ITEM 1. Legal Proceedings
We are subject to certain legal and regulatory proceedings described below, and from time to time may be involved in a variety of claims, lawsuits, investigations and proceedings relating to contractual disputes, intellectual property rights, employment matters, regulatory compliance matters and other litigation matters.
Melcher Litigation
On September 28, 2016, a complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California against Five9, Inc. (“Five9”), as the successor in interest to Face It, Corp. (“Face It”), and Lance Fried, a former Five9 employee who was the former Chief Executive Officer of Face It. The action, captioned Melcher, et al. v. Five9, Inc., et al., No. 16-cv-02440, was filed as a direct action by Carl Melcher, a purported former stockholder of Face It, and his related investment entity.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs allege that Face It repurchased the plaintiffs’ stock in September 2013 before Five9 acquired Face It, and that in connection with the repurchase, Fried made material misstatements or omissions to Melcher, by failing to disclose that Face It allegedly was in concurrent discussions about a potential sale of the company to Five9. The complaint alleges violations of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, as well as various claims under state law and common law. The complaint seeks to set aside Face It’s September 2013 stock repurchase from the plaintiffs, as well as an unspecified amount of damages and an award of attorney’s fees and costs, in addition to other relief.
The outcome of litigation and regulatory claims cannot be predicted with certainty, may be expensive and cause distraction to our management, even if we are ultimately successful, and could harm our future results of operations, cash flows and financial condition.
NobelBiz Litigation
On August 5, 2011, NobelBiz sent a letter to us asserting infringement of a patent related to virtual call centers. On April 3, 2012, NobelBiz filed a patent infringement lawsuit against us in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The patent asserted in the complaint is different, but related, to the patent asserted in the original letter. The lawsuit, NobelBiz Inc. v. Five9, Inc., Case No. 6:12-cv-00243-LED, alleges that our local caller ID management service infringes United States Patent No. 8,135,122, or the ‘122 patent. The ‘122 patent, titled “System and Method for Modifying Communication Information (MCI),” issued on March 13, 2012, and according to the complaint is alleged to relate to “a system for processing a telephone call from a call originator (also referred to as a calling party) to a call target (also referred to as a receiving party), where the system accesses a database storing outgoing telephone numbers, selects a replacement telephone number from the outgoing telephone numbers based on the telephone number of the call target, and originates an outbound call to the call target with a modified outgoing caller identification (‘caller ID’).” NobelBiz seeks damages in the form of lost profits as well as injunctive relief. The lawsuit is one of several lawsuits filed by NobelBiz against various companies including TCN Inc., LiveVox, Inc. and Global Connect LLC. On March 28, 2013, the court granted our motion to transfer the case to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Subsequently, NobelBiz amended its complaint to add claims related to U.S. Patent No. 8,565,399, or the ‘399 patent, which is a continuation in the same family as the ‘122 patent and addresses the same technology. We responded to the complaint and amended complaint by asserting noninfringement and invalidity of the ‘122 and ‘399 patents. On January 16, 2015, the court issued an order regarding claim construction of the two patents-in-suit. On March 7, 2016, the court stayed the case pending an appeal in lawsuits involving NobelBiz, Global Connect and TCN that also involve the ‘122 and ‘399 patents. The appeal for those cases is likely to last until late 2016 or into 2017, after which time the lawsuit between NobelBiz and Five9 will resume and a new schedule will be entered by the Court.
The outcome of litigation and regulatory claims cannot be predicted with certainty, may be expensive and cause distraction to our management, even if we are ultimately successful, and could harm our future results of operations, cash flows and financial condition.
ITEM 1A. Risk Factors
Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties. You should consider carefully the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this report. If any
of the following risks or other risks actually occur, our business, financial condition, results of operations, and future prospects could be materially harmed, and the price of our common stock could decline.
The following description of the risk factors associated with our business includes any material changes to and supersedes the description of the risk factors associated with our business previously disclosed in Part II, Item 1A of our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2016.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
Our quarterly and annual results may fluctuate significantly, may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business and may result in decreases in the price of our common stock.
Our quarterly and annual results of operations, including our revenues, profitability and cash flow have varied, and may vary significantly in the future, and period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. Accordingly, the results of any one quarter or period should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. Our quarterly and annual financial results may fluctuate as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside our control and, as a result, may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business. Fluctuation in quarterly and annual results may harm the value of our common stock. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our quarterly and annual results include, without limitation:
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market acceptance of our solution;
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our ability to attract new clients and grow our business with existing clients;
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our ability to adequately expand our sales force
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changes in strategic and client relationships;
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the amount and timing of costs and expenses related to the maintenance and expansion of our business, operations and infrastructure;
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the timing and success of new product and feature introductions by us or our competitors or any other change in the competitive dynamics of our industry, including consolidation among competitors, clients or strategic partners;
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network outages or security breaches, which may result in the loss of clients, client credits and harm to our reputation;
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seasonal factors that may cause our revenues in the first half of a year to be relatively lower than our revenues in the second half of a year;
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inaccessibility or failure of our cloud contact center software due to failures in the products or services provided by third parties;
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the timing of recognition of revenues;
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increases or decreases in the elements of our solution or pricing changes upon any renewals of client agreements;
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changes in our pricing policies or those of our competitors;
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the level of professional services and support we provide our clients;
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the components of our revenue;
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the addition or loss of key clients, including through acquisitions or consolidations;
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general economic, industry and market conditions;
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the timing of costs and expenses related to the development or acquisition of technologies or businesses and potential future charges for impairment of goodwill from acquired companies;
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compliance with, or changes in, the current and future regulatory environment;
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the hiring, training and retention of key employees;
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litigation or other claims against us;
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our ability to obtain additional financing; and
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advances and trends in new technologies and industry standards.
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If we are unable to attract new clients or sell additional services and functionality to our existing clients, our revenue and revenue growth will be harmed.
To increase our revenue, we must add new clients, add additional agent seats and sell additional functionality to existing clients, and encourage existing clients to renew their subscriptions on terms favorable to us. As our industry matures, as our clients experience seasonal trends in their business, or as competitors introduce lower cost and/or differentiated products or services that are perceived to compete favorably with ours, our ability to add new clients and renew, maintain or upsell existing clients based on pricing, cost of ownership, technology and functionality could be impaired. As a result, we may be unable to renew our agreements with existing clients, attract new clients or grow or maintain our business with existing clients, which could harm our revenue and growth.
Furthermore, a portion of our revenue is generated by acquiring domestic and international telecommunications minutes from wholesale telecommunication service providers and reselling those minutes to our clients. As a result, we must resell more minutes if telecommunications rates decrease to maintain our level of usage revenue.
Our recent rapid growth may not be indicative of our future growth, and if we continue to grow rapidly, we may fail to manage our growth effectively.
For the three months ended
September 30, 2016
, our revenue was
$41.0 million
, which increased by
$8.7 million
, or
27%
, from
$32.3 million
for the same period of 2015. For the nine months ended
September 30, 2016
, our revenue was
$117.9 million
, which increased by
$25.0 million
, or
27%
, from
$92.8 million
for the same period of 2015. For the years ended December 31, 2015, 2014 and 2013, our revenue was $128.9 million, $103.1 million and $84.1 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 25% and 23%, respectively. In the future, as our revenue increases, our annual revenue growth rate may decline. We believe growth of our revenue depends on a number of factors, including our ability to:
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compete with other vendors of cloud-based enterprise contact center systems to capture market share from providers of legacy on-premise systems;
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increase our existing clients’ use of our solution and further develop our partner ecosystem;
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strengthen and improve our solution through significant investments in research and development and the introduction of new and enhanced solutions
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introduce our solution to new markets outside the United States and increase global awareness of our brand; and
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selectively pursue acquisitions.
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If we are not successful in achieving these objectives, our revenue may be harmed. In addition, we plan to continue to invest in future growth, including expending substantial financial and other resources on:
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sales and marketing, including a significant expansion of our sales and professional services organization;
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our technology infrastructure, including systems architecture, management tools, scalability, availability, performance and security, as well as disaster recovery measures;
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solution development, including investments in our solution development team and the development of new solutions, as well as new applications and features for existing solutions;
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international expansion; and
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general administration, including legal, regulatory compliance and accounting expenses.
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Moreover, we continue to expand our headcount and operations. We grew from 630 employees as of December 31, 2014 to
739
employees as of
September 30, 2016
. We anticipate that we will continue to expand our operations and headcount in the near term. This growth has placed, and future growth will place, a significant strain on our management, administrative, operational and financial resources and infrastructure. Our success will depend in part on our ability to manage this growth effectively. To manage the expected growth of our operations and personnel, we will need to continue to improve our operational, financial and management controls and our reporting systems and procedures. Failure to effectively manage growth could result in difficulty or delays in adding new clients, declines in quality or client satisfaction, increases in costs, system failures, difficulties in introducing new features or solutions, the need for more capital than we anticipate or other operational difficulties, and any of these difficulties could harm our business performance and results of operations.
The expected addition of new employees and the capital investments that we anticipate will be necessary to manage our anticipated growth will make it more difficult for us to generate earnings or offset any future revenue
shortfalls by reducing costs and expenses in the short term. If we fail to manage our anticipated growth, we will be unable to execute our business plan successfully.
Failure to adequately expand our sales force will impede our growth.
We will need to continue to expand and optimize our sales infrastructure in order to grow our client base and business. We plan to continue to aggressively expand our sales force, both domestically and internationally. Identifying and recruiting qualified personnel and training them in the use and sale of our solution requires significant time, expense and attention. It can take several months before our sales representatives are fully trained and productive. Our business may be harmed if our efforts to expand and train our sales force do not generate a corresponding increase in revenues. In particular, if we are unable to hire, develop and retain talented sales personnel or if new sales personnel are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time, we may not be able to realize the expected benefits of this investment or increase our revenues.
The markets in which we participate are highly competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our operating results could be harmed.
The market for contact center solutions is highly competitive. Generally, we do not have long-term contracts with our clients and our clients can terminate our service and switch to competitors’ offerings on short notice.
We currently compete with large legacy technology vendors that offer on-premise enterprise telephony and contact center systems, such as Avaya and Cisco, and legacy on-premise software companies that come from a computer-telephony integration ("CTI") heritage, such as Aspect, Genesys, and Interactive Intelligence (which recently announced it was being acquired by Genesys). These companies are supplementing their traditional on-premise contact center systems with cloud offerings, either through acquisition or in-house development. Additionally, we compete with vendors that historically provided other contact center services and technologies and expanded to offer cloud contact center software. These companies include inContact (which has announced it was being acquired by NICE Ltd.) and LiveOps. We also face competition from smaller contact center service providers with specialized contact center software offerings. Our actual and potential competitors may enjoy competitive advantages over us, including greater name recognition, longer operating histories and larger marketing budgets, as well as greater financial or technical resources. With the introduction of new technologies and market entrants, we expect competition to intensify in the future.
Some of our competitors can devote significantly greater resources than we can to the development, promotion and sale of their products and services and many have the ability to initiate or withstand substantial price competition. Current or potential competitors may also be acquired by third parties with significantly greater resources, such as NICE Ltd.'s acquisition of inContact and Genesys’ acquisition of Interactive Intelligence. In addition, many of our competitors have stronger name recognition, longer operating histories, established relationships with clients, more comprehensive product offerings, larger installed bases and major distribution agreements with consultants, system integrators and resellers. Our competitors may also establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties that may further enhance their product offerings or resources and ability to compete. If our competitors’ products, services or technologies become more accepted than our solution, if they are successful in bringing their products or services to market earlier than ours, or if their products or services are less expensive or more technologically capable than ours, our revenues could be harmed. Pricing pressures and increased competition could result in reduced sales and revenues, reduced margins and loss of, or a failure to maintain or improve, our competitive market position, any of which could harm our business.
If we fail to manage our technical operations infrastructure, our existing clients may experience service outages, our new clients may experience delays in the deployment of our solution and we could be subject to, among other things, claims for credits or damages.
Our success depends in large part upon the capacity, stability and performance of our operations infrastructure. From time to time, we have experienced interruptions in service, and may experience such interruptions in the future. These service interruptions may be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, viruses, security attacks, fraud, spikes in client usage and denial of service issues. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. Our failure to achieve or maintain expected performance levels, stability and security could harm our relationships with our clients, result in claims for credits or damages, damage our reputation and significantly reduce client demand for our solution and harm our business.
Any future service interruptions could:
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cause our clients to seek credits or damages for losses incurred;
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cause existing clients to cancel or elect not to renew their contracts;
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affect our reputation as a reliable service provider;
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make it more difficult for us to attract new clients or expand our business with existing clients; or
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require us to replace existing equipment.
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We have experienced significant growth in the number of agents and interactions that our infrastructure supports. As the number of agent seats within our client base grows and our clients' use of our service increases, we will be required to make additional investments in our capacity to maintain adequate stability and performance, the availability of which may be limited or the cost of which may be prohibitive. In addition, we need to properly manage our operations infrastructure in order to support version control, changes in hardware and software parameters and the evolution of our solution. If we do not accurately predict or improve our infrastructure requirements to keep pace with growth in our business, our business could be harmed.
If our existing clients terminate their subscriptions or reduce their subscriptions and related usage, our revenues and gross margins will be harmed and we will be required to spend more money to grow our client base.
We expect to continue to derive a significant portion of our revenues from existing clients. As a result, retaining our existing clients is critical to our future operating results. We offer monthly, annual and multiple-year contracts to our clients, with 30 days’ notice generally required for changes in the number of agent seats or termination of their contracts. Subscriptions and related usage by our existing clients may decrease if:
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clients are not satisfied with our services, prices or the functionality of our solution;
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the stability, performance and security of our hosting infrastructure and hosting services are not satisfactory;
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our clients’ business declines due to industry cycles, seasonality, business difficulties or other reasons;
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competition increases from other contact center providers;
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alternative technologies, products or features emerge that we do not provide;
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our clients or potential clients experience financial difficulties;
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the volume of minutes for inbound and outbound interactions between our clients and their customers decreases; or
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the U.S. or global economy declines.
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If our existing clients’ subscriptions and related usage decrease or are terminated, we will need to spend more money to acquire new clients to maintain our existing level of revenues. We incur significant costs and expenses, including sales and marketing expenses, to acquire new clients, and those costs and expenses are an important factor in determining our net profitability. There can be no assurance that our efforts to acquire new clients will be successful.
The loss of one or more of our key clients, or a failure to renew our subscription agreements with one or more of our key clients, could harm our ability to market our solution.
We rely on our reputation and recommendations from key clients in order to market and sell our solution. The loss of any of our key clients, or a failure of some of them to renew or to continue to recommend our solution, could have a significant impact on our revenues, reputation and our ability to obtain new clients. In addition, acquisitions of our clients could lead to cancellation of our contracts with those clients, thereby reducing the number of our existing and potential clients.
Our growth depends in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties and our failure to successfully grow and manage these relationships could harm our business.
We leverage strategic relationships with third parties, such as CRM providers, Workforce Optimization, or WFO, providers, other technology providers, system integrators, and telephony providers. For example, our CRM and system integrator relationships provide significant lead generation for new client opportunities. As we grow our business, we will continue to depend on both existing and new strategic relationships. Our competitors may be more successful than we are in establishing or expanding relationships with third parties or may provide incentives to third parties to favor their products over our solution. These strategic partners may cease to recommend our solution to prospective clients due to actual or perceived lack of features, technological issues or failures, reputational concerns, economic incentives, or other factors, which would harm our business, financial conditions and operations.
Furthermore, there has and continues to be a significant amount of consolidation in our industry and adjacent industries, if our partners are acquired, fail to work effectively with us or go out of business, they may no longer support or promote our solution, or may be less effective in doing so, which could harm our business, financial condition and operations. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our strategic relationships with third parties, or these partners fail to recommend our solution, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenues could be impaired and our operating results may suffer. Even if we are successful, we cannot assure you that these relationships will result in increased client usage of our solution or increased revenue.
In addition, identifying new partners, and negotiating and documenting relationships with them, requires significant time and resources. As the complexity of our solution and our third-party relationships increases, the management of those relationships and the negotiation of contractual terms sufficient to protect our rights and limit our potential liabilities will become more complicated. We also license technology from certain third-party partners, including through OEM relationships. Certain of these agreements permit either party to terminate all or a portion of the relationship without cause at any time and for any reason. If one of these agreements is terminated by the other party, we would have to find an alternative source or develop new technology ourselves, either of which could cause delays in our ability to offer our solution or certain product features to our clients, result in increased expense and harm our business. Our inability to successfully manage and maintain these complex relationships or negotiate sufficient contractual terms could harm our business.
Our clients may fail to comply with the terms of their agreements, necessitating action by us to collect payment, or may terminate their subscriptions for our solution.
If clients fail to pay us under the terms of our agreements or fail to comply with the terms of our agreements, including compliance with regulatory requirements, we may terminate clients, lose revenue, be unable to collect amounts due to us, be subject to legal or regulatory action and incur costs in enforcing the terms of our contracts, including litigation. Some of our clients may seek bankruptcy protection or other similar relief and fail to pay amounts due to us, seek reimbursement for amounts already paid, or pay those amounts more slowly, either of which could harm our operating results, financial position and cash flow.
We sell our solution to larger organizations that require longer sales and implementation cycles and often demand more configuration and integration services or customized features and functions that we may not offer, any of which could delay or prevent these sales and harm our growth rates, business and operating results.
As we continue to target our sales efforts at larger organizations, we face greater costs, longer sales and implementation cycles and less predictability in completing our sales. These larger organizations typically require more configuration and integration services, which increases our upfront investment in sales and deployment efforts, with no guarantee that these clients will subscribe to our solution or increase the scope of their subscription. Furthermore, with larger organizations, we must provide greater levels of education regarding the use and benefits of our solution to a broader group of people. As a result of these factors, we must devote a significant amount of sales support and professional services resources to individual clients and prospective clients, thereby increasing the cost and time required to complete sales. Our typical sales cycle for larger organizations is four to five months, but can be significantly longer, and we expect that our average sales cycle may increase as sales to larger organizations continue to grow as a percentage of our business. Longer sales cycles could cause our operating and financial results to be less predictable and to fluctuate from period to period. In addition, many of our clients that are larger organizations initially deploy our solution to support only a portion of their contact center agents. Our success depends on our ability to increase the number of agent seats and the number of applications utilized by larger organizations over time. There is no guarantee that these clients will increase their subscriptions for our solution. If we do not expand our initial relationships with larger organizations, the return on our investments in sales and deployment efforts for these clients will decrease and our business may suffer.
Furthermore, we may not be able to provide the configuration and integration services that larger organizations typically require. For example, our solution does not currently permit clients to modify our software code, but instead requires them to use our set of application programming interfaces, or APIs. If prospective clients require customized features or functions that we do not offer, and that would be difficult for them to deploy themselves, they will need to use our services or third-party service providers or we may lose sales opportunities with larger organizations and our business could suffer.
Because a significant percentage of our revenue is derived from existing clients, downturns or upturns in new sales will not be immediately reflected in our operating results and may be difficult to discern.
We generally recognize subscription revenue from clients monthly as services are delivered. As a result, a significant percentage of the subscription revenue we report in each quarter is derived from existing clients. Consequently, a decline in new subscriptions in any single quarter will likely have only a small impact on our revenue results for that quarter. However, the cumulative impact of such declines could harm our revenues in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our solution, and potential changes in our pricing policies or renewal rates, will typically not be reflected in our results of operations until future periods. We also may be unable to adjust our cost structure to reflect the changes in revenue, resulting in lower margins and earnings. In addition, our subscription model makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through additional sales in any period, as revenue from new clients will be recognized over time as services are delivered. For example, many of our clients initially deploy our solution to support only a portion of their contact center agents. Any increase to our revenue and the value of these existing client relationships will only be reflected in our results of operations if and when these clients increase the number of agent seats and the number of components of our solution over time.
We rely on third-party telecommunications and internet service providers to provide our clients and their customers with telecommunication services and connectivity to our cloud contact center software and any failure by these service providers to provide reliable services could subject us to, among other things, claims for credits or damages.
We rely on third-party telecommunication service providers to provide our clients and their customers with telecommunication services. These telephony services include the public switched telephone network, or PSTN, telephone numbers, call termination and origination services, and local number portability for our clients. In addition, we depend on our internet bandwidth suppliers to provide uninterrupted and error-free service through their telecommunications networks. We exercise little control over these third-party providers, which increases our vulnerability to problems with the services they provide. If any of these service providers fail to provide reliable services, or terminate or increase the cost of the services that we and our clients depend on, we may be required to switch to another service provider. Delays caused by switching our technology to another service provider, if available, and qualifying this new service provider could materially harm our client relationships, business, financial condition and operating results.
Due to our reliance on these service providers, when problems occur, it may be difficult to identify the source of the problem. Service disruption or outages, whether caused by our service, the products or services of our third-party service providers, or our clients’ or their customers’ equipment and systems, may result in loss of market acceptance of our solution and any necessary repairs or other remedial actions may force us to incur significant costs and expenses. Any failure on the part of third-party service providers to achieve or maintain expected performance levels, stability and security could harm our relationships with our clients, result in claims for credits or damages, damage our reputation, significantly reduce client demand for our solution and seriously harm our financial condition and operating results.
We have a history of losses and we may be unable to achieve or sustain profitability.
We have incurred significant losses in each period since our inception in 2001. We incurred net losses of
$3.9 million
and
$12.3 million
in the three and nine months ended
September 30, 2016
, respectively, and a net loss of $25.8 million in the year ended December 31, 2015. As of
September 30, 2016
, we had an accumulated deficit of
$166.7 million
. These losses and our accumulated deficit reflect the substantial investments we have made to develop our solution and acquire new clients. We expect the dollar amount of our costs and expenses to increase in the future as revenue increases, although at a slower rate. We expect our losses to continue for the foreseeable future as we continue to develop and expand our business. Furthermore, to the extent we are successful in increasing our client base, we may also incur increased losses because costs associated with acquiring clients are generally incurred up front, while revenues are recognized over the course of the client relationship. We also have negative gross margins on our professional services, which are expected to continue in the future. In addition, as a public company, we incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses. You should not consider our historical or recent growth in revenues as necessarily indicative of our future performance. Accordingly, we cannot assure you that we will achieve profitability in the future nor that, if we do become profitable, we will sustain profitability.
If the market for cloud contact center software solutions develops more slowly than we expect or declines, our business could be harmed.
The cloud contact center software market is not as mature as the market for legacy on-premise contact center systems, and it is uncertain whether cloud contact center solutions will achieve and sustain high levels of client demand and market acceptance. Our success will depend to a substantial extent on the widespread adoption of cloud contact center software solutions as a replacement for legacy on-premise systems. Many larger organizations have invested substantial technical, personnel and financial resources to integrate legacy on-premise contact center systems into their businesses and, therefore, may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate to cloud contact center solutions such as ours. It is difficult to predict client adoption rates and demand for our solution, the future growth rate and size of the cloud contact center software market, or the entry of competitive products and services. The expansion of the cloud contact center software market depends on a number of factors, including the refresh rate for legacy on-premise systems, cost, performance and perceived value associated with cloud contact center software solutions, as well as the ability of providers of cloud contact center software solutions to address security, stability and privacy concerns. If we or other cloud contact center solution providers experience security incidents, loss of client data, disruptions in service or other problems, the market for cloud contact center software products, solutions and services as a whole, including our solution, may be harmed. If cloud contact center software solutions do not achieve widespread adoption, or there is a reduction in demand for such solutions caused by a lack of client acceptance, enhanced product offerings from on-premise providers, technological challenges, weakening economic conditions, security or privacy concerns, competing technologies and products, decreases in corporate spending or otherwise, it could result in decreased revenues and our business could be harmed.
Shifts over time or from quarter-to-quarter in the mix of sizes or types of organizations that purchase our solution or changes in the components of our solution purchased by our clients could affect our gross margins and operating results.
Our strategy is to sell our solution to both smaller and larger organizations. Our gross margins can vary depending on numerous factors related to the implementation and use of our solution, including the features and number of agent seats purchased by our clients and the level of usage and professional services and support required by our clients. For example, our larger clients typically require more professional services and because our professional services offerings typically have negative margins, any increase in sales of professional services could harm our gross margins and operating results. We also have lower margins on our usage revenues. Sales to larger organizations may also entail longer sales cycles and more significant selling efforts. Selling to smaller clients may involve smaller contract sizes, fewer upsell opportunities, a higher likelihood of contract terminations, fewer potential agent seats and greater credit risk and uncertainty. If the mix of organizations that purchase our solution, or the mix of solution components purchased by our clients, changes unfavorably, our revenues and gross margins could decrease and our operating results could be harmed.
We depend on data centers operated by third parties and any disruption in the operation of these facilities could harm our business.
We host our solution at data centers located in Santa Clara, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Slough, England and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Any failure or downtime in one of our data center facilities could affect a significant percentage of our clients. While we control and have access to our servers and all of the components of our network that are located in our external data centers, we do not control the operation of these facilities. The owners of our data center facilities have no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. If we are unable to renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms, or if one of our data center operators is acquired, closes, suffers financial difficulty or is unable to meet our growing capacity needs, we may be required to transfer our servers and other infrastructure to new data center facilities, and we may incur significant costs and service interruptions in connection with doing so.
Our data centers are subject to various points of failure. Problems with cooling equipment, generators, uninterruptible power supply, routers, switches, or other equipment, whether or not within our control, could result in service interruptions for our clients as well as equipment damage. Our data centers are subject to disasters such as earthquakes, floods, fires, hurricanes, acts of terrorism, sabotage, break-ins, acts of vandalism and other events, which could cause service interruptions or the operators of these data centers to close their facilities for an extended period of time or permanently. The destruction or impairment of any of our data center facilities could result in significant downtime for our solution and the loss of client data. Because our ability to attract and retain clients depends on our providing clients with highly reliable service, even minor interruptions in our service could harm our business, revenues and reputation. Additionally, in connection with the continuing expansion of our existing data
center facilities, there is an increased risk that service interruptions may occur as a result of server addition, relocation or other issues.
Our data centers are also subject to increased power costs. We may not be able to pass on any increase in power costs to our clients, which could reduce our operating margins.
Our recent growth makes it difficult to evaluate and predict our current business and future prospects.
While we have been in existence since 2001, much of our growth has occurred in recent years. Our recent growth may make it difficult for investors to evaluate our current business and our future prospects. We have encountered and will continue to encounter risks and difficulties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, including increasing and unforeseen expenses as we continue to grow our business.
Our ability to forecast our future operating results is limited and subject to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to predict revenue levels, and plan for and model future growth. We have encountered and will continue to encounter risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, such as the risks and uncertainties described in this report. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties, which we use to plan our business, are incorrect or change due to adjustments in our markets or our competitors and their product offerings, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could differ materially from our expectations and our business could suffer.
If our solution fails, or is perceived to fail, to perform properly or if it contains technical defects, our reputation could be harmed, our market share may decline and we could be subject to product liability claims.
Our solution may contain undetected errors or defects that may result in failures or otherwise cause our solution to fail to perform in accordance with client expectations. Moreover, our clients could incorrectly implement or inadvertently misuse our products, which could result in client dissatisfaction and harm the perceived utility of our products and brand. Because our clients use our solution for mission-critical aspects of their business, any real or perceived errors or defects in, or other performance problems with, our solution may damage our clients’ businesses and could significantly harm our reputation. If that occurs, we could lose future sales, or our existing clients could elect to cancel or not renew our solution, seek payment credits, seek damages against us, or delay or withhold payment to us, which could result in reduced revenues, an increase in our provision for uncollectible accounts and service credits, an increase in collection cycles for accounts receivable, and harm our financial results. Clients also may make indemnification or warranty claims against us, which could result in significant expense and risk of litigation. Product performance problems could result in loss of market share, failure to achieve market acceptance and the diversion of development resources.
Any product liability, intellectual property, warranty or other claims against us could damage our reputation and relationships with our clients, and could require us to spend significant time and money in litigation or pay significant settlements or damages. Although we maintain general liability insurance, including coverage for errors and omissions, this coverage may not be sufficient to cover liabilities resulting from such claims. Also, our insurers may disclaim coverage. Our liability insurance also may not continue to be available to us on reasonable terms, in sufficient amounts, or at all. Any contract or product liability claims successfully brought against us would harm our business. In addition, since telecommunications billing is inherently complex and requires highly sophisticated information systems to administer, our billing system may experience errors or we may improperly operate the system, which could result in the system incorrectly calculating the fees owed by our clients for our services or related taxes and administrative fees.
Security breaches and improper access to or disclosure of our data or our clients’ data, or other cyber attacks on our systems, could result in litigation and regulatory risk, harm our reputation and adversely affect our business.
Our solution involves the storage and transmission of our clients’ information, including information about our clients’ customers or other information treated by our clients as confidential. Unauthorized access, security breaches or other cyber attacks could result in the loss of confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, or unauthorized use of our systems, leading to litigation, indemnity obligations, increased expenses, and other liability. Such incidents could also cause interruptions to the solution we provide, degrade the user experience, or cause users to lose confidence in our solution. While we have security measures in place to protect client information and minimize the probability of security breaches and other cyber attacks, if these measures fail as a result of a cyber-attack, other third-party action, employee error, malfeasance or otherwise, and someone obtains unauthorized access to our clients’ data, our reputation could be damaged, our business may suffer and we could incur significant liability. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems change frequently and
generally are not identified until they are launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. In addition, third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce employees or users to disclose information in order to gain access to our data or our users' data. Moreover, any failure on the part of third parties, including our clients, to achieve or maintain security measures for their own systems could harm our relationships with our clients, result in claims against us for credits or damages, damage our reputation and significantly reduce client demand for our solution. Any or all of these issues could harm our ability to attract new clients, cause existing clients to cancel, reduce or not renew their subscriptions, result in reputational damage or subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, including orders or consent decrees forcing us to modify our business practices, all of which could have a material and adverse effect on our business, reputation or financial results.
We are subject to many hazards and operational risks that can disrupt our business, some of which may not be insured or fully covered by insurance.
Our operations are subject to many hazards inherent in the cloud contact center software business, including:
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damage to third-party and our infrastructure and data centers, related equipment and surrounding properties caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires and other natural disasters, explosions and acts of terrorism;
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inadvertent damage from third parties; and
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other hazards that could also result in suspension of operations, personal injury and even loss of life.
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These risks could result in substantial losses and the curtailment or suspension of our operations. For example, in the event of a major earthquake along the West Coast of the United States (where our corporate headquarters and one of our data centers are located), hurricane or tropical storm in the southeastern United States (where our other U.S. data center is located) or catastrophic events such as fire, power loss, telecommunications failure, cyber-attack, war or terrorist attack, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system and service interruptions, reputational harm, delays in product development, breaches of data security and loss of critical data, any of which could harm our business and operating results.
We are not insured against all claims, events or accidents that might occur. If a significant accident or event occurs that is not fully insured, if we fail to recover all anticipated insurance proceeds for significant accidents or events for which we are insured, or if we or our data center providers fail to reopen facilities damaged by such accidents or events, our operations and financial condition could be harmed. In addition to being denied coverage under existing insurance policies, we may not be able to maintain or obtain insurance of the type and amount we desire at reasonable rates.
The contact center software solutions market is subject to rapid technological change, and we must develop and sell incremental and new products in order to maintain and grow our business.
The contact center software solutions market is characterized by rapid changes in client requirements, frequent introductions of new and enhanced products and continuing and rapid technological advancement. To compete successfully, we must continue to design, develop, manufacture and sell new and enhanced contact center products, applications and features that provide increasingly higher capabilities, performance and stability at lower cost. If we are unable to develop or acquire new features for our existing solution or new applications that achieve market acceptance or that keep pace with technological developments, our business would be harmed. For example, we are focused on enhancing the reliability, features and functionality of our contact center solution to enhance its utility to our clients, particularly larger clients with complex, dynamic and global operations. The success of these enhancements depends on many factors, including timely development, introduction and market acceptance, as well as our ability to transition our existing clients to these new products, applications and features. Failure in this regard may significantly impair our revenue growth. In addition, because our solution is designed to operate on a variety of systems, we will need to continuously modify and enhance our solution to keep pace with changes in hardware, operating systems, the increasing trend toward multi-channel communications and other changes to software technologies. We may not be successful in developing or acquiring these modifications and enhancements or bringing them to market in a timely fashion. Furthermore, uncertainties about the timing and nature of new network platforms or technologies, or modifications to existing platforms or technologies, could delay introduction of our solution and increase our research and development expenses. Any failure of our solution to operate effectively with future network platforms and technologies could reduce the demand for our solution, result in client dissatisfaction and harm our business.
Our ability to continue to enhance our solution is dependent on adequate research and development resources. If we are not able to adequately fund our research and development efforts, we may not be able to compete effectively and our business and operating results may be harmed.
In order to remain competitive, we must continue to develop new solution offerings and enhancements to our existing cloud contact center software. Maintaining adequate research and development personnel and resources to meet the demands of the market is essential. If we are unable to develop products, applications or features internally due to constraints, such as high employee turnover, insufficient cash, inability to hire sufficient research and development personnel or a lack of other research and development resources, we may miss market opportunities. Furthermore, many of our competitors expend considerably greater amounts on their research and development programs than we do, and those that do not may be acquired by larger companies that would allocate greater resources to our competitors’ research and development programs. Our failure to devote adequate research and development resources or compete effectively with the research and development programs of our competitors could harm our business.
If we are unable to maintain the compatibility of our software with other products and technologies, our business would be harmed.
Our clients often integrate our solution with their business applications, particularly third-party CRM solutions. These third-party providers or their partners could alter their products so that our solution no longer integrates well with them, or they could delay or deny our access to technology releases that allow us to adapt our solution to integrate with their products in a timely fashion. If we cannot adapt our solution to changes in complementary technology deployed by our clients, it may significantly impair our ability to compete effectively.
Our business could be harmed if our clients are not satisfied with the professional services and technical support provided by us or our partners.
Our business depends on our ability to satisfy our clients, not only with respect to our solution, but also with the professional services and technical support that are required for our clients to implement and use our solution to address their business needs. Professional services and technical support may be performed by our own staff or, with respect to a select subset of our solution, by third parties. We will need to continue to expand and optimize our professional services and technical support in order to keep up with new client installations and ongoing service, which will take time and expense to implement. Identifying and recruiting qualified service personnel and training them in our solution is difficult and competitive and requires significant time, expense and attention. We may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate short-term increases in client demand for support services. We also may be unable to modify the format of our support services or change our pricing to compete with changes in support services provided by our competitors. Increased client demand for these services, without corresponding revenues, could increase our costs and harm our operating results. If a client is not satisfied with the deployment and ongoing services performed by us or a third party, then we could lose clients, miss opportunities to expand our business with these clients, incur additional costs, or lose, or suffer reduced margins on, our service revenue, any of which could damage our ability to grow our business. In addition, negative publicity related to our professional services and technical support, regardless of its accuracy, may damage our business by affecting our ability to compete for new business with current and prospective clients.
Sales to clients outside the United States or with international operations and our international sales efforts and operations support expose us to risks inherent in international sales and operations.
A key element of our growth strategy is to expand our international sales efforts and develop a worldwide client base. Because of our limited experience with international sales, our international expansion may not be successful and may not produce the return on investment we expect. To date, we have realized only a small portion of our revenues from clients outside the United States.
Our international employees are primarily located in the Philippines, where technical support, training and other professional services are performed, and Russia, where software development services are performed. We have also started to ramp sales, marketing and support personnel in the U.K. to maintain and support our European data centers and to provide service and support to clients in certain countries of the European Union. Operating in international markets requires significant resources and management attention and subjects us to intellectual property, regulatory, economic and political risks that are different from those in the United States. As we increase our international sales efforts and continue our other international operations, we will face risks in doing business internationally that could harm our business, including:
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the need to establish and protect our brand in international markets;
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the need to localize and adapt our solution for specific countries, including translation into foreign languages and associated costs and expenses;
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difficulties in staffing and managing foreign operations, particularly hiring and training qualified sales and service personnel;
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different pricing environments, longer sales and accounts receivable payment cycles and collections issues;
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weaker protection for intellectual property and other legal rights than in the U.S. and practical difficulties in enforcing intellectual property and other rights outside of the U.S.;
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increased risk of piracy, counterfeiting and other misappropriation of our intellectual property in our locations outside the U.S.;
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new and different sources of competition;
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general economic conditions in international markets;
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fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies, which may make our solution more expensive in other countries or may increase our costs, impacting our operating results when translated into U.S. dollars;
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compliance with customs duties, tariffs and other international trade complexities;
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compliance challenges related to the complexity of multiple, conflicting and changing governmental laws and regulations, including employment, tax, telecommunications and telemarketing laws and regulations;
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privacy and data protection laws and regulations that are complex, expensive to comply with and may require that client data be stored and processed in a designated territory;
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increased risk of international telecom fraud;
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laws and business practices favoring local competitors;
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compliance with U.S. laws and regulations for foreign operations, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.K. Bribery Act, import and export control laws, tariffs, trade barriers, economic sanctions and regulatory or contractual limitations on our ability to sell our solution in certain foreign markets, and the risks and costs of non-compliance;
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increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities;
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restrictions on the transfer of funds;
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adverse tax consequences; and
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unstable economic and political conditions.
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These risks could harm our international operations, increase our operating costs and hinder our ability to grow our international business and, consequently, our overall business and results of operations. In addition, if the political and military situation in Russia and the Ukraine significantly worsens, or if either Russia or the United States imposes significant new economic sanctions or restrictions, and we are restricted or precluded from continuing our software development operations in Russia, our costs could increase, and our product development efforts, business and results of operations could be significantly harmed.
In addition, compliance with laws and regulations applicable to our international operations increases our cost of doing business outside the United States. We may be unable to keep current with changes in foreign government requirements and laws as they change from time to time. Failure to comply with these regulations could harm our business. In many countries outside the United States it is common for others to engage in business practices that are prohibited by our internal policies and procedures or U.S. regulations applicable to us. Although we have implemented policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance with these laws and policies, there can be no assurance that all of our employees, contractors, strategic partners and agents will comply with these laws and policies. Violations of laws or key control policies by our employees, contractors, strategic partners or agents could result in delays in revenue recognition, financial reporting misstatements, fines, penalties, or prohibitions on selling our solution, any of which could harm our business.
The results of the United Kingdom’s referendum on withdrawal from the European Union may have a negative effect on global economic conditions, financial markets and our business.
In June 2016, a majority of voters in the United Kingdom elected to withdraw from the European Union in a national referendum, referred to as Brexit. The referendum was advisory, and the terms of any withdrawal are subject to a negotiation period that could last at least two years after the government of the United Kingdom formally initiates a withdrawal process. Nevertheless, the referendum has created significant uncertainty about the
future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, including with respect to the laws and regulations that will apply as the United Kingdom and the European Union determine which European Union laws to replace or replicate in the event of a withdrawal. The referendum has also given rise to calls for the governments of other European Union member states to consider withdrawal.
Brexit has adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect global economic conditions and the stability of global financial markets. For example, Brexit introduced significant volatility in global stock markets and currency exchange rate fluctuations that resulted in the strengthening of the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies in which we conduct business. The strengthening of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies will make our solution more expensive to international clients and may adversely affect our international sales. Brexit could also cause disruptions to and create uncertainty surrounding our business, including affecting our relationships with our existing and future clients, owners of our data center facilities in the U.K. and The Netherlands and our data center partners' ability to retain and hire qualified employees, which could harm our business, business opportunities, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.
We depend on our senior management team and the loss of one or more key employees or an inability to attract and retain highly skilled employees could harm our business and results of operations.
Our success largely depends upon the continued services of our key executive officers. We also rely on our leadership team in the areas of research and development, marketing, sales, services and general and administrative functions, and on mission-critical individual contributors. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. The loss of one or more of our executive officers or key employees could seriously harm our business. We currently do not maintain key person life insurance policies on any of our employees.
To execute our growth plan, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel and we may incur significant costs to do so. Competition for these personnel is intense, especially for engineers with high levels of experience in designing and developing cloud software and for senior sales executives. We have, from time to time, experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications. We invest significant time and expense in training our employees, which increases their value to competitors who may seek to recruit them and increases our costs. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects would be harmed. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have. If we hire employees from competitors or other companies, their former employers may attempt to assert that these employees or we have breached legal obligations, resulting in a diversion of our time and resources and, potentially, damages.
Volatility or lack of performance in the trading price of our common stock may also affect our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel because job candidates and existing employees often emphasize the value of the stock awards they receive in connection with their employment when considering whether to accept or continue employment. If the perceived value of our stock awards is low or declines, it may harm our ability to recruit and retain highly skilled employees.
If we fail to grow our marketing capabilities and develop widespread brand awareness cost effectively, our business may suffer.
Our ability to increase our client base and achieve broader market acceptance of our cloud contact center software solution will depend to a significant extent on our ability to expand our marketing operations. We plan to continue to dedicate significant resources to our marketing programs, including internet advertising, digital marketing campaigns, social marketing, trade shows, industry events, co-marketing with strategic partners and telemarketing. The effectiveness of our online advertising may vary in the future due to competition for key search terms, changes in search engine use and changes in the search algorithms used by major search engines. All of these efforts will continue to require us to invest significant financial and other resources in our marketing efforts.
In addition, we believe that developing and maintaining widespread awareness of our brand in a cost-effective manner, both in the United States and internationally, is critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our solution and attracting new clients. Brand promotion activities may not generate client awareness or increase revenues, and may not offset the costs and expenses we incur in building our brand. If we fail to successfully promote, maintain and protect our brand, or incur substantial costs and expenses, we may fail to attract or retain clients necessary to realize a sufficient return on our brand-building efforts, or to achieve the widespread brand awareness that is critical for broad client adoption of our solution.
We may not be able to secure additional financing on favorable terms, or at all, to meet our future capital needs.
To date, we have financed our operations primarily through sales of our solution, lease facilities and net proceeds from our equity and debt financings. We do not know when or if our operations will generate sufficient cash to fund our ongoing operations. In the future, we may require additional capital to respond to business opportunities, challenges, acquisitions, a decline in sales, increased regulatory obligations or unforeseen circumstances and may engage in equity or debt financings or enter into credit facilities.
We have a substantial amount of debt. As of
September 30, 2016
, we had approximately
$32.6 million
in principal amount outstanding under our
New Revolving Credit Facility
entered into on
August 1, 2016
(see Note 5 of the notes to condensed consolidated financial statements under Part I - Item 1 and 'Liquidity and Capital Resources' under Part I - Item 2 of this Form 10-Q),
$0.5 million
outstanding under a promissory note with the USAC and a
$1.2 million
FCC civil penalty payable to the U.S. Treasury (see Note 5 of the notes to condensed consolidated financial statements under Part I - Item 1 of this Form 10-Q). The
New Revolving Credit Facility
is collateralized by substantially all of our assets and contains a number of covenants that limit our ability to, among other things, sell assets, make acquisitions or investments, incur debt, grant liens, pay dividends or make distributions, enter into transactions with our affiliates and use all of our available cash on hand and may prevent us from engaging in acts that may be in our best long-term interests. The amount of our current debt, our debt service obligations, the collateral pledged under the
New Revolving Credit Facility
and the covenants to which we are bound may prevent us from being able to timely secure additional debt or equity financing on favorable terms, or at all, or to pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions.
Any debt financing obtained by us in the future would cause us to incur additional debt service expenses and could include restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and pursue business opportunities. If we raise additional funds through further issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution in their percentage ownership of our company, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges senior to those of holders of our common stock. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to grow and support our business and to respond to business challenges could be significantly limited.
Adverse economic conditions may harm our business.
Our business depends on the overall demand for cloud contact center software solutions and on the economic health of our current and prospective clients. In general, worldwide economic conditions remain unstable. The results of the United Kingdom’s referendum on withdrawal from the European Union, slow growth and economic uncertainty in the U.S. and in various parts of the world, and fluctuations in interest rates and foreign currency exchange rates, has added to the uncertainty regarding economic conditions generally. In addition to the United States, we plan to market and sell our solution in Europe, Asia and other international markets. If economic conditions, including currency exchange rates, in these areas and other key potential markets for our solution continue to remain uncertain or deteriorate further, clients may delay or reduce their contact center and overall information technology spending. If our clients experience economic hardship, this could reduce the demand for our solution, delay and lengthen sales cycles, lower prices for our solution, and lead to slower growth or even a decline in our revenues, operating results and cash flows.
We may acquire other companies or technologies or be the target of strategic transactions, which could divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders and otherwise disrupt our operations and harm our operating results.
We may acquire or invest in businesses, applications or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our solution, enhance our technical capabilities or otherwise offer growth opportunities. The pursuit of potential acquisitions may divert the attention of management, and cause us to incur various costs and expenses in identifying, investigating and pursuing acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated. We may not be able to identify desirable acquisition targets or be successful in entering into an agreement with any particular target.
To date, the growth in our business has been primarily organic, and we have limited experience in acquiring other businesses, having only completed one small acquisition. In any future acquisitions, we may not be able to successfully integrate acquired personnel, operations and technologies, or effectively manage the combined business following the acquisition. We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits from our future acquired businesses due to a number of factors, including:
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inability to integrate or benefit from acquisitions in a profitable manner;
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unanticipated costs or liabilities associated with the acquisition, including legal claims arising from the activities of companies we acquire;
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incurrence of acquisition-related costs;
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difficulty converting the clients of the acquired business to our solution and contract terms, including disparities in the revenues, licensing, support or professional services model of the acquired company;
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difficulty integrating the accounting systems, operations and personnel of the acquired business;
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difficulties and additional costs and expenses associated with supporting legacy products and hosting infrastructure of the acquired business;
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diversion of management’s attention from other business concerns;
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harm to our existing relationships with our partners and clients as a result of the acquisition;
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the loss of our or the acquired business’s key employees;
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diversion of resources that could have been more effectively deployed in other parts of our business; and
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use of substantial portions of our available cash to consummate the acquisition.
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In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to acquired goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. In the future, if our acquisitions do not yield expected returns, we may be required to take charges to our operating results based on this impairment assessment process, which could harm our results of operations.
Acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities, the use of our available cash, or the incurrence of debt, which could harm our operating results. In addition, if an acquired business fails to meet our expectations, our operating results, business and financial condition may suffer.
In addition, we sometimes receive inquiries relating to potential strategic transactions, including from third parties who may seek to acquire us. We will continue to consider and discuss such transactions as we deem appropriate. Such potential transactions may divert the attention of management, and cause us to incur various costs and expenses in investigating and evaluating such transactions, whether or not they are consummated.
If we are unable to maintain and further develop effective internal control over financial reporting, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock may decrease.
As a public company, we are required to maintain internal control over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal controls. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“Section 404”) requires that we evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and provide a management report on our internal control over financial reporting. However, our independent registered public accounting firm will not be required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 until we are no longer an “emerging growth company,” as defined by The Jumpstart Our Businesses Act of 2012 (the “JOBS Act”).
In the future, if we identify one or more material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, we will be unable to assert that our internal controls are effective. A “material weakness” is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.
If we have material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, we may not detect errors on a timely basis and our financial statements may be materially misstated. If we identify material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, if we are unable to comply with the requirements of Section 404 in a timely manner, if we are unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to attest that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock could decrease. We could also become subject to stockholder or other third-party litigation as well as investigations by the stock exchange on which our securities are listed, the SEC or other regulatory authorities, which could require additional financial and management resources and could result in fines, trading suspensions or other remedies.
Changes in financial accounting standards or practices may cause adverse, unexpected financial reporting fluctuations and affect our reported operating results.
U.S. GAAP are subject to interpretation by the FASB, the SEC and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in accounting standards or practices can have a significant effect on our reported results and may even affect our financial statements completed before the change is effective. New accounting pronouncements and varying interpretations of accounting pronouncements have occurred and will occur in the future. Changes to existing rules or the questioning of current practices may harm our reported financial results or the way we account for or conduct our business.
For example, we recognize revenue in accordance with ASU 2009-13, Revenue Recognition (Topic 605) — Multiple-Deliverable Revenue Arrangements — a Consensus of the Emerging Issues Task Force (formerly known as EITF 08-01). In May 2014, the FASB issued ASU 2014-09,
Revenue from Contracts with Customers
, a new standard on the recognition of revenue from contracts with customers, which includes a single set of rules and criteria for revenue recognition to be used across all industries. Companies may use either a full retrospective or a modified retrospective approach to adopt ASU 2014-09. The new standard is effective for our annual and interim reporting periods beginning January 1, 2018. All companies that enter into contracts with customers to transfer goods or services will be affected in some way by ASU 2014-09. As a result of future interpretations or applications of existing and new accounting standards, including ASU 2014-09 and ASU 2009-13, the timing of our revenue recognition could change, which would cause fluctuations in our operating results.
In addition, certain factors have in the past and may in the future cause us to defer recognition of revenues. For example, the inclusion in our client contracts of material non-standard terms, such as acceptance criteria, could require the deferral of revenue. To the extent that such contracts become more prevalent in the future our revenue may be harmed.
Because of these factors and other specific requirements under U.S. GAAP for revenue recognition, we must have precise terms and conditions in our arrangements in order to recognize revenue when we deliver our solution or perform our professional services. Negotiation of mutually acceptable terms and conditions can extend our sales cycle, and we may accept terms and conditions that do not permit revenue recognition at the time of delivery.
We may not be able to utilize a significant portion of our net operating loss or research tax credit carryforwards, which could harm our profitability and financial condition.
As of December 31, 2015, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards due to prior period losses of
$124.4 million
and
$85.2 million
, respectively, which if not utilized will begin to expire in 2024 for federal purposes and began to expire in 2015 for state purposes. We also have research and development credit carryforwards of approximately $2.2 million and $1.8 million for federal and state income taxes, respectively, which if not utilized will begin to expire in 2022. If we are unable to generate sufficient taxable income to utilize our net operating loss and research tax credit carryforwards, these carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, which could harm our profitability and financial condition.
In addition, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (“IRC Section 382”), our ability to utilize net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes, such as research tax credits, in any taxable year may be limited if we experience an “ownership change.” An IRC Section 382 “ownership change” generally occurs if one or more stockholders or groups of stockholders who own at least 5% of our stock increase their ownership by more than 50 percentage points over their lowest ownership percentage within a rolling three-year period. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. We experienced an ownership change prior to 2014 and the disclosed amounts of our net operating losses and potential tax credits have been reduced for the effect of the IRC Section 382 limitations. Subsequent or future issuances or sales of our stock (including certain transactions involving our stock that are outside of our control) could cause an “ownership change” again, which would impose an annual limit on the amount of pre-ownership change net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes we can use to reduce our taxable income, potentially increasing and accelerating our liability for income taxes, and also potentially causing those tax attributes to expire unused. It is possible that such an ownership change could materially reduce our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes to offset taxable income, which could require us to pay more income taxes than if we were able to fully utilize our net operating loss carryforwards and harm our profitability.
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property
Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.
Our success and ability to compete depend in part upon our intellectual property. As of
September 30, 2016
, our intellectual property portfolio included
nine
registered U.S. trademarks,
ten
issued U.S. patents,
three
pending U.S. patent applications and
one
registered U.S. copyright. As of
September 30, 2016
, we also had
four
issued patents,
nine
pending patent applications and
fourteen
limited trademark registrations outside the U.S. The expiration dates of our issued patents range from
2030 to 2034
. We primarily rely on copyright, trade secret and trademark laws, trade secret protection and confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, clients, partners and others to protect our intellectual property rights. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property rights may be inadequate. We may not be able to obtain any further patents or trademarks, our current patents could be invalidated or our competitors could design their products around our patented technology, and our pending applications may not result in the issuance of patents or trademarks. We have pending patent applications and limited trademark registrations outside the U.S., and we may have to expend significant resources to obtain additional protection as we expand our international operations. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of intellectual property rights in other countries, including Russia, where we have significant research and development operations, and the Philippines, where we have significant technical support, training and other professional services are performed, are uncertain and may afford little or no effective protection of our proprietary technology, and the risk of intellectual property misappropriation may be higher in these countries. Consequently, we may be unable to prevent our proprietary technology from being exploited abroad, which could affect our ability to expand into international markets or require costly efforts to protect our technology.
In order to protect our intellectual property rights, we may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect these rights. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Accordingly, we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing upon or misappropriating our intellectual property. Our failure to secure, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could substantially harm the value of our technology, solutions, brand and business.
We will likely continue to be subject to third-party intellectual property infringement claims.
There is considerable patent and other intellectual property development activity and litigation in our industry. Our success depends upon our not infringing upon the intellectual property rights of others. Our competitors, as well as a number of other entities and individuals, may own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our industry. From time to time, third parties have claimed that we are infringing upon their intellectual property rights. For example, on April 3, 2012, NobelBiz, Inc. (“NobelBiz”) filed a patent infringement lawsuit against us alleging that our local caller ID management service infringes United States Patent No. 8,135,122. Subsequently, NobelBiz amended its complaint to add claims related to U.S. Patent No. 8,565,399, which is a continuation in the same family as the prior patent and addresses the same technology. NobelBiz seeks damages in the form of lost profits as well as injunctive relief. See “Part II, ITEM 1. Legal Proceedings.” If NobelBiz is successful in its request for injunctive relief, we will have to stop providing the accused technology, enter into a license agreement with NobelBiz for the technology or modify our technology, any of which could harm our business. There can be no assurance that we (i) will prevail in this action, (ii) can develop non-infringing technology that is accepted in the market if we are enjoined from using the accused technology or (iii) will be able to negotiate favorable licensing terms with NobelBiz. There can also be no assurance that other actions alleging infringement by us of third-party patents will not be asserted or prosecuted against us.
Certain technology necessary for us to provide our solution may be patented, copyrighted or otherwise protected by other parties either now or in the future. In such case, we would have to negotiate a license for the use of that technology. We may not be able to negotiate such a license at a price that is acceptable, or at all. The existence of such a patent, copyright or other protections, or our inability to negotiate a license for any such technology on acceptable terms, could force us to cease using such technology and offering solutions incorporating such technology.
Others have claimed, or in the future may claim, that our solution and underlying technology infringe or violate their intellectual property rights. However, we may be unaware of the intellectual property rights that others may claim cover some or all of our technology or solution. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur
significant costs and expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, require that we refrain from using, manufacturing or selling certain offerings or features or using certain processes, prevent us from offering our solution or certain features thereof, or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms, any of which could harm our business and operating results. We may also be obligated to indemnify our clients or business partners or pay substantial settlement costs, including royalty payments, in connection with any such claim or litigation and to obtain licenses, modify applications, or refund fees, which could be costly. Even if we were to prevail in such a dispute, any litigation regarding our intellectual property could be costly and time consuming and divert the attention of our management and key personnel from our business operations.
We employ third-party licensed software for use in or with our solution, and the inability to maintain these licenses or errors in the software we license could result in increased costs, or reduced service levels, which could harm our business.
Our solution incorporates certain third-party software obtained under licenses from other companies. We anticipate that we will continue to rely on such software and development tools from third parties in the future. Although we believe that there are commercially reasonable alternatives to the third-party software we currently license, this may not always be the case, or it may be difficult or costly to transition to other providers. In addition, integration of the software used in our solution with new third-party software may require significant work and require substantial investment of our time and resources. To the extent that our solution depends upon the successful operation of third-party software in conjunction with our software, any undetected errors or defects in this third-party software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our solution, delay new product or solution introductions, result in increased costs, or a failure of our solution and injure our reputation. Our use of additional or alternative third-party software would require us to enter into license agreements with third parties and to integrate such software to our solution.
There can be no assurance that the technology licensed by us will continue to provide competitive features and functionality or that licenses for technology currently utilized by us or other technology that we may seek to license in the future, will be available to us at a reasonable cost or on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Third-party licensors may also be acquired or go out of business, which could preclude us from continuing to use such technology. The loss of, or inability to maintain, existing licenses could result in lost product features, as well as implementation delays or reductions until equivalent technology or suitable alternative solutions could be developed, identified, licensed and integrated, and could increase our costs and harm our business.
Our solution utilizes open source software, and any failure to comply with the terms of one or more of these open source licenses could negatively affect our business.
Our solution includes software covered by open source licenses, which may include, for example, free general public use licenses, open source front-end libraries, open source stand-alone applications and open source applications. The terms of various open source licenses have not been interpreted by United States courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market our solution. By the terms of certain open source licenses, we could be required to release the source code of our proprietary software, and to make our proprietary software available under open source licenses, if we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner. In the event that portions of our proprietary software are determined to be subject to an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code, re-engineer all or a portion of our technologies, or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our technologies, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and solutions. In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the origin of the software. Given the nature of open source software, there is also a risk that third parties may assert copyright and other intellectual property infringement claims against us based on our use of certain open source software programs. Many of the risks associated with the usage of open source software cannot be eliminated, and could harm our business.
Risks Related to Regulatory Matters
Failure to comply with laws and regulations could harm our business and our reputation.
Our business is subject to regulation by various federal, state, local and foreign governmental agencies, including agencies responsible for monitoring and enforcing employment and labor laws, workplace safety, environmental laws, consumer protection laws, anti-bribery laws, import/export controls, federal securities laws and
tax laws and regulations. In certain jurisdictions, these regulatory requirements may be more stringent than those in the United States and in other circumstances these requirements may be more stringent in the United States. Noncompliance with applicable regulations or requirements could subject us to investigations, sanctions, mandatory recalls, enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, fines, damages, civil and criminal penalties or injunctions. If any governmental sanctions, fines or penalties are imposed, or if we do not prevail in any possible civil or criminal litigation, our business, operating results, financial condition and our reputation could be harmed. In addition, responding to any action will likely result in a significant diversion of management’s attention and resources and an increase in professional fees. Enforcement actions and sanctions could further harm our business, operating results, financial condition and our reputation.
Alleged or actual failure to comply with the constantly evolving legal and contractual environment surrounding calling consumers and wireless phone numbers by other companies or our competitors or governmental or private enforcement actions related thereto, could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
The legal and contractual environment surrounding calling consumers and wireless phone numbers is constantly evolving. In the United States, two federal agencies, the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, and the FCC, and various states have laws including, at the federal level, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, or TCPA, that restrict the placing of certain telephone calls and texts to residential and wireless telephone subscribers by means of automatic telephone dialing systems, prerecorded or artificial voice messages and fax machines. These laws require companies to institute processes and safeguards to comply with these restrictions. Some of these laws, where a violation is established, can be enforced by the FTC, FCC, State Attorneys General, or private party litigants. In these types of actions, the plaintiff may seek damages, statutory penalties, costs and/or attorneys’ fees.
We have designed our solution to comply with these laws. To the extent that our solution is viewed by clients or potential clients as less functional, or more difficult to deploy or use, because of our solution’s compliance features, we may lose market share to competitors that do not include similar compliance safeguards. Our contractual arrangements with our clients who use our solution to place calls also expressly require them to comply with all such laws and to indemnify us for any failure to do so. We take reasonable steps to confirm such compliance. Even with these efforts, it is possible that the FTC, FCC, private litigants or others may attempt to hold our clients, or us as a software provider, responsible for alleged violations of these laws. It also is possible that we may not successfully enforce or collect upon our contractual indemnities from our clients. Additionally, these laws, and any changes to them or the interpretation thereof, that further restrict calling consumers, including to wireless phone numbers, adverse publicity regarding the alleged or actual failure by companies, including our clients and competitors, to comply with such laws or governmental or private enforcement actions related thereto, could result in a reduction in the use of our solution by our clients and potential clients, which could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
Increased taxes on our service may increase our clients’ cost of using our service and/or increase our costs and reduce our profit margins to the extent the costs are not passed through to our clients, and we may be subject to liabilities for past sales and other taxes, surcharges and fees.
Prior to 2012, we did not collect or remit U.S. state or local sales, use, gross receipts, excise and utility user taxes, fees or surcharges on our solution.
During 2011, we analyzed our activities and determined that we were obligated to collect sales taxes on sales of our subscription services in certain U.S. states. Accordingly, we registered with those states and, in 2012, commenced paying past-due amounts and collecting sales taxes from our clients and remitting such taxes to the applicable state taxing authorities. During the first quarter of 2015, we conducted an updated review of the taxability of sales of our subscription services and identified four additional U.S. states where we may be obligated to collect and remit sales taxes.
During 2013, we analyzed our activities and determined that we may be obligated to collect and remit sales, excise and utility user taxes, as well as surcharges as a communications service provider, and pay gross receipts taxes, on our usage-based fees in certain U.S. states and municipalities. We neither collected nor remitted state and local taxes or surcharges on usage-based fees in any of the periods prior to 2014. Based on our ongoing assessment of our U.S. state and local tax collection and remittance obligations in respect of usage-based fees, in 2014, we registered for tax and regulatory purposes in all U.S. states where we determined such registration is proper and commenced collecting and remitting applicable state and local taxes and surcharges on such fees.
Prior to 2016, we had not collected taxes for our sales in Canada. During the second quarter of 2015, we reviewed the taxability of our sales in Canada and determined that we were obligated to collect from our Canadian clients and remit to the Canadian federal and certain provincial governments VAT and/or PST. We commenced collecting and remitting such taxes in January 2016.
We have accrued a contingent liability of
$2.2 million
for our best estimate of the probable amount of taxes and surcharges that may be imposed by various states and municipalities on our activities, including our usage-based and subscription services, prior to registration. This contingent liability is based on our analysis of a number of factors, including the source location of our usage-based fees, the taxability of our subscription services and the rules and regulations in each state. The actual amount of state and local taxes and surcharges paid may differ from our estimates. See Note
9
of the notes to condensed consolidated financial statements.
While we have accrued for these potential liabilities in each period, such accruals are based on analyses of our business activities, the operation of our solution, applicable statutes, regulations and rules in each state and locality and estimates of sales subject to sales tax or other charges. State and local taxing and regulatory authorities may challenge our position and may decide to audit our business and operations with respect to state or local sales, use, gross receipts, excise and utility user taxes, fees or surcharges, which could result in our being liable for taxes, fees, or surcharges, as well as related penalties and interest, above our recorded accrued liability or additional liability for taxes, fees, or surcharges, as well as penalties and interest for our clients, which could harm our results of operations and our relationships with our clients. In addition, if our international sales grow, additional foreign countries may seek to impose sales or other tax collection obligations on us, which would increase our exposure to liability.
The applicability of state or local taxes, fees or surcharges relative to services such as ours is complex, ambiguous and subject to interpretation and change. If states enact new legislation or if taxing and regulatory authorities promulgate new rules or regulations or expand or otherwise alter their interpretations of existing rules and regulations, we could incur additional liabilities. In addition, the collection of additional taxes, fees or surcharges in the future could increase our prices or reduce our profit margins. Compliance with new or existing legislation, rules or regulations may also make us less competitive with those competitors who are not subject to, or choose not to comply with, such legislation, rules or regulations. We have incurred, and will continue to incur, substantial ongoing costs associated with complying with state or local tax, fee or surcharge requirements in the numerous markets in which we conduct or will conduct business.
We are subject to assessments for unpaid USF contributions, as well as interest thereon and civil penalties, due to our late registration and past failure to recognize our obligation as a USF contributor and as an international carrier.
During the third quarter of 2012, we determined that based on our business activities, we are classified as a telecommunications service provider for regulatory purposes and we are required to make direct contributions to the USF based on revenue we receive from the resale of interstate and international telecommunications services. Previously, we had been advised that our telecommunications services were an integral part of an information service and accordingly made indirect USF contributions as an end user through payments to our wholesale telecommunications service providers. In order to comply with the obligation to make direct contributions, in November 2012, we made a voluntary self-disclosure to the FCC Enforcement Bureau and have registered with the USAC which is charged by the FCC with administering the USF. In April 2013, we began remitting required contributions on a prospective basis directly to USAC.
Our registration with USAC subjects us to assessments for unpaid USF contributions, as well as interest thereon and civil penalties, due to our late registration and past failure to recognize our obligation as a USF contributor and as an international carrier. We are required to pay assessments for periods prior to our registration. As of December 31, 2012, our total past due USF contribution being imposed by USAC and accrued by us for the period from 2003 through 2012 was
$8.1 million
, of which
$4.7 million
was undisputed and
$3.4 million
, including
$0.8 million
that pertains to 2003 through 2007, was disputed. As of
September 30, 2016
, we had a promissory note issued to USAC with an outstanding principal balance of
$0.5 million
for the undisputed portion and an accrued liability of
$5.2 million
for the disputed portion and estimated interest and penalties, which are included in notes payable amounts and accrued federal fees, respectively, in the condensed consolidated balance sheet. See Note
9
of the notes to condensed consolidated financial statements. Although we are in administrative proceedings before the FCC to limit such back assessments to the period 2008 through 2012, it is possible that we will be required to pay back assessments for the period from 2003 to 2007. We have submitted two separate Requests for Review (a form of appeal) to the FCC's Wireline Bureau challenging the application of FCC rules to the assessments of USF fees for 2003 to 2007, and from 2008 to 2012. The FCC has not yet resolved either of those Requests for Review. If the
pending disputes are not resolved in our favor, it is possible that we will be required to pay additional back assessments for one or both of those periods. The first Request for Review, which relates to 2003 to 2007 fees, asks the FCC to apply its discretion and relieve us from paying USF fees for those aging fees. The second Request for Review, which applies to both periods, seeks to obtain credit for the indirect USF payments we have made since 2003 to our wholesale telecommunications service providers. If we are unsuccessful in obtaining credit from the FCC for these payments, we will seek reimbursement from our wholesale telecommunication service providers. We will face a regulatory and contractual challenge in seeking recovery or credit for our USF reimbursement payments previously made to our wholesale telecommunication service providers.
In 2012, we also determined that we were a provider of international telecommunications services and therefore we were required to secure from the FCC a section 214 international carrier authorization permitting such international telecommunications. We applied with the FCC for international carrier authority, which was granted on June 9, 2015.
On June 12, 2015, in connection with our late registration with the USAC and past failure to recognize our obligation as a USF contributor and as an international carrier from 2003 to 2012, we entered into a consent decree with the FCC Enforcement Bureau. In the consent decree, we agreed to pay a civil penalty of
$2.0 million
to the U.S. Treasury in twelve equal quarterly installments starting in July 2015 without interest. In the third quarter of 2014, we had accrued a
$2.0 million
liability for the then tentative civil penalty, of which
$1.2 million
in principal remained outstanding as of
September 30, 2016
. The consent decree also requires us to adopt certain internal regulatory compliance monitoring and training requirements, and to report on the status of those compliance efforts to the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau during a period of three years. Our implementation of the internal regulatory compliance monitoring and training requirements were completed in August 2015, and the annual compliance reporting to the FCC will continue until June 2018. To the extent that we do not comply with these obligations, we could be subject to further enforcement action, including fines and penalties, by the FCC. See Note
9
of the notes to condensed consolidated financial statements.
Our ongoing obligations to pay federal, state and local telecommunications contributions and taxes may decrease our price advantage over our competitors who have historically paid these contributions and taxes and could also make us less competitive with those competitors who are not subject to, or choose not to comply with, those requirements. In addition, if we are unable to continue to pass some or all of the cost of these contributions and taxes to our clients, our profit margins on the minutes we resell will decrease. Our federal contributions and tax obligations may significantly increase in the future, due to new interpretations by governing authorities, governmental budget pressures, changes in our business model or solutions or other factors.
If we do not comply with FCC rules and regulations, we could be subject to further FCC enforcement actions, fines, loss of licenses and possibly restrictions on our ability to operate or offer certain of our services.
Since our business is regulated by the FCC, we are subject to existing or potential FCC regulations relating to privacy, disability access, porting of numbers, USF contributions and other requirements. If we do not comply with FCC rules and regulations, we could be subject to further FCC enforcement actions, fines, loss of licenses and possibly restrictions on our ability to operate or offer certain of our services. Any further enforcement action by the FCC, which may be a public process, would hurt our reputation in the industry, possibly impair our ability to sell our services to clients and could harm our business and results of operations.
Among the regulations to which we are subject, we must comply (in whole or in part) with:
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the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, which requires covered entities to assist law enforcement in undertaking electronic surveillance;
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contributions to the USF which requires that we pay a percentage of our revenues resulting from the provision of interstate telecommunications services to support certain federal programs;
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payment of annual FCC regulatory fees based on our interstate and international revenues;
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rules pertaining to access to our services by people with disabilities and contributions to the Telecommunications Relay Services fund; and
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FCC rules regarding Customer Proprietary Network Information, or CPNI, which prohibit us from using such information without client approval, subject to certain exceptions.
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If we do not comply with any current or future rules or regulations that apply to our business, we could be subject to additional and substantial fines and penalties, we may have to restructure our service offerings, exit
certain markets, accept lower margins or raise the price of our services, any of which could ultimately harm our business and results of operations.
Reform of federal and state USF programs could increase the cost of our service to our clients, diminishing or eliminating our pricing advantage.
The FCC and a number of states are considering reform or other modifications to USF programs. The way we calculate our contribution may change if the FCC or certain states engage in reform or adopt other modifications. In April 2012, the FCC released a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to consider reforms to the manner in which companies like us contribute to the federal USF program. In general, the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is considering questions like: what companies should contribute, how contributions should be assessed, and methods to improve the administration of the system. We cannot predict the outcome of this proceeding nor its impact on our business at this time.
Should the FCC or certain states adopt new contribution mechanisms or otherwise modify contribution obligations that increase our contribution burden, we will either need to raise the amount we currently collect from our clients to cover this obligation or absorb the costs, which would reduce our profit margins. Furthermore, the FCC has ruled that states can require us to contribute to state USF programs. A number of states already require us to contribute, while others are actively considering extending their programs to include the solution we provide. Currently our USF contributions are borne by our clients which may result in our solution becoming less competitive as compared to those provided by our competitors.
Privacy concerns and domestic or foreign laws and regulations may reduce the demand for our solution, increase our costs and harm our business.
Our clients can use our solution to collect, use and store information, including personally identifiable information or other information treated as confidential, regarding their customers and potential customers. Federal, state and foreign government bodies and agencies have adopted, are considering adopting, or may adopt laws and regulations regarding the collection, use, storage and disclosure of such information obtained from consumers and individuals. The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, such laws and regulations that are applicable to us and the businesses of our clients may limit the use and adoption of our solution and reduce overall demand, or lead to significant fines, penalties or other regulatory liabilities such as orders or consent decrees forcing us to modify our business practices, as well as reputational damage or third-party lawsuits for any noncompliance with such privacy laws. Furthermore, privacy concerns may cause consumers to resist providing the personal data necessary to allow our clients to use our solution effectively. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our solution in certain industries or countries.
Domestic and international legislative and regulatory initiatives may harm our clients’ ability to process, handle, store, use and transmit information, including demographic and personally identifiable information or other information treated as confidential, regarding their customers, which could reduce demand for our solution. These laws and regulations are still evolving and are likely to be in flux and subject to uncertain interpretation for the foreseeable future. Our business could be harmed if legislation or regulations are adopted, interpreted or implemented in a manner that is inconsistent from country to country and inconsistent with our current policies and practices, or those of our clients. In addition, foreign data protection, privacy, and consumer protection laws and regulations are often more stringent than those in the United States. In particular, the European Union and its member states traditionally have imposed greater legal obligations on companies that collect and process personal data.
In October 2015, the Court of Justice for the European Union invalidated the EU-US Safe Harbor program, or the Safe Harbor. The Safe Harbor provided participating U.S. companies with a legal basis to comply with EU data transfer regulations that would otherwise restrict the transfer of personal data by our customers from the European Union to us in the United States. Some of our clients relied on the Safe Harbor to transfer the personal data of their customers located in the EU to the United States. Other clients relied on legally recognized alternative mechanisms such as standard contractual clauses issued by the European Commission (commonly referred to as “model contracts”) or binding corporate resolutions to make such transfers. We relied on the use of standard contractual clauses issued by the European Commission before the invalidation of the Safe Harbor Program in October 2015, and we continue to do so currently. In July 2016, EU and U.S. regulators announced the approval of a new trans-Atlantic Agreement, the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, which succeeds the Safe Harbor Program. Companies interested in self-certifying compliance with this new trans-Atlantic data-transfer framework can do so as of August 2016, when the U.S. Department of Commerce began accepting certifications.
The self-certification process under the Privacy
Shield is similar to the Safe Harbor program. However, the compliance requirements under the Privacy Shield are generally more stringent than under the Safe Harbor.
Other methods for transferring personal data across the Atlantic are also facing legal scrutiny. In May 2016, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner announced its intention to seek declaratory relief in the Irish High Court and a referral to the European Court of Justice, or the ECJ, to determine the legal status of data transfers under standard contractual clauses. An adverse decision from the ECJ will impact how either we or our clients transfer personal data out of the European Union. Further uncertainty exists with regard to data transfers in relation to the United Kingdom due to the recent referendum in which voters in the UK decided to withdraw from the European Union. Finally, the EU recently adopted the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which is the most comprehensive reform of data protection law in the EU’s history. The GDPR, which is expected to be effective in May 2018, will significantly update and modify European data protection law, including extending its application to a wider range of non-EU entities, harmonizing data protection rules across EU member states, giving data subjects important new rights, and significantly increasing penalties for non-compliance.
Any of these developments, and the cost of compliance, could harm our operations and financial results. Moreover, any non-compliance, or perceived non-compliance, with these obligations could result in investigations or enforcement actions by applicable regulators, lawsuits by private parties, changes to our business practices, increased cost of operations, or declines in client growth, or may otherwise harm our business. In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy groups and the technology and other industries are considering various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. If the processing of information were to be curtailed in this manner, our solution may be less attractive, which may reduce demand for our solution and harm our business.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
Our stock price has been volatile, may continue to be volatile and may decline, including due to factors beyond our control.
The market price of our common stock has been volatile in the past and may fluctuate significantly in the future in response to numerous factors, many of which are beyond our control. During the nine months ended
September 30, 2016
, the sale price per share of our common stock ranged from a low of $6.14 to a high of $16.23. Factors that may contribute to continuing volatility in the price of our common stock include:
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actual or anticipated fluctuations in our operating results;
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the financial projections we provide to the public, any changes in these projections or our failure to meet these projections;
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failure of securities analysts to initiate or maintain coverage of our company, changes in financial estimates by any securities analysts who follow our company, or our failure to meet these estimates or the expectations of investors;
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ratings changes by any securities analysts who follow our company;
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sales or distributions of our common stock by us or our significant stockholders, or the public announcement of same;
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the assessment of our business or position in our market published in research and other reports;
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announcements by us or our competitors of significant technical innovations, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, joint ventures or capital commitments;
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changes in operating performance and stock market valuations of other technology companies generally, or those in the SaaS industry in particular;
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price and volume fluctuations in the overall stock market, including as a result of trends in the U.S. or global economy;
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any major change in our board of directors or management;
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lawsuits threatened or filed against us;
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legislation or regulation of our business, the internet and/or contact centers;
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new entrants into the contact center market, including the transition by providers of legacy on-premise contact center systems to cloud solutions, as well as cable and incumbent telephone companies and other well-capitalized competitors;
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new products or new sales by us or our competitors;
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the perceived or real impact of events that harm our direct competitors;
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developments with respect to patents or proprietary rights;
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general market conditions;
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distributions to limited partners, or block sales, by original venture capital investors; and
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other events or factors, including those resulting from war, incidents of terrorism or responses to these events, which could be unrelated to, or outside of, our control.
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In addition, stock markets have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many technology companies. Stock prices of many technology companies have fluctuated in a manner unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. These and other factors may disproportionately impact the trading price of our common stock. In the past, stockholders have instituted securities class action litigation following periods of market volatility. If we were to become involved in securities litigation, it could subject us to substantial costs, divert resources and the attention of management from our business and harm our business, results of operations, financial condition, reputation and cash flows.
If securities or industry analysts discontinue publishing research or reports about our business, or publish negative reports about our business, our share price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common stock depends in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business, our market and our competitors. We do not have any control over these analysts. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our shares or change their opinion of our shares, our share price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our company or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which could cause our share price or trading volume to decline.
Substantial future sales of shares of our common stock could cause the market price of our common stock to decline.
The market price of shares of our common stock could decline as a result of substantial sales of our common stock, particularly sales by our directors, executive officers and significant stockholders and persons to whom our shares are distributed by our significant stockholders or the perception in the market that holders of a large number of shares intend to sell their shares.
As of
September 30, 2016
, the holders of up to approximately
6,249,479
shares of our outstanding common stock (including shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of our warrants) have rights, subject to certain conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or our stockholders. The filing of a registration statement for these shares may cause our stock price to decline, even before such shares are actually sold in the market. We have also registered shares of common stock that we may issue under our employee equity incentive plans. These shares can be sold freely in the public market upon issuance.
We are an emerging growth company and we cannot be certain if the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our common stock less attractive to investors.
We are an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act. Under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies can delay adopting new or revised financial accounting standards until such time as those standards apply to private companies. We irrevocably elected not to avail ourselves of this extended transition period and, therefore, we are subject to the same new or revised accounting standards as other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies.”
For as long as we continue to be an emerging growth company, we may take advantage of certain other exemptions from reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. Investors may find our common stock less attractive because we rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock and our stock price may be more volatile or decline.
We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest of (i) the end of the fiscal year in which the market value of our common stock that is held by non-affiliates is at least $700 million as of the last business day of our most recently completed second fiscal quarter, (ii) the end of the fiscal year in which we have total annual gross revenues of $1 billion or more during such fiscal year, (iii) the date on which we issue more than $1 billion in non-convertible debt in a three-year period or (iv) the end of fiscal 2019.
Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could make an acquisition of our company more difficult, limit attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management and limit the market price of our common stock.
Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change in control or changes in our management. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws:
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provide that our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors;
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provide that stockholders may remove directors only for cause and only with the approval of holders of at least 66
2
⁄
3
% of our then outstanding capital stock;
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provide that the authorized number of directors may be changed only by resolution of the board of directors;
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provide that all vacancies, including newly created directorships, may, except as otherwise required by law, be filled by the affirmative vote of a majority of directors then in office, even if less than a quorum;
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provide that our stockholders may not take action by written consent, and may only take action at annual or special meetings of our stockholders;
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provide that stockholders seeking to present proposals before a meeting of stockholders or to nominate candidates for election as directors at a meeting of stockholders must provide notice in writing in a timely manner, and also specify requirements as to the form and content of a stockholder’s notice;
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restrict the forum for certain litigation against us to Delaware;
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do not provide for cumulative voting rights (therefore allowing the holders of a majority of the shares of common stock entitled to vote in any election of directors to elect all of the directors standing for election);
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provide that special meetings of our stockholders may be called only by the chairman of the board, our chief executive officer or the board of directors pursuant to a resolution adopted by a majority of the total number of authorized directors; and
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provide that stockholders will be permitted to amend our amended and restated bylaws only upon receiving at least 66
2
/
3
% of the votes entitled to be cast by holders of all outstanding shares then entitled to vote generally in the election of directors, voting together as a single class.
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These provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management. In addition, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which generally prohibits a Delaware corporation from engaging in any of a broad range of business combinations with any “interested” stockholder for a period of three years following the date on which the stockholder became an “interested” stockholder.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the sole and exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that, unless we consent to the selection of an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the sole and exclusive forum for (1) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, (2) any action asserting a claim of breach of fiduciary duty owed by any of our directors, officers or other employees to us or to our stockholders, (3) any action asserting a claim arising pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law or (4) any action asserting a claim governed by the internal affairs doctrine. The choice of forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage such lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be
inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.
We have never paid cash dividends and do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.
We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our common stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings and do not expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Any future determination to declare cash dividends will be made at the discretion of our board of directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on a number of factors, including our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, contractual restrictions, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. In addition, our New Revolving Credit Facility prohibits us and our subsidiaries from, among other things, paying any dividends or making any other distribution or payment on account of our common stock. Accordingly, holders of our common stock must rely on sales of their common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investments.
Our directors, executive officers and significant stockholders, who hold approximately 24% of the voting power of our outstanding common stock, have substantial control over us and could delay or prevent a change in corporate control.
As of
September 30, 2016
, our directors, executive officers and holders of more than 5% of our common stock, together with their affiliates, beneficially owned, in the aggregate, approximately 24% of our outstanding common stock. As a result, these stockholders, acting together, have the ability to substantially influence the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. In addition, these stockholders, acting together, have the ability to substantially influence the management and affairs of our company. Accordingly, this concentration of ownership might decrease the market price of our common stock by:
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delaying, deferring or preventing a change in control of Five9;
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impeding a merger, consolidation, takeover or other business combination involving us; or
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discouraging a potential acquirer from making a tender offer or otherwise attempting to obtain control of Five9.
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