ITEM 1. Business
Overview
Five9 is a pioneer and leading provider of cloud software for contact centers. Since our inception, we have exclusively focused on delivering our platform in the cloud and are disrupting a significantly large market by replacing legacy on-premise contact center systems. Contact centers are vital hubs of interaction between organizations and their customers and, therefore, are essential to delivering successful customer service, sales and marketing strategies. Our mission is to empower organizations to transform their contact centers into customer engagement centers of excellence, while improving business agility and significantly lowering the cost and complexity of their contact center operations. Our purpose-built, highly scalable and secure Virtual Contact Center, or VCC, cloud platform delivers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-use applications that enable the breadth of contact center-related customer service, sales and marketing functions. We have become an established leader in the cloud contact center market, facilitating
more than three billion
interactions between our more than
2,000
clients and their customers per year. We believe our ability to combine software and telephony into a single unified platform that is delivered in the cloud creates a significant advantage.
Based on our current product offering and historical average annual recurring revenue per seat, we believe that the market for our solution is approximately
$24 billion
annually worldwide.
Gartner estimated that there are approximately 15.8 million contact center agents worldwide
.
Furthermore, we believe cloud penetration of the contact center market in North America is between 10% to 15%
. We believe adoption of cloud contact center software solutions is increasing rapidly as a result of several distinct trends. The increasing adoption of cloud computing, especially within customer relationship management, or CRM, is creating strong demand for integrated cloud contact center software solutions. In addition, cloud contact center software solutions now offer the functionality required by large, complex enterprise contact centers. Furthermore, we believe organizations typically refresh their contact center systems every
8 to 10 years
, which provides an opportunity for cloud solutions to replace legacy on-premise contact center systems when these replacement decisions arise. On-premise systems require large up-front investments, long deployment cycles and are burdensome to maintain. These systems are also often inflexible, complex, and require significant duplication of effort and integration across multiple sites. This creates substantial challenges for clients with on-premise contact center systems to implement new features or upgrades, or to integrate with adjacent cloud solutions. As a result, cloud contact center software solutions are replacing legacy on-premise contact center systems.
Our solution, which is comprised of our Virtual Contact Center, or VCC, cloud platform and applications, allows simultaneous management and optimization of customer interactions across voice, chat, email, web, social media and mobile channels, either directly or through our application programming interfaces, or APIs. Our VCC cloud platform matches each customer interaction with an appropriate agent resource and delivers relevant customer data to the agent in real-time through integrations with adjacent enterprise applications, such as CRM software, to optimize the customer experience and improve agent productivity. Our solution ensures our clients always have the latest version of our software. Delivered on-demand, our solution enables our clients to quickly deploy agent seats in any geographic location with only a computer, headset and broadband internet connection, and rapidly adjust the number of contact center agent seats in response to changing business requirements. Unlike legacy on-premise contact center systems, our solution requires minimal up-front investment, can be rapidly deployed and is maintained by us in the cloud.
Our sales model consists of a field sales team that sells our solution into larger opportunities and a telesales team that sells our solution into smaller opportunities. We have developed a proven, high velocity, metrics-driven sales and marketing strategy, which is designed to effectively identify, qualify and close sales opportunities. To complement this go-to-market strategy, we have developed a large ecosystem of technology and system integrator partners and independent software vendors to help increase awareness of our solution in the market and drive incremental sales opportunities with new and existing clients. We are establishing a network of master sales agents, which provide sales leads, and resellers, which sell our solution to new and existing clients. We expect that this network will enable us to attract additional clients, and we expect our resellers will assist us in expanding internationally.
We provide our solution through a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, business model with recurring subscriptions based primarily on the number of agent seats and minutes of usage, as well as the specific functionalities and applications our clients deploy.
We have achieved significant growth in recent periods. For the years ended
December 31, 2017
,
2016
and
2015
, our revenues were
$200.2 million
,
$162.1 million
and
$128.9 million
, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of
24%
and
26%
, respectively. We incurred net losses of
$9.0 million
,
$11.9 million
and
$25.8 million
for the years ended
December 31, 2017
,
2016
and
2015
, respectively, as a result of increased investment in our growth. As of
December 31, 2017
,
2016
and
2015
, our total assets were
$128.2 million
,
$105.2 million
and
$99.2 million
, respectively. Our recurring revenue model combined with our Annual Dollar-Based Retention Rate, which was
98%
as of
December 31, 2017
, have enhanced our ability to forecast our financial performance and plan future investments. For a description of how our Annual Dollar-Based Retention Rate is calculated, please refer to ITEM 7 “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
We operate in a single reportable segment. Please refer to the geographical information for each of the last three years in Note
11
of the notes to our consolidated financial statements. Please refer to the discussion of risks related to our foreign operations in the section entitled “ITEM 1A. Risk Factors.”
Industry Overview
Contact centers must evolve in today’s rapidly changing technology environment
Contact centers are vital hubs of interaction between organizations and their customers and are mission critical to the successful execution of customer service, sales and marketing strategies. Both consumer and enterprise technology trends are driving an evolution in contact center strategies. Today, customers increasingly expect seamless communications across multiple channels, including voice, chat, email, web, social media and mobile, thereby increasing the number of touch points between organizations and their customers. Along with these additional channels, customers expect personalized interactions to enhance overall customer service. Delivering customer interactions to an appropriate agent resource, while delivering relevant customer data to the agent in real-time, is crucial in providing effective customer service.
As the needs of organizations and their customers have become more sophisticated, so have the demands for contact centers. Striving for greater efficiency in meeting demand, the use of remote agents and geographically dispersed contact centers has proliferated. To increase capacity and undertake upgrades, on-premise contact centers must unify geographically dispersed agents and hardware, which requires building out teams and facilities to forecasted future capacity and is a long-term undertaking. In order to meet these changing demands, contact centers must upgrade their existing on-premise contact center systems or migrate their contact center operations to the cloud.
Legacy on-premise contact center systems are inefficient
The majority of contact center operations today rely on legacy on-premise contact center systems that include business workflows, as well as hardware and software architectures designed more than a decade ago. Legacy on-premise contact center systems are typically developed for location-specific deployments and are often costly, inflexible, complex and require significant duplication of effort and integration across multiple sites. Key shortcomings of these legacy systems include:
|
|
•
|
Long and complex implementation and upgrade cycles.
Implementation of legacy on-premise contact center systems requires long deployment timelines and complex integrations with other enterprise systems. Once these systems have been deployed, integrated and customized, upgrades and modifications can be extremely challenging. Due to these customized solutions and complex integrations, clients will often forego or postpone upgrades for fear of disabling key functionality. If they do choose to upgrade, clients are often required to rebuild integrations in order to retain full functionality, which frequently results in significant expenditures of time, resources and capital.
|
|
|
•
|
Inflexible resource deployment.
As organizations expand globally, they require the ability to easily manage remote agents and quickly adjust agent seats to accommodate peak call volumes. Most legacy on-premise contact center systems do not provide these capabilities and, as a result, their clients are typically unable to quickly scale their contact center operations in response to changing business needs. This often results in costly over-building of additional capacity to accommodate peak volumes.
|
|
|
•
|
Duplicative technology stacks across multiple sites.
Organizations must integrate multiple contact center sites to drive efficiency and create a unified customer view. Organizations running on-premise systems often find themselves with dissimilar systems at each site resulting in non-integrated and inefficient silos of technology. Moreover, technology at each site is in a constant state of change over time. The initial and ongoing integration of these contact center sites for such organizations requires significant ongoing investment.
|
Our Opportunity
Based on our current product offerings and historical average annual recurring revenue per seat, we believe that the market for our solution is approximately
$24 billion
annually worldwide.
Gartner estimated that there are approximately 15.8 million contact center agents worldwide
.
Furthermore, we believe cloud penetration of the contact center market in North America is between 10% to 15%
. We believe the market for contact center solutions is undergoing a significant shift to the cloud driven primarily by:
|
|
•
|
Adoption of cloud CRM solutions
|
|
|
•
|
Sophistication of cloud contact center software solutions
|
|
|
•
|
Technology refresh of on-premise contact center systems
|
|
|
•
|
Simplicity of the cloud vs. complexity of legacy on-premise
|
Adoption of cloud CRM solutions has grown as organizations seek to enhance their sales strategies, increase business agility and reduce costs. CRM solutions typically integrate deeply with contact center solutions to provide agents with real-time access to customer information. The shift to cloud CRM and ease of integration are creating significant demand for integrated cloud contact center software solutions. As the market opportunity has expanded, cloud contact center software solutions have evolved to meet the requirements of large, complex enterprise contact centers. We believe organizations have typically refreshed their on-premise contact center systems every
8 to 10 years
. Given the prevalence of cloud CRM and the capabilities of cloud-based contact centers, cloud solutions are increasingly considered as a replacement alternative to legacy on-premise contact center systems during these refresh decisions.
Our Solution
We deliver a comprehensive, end to end cloud software solution for contact centers. Our solution enables organizations of all sizes to enhance the customer experience through omnichannel engagement, improve customer service, increase sales performance and improve the efficiency and cost of their operations. Our solution is designed to enable customers to seamlessly engage through voice, video, website, mobile, chat, email, click-to-call, callback, social and messaging. Our agent interface, built on HTML5, is an intuitive browser-based design providing easy visualization of customer profile, context and cross channel history. Our Freedom platform provides a modern micro services-based open enterprise architecture built with representational state transfer, or REST, API’s and powerful software development kits, or SDKs, enabling customers, partners and developers to deliver powerful solutions that bridge the context gap between their unique systems. We provide high voice quality with our Agent Connect service and our call-by-call carrier optimization routing. Our web analytics capabilities enable businesses to see what visitors are doing live on their website, in a mobile application, or in interactions with their agents. It provides customer journey analytics and lifetime journey mapping with full insight across all channels and enables enterprises to address online presence for both buying and customer care use cases. Combined with our robust natural language processing, or NLP, which can determine sentiment and reasons for contact and our next best actions engine for real-time recommendations, enterprises are able to transform their customer’s experience from reactive interactions into trusted, proactive engagements, or proactive analytics. Our complete end-to-end capabilities include computer-telephony integration, or CTI, interactive voice response, or IVR, visual IVR, automatic contact distribution, or ACD, with skills-based routing, reporting, dashboards, agent and supervisor desktop, dialer, mobile applications for contact center and customer, pre-built CRM integrations, quality management, speech and desktop analytics, customer surveys and workforce management.
Our cloud contact center solution provides the following key elements:
|
|
•
|
Rapid implementation, seamless updates and pre-built integrations.
Our solution is designed to be deployed quickly and seamlessly with minimal disruption to a client’s operations. The pre-built integrations with leading CRM and other enterprise applications reduce the complexity and burden-of-effort of integrating with the client’s business applications. The solution is designed to be seamlessly updated so that
|
clients are always on the latest version of the software, while maintaining their existing configurations, ensuring minimal disruption to the client’s contact center operations.
|
|
•
|
Highly flexible platform.
Our solution provides easy administration, configuration and role-based functionalities for agents, supervisors and administrators enabling the rapid adjustment of contact center resources to meet a changing mix of contact channels and peaks-and-troughs in contact volumes.
|
|
|
•
|
Scalable, secure and reliable multi-tenant architecture.
Our solution provides organizations of all sizes with the robust contact center functionality, scalability, flexibility and security required in the most sophisticated and distributed environments.
|
Our solution provides the following key benefits to clients:
|
|
•
|
Higher agent productivity.
Our solution empowers agent productivity and effectiveness by allowing agents to handle both inbound and outbound calls and interact with customers across multiple contact channels, including voice, chat, email, web, social media and mobile. Our solution gives agents the ability to switch between media channels through an easy-to-use, unified interface that provides agents with all the relevant content and tools needed to complete the task at hand.
|
|
|
•
|
Improved customer experience.
Our intelligent contact routing and self-service IVR capabilities, pre-built CRM integrations, and multichannel engagement ensure that customers receive an omnichannel experience. Each new contact is quickly routed to an appropriate agent resource. Using the rich contact history and additional context through integrations with CRM applications, agents have immediate access to the most current, relevant and accurate information about the customer, resulting in increased first contact resolutions and a more satisfying experience for the customer.
|
|
|
•
|
Enhanced end-to-end visibility.
Our solution provides clients’ operations staff, quality team and leadership with a complete view of contact center performance through a comprehensive set of historical reports, real-time dashboards, and quality and performance management tools. Clients can also extract reporting data from our solution for further analysis using a spreadsheet application or using the sophistication of an enterprise business intelligence application. This insight provides an organization-wide view of customer engagement performance and allows clients to quickly determine the appropriate actions required to address changing circumstances.
|
|
|
•
|
Greater operational efficiency.
Our solution provides contact center managers and supervisors with significant visibility into their agents’ productivity and effectiveness and the performance of their inbound queues and outbound campaigns. Our solution has robust intelligence and analytics capabilities to help supervisors optimize operations and campaigns in real-time to drive increased efficiency. Our role-based interfaces deliver specific functionality to both desktops and mobile devices to meet the unique needs of agents, supervisors and administrators.
|
|
|
•
|
Compelling value proposition.
We provide a unified cloud-based software and telephony platform for contact center operations, including software applications, technology infrastructure, maintenance, monitoring, storage, security, client support and upgrades, which enables our clients to simplify their technology infrastructure and streamline IT costs. We manage upgrades and deployments remotely, resulting in lower total cost of operations relative to legacy on-premise contact center systems that often require in-house technical support staff.
|
Our Competitive Strengths
We believe that our position as a leading provider of cloud contact center software results from several key competitive strengths, including:
|
|
•
|
Cloud-based, enterprise-grade platform and end-to-end application suite.
We deliver a cloud-based enterprise-grade platform and applications suite with multi-channel capabilities that allows our clients to manage their entire contact center operation. Our highly scalable, secure and multi-tenant architecture enables us to serve large, distributed enterprises with complex contact center requirements, as well as smaller organizations, all from a single cloud platform.
|
|
|
•
|
Rapid deployment and support of our comprehensive solution.
Our high-touch engagement model for larger implementations leverages a proven lifecycle approach including detailed discovery, design, testing, training and optimization. This not only accelerates agent activation, but also targets desired business
|
outcomes. Through the use of tools and processes that have been refined over thousands of customers, we can also efficiently meet the needs of our smaller clients. We offer flexibility and integrate with a number of leading CRM vendors, including: salesforce.com, Inc., or Salesforce, Oracle Corporation, or Oracle, Zendesk, Inc., or Zendesk, Microsoft Corporation, or Microsoft, ServiceNow, Inc., or ServiceNow, and others. Once operational, we offer a high touch Premium Support service where we assign a Technical Account Manager who has intimate knowledge of the customers’ operations so we can quickly resolve issues and fine tune the solution. As a result, our clients’ contact centers become fully operational faster and they recognize time to value more quickly than with legacy on-premise contact center systems.
|
|
•
|
Reliable, secure, compliant and scalable platform.
Our pla
tform delivers what we believe is industry leading reliability; cybersecurity using a defense-in-depth approach; legal and regulatory compliance features designed to assist our clients in complying with applicable laws, regulations and industry standards including Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, Customer Proprietary Network Information, or CPNI, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, and analogous provincial laws, and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS, and is scalable to accommodate the requirements of larger clients.
|
|
|
•
|
Proven, repeatable and scalable go-to-market model.
We engage with our clients through a highly scalable and metrics-driven sales and marketing organization that effectively identifies, qualifies and closes sales opportunities. The deep domain expertise of our field sales team is instrumental in selling to larger opportunities, and our highly efficient telesales model enables us to cost-effectively identify, qualify and close a high volume of smaller opportunities. Our ecosystem of technology and system integrator partners increases awareness of our solution and helps generate new sales opportunities. We believe our go-to-market model gives us an efficient and effective means of targeting organizations of all sizes.
|
|
|
•
|
Established market presence and a large, diverse client base.
We have a large, diverse client base of over
2,000
organizations across multiple industries. We believe our clients view us as a key strategic solutions provider. The performance, reliability, ease-of-use and comprehensive nature of our solution has resulted in high client retention.
|
|
|
•
|
Extensive partner ecosystem.
We have cultivated a robust ecosystem of partners including a variety of leading CRM software vendors such as Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, Microsoft and ServiceNow; WFO vendors such as Calabrio, Verint and CSI; unified communications vendors such as Microsoft Teams (formerly Skype for Business) and Cisco; system integrators such as Accenture PLC, Deloitte Consulting LLP and PwC LLP; master agents and resellers; cloud private branch exchange, or PBX, phone systems vendors; independent software vendors; and telephony providers such as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and CenturyLink Communications, LLC. We believe this ecosystem has enabled us to increase our brand awareness and enhance the functionality and value of our solution for our clients.
|
|
|
•
|
Focus on innovation and thought leadership.
Since our inception, we have been an innovator of cloud contact center software. Our investment in research and development has driven our growth and enabled us to deliver a cloud contact center software solution with the features and functionality to power the most complex contact centers. Our extensive domain expertise enables us to enhance our solution and serves as a critical competitive differentiator. We strive to be a thought leader in our industry, identifying and developing cloud capabilities to transform traditional contact center operations into customer engagement centers of excellence.
|
Our Growth Strategy
Our objective is to strengthen our position as a leader in cloud contact center software. To accomplish this goal, we are pursuing the following growth strategies:
|
|
•
|
Capture increased market share
. We believe that the adoption of cloud contact center software solutions is increasingly driven by mainstream adoption of cloud computing, especially within CRM, as well as the increasing capabilities of these solutions. With organizations refreshing their contact center systems every
8 to 10 years
, cloud solutions have an opportunity to replace legacy on-premise contact center systems at the time a replacement decision is made. We believe there is a substantial opportunity for us to win new clients
|
and increase our market share given the strength and client benefits of our cloud solution. We intend to continue to invest aggressively in our sales force and marketing capabilities to win new clients.
|
|
•
|
Continue to increase sales in our existing client base
. Many of our clients initially deploy our solution to support only a portion of their contact center agents. We intend to increase the number of agents using our solution within our existing clients as they experience the benefits of our cloud solution. We also intend to sell our existing clients incremental applications to increase our revenue and the value of our existing client relationships.
|
|
|
•
|
Maintain our innovation leadership by strengthening and extending our solution
. We have an innovative platform that has enabled us to establish a leadership position in the cloud contact center software market. To preserve and expand our leadership position, we intend to continue to make significant investments in research and development to strengthen our existing solution and develop additional industry-leading contact center features and applications.
|
|
|
•
|
Further develop our partner ecosystem
. We have established strong partner relationships with organizations in the contact center ecosystem to further enhance the value of our VCC cloud platform. We intend to continue to cultivate new relationships with additional CRM, WFO and unified communications partners as well as system integrators, master agents, resellers, PBX providers, phone systems vendors, independent software vendors and telephony providers to enhance the value of our solution and drive sales.
|
|
|
•
|
Expand internationally
. To date, our primary focus has been on the U.S. market, which represented
94%
, 93% and 93% of our revenue in
2017
,
2016
and
2015
, respectively, based on bill to addresses. We believe there is a significant opportunity for our cloud solution to disrupt incumbent legacy on-premise contact center systems internationally. We plan to increase our sales capabilities internationally by expanding our direct sales force and working with channel partners to target these markets and grow our international client base. We have co-location data center facilities in Europe to provide clients in certain countries of the European Union, or EU, with regional access to our cloud contact center solution to better serve local needs.
|
|
|
•
|
Selectively pursue acquisitions
. In addition to organically developing and strengthening our solution, we intend to selectively explore acquisition opportunities of companies and technologies to expand the functionality of our solution, provide access to new clients or markets, or both.
|
Our Virtual Contact Center Cloud Platform and Applications
Our cloud contact center software solution consists of our highly scalable VCC cloud platform that delivers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-use, secure applications to cover the breadth of contact center-related customer service, sales and marketing functions. Our VCC cloud platform acts as the hub for omnichannel engagement between our clients and their customers. This enables clients to fully manage the end-to-end customer experience in a single unified architecture. Our solution enables our clients to manage customer interactions across multiple channels including voice, chat, email, web, video, social media and mobile and connects them to the most appropriate agent. Whether the resource is an internal contact center agent, an outsourcer, an agent working from home, a knowledge worker, or self-service, our solution enables our clients to deliver a highly effective customer experience.
Our solution is built using a multi-tenant architecture and delivered in the cloud. The following diagram illustrates our VCC cloud platform and comprehensive suite of applications used by agents, supervisors and administrators. In addition, we provide a robust set of management applications including workforce management, reporting, quality management and supervisor tools.
Inbound Contact Center
: With our VCC cloud platform, organizations of all sizes have everything they need to handle their inbound customer engagement. This includes the ability to take voice calls, respond to chat and email, and engage with a wide range of social media sources. Our platform includes a full-featured IVR system that allows our clients to provide a self-service capability and to automatically determine the customer intent and identify the type of resource to best handle the customer inquiry. At the center of our VCC cloud platform is the ACD module which provides intelligent routing of customer interactions. This enables clients to classify and prioritize customer interactions and ensure that the interactions are delivered to the most appropriate resource to provide the best customer experience and maximize business results.
Through CTI capabilities, out-of-the-box integrations with CRM solutions (such as Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, Microsoft and ServiceNow), and easy to use open APIs, clients can provide a personalized customer experience by prioritizing important customers and delivering customer information to the agent handling the interaction. This promotes quick first contact resolution, which is a key factor in delivering a superior customer experience.
Outbound Contact Center:
Our Outbound Contact Center application enables our clients to improve the efficiency and productivity of outbound contact center agents. We provide a complete solution for outbound sales and marketing campaigns, including multiple automated dialing options, so our clients can find the right match for their needs and environment, whether outbound business-to-consumer, or B2C, business-to-business, B2B, or 1:1 proactive customer care. We provide a variety of outbound dialer modes, including a patented predictive dialer capability. The predictive dialer greatly enhances the productivity of agents and sales representatives by increasing productive talk time and minimizing idle time spent listening to voice mail and busy signals. These dialer solutions allow our clients to choose the automation capabilities that best align with their contact center environment and objectives, including lead prospecting, qualifying, nurturing and converting. We also provide campaign management tools such as list management, sophisticated dialer rules and agent scripting. In addition, we provide a manual touch mode option that provides tools to outbound clients to comply with the TCPA regulations.
Blended Contact Center:
We provide both inbound and outbound capabilities on a single platform to unify contact center operations and enable end-to-end customer engagement. This improves agent productivity as interactions are automatically selected and routed to agents based on interaction volume. When inbound call volumes are low, the blending ability allows clients to shift inbound agent resources to outbound-related functions.
For example, inbound agents can be assigned to the outbound queue for automatic follow-ups on any customer interaction, flag customer surveys for personalized attention, or resolve open customer issues.
Omnichannel Applications Powered by Five9:
Our multichannel applications are powered by a unique set of technologies. These technologies include an advanced Natural Language Processing, or NLP, engine to filter and categorize interactions, eliminate spam and determine sentiment. Based on a client’s unique set of business policies and needs, our solution provides simpler, smarter, and more productive omnichannel engagement by offering agents Sentiment Analysis, Clustering, Trending Topics, and Relevance. In addition, Five9 powers agent assistance tools to help agents resolve issues quickly.
Five9 VCC integrates voice with chat, email, web, social media and mobile applications for a true omnichannel agent and customer experience.
|
|
•
|
Five9 Social - Applies contact center customer service and sales best practices to social channels. Our solution routes, tracks and reports on agent performance in responding to social media posts in the same manner as other channels.
|
|
|
•
|
Five9 Chat - Live consumer-to-agent chat from mobile or web devices gives agents the ability to respond, record and manage multiple chat interactions.
|
|
|
•
|
Five9 Email - Makes email a high-response sales, service and support channel. Our email routing capability filters and intelligently routes email requests to enable the best qualified agents to respond in a timely manner.
|
|
|
•
|
Five9 Visual IVR - Our visual IVR application provides mobile customer care for today’s connected customers. It allows clients to develop an IVR script once and deploy it on multiple touchpoints, including mobile devices and websites.
|
|
|
•
|
Five9 Web Engagement - Sophisticated analytics with machine learning identify user patterns on websites, match persona and outcome probabilities and trigger proactive engagement actions. This enables contact centers to proactively identify when online customers may require assistance to complete a purchase, solve a problem, answer a question or any other online interaction. Given that today the majority of contact center interactions originate on the web, Five9 Web Engagement including chat capability enables contact centers to move beyond simple interactions to true personalized engagement.
|
Management Applications:
Our integrated portfolio of management applications is built and delivered on our highly scalable and flexible VCC cloud platform. Our solution provides real-time supervisor tools to monitor and manage the performance of agents and call flows. We also provide a suite of configurable management reports to enable clients to manage the end-to-end performance of their contact center operations. For clients with high-end Workforce Optimization, or WFO, needs, our solution can provide fully integrated workforce and quality management applications through our strategic relationships with Calabrio, Verint and CSI. Our solution has native recording capabilities for contact centers that need to record their interactions.
Our clients can access our VCC cloud platform in five different ways:
|
|
•
|
Agent Desktop:
Serves as the unified environment for contact center agents. Agents are provided with one easy-to-use desktop that is designed to allow agents to seamlessly conduct omnichannel interactions. Our universal transaction model adjusts to the needs of the interaction, including voice, chat, email, web, social media or mobile, yet feels familiar to the agent, making training simple. Automated call scripting and real-time customer data, such as purchase and interaction history, is delivered to empower agents with the information they need to deliver a superior customer experience.
|
|
|
•
|
CRM Integrations:
For clients who prefer to have their agents or sales representatives work within their CRM desktop, we offer pre-built integrations with leading providers of CRM systems such as Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, Microsoft and ServiceNow. In addition, professional services can provide integrations with custom or legacy CRM systems. Our solution provides softphone and telephony capabilities within the CRM desktop, and routes each customer interaction to an appropriate agent resource. Agents are able to work within a familiar desktop, equipped with full telephony controls and giving them immediate access to the most current, relevant and accurate information about the customer.
|
|
|
•
|
Supervisor:
Provides supervisors with tools to optimize the contact center and ensure high quality customer interactions. These tools include a visual supervisor dashboard that provides easy to use visibility
|
into call routing, queues, service levels, workflow management, utilization, campaign statistics and agent productivity. A mobile tablet version of the supervisor application is also available to help supervisors monitor agents, listen in on conversations, coach agents, and oversee queues and agent performance metrics while on the contact center floor. These metrics typically include average handle time, first contact resolution, number of interactions handled and contact outcomes.
|
|
•
|
Administrator:
Provides administrators with a comprehensive set of integrated tools to easily configure agent skills (such as language, domain expertise, and media channels to service), determine interaction routing strategies, specify IVR scripts and manage the contact center operation. The Five9 Administrator system is easy to use so that contact center business personnel can set up and make changes themselves, without having to rely on specialized IT staff often required to manage legacy on-premise contact center systems. This represents a key advantage of our VCC cloud platform as it allows businesses to adapt quickly to keep up with the rapid changes required in contact center operations.
|
|
|
•
|
Reporting and Analytics:
Real-time and historical reports provide statistics and key performance indicators to allow executives and supervisors to monitor the contact center, improve reaction time to interaction volume and manage agents more effectively. We provide more than 100 standard reports with multiple views and drill-downs into individual inbound calls and multichannel interaction metrics, customer interaction outcomes, and outbound sales and marketing program metrics. Our reporting module also enables clients to build customized reports and reporting schedules.
|
Clients
We have a large and diverse client base comprised of more than
2,000
organizations as of
December 31, 2017
, with no single client representing more than
10%
of our revenues in
2017
,
2016
or
2015
. Our client base spans organizations of all sizes across multiple industries, including banking and financial services, business process outsourcers, consumer, healthcare and technology.
Sales
Our sales model consists of a field sales team that sells our solution into larger opportunities and a telesales team that sells our solution into smaller opportunities. We established our business targeting smaller opportunities and have expanded our sales focus to larger opportunities as we gained traction in the market and enhanced the capabilities of our cloud solution. We have developed a disciplined, high volume, metrics-driven sales strategy, designed to enable us to efficiently generate and close a large number of new sales opportunities. Our telesales team focuses on qualified leads generated through traffic to our websites, and also supports our field sales team through lead generation and lead-tracking activities. Our field and telesales teams are also responsible for selling to existing clients that may renew their subscriptions, increase the number of agents using our cloud solution, add new applications from our solution and expand the deployment of our solution across their contact centers.
Marketing
To build client awareness and adoption of our solution, our lead generation activities consist primarily of client referrals, search engine marketing, internet advertising, digital marketing campaigns, social marketing, trade shows, industry events, co-marketing with strategic partners and telemarketing. In addition, our industry analyst, press and media outreach programs, and web site marketing initiatives are designed to build brand awareness and preference for Five9. We offer free trials and services to allow prospective clients to experience the quality and ease-of-use of our cloud solution, to learn about the features and functionality of our VCC cloud platform in more detail, and to quantify the benefits of our cloud solution.
To complement our sales and marketing efforts, we have developed a large ecosystem of software, technology, telephony and system integrator partners and independent software vendors who help increase awareness of our solution and generate new and installed base sales opportunities.
Research and Development
Our ability to compete depends in large part on our continuous commitment to research and development and our ability to improve the functionality of, and add new features to, our VCC cloud platform. Our core research and development center is based in our San Ramon, California headquarters with additional engineers located in Russia, which allows us to benefit from relatively low-cost and highly skilled software developers. Our engineering team has deep software and telecommunications skills, and works closely with our sales team to identify our clients’
product requirements. In addition, continuous interactions with our partners enable our engineers to enhance the usability and performance of our platform and its integration with best-in-class CRM and other business applications and telephony technologies.
As of
December 31, 2017
, we had
170
employees in our research and development group. Our research and development expenses totaled
$27.1 million
,
$23.9 million
and
$22.7 million
for the years ended
December 31, 2017
,
2016
and
2015
, respectively. We intend to continue investing in research and development to continue to deliver robust functionality to our clients.
Professional Services
We offer comprehensive professional services to our clients to assist in the successful implementation and optimization of our solution. Our professional services include application configuration, system integration, and education and training. Our clients may use our professional services team for implementing our solution or, in limited cases, they may also choose to perform these services themselves or engage third-party service providers to perform such services. Our cloud solution allows us to eliminate the need for lengthy and complex technology integrations, such as deploying equipment or maintaining hardware infrastructure for individual clients. As a result, we are typically able to deploy and optimize our solution in significantly less time than required for deployments of legacy on-premise contact center systems.
Technology and Operations
Our highly scalable and flexible VCC cloud platform is the result of more than 15 years of research, development, client engagement and operational experience. The platform is comprised of in-house developed intellectual property, open source products and commercially available hardware and software. The platform is designed to be redundant and we believe that all components can be upgraded, expanded or replaced with minimal or no interruption in service.
We currently deliver our services globally from four third-party co-location data center facilities located in Santa Clara, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Slough, England and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We also deliver some services using public cloud infrastructure in the Asia Pacific region. Our infrastructure, including our third-party co-location facilities, is designed to support real-time mission-critical telecommunications, applications and operational support systems. Our infrastructure is built with redundant, fault-tolerant components divided into distinct security zones forming protective layers for our applications and customer data.
We have designed and maintain an operations, capacity and security program to monitor and maintain our platform, ensure efficient utilization of the platform capacity and protect against security threats or data breaches. Our operations team monitors our data centers for potential performance issues, unauthorized attempts to access secure data or applications and the overall integrity of the platform.
Competition
The market for contact center software is fragmented, highly competitive and evolving rapidly in response to shifting consumer behavior, especially the rapid adoption of mobile devices and social media. The proliferation of each is driving change in contact center technology, as customers expect companies to give them the option of seamless communication across any channel according to their preference and needs. Combined with the disruptive nature of the cloud in the contact center, this has resulted in competitors who come from different market and product heritages, and who vary in size, breadth and scope of the products and services offered. We currently compete with large legacy on-premise contact center system vendors that offer on-premise enterprise telephony and contact center systems, such as Avaya Inc., or Avaya, and Cisco Systems, Inc., or Cisco, and legacy on-premise software companies with a historical focus on CTI, such as Aspect Software, Inc., or Aspect, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., or Genesys, and Interactive Intelligence Group, Inc., now part of Genesys. These companies are expanding their traditional on-premise contact center systems with cloud-based offerings, either through acquisitions 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, Inc., acquired by NICE Systems, and Seranova, formerly LiveOps, Inc. 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, larger marketing budgets and greater financial and technical resources. We believe the principal competitive factors in our market include:
|
|
•
|
breadth and depth of solution features;
|
|
|
•
|
reliability, scalability and quality of the platform;
|
|
|
•
|
ease and speed of deployment;
|
|
|
•
|
ease of application administration and use;
|
|
|
•
|
level of client satisfaction;
|
|
|
•
|
domain expertise in contact center operations;
|
|
|
•
|
integration with third-party applications;
|
|
|
•
|
ability to quickly adjust agent seats based on business requirements;
|
|
|
•
|
breadth and domain expertise of the sales, marketing and support organization;
|
|
|
•
|
ability to keep pace with client requirements;
|
|
|
•
|
extent and efficiency of our professional services;
|
|
|
•
|
ability to offer multiple channels of engagement; and
|
|
|
•
|
size and financial stability of operations.
|
We believe we currently compete effectively with respect to each of the factors identified above.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, and trade secret laws in the U.S. and other jurisdictions, as well as license agreements, confidentiality agreements, and other contractual protections, to protect our proprietary technology. We also rely on a number of registered and unregistered trademarks to protect our brand. In addition, we require our employees and independent contractors involved in development of intellectual property on our behalf to enter into agreements acknowledging that all works or other intellectual property generated or conceived by them on our behalf are our property, and assigning to us any rights, including intellectual property rights, that they may claim or otherwise have in those works or property, to the extent allowable under applicable law.
As of
December 31, 2017
, our intellectual property portfolio included
seven
registered U.S. trademarks,
10
issued U.S. patents,
two
pending U.S. patent applications and
one
registered U.S. copyright. As of
December 31, 2017
, we also had
two
issued patents,
six
pending patent applications and
11
limited
trademark registrations outside the U.S. The expiration dates of our issued patents range from 2030 to 2034. In general, our patents and patent applications apply to aspects of our VCC cloud platform.
We are also a party to various license agreements with third parties that typically grant us the right to use certain third-party technology in conjunction with our solution. We expect that software and other applications in our industry may be subject to third-party infringement claims as the number of competitors grows and the functionality of applications in different industry segments overlaps. Any of these third parties might make a claim of infringement against us at any time.
Seasonality
We believe that there can be 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. During
2017
,
2016
and
2015
,
53%
of our total revenues were generated in the second half of each year. We believe this is due to increased activities in retail, healthcare and education.
Employees
As of
December 31, 2017
, we had
860
full-time employees, including
387
in technology and operations,
170
in research and development,
193
in sales and marketing, and
110
in general and administrative. None of our employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements. We believe our employee relations are good and we have never experienced any work stoppages.
Regulatory
The following summarizes important, but not all, federal, state and foreign regulations that could impact our operations. Federal and state regulations are subject to judicial review, administrative revision and statutory changes through legislation that could materially affect how we and others in this industry operate.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 vests the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, with jurisdiction over interstate telecommunications services, while preserving state and local jurisdiction over many aspects of these services. As a result, telecommunications services are regulated at both the federal and state levels in the United States.
We are classified as a telecommunications service provider for federal regulatory purposes. 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, automatic number dialing, contributions to the federal Universal Service Fund and related funds, or USF, and other requirements. If we do not comply with FCC rules and regulations, we could be subject to FCC enforcement actions, fines, loss of operating authority and possibly restrictions on our ability to operate or offer certain of our services. Any 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.
We must comply with numerous federal regulations, including:
|
|
•
|
Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, which regulates the use of automatic dialing equipment and pre-recorded messages to contact consumers;
|
|
|
•
|
CALEA, which requires covered entities to assist law enforcement in undertaking electronic surveillance;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
payment of annual FCC regulatory fees based on our interstate and international revenues;
|
|
|
•
|
rules pertaining to access to our services by people with disabilities and contributions to the Telecommunications Relay Services fund; and
|
|
|
•
|
FCC rules regarding CPNI which require that we not use such information without customer approval, subject to certain exceptions.
|
In addition, we must make contributions and other payments on our usage-based fees to state and local governmental entities. The tax and fee structure for communications services such as ours is complex, ambiguous and subject to interpretation. If taxing and regulatory authorities enact new rules or regulations or expand 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 these regulations may also make us less competitive with those competitors who are not subject to, or choose not to comply with, these regulations. See Note
10
of the notes to consolidated financial statements under ITEM 8 of this Form 10-K for a discussion of our liabilities related to USF matters.
As we expand internationally, we will be subject to laws and regulations in the countries in which we offer our services. Regulation of the solutions we provide outside the U.S. varies from country to country, is often unclear, and may be more onerous than those imposed on our services in the U.S. For example, the European Union adopted a new law governing data protection and privacy called the General Data Protection Regulation, or the GDPR, which will be in effect in May 2018. The law requires companies to meet new and extended requirements regarding the processing of personal data. Non-compliance with the GDPR may result in administrative fines of up to $20 million EUR or 4% of the worldwide revenue from the preceding year, whichever is higher. In addition, we are subject to Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, and the analogous provincial laws, which similarly impose data privacy and security obligations on our processing of personal data. Our regulatory obligations in foreign jurisdictions could harm the use or cost of our solution in international locations as data protection and privacy laws and regulations around the world continue to evolve.
The legislative and regulatory scheme for telecommunications service providers and other solutions we provide will continue to evolve and can be expected to change the competitive environment for these services. It is not possible to predict how such evolution and changes will affect our business or our industry. If we do not comply with current or future rules or regulations that apply to our business, we could be subject to substantial additional 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 harm our business and results of operations. See “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Regulatory Matters” under ITEM 1A of this Form 10-K for more information.
Company Information
We were incorporated in Delaware in 2001. We operate in a single reportable segment. Our principal executive office is located at Bishop Ranch 8, 4000 Executive Parkway, Suite 400, San Ramon, CA 94583 and our telephone number is (925) 201-2000. Our website address is www.five9.com. Our website and the information contained therein or connected thereto shall not be deemed to be incorporated into this annual report on Form 10-K. We own or have rights to trademarks or trade names that we use in connection with the operation of our business, including our corporate names, logos and domain names. In addition, we own or have the rights to copyrights, trade secrets and other proprietary rights that protect the content of our products. Solely for convenience, some of the copyrights, trademarks and trade names referred to in this annual report on Form 10-K are listed without ©, ® and ™ symbols, but we will assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights to our copyrights, trademarks and trade names.
Available Information
Our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy and information statements and amendments to reports are filed with, or furnished to, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act. The public may obtain these filings at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549 or by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC also maintains a website at https://www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding Five9 and other companies that file materials with the SEC electronically. Copies of Five9’s reports on Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q and Forms 8-K, may be obtained, free of charge, electronically through our internet website, http://investors.five9.com/sec.cfm as soon as reasonably practicable after such material is filed electronically with, or furnished to, the SEC. The information on our website is not a part of, or incorporated by reference into, this annual report on Form 10-K.
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.
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:
|
|
•
|
market acceptance of our solution;
|
|
|
•
|
our ability to attract new clients and grow our business with existing clients;
|
|
|
•
|
our ability to adequately expand our sales and service team;
|
|
|
•
|
our ability to acquire and maintain strategic and client relationships;
|
|
|
•
|
the amount and timing of costs and expenses related to the maintenance and expansion of our business, operations and infrastructure;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
network outages or security incidents, which may result in additional expenses or losses, the loss of clients, the provision of client credits, and harm to our reputation;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
inaccessibility or failure of our cloud contact center software due to failures in the products or services provided by third parties;
|
|
|
•
|
our ability to expand, and effectively utilize our network of master agents and resellers;
|
|
|
•
|
the timing of recognition of revenues under current and future GAAP;
|
|
|
•
|
changes in our pricing policies or those of our competitors;
|
|
|
•
|
the level of professional services and support we provide our clients;
|
|
|
•
|
the components of our revenue;
|
|
|
•
|
the addition or loss of key clients, including through acquisitions or consolidations;
|
|
|
•
|
general economic, industry and market conditions;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
compliance with, or changes in, the current and future domestic and international regulatory environment;
|
|
|
•
|
the hiring, training and retention of key employees;
|
|
|
•
|
litigation or other claims against us;
|
|
|
•
|
the ability to expand internationally, and to do so profitability;
|
|
|
•
|
our ability to obtain additional financing;
|
|
|
•
|
advances and trends in new technologies and industry standards; and
|
|
|
•
|
increases or decreases in the costs to provide our solution or pricing changes upon any renewals of client agreements.
|
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 or differentiated products or services that are perceived to compete favorably with ours, our ability to add new clients and renew, maintain or sell additional services to existing clients based on pricing, cost of ownership, technology and functionality could be harmed. As a result, our existing clients may not renew our agreements or may decrease the number of agent seats, and we may be unable to 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, if telecommunications rates decrease, we must resell more minutes 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 years ended
December 31, 2017
,
2016
and
2015
, our revenues were
$200.2 million
,
$162.1 million
and
$128.9 million
, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of
24%
and
26%
, respectively. In the future, as our revenue increases, our annual revenue growth rate may decline. We believe our revenue growth will depend on a number of factors, including our ability to:
|
|
•
|
compete with other vendors of cloud-based enterprise contact center systems to capture market share, including from providers of legacy on-premise systems;
|
|
|
•
|
increase our existing clients’ use of our solution and further develop our partner ecosystem;
|
|
|
•
|
strengthen and improve our solution through significant investments in research and development and the introduction of new and enhanced solutions;
|
|
|
•
|
introduce our solution to new markets outside of the United States and increase global awareness of our brand; and
|
|
|
•
|
selectively pursue acquisitions.
|
If we are not successful in achieving these objectives, our ability to grow our revenue may be negatively impacted. In addition, we plan to continue to invest in future growth, including expending substantial financial and other resources on:
|
|
•
|
sales and marketing, including a significant expansion of our sales and professional services organization;
|
|
|
•
|
our technology infrastructure, including systems architecture, management tools, scalability, availability, performance and security, as well as disaster recovery measures;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
international expansion; and
|
|
|
•
|
general administration, including legal, regulatory compliance and accounting expenses.
|
Moreover, we continue to expand our headcount and operations. We grew from
780
employees as of December 31,
2016
to
860
employees as of
December 31, 2017
. 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 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 direct sales force will impede our growth.
We need to continue to expand and optimize our sales infrastructure in order to grow our client base and business. We plan to continue to expand our direct 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, and the expense incurred, to expand and train our direct 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.
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:
|
|
•
|
cause our clients to seek credits or damages for losses incurred;
|
|
|
•
|
cause existing clients to cancel their contracts and move to a competitor;
|
|
|
•
|
affect our reputation as a reliable service provider;
|
|
|
•
|
make it more difficult for us to attract new clients or expand our business with existing clients; or
|
|
|
•
|
require us to replace existing equipment.
|
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 need to continue 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.
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, unauthorized use of our systems, security breaches or other cyber attacks could result in the loss of confidentiality, integrity and availability of such information, leading to litigation, indemnity obligations, increased expense, and other liability. Such incidents could also cause interruptions to the solution we provide, degrade the user experience, or cause clients to lose confidence in our solution. In April 2017, we were notified that third parties were suspected of having unlawfully acquired some of our clients’ information. We conducted an investigation, believe this acquisition was the result of a vulnerability that has now been remediated, and notified clients we determined may have been impacted. Expenses incurred to date related to this incident have not been material.
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’ information, 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 maintain appropriate 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.
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, or CTI, heritage, such as Aspect and Genesys (including through its acquisition of Interactive Intelligence). 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 (acquired by NICE Ltd.) and LiveOps, now named Seranova. 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 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, including to zero, or termination of their contracts. Subscriptions and related usage by our existing clients may decrease if:
|
|
•
|
clients are not satisfied with our services, prices or the functionality of our solution;
|
|
|
•
|
the stability, performance or security of our solution are not satisfactory;
|
|
|
•
|
our clients’ business declines due to industry cycles, seasonality, business difficulties or other reasons;
|
|
|
•
|
competition increases from other contact center providers;
|
|
|
•
|
fewer clients purchase usage from us;
|
|
|
•
|
alternative technologies, products or features emerge that we do not provide;
|
|
|
•
|
our clients or potential clients experience financial difficulties; or
|
|
|
•
|
the U.S. or global economy declines.
|
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.
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. These relationships are typically not exclusive and our partners often also offer products of our competitors. 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 or security issues or failures, reputational concerns, economic incentives, or other factors, which would harm our business, financial condition and operations. Furthermore, there has and continues to be a significant amount of consolidation in our industry and adjacent industries, and 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 parties, 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.
We are establishing a network of master agents and resellers to sell our solution; our failure to effectively develop, manage, and maintain this network could materially harm our revenues.
We are establishing a network of master sales agents, which provide sales leads, and resellers, which sell our solution to new and existing clients. We expect that this network will enable us to attract additional clients. We expect our resellers will also assist us in expanding internationally. These master agents and resellers sell, or may in the future decide to sell, solutions for our competitors. Our competitors may be able to cause our current or potential master agents or resellers to favor their services over ours, either through financial incentives, technological innovation, by offering a broader array of services to these service providers or otherwise, which could reduce the effectiveness of our use of these third parties. If we fail to maintain relationships with current master agents and resellers, fail to develop relationships with new master agents and resellers in new and existing markets, if we fail to manage, train, or provide appropriate incentives to our existing master agents and resellers, or if our master agents and resellers are not successful in their sales efforts, sales of our subscriptions may decrease or not grow at an appropriate rate and our operating results could be harmed.
In addition, identifying new resellers, and negotiating and documenting relationships with them, requires significant time and resources. As the complexity of our solution and our reseller 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. Our inability to successfully manage these complex relationships or negotiate sufficient contractual terms could harm our business.
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 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 closing 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 six 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 negatively impact our business and results of operations 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 cause us to lose clients and subject us to claims for credits or damages, among other things.
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. 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.
If any of these service providers fail to provide reliable services, suffer outages, degrade, disrupt, increase the cost of or terminate 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. Further, 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, cause us to lose clients, result in claims for credits or damages, increase our costs or the costs incurred by our customers, damage our reputation, significantly reduce client demand for our solution and seriously harm our financial condition and operating results.
Our clients and their customers rely on internet service providers to provide them with access and connectivity to our cloud contact center software and changes in how internet service providers handle and charge for access to the internet could materially harm our client relationships, business, financial condition and operations results.
In 2015, the FCC released an order, commonly referred to as net neutrality, that, among other things, prohibited (i) the impairment or degradation of lawful internet traffic on the basis of content, application or service and (ii) the practice of favoring some internet traffic over other internet traffic based on the payment of higher fees. In December 2017, the FCC voted to overturn the net neutrality regulations imposed by the 2015 order. Internet service providers in the U.S. may now be able to impair or degrade the use of, or increase the cost of using, our solution. Net neutrality regulations vary widely among the jurisdictions in which we operate. While certain jurisdictions have strong protections for services such as ours, other countries either lack a net neutrality framework or otherwise do not strictly enforce net neutrality regulations. The impairment, degradation or prioritization of lawful internet traffic by internet service providers could materially harm our client relationships, business, financial condition and operating results.
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.
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 opportunities to sell additional services, 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 are in the process of expanding our international operations, which exposes us to significant risks.
To date, we have not generated significant revenues from outside of the U.S., Canada and the U.K. However, we already have significant operations outside these countries and we expect to grow our international presence in the future. The future success of our business will depend, in part, on our ability to expand our operations and customer base to other countries. Operating in international markets requires significant resources and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, economic, and political risks that are different from those in the U.S. Due to our limited experience with international operations and developing and managing sales and distribution channels in international markets, our international expansion efforts may not be successful.
We have a history of losses and we may be unable to achieve or sustain profitability.
We have incurred significant losses in each annual period since our inception in 2001. We incurred net losses of
$9.0 million
,
$11.9 million
and
$25.8 million
for the years ended
December 31, 2017
,
2016
and
2015
, respectively. As of
December 31, 2017
, we had an accumulated deficit of
$175.4 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 medium term. In addition, as a public company, we incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses. Our historical or recent growth in revenues is not necessarily indicative of our future performance. Accordingly, there is no assurance 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.
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 our 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 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. 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 or related taxes and administrative fees. 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.
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:
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
security breaches resulting in loss or disclosure of confidential client and customer data and potential liability to clients and non-client third parties for such disclosures;
|
|
|
•
|
inadvertent damage from third parties; and
|
|
|
•
|
other hazards that could also result in suspension of operations, personal injury and even loss of life.
|
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, tropical storm or severe weather 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 features 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, in a select subset of cases, 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 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 increase our 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 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:
|
|
•
|
the need to establish and protect our brand in international markets;
|
|
|
•
|
the need to localize and adapt our solution for specific countries, including translation into foreign languages and associated costs and expenses;
|
|
|
•
|
difficulties in staffing and managing foreign operations, particularly hiring and training qualified sales and service personnel;
|
|
|
•
|
the need to make implementations, and offer customer care, in various native languages;
|
|
|
•
|
different pricing environments, longer sales and accounts receivable payment cycles and collections issues;
|
|
|
•
|
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.;
|
|
|
•
|
increased risk of piracy, counterfeiting and other misappropriation of our intellectual property in our locations outside the U.S.;
|
|
|
•
|
new and different sources of competition;
|
|
|
•
|
general economic conditions in international markets;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
compliance with customs duties, tariffs and other international trade complexities;
|
|
|
•
|
compliance challenges related to the complexity of multiple, conflicting and changing governmental laws and regulations, including employment, tax, telecommunications and telemarketing laws and regulations;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
increased risk of international telecom fraud;
|
|
|
•
|
laws and business practices favoring local competitors;
|
|
|
•
|
compliance with laws and regulations for foreign operations, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.K. Bribery Act and other anti-corruption laws, 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;
|
|
|
•
|
increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities;
|
|
|
•
|
restrictions or taxes on the transfer of funds;
|
|
|
•
|
adverse tax consequences; and
|
|
|
•
|
unstable economic and political conditions.
|
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, or the relationship between Russia and the United States, significantly worsens, or if either Russia or the United States imposes significant new economic sanctions or restrictions on doing business, 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. or international 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.
We have undergone recent changes to our management team; 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 executives and other employees could harm our business and results of operations.
Our Chief Executive Officer resigned for health reasons (though he remains as Executive Chairman of our Board of Directors) effective December 2, 2017, resulting in the appointment of our Chief Financial Officer as Interim Chief Executive Officer, the promotion of our EVP of Global Sales and Services to President, and the commencement of a search for a Chief Executive Officer. Our success depends, in part, upon the performance and continued services of our key executive officers. If our new executive leadership team fails to perform effectively or if we fail to retain these executives or other members of our executive leadership team, including after we hire a new Chief Executive Officer, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be harmed. 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. 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, including a new CEO, and we may incur significant costs to do so. Competition for these personnel is intense, especially for a CEO, engineers highly experienced 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 has varied over time and 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. Our business will be seriously harmed if our efforts and expenditures do not generate a proportionate increase in revenue.
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 even if they do, any increase in revenues may occur after the expense has been occurred, and may not offset the costs and expenses of 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 the 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
December 31, 2017
, we had approximately
$32.6 million
in principal amount outstanding under our New Revolving Credit Facility entered into on August 1, 2016 and a
$0.3 million
FCC civil penalty payable to the U.S. Treasury. See Note
6
of the notes to consolidated financial statements.
Our 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, 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 total debt and 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 additional 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 addition to the United States, Canada and Latin America, 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, 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:
|
|
•
|
inability to integrate or benefit from acquisitions in a profitable manner;
|
|
|
•
|
unanticipated costs or liabilities associated with the acquisition, including legal claims arising from the activities of companies we acquire;
|
|
|
•
|
acquisition-related costs;
|
|
|
•
|
difficulty converting the clients of the acquired business to our solution and contract terms, including due to disparities in the revenue, licensing, support or professional services model of the acquired company;
|
|
|
•
|
difficulty integrating the accounting systems, operations and personnel of the acquired business;
|
|
|
•
|
difficulties and additional costs and expenses associated with supporting legacy products and the hosting infrastructure of the acquired business;
|
|
|
•
|
diversion of management’s attention from other business concerns;
|
|
|
•
|
harm to our existing relationships with our partners and clients as a result of the acquisition;
|
|
|
•
|
the loss of our or the acquired business’s key employees;
|
|
|
•
|
diversion of resources that could have been more effectively deployed in other parts of our business; and
|
|
|
•
|
use of substantial portions of our available cash to consummate the acquisition.
|
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, third parties may be interested in acquiring 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, or 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 had not been required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 for periods prior to the year ended December 31, 2017 as we were an “emerging growth company,” as defined by The Jumpstart Our Businesses Act of 2012, or The JOBS Act. Beginning with this annual report, our independent registered public accounting firm is required to provide this attestation, which has and will continue to increase our cost and expense.
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.
We are no longer an emerging growth company and the additional requirements we must comply with may strain our resources and divert management’s attention from other business concerns.
We are no longer an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act. While we were an emerging growth company, we were able to take advantage of certain exemptions from reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies. Compliance with these additional laws, rules and regulations has, and will continue to increase our legal and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time consuming or costly and increase demand on our systems and resources. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns and our costs and expenses will increase, which could harm our business and operating results. We may also need to hire more employees in the future or engage additional outside consultants to comply with these requirements, which will increase our costs and expenses.
Changes in financial accounting standards or practices may cause adverse, unexpected financial reporting fluctuations and affect our reported operating results.
U.S. GAAP is 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,
i
n May 2014, the FASB issued new revenue recognition rules under Accounting Standard Codification 606 -
Revenue from Contracts with Customers
(“ASC 606”), which includes a single set of rules and criteria for revenue recognition to be used across all industries. We adopted this new standard in January 2018 using a modified retrospective method. With the adoption of this standard, the timing of our commission expense recognition will change, which will cause fluctuations in our operating results. See Note 1 of the notes to consolidated financial statements for information regarding the effect of new accounting pronouncements on our financial statements. The application of new accounting guidance including ASC 606 will be based on all information available to us as of the date of adoption and up through subsequent interim reporting, including transition guidance published by the standard setters. However, the interpretation of these new standards will continue to evolve as other public companies adopt the new guidance and the standard setters issue new interpretative guidance related to these rules. As a result, changes in the interpretation of these rules could result in material adjustments to our application of the new guidance, which could have a material effect on our results of operations and financial condition. Additionally, any difficulties in implementing these pronouncements could cause
us to fail to meet our financial reporting obligations, which could result in regulatory discipline and harm investors’ confidence in us.
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.
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 initiated the withdrawal process on March 29, 2017. This election to withdraw 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 after the effectiveness of the withdrawal. The referendum has also given rise to calls for the governments of other European Union member states to consider withdrawal.
Brexit has harmed and may continue to harm 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. This volatility will likely continue while the United Kingdom and the European Union negotiate the terms of the withdrawal, as well as after the withdrawal takes effect. The strengthening of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies will make our solution more expensive to international clients and may harm 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 may not be able to utilize a significant portion of our net operating loss or research tax credit carryforwards, and under recently enacted lower federal corporate tax rates such tax benefits will be of less value, which could harm our profitability and financial condition.
As of
December 31, 2017
, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards due to prior period losses of
$188.8 million
and
$104.4 million
, respectively, which if not utilized will begin to expire in
2024
for federal purposes. The state net operating loss started to expire in
2017
. As of December 31,
2017
, we also had research credit carryforwards for federal and California state tax purposes of
$2.8 million
and
$2.4 million
. If not utilized, the federal research credit carryforwards 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, or 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 resulting 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.
We continue to assess the impact of recently enacted H.R. 1, commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or the new tax law, as well as any future regulations implementing the new tax law and any interpretations of the new tax law. The effect of those regulations and interpretations, as well as any additional tax reform legislation in the United States or elsewhere, could harm our business and financial condition by, among other things, decreasing the value of our net operating loss carryforwards. If we are required to reduce the value of our net operating loss carryforwards, we may be required to record a corresponding charge to current earnings, which could harm our financial condition and results of operations in the period in which it is recorded.
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
December 31, 2017
, our intellectual property portfolio included
seven
registered U.S. trademarks,
10
issued U.S. patents,
two
pending U.S. patent applications and
one
registered U.S. copyright. As of
December 31, 2017
, we also had
two
issued patents,
six
pending patent applications and
11
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., or NobelBiz, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against us alleging that our local caller ID management service infringes United States Patent No. 8135122. Subsequently, NobelBiz amended its complaint to add claims related to U.S. Patent No. 8565399, which is a continuation in the same family as the prior patent and addresses the same technology. In December 2017, the parties settled the matter and the case was dismissed in its entirety.
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 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 and litigation. The loss in existing licenses could also result in 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 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.
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. 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 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.
We have accrued a contingent liability of
$1.5 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
10
of the notes to 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.
Our ability to offer services outside the U.S. is subject to different regulatory and taxation requirements, which may be complicated and uncertain.
As we continue to expand the sale and implementation of our solutions internationally, we will be subject to new regulations, taxes, surcharges and fees. Compliance with these new complex regulatory requirements that differ from country to country and are frequently changing may impose substantial compliance burdens on our business. At times, it may be difficult to determine which laws and regulations apply, we may discover that we are required to comply with certain laws and regulations after having provided services for some time in that jurisdiction, which could subject us to retroactive taxes, fees and penalties, and we may be subject to conflicting requirements. For example, prior to 2016, we had not collected taxes on 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 Value-added Taxes, or VAT, and/or Provincial Sales Taxes, or PST. We commenced collecting and remitting such taxes in January 2016. Additionally, as we expand internationally, the risk that governments will regulate or impose new or increased taxes or fees on our services increases. Any such additional regulation or taxes could decrease the value of our international expansion and harm our results of operations.
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. 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
was disputed. We subsequently updated our filings and increased the liability related to 2008 through 2012 by
$0.5 million
, arriving at a new total of
$3.9 million
in disputed liability. As of January 31, 2017, we had fully paid the promissory note issued to USAC for the undisputed portion. In January 2017, the FCC ruled in our favor with respect to most of the disputed amount. In September 2017, USAC issued a credit to us reflecting the FCC’s ruling for the
$3.1 million
of the
$3.9 million
in disputed liability. In addition, USAC reversed the interest and penalties related to the disputed liability of
$3.1 million
. The remaining
$0.8 million
in dispute involves USAC’s assessment of liability for the period of 2003 through 2007, which was prior to the five year window during which we were required to maintain financial records for USF contribution purposes. In 2013, we filed a Request for Review (a form of appeal) of this disputed amount with the FCC, which remains pending. If the Request for Review is not resolved in our favor, it is possible that we will be held to the back assessments of
$0.8 million
, which includes interest and penalties on that amount.
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
$0.3 million
in principal remained outstanding as of
December 31, 2017
. 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
10
of the notes to 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.
The regulations to which we are subject (in whole or in part) include:
|
|
•
|
the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, which requires covered entities to assist law enforcement in undertaking electronic surveillance;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
payment of annual FCC regulatory fees based on our interstate and international revenues;
|
|
|
•
|
rules pertaining to access to our services by people with disabilities and contributions to the Telecommunications Relay Services fund; and
|
|
|
•
|
FCC rules regarding Customer Proprietary Network Information, or CPNI, which prohibit us from using such information without client approval, subject to certain exceptions.
|
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 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. The changes in the leadership of the U.S. Government resulting from the federal election in 2016 may renew interest in completing this proceeding.
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 could result in our solution becoming less competitive as compared to products 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 laws. Furthermore, privacy and data protection 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 U.S.-EU 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 clients 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 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, or the Privacy Shield, which succeeds the Safe Harbor. Companies interested in self-certifying compliance with this new trans-Atlantic data-transfer framework could do so beginning in 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. However, the compliance requirements under the Privacy Shield are generally more stringent than under the Safe Harbor. The Privacy Shield
is subject to annual review by the EU Commission. In October 2017, the EU Commission released its report and accompanying working document on the first annual review of the Privacy Shield, including recommendations on the functioning of the Privacy Shield that need to be improved by the US authorities. The Art. 29 Working Party (advisory body comprised of representatives of EU data protection authorities) issued in December 2017 a report concerning the first annual review of the functioning of the Privacy Shield in which it identified a number of significant concerns that need to be addressed by both the EU Commission and the U.S. authorities by May 25, 2018. The Art. 29 Working Party threatens to take legal action against the Privacy Shield adequacy decision if its concerns are not properly addressed within the given timeframe.
Other methods for transferring personal data across the Atlantic are also facing legal scrutiny. In October 2017 the Irish High Court decided in a case concerning the validity of standard contractual clauses to refer certain questions to the European Court of Justice, or the ECJ, for a determination in a preliminary ruling. An adverse decision from the ECJ will impact how either we or our clients transfer personal data out of the EU. Further uncertainty exists with regard to data transfers in relation to the United Kingdom due to a 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 will become applicable 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.
In addition, as indicated above, we are also subject to Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, and the analogous provincial laws, which similarly impose data privacy and security obligations on our processing of personal data.
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
twelve months ended
December 31, 2017
, the sale price per share of our common stock ranged from a low of
$14.00
to a high of
$27.81
. Factors that may contribute to continuing volatility in the price of our common stock include:
|
|
•
|
actual or anticipated fluctuations in our operating results;
|
|
|
•
|
the financial projections we provide to the public, any changes in these projections or our failure to meet these projections;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
ratings changes by any securities analysts who follow our company;
|
|
|
•
|
sales of our common stock by us or our significant stockholders, or the public announcement of same;
|
|
|
•
|
the assessment of our business or position in our market published in research and other reports;
|
|
|
•
|
announcements by us or our competitors of significant technical innovations, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, joint ventures or capital commitments;
|
|
|
•
|
changes in operating performance and stock market valuations of other technology companies generally, or those in the software as a service industry in particular;
|
|
|
•
|
price and volume fluctuations in the overall stock market, including as a result of trends in the U.S. or global economy;
|
|
|
•
|
any major change in our board of directors or management;
|
|
|
•
|
lawsuits threatened or filed against us;
|
|
|
•
|
security breaches or incidents impacting our clients or their customers;
|
|
|
•
|
legislation or regulation of our business, the internet and/or contact centers;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
new products or new sales by us or our competitors;
|
|
|
•
|
the perceived or real impact of events that harm our direct competitors;
|
|
|
•
|
developments with respect to patents or proprietary rights;
|
|
|
•
|
general market conditions;
|
|
|
•
|
distributions to limited partners, or block sales, by original venture capital investors; and
|
|
|
•
|
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.
|
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.
Certain holders of our outstanding common stock 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.
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:
|
|
•
|
provide that our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
provide that the authorized number of directors may be changed only by resolution of the board of directors;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
provide that our stockholders may not take action by written consent, and may only take action at annual or special meetings of our stockholders;
|
|
|
•
|
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;
|
|
|
•
|
restrict the forum for certain litigation against us to Delaware;
|
|
|
•
|
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);
|
|
|
•
|
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
|
|
|
•
|
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.
|
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.
ITEM 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
None.
ITEM 2. Properties
We currently lease approximately
108,100
square feet of office space worldwide. Information concerning our principal leased properties as of
December 31, 2017
is set forth below:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Location
|
|
Principal Use
|
|
Square Footage
|
|
Lease Expiration Date
|
San Ramon, California
|
|
Corporate headquarters, sales, marketing, product design, professional services, research and development
|
|
79,600
|
|
March 2021
|
The Philippines
|
|
Technical support, training and other professional services
|
|
16,500
|
|
March, 2020
|
Russia
|
|
Software development
|
|
12,000
|
|
December 2018*
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
*
|
This represents the expiration date for the lease renewal effective in February 2018.
|
The hosting of our equipment and software at co-located third-party facilities is also significant to our business. We have entered into rental agreements with third-party facilities in Santa Clara, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Slough, England; and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, which require monthly payments for a fixed period of time in exchange for certain guarantees of network and telecommunication availability. These agreements expire at various dates through
2021
.
We believe our facilities are sufficient for our current needs.
ITEM 3. Legal Proceedings
Information with respect to this item may be found under the heading “Legal Matters” in Note
10
of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, which information is incorporated herein by reference.
ITEM 4. Mine Safety Disclosures
Not applicable.