ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
The following risk factors and other information included in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q should be carefully considered. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we presently deem less significant may also impair our business operations. Please see the first two pages in Part I, Item 2 of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for a discussion of the forward-looking statements that are qualified by these risk factors. If any of the events or circumstances described in the following risk factors actually occurs, our business, operating results and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
Risks Related to Our Business and Our Industry
Our limited operating history makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects.
We were incorporated in 2008 and, as a result, have only a limited operating history upon which our business and future prospects may be evaluated. Although we have experienced substantial revenue growth in our limited history, our rate of revenue growth has been declining since the third quarter of 2013. We may not be able to slow or reverse this decline in revenue growth rate, and we may not be able to maintain our current revenue levels. We have encountered and will continue to encounter risks and difficulties frequently experienced by companies in rapidly developing and changing industries, including challenges related to recruiting, integrating and retaining qualified employees; making effective use of our limited resources; achieving market acceptance of our existing and future offerings; competing against companies with greater financial and technical resources; acquiring and retaining advertisers and advertising agency customers; and developing new offerings, either internally or through acquisitions.
As a company in a rapidly evolving industry, our business prospects depend in large part on our ability to:
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develop, offer, sell and provide effective service and support for competitive technology platforms and offerings that meet our advertisers’ and their agencies' needs as they change;
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build a reputation for superior solutions and create trust and long-term relationships with advertisers and advertising agencies;
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partner with advertising agencies to offer solutions to their customers;
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attract, hire, integrate and retain qualified and motivated employees;
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expand our expertise in technologies required for our offerings, such as our self-service DSP and DMP enterprise solutions, that involve developing solutions for use directly by customers, including user interface development, user documentation and ongoing customer support and maintenance;
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effectively execute on cost-cutting and other operating efficiency initiatives in order to create more leverage in our business;
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distinguish ourselves from competitors in our industry while at the same time working with those competitors that also offer advertising inventory for our acquisition and placement;
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maintain and expand our relationships with the sources of quality inventory through which we execute our customers’ advertising campaigns, including but not limited to Facebook inventory;
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respond to evolving industry standards, government regulations and customer requirements that impact our business, particularly in the areas of data collection and consumer privacy;
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prevent or otherwise mitigate failures or breaches of security or privacy;
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expand our business internationally; and
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obtain additional funding.
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If we are unable to meet one or more of these objectives or otherwise adequately address the risks and difficulties that we face, our business may suffer, our revenue may decline and we may not be able to achieve further growth or long-term positive profitability or cash flow.
We may experience fluctuations in our operating results, which make our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results or future guidance that we issue to fall below our expectations or those of investors or analysts.
Our quarterly and annual operating results have fluctuated in the past. Similarly, we expect our future operating results to fluctuate for the foreseeable future due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control. We have only a few longer term contracts, and we book, bill and recognize a substantial portion of our revenue on a month-to-month basis; both factors make our business less predictable. Our fluctuating results have in the past and could in the future cause our performance to fall below the expectations of investors and securities analysts, and adversely affect the price of our common stock. Because our business is changing and evolving rapidly, our historical operating results may not be useful for predicting our future operating results. Factors that may increase the volatility of our operating results include the following:
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the addition or loss of customers;
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changes in demand and pricing for our solutions;
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changes in our revenue mix and shifts in media margins related to changes in our sales strategies or product mix that impact our profitability;
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the unpredictable nature of agency relationships;
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the seasonal nature of our customers’ spending on digital advertising campaigns;
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changes in our pricing policies or the pricing policies of our competitors;
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the pricing of advertising inventory or of other third-party services that we require;
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the introduction of new technologies, product or service offerings by our competitors;
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changes in our customers’ advertising budget allocations, agency affiliations, or marketing strategies, which could affect their interest in our solutions;
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changes and uncertainty in the regulatory environment for us or our customers;
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changes in the economic prospects of our customers or the economy generally, which could alter current or prospective customers’ spending priorities, or could increase the time or costs required to complete sales to customers;
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changes in the availability of advertising inventory through real-time advertising exchanges, or in the cost to reach end consumers through digital advertising;
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the rate of our investment in people and related infrastructure;
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the extent to which we expand operations outside of North America;
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changes in our capital expenditures and/or lease obligations as we acquire the computer hardware, equipment, facilities and other assets required to support our business; and
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the cost and potential outcomes of existing and future litigation, including, without limitation, the purported stockholder class action and stockholder derivative lawsuits described below under “Risks Related to the Securities Markets and Ownership of our Common Stock—
The price of our common stock has been volatile and the value of our common stock has declined substantially since our IPO."
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Based upon all of the factors described above and others that we may not anticipate, including those beyond our control, we have a limited ability to forecast our future revenue, costs and expenses and the resulting profit or loss and cash flows. As a result, our actual operating results may from time to time fall below our own estimates or the expectations of investors and analysts. Furthermore, our projected results may from time to time fall below our initial estimates or the expectations of investors and
analysts. These situations have occurred several times since we became a public company and resulted in substantial declines in our stock price. See “Risks Related to the Securities Markets and Ownership of our Common Stock—
We have failed in the past, and may fail in the future, to meet our publicly announced guidance or other expectations about our business and future operating results. Such past failures have caused, and future failures would likely cause, our stock price to decline,
” below.
Our credit agreement
contains operating and financial covenants that restrict our business and financing activities and, in some cases, could result in an immediate requirement to repay our outstanding loans.
Borrowings under our credit agreement with certain lenders and Comerica Bank, or "Comerica," as agent for the lenders, are secured by substantially all of our assets, including our intellectual property. (See Note 6 of the unaudited Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements in Part I, Item 1 of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for a detailed description of this agreement.) Our credit agreement also restricts our ability to, among other things:
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dispose of or sell our assets;
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make material changes in our business or management;
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consolidate or merge with other entities;
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incur additional indebtedness;
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create liens on our assets;
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make investments, including capital expenditures;
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enter into transactions with affiliates; and
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pay off or redeem subordinated indebtedness.
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These restrictions are subject to certain exceptions. In addition, our credit agreement requires us to comply with minimum bank-defined EBITDA (as defined in Note 6 of our unaudited Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements in Part I, Section 1 of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q) covenants, maintain minimum cash balances with the lenders and maintain minimum liquidity ratios, among other requirements, and gives the lenders the right to use future cash collections from accounts receivable directly to reduce the outstanding balance of the revolving credit facility, if the aggregated cash balances on deposit with the lenders and certain other domestic financial institutions fall below $40.0 million. If the lenders were to exercise this right, our ability to pay the costs of our operations, including payroll and vendor costs, would be adversely impacted, and could lead to insolvency or bankruptcy.
The operating and financial restrictions and covenants in the credit agreement, as well as any future financing agreements that we may enter into, could restrict our ability to finance our operations and to engage in, expand or otherwise pursue business activities and strategies and ultimately have a material adverse effect on our business. We have failed to comply with similar covenants in the past. For example, as of December 31, 2012, September 30, 2013, and September 30, 2014, we were not in compliance with certain financial and non-financial covenants in applicable secured loan and security agreements, including covenants related to permitted indebtedness for a corporate credit card account balance and limitations on our capital expenditures. Although we have been able to obtain a waiver for each such covenant violation in the past, there is no guarantee that our lenders will waive such violations in the future. We currently anticipate falling short of the bank-defined EBITDA covenant for the quarter ending December 31, 2016. Our ability to comply with these covenants may be affected by events beyond our control, and future breaches of any of these covenants could result in a default under the credit agreement. Future defaults, if not waived, could cause all of the outstanding indebtedness under our credit agreement to become immediately due and payable and would permit the lenders to terminate all commitments to extend further credit and permit Comerica, on behalf of the lenders, to proceed against the collateral in which we granted Comerica a security interest.
If we do not have or are unable to generate sufficient cash available to repay our debt obligations when they become due and payable, either upon maturity or in the event of a default, we may not be able to obtain additional debt or equity financing on favorable terms, if at all. This could materially and adversely affect our liquidity and financial condition and our ability to operate and continue our business as a going concern.
We may require additional capital to support ongoing operations and growth, and such capital might not be available on terms acceptable to us, if at all. This could hamper our growth and adversely affect our business.
We may require additional capital to support operational needs, business growth and to respond to business challenges, including the management of intra-quarter cash flow cyclicality, the need to develop new features or enhance our platform, improve our operating infrastructure or acquire complementary businesses and technologies. In implementing our business strategy, we may decide to, or need to, engage in public or private equity, equity-linked or debt financings to secure additional funds to strengthen our balance sheet, and support our business plans through the end of this year and into 2017. Our failure to obtain capital when needed could limit our operational flexibility and force us to delay, reduce or eliminate our growth plans and technology development.
We may raise funds in equity or debt financings or enter into credit facilities in order to access funds for our capital needs. We cannot be certain that additional capital will be available to us as needed on acceptable terms, or at all. Our 2016 Loan Facility expires in December 2017. While we intend to seek an extension of the bank credit beyond December 2017, we may not be able to secure additional financing from lenders on favorable terms, or at all, to meet our future capital needs.
On May 10, 2016, we filed an S-3 registration statement, supplemental prospectus, and entered into a sales agreement for "at-the-market" offerings enabling us to sell common shares into the market over time. If we raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges superior to those of holders of our common stock. Any debt financing that we secure in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, including the ability to pay dividends. This may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. We may not be able to complete equity or debt offerings on terms favorable to us, if at all. If we are unable to obtain capital on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to support business growth and respond to business challenges could be significantly impaired, and our business could be adversely affected.
We have a history of losses and may not achieve or sustain profitability in the future.
We incurred net losses of $210.5 million, $64.3 million and $20.9 million for the years ended
December 31, 2015
,
2014
and
2013
, respectively and a net loss of
$(10.7) million
for the
three months ended September 30, 2016
. As of
September 30, 2016
, we had an accumulated deficit of
$367.5 million
. We may not achieve profitability in the foreseeable future, if at all. For example, in 2015 our operating expenses increased more rapidly than our revenue primarily due to non-cash goodwill impairment and amortization and depreciation charges, as well as restructuring expenses related to our reduction in force in April 2015 and corresponding adjustments to physical facilities. Our operating expenses are largely based on personnel and facilities, and are relatively fixed in the short term. Hence, our operating expenses increased more rapidly than our revenue in 2014, primarily due to a shortfall in our revenue compared to our forecasts combined with substantial continued investments we were making in our business, including an 81% increase in our headcount during 2014, and due to leases and tenant improvements at our growing number of office locations.
We sell Platform Solutions in addition to Media Services. Some of these sales may result in the deferral of platform revenues over the term of the subscription. However, our sales costs, including commissions on such sales, will generally be incurred up front, which could result in additional losses as we ramp this business, even though the aggregate revenues from such activities exceed the associated aggregate costs of acquiring and providing such services over the full course of the term. In addition, Platform Solutions arrangements typically have lower margins compared to Media Services arrangements. Our strategy to focus on a smaller number of high value customers is also impacting our margins. Our Media Services agreements vary and we have entered into agreements with lower media margins with our larger Media Services customers. As a result of these developments, we expect our margins to continue to decline.
In order to achieve sustained profitability and positive cash flow, we must change our operational infrastructure and practices. For example, we must manage our expenses to create operating leverage and manage our financial and capital resources more effectively. If we fail to implement the necessary changes to our operations on a timely basis, or if we are unable to implement them effectively or at all, our business may suffer. Our bank covenants require us to improve our bank-defined EBITDA (as defined in Note 6 of our unaudited Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements in Part I, Section 1 of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q) results materially over the course of fiscal year 2016. If we fail to achieve such improvements, the banks could revoke our loans. Any future losses will continue to impair our liquidity, which could ultimately cause us to become insolvent. Furthermore, our goal to grow our business will require either that we improve our working capital management, by better aligning the time it takes to collect on customer invoices with our vendor payment terms, which are typically shorter, or obtain additional capital to support this working capital requirement. In July and August 2016, we increased our borrowing under the 2016 Loan Facility to
$71.5 million fully utilizing the full borrowing capacity available to us under the 2016 Loan Facility. Our intra-quarter cash flows are highly cyclical, and therefore, our intra-quarter cash balances fluctuate and can present significant cash management challenges for us. We cannot provide assurance that we will be successful in addressing these and other challenges we may face in the future.
We have experienced a slowing rate of revenue growth since the third quarter of 2013. During the third quarter of 2015, revenue declined compared to the second quarter of 2015; during the fourth quarter of 2015, revenue declined compared to the fourth quarter of 2014; and during the third quarter and the first nine months of 2016, revenue declined compared to the third quarter and first nine months of 2015.
Our revenue growth will continue to suffer if we do not improve our capabilities to attract key former and potential customers, retain our customers and sell more solutions to these customers.
In the short term, we expect our revenue growth to continue to be impacted as we continue building our enterprise sales capabilities and as we continue to hire new sales personnel, including senior sales leaders, who require time to become productive. To sustain or increase our revenue longer-term, we must add and retain new customers and encourage longer-term customers to purchase additional offerings from us, including our newer enterprise solutions. In 2016, we focused our sales and customer service personnel on attracting new high-value customers and on expanding our relationships with our largest existing customers, with a focus on increasing revenue from our top 50 and 250 customers. As the digital advertising industry matures and as competitors introduce lower cost or differentiated products or services that compete with or are perceived to compete with ours, our ability to sell our solutions to new and existing advertisers based on our offerings, pricing, technology platform and functionality has been and could continue to be challenged. Some advertisers that are repeat users of our Media Services have increased their spending over time. Conversely, some advertisers that are newer to our solution tend to spend less than, and may not return at all, or as frequently as, advertisers that have used our solution for longer periods of time. With long-time advertisers, we may reach or have already reached a point of saturation at which it is challenging to continue to grow our revenue from those advertisers because of their unfamiliarity with the breadth of our product suite, as well as factors beyond our control such as internal limits that advertisers or their agencies may place on the allocation of their advertising budgets to digital media, to particular campaigns, to a particular provider, or for other reasons not known to us. Since 2014, we have been experiencing fluctuations in average customer spend, as well as the loss of, or decline in spend by, some of our larger customers. If we are unable to reverse this trend, continue to attract more new high value customers and obtain additional business from existing customers, our revenue and operating results will continue to be adversely affected.
Our ability to slow or reverse this declining rate of revenue growth will depend in part upon the successful introduction of new offerings (including our ability to cross-sell our full suite of offerings). We operate in a highly competitive market, and there can be no assurance that these new offerings will gain significant levels of market acceptance. In particular, the market for our enterprise solutions is relatively new. Advertisers may be reluctant to make significant investments in these solutions. The sales cycle for enterprise solutions can be long and unpredictable and require considerable time and expense. Even if we generate a sale, we incur upfront costs associated with onboarding advertisers to our enterprise platforms, which can be a complex process as we must support a wide range of customer data formats and capabilities, and integrate with a wide range of applications and technology and process infrastructures. We may not recoup our investment if we do not maintain the advertiser relationship over time.
We compete for allocation of advertising budgets with agencies that may prefer to allocate their clients' advertising spend to their own internal agency trading desks or other solutions, reducing our ability to grow or retain revenue from customers represented by agencies even if our solutions are more effective.
Among our principal competitors for our solutions are advertising agencies that operate agency trading desks, either directly or through affiliates. Customers often rely on agencies to direct and allocate their advertising spend for advertising in digital media among various providers. We rely predominately on advertising agencies to purchase our solution on behalf of advertisers, and certain of those agencies or agency holding companies have, or are creating competitive solutions, referred to as agency trading desks. If these agency trading desks are successful in leveraging their relationships with the advertisers, we may be unable to compete for advertisers’ budgets even if our solution is more effective. Many agencies that we work with are also owned by large agency holding companies. For various reasons related to the agencies’ own priorities or those of their holding companies, they may not recommend our solution, even though it may be more effective, and we may not have the opportunity to demonstrate our value to advertisers. Furthermore, agencies are increasingly involved in helping to select self-service platform providers for the advertisers they represent. This trend has impacted, and may continue to impact, our ability to grow revenue from those advertisers. Since 2014, we have been experiencing declines in revenue from some customers that directed more spend through agency trading desks that did not use our Media Services. Our ability to compete successfully and return to consistent revenue growth will depend in part on our ability to identify opportunities to work collaboratively with agencies and agency trading desks. Even where advertising agencies choose to use or continue using our solutions, they may choose to use our Platform Solutions for their advertiser clients at a lower margin than our Media Services.
We may not be able to compete successfully against current and future competitors because competition in our industry is intense, and our competitors may offer solutions that are perceived by our customers to be more attractive than ours or leverage captive inventory or data to their advantage. These factors could result in declining revenue or the inability to grow our business.
Competition for our advertisers’ advertising budgets is intense, as is competition for broader advertising solutions such as data management platforms. We operate in a market that is subject to rapid development and introduction of product and service offerings, changing branding objectives and evolving customer demands, all of which affect our ability to remain competitive. For example, in the past, we experienced a decline in revenue from some customers that adopted competitors' DSP and/or DMP solutions rather than our own similar solutions. We expect competition to increase as the barriers to enter our market are low and consolidation is increasing. Increased competition may force us to charge less for our solutions, or offer pricing models that are less attractive to us and decrease our margins. Our principal competitors for our media buying solutions include traditional advertising networks, and advertising agencies that operate an agency trading desk, either directly or through an affiliate. Competitors for our self-service solutions include other companies that offer self-service DSP and/or DMP solutions, such as Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle (BlueKai), that allow advertisers to purchase inventory directly from advertising exchanges or other third parties and manage and analyze their own consumer data and third party data. Other competitors for our solutions include in-house tools and custom solutions currently used by brand advertisers to manage their customer data and advertising and marketing activities. As our platforms evolve and we introduce new technologies, features and functionality, we may face competition from new sources.
We also compete with services offered through large online portals that have significant brand recognition, such as Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN and The Rubicon Project. These large portals have substantial proprietary digital advertising inventory that may provide them with competitive advantages, including far greater access to Internet user data, and the ability to significantly influence pricing for digital advertising inventory. Furthermore, these portals may not offer some of their premium, or even all of their inventory, for sale, but instead, use it in their own captive advertising activities. We also compete for a share of advertisers’ total advertising budgets with online search advertising, for which we do not offer a solution, and with traditional advertising media, such as direct mail, broadcast television, radio, cable and print. Some of our competitors have also established reputations for specific services, such as retargeting with dynamic creative, for which we do not have an established market presence. Many current and potential competitors have competitive advantages relative to us, such as longer operating histories, greater name recognition, larger client bases, greater access to advertising inventory on premium websites and significantly greater financial, technical, sales and marketing resources. Increased competition may result in reduced pricing for our solutions, longer sales cycles or a decrease of our market share, any of which could negatively affect our revenue and future operating results and our ability to grow our business.
Any expense reduction initiatives that we have undertaken or may undertake may not deliver the expected results and these initiatives may adversely affect our business.
In early 2015, we announced that we intended to take measures to move toward profitability and improve our operating leverage, including slowing our headcount growth considerably, managing our expenses more effectively, and minimizing our capital spending requirements. In April 2015 we committed to a plan intended to improve our operational efficiency. This plan
included a reduction of approximately 11% of our workforce that was completed during the second quarter of 2015, and other cost reduction measures that extended throughout 2015. As we have taken and continue to take actions to better align our operating expenses with our revenue, manage our costs better, and more efficiently manage our business, such actions have resulted and could result in disruptions to our operations and our workforce, and adversely affect our business. In particular, higher voluntary attrition, and the resulting influx of new leaders and other employees, has impacted our efficiency across the company as we expend the time and resources necessary to recruit and retain talent, restructure our organizations, and train new employees.
Expense reduction and greater operational efficiency continue to be priorities in 2016. To effectively manage our business and operations with fewer employees, we have spent and may need to continue spending significant resources to further automate our business processes, improve our technology infrastructure, our operational, financial and management controls, and our reporting systems and procedures by, among other things:
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monitoring and updating our technology infrastructure to maintain high performance and the security of our data centers and network;
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enhancing and automating work processes of our customer service and operations teams to ensure that our service professionals can efficiently and effectively support our customers; and
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enhancing our internal controls to ensure timely, accurate and highly efficient billing processes.
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These enhancements and improvements have required and will continue to require capital expenditures and allocation of valuable management and employee resources. We expect to continue to actively monitor our operating expenses; however, if we do not fully realize the anticipated benefits of any expense reduction initiatives, including reductions in headcount, our business could be adversely affected. In addition, we cannot be sure that our efforts to manage expenses and improve our operating leverage will be successful. If our operating expenses are higher than we expect or if we do not maintain adequate control of our costs and expenses, our operating results will suffer.
If we fail to make the right investment decisions in our offerings and technology platforms, we may not attract and retain advertisers and advertising agencies and our revenue and results of operations may decline.
We compete for advertisers, which are often represented by advertising agencies, who want to purchase digital media for advertising campaigns and/or invest in enterprise solutions for the purchase of digital media, data management and/or personalization of web properties. Our industry is subject to rapid changes in standards, technologies, products and service offerings, as well as in advertiser demands and expectations. We continuously need to make decisions regarding which offerings and technology to invest in to meet advertiser demand and evolving industry standards and regulatory requirements. We may make wrong or untimely decisions regarding these investments. If new or existing competitors offer more attractive offerings, we may lose advertisers, or advertisers and their agencies may decrease their spending on our solutions. New advertiser demands, superior competitive offerings or new industry standards could render our existing solutions unattractive, unmarketable or obsolete and require us to make substantial unanticipated changes to our technology platforms or business models. Our failure to adapt to a rapidly changing market or to anticipate advertiser demand could harm our business and our financial performance.
Our entry into the market for our Platform Solutions is relatively new, and if we are not recognized as a technology company that can deliver effective, reliable and secure platform solutions to enterprise clients and agencies, then our prospects and clients may be unwilling to use our solutions and our business will suffer.
As we expand our offerings to include our Platform Solutions for enterprise clients and agencies, we must develop new skills that are critical to delivering such offerings, and invest significantly in training employees to support a the business model and the long term enterprise client relationships that we want to maintain and further develop. We must expand our expertise in technologies required for those offerings, and develop a reputation for regularly developing and delivering software updates and new features to enterprise clients. We must continue to develop and provide an easy to use, intuitive user interface for our solutions and provide robust client training programs and professional services to support our clients’ use of our platform. In addition, we must have skilled sales and customer service employees that are capable of working with clients to assess their use of our platform. We must be able to develop and execute product roadmaps for clients to facilitate ongoing software feature development and ensure continued client use of our platform offerings, including the use of our technology for purchasing digital media for advertising and implementing marketing campaigns. We must also provide a secure infrastructure that clients trust to house their customer data, devote significant resources to cyber and physical security, and regularly test, audit, and augment our security protocols and practices.
Because the sales cycle for enterprise solutions can be long and unpredictable and requires considerable time and expense, and client relationships may take a long time to grow and mature, it may be many quarters or years before we know whether our investment in these solutions will be a profitable business for us. If we do not develop and maintain a good reputation as an enterprise solutions provider, and we are not successful in generating revenue from these solutions and the resulting enterprise client relationships, then we may not recoup our investments in the these solutions, and our results of operations will be harmed.
We must continue to invest significant time and resources to develop successful strategies for marketing and selling our programmatic marketing platform, and to train our marketing and sales personnel on these strategies.
Our programmatic marketing platform, which combines our DSP and DMP solutions into a single platform, is a new offering for us that we have developed since we acquired [x+1] and its DMP in September 2014. Our ability to achieve success with this combined platform depends to a great extent on our ability to develop appropriate marketing and sales strategies, which are different from the strategies that our marketing and sales personnel rely on for our other offerings. We must continue to invest time and resources to further refine them and to provide additional training to marketing and sales personnel. If we fail to develop and implement successful marketing and sales strategies for our programmatic marketing platform, our revenue will be adversely impacted.
If we do not manage our information technology systems and infrastructure effectively, (i) the quality of our solutions and services and our relationships with our customers may suffer, and/or (ii) our ability to perform essential administrative functions may be impaired. Either or both of these results could have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
We rely heavily on information technology, or "IT," systems to manage critical customer-related functions such as advertising campaign management and operations, data center operations and data management platform hosting. We must expand, improve and automate these systems to maintain the quality of our solutions going forward and, in particular, to avoid service interruptions, security breaches and slower system performance for our enterprise solutions. We also depend on IT systems to help us manage essential functions such as revenue recognition, budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, invoicing, collections and other administrative functions, and we must continue to expand and improve these IT systems as well. Despite the use of IT systems, many of our processes remain manual in nature, and thus we must also continue to manage our employees, operations, finances, research and development and capital investments efficiently. Our productivity and the quality of our solutions may be adversely affected if we do not quickly and effectively integrate and train our new employees on our systems, processes and security protocols, and if we fail to appropriately coordinate across our functional groups and offices. If we do not adapt to meet the evolving challenges or our business, and if we do not effectively and efficiently scale our operations to support our business, then the quality of our solutions may suffer, our IT systems and infrastructure may be more prone to security breaches and service interruptions, and relationships with our customers may be harmed, which, in turn, could have an adverse impact on our financial condition and results of operations.
Our future success depends on the continuing efforts of our executive team, senior managers and other key employees, and on our ability to recruit, hire, train, motivate and retain additional employees at all levels of our workforce.
We promoted E. Randolph Wootton III from chief revenue officer for North America to chief executive officer, or "CEO," in November 2015. Stephen Snyder is expected to join the Company as chief financial officer, "CFO," in November 2016. We also hired additional senior leaders in 2015 and the first nine months of 2016 including a chief revenue officer, a chief marketing officer, a chief customer officer, managing director of international operations, senior vice president of engineering, and other sales and business development roles. Our future success depends upon us successfully integrating these leaders into their new roles, as well as our ability to attract and retain additional management team members and other highly skilled employees, including software engineers, analytics and operations employees and sales professionals.
Over the past year we have experienced significant turnover within our executive team. George John, co-founder and former CEO and chairman of our board of directors, David Sankaran, CFO, and Abhinav Gupta, our former vice president of engineering, left the company in the fourth quarter of 2015. Dominic Trigg, our senior vice president and general manager, EMEA, resigned as an employee in March 2016. Manu Thapar, our senior vice president of research and development, left the Company in April 2016. Rex S. Jackson, CFO, left the Company in October 2016. Since November 2014, we have hired several senior executives as well as others in senior leadership roles. We have open positions on our senior leadership teams and throughout the Company for which we are seeking qualified applicants, and we have made organizational changes in many functions, including sales and engineering. Our future success depends on the swift and effective integration of all new executives and other employees into our business operations and company culture. None of our executives or other key employees has an employment agreement for a specific term, and any of our employees may terminate their employment with us at any time.
The market for talent in our key areas of operations, including California, New York, Chicago and London, is intensely competitive. Our engineering group is primarily based in Redwood City, California, where we face significant competition for talent from large technology companies such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. These companies may provide more generous compensation and benefits, more diverse opportunities and better chances for career advancement than we do. Some of these advantages may be more appealing to high-quality candidates and employees than those we have to offer. In addition, the decline in our stock price has created additional challenges related to our ability to compete effectively with respect to equity compensation.
New employees often require significant training and, in many cases, take significant time before they achieve full productivity. As a result, we may incur significant costs to attract and retain employees, including significant expenditures related to salaries and benefits and compensation expenses related to equity awards, and we may lose new employees to our competitors or other companies before we realize the benefit of our investment in recruiting and training them. Moreover, new employees may not be or become as productive as we expect, as we may face challenges in adequately or appropriately integrating them into our workforce and culture. In addition, as we move into new geographies, we will need to attract and recruit skilled employees in those areas. We have limited experience with recruiting in geographies outside of the United States, and may face additional challenges in attracting, integrating and retaining international employees.
Even if we are successful in hiring qualified new employees, we may be subject to allegations that we have improperly solicited such employees while they remained employed by our competitors, that such employees have improperly solicited other colleagues of theirs employed by the same competitors or that such employees have divulged proprietary or other confidential information to us in violation of their agreements with such competitors. If we are unable to attract, integrate and retain suitably qualified individuals, our business, financial position and results of operations would be harmed.
Our marketing and sales efforts have required significant investments, which may not yield returns in the foreseeable future, if at all.
We have invested significant resources in our marketing and sales teams to educate the marketplace about the value of our solutions and to sell the solutions to prospective advertisers and advertising agencies. We evolved our marketing strategy in 2015 to place more emphasis on our comprehensive programmatic marketing platform and our Moment-Scoring technology. On the sales side, we often spend substantial time and resources explaining how our solutions can optimize advertising campaigns, and responding to requests for proposals from potential advertisers and their advertising agencies, including developing material specific to the needs of such potential advertisers. Our business depends in part upon the market perception of our solutions and on advertisers’ confidence, and the confidence of the advertising agencies that represent those advertisers, that our solutions are superior to other methods of purchasing digital advertising. In order to support our sales teams more effectively in an extremely competitive environment, our marketing efforts must continue to keep pace with the evolution of our business and educate the market about our technology advantages and capabilities. We may not be successful in attracting new advertisers despite our investment in our marketing and sales organizations.
If we do not effectively train and provide tools and technology to support our sales, customer service and operations teams, we may be unable to maintain or increase sales to our existing customers or maintain customer satisfaction, and our business would be adversely affected.
We are substantially dependent on our sales, customer service and operations teams to maintain and increase sales from our existing customers and on our customer service and operations teams to maintain customer satisfaction. Our ability to achieve significant revenue growth will depend, in part, on our success in recruiting, training, integrating and retaining sufficient numbers of sales and customer service and operations personnel to support growth and maintain customer satisfaction, and providing them the tools and technology that they need to efficiently do their jobs and satisfy customer demands. As we expand our direct response and brand offerings and our self-service platforms, our sales teams are also required to spend time learning new offerings and become more effective at cross-selling. Our customer service and operations teams are required to spend time learning to support the new offerings and troubleshooting customer issues. If we cannot provide the tools and training to our teams to support new and repeat customer growth, we will continue to see declines in our revenue retention rate that we have experienced since the beginning of 2014, and fail to maintain satisfactory customer relationships. We require sales and customer service and operations teams to meet the demands of two distinctly different types of customers with different types of offerings; those that purchase managed services from us, and those that invest in our technology as an enterprise solution. Our sales and customer service and operations teams have been primarily trained and experienced in selling and supporting our managed service solutions to and servicing advertising agencies, which often control advertisers' budgets. Our enterprise solutions are marketed and sold to agencies, enterprise customers and other channel partners directly. We are expanding our capabilities in enterprise sales and customer service and operations, and we have invested in existing personnel to sell solutions to advertising agencies, large brand advertisers and channel partners and provide customer support.
Our liquidity could be adversely impacted by adverse conditions in the financial markets.
As of
September 30, 2016
, we had
$78.7 million
in cash and cash equivalents. Of this balance, $30.0 million is required to be on deposit with our loan facility lenders as of the 15th and the last days of each month. At any point in time, we have funds in our operating accounts that are with third party financial institutions that exceed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, insurance limits. These cash balances could be impacted if the underlying financial institutions fail or become subject to other adverse conditions in the financial markets.
Through 2013, our historical revenue growth partially masked seasonal fluctuations in advertising activity. However, as our revenue growth rate has declined and/or to the extent seasonal advertising patterns become more pronounced, seasonality will cause material fluctuations on our quarterly operating results and cash flows.
Our revenue, operating results, and other key operating and performance metrics vary from quarter to quarter due to the seasonal nature of our advertisers’ spending on digital advertising campaigns. For example, advertisers tend to devote more of their advertising budgets to the fourth calendar quarter to coincide with consumer holiday spending. Moreover, advertising inventory in the fourth quarter may be more expensive due to increased demand for advertising inventory. Our historical high revenue growth through the first half of 2013 partially masked the impact of seasonality, but as our growth rate has declined since the third quarter of 2013, and to the extent seasonal spending becomes more pronounced, seasonality could cause material fluctuations on our revenue, cash flow, operating results and other key operating and performance metrics from period to period.
If the use of 'third party cookies' is rejected by Internet users, or potentially unfavorable "Do Not Track" standards or government regulations are created, our performance could decline and we could lose advertisers and revenue.
We use "cookies" (small text files) to gather important data to help deliver our solution. These cookies are placed through an Internet browser on an Internet user's device and correspond to a data set that we keep on our servers. Our cookies are known as “third party” cookies because we do not have a direct relationship with the Internet user. Our cookies collect anonymous information, such as when an Internet user views an ad, clicks on an ad, or visits one of our advertisers' websites. We use these cookies for reasons such as to help us achieve our advertisers' campaign goals, to help us ensure that the same Internet user does not unintentionally see the same advertisement too frequently, to report aggregate information to our advertisers regarding the performance of their advertising campaigns and to detect and prevent fraudulent activity throughout our network of inventory. We also use data from cookies to help us decide whether to bid on, and how much to bid on, an opportunity to place an advertisement in a certain location, at a given time, in front of a particular Internet user. A lack of data associated with cookies may detract from our ability to make decisions about which inventory to purchase for an advertiser’s campaign, and undermine the effectiveness of our solution.
Cookies may easily be deleted or blocked by Internet users. All of the most commonly used Internet browsers (including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari) allow Internet users to prevent cookies from being accepted by their browsers. Internet users can also delete cookies from their devices at any time. In addition, the Safari browser blocks third party cookies by default, and other publishers of other browsers may choose to modify their software defaults in this way in the future. Unless such default settings in browsers are altered by Internet users, we will be able to set fewer of our cookies on users' devices, which could adversely affect our business. In addition, companies such as Google have publicly disclosed their intention to move away from cookies to other forms of persistent, unique identifiers, or IDs, to indicate Internet users in the bidding process on advertising exchanges. This could have a negative impact on our ability to locate the same anonymous user across different web properties, and reduce the effectiveness of our solution.
As the use of cookies has received ongoing media attention over the past several years, some government regulators and privacy advocates have suggested creating a "Do Not Track" standard that would allow Internet users to express a preference, independent of cookie settings in their web browser, not to have their website browsing history recorded. All the major Internet browsers have implemented some version of a "Do Not Track" setting. In the past, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 included a "Do Not Track" setting that was selected "on" by default. However, there is no definition of "tracking," no consensus regarding what message is conveyed by a "Do Not Track" setting and no industry standards regarding how to respond to a "Do Not Track" preference. It is possible that we could face competing policy standards, or standards that put our business model at a competitive disadvantage to other companies that collect data from Internet users and may not be required to adhere to the same Do Not Track policy standard that we must adhere to, standards that reduce the effectiveness of our solution, or standards that require us to make costly changes to our solution. The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has stated that it will pursue a legislative solution if the industry cannot agree upon a standard. The "Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2015" was introduced in the United States Senate in December 2015. In October 2016, the European Commission suggested that a "Do Not Track" setting could provide a method for regulatory compliance in the European Union. If a "Do Not Track" web browser setting is adopted by many Internet users, and the standard either imposed by state or federal legislation, or agreed upon by standard setting groups, requires us to recognize
a "Do Not Track" signal and prohibits us from using non-personal data as we currently do, then that could hinder growth of advertising and content production on the web generally, and limit the quality and amount of data we are able to store and use, which would cause us to change our business practices and adversely affect our business.
In the European Union, or EU, Directive 2009/136/EC, commonly referred to as the "Cookie Directive," directs EU member states to ensure that accessing information on an Internet user’s computer, such as through a cookie, is allowed only if the Internet user has given his or her consent. We may not be able to develop or implement additional tools that compensate for the lack of data associated with cookies. Moreover, even if we are able to do so, such additional tools may be subject to further regulation, time consuming to develop or costly to obtain, and less effective than our current use of cookies. The General Data Protection Regulation, which was ratified in December 2015 and adopted by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament in April 2016, is being readied for implementation in the European Union. The General Data Protection Regulation is an EU-wide regulation, which would be enforced in all member states, that could restrict how data is collected in the EU, what type of user consent must be obtained prior to data collection, and other rules related to the collection, storage and usage of data gathered from EU citizens. If enacted into law, possible new rules regarding data collection could limit or change the way we collect information, and could have a negative impact on our ability to optimize our clients' advertising campaigns.
Ad blocking technology can limit our access to advertising inventory and our ability to reach the intended recipients of the ads we serve. If the use of ad-blocking technology becomes more prevalent, the performance of our campaigns could decline, we could lose advertisers, and our revenue, costs and other results of operations could be negatively impacted.
In order to serve advertisements to consumers on behalf of our customers, we require access to digital inventory. Some consumers download and use "ad-blocking" software, which can prevent web browsers (for example, Firefox, Google Chrome and others) from interacting with or downloading advertising, or that can prevent ads from being displayed once the advertising is served. If the use of ad blocking software and technology becomes more prevalent, it could hamper our ability to optimally serve advertisements for marketing campaigns, and our business could be harmed. In addition, it could limit the amount of free, advertising-supported content available to consumers online, or otherwise restrict our access to available inventory and could drive up the price of available inventory, which could increase the media costs we pay. Also, some companies that distribute ad blocking software make money by charging companies like ours a fee to serve advertising to consumers that have installed their “ad blocking” software. We currently do not pay fees to such companies because we do not consider those consumers receptive to advertising; however, if we did pay such fees, our costs would increase. An increase in media costs would affect our total operating cost and margins and ultimately our results of operations. Finally, the mere existence of ad blockers, regardless of their effectiveness, may generate concern regarding the health of the digital advertising industry, which could impact the value of companies in the industry generally.
Our international expansion subjects us to additional costs and risks and may not yield returns, including anticipated revenue growth, in the foreseeable future, and our continued expansion internationally may not be successful.
Our significant investment in international expansion subjects us to many challenges associated with supporting a growing business across a multitude of cultures, customs, monetary, legal and regulatory systems and commercial infrastructures. We have a limited operating history outside of the United States, and our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations internationally requires considerable attention and resources. We began operations in the United Kingdom in 2011. Our UK subsidiary has employees in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Australia. We established subsidiaries in Germany and Canada in 2013 and in Brazil in 2014 (although we moved to a reseller model in Brazil in 2016). In addition, in 2012, we licensed a third party to make our solution available in Japan. We expect to significantly expand our international operations in the future.
Our international expansion and the integration of international operations present challenges and risks to our business and require significant attention from our management, finance, analytics, operations, sales and engineering teams to support advertising campaigns abroad. For example, as a direct result of our relationship with our Japan licensee, we have undertaken engineering and other work to support campaigns for Japanese advertisers and localize our technology platform for language, currency and time zone, and have made substantial investments to train our Japan licensee’s sales team to sell our solution in Japan. Moreover, our Japan licensee is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a large advertising agency holding company, which has other subsidiaries that may offer services that compete with us. As a result, there is a risk that conflicts of interest may arise that could reduce our ability to gain market share in the Japanese market. Compliance with complex foreign and U.S. laws and regulations that apply to our international operations increases our cost of doing business abroad, could interfere with our ability to offer our solutions competitively to advertisers and advertising agencies in one or more countries and expose us or our employees to fines and penalties. In some cases, our advertisers might impose additional requirements on our business in efforts to comply with their interpretation of their own or our legal obligations. These requirements might differ significantly from the requirements applicable
to our business in the United States and could require engineering and other costly resources to accommodate. Laws and regulations that could impact us include but are not limited to tax laws, employment laws, data privacy regulations, U.S. laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and local laws prohibiting corrupt payments to governmental officials and private entities, such as the U.K. Bribery Act. Violations of these laws and regulations could result in monetary damages, criminal sanctions against us, our officers, or our employees, and prohibitions on the conduct of our business. We will likely incur significant operating expenses as a result of our international expansion, and it may not be as successful as we anticipate. Our international business also subjects us to the impact of global and regional recessions and economic and political instability, differing regulatory requirements, costs and difficulties in managing a distributed workforce, potentially adverse tax consequences in the United States and abroad, fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates and restrictions on the repatriation of funds to the United States. Our failure to manage these risks and challenges successfully could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Our solutions are primarily dependent on advertisers purchasing display advertising. A decrease in the use of display advertising, would harm our business, growth prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
Historically, our customers have predominantly purchased our solution for display advertising. We expect that display advertising will continue to be a significant channel used by our customers. Should our customers lose confidence in the value or effectiveness of display advertising, the demand for our display solution could decline.
If we fail to maintain adequate security and supporting infrastructure as we scale our systems, we may experience outages and disruptions of our services, and we may be in breach of our security obligations to our enterprise customers, advertising exchanges, or other suppliers. Any of these occurrences could harm our brand and reputation; result in loss of customer information and related indemnity obligations and other liabilities; and negatively impact our revenue and results of operations.
As we grow our business, we expect to continue to invest in technology services, hardware and software, including data centers, network services, storage, and database technologies. Creating the appropriate support for our technology platforms, including big data and computational infrastructure, is expensive and complex, and our execution could result in inefficiencies or operational failures and increased vulnerability to cyber-attacks. We make representations to our customers, advertising exchanges and other suppliers, regarding our security policies and practices, and often are subject to their terms and conditions. If we do not adequately implement and enforce these security policies to the satisfaction of our customers, advertising exchanges or other business partners, this could result in a loss of customer or supplier confidence, damage to our reputation and a loss of business. Further, security breaches could not only diminish the quality of our services and our performance for advertisers; they could also be a violation of security obligations to our enterprise customers that are designed to protect the data that we collect, store and transmit for them. Cyber-attacks could include denial-of-service attacks impacting service availability (including the ability to deliver ads) and reliability; the exploitation of software vulnerabilities in Internet facing applications; social engineering of system administrators; or the introduction of computer viruses or malware into our systems. Cyber-attacks of increasing sophistication may be difficult to detect and could result in the theft of our intellectual property, our data and/or our customers’ data, or the distribution of malicious software. In addition, we are vulnerable to unintentional errors as well as malicious actions by persons with authorized access to our systems that exceed the scope of their access rights, or unintentionally or intentionally alter parameters or otherwise interfere with the intended operations of our platforms. The steps we take to increase the reliability, integrity and security of our systems may be expensive and may not prevent system failures or unintended vulnerabilities resulting from the increasing number of persons with access to our systems, complex interactions within our technology platforms and the increasing number of connections with the technology of customers, third party partners and vendors. Operational errors or failures or successful cyber-attacks could result in damage to our reputation and loss of current and new advertisers and other business partners, as well as exposure to indemnity claims and other liability to our enterprise solution customers and other business partners, which could harm our business. In addition, we could be adversely impacted by outages and disruptions in the online platforms of our key business partners, such as the real-time advertising exchanges, who we rely upon for access to inventory.
We typically do not have long-term commitments from our advertisers, and we may not be able to retain advertisers or attract new advertisers that provide us with revenue that is comparable to the revenue generated by any advertisers we may lose.
Most of the advertisers that use our solution do business with us by placing insertion orders for particular advertising campaigns. If we perform well on a particular campaign, then the advertiser, or most often, the advertising agency representing the advertiser, may place new insertion orders with us for additional advertising campaigns. We rarely have any commitment from an advertiser beyond the campaign governed by a particular insertion order. We use the Interactive Advertising Bureau, or IAB, standard terms and conditions, pursuant to which our insertion orders may also be canceled by advertisers or their advertising agencies prior to the completion of the campaign without penalty. As a result, our success is dependent upon our ability to outperform our competitors and win repeat business from existing advertisers, while continually expanding the number of advertisers for whom we provide services. In addition, it is relatively easy for advertisers and the advertising agencies that represent them to seek
an alternative provider for their advertising campaigns because there are no significant switching costs. Agencies, with which we do the majority of our business, often have relationships with many different providers, each of which may be running portions of the same advertising campaign. Because we generally do not have long-term contracts, it is difficult for us to accurately predict future revenue streams. We cannot provide assurance that our current advertisers will continue to use our solution, or that we will be able to replace departing advertisers with new advertisers that provide us with comparable revenue.
The sales cycle for our enterprise solutions can be long and unpredictable and requires considerable time and expense before winning a sale or not; this can make it difficult to predict when, if at all, we will obtain new enterprise customers and when we will generate revenue from those customers.
The sales cycle for our enterprise business from initial contact with a sales prospect to contract execution and technology implementation, typically takes a significant amount of time and is difficult to predict. The sales cycle in some cases can take up to twelve months or more. Our sales efforts involve educating our customers about the use, technical capabilities and benefits of our platform. Some of our customers undertake a significant evaluation process that frequently involves not only our platform but also the offerings of our competitors. This process is costly and time-consuming. As a result, it is difficult to predict if and when we will obtain new customers and begin generating revenue from these new customers. Because of the long sales cycle, we may incur significant expenses before we have an opportunity to win the sale and execute a definitive agreement with a prospective customer and even more time before we are able to generate any revenue from any agreement. We have no assurance that the substantial time and money spent on our sales efforts will generate significant revenue, or that the customer engagement will ultimately be profitable. If conditions in the marketplace generally or with a specific prospective customer change negatively, it is possible that no definitive agreement will be executed, and we will be unable to recover any of these expenses.
If we serve our advertisers’ advertisements on undesirable websites or fail to detect fraud (including bot traffic), our reputation will suffer, which would harm our brand and reputation and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Our business depends in part on providing our advertisers with a service that they trust. We have contractual commitments to take commercially reasonable measures to prevent advertisers’ advertisements from appearing on undesirable websites or on certain websites that they identify, and we use a combination of proprietary technology and third-party services to help us meet those commitments. We use third party technology, and our own proprietary technology, to detect suspected invalid bot traffic, as well as click fraud, which is an automated computer-generated click on an advertisement rather than a click by a human. In 2014 there was a significant amount of negative publicity about fraud and bot traffic within our industry, including negative publicity directed at us. As a result, our abilities to both combat bot traffic and to communicate proactively about our capabilities in this area have become increasingly important. In addition, we use proprietary technology to block inventory that we suspect to be fraudulent, including “tool bar” inventory, which is inventory that appears within an application, often called a “tool bar,” and that overlays a website and displaces any advertising that would otherwise be displayed on that website. Preventing and combating fraud, which is an industry-wide issue, requires constant vigilance, and we may not always be successful in our efforts to do so or in our efforts to address negative press on the topic.
If we serve advertising on inventory that is objectionable to our advertisers or fraudulent, we may lose the trust of our advertisers, which would harm our brand and reputation and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. We may also purchase inventory inadvertently that proves to be unacceptable for advertising campaigns, in which case we are responsible for the media cost and cannot bill that cost to any campaign. If we buy substantial volumes of unusable inventory, this could negatively impact our results of operations.
If our access to quality advertising inventory is diminished or if we fail to acquire new advertising inventory, our revenue could decline and our growth could be impeded.
We must maintain a consistent supply of attractive advertising inventory, meaning the digital space on which we place advertising impressions, including websites, proprietary social networks, such as Facebook, and mobile applications. Our success depends on our ability to secure quality inventory through real-time advertising exchanges on reasonable terms across a broad range of advertising networks and exchanges and premium publishers, including real-time advertising exchanges, such as Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange or AppNexus; suppliers of video and mobile inventory, including premium publishers with which we may seek direct relationships; and inventory available on social media platforms through application program interfaces, or APIs, including Facebook.
The amount, quality and cost of inventory available to us can change at any time. Our suppliers are not bound by long-term contracts, and we purchase inventory subject to their terms and conditions. As a result, we cannot provide any assurance that we will have access to a consistent supply of quality inventory through real-time advertising exchanges. Moreover, the number
of competing intermediaries that purchase advertising inventory from real-time advertising exchanges and other digital advertising suppliers continues to increase, while the number of suppliers may decline due to consolidation trends in the industry; both of these factors could put upward pressure on inventory costs. If we are unable to compete favorably for advertising inventory available on real-time advertising exchanges and other advertising inventory, or if real-time advertising exchanges or other suppliers decide not to make their advertising inventory available to us for violations of their terms and conditions or otherwise, we may not be able to place advertisements at competitive rates or find alternative sources of inventory with comparable traffic patterns and consumer demographics in a timely manner. Furthermore, the inventory that we access through real-time advertising exchanges may be of low quality or misrepresented to us, despite attempts by us and our suppliers to prevent fraud and conduct quality assurance checks. We may also seek to acquire access to premium inventory directly from publishers for display, mobile and video impressions. Other companies, including large integrated companies that own or have exclusive relationships with publishers, ad exchanges and ad networks, may compete with us and restrict our access to media inventory from their wholly-owned properties or other publishers.
Suppliers control the bidding process for the inventory they supply, and their processes may not always work in our favor. For example, suppliers may place restrictions on our use of their inventory, including restrictions that prohibit the placement of advertisements on behalf of certain advertisers. In 2015 Facebook eliminated our access to the Facebook exchange platform, or FBX. This required us to adapt our offering in order to continue to access advertising inventory from Facebook but our access does not appear to be as effective as direct access to FBX. Google also announced changes to YouTube video inventory availability beginning in 2016 that eliminated our access to video inventory on YouTube through real-time bidding exchanges.
We may not win the right to deliver advertising from the inventory that we select and may not be able to replace inventory that is no longer made available to us.
If we are unable to maintain a consistent supply of quality inventory for any reason, our business, brand and reputation, advertiser retention and loyalty, financial condition and results of operations would be harmed.
Currently, our social media offering is almost entirely dependent on access to Facebook’s inventory. We no longer have access to FBX inventory and now access Facebook inventory through APIs. If our access to quality inventory in social media (including through Facebook) is diminished or if we fail to acquire new advertising inventory in social media, our growth could be impeded and our revenue could decline.
Currently, our social media offering is almost entirely limited to Facebook’s platform. As a result, our ability to grow revenue in the social channel is directly tied to the availability of Facebook ad inventory. We historically accessed Facebook inventory through FBX, which was launched in the second half of 2012. Since April 2015, we no longer have access to Facebook's FBX platform, though Facebook allows other companies in our industry to purchase inventory through the FBX platform. This could put us at a competitive disadvantage. We instead access Facebook inventory (including Facebook mobile and video inventory) through an application program interface, or API. If we are unable to compete favorably for advertising inventory on Facebook through the API, our social media offering may not be successful. Also, we cannot provide assurance that Facebook will continue to make its advertising inventory available to us upon reasonable terms or at all, and we may not be able to replace the FBX advertising inventory with inventory that meets our advertisers’ specific goals with respect to social media. In addition, advertisers may prefer to work with companies that have access to FBX inventory in addition to the Facebook APIs, have access to advertising opportunities on social media platforms other than Facebook or that have a longer history of integration with social media platforms. If we are unable to run advertising campaigns on Facebook, integrate with social media platforms that may become more available and/or more popular in the future or otherwise find alternative sources of quality social media inventory, our business could be harmed.
If mobile connected devices, their operating systems or content distribution channels, including those controlled by our competitors, develop in ways that prevent our advertising campaigns from being delivered to their users, our ability to grow our business will be impaired.
There is rapid growth in content consumption on mobile devices. Our success in the mobile channel depends on our ability to access mobile inventory from suppliers, which may also be competitors, on reasonable terms. These suppliers may decide to offer their own solutions and exclude us from reaching quality inventory that they control. Our success also depends upon the ability of our technology platform to integrate with mobile inventory suppliers and provide advertising for most mobile connected devices, as well as the major operating systems that run on them and the thousands of applications that are downloaded onto them. The design of mobile devices and operating systems is controlled by third parties with whom we do not have any formal relationships. These parties frequently introduce new devices, and from time to time they may introduce new operating systems or modify existing ones. Network carriers may also impact the ability to access specified content on mobile devices. If our solution was unable to work on these devices or operating systems, either because of technological constraints or because an operating system
or application developer, device maker or carrier wished to impair, or inadvertently impaired, our ability to purchase inventory and provide advertisements, our ability to generate revenue could be significantly harmed. Precise location data, gathered from mobile devices, is one important factor in running successful mobile advertising campaigns for our advertisers. If the rules for how precise location is gathered and used change, it could adversely affect our ability to optimize mobile advertising campaigns for our advertisers.
Certain self-regulatory organizations of which we are a part released mobile-specific privacy principles that became effective in September 2015. If we fail to comply with these principles, or if we must modify our business practices in a way that reduces our ability to provide quality service to clients, it could affect our ability to generate new mobile channel business.
Errors or failures in our software and systems could adversely affect our operating results and growth prospects.
We depend upon the sustained and uninterrupted performance of our technology platforms to operate and execute thousands of campaigns at any given time; manage our inventory supply (including inventory quality controls); bid on inventory for each campaign; serve or direct a third party to serve advertising; collect, process and interpret data to optimize campaign performance in real time; and provide billing information to our financial systems. If our technology platforms cannot scale to meet demand, or if there are errors in our execution of any of these functions on our platforms, then our business could be harmed. Because our software is complex, undetected errors and failures may occur, especially when new versions or updates are made. We do not have the capability to test new releases or updates to our code on a small subset of campaigns, which means that bugs or errors in code could impact all campaigns on our platforms. Despite testing by us, errors or bugs in our software have in the past, and may in the future, not be found until the software is in our live operating environment. For example, we have experienced failures in our bidding system to recognize or respond to budget restrictions for campaigns, resulting in overspending on media, and we may in the future have failures in our systems that cause us to buy more media than our advertisers are contractually obligated to pay for, which could be costly and harm our operating results. Errors or failures in our software could also result in negative publicity, damage to our brand and reputation, loss of or delay in market acceptance of our solution, increased costs or loss of revenue, loss of competitive position or claims by advertisers for losses sustained by them. In such an event, we may be required or choose to expend additional resources to help mitigate any problems resulting from errors in our software. In addition, many of our customers use third-party services to measure campaign results, such as ad delivery, viewability, and fraud detection, and the accuracy of these services may differ. There may be discrepancies between our measurements and the measurements of these third parties which make it challenging for us to deliver on our advertisers’ goals as measured in these different ways. We may make errors in the measurement of our campaigns causing discrepancies with our advertisers’ measurements leading to a lack of confidence in us or the need for advertiser “make-goods,” the standard credits given to advertisers for campaigns that have not been delivered properly. These campaign measurement issues add complexity, cost, and risks associated with performance and quality to some of the campaigns we deliver. Material defects or errors in our enterprise platform, including our DMP solution, could also result in unanticipated costs and harm to our reputation. The software systems underlying the enterprise solutions, including the DMP, are inherently complex and may contain errors that could cause disruption in availability and other performance issues. Such performance issues could result in customers making warranty or other claims against us. Alleviating problems resulting from errors in our software could require significant expenditures of capital and other resources and could cause interruptions, delays or the cessation of our business, any of which would adversely impact our reputation as well as our financial position, results of operations and growth prospects.
As customers increase usage of our enterprise solutions, we will need to continually improve our hosting infrastructure.
We expect our enterprise solutions to continue to add customers, transactions and data that our hosting infrastructure will be required to support. We seek to maintain sufficient excess capacity in the hosting infrastructure to meet the needs of all of our enterprise customers. We also seek to maintain excess capacity to facilitate the increase in new customers and transactions. For example, if we secure a large customer or a group of enterprise customers that require significant amounts of bandwidth or storage, we may need to increase bandwidth, storage, power or other elements of our application architecture and our infrastructure, and our existing systems may not be able to scale in a manner satisfactory to our existing or prospective customers. As use of the platforms grows, we will need to devote additional resources to improving our application architecture and our infrastructure in order to maintain the performance of our enterprise solutions. We may need to incur additional costs to upgrade or expand our computer systems and architecture in order to accommodate increased or expected increases in demand. These costs could impact our results of operations.
Our business prospects depend, in part, on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties, including ready access to hardware in key locations to facilitate the delivery of our solution and reliable management of Internet traffic.
We anticipate that we will continue to depend on various third-party relationships in order to grow our business. We continue to pursue additional relationships with third parties, such as technology and content providers, real-time advertising
exchanges, social media companies, data and market research companies, publishers, co-location facilities and other strategic partners. Identifying, negotiating and documenting relationships with third parties requires significant time and resources as does integrating third-party data and services. Our agreements with channel partners and providers of technology, computer hardware, co-location facilities, content and consulting services and real-time advertising exchanges are typically non-exclusive, do not prohibit them from working with our competitors or from offering competing services and do not typically have minimum purchase commitments. Our competitors may be effective in providing incentives to third parties to favor their products or services over ours or to otherwise prevent or reduce purchases of our solutions. In addition, these third parties may not perform as expected under our agreements with them, and we may have disagreements or disputes with such third parties, which could negatively affect our brand and reputation.
In particular, our business depends on our ability to source computer hardware, including servers built to our specifications, and the ability to locate those servers and related hardware in co-location facilities in the most desirable locations to facilitate the timely delivery of our services. Disruptions in the services provided at co-location facilities that we rely upon can degrade the level of services that we can provide, which could harm our business. We also rely on our integration with many third-party technology providers to execute our business on a daily basis. We must efficiently direct a large amount of network traffic to and from our servers to consider tens of billions of bid requests per day, and each bid typically must take place in approximately 100 milliseconds. We rely on a third-party domain name service, or DNS, to direct traffic to our closest data center for efficient processing. If our DNS provider experiences disruptions or performance problems, this could result in inefficient balancing of traffic across our servers as well as impairment or prevention of web browser connectivity to our site, which could harm our business.
Our solutions rely on third-party open source software components, and failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open source software licenses could restrict our ability to sell our solutions.
Our technology platforms, including our computational infrastructure, rely on software licensed to us by third-party authors under “open source” licenses. The use of open source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. Some open source licenses contain requirements that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon the type of open source software we use. If we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software to the public. This would allow our competitors to create similar solutions with less development effort and time and ultimately put us at a competitive disadvantage.
Although we monitor our use of open source software to avoid subjecting our products to conditions we do not intend, the terms of many open source licenses have not been interpreted by United States courts, and there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in a way that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to commercialize our services. Moreover, we cannot guarantee that our processes for controlling our use of open source software will be effective. If we are held to have breached the terms of an open source software license, we could be required to seek licenses from third parties to continue operating our platforms on terms that are not economically feasible, to re-engineer our platforms or the supporting computational infrastructure to discontinue use of certain code, or to make generally available, in source code form, portions of our proprietary code, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Failure to comply with industry self-regulation could harm our brand, reputation and business.
We have committed to complying with the Network Advertising Initiative’s Code of Conduct and the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising in the United States, as well as similar self-regulatory principles in Europe adopted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau—Europe and the European Digital Advertising Alliance and the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada in Canada. Our efforts to comply with these principles include offering Internet users notice and transparency when advertising is served to them based, in part, on web browsing data history. We also offer Internet users the ability to opt out of receiving interest-based advertisements based on historical data that we have collected. However, we have made mistakes in our implementation of these guidelines in the past, and if we make mistakes in the future, or our opt out mechanisms fail to work as designed, or if Internet users misunderstand our technology or our commitments with respect to these principles, we could be subject to negative publicity, government investigation, government or private litigation, or investigation by self-regulatory bodies or other accountability groups. Any such action against us could be costly and time consuming, require us to change our business practices, cause us to divert management’s attention and our resources and be damaging to our reputation and our business.
Our corporate culture has contributed to our success. If we cannot maintain it as the size of our employee base fluctuates, we could lose the innovation, creativity and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business could be harmed.
Through the second quarter of 2015, we had undergone rapid, continuous growth in our employee base. However, in April 2015 we announced a reduction in force affecting approximately 11% of our employee base. We had
858
employees (
667
in the United States and
191
employees overseas) as of
September 30, 2016
, compared with
962
employees (
799
and
163
employees in the United States and overseas, respectively), as of
September 30, 2015
. Both rapid growth and layoffs can make it difficult to effectively maintain our corporate culture. We believe our corporate culture has been a critical component of our success as we believe it fosters innovation, teamwork, and focus on customers and execution, while facilitating knowledge sharing across our organization. As we change, we may find it difficult to preserve our corporate culture, which could reduce our ability to innovate and operate effectively. In turn, the failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our ability to attract, recruit, integrate and retain employees and effectively execute our business strategy.
We rely predominately on advertising agencies to purchase our solution on behalf of advertisers, and we incur the cost of an advertising campaign before we bill for services. Such agencies may have or develop high-risk credit profiles, which may result in credit risk to us.
We must consider the effect of credit risk in transactions with agencies or other third parties and advertisers. A substantial portion of our business is sourced through advertising agencies, and we contract with these agencies as an agent for a disclosed principal, which is the advertiser. Typically, the advertising agency pays for our services once it has received payment from the advertiser for our services. Our contracts typically provide that if the advertiser does not pay the agency, the agency is not liable to us, and we must seek payment solely from the advertiser. Contracting with these agencies, which in certain cases have or may develop high-risk credit profiles, subjects us to greater credit risk than where we contract with advertisers directly. This credit risk may vary depending on the nature of an advertising agency’s aggregated advertiser base. As of
September 30, 2016
,
two
agency holding companies, accounted for
10%
of more of accounts receivable. There can be no assurances that we will not experience additional bad debt expense in the future. Any such write-offs for bad debt could have a materially negative effect on our results of operations for the periods in which the write-offs occur. Even if we are not paid, we are still obligated to pay for the media we have purchased for the advertising campaign, and as a consequence, our results of operations and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
Fluctuations in the exchange rates of foreign currencies have resulted in, and could in the future result in currency transaction losses that negatively impact our financial results.
We currently have foreign sales primarily denominated in British pounds, euros, Japanese yen and Canadian dollars and may, in the future, have sales denominated in the currencies of additional countries in which we establish or have established sales offices. In addition, we incur a portion of our operating expenses in British pounds, euros, Canadian dollars and Hong Kong dollars. We expect international sales to become an increasingly important part of our business. Any adverse fluctuation in the exchange rates of these foreign currencies could negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. We have not previously engaged in foreign currency hedging. If we decide to attempt to hedge our foreign currency exposure, we may not be able to hedge effectively due to lack of experience, unreasonable costs or illiquid markets. In addition, those activities may be limited in the protection they provide us from foreign currency fluctuations and can themselves result in losses. The recent appreciation of the U.S. dollar has caused a decline in the U.S. dollar value of revenue billed in foreign currencies, and we expect this negative impact on revenue and net loss may continue.
Legislation and regulation of online businesses, including privacy and data protection regimes, could create unexpected costs, subject us to enforcement actions for compliance failures, or cause us to change our technology platform or business model, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.
Government regulation could increase the costs of doing business online. U.S. and foreign governments have enacted or are considering legislation related to online advertising and we expect to see an increase in legislation and regulation related to advertising online, the use of geo-location data to inform advertising, the collection and use of anonymous Internet user data and unique device identifiers, such as IP address or unique mobile device identifiers, and other data protection and privacy regulation.
Recent revelations about bulk online data collection by the National Security Agency, and news articles suggesting that the National Security Agency may gather data from cookies placed by Internet advertisers to deliver interest-based advertising, may further interest governments in legislation regulating data collection by commercial entities, such as advertisers and publishers and technology companies that serve the advertising industry. Such legislation could affect the costs of doing business online, and could reduce the demand for our solutions or otherwise harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. For example, a wide variety of provincial, state, national and international laws and regulations apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer and other processing of personal data. While we have not collected data that is traditionally
considered personal data, such as name, email address, address, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, financial or health data, we typically do collect and store IP addresses and other device identifiers, that are or may be considered personal data in some jurisdictions or otherwise may be the subject of legislation or regulation.
Evolving and changing definitions of personal data, within the EU, the United States and elsewhere, especially relating to classification of IP addresses, machine or device identifiers, pseudonymous identifiers, location data and other information, have in the past and could in the future, cause us to change our business practices, or limit or inhibit our ability to operate or expand our business. Data protection and privacy-related laws and regulations are evolving and could result in ever-increasing regulatory and public scrutiny and escalating levels of enforcement and sanctions. The referendum held in June 2016 by the United Kingdom in which voters approved an exit from the European Union, commonly referred to as “Brexit,” could also lead to further legislative and regulatory changes. We
use anonymous and pseudonymous data to buy media for, target and effectively optimize our clients' marketing campaigns. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information (PII), allow our clients to send us PII or store PII in our platform. It is possible that the definition of PII that government regulatory bodies operate under may be modified or expanded in markets where we does business. If this occurs, and if we can no longer collect or use specific types of data in markets where we previously had access to it, the performance of our clients' marketing campaigns may suffer and our ability to efficiently and cost-effectively purchase media may be adversely affected. These possible changes could impact revenue and other results of operations.
We must comply with government laws and regulations regarding the collection and use of certain kinds and classifications of data, such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Failure to comply with such government regulations could result in fines, penalties and negative press for us.
While we take measures to protect the security of information that we collect, use and disclose in the operation of our business, and to offer certain privacy protections with respect to that information, our measures may not always be effective. In addition, while we take steps to avoid collecting personally identifiable information about consumers, we may inadvertently receive this information from advertisers or advertising agencies or through the process of delivering advertising. Our failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations, or to protect personal data, could result in enforcement action against us, including fines, imprisonment of our officers and public censure, claims for damages by consumers and other affected individuals, damage to our reputation and loss of goodwill, any of which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, could harm our reputation and inhibit adoption of our solutions by current and future advertisers and advertising agencies.
In 2016, the Department of Commerce and the European Union completed the negotiation of the "Privacy Shield" framework, which allows US-based companies to transfer personal data about European citizens from the EU to the United States, after the US-based company has certified compliance with the "Privacy Shield" framework with the US Department of Commerce. This "Privacy Shield" framework replaces a previous framework, which was called "Safe Harbor". When companies certify that they are compliant with "Privacy Shield", they are reporting that they comply with specific obligations and practices detailed in the framework. We are a "Privacy Shield" certified company. If it were to be determined that we were not complying with our obligations under the "Privacy Shield" framework, and we lost our "Privacy Shield" certification from the Department of Commerce, it could result in a reluctance for clients to do business with us, or the loss of existing business.
Our proprietary rights may be difficult to enforce. This could enable others to copy or use aspects of our solution without compensating us, which could erode our competitive advantages and harm our business.
Our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect proprietary methods and technologies that we develop under the intellectual property laws of the United States, so that we can prevent others from using our inventions and proprietary information. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, our competitors might gain access to our technology, and our business could be adversely affected. We rely on trademark, copyright, trade secret and patent laws, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary methods and technologies. Our patent strategy is still in its early stages and while we have a small number of pending patent applications, valid patents may not be issued from our pending applications, and the claims eventually allowed on any patents may not be sufficiently broad to protect our technology or offerings and services. Any issued patents may be challenged, invalidated or circumvented, and any rights granted under these patents may not actually provide adequate defensive protection or competitive advantages to us. Additionally, the process of obtaining patent protection is expensive and time-consuming, and we may not be able to prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. Additional uncertainty may result from changes to intellectual property legislation enacted in the United States, including the recent America Invents Act, and other national governments and from interpretations of the intellectual property laws of the United States and other countries by applicable courts and agencies. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may
be unable to obtain adequate patent protection, or to prevent third parties from infringing upon or misappropriating our intellectual property.
Unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our technology or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. We generally enter into confidentiality and/or license agreements with our employees, consultants, vendors and advertisers, and generally limit access to and distribution of our proprietary information. However, we cannot provide assurance that any steps taken by us will prevent misappropriation of our technology and proprietary information. Policing unauthorized use of our technology is difficult. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those of the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of our proprietary rights in such countries may be inadequate. From time to time, legal action by us may be necessary to enforce our intellectual property rights, to protect our trade secrets, to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, or to defend against claims of infringement. Such litigation could result in substantial costs and the diversion of limited resources and could negatively affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights (including aspects of our technology platform), we may find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to others who have not incurred the same level of expense, time and effort to create and protect their intellectual property.
We may be subject to intellectual property rights claims by third parties, which are extremely costly to defend, could require us to pay significant damages and could limit our ability to use certain technologies.
Third parties may assert claims of infringement of intellectual property rights in proprietary technology against us or against our advertisers for which we may be liable or have an indemnification obligation. We may be more at risk of infringement claims when we offer enterprise solutions used directly by our clients because our technology is more accessible to potential claimants, and also because through the [x+1] acquisition we acquired a substantial amount of additional technology and intellectual property. Any claim of infringement by a third party, even those without merit, could cause us to incur substantial costs defending against the claim and could distract our management from operating our business.
Although third parties may offer a license to their technology, the terms of any offered license may not be acceptable and the failure to obtain a license or the costs associated with any license could cause our business, financial condition and results of operations to be materially and adversely affected. In addition, some licenses may be non-exclusive, and therefore our competitors may have access to the same technology licensed to us. Alternatively, we may be required to develop non-infringing technology, which could require significant effort and expense and ultimately may not be successful. Furthermore, a successful claimant could secure a judgment or we may agree to a settlement that prevents us from distributing certain products or performing certain services or that requires us to pay substantial damages, including treble damages if we are found to have willfully infringed a claimant’s patents or copyrights, royalties or other fees. Any of these events could seriously harm our business financial condition and results of operations.
Legal claims against us resulting from the actions of our customers could damage our reputation and be costly to defend.
We receive representations from our customers that the content of the advertising that we place on their behalf is lawful. We also rely on representations from our customers that they maintain adequate privacy policies that allow us to place pixels on their websites and collect data from users that visit those websites to aid in delivering our solution. However, we do not independently verify whether we are permitted to deliver advertising to our customers’ Internet users or that the content of the advertisements we deliver is legally permitted. If any of our customers’ representations are untrue and our customers do not abide by foreign, federal, state or local laws or regulations governing their content or privacy practices, we could become subject to legal claims against us, we could be exposed to potential liability (for which we may or may not be indemnified by our advertisers), and our reputation could be damaged.
Indemnity provisions in various agreements potentially expose us to substantial liability for intellectual property infringement and other losses.
Our agreements with advertisers, advertising agencies, and other third parties may include indemnification provisions under which we agree to indemnify them for losses suffered or incurred as a result of claims of intellectual property infringement, damages caused by us to property or persons, or other liabilities relating to or arising from our products, services or other contractual obligations. The term of these indemnity provisions generally survives termination or expiration of the applicable agreement. Large indemnity payments would harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.
We have identified material weaknesses in our internal controls in the past, and if we do not continue to develop effective internal controls, we may not be able to accurately report our financial results or prevent fraud, and our business could suffer as a result.
When we are no longer an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the Jumpstart our Business Startups Act, or the "JOBS Act," we will be required, pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting. We will need to disclose any material weaknesses (as defined by SEC rules) in our internal controls over financial reporting that are identified by our management, as well as provide a statement that our independent registered public accounting firm has issued an opinion on our internal controls over financial reporting. Our independent registered public accounting firm will not be required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting until our first annual report filed with the SEC following the later of (i) the date we are deemed to be a "large accelerated filer," as defined in the Exchange Act, or (ii) the date we are no longer an emerging growth company.
In connection with the audit of our financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2010, we identified certain material weaknesses in our internal controls resulting from a lack of qualified personnel within our accounting function that possessed an appropriate level of expertise to perform certain functions. We have since remediated these material weaknesses. We are continuing to develop our internal controls, processes and reporting systems by, among other things, hiring qualified personnel with expertise to perform specific functions, and implementing software systems to manage our revenue and expenses and to allow us to budget and undertake multi-year financial planning and analysis. This process has been and will be time-consuming, costly and complicated. We may not be successful in implementing these systems or in developing other internal controls, which could undermine our ability to provide accurate, timely and reliable reports on our financial and operating results. For example, in connection with filing a registration statement for our initial public offering, errors were identified in the unaudited consolidated statement of cash flows for the six months ended June 30, 2012. We have since corrected these errors and concluded that the corrections were immaterial. However, if we identify additional errors that are caused by material weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting and we do not detect the errors on a timely basis, our financial statements could be materially misstated. If we identify new material weaknesses in our internal controls 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 controls over financial reporting are effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting when requested to do so, investors could lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock could be negatively affected. As a result of any such failures, we could also become subject to investigations by the NASDAQ Global Select Market, the SEC, or other regulatory authorities, and become subject to lawsuits by stockholders, which could harm our reputation and financial condition and divert financial and management resources from our core business.
Economic downturns and political and market conditions beyond our control could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Our business depends on the overall demand for advertising and on the economic health of our current and prospective advertisers. Economic downturns or instability in political or market conditions may cause current or new advertisers to reduce their advertising budgets. Adverse economic conditions and general uncertainty about economic recovery in the U.S. or abroad, are likely to affect our business prospects. In addition, concerns over the sovereign debt situation in certain countries in the EU, the impact of Brexit, as well as continued geopolitical turmoil in many parts of the world have, and may continue to, put pressure on global economic conditions, which could lead to reduced spending on advertising.
If our estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies are based on assumptions that change or prove to be incorrect, our operating results could fall below the expectations of investors and securities analysts, which could result in a decline in our stock price.
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities, equity, revenue and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. Our operating results could be adversely affected if our assumptions change or if actual circumstances differ from those reflected in our assumptions. If, as a result, our operating results fall below the expectations of investors and securities analysts, our stock price could decline. Significant assumptions and estimates used in preparing our consolidated financial statements include those related to revenue recognition, allowances for doubtful accounts and returns, internal-use software and development costs, income taxes, stock-based compensation expense and impairment of goodwill and intangible assets.
Our ability to use our net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations, which could subject our business to higher tax liability.
We may be limited in the portion of net operating loss carry-forwards that we can use in the future to offset taxable income for U.S. federal and state income tax purposes. At
December 31, 2015
, we had U.S. federal net operating loss carry-forwards, or NOLs, of $219.5 million and state NOLs of $76.9 million. A lack of future taxable income would adversely affect our ability to utilize these NOLs. In addition, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” is subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its NOLs to offset future taxable income. We believe that we experienced an ownership change under Section 382 of the Code in prior years that may limit our ability to utilize a portion of the NOLs and future changes in our stock ownership could result in additional ownership changes under Section 382 of the Code. Our NOLs may also be impaired under similar provisions of state law. We have recorded a valuation allowance related to our NOLs and other net deferred tax assets due to the uncertainty of the ultimate realization of the future benefits of those assets. Our NOLs may expire unutilized or underutilized, which would prevent us from offsetting future taxable income.
Forecasts of market growth may prove to be inaccurate, and even if the market in which we compete achieves the forecasted growth, we cannot provide assurance that our business will grow at similar rates, if at all.
Market growth forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may not prove to be accurate. Forecasts relating to the expected growth in the digital advertising and real-time bidding markets may prove to be inaccurate. Even if these markets experience the forecasted growth, we may not grow our business at similar rates, or at all. Our growth is subject to many factors, including our success in implementing our business strategy, which is subject to many risks and uncertainties.
We may invest in or acquire other businesses in the future. These activities require significant management attention and resources to integrate new businesses into our existing operations. These activities could disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value and adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.
As part of our business strategy, we may make investments in or acquisitions of complementary companies, products or technologies. These activities involve significant risks to our business. We may not be able to find suitable acquisition candidates, and we may not be able to complete such acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all. The acquisitions we do complete may not ultimately strengthen our competitive position. Any acquisitions we complete could be viewed negatively by our advertisers, advertising agencies and investors, which could have an adverse impact on our business and the value of our common stock. In addition, if we are unsuccessful at integrating acquired employees or technologies, our financial condition and results of operations, including revenue growth, could be adversely affected. Any acquisition and subsequent integration will require significant time and resources. We have only completed one acquisition to date and have not yet completed our integration of the acquired business. As a result, our ability as an organization to acquire and integrate other companies, products or technologies in a successful manner is unproven. We may not be able to successfully evaluate and use the acquired technology or employees, or otherwise manage the acquisition and integration processes successfully. We will be required to pay cash, incur debt and/or issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition, each of which could adversely affect our financial condition and the value of our common stock. The use of cash to pay for acquisitions will limit other potential uses of our cash, including investments in our sales and marketing and product development organizations, and in infrastructure to support scalability. The issuance or sale of equity or convertible debt securities to finance any such acquisitions will result in dilution to our stockholders and could negatively impact earnings per share. If we incur debt in connection with any future acquisition, it would result in increased fixed obligations and could also impose covenants or other restrictions that could impede our ability to manage our operations.
Anticipated and unanticipated charges to earnings resulting from acquisitions may adversely affect our results of operations. Under business combination accounting standards, we recognize the identifiable assets acquired and the liabilities assumed, generally at their acquisition date fair values and separately from goodwill. Our estimates of fair value are based upon assumptions we believe to be reasonable but which are inherently uncertain. After we complete an acquisition, a number of factors could result in material charges, which could adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows, including but not limited to costs incurred to integrate employees such as employee retention, redeployment or relocation expenses; amortization, impairment or reduction in the useful lives of intangible assets; amortization or impairment of goodwill; costs to maintain certain duplicative pre-merger activities for an extended period of time or to maintain these activities for a period of time that is longer than we had anticipated; and charges to our operating results due to the expensing of certain stock awards assumed in an acquisition. In third quarter of 2015, for example, we recognized an impairment of goodwill, as described in Note 12 to our Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements. Substantially all of these costs will be accounted for as expenses that will decrease our net income and earnings per share for the periods in which those costs are incurred.
Additional risks related to investments and acquisitions include but are not limited to the following:
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The need to integrate the technology underlying an acquired company's products and services with our technology;
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The need to integrate an acquired company's sales organization with ours in a manner that will optimize sales of the combined company's offerings;
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The need to integrate an acquired company’s accounting, management information, human resources and other administrative systems to permit effective management and timely reporting and to reduce administrative costs;
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The possibility that the combined company will not achieve the expected benefits of the acquisition, including any anticipated operating and product synergies, as quickly as anticipated, if at all;
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The need to implement or remediate controls, procedures and policies appropriate for a public company in an acquired company that, prior to the acquisition, lacked these controls, procedures and policies;
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The need to address unfavorable revenue recognition or other accounting or tax treatment as a result of an acquired company’s practices;
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The possibility of higher than anticipated costs in continuing support and development of acquired products; in general and administrative functions that support new or multiple business models; or in compliance with associated regulations that are more complicated than we had anticipated;
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Cultural challenges associated with integrating employees from an acquired company or business into our organization, and the risk of attrition if integration is not successful;
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The possibility that we will be unable to retain key employees and maintain the key business and customer relationships of any business we acquire;
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The possibility that we will not discover important facts during due diligence for an acquisition that could have a material adverse impact on the value of any business we acquire and subject us to unexpected claims and liabilities, regulatory exposure and/or other expenses;
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Litigation or other claims in connection with, or inheritance of claims or litigation risks as a result of, an acquisition, including claims from terminated employees, customers or other third parties;
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Significant accounting charges resulting from the completion and integration of a sizable acquisition and related capital expenditures;
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Significant acquisition-related accounting adjustments that may cause reported revenue and profits of the combined company to be lower than the sum of their stand-alone revenue and profits;
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The possibility that the costs of, or operational difficulties arising from, an acquisition would be greater than anticipated;
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Additional country-specific risks, to the extent that we engage in strategic transactions outside of the United States, including risks related to integration of operations across different cultures and languages; currency risks; the particular economic, political and regulatory risks associated with specific countries; and the possibility that data privacy regulations in new markets may be applied differently to an acquired company's technology and practices than they are to our technology and practices; and
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The possibility that a change of control of a company we acquire triggers a termination of contractual or intellectual property rights important to the operation of its business.
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Any of the foregoing factors, among others, could harm our financial condition or prevent us from achieving improvements in our financial condition and operating performance that could have otherwise been achieved by us on a stand-alone basis. Our stockholders may not have the opportunity to review, vote on or evaluate future acquisitions or investments.
Our business is subject to the risk of earthquakes, fire, power outages, floods and other catastrophic events, and to other interruptions due to natural or human causes.
We maintain servers at co-location facilities in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Nevada, Virginia, Germany, the Netherlands and Hong Kong that we use to deliver advertising campaigns for our advertisers, and expect to add other data centers at co-location facilities in the future. Any of our facilities may be harmed or rendered inoperable by natural or man-made disasters, including earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, floods, nuclear disasters, war, acts of terrorism, vandalism or other criminal activities, infectious disease outbreaks and power outages, any of which could render it difficult or impossible for us to operate our business for some period of time. For example, in October 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused our former data center in New York to cease operations because of storm damage, which caused us to divert online traffic to other facilities. Our corporate headquarters and the co-location facility where we maintain data used in our business operations are both located in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region known for seismic activity. If we were to lose the data stored in our California co-location facility, it could take at least a full day to recreate this data in our Nevada co-location facility, which could result in a material negative impact on our business operations, and potential damage to our advertiser and advertising agency relationships. If one of our facilities were to suffer damage, it would likely be costly to repair or replace, and any such efforts would likely require substantial time. Any disruptions in our operations could negatively impact our business and results of operations, and harm our reputation. In addition, we may not carry sufficient business interruption insurance to compensate for the losses that may occur. Any of these losses or damages could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Risks Related to the Securities Markets and Ownership of Our Common Stock
The price of our common stock has been volatile and the value of our common stock has declined substantially since our IPO.
Technology stocks have historically experienced high levels of volatility. The trading price of our common stock has, and is likely going to continue to fluctuate substantially. Since our initial public offering in September 2013 through
September 30, 2016
, our common stock has ranged in price from a low of
$2.09
to a high of
$71.89
. These fluctuations have caused many stockholders to suffer declines in the value of their investment in our common stock. Factors that could cause further fluctuations in the trading price of our common stock include the following:
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announcements of financial results, new offerings, products, services or technologies, initiatives, commercial relationships, acquisitions or other events by us, our competitors or others in our industry sector;
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price and volume fluctuations in the overall U.S. and foreign stock markets from time to time;
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significant volatility in the market price and trading volume of technology companies in general and of companies in the digital advertising industry in particular;
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fluctuations in the trading volume of our shares or the size of our public float;
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actual or anticipated changes or fluctuations in our results of operations;
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whether our results of operations meet the expectations of investors or securities analysts;
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actual or anticipated changes in the expectations of investors or securities analysts, whether due to our issuance of new guidance or otherwise;
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litigation involving us, our industry, or both;
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regulatory developments in the United States, foreign countries, or both;
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general economic conditions and trends;
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major catastrophic events;
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sales of large blocks of our common stock;
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departures of key employees; or
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an adverse impact on us from any of the other risks cited in this Risk Factors section.
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In addition, if the market for technology stocks or the stock market, in general, experience a loss of investor confidence, the trading price of our common stock could decline for reasons unrelated to our business, results of operations or financial condition. The trading price of our common stock might also decline in reaction to events that affect other companies in our industry whether or not these events directly affect us.
Our stock price has been volatile and has declined since our initial public offering in September 2013. On September 3, 2014, a stockholder class action lawsuit was filed against us, certain of our officers and certain underwriters of our initial public offering in September 2013 and our follow-on offering in January 2014. On September 10, 2014, a substantively similar lawsuit was filed, adding our board of directors and additional underwriters as defendants. The complaints allege violations of the federal securities laws on behalf of a purported class consisting of purchasers of our common stock pursuant or traceable to the registration statements and prospectuses for our initial and follow-on public offerings, and seek unspecified compensatory damages and other relief. A consolidated complaint was filed on February 27, 2015. All defendants moved to dismiss the consolidated complaint and on December 23, 2015, the Court granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motions to dismiss. For more information, see Part II, Item 1,
"Legal Proceedings."
Securities litigation, regardless of the outcome, can ultimately result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and resources from our business. This could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
We have failed in the past, and may fail in the future, to meet our publicly announced guidance or other expectations about our business and future operating results. Such past failures have caused, and future failures would likely cause, our stock price to decline.
We have provided and may continue to provide guidance about our business and future operating results. In developing this guidance, our management must make certain assumptions and judgments about our future performance. We use a variety of models to forecast revenue in our business, including but not limited to models based on our bookings, estimates from our sales personnel, and projected productivity of our sales representatives. Each of our models has limitations. For example, revenue anticipated by a sales representative for a particular quarter might be delayed, reduced in amount or not materialize at all for a variety of reasons, including many that are out of our control. As another example, sales personnel productivity may change significantly from historical patterns when we hire new, less experienced sales personnel, when we introduce new products and services and if we are required to integrate sales personnel and new products as part of an acquired business. In addition, expanding competitive alternatives available to our customers in the market, an unexpected slowdown in general economic conditions, unexpected customer turnover and a variety of other factors could lead to unanticipated reductions in spending by our customers.
Our industry is rapidly changing, and as we adopt new business models to address customer requirements, our historical methods of forecasting may prove inadequate. Our increasing focus on enterprise solutions, which have long sales cycles, exacerbates our difficulty in developing accurate forecasts. It may take a number of quarters selling enterprise solutions for us to understand enough about the dynamics impacting our revenue mix to be able to accurately forecast revenue for our business.
Our business results may vary significantly from our guidance due to a number of factors, many of which could adversely affect our operations and operating results. Furthermore, if our publicly announced guidance of future operating results fails to meet expectations of securities analysts, investors or other interested parties, the price of our common stock would likely decline, as it did following our announcement of guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2014 on May 8, 2014, and our announcement of third quarter and full year guidance on August 5, 2014.
The concentration of our capital stock ownership could limit your ability to influence the outcome of key transactions, including a change of control.
Our directors, executive officers and all of our stockholders who own greater than 5% of our outstanding common stock, in the aggregate, owned approximately
35.6%
of the outstanding shares of our common stock based on the number of shares outstanding as of
September 30, 2016
. As a result, these stockholders will be able to influence or control matters requiring approval by our stockholders, including the election of directors and the approval of mergers, acquisitions or other extraordinary transactions. They may also have interests that differ from yours and may vote in a manner that is adverse to your interests. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of deterring, delaying or preventing a change of control of our company, could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock as part of a sale of our company and might ultimately affect the market price of our common stock.
The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources, and divert our management’s attention.
As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, and are required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of the NASDAQ Global Select Market and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Compliance with these rules and regulations have increased our legal and financial compliance costs, made some activities more difficult, time-consuming or costly and increased demand on our systems and resources. Among other things, the Exchange Act requires that we file annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and results of operations and maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting. In order to maintain and, if required, improve our disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls over financial reporting to meet this standard, significant resources and management oversight may be required. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could harm our business and results of operations. Although we have already hired additional employees to comply with these requirements, we may need to hire even more employees in the future, which will increase our costs and expenses.
We are an emerging growth company, and we cannot be certain if the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our common stock less attractive to investors.
For so long as we remain an emerging growth company as defined in the JOBS Act, we expect to take advantage of certain exemptions from various requirements that are applicable to public companies that are not emerging growth companies, including not being required to comply with the independent auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We may take advantage of these exemptions for so long as we are an emerging growth company, which could be as long as five years following the completion of our IPO in September 2013. Investors may find our common stock less attractive because we rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock, and our stock price may be more volatile and may decline.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research reports about our business, our share price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common stock will, to some extent, depend on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. We do not have any control over these analysts. If one or more of the analysts who cover us should downgrade our shares or change their opinion of our business prospects, our share price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts ceases coverage of our company or fails 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.
We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future and, consequently, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our common stock.
We have never declared or paid any dividends on our common stock. We have an accumulated deficit in our stockholders’ equity and have not generated net income through
September 30, 2016
. In addition, our credit facility contains restrictions on our ability to pay dividends. We intend to retain any earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business, and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the future. As a result, you may only receive a return on your investment in our common stock if the market price of our common stock increases.
Our charter documents and Delaware law could discourage takeover attempts and lead to management entrenchment.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws contain provisions that could delay or prevent a change in control of our company. These provisions could also make it difficult for stockholders to elect directors that are not nominated by the current members of our board of directors or take other corporate actions, including effecting changes in our management. These provisions include:
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a classified board of directors with three-year staggered terms, which could delay the ability of stockholders to change the membership of a majority of our board of directors;
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the ability of our board of directors to issue shares of preferred stock and to determine the price and other terms of those shares, including preferences and voting rights, without stockholder approval, which could be used to significantly dilute the ownership of a hostile acquiror;
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the exclusive right of our board of directors to elect a director to fill a vacancy created by the expansion of our board of directors or the resignation, death or removal of a director, which prevents stockholders from being able to fill vacancies on our board of directors;
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a prohibition on stockholder action by written consent, which forces stockholder action to be taken at an annual or special meeting of our stockholders;
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the requirement that a special meeting of stockholders may be called only by the chairman of our board of directors, our president, our secretary, or a majority vote of our board of directors, which could delay the ability of our stockholders to force consideration of a proposal or to take action, including the removal of directors;
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the requirement for the affirmative vote of holders of at least 66-2/3% of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the voting stock, voting together as a single class, to amend the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation relating to the management of our business or our amended and restated bylaws, which may inhibit the ability of an acquiror to effect such amendments to facilitate an unsolicited takeover attempt;
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the ability of our board of directors, by majority vote, to amend our amended and restated bylaws, which may allow our board of directors to take additional actions to prevent an unsolicited takeover and inhibit the ability of an acquiror to amend our amended and restated bylaws to facilitate an unsolicited takeover attempt; and
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advance notice procedures with which stockholders must comply to nominate candidates to our board of directors or to propose matters to be acted upon at a stockholders’ meeting, which may discourage or deter a potential acquiror from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquiror’s own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of us.
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In addition, as a Delaware corporation, we are subject to Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. These provisions may prohibit large stockholders, in particular those owning 15% or more of our outstanding voting stock, from merging or combining with us for a certain period of time.