic expansion, including in hiring qualified sales management personnel, penetrating the target market, and/or managing foreign operations in such locales.
Risks inherent with international sales include without limitation:
• | compliance with multiple, conflicting and changing governmental laws and regulations, including employment, tax, competition, privacy and data protection laws and regulations, including the GDPR; |
• | compliance by us and our business partners with international bribery and anti-corruption laws, including the UK Bribery Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; |
• | the risk that illegal or unethical activities of our local employees or business partners will be attributed to or result in liability to us or damage to reputation; |
• | longer and potentially more complex sales cycles; |
• | longer accounts receivable payment cycles and other collection difficulties; |
• | tax treatment of revenues from international sources and changes to tax codes, including being subject to foreign tax laws and being liable for paying withholding, income or other taxes in foreign jurisdictions; |
• | different pricing and distribution environments; |
• | foreign currency fluctuations, which may cause transactional and translational remeasurement losses; |
• | potential changes in international trade policies, agreements and practices, including the adoption and expansion of formal or informal trade restrictions or regulatory frameworks or business practices favoring local competitors; |
• | potential threatening state-sponsored actions, including cybersecurity threats, directed at local data centers, customers or end-users; |
• | local business practices and cultural norms that may favor local competitors; and |
• | localization of our services, including translation into foreign languages and associated expenses. |
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If we are unable to manage these risks, if our required investments in these international markets are greater than anticipated, or if we are unsuccessful in increasing sales in emerging markets, our revenue growth rate, business and operating results will be adversely affected.
We do business with federal, state and local governments, government agencies, and heavily regulated organizations in the U.S. and in foreign jurisdictions; as a result we face risks related to the procurement process, budget decisions driven by statutory and regulatory determinations, termination of contracts, and compliance with government contracting requirements.
We provide products and services to the U.S. government by leveraging our partner ecosystem and to a number of state and local governments and heavily-regulated organizations both through our partners and directly, and we have made, and may continue to make, significant investments to support future sales opportunities in the federal, state and local government sectors. A substantial majority of our sales to date to government entities have been made indirectly through our distribution and reseller partners. Doing business with government entities presents a variety of risks. Among other risks, the procurement process for governments and their agencies is highly competitive and can be time-consuming, requiring us to incur significant up-front time and expense, such as engaging lobbyists, which subjects us to additional compliance risks and costs, without any assurance that we (or a third-party reseller) will win a contract. Beyond this, demand for our products and services may be impacted by public sector budgetary cycles and funding availability; funding in any given fiscal cycle may be reduced or delayed, including in connection with an extended federal government shutdown, which could adversely impact demand for our products and services. In addition, public sector and heavily-regulated customers may have contractual, statutory or regulatory rights to terminate current contracts with us or our third-party distributors or resellers for convenience or due to a default, though such risk may be assumed by such third-party distributor or reseller. If a contract is terminated for convenience, we may only be able to collect fees for products or services delivered prior to termination and settlement expenses. If a contract is terminated due to a default, we may be liable for excess costs incurred by the customer for procuring alternative products or services or be precluded from doing further business with government entities. Further, entities providing services to governments are required to comply with a variety of complex laws, regulations, and contractual provisions relating to the formation, administration, or performance of government contracts that give public sector customers substantial rights and remedies, many of which are not typically found in commercial contracts. These may include rights with respect to price protection, the accuracy of information provided to the government, contractor compliance with supplier diversity policies, and other terms that are particular to government contracts, such as termination rights. These rules may apply to us and/or third parties through whom we resell our products and services and whose practices we may not control, where such parties’ non-compliance could impose repercussions with respect to contractual and customer satisfaction issues. Federal, state, and local governments routinely investigate and audit contractors for compliance with these requirements. If, as a result of an audit or review, it is determined that we have failed to comply with these requirements, we may be subject to civil and criminal penalties and administrative sanctions, including termination of contracts, forfeiture of profits, cost associated with the triggering of price reduction clauses, fines, and suspensions or debarment from future government business, and we may suffer harm to our reputation.
Our customers also include a number of non-U.S. governments. Similar procurement, budgetary, contract, and audit risks that apply in the context of U.S. government contracting also apply to our doing business with these entities, particularly in certain emerging markets where our customer base is less established. In addition, compliance with complex regulations and contracting provisions in a variety of jurisdictions can be expensive and consume significant management resources. In certain jurisdictions, our ability to win business may be constrained by political and other factors unrelated to our competitive position in the market. Additionally, many of our current and prospective customers, such as those in the financial services and health care industries, are highly regulated and may be required to comply with more stringent regulations in connection with subscribing to and implementing our services. Each of these difficulties could materially adversely affect our business and results of operations.
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If we fail to comply with anti-corruption laws, including the FCPA and similar laws associated with our activities outside of the United States, as well as general trade regulations, including but not limited to economic sanctions and embargoes, we could be subject to penalties, our business could be materially adversely affected and we could be subject to civil and/or criminal sanctions.
We are subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (FCPA), the U.S. domestic bribery statute contained in 18 U.S.C. §201, the UK Bribery Act, and possibly other anti-bribery laws in countries in which we conduct activities. We face significant risks if we fail to comply with the FCPA and other anti-corruption laws that prohibit companies and their employees and third-party intermediaries from promising, authorizing, offering, or providing, directly or indirectly, improper payments or benefits to foreign government officials, political parties, and private-sector recipients for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business, directing business to any person, or securing any advantage. In addition, we use various third parties to sell our solution and conduct our business abroad. We or our third-party intermediaries may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities and we can be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of these third-party intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, partners, and agents, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities. We have implemented and continue to update an anti-corruption compliance program but cannot assure you that all of our employees and agents, as well as those companies to which we outsource certain of our business operations, will not take actions in violation of our policies and applicable law, for which we may be ultimately held responsible.
As we continue to expand our business internationally, we will inevitably do more business with large enterprises and the public sector in countries that are perceived to have heightened levels of public sector corruption. Increased business in countries perceived to have heightened levels of corruption could subject us and our officers and directors to increased scrutiny and increased liability from our business operations.
In addition, we are subject to compliance with general trade regulations relating to doing business outside the United States, including certain restrictions on conducting trade in certain restricted countries or with certain entities or individuals.
Any violation of the FCPA, other applicable anti-corruption laws general trade regulations by our own employees or our third-party intermediaries, could result in regulatory investigations, whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage and/or severe criminal or civil sanctions, which could have a materially adverse effect on our reputation, business, operating results, and prospects. In addition, responding to any enforcement action may result in a significant diversion of management’s attention and resources and significant defense costs.
If we lose key employees or are unable to attract and retain the employees we need, our business and operating results will be adversely affected.
Our success depends largely upon the continued services of our management team, including our Chief Executive Officer, and many key individual contributors. From time to time in the ordinary course of business, there may be changes in our management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives. While we seek to manage these transitions carefully, including by establishing strong processes and procedures and succession planning, such changes may result in a loss of institutional knowledge and cause disruptions to our business.
In the technology industry, there is substantial and continuous competition for engineers with high levels of experience in designing, developing and managing software and Internet-related solutions, as well as competition for sales executives and operations personnel. We may not be successful in attracting and retaining qualified personnel. We have from time to time experienced, and we may continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining highly skilled employees with appropriate qualifications, and may not be able to fill positions in desired geographic areas or at all. In particular, competition for experienced software and cloud computing infrastructure engineers in the San Francisco Bay area, San Diego, Seattle, London, Amsterdam and Hyderabad, our primary operating locations, is intense. Our employees, including our executive officers, are employed by us on an “at-will” basis, which means they may terminate their employment with us at any time. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects could be adversely affected.
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Privacy laws and concerns, evolving regulation of cloud computing, cross-border data transfer restrictions, other foreign and domestic regulations and standards related to personal data and the Internet may adversely affect our business.
National and local governments or agencies have in the past adopted, and may in the future adopt, laws and regulations affecting data privacy, the use of the Internet as a commercial medium, and data sovereignty requirements concerning the location of data centers that store and process data. Changing laws, regulations and standards applying to the collection, transfer, processing, storage or use of personal data could affect our customers’ ability to use and share data, potentially restricting our ability to store, process and share data with our customers in connection with providing our services, and in some cases, could impact our ability to offer our services in certain locations or our customers’ ability to deploy our services globally. For example, in 2016 the EU adopted the GDPR, which took effect on May 25, 2018 and established new requirements applicable to the handling of personal data. In the United Kingdom, a Data Protection Bill that substantially implements the GDPR also became law in May 2018. Further, laws such as the EU’s proposed e-Privacy Regulation are increasingly aimed at the use of personal information for marketing purposes, the tracking of individuals’ online activities and the “right to be forgotten,” requiring a company to delete certain information about individuals upon their request in certain circumstances. Although we do not believe Brexit will require us to alter our operations in any material way, Brexit may cause uncertainty for our customers. In addition, in June 2018 the CCPA was signed into law, which takes effect in July 2020 and broadly defines personal information and provides California consumers increased privacy rights and protections. The CCPA will, among other things, require covered companies to provide new disclosures to California consumers, and afford such consumers new abilities to opt-out of certain sales of personal information, when it goes into effect on July 1, 2020. Legislators have stated that they intend to propose amendments to the CCPA before it goes into effect, and it remains unclear what, if any, modifications will be made to this legislation or how it will be interpreted. The effects of the CCPA potentially are significant, however, and may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply.
The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, the GDPR, the e-Privacy Regulation, the CCPA and other privacy laws, regulations and standards may cause us to incur substantial operational costs or require us to modify our data handling practices, may limit the use and adoption of our services and reduce overall demand for our services. In addition, non-compliance could result in proceedings against us by governmental entities or others, significant fines, and may otherwise adversely impact our business, financial condition and operating results.
In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy groups and other technology and industry groups have established or may establish various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. Our customers may expect us to meet voluntary certifications or adhere to other standards established by third parties. If we are unable to maintain these certifications or meet these standards, it could reduce demand for our applications and adversely affect our business.
Because we generally recognize revenues from our subscription service over the subscription term, a decrease in new subscriptions or renewals during a reporting period may not be immediately reflected in our operating results for that period.
We generally recognize revenues from customers ratably over the terms of their subscriptions. Net new ACV from new subscriptions, expansion contracts and renewals entered into during a period can generally be expected to generate revenue for the duration of the subscription term. As a result, most of the revenues we report in each period are derived from the recognition of deferred revenues relating to subscriptions entered into during previous periods. Consequently, a decrease in new or renewed subscriptions in any single reporting period will have a limited impact on our revenues for that period. In addition, our ability to adjust our cost structure in the event of a decrease in new or renewed subscriptions may be limited.
Further, a decline in new subscriptions or renewals in a given period may not be fully reflected in our revenues for that period, but will negatively affect our revenues in future periods. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our services, and changes in our rate of renewals, may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenues through additional sales in any period, as revenues from new customers are generally recognized over the applicable subscription term. Additionally, due to the complexity of certain of our customer contracts, the actual revenue recognition treatment required under Topic 606 will depend on contract-specific terms and may result in greater variability in revenues from period to period.
In addition, a decrease in new subscriptions or renewals in a reporting period may not have an immediate impact on billings for that period due to factors that may offset the decrease, such as an increase in billings duration, the dollar value of contracts with future start dates, or the dollar value of collections in the current period related to contracts with future start dates.
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We rely on our network of partners for a portion of our revenues, and if these partners fail to perform, our ability to sell and distribute our products may be limited, and our operating results may be harmed.
A portion of our revenues is generated by sales through our network of partners, including distributors and resellers. In addition, we increasingly rely on our partners to provide professional services, including customer implementations. While we provide our partners with training and programs, including accreditations and certifications, these programs may not be effective or utilized consistently. In addition, new partners may require extensive training and may take significant time and resources to achieve productivity. Our partners may subject us to lawsuits, potential liability, and reputational harm if, for example, any of our partners misrepresent the functionality of our platform or products to customers, fail to perform services to our customers’ expectations, or violate laws or our corporate policies. In addition, our partners may utilize our platform to develop products and services that could potentially compete with products and services that we offer currently or in the future. Concerns over competitive matters or intellectual property ownership could constrain these partnerships. If we fail to effectively manage and grow our network of partners, or properly monitor the quality and efficacy of their service delivery, our ability to sell our products and efficiently provide our services may be impacted, and our operating results may be harmed.
As we acquire or invest in companies and technologies, we may not realize the expected business or financial benefits and the acquisitions and investments may divert our management’s attention and result in additional dilution to our stockholders.
We have acquired or invested in companies and technologies in the past as part of our business strategy and may continue to evaluate (and from time to time, execute) potential strategic transactions, including acquisitions of, or investments in, businesses, technologies, services, products and other assets in the future. We also may enter into relationships with other businesses to expand our service offerings, functionality or our ability to provide services in international locations, which could involve preferred or exclusive licenses, additional channels of distribution, discount pricing or investments in other companies. Although we conduct a reasonably extensive due diligence with each of the entities with which we engage for a potential strategic transaction, our due diligence efforts may not reveal every material concern that may exist either with respect to the target entity or our assumptions surrounding the resulting combination. Acquisitions and investments involve numerous risks, including:
• | assimilating or integrating the businesses, technologies, products, personnel or operations of the acquired companies; |
• | failing to achieve the expected benefits of the acquisition or investment; |
• | potential loss of key employees of the acquired company; |
• | inability to maintain relationships with customers and partners of the acquired business; |
• | unanticipated expenses related to acquired technology and its integration into our existing technology; |
• | potential adverse tax consequences; |
• | inability to generate sufficient revenue to offset acquisition or investment costs; |
• | disruption to our business and diversion of management attention and other resources; |
• | potential financial and credit risks associated with acquired customers; |
• | dependence on acquired technologies or licenses for which alternatives may not be available to us without significant cost or complexity; |
• | in the case of foreign acquisitions, the challenges associated with integrating operations across different cultures and languages and any currency and regulatory risks associated with specific countries; and |
• | potential unknown liabilities associated with the acquired businesses. |
In addition, we may have to pay cash, incur debt, or issue equity or equity-linked securities to pay for any future acquisitions, each of which could adversely affect our financial condition or the market price of our common stock. Furthermore, if we finance acquisitions by issuing equity or convertible or other debt securities or loans, our existing stockholders may be diluted, or we could face constraints related to the terms of and repayment obligation related to the incurrence of indebtedness that could affect the market price of our common stock. The occurrence of any of these risks could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.
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Our use of open source software could harm our ability to sell our services and subject us to possible litigation.
Our products incorporate software licensed to us by third-party authors under open source licenses, and we expect to continue to incorporate open source software into other services in the future. We attempt to monitor our use of open source software in an effort to avoid subjecting our services to adverse licensing conditions. However, there can be no assurance that our efforts have been or will be successful. There is little or no legal precedent governing the interpretation of the terms of open source licenses, and therefore the potential impact of these terms on our business is uncertain and enforcement of these terms may result in unanticipated obligations regarding our services and technologies. For example, depending on which open source license governs open source software included within our services or technologies, we may be subjected to conditions requiring us to offer our services to users at no cost; make available the source code for modifications and derivative works based upon, incorporating or using the open source software; and license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of the particular open source license. Moreover, if an author or other third party that distributes such open source software were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal costs defending ourselves against such allegations, be subject to significant damages or be enjoined from the distribution of our services.
If we are unable to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, the accuracy and timeliness of our financial reporting may be adversely affected.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires us, among other things, to assess and report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting annually and disclosure controls and procedures quarterly. In addition, our independent registered public accounting firm is required to audit the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act annually. Our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our controls are documented, designed or operating. Moreover, our testing, or the subsequent testing by our independent registered public accounting firm, may reveal material weaknesses or significant deficiencies. If material weaknesses are identified or we are not able to comply with the requirements of Section 404 in a timely manner, our reported financial results could be materially misstated or could subsequently require restatement, we could receive an adverse opinion regarding our internal control over financial reporting from our independent registered public accounting firm, we could be subject to investigations or sanctions by regulatory authorities and we could incur substantial expenses. New accounting principles, such as the new revenue recognition standards that became effective for us beginning January 1, 2018, require significant changes to our existing processes and controls. We may not be able to effectively implement system and process changes required for new standards on a timely basis. Any delays or failure to update our systems and processes could also lead to a material weakness or significant deficiency.
Natural disasters and other events beyond our control could harm our business.
Natural disasters or other catastrophic events may cause damage or disruption to our operations, international commerce and the global economy, and thus could have a negative effect on us. Our business operations are subject to interruption by natural disasters, flooding, fire, power shortages, pandemics, terrorism, political unrest, telecommunications failure, vandalism, cyber-attacks, geopolitical instability, war, the effects of climate change (such as drought, wildfires, increased storm severity and sea level rise) and other events beyond our control. Although we maintain crisis management and disaster response plans, such events could make it difficult or impossible for us to deliver our services to our customers, could decrease demand for our services, and could cause us to incur substantial expense. Our insurance may not be sufficient to cover losses or additional expense that we may sustain in connection with any natural disaster. The majority of our research and development activities, corporate offices, information technology systems, and other critical business operations are located near major seismic faults in California and Washington. Customer data could be lost, significant recovery time could be required to resume operations and our financial condition and operating results could be adversely affected in the event of a major natural disaster or catastrophic event.
20
Risks Related to Our Convertible Senior Notes
We may not have the ability to raise the funds necessary to settle conversions of our convertible senior notes due 2022 (the 2022 Notes) in cash or to repurchase the 2022 Notes upon a fundamental change, and our future debt may contain limitations on our ability to pay cash upon conversion or repurchase of the 2022 Notes.
Holders of the 2022 Notes have the right to require us to repurchase all or a portion of their 2022 Notes upon the occurrence of a fundamental change (as defined in the indenture for the 2022 Notes) at a repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the 2022 Notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid special interest, if any. In addition, if a make-whole fundamental change (as defined in the indenture for the 2022 Notes) occurs prior to the maturity date of the 2022 Notes, we will in some cases be required to increase the conversion rate for a holder that elects to convert its 2022 Notes in connection with such make-whole fundamental change. Upon conversion of the 2022 Notes, unless we elect to deliver solely shares of our common stock to settle such conversion (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional shares), we will be required to make cash payments in respect of the 2022 Notes being converted. However, we may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing at the time we are required to make repurchases of the 2022 Notes surrendered therefor or pay cash with respect to the 2022 Notes being converted.
We and our subsidiaries may incur substantial additional debt in the future, subject to the restrictions contained in our future debt instruments, some of which may be secured debt. We are not restricted under the terms of the indenture governing the 2022 Notes from incurring additional debt, securing existing or future debt, recapitalizing our debt or taking a number of other actions that could have the effect of diminishing our ability to make payments on the 2022 Notes when due. Furthermore, the indenture for the 2022 Notes prohibits us from engaging in certain mergers or acquisitions unless, among other things, the surviving entity assumes our obligations under the 2022 Notes and the indenture. These and other provisions in the indenture could deter or prevent a third party from acquiring us even when the acquisition may be favorable to holders of the 2022 Notes.
In addition, our ability to repurchase or to pay cash upon conversion of the 2022 Notes may be limited by law, regulatory authority or agreements governing our future indebtedness. Our failure to repurchase the 2022 Notes at a time when the repurchase is required by each indenture or to pay cash upon conversion of the 2022 Notes as required by the indenture would constitute a default. A default under the indenture or the fundamental change itself could also lead to a default under agreements governing our future indebtedness. Moreover, the occurrence of a fundamental change under the indenture could constitute an event of default under any such agreements. If the payment of the related indebtedness were to be accelerated after any applicable notice or grace periods, we may not have sufficient funds to repay the indebtedness and repurchase the 2022 Notes, or to pay cash upon conversion of the 2022 Notes.
The conditional conversion feature of the 2022 Notes may adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.
Prior to the business day immediately preceding February 1, 2022, the holders of the 2022 Notes may elect to convert their notes during any calendar quarter (and only during such calendar quarter) if the last reported sale price of our common stock for at least 20 trading days during the period of 30 consecutive trading days ending on the last trading day of the immediately preceding calendar quarter is greater than or equal to $175.18 (the Conversion Condition). The Conversion Condition was met for the 2022 Notes during the three months ended June 30, 2018 and September 30, 2018. Therefore, the 2022 Notes became convertible at the holders’ option beginning on July 1, 2018 and continued to be convertible at the holders’ option through December 31, 2018. The Conversion Condition was not met for the 2022 Notes for the three months ended December 31, 2018, and therefore the 2022 Notes are not convertible at the holders’ option for the quarter ending March 31, 2019. If one or more holders elect to convert their 2022 Notes in future periods, unless we elect to satisfy our conversion obligation by delivering solely shares of our common stock (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we may settle all or a portion of our conversion obligation in cash, which could adversely affect our liquidity and result in a material adverse effect on our financial position, results of operations and cash flows. In addition, to the extent we receive conversion requests, we may also record a loss on early conversions of the 2022 Notes converted by noteholders based on the difference between the fair market value allocated to the liability component on the settlement date and the net carrying amount of the liability component and unamortized debt issuance on the settlement date.
21
The convertible note hedge and warrant transactions may affect the value of the 2022 Notes and our common stock.
In connection with the sale of the 2022 Notes and our convertible senior notes due 2018 (the 2018 Notes), we entered into convertible note hedge (the 2022 Note Hedge and 2018 Note Hedge, respectively) transactions with certain financial institutions (option counterparties). We also entered into warrant transactions with the option counterparties pursuant to which we sold warrants for the purchase of our common stock (the 2022 Warrants and 2018 Warrants, respectively). The 2018 Note Hedge offset the dilution and cash payments in excess of the principal amount of the converted 2018 Notes and expired upon the maturity date of the 2018 Notes, which was November 1, 2018. The 2022 Note Hedge is expected generally to reduce the potential dilution upon any conversion of the 2022 Notes and/or offset any cash payments we are required to make in excess of the principal amount of converted 2022 Notes, as the case may be. The warrant transactions could separately have a dilutive effect to the extent that the market price per share of our common stock exceeds the exercise price of the 2022 Warrants or 2018 Warrants, which is $203.40 and $107.46, respectively. As the 2018 Warrants and the 2022 Warrants will be net share settled, the total number of shares of our common stock we will issue depends on the daily volume-weighted average stock prices over a 60 trading day period beginning on the first expiration date of the 2018 Warrants, which is was February 1, 2019, and the first expiration date of the 2022 Warrants, which will be September 1, 2022. We have issued and expect to continue to issue additional shares of our common stock in the first half of 2019 upon the automatic exercise of the 2018 Warrants. Additionally, we expect to issue additional shares of our common stock in the second half of 2022 upon the automatic exercise of the 2022 Warrants. Based on the volume-weighted average stock price on February 1, 2019, the total number of shares of our common stock to be issued upon the exercise of the 2018 Warrants would be approximately 4.0 million, resulting in immediate and substantial dilution to our existing stockholders. Similarly, the 2022 Warrants could have a dilutive effect to the extent that the daily volume-weighted average stock prices over a 60 trading day period beginning on September 1, 2022 exceeds the strike price of the 2022 Warrants. Based on the volume-weighted average stock price on February 1, 2019, the total number of shares of our common stock to be issued upon the automatic exercise of the 2022 warrants would be approximately 0.4 million. The actual number of shares of our common stock issuable upon the automatic exercise of the 2022 warrants, if any, is unknown at this time. Refer to Note 11 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.
The option counterparties and/or their respective affiliates may modify their hedge positions by entering into or unwinding various derivatives with respect to our common stock and/or purchasing or selling our common stock in secondary market transactions prior to the maturity of the 2022 Notes (and are likely to do so during any observation period related to a conversion of the 2022 Notes, or following any repurchase of the 2022 Notes by us on any fundamental change repurchase date (as defined in the indentures for the 2022 Notes) or otherwise). This activity could also cause or avoid an increase or a decrease in the market price of our common stock or the 2022 Notes, which could affect note holders’ ability to convert the 2022 Notes and, to the extent the activity occurs during any observation period related to a conversion of the 2022 Notes, it could affect the amount and value of the consideration that note holders will receive upon conversion of the 2022 Notes.
The potential effect, if any, of these transactions and activities on the market price of our common stock or the 2022 Notes will depend in part on market conditions and cannot be ascertained at this time. Any of these activities could adversely affect the value of our common stock and the value of the 2022 Notes (and as a result, the value of the consideration, the amount of cash and/or the number of shares, if any, that note holders would receive upon the conversion of any 2022 Notes) and, under certain circumstances, the ability of the note holders to convert the 2022 Notes.
We do not make any representation or prediction as to the direction or magnitude of any potential effect that the transactions described above may have on the price of the 2022 Notes or our common stock. In addition, we do not make any representation that the option counterparties will engage in these transactions or that these transactions, once commenced, will not be discontinued without notice.
We are subject to counterparty risk with respect to the 2022 Note Hedge.
The option counterparties are financial institutions, and we will be subject to the risk that any or all of them may default under the 2022 Note Hedge. Our exposure to the credit risk of the option counterparties will not be secured by any collateral. Recent global economic conditions have resulted in the actual or perceived failure or financial difficulties of many financial institutions. If an option counterparty becomes subject to insolvency proceedings, we will become an unsecured creditor in those proceedings, with a claim equal to our exposure at that time under our transactions with that option counterparty. Our exposure will depend on many factors but, generally, an increase in our exposure will be correlated to an increase in the market price and in the volatility of our common stock. In addition, upon a default by an option counterparty, we may suffer adverse tax consequences and more dilution than we currently anticipate with respect to our common stock. We can provide no assurances as to the financial stability or viability of the option counterparties.
22
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
The market price of our common stock has historically been and is likely to continue to be volatile and could subject us to litigation.
The trading price of our common stock has been, and is likely to continue to be, volatile and could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control. In addition, the trading prices of the securities of technology companies in general have been highly volatile, and the volatility in market price and trading volume of securities is often unrelated or disproportionate to the financial performance of the companies issuing the securities. Factors affecting the market price of our common stock, some of which are beyond our control, include:
• | changes in the estimates of our operating results or changes in recommendations by securities analysts that elect to follow our common stock; |
• | announcements of new products, services or technologies, new applications or enhancements to services, strategic alliances, acquisitions, or other significant events by us or by our competitors; |
• | fluctuations in the valuation of companies perceived by investors to be comparable to us, such as high-growth or cloud companies; |
• | changes to our management team; |
• | trading activity by directors, executive officers and significant stockholders, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell their shares; |
• | the size of our market float; |
• | the volume of trading in our common stock, including sales upon exercise of outstanding options or vesting of equity awards or sales and purchases of any common stock issued upon conversion of the 2022 Notes or in connection with the 2022 Note Hedge and 2022 Warrant transactions relating to the 2022 Notes, or 2018 Warrant transactions relating to the 2018 Notes; |
• | the economy as a whole, market conditions in our industry, and the industries of our customers; and |
• | overall performance of the equity markets. |
Following periods of volatility in the market price of a company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been brought against that company. Securities litigation could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and resources from our business. This could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We do not intend to pay dividends on our common stock, so any returns will be limited to changes in the value of our common stock.
We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our common stock. We currently anticipate that we will retain future earnings for the development, operation and expansion of our business and do not anticipate declaring or paying any cash dividends for the foreseeable future. In addition, our ability to pay cash dividends on our common stock may be prohibited or limited by the terms of any future debt financing arrangement. Any return to stockholders will therefore be limited to the increase, if any, of our stock price.
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Provisions in our charter documents, Delaware law, our 2022 Notes might discourage, delay or prevent a change of control of our company or changes in our management and, therefore, depress the market price of our common stock.
Our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws contain provisions that could depress the market price of our common stock by acting to discourage, delay or prevent a change in control of our company or changes in our management that the stockholders of our company may deem advantageous. These provisions among other things:
• | establish a classified board of directors so that not all members of our board are elected at one time; |
• | permit the board of directors to establish the number of directors; |
• | provide that directors may only be removed “for cause” and only with the approval of 66 2/3% of our stockholders; |
• | require super-majority voting to amend some provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws; |
• | authorize the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock that our board could use to implement a stockholder rights plan; |
• | eliminate the ability of our stockholders to call special meetings of stockholders; |
• | prohibit stockholder action by written consent, which requires all stockholder actions to be taken at a meeting of our stockholders; |
• | provide that the board of directors is expressly authorized to make, alter or repeal our restated bylaws; and |
• | establish advance notice requirements for nominations for election to our board or for proposing matters that can be acted upon by stockholders at annual stockholder meetings (though our restated bylaws have implemented stockholder proxy access). |
In addition, Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law may discourage, delay or prevent a change in control of our company. Section 203 imposes certain restrictions on merger, business combinations and other transactions between us and holders of 15% or more of our common stock.
Further, the fundamental change provisions of our 2022 Notes may delay or prevent a change in control of our company, because those provisions allow note holders to require us to repurchase such notes upon the occurrence of a fundamental change.
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ITEM 1B. | UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS |
None.
ITEM 2. | PROPERTIES |
Our principal office is located in Santa Clara, California, where we lease approximately 608,000 square feet of space under three lease agreements. We also have approximately 510,000 square feet of expansion space that is currently under development by the landlord under two additional lease agreements. We also maintain offices in various North American, South American, European and Asian countries. All of our properties are currently leased. We believe our existing facilities are adequate to meet our current requirements. See Note 18 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information about our lease commitments. We expect to expand our facilities capacity as our employee base grows. We believe we will be able to obtain such space on acceptable and commercially reasonable terms.
ITEM 3. | LEGAL PROCEEDINGS |
From time to time, we are party to litigation and other legal proceedings in the ordinary course of business. While the results of any litigation or other legal proceedings are uncertain, we are not presently a party to any legal proceedings that, if determined adversely to us, would individually or taken together have a material adverse effect on our business, financial position, results of operations or cash flows.
ITEM 4. | MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES |
Not applicable.
25
PART II
ITEM 5. | MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES |
Market Information for Common Stock
Our common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “NOW.”
Dividends
Our board of directors currently intends to retain any future earnings to support operations and to finance the growth and development of our business, and therefore does not intend to pay cash dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future.
Stockholders
As of December 31, 2018, there were 10 registered stockholders of record (not including an indeterminate number of beneficial holders of stock held in street name through brokers and other intermediaries) of our common stock.
Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans
The information required by this item will be included in an amendment to this Annual Report on Form 10-K or incorporated by reference from our definitive proxy statement to be filed with the SEC pursuant to Regulation 14A.
Stock Performance Graph
The following shall not be deemed incorporated by reference into any of our other filings under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act) or the Securities Act except to the extent we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing.
The graph below compares the cumulative total stockholder return on our common stock with the cumulative total return on the NYSE Composite Index and the Standard & Poor Systems Software Index for each of the last five fiscal years ended December 31, 2014 through December 31, 2018, assuming an initial investment of $100. Data for the NYSE Composite Index and the Standard & Poor Systems Software Index assume reinvestment of dividends.
26
The comparisons in the graph below are based upon historical data and are not indicative of, nor intended to forecast, future performance of our common stock.
Base Period | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dec 31, 2013 | Dec 31, 2014 | Dec 31, 2015 | Dec 31, 2016 | Dec 31, 2017 | Dec 31, 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||
ServiceNow, Inc. | $ | 100.00 | $ | 121.14 | $ | 154.54 | $ | 132.73 | $ | 232.80 | $ | 317.89 | |||||||||||
NYSE Composite | 100.00 | 106.75 | 102.38 | 114.61 | 136.07 | 123.89 | |||||||||||||||||
S&P Systems Software | 100.00 | 123.01 | 135.89 | 153.87 | 211.38 | 246.01 | |||||||||||||||||
Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities
During the quarter ended December 31, 2018, we issued 1.3 million shares of our common stock upon settlement of $161.8 million in principal of our 2018 Notes submitted for conversion. These shares of our common stock were issued in reliance on the exemption from registration provided by Section 3(a)(9) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Refer to Note 11 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further details.
Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
As discussed above, during the quarter ended December 31, 2018, we issued 1.3 million shares of our common stock upon settlement of $161.8 million in principal of our 2018 Notes submitted for conversion. In connection with these conversions, we exercised a portion of the 2018 Note Hedge and the Note Hedge counterparties delivered to us 1.3 million shares of our common stock. These counterparties to the 2018 Note Hedge may be deemed an “affiliated purchaser” and may have purchased the shares of our common stock deliverable to us upon the exercise of the 2018 Note Hedge. Refer to Note 11 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further details.
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ITEM 6. | SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA |
The following selected consolidated financial data should be read together with our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” appearing elsewhere in this filing. The consolidated statements of operations data for each of the years ended December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2018 and 2017 set forth in the tables below have been updated to comply with the new standards under Topic 606, including previously reported amounts, which are labeled “as adjusted.” The consolidated statements of operations data for each of the years end December 31, 2015 and 2014 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2016, 2015 and 2014 set forth in the tables below do not reflect the adoption of Topic 606 and continue to be reported under the standards in effect for those periods. The selected consolidated financial data in this section are not intended to replace our consolidated financial statements and the related notes. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of our future results.
Year Ended December 31, | |||||||||||||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | |||||||||||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||||||||||
(in thousands, except share and per share data) | |||||||||||||||||||
Consolidated Statements of Operations Data: | |||||||||||||||||||
Revenues: | |||||||||||||||||||
Subscription | $ | 2,421,313 | $ | 1,739,500 | $ | 1,234,070 | $ | 848,278 | $ | 567,217 | |||||||||
Professional services and other | 187,503 | 178,994 | 156,915 | 157,202 | 115,346 | ||||||||||||||
Total revenues | 2,608,816 | 1,918,494 | 1,390,985 | 1,005,480 | 682,563 | ||||||||||||||
Cost of revenues (1): | |||||||||||||||||||
Subscription | 417,421 | 315,570 | 235,414 | 183,400 | 142,687 | ||||||||||||||
Professional services and other | 205,237 | 184,292 | 163,581 | 146,013 | 106,089 | ||||||||||||||
Total cost of revenues | 622,658 | 499,862 | 398,995 | 329,413 | 248,776 | ||||||||||||||
Gross profit | 1,986,158 | 1,418,632 | 991,990 | 676,067 | 433,787 | ||||||||||||||
Operating expenses (1): | |||||||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing | 1,203,056 | 894,977 | 659,983 | 498,439 | 341,119 | ||||||||||||||
Research and development | 529,501 | 377,518 | 285,239 | 217,389 | 148,258 | ||||||||||||||
General and administrative | 296,027 | 210,533 | 158,936 | 126,604 | 96,245 | ||||||||||||||
Legal settlements (2) | — | — | 270,000 | — | — | ||||||||||||||
Total operating expenses | 2,028,584 | 1,483,028 | 1,374,158 | 842,432 | 585,622 | ||||||||||||||
Loss from operations | (42,426 | ) | (64,396 | ) | (382,168 | ) | (166,365 | ) | (151,835 | ) | |||||||||
Interest expense | (52,733 | ) | (53,394 | ) | (33,278 | ) | (31,097 | ) | (29,059 | ) | |||||||||
Interest income and other income (expense), net | 56,135 | 4,384 | 5,027 | 4,450 | 5,354 | ||||||||||||||
Loss before income taxes | (39,024 | ) | (113,406 | ) | (410,419 | ) | (193,012 | ) | (175,540 | ) | |||||||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes | (12,320 | ) | 3,440 | 3,830 | 5,414 | 3,847 | |||||||||||||
Net loss | $ | (26,704 | ) | $ | (116,846 | ) | $ | (414,249 | ) | $ | (198,426 | ) | $ | (179,387 | ) | ||||
Net loss per share - basic and diluted | $ | (0.15 | ) | $ | (0.68 | ) | $ | (2.52 | ) | $ | (1.27 | ) | $ | (1.23 | ) | ||||
Weighted-average shares used to compute net loss per share - basic and diluted | 177,846,023 | 171,175,577 | 164,533,823 | 155,706,643 | 145,355,543 | ||||||||||||||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606.
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(1) | Stock-based compensation included in the statements of operations data above was as follows: |
Year Ended December 31, | |||||||||||||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | |||||||||||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenues: | |||||||||||||||||||
Subscription | $ | 48,738 | $ | 35,334 | $ | 28,420 | $ | 23,416 | $ | 14,988 | |||||||||
Professional services and other | 32,816 | 27,401 | 26,516 | 23,265 | 13,116 | ||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing | 228,045 | 170,527 | 131,571 | 102,349 | 54,006 | ||||||||||||||
Research and development | 135,203 | 92,025 | 81,731 | 70,326 | 42,535 | ||||||||||||||
General and administrative | 99,151 | 68,717 | 49,416 | 38,357 | 29,674 | ||||||||||||||
Total stock-based compensation | $ | 543,953 | $ | 394,004 | $ | 317,654 | $ | 257,713 | $ | 154,319 | |||||||||
(2) | For details regarding the legal settlements expenses of $270.0 million included in the year ended December 31, 2016, refer to Note 18 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. |
As of December 31, | |||||||||||||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | |||||||||||||||
*As Adjusted | |||||||||||||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||||||||||
Consolidated Balance Sheet Data: | |||||||||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents and investments | $ | 2,079,778 | $ | 2,170,740 | $ | 1,162,020 | $ | 1,223,917 | $ | 935,563 | |||||||||
Working capital | 332,120 | 382,472 | 271,037 | 353,999 | 399,989 | ||||||||||||||
Total assets | 3,879,140 | 3,550,245 | 2,033,767 | 1,807,052 | 1,424,752 | ||||||||||||||
Deferred revenue, current and non-current portion | 1,690,191 | 1,246,815 | 895,101 | 603,754 | 422,238 | ||||||||||||||
Convertible senior notes, net, non-current portion | 661,707 | 630,018 | 507,812 | 474,534 | 443,437 | ||||||||||||||
Total stockholders’ equity | 1,111,199 | 778,744 | 386,961 | 566,814 | 428,675 | ||||||||||||||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606.
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ITEM 7. | MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS |
You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing under “Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” in Item 8 of this filing. Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis or set forth elsewhere in this filing, including information with respect to our plans and strategy for our business, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. You should carefully read the “Risk Factors” section of this filing for a discussion of important factors that could cause actual results and the timing of certain events to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis.
Our billings and free cash flow measures included in the sections entitled “—Key Business Metrics—Billings,” and “—Key Business Metrics—Free Cash Flow” are not in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. These measures may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies, limiting their usefulness for comparison purposes. We encourage investors to carefully consider our results under GAAP, as well as our supplemental non-GAAP results, to more fully understand our business.
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Overview
ServiceNow, the company that makes work, work better for people, is a leading provider of enterprise cloud computing services that define, structure, manage and automate digital workflows for global enterprises. We deliver digital workflows that help our customers create great experiences and unlock productivity. We typically deliver our software via the Internet as a service, through an easy-to-use, consumer product-like interface, which means it can be easily configured and rapidly deployed. In a minority of cases, customers deploy our software internally or contract with a third party to host the software to support their unique regulatory or security requirements.
We generally offer our services on an annual subscription fee basis, which includes access to the ordered subscription service and related support, including updates to the subscription service during the subscription term. Pricing for our subscription services is based on a number of factors, including duration of subscription term, volume, mix of products purchased, and discounts. We generate sales through our direct sales team and, to a lesser extent, indirectly through resale partners and third-party referrals. We also generate revenues from professional services and for training of customer and partner personnel. We generally bill our customers annually in advance for subscription services and monthly in arrears for our professional services as the work is performed.
A majority of our revenues come from large global enterprise customers. We continue to invest in the development of our services, infrastructure and sales and marketing to drive long-term growth. We increased our overall employee headcount to 8,154 as of December 31, 2018 from 6,222 as of December 31, 2017.
Key Business Metrics
Number of customers with ACV greater than $1 million. We count the total number of customers with annualized contract value (ACV) greater than $1 million as of the end of the period. We had 678, 508, and 354 customers with ACV greater than $1 million as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. For purposes of customer count, a customer is defined as an entity with a unique Dunn & Bradstreet Global Ultimate (GULT), Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number and an active subscription contract as of the measurement date. The DUNS number is a global standard for business identification and tracking. We make exceptions for holding companies, government entities and other organizations for which the GULT, in our judgment, does not accurately represent the ServiceNow customer. For example, while all U.S. government agencies roll up to “Government of the United States” under the GULT, we count each government agency that we contract with as a separate customer. Our customer count is subject to adjustments for acquisitions, spin-offs and other market activity. Previously disclosed number of customers with ACV greater than $1 million as well as our average contract term calculations are restated to allow for comparability. ACV is calculated based on the foreign exchange rate in effect at the time the contract was signed. Foreign exchange rate fluctuations could cause some variability in the number of customers with ACV greater than $1 million.
Renewal rate. We calculate our renewal rate by subtracting our attrition rate from 100%. Our attrition rate for a period is equal to the ACV from customers lost during the period, divided by the sum of (i) the total ACV from all customers that renewed during the period, excluding changes in price or users, and (ii) the total ACV from all customers lost during the period. Accordingly, our renewal rate is calculated based on ACV and is not based on the number of customers that have renewed. Further, our renewal rate does not reflect increased or decreased purchases from our customers to the extent such customers are not lost customers. A lost customer is a customer that did not renew an expiring contract and that, in our judgment, will not be renewed. Typically, a customer that reduces its subscription upon renewal is not considered a lost customer. However, in instances where the subscription decrease represents the majority of the customer’s ACV, we may deem the renewal as a lost customer. For our renewal rate calculation, we define a customer as an entity with a separate production instance of our service and an active subscription contract as of the measurement date, instead of an entity with a unique GULT or DUNS number. We adjust our renewal rate for acquisitions, consolidations and other customer events that cause the merging of two or more accounts occurring at the time of renewal. Previously disclosed renewal rates may be restated to reflect such adjustments to allow for comparability. Our renewal rate was 98%, for each of the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2016, and 97% for the year ended December 31, 2017. As our renewal rate is impacted by the timing of renewals, which could occur in advance of, or subsequent to the original contract end date, period-to-period comparison of renewal rates may not be meaningful.
Total backlog. Total backlog consists of unbilled backlog, deferred revenue and customer deposits. Unbilled backlog is an operational measure representing future unearned revenue amounts believed to be firm that are to be invoiced under our existing agreements and are not included in the deferred revenue or customer deposits on our consolidated balance sheets. In our previous Annual Reports on Form 10-K, we referred to unbilled backlog as “backlog.” We believe total backlog is a useful measure of customer adoption of our services.
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As of December 31, 2018, our total backlog was $5.1 billion, of which $3.4 billion was unbilled backlog and $1.7 billion was deferred revenue and customer deposits. Of this total backlog, we expect to recognize approximately 50% in revenues over the 12 months following December 31, 2018, with the balance to be recognized thereafter.
As of December 31, 2017, our total backlog was $3.8 billion, of which $2.5 billion was unbilled backlog and $1.7 billion was deferred revenue and customer deposits, which reflects the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. For the disclosure of unbilled backlog prior to the adoption of Topic 606, see the section entitled “Business” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 filed on February 28, 2018.
We expect total backlog to fluctuate due to a number of factors, including the timing, duration and size of customer contracts, the mix of cloud and self-hosted offerings and foreign exchange rate fluctuations.
Billings. We define billings, a non-GAAP financial measure, as revenues recognized plus the change in total unbilled receivables, deferred revenue and customer deposits as presented on the consolidated statements of cash flows. Prior to adopting Topic 606 on January 1, 2018, we had defined billings in previous filings as revenues recognized plus the change in total deferred revenue as presented on the consolidated statements of cash flows. Our current definition better aligns with Topic 606, which became effective for our interim and annual periods beginning January 1, 2018. Refer to Note 2 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information regarding Topic 606.
A calculation of billings is provided below:
Year Ended December 31, | |||||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | |||||||||||
Billings: | |||||||||||
Total revenues | $ | 2,608,816 | $ | 1,918,494 | $ | 1,390,985 | |||||
Change in deferred revenue, unbilled receivables and customer deposits(1) | 480,019 | 381,160 | 283,568 | ||||||||
Total billings | $ | 3,088,835 | $ | 2,299,654 | $ | 1,674,553 | |||||
Year-over-year percentage change in total billings | 34 | % | 37 | % | NM | ||||||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
NM - Not meaningful. Year-over-year percentage change in total billings is not meaningful as 2015 billings have not been adjusted for the adoption of Topic 606.
(1) | As presented on or derived from our consolidated statements of cash flows. |
Billings consists of amounts invoiced for subscription contracts with existing customers, renewal contracts, contracts for increased purchases with existing customers (expansion contracts), contracts with new customers, and contracts for professional services and training. Factors that may cause our billings results to vary from period to period include the following:
• | Billings duration. While we typically bill customers annually for our subscription services. Customers sometimes request, and we accommodate, billings with durations less than or greater than the typical 12-month term. |
• | Contract start date. From time to time, we enter into contracts with a contract start date in the future, and we exclude these amounts from billings as these amounts are not included in our consolidated balance sheets, unless such amounts have been paid as of the balance sheet date. |
• | Foreign currency exchange rates. While a majority of our billings have historically been in U.S. Dollars, an increasing percentage of our billings in recent periods has been in foreign currencies, particularly the Euro and British Pound Sterling. |
• | Timing of contract renewals. While customers typically renew their contracts at the end of the contract term, from time to time customers may do so either before or after the scheduled expiration date. For example, in cases where we are successful in selling additional products or services to an existing customer, a customer may decide to renew its existing contract early to ensure that all its contracts expire on the same date. In other cases, prolonged negotiations or other factors may result in a contract not being renewed until after it has expired. |
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While we believe billings is a useful leading indicator regarding the performance of our business, due to the factors described above, an increase or decrease in new or renewed subscriptions in a reporting period may not have an immediate impact on billings for that reporting period.
To facilitate greater year-over-year comparability in our billings results, we disclose the impact that foreign currency rate fluctuations and fluctuations in billings duration had on our billings. The impact of foreign currency rate fluctuations is calculated by translating the current period results for entities reporting in currencies other than U.S. Dollars into U.S. Dollars at the average exchange rates in effect during the prior period presented, rather than the actual exchange rates in effect during the current period. The impact of fluctuations in billings duration is calculated by replacing the portion of multi-year billings in excess of 12 months during the current period with the portion of multi-year billings in excess of 12 months during the prior period presented. Notwithstanding the adjustments described above, the comparability of billings results from period to period remains subject to the impact of variations in the dollar value of contracts with future start dates and the timing of contract renewals, for which no adjustments have been presented.
Foreign currency rate fluctuations had a favorable impact of $31.0 million and $9.1 million on billings for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively. Changes in billings duration had a favorable impact of $7.4 million and $1.6 million for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively.
Free cash flow. We define free cash flow, a non-GAAP financial measure, as GAAP net cash provided by operating activities reduced by purchases of property and equipment. Purchases of property and equipment are otherwise included in cash used in investing activities under GAAP. We believe information regarding free cash flow provides useful information to investors because it is an indicator of the strength and performance of our business operations. However, our calculation of free cash flow may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies.
Year Ended December 31, | |||||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Free cash flow: | |||||||||||
Net cash provided by operating activities | $ | 811,089 | $ | 642,940 | $ | 159,081 | |||||
Purchases of property and equipment | (224,462 | ) | (150,510 | ) | (105,562 | ) | |||||
Free cash flow (1) | $ | 586,627 | $ | 492,430 | $ | 53,519 | |||||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
(1) | Free cash flow for the year ended December 31, 2018 includes the cash outflow of $145.3 million relating to the repayments of convertible senior notes attributable to debt discount. Free cash flow for the year ended December 31, 2016 includes the cash outflow of a $267.5 million payment for aggregate legal settlements. Refer to Note 11 and 18, respectively in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further details. |
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Average contract term. We calculate the average contract term for new customers, expansion contracts and renewals based on the term of those contracts entered into during the period weighted by their ACV. Revised mapping of customers in the current period may result in revised new customer, expansion and renewal contract terms for previous periods, due to adjustments for acquisitions, spin-offs, improved subsidiary mapping, consolidations and updates to customer DUNS numbers. Previously disclosed average contract terms may be restated to reflect such adjustments to allow for comparability. The average new customer contract term was 35 months, 32 months, and 31 months for the years ended December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016. The average expansion contract term was 25 months for the year ended December 31, 2018 and 26 months for each of the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. The average renewal contract term was 27 months for each of the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017 and 28 months for the year ended December 31, 2016.
G2K customer count. The Global 2000 (G2K) customer count is defined as the total number of G2K companies in our customer base as of the end of the period. Our G2K customer count was 883, 810, and 721 as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. The Forbes Global 2000 is an annual ranking of the top 2,000 public companies in the world by Forbes magazine. The ranking is based on a mix of four metrics: sales, profit, assets, and market value. The Forbes Global 2000 is updated annually in the second quarter of the calendar year. Current and prior period G2K customer counts are based on the most recent list for comparability purposes. We also adjust the G2K count for acquisitions, spin-offs and other market activity. For example, we add a G2K customer when a G2K company that is not our customer acquires a company in our existing customer base that is not a G2K company. When we enter into a contract with a G2K parent company, or any of its related subsidiaries, or any combination of entities within a G2K company, we count only one G2K customer. We do not count further penetration into entities within a given G2K as a new customer in the G2K customer count. Our G2K customer count also excludes customers that have only purchased our Express product offering, which is our entry-level IT service management solution. Our G2K customer count does not include large private companies, government agencies and educational organizations, which represent a growing portion of our customer base. As a result, our G2K customer count metric has become less relevant to our business over time and we do not plan to disclose this metric in future filings.
Average ACV per G2K customer. We calculate average ACV for our G2K customers by taking aggregate ACV from G2K customers as of the end of the period divided by the total number of G2K customers as of the end of the period. Our average ACV per G2K customer was approximately $1.7 million, $1.3 million, and $1.1 million as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. ACV is calculated based on the foreign exchange rate in effect at the time the contract was entered into, and as a result, foreign currency rate fluctuations could cause variability in the average ACV per G2K customer. Prior G2K customer counts used in calculating ACV per G2K customer are adjusted for the most recent Forbes Global 2000 list for comparability purposes. As discussed above, average ACV per G2K customer has become less relevant to our business over time as the underlying G2K customer count does not include large private companies, government agencies and education organizations, which represent a growing portion of our customer base. As a result, we do not plan to disclose this metric in future filings.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenues
Subscription revenues. Subscription revenues are primarily comprised of fees that give customers access to the ordered subscription service for both self-hosted offerings and cloud-based subscription offerings, and related support and updates, if any, to the subscription service during the subscription term. For our cloud-based offerings, we recognize revenue ratably over the subscription term. For self-hosted offerings, a substantial portion of the sales price is recognized upon delivery of the software, which may cause greater variability in our subscription revenues and subscription gross margin. Pricing includes multiple instances, hosting and support services, data backup and disaster recovery services, as well as future updates, when and if available, offered during the subscription term. We typically invoice our customers for subscription fees in annual increments upon execution of the initial contract or subsequent renewal. Our contracts are generally non-cancelable during the subscription term, though a customer can terminate for breach if we materially fail to perform.
Professional services and other revenues. Professional services revenues consist of fees associated with professional services. Our arrangements for professional services are primarily on a time-and-materials basis. We generally invoice our professional services monthly in arrears based on actual hours and expenses incurred, and revenues are recognized as services are delivered. Some of our professional services arrangements are on a fixed fee or subscription basis, under which we recognize revenues on a proportional performance basis or ratably over the contract term. Other revenues primarily consist of fees from customer training delivered on-site or through publicly available classes. Typical payment terms require our customers to pay us within 30 days of invoice.
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We generate sales directly through our sales team and, to a lesser extent, indirectly through resale partners. We also offer a portfolio of professional and other services, both directly and through our network of partners. Revenues from our direct sales organization represented 84% for the year ended December 31, 2018, and 88% for each of the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2016. For purposes of this disclosure, revenues from systems integrators and managed services providers are included as revenues from our direct sales organization.
Allocation of Overhead Costs
Overhead costs associated with office facilities, IT and certain depreciation related to infrastructure that is not dedicated for customer use or research and development use are allocated to cost of revenues and operating expenses based on headcount.
Cost of Revenues
Cost of subscription revenues. Cost of subscription revenues consists primarily of expenses related to hosting our services and providing support to our customers. These expenses are comprised of data center capacity costs, which include colocation costs associated with our data centers as well as interconnectivity between data centers, depreciation related to our infrastructure hardware equipment dedicated for customer use, amortization of intangible assets, expenses associated with software, IT services and support dedicated for customer use, personnel-related costs directly associated with data center operations and customer support, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, and allocated overhead.
Cost of professional services and other revenues. Cost of professional services and other revenues consists primarily of personnel-related costs directly associated with our professional services and training departments, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, the costs of contracted third-party partners, travel expenses and allocated overhead.
Professional services are performed directly by our services team, as well as by contracted third-party partners. Fees paid by us to third-party partners are primarily recognized as cost of revenues as the professional services are delivered. Cost of revenues associated with our professional services engagements contracted with third-party partners as a percentage of professional services and other revenues was 18%, 22% and 21% for the years ended December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses directly associated with our sales and marketing staff, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation. Sales and marketing expenses also include the amortization of commissions paid to our sales employees and third-party referral fees, including related payroll taxes and fringe benefits. From time to time, third parties provide us referrals for which we pay a referral fee. We include revenues associated with these referrals as part of revenues from our direct sales organization. Referral fees paid to these third parties are generally 10% of the customer’s net new ACV. We defer referral fees paid as they are considered incremental selling costs associated with acquiring customer contracts, and include the amortization of these referral fees in sales and marketing expense. In addition, sales and marketing expenses include expenses offset by proceeds related to our annual Knowledge user conference (Knowledge), other marketing program expenses, which include events other than Knowledge, and costs associated with purchasing advertising and marketing data, software and subscription services dedicated for sales and marketing use and allocated overhead. As part of our adoption of Topic 606, during the year ended December 31, 2018, we recorded a decrease in sales and marketing expenses and a corresponding increase to our deferred commissions asset of $5.4 million. These adjustments reflect the correction of previously undercapitalized incremental fringe benefit costs associated with sales commissions that were paid since 2012. We concluded that these adjustments were not material to the current period or any previously reported periods presented, as adjusted for the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606.
Research and Development
Research and development expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses directly associated with our research and development staff, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation and allocated overhead. Research and development expenses also include data center capacity costs, costs associated with outside services contracted for research and development purposes, amortization of intangible assets and depreciation of infrastructure hardware equipment that is used solely for research and development purposes.
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General and Administrative
General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses for our executive, finance, legal, human resources, facilities and administrative personnel, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, external legal, accounting and other professional services fees, other corporate expenses, amortization of intangible assets and allocated overhead.
Legal Settlements
Legal settlements consist of one-time aggregate charges related to the settlement agreements with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) and BMC Software, Inc. (BMC) in 2016. Refer to Note 18 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further details regarding these matters.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists of federal, state and foreign income taxes. Due to cumulative losses, we maintain a valuation allowance against our U.S. and certain foreign deferred tax assets as of December 31, 2018 and 2017. We consider all available evidence, both positive and negative, including but not limited to earnings history, projected future outcomes, industry and market trends and the nature of each of the deferred tax assets in assessing the extent to which a valuation allowance should be applied against our U.S. and foreign deferred tax assets.
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Results of Operations
The following tables set forth our results of operations for the periods presented. All amounts and disclosures for each of the years ended December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016 set forth in the tables below have been updated to comply with the new standards under Topic 606, including previously reported amounts, which are labeled “as adjusted” in these selected consolidated financial statements. The period-to-period comparison of financial results is not necessarily indicative of future results.
Year Ended December 31, | |||||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Revenues: | |||||||||||
Subscription | $ | 2,421,313 | $ | 1,739,500 | $ | 1,234,070 | |||||
Professional services and other | 187,503 | 178,994 | 156,915 | ||||||||
Total revenues | 2,608,816 | 1,918,494 | 1,390,985 | ||||||||
Cost of revenues (1): | |||||||||||
Subscription | 417,421 | 315,570 | 235,414 | ||||||||
Professional services and other | 205,237 | 184,292 | 163,581 | ||||||||
Total cost of revenues | 622,658 | 499,862 | 398,995 | ||||||||
Gross profit | 1,986,158 | 1,418,632 | 991,990 | ||||||||
Operating expenses (1): | |||||||||||
Sales and marketing | 1,203,056 | 894,977 | 659,983 | ||||||||
Research and development | 529,501 | 377,518 | 285,239 | ||||||||
General and administrative | 296,027 | 210,533 | 158,936 | ||||||||
Legal settlements(2) | — | — | 270,000 | ||||||||
Total operating expenses | 2,028,584 | 1,483,028 | 1,374,158 | ||||||||
Loss from operations | (42,426 | ) | (64,396 | ) | (382,168 | ) | |||||
Interest expense | (52,733 | ) | (53,394 | ) | (33,278 | ) | |||||
Interest income and other income (expense), net | 56,135 | 4,384 | 5,027 | ||||||||
Loss before income taxes | (39,024 | ) | (113,406 | ) | (410,419 | ) | |||||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes | (12,320 | ) | 3,440 | 3,830 | |||||||
Net loss | $ | (26,704 | ) | $ | (116,846 | ) | $ | (414,249 | ) | ||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
(1) | Stock-based compensation included in the statements of operations data above was as follows: |
Year Ended December 31, | |||||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Cost of revenues: | |||||||||||
Subscription | $ | 48,738 | $ | 35,334 | $ | 28,420 | |||||
Professional services and other | 32,816 | 27,401 | 26,516 | ||||||||
Sales and marketing | 228,045 | 170,527 | 131,571 | ||||||||
Research and development | 135,203 | 92,025 | $ | 81,731 | |||||||
General and administrative | 99,151 | 68,717 | 49,416 | ||||||||
Total stock-based compensation | $ | 543,953 | $ | 394,004 | $ | 317,654 | |||||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
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(2) | For details regarding the legal settlements expenses of $270.0 million included in the year ended December 31, 2016, refer to Note 18 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. |
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | ||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | |||||||
Revenues: | ||||||||
Subscription | 93 | % | 91 | % | 89 | % | ||
Professional services and other | 7 | 9 | 11 | |||||
Total revenues | 100 | 100 | 100 | |||||
Cost of revenues (1): | ||||||||
Subscription | 16 | 16 | 17 | |||||
Professional services and other | 8 | 10 | 12 | |||||
Total cost of revenues | 24 | 26 | 29 | |||||
Gross profit | 76 | 74 | 71 | |||||
Operating expenses (1): | ||||||||
Sales and marketing | 46 | 46 | 48 | |||||
Research and development | 20 | 20 | 21 | |||||
General and administrative | 12 | 11 | 11 | |||||
Legal settlements(2) | — | — | 19 | |||||
Total operating expenses | 78 | 77 | 99 | |||||
Loss from operations | (2 | ) | (3 | ) | (28 | ) | ||
Interest expense | (2 | ) | (3 | ) | (2 | ) | ||
Interest income and other income (expense), net | 2 | — | — | |||||
Loss before income taxes | (2 | ) | (6 | ) | (30 | ) | ||
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes | (1 | ) | — | — | ||||
Net loss | (1 | %) | (6 | %) | (30 | %) | ||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
(1) | Stock-based compensation included in the statements of operations above as a percentage of revenues was as follows: |
Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | ||||||
*As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | |||||||
Cost of revenues: | ||||||||
Subscription | 2 | % | 2 | % | 2 | % | ||
Professional services and other | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||
Sales and marketing | 9 | 9 | 9 | |||||
Research and development | 5 | 5 | 6 | |||||
General and administrative | 4 | 4 | 4 | |||||
Total stock-based compensation | 21 | % | 21 | % | 23 | % | ||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
(2) | For details regarding the legal settlements expenses of $270.0 million included in the year ended December 31, 2016, refer to Note 18 in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. |
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Comparison of the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017
Revenues
Year Ended December 31, | % Change | |||||||||
2018 | 2017 | |||||||||
*As Adjusted | ||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||
Revenues: | ||||||||||
Subscription | $ | 2,421,313 | $ | 1,739,500 | 39 | % | ||||
Professional services and other | 187,503 | 178,994 | 5 | % | ||||||
Total revenues | $ | 2,608,816 | $ | 1,918,494 | 36 | % | ||||
Percentage of revenues: | ||||||||||
Subscription | 93 | % | 91 | % | ||||||
Professional services and other | 7 | % | 9 | % | ||||||
Total | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||||||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
Subscription revenues increased $681.8 million during the year ended December 31, 2018, compared to the prior year, driven by increased purchases by existing customers and an increase in customer count. Included in subscription revenues is $118.5 million and $80.2 million of revenues recognized upfront from the delivery of software associated with self-hosted offerings during the year ended December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively. We expect subscription revenues to grow in absolute dollars as we continue to add new customers and existing customers increase their usage of our products, but remain relatively flat as a percentage of total revenues in the year ending December 31, 2019. Our expectations for revenues, cost of revenues and operating expenses for the year ending December 31, 2019 are based on foreign exchange rates as of December 31, 2018.
Subscription revenues consist of the following:
Year Ended December 31, | % Change | |||||||||
2018 | 2017 | |||||||||
*As Adjusted | ||||||||||
(dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||
Service management products | $ | 2,050,841 | $ | 1,526,125 | 34 | % | ||||
ITOM products | 370,472 | 213,375 | 74 | % | ||||||
Total subscription revenues | $ | 2,421,313 | $ | 1,739,500 | 39 | % | ||||
*As adjusted to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. See Note 2 for further details.
Our service management products include our platform, ITSM, ITBM, customer service management, HR service delivery, security operations, ITAM, and GRC, and are generally priced on a per user basis. Our ITOM products are generally priced on a per node basis.
Professional services and other revenues increased $8.5 million during the year ended December 31, 2018, compared to the prior year, due to an increase in the services provided to new and existing customers. We expect professional services and other revenues for the year ending December 31, 2019 to increase in absolute dollar terms, but remain relatively flat as a percentage of total revenues when compared to professional services and other revenues for the year ended December 31, 2018 as we are increasingly focused on deploying our internal professional services organization as a strategic resource and relying on our partner ecosystem to contract directly with customers for service delivery.
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Cost of Revenues and Gross Profit Percentage