Item 1. Business
Overview
Limelight operates a private, globally distributed, high-performance network and provides a suite of integrated services marketed as the Limelight Orchestrate Platform. These services include content delivery, video content management, website and web application acceleration, website and content security, and cloud storage services.
The services we provide help our customers optimize and deliver digital content to a wide variety of digital devices. These services provide advanced features to enable digital workflows for video publishing, content distribution for any device, and website and web application acceleration. Limelight services incorporate content and application security, file management, video transformation, distributed storage functionality, and the analytics and reporting associated with them. These services leverage our global network, which provides highly available, highly redundant storage, bandwidth, and computing resources, as well as connectivity to last-mile broadband network providers.
Limelight’s high capacity, high speed private global network and distributed storage and compute capabilities are also well suited to the emerging
Internet of Things
(
IoT) and edge compute workloads where rapid response times are needed.
We derive revenue primarily from the sale of components of the Limelight Orchestrate Platform. We also generate revenue through the sale of professional services and other infrastructure services, such as transit and rack space services. In addition, we also maintain relationships with resellers that purchase our services for resale to their end customers.
We provide our services to customers that we believe view Internet, mobile, social, and other digital initiatives as critical to their success, including traditional and emerging media companies operating in the television, music, radio, newspaper, magazine, movie, game, software, and social media industries, as well as to enterprises, technology companies, and government entities conducting business online. Our offerings enable our customers to deliver a high quality online experience and thereby improve brand perception, drive revenue, and enhance customer relationships.
We are a Delaware corporation formed in 2001. Our principal executive offices are located at 222 South Mill Avenue, 8
th
Floor, Tempe, Arizona 85281, and our main telephone number is (602) 850-5000. We began development of our infrastructure in 2001 and began generating meaningful revenue in 2002. We began international operations in 2004. As of December 31, 2017, we had approximately 717 active customers and had a presence in approximately 50 countries throughout the world.
We are registered as a reporting company under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (Exchange Act). Accordingly, we file or furnish with the SEC annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and all amendments to such reports as required by the Exchange Act and the rules and regulations of the SEC. We refer to these reports as "Periodic Reports". The public may read and copy any Periodic Reports or other materials we file with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F. Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549. Information on the operation of the Public Reference Room is available by calling 1-800-SEC-0330. In addition, the SEC maintains an Internet website that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding issuers, such as Limelight Networks, Inc., that file electronically with the SEC. The address of this website is www.sec.gov.
Our Internet website address is www.limelight.com. We make available, free of charge, on or through our Internet website our Periodic Reports and amendments to those Periodic Reports as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file them with the SEC. We are not, however, including the information contained on our website, or information that may be accessed through links on our website, as part of, or incorporating it by reference into, this annual report on Form 10-K.
Five Trends Driving Internet Congestion
We have identified five trends that point to an Internet of the future in which congestion may cause outages and prevent organizations from delivering the highest quality digital experiences. In this situation, the need and demand for private, global networks to deliver digital content become important. These trends are:
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Shift to over the top (OTT) consumption for online video.
Online video viewership continues to grow as does the number of connected devices for consuming content. In our September 2017
State of Online Video
consumer report, we found that consumers watch approximately 5 hours and 45 minutes of online video per week on average, with Millennials far exceeding 7 hours. Viewing habits are shifting as well. There’s an increasing use of a multitude of devices to watch online video both inside and outside the home, ranging from computers and tablets to smart
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phones and streaming devices. This trend reflects that many top-tier content owners have either already launched their content direct-to-consumer (e.g., HBO, CBS, Showtime) or have announced plans to do so. In addition, content owners continue to join forces with media companies (e.g., Sony, Hulu, Dish Networks) to launch OTT subscription services enabling consumers to bundle together channels for a fraction of the cost of a cable subscription.
As day-to-day consumption of video content shifts to Internet-based delivery, we believe this will put an increasing strain on the Internet placing additional pressure on organizations and service providers to take steps to protect the quality of the end-user experience as this increasing segment of traffic competes with other Internet activities, such as browsing websites and downloading digital content.
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Broadcast Quality Online Video
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Consumers are continuing to consume online streaming video in record numbers. Online video is rapidly growing towards becoming a primary method by which users consume video content, whether it’s via their personal computers, smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, or other connected devices. Yet, consumers continue to expect the same quality experience online as they would have in viewing broadcast television. This will put a significant burden on publishers to produce not just compelling content, but also to deliver it in a way that meets changing consumer expectations. To keep up, organizations have been forced to increase quality to provide a “broadcast-like” experience. For example, with the recent advent of 4K resolution devices, several large-scale online video providers are already streaming in this new format that requires, in most cases, four times the bandwidth of a traditional high definition stream. We believe that as more content is made available in 4K resolution (coupled with increasing sales of 4K-ready devices like televisions and computer monitors), more consumers will want to consume the higher-quality content, resulting in increased strain on Internet architecture and infrastructure.
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Growth of digital downloads.
C
onsumers are becoming more accustomed to making purchases of movies, music, games, and applications digitally from a variety of retailers
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ith the growing availability of higher bandwidth connections to connected devices. As a result, consumers accept larger download sizes. For example, releases of popular games have topped 50 gigabytes (GBs) in size. As digital purchases of massive files increase, we believe that this will cause more strain on the Internet’s infrastructure. We believe that this will result in additional pressure on organizations and service providers to take steps to avoid congestion, latency, lengthening download times, and increasingly interrupted downloads, all of which we believe would undermine an organization’s ability to deliver the best possible digital experience.
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Webpage size.
Organizations are building more complex, interactive, and engaging digital experiences that rely heavily on imagery and multimedia content. This trend is reflected in the growing size of webpages. For example, today's average webpage requires users to download 2.5 MB worth of data, according to the HTTP-Archive, a site that tracks website performance and the technologies they use. We believe, through a highly congested Internet, these websites will become increasingly harder to deliver at the level of performance that users expect.
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The Internet of Things (IoT).
Connected devices communicate with each other and with server-based resources via the Internet. Although it is unclear as to how much bandwidth this “background communication” will consume, as more devices become connected and begin communicating with each other and other resources, this traffic will compete with other Internet traffic such as streaming video and digital downloads. We believe IoT may complicate an organization’s ability to utilize the Internet to deliver high quality digital experiences.
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Seven Trends Illustrating Consumer Demand for Digital Content
The Internet is key for today’s digital business. Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and other Internet protocols are critical to enabling organizations to digitize business processes and operations as well as provide the kinds of experiences that consumers worldwide have come to expect across a variety of devices. We believe there are seven trends that illustrate a demand for digital content, contribute to the overall usage of the Internet, increase potential congestion, and punctuate the need for a private, global network to meet the level of performance that users expect. We believe these trends are:
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The continued growth of online video.
Consumers are demanding and consuming video, music, and other forms of rich media over the Internet. According to Cisco's
Visual Networking Index
annual report, IP video will account for 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021. Based on this trend, we expect that businesses will continue to incorporate video into their digital marketing efforts as a way to further differentiate their message from competitors and generate new opportunities for engagement.
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Mobile First.
We believe that mobile will continue to be increasingly important as a primary method users employ to interact with online content, a position supported by our November 2017
State of The User Experience
consumer research which indicated that smartphones are the most popular device for accessing online content. Mobile devices enable consumers to remain connected and engaged with an organization’s content when they are away from their
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primary computers or TVs and it’s clear that consumers are employing these devices more often to do so. However, in order for those consumers to remain engaged, the experience must be optimized across devices. An organization’s dynamic content and video has to be accessible regardless of device and provide the same engagement and interaction with those users.
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The continued migration of information technology (IT) services into the cloud.
Enterprises may seek to decrease infrastructure expenditures by moving to a “cloud-based” model in which application delivery and storage are available on-demand and paid for on an as-needed basis. We anticipate that the core cloud computing market will continue to grow at a rapid pace as the cloud increasingly becomes a mainstream IT strategy embraced by corporate enterprises and government agencies. According to Gartner, by 2020 the shift to cloud will affect more than $1 trillion in IT spending. The core cloud market includes platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings such as content delivery networks (CDN), as well as the cloud-delivered software used to build and manage a cloud environment.
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Increasing user expectations for digital experience performance.
Websites are becoming increasingly complex and large, while user expectations for website performance are becoming more demanding. We anticipate that these demanding consumer expectations will drive a continued need for website and web application acceleration services. The combination of performance expectation coupled with multi-device delivery creates a considerable challenge for most organizations.
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Increasing need for scalable storage.
The amount of data created each year has grown rapidly, and we believe this rapid growth in data production will create demand for flexible and scalable storage mechanisms to support growing libraries of digital content. We anticipate the need for cloud storage to increase because of the growing demand for video and other types of digital content. Organizations must consider their choice of storage solution carefully when the technology is part of a digital content delivery chain as the wrong selection can lead to incremental latency that can undermine digital experience performance.
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The evolution of digital marketing.
As the global online economy has continued to expand and grow, it has become increasingly difficult for businesses to capture consumer attention. Because of this difficulty, we anticipate that marketing will continue to evolve from “broadcast advertising” to engaging with users through conversations associated with content in a variety of places including websites and social networks. We believe this kind of engagement requires that content be increasingly comprised of video and rich media, and be delivered in a manner that meets the high user expectations for the delivery and responsiveness of digital experiences.
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Global broadband speed increase.
With each passing year, the average broadband connection speed is increasing around the world, especially as governmental agencies (such as the United States Federal Communications Commission) take an active role in ensuring that consumers have access to high-speed connections. The continued increase in speed is illustrative of consumer desire to access multimedia content (e.g. online video, game downloads, interactive web applications) through the Internet and how integral rich, digital experiences have become the way people conduct their lives on a daily basis.
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Requirements for delivering effective digital experiences
We believe that the challenges of delivering digital content, particularly related to rich media, dynamic content, and applications over the Internet to a wide variety of mobile and connected devices, have created a new set of technical, management, and economic requirements for organizations seeking to succeed in the online economy. We believe those requirements include the following:
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Reduction of IT involvement.
As businesses increasingly rely on cloud-based services they will require more intuitive web-based interfaces that enable adoption and usage of cloud-based services by the entire company or organization, regardless of location, with less direct IT support required.
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Security.
Maintaining effective security is a challenge for any enterprise that operates an online presence. Threats, denial of service attacks, viruses, and piracy can impact online web presence in many ways, including compromising personal and sensitive information, loss of customer trust and loyalty, loss of revenue, and negative publicity and brand reputation. Businesses require services that employ a number of software and network features to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access to content and network-related attacks against web properties, digital content, and applications. There continues to be an increasing number of high profile security incidents that continue to raise the awareness, and strategic importance of, security in our industry.
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Conditional access to content.
Consumers increasingly expect the ability to consume any form of media content online. To meet this expectation, traditional media companies are making their enormous libraries of content, such as television shows and movies, available for viewing online. Content providers often have regulations with respect to where they can display, or store their content, due to industry requirements or geographic location. Accordingly, companies require powerful features that enable them to control where content is stored, for how long, and in what regions it can be delivered.
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Ability to scale capacity to handle rapidly accelerating demand.
Online businesses must scale delivery of their web presence smoothly as the quantity of their site visitors or audience increases to avoid delays for users. When a large number of users simultaneously access a particular digital content asset like a video, the operator must be able to meet that surge in demand without making users wait. Rapidly accelerating demand can be related to a single event, such as a breaking news story or seasonal shopping, or can be spread across an entire library of content, such as when a social media website surges in popularity. The continued increase in video and other rich media consumption, and the growing size of digital content objects, contributes to concerns that Internet bandwidth may be supply constrained in the future.
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Ability to easily publish and deliver online video.
As the consumer demand for online video grows, businesses and organizations may be required to adopt video into their marketing messages. However, there are a host of complexities involved in developing and implementing a “video publishing workflow.” Businesses will require intuitive tools that enable them to manage their video portfolio, and quickly and efficiently publish and deliver their video content at scale with quality performance. Additionally, businesses will require that video content can be converted automatically for playing on any mobile device with the opportunity to integrate advertisements.
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Multi-device delivery.
With the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets, businesses and organizations must ensure that their content, whether dynamic web pages or video, display properly in mobile formats. However, adding this requirement to existing content publishing workflows may greatly complicate internal processes that may result in delays for making content available to end users. Additionally, because many mobile devices have separate requirements, businesses will require features for automatically delivering correctly formatted content.
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Reliability and Consistency.
Throughout the path data must traverse to reach a user, problems with the underlying infrastructure supporting the Internet can occur. For example, servers can crash or network connections can fail. Network, datacenter, or service provider outages can mean frustrated users, lost audiences, and missed revenue opportunities. Businesses require a massively redundant network that they can depend on to ensure the reliable and consistent delivery of their digital experiences.
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Our Services
We believe our integrated suite of services, coupled with our global network, are responsive to the trends driving Internet growth and address the requirements for delivering effective digital experiences. Our primary services include the following:
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Content delivery services
improve the reliability and performance of digital content delivery by using our global network to deliver rich media files such as video, music, games, and software, or live streaming of corporate or entertainment events. We support all major formats as well as dynamic and static webpages.
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Mobile device media delivery services
help publishers deliver properly-formatted, device-optimized live and on-demand video to almost any media-enabled device by creating multiple output formats. These services automatically transform and package the live and on demand streams at the time they are requested, creating the format needed for playback by the requesting device.
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Video content management services
help organizations manage, publish, syndicate, analyze, and monetize video content through a cloud-based service. Services also include an extensible off-the-shelf video player for quick deployment and monetization features that enable customers to integrate advertising into the video playback experience.
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Performance services
improve web experiences by speeding up the loading of web pages for faster action and provide consistent performance from any geography for dynamic and personalized content, online commerce transactions, and web applications.
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Cloud-based storage services
provide customers with the scalable, redundant, geographically diverse storage of media and enterprise content, offering policies for global geographic placement, content workflow, and business logic controls while maintaining the highest levels of performance for object retrieval.
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Cloud-based content security services
mitigate a variety of attacks against websites and protect against unauthorized access or theft of content. These services include protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, Web Application Firewall (WAF) protection, and conditional access controls that restrict access to digital content through rights management, geographic and IP address restriction and HTTP request and response flows.
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Edge services
make it easy to process, analyze, and aggregate information close to where it is being generated. These edge capabilities together with Limelight’s global private network provide fast and secure infrastructure for low-latency data processing.
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Limelight Global Network
Our global network provides highly available, highly redundant storage, bandwidth, and computing resources in support of our services and solutions. This architecture, managed by our proprietary software, automatically responds to network and datacenter outages and disruptions. All of our delivery locations are interconnected via our global network and also connected to multiple Internet backbone and broadband Internet service provider (ISP) networks. This global network has three main features:
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Densely configured, high-capacity.
Our global network consists of dense clusters of specially configured servers organized into large, multi-tiered, logical delivery locations. The extensive storage capacity of these logical locations leads to fewer cache misses to our network of servers than we believe would occur in other CDN architectures and provides significant scalability and responsiveness to surges in end-user demand. The clustering of many high-performance CPUs provides us with aggregated computational power.
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Many connections to other networks.
Our logical locations are directly connected to hundreds of ISPs and other user access networks, which are computer networks connected to end-users. In addition, for dedicated connectivity between our logical locations, we operate a dedicated fiber optic backbone and metro area networks. Also, our infrastructure has multiple connections to the Internet. In combination, these connections enable us to frequently bypass the often-congested public Internet, improving the delivery speed of content.
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Intelligent software to manage the network.
We have developed proprietary software that manages our global network. This software manages, among other things, the delivery of digital content, the retrieval of dynamic content, storage and retrieval of objects, activity logging, and information reporting.
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We continue to expand our architecture through the use of “smart POPs.” These smaller POPs are less dense than our traditional densely-configured metro POPs and are designed to be quickly and more cost-effectively deployed within existing networks. In addition, we continue to explore and implement ways to improve throughput and efficiency of our infrastructure through the use of advanced technologies, hardware tuning, and software refinement that help us deliver more content, more quickly, for less cost.
Segment and Geographic Information
We operate in one industry segment, providing content delivery and related services and solutions for global businesses to help them deliver their digital content across Internet, mobile, and social channels. We operate in three geographic areas - Americas; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and Asia Pacific. For the years ended December 31, 2017, 2016, and 2015, approximately 37%, 40%, and 40%, respectively, of our total revenue was derived from our operations outside the Americas. For the years ended December 31, 2017, 2016, and 2015, we derived approximately 55%, 46%, and 48%, respectively of our international revenue from EMEA and approximately 45%, 54%, and 52%, respectively, of our international revenue from Asia Pacific. During 2017, we had three countries, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States that represented more than 10% of our total revenues. During 2016 and 2015, we had two countries, Japan and the United States, that represented more than 10% of our total revenues. For a description of risks attendant to our foreign operations, see the section titled “Risk Factors” set forth in Part 1, Item 1A of this annual report on Form 10-K. For more segment and geographic information, including revenue from customers, a measure of profit or loss, and total assets for each of the last three fiscal years, see our Consolidated Financial Statements included in this annual report on Form 10-K, including Note 21 thereto.
Sales, Service and Marketing
Our sales and service professionals are located in five offices in the United States with an additional nine office locations in EMEA and Asia Pacific. We target media, high tech, software, gaming, enterprise, and other organizations for which the delivery of digital content is critical to the success of their business.
Our sales and service organization includes employees in telesales and field sales, professional services, account management, and solutions engineering. As of December 31, 2017, we had approximately 130 employees in our sales organization. Our ability to achieve revenue growth in the future will depend in large part on whether we successfully recruit, train, and retain sufficient sales, technical, and global services personnel, and how well we establish and maintain our distribution and reseller relationships. We believe that the complexity of our services will continue to require highly trained global sales and services personnel.
To support our sales efforts and promote the Limelight brand, we conduct marketing programs. Our marketing strategies include an active public relations campaign, advertisements, events and trade shows, digital marketing activities, strategic alliances, and on-going customer communication programs. As of December 31, 2017, we had 26 employees in our global marketing organization.
Customers
Our customers operate in the media, entertainment, gaming, software, enterprise, retail and other sectors. As of December 31, 2017, we had approximately 717 active customers worldwide, including many widely recognized names in the fields of online video, digital music, news media, games, rich media applications, and software delivery.
For the year ended December 31, 2017, we had one customer, Amazon, who accounted for 10% or more of our total revenue. For the years ended December 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively, we had no customer who accounted for 10% or more of our total revenue. In the past, the customers that comprise our top 20 customers have continually changed, and our large customers may not continue to be as significant going forward as they have been in the past.
From time to time we have discontinued service to customers for non-payment. Although we did not receive continuing revenue from these former customers, these changes provided for a stronger mix of customers across our base, decreased our days sales outstanding, and allowed us to recoup network capacity to help meet future growth needs. We continue to focus on acquiring and retaining high quality customers across all market segments.
Competition
We operate in the digital content delivery market, which is rapidly evolving and highly competitive. We expect this competitive environment to continue. We believe that the principal competitive factors affecting this market fall into four primary categories: management, delivery, security, and metrics.
Management for digital content is measured by the features available for managing, publishing, and delivering digital content across multiple channels and to multiple devices.
Delivery for digital content is measured by scale and performance. We measure scale by the number of physical locations in the network and the capabilities of the network to deliver large amounts of content to locations around the world and to absorb unplanned spikes in requests for content. We measure performance by file delivery time, end-user media consumption rates, quality of the end-user experience, and scalability, both in terms of average capacity and special event capacity.
Security for digital content is measured by the features available for addressing attacks against digital properties (e.g., websites) and protecting content from unauthorized view, transmission, or access.
In addition, metrics around the ability to efficiently locate and deliver web content, the ease of implementation, the ability to customize systems for unique content types and mixes, reliability, security, consumer engagement, and cost efficiency continue to be key criteria for this market.
The market for digital content delivery is increasingly complex and can require multiple vendors to provide customers with a complete set of tools and services to manage and deliver all of their digital content to all audiences as part of a global digital presence. We believe that in those situations where multiple vendors are required, Limelight is one of the few CDNs with the scale, performance, and reach required to deliver digital content to global audiences. We also believe the combination of cloud-based software and infrastructure/bandwidth associated with our physical global network solve multiple challenges for
customers by removing the need to install, manage, or provision software and hardware to satisfy the requirements for storing and delivering digital content.
We believe our future success will depend on our ability to continue to enhance the performance, integration, and functionality of our existing suite of services and of our global network, and on our ability to add additional services and functionality to meet the market’s increasing expectations regarding digital content delivery and consumer engagement.
The global digital content delivery market is fragmented, but we face primary competition from Akamai, Level 3, Amazon, CDNetworks, Fastly, Highwinds and Verizon Digital Media Services.
The principal methods of competition in this market include scale, performance, service, ease of use, product features, and price. We believe we are competitive across these dimensions. Product feature competition is intense, requiring continuous investment in innovation.
Research and Development
Our research and development organization is responsible for the design, development, testing, and certification of the software, hardware, and network architecture of our global network and support of our content delivery and other Limelight Orchestrate Platform solutions. As of December 31, 2017, we had 162 employees and employee equivalents in our research and development group. Our research and development personnel are primarily located in Boston, Massachusetts; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Seattle, Washington; Lviv, Ukraine, and at our headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. Our engineering efforts support product development across all of our service areas, as well as innovation related to the global network itself. We test our services to ensure scalability in times of peak demand. We use internally developed and third-party software to monitor and to improve the performance of our network in the major Internet consumer markets around the world where we provide services for our customers. Our research and development expenses were $25,342, $24,335, and $28,016 in 2017, 2016, and 2015, respectively, including stock-based compensation expense of $2,322, $2,104, and $2,236 in 2017, 2016, and 2015, respectively.
Intellectual Property
Our success depends in part upon our ability to protect our core technology and other intellectual capital. To accomplish this, we rely on a combination of intellectual property rights, including patents, trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, domain registrations, and contractual protections.
As of December 31, 2017, we had received 136 patents in the United States, expiring between 2023 and 2034, and we had 2 U.S. patent applications pending. We do not have any issued patents in foreign countries. We do not know whether any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will require us to narrow our claims. Any patents that may be issued to us may be contested, circumvented, found unenforceable or invalidated, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing them. Therefore, we cannot predict the exact effect of having a patent with certainty.
As of December 31, 2017, we had received four trademarks in the United States. Our name, Limelight Networks, has been filed for multiple classes in the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. We have 27 non United States trademarks registered. There is a risk that pending trademark applications may not issue, and that those trademarks that have issued may be challenged by others who believe they have superior rights to the marks.
We generally control access to and use of our proprietary software and other confidential information through the use of internal and external controls, including physical and electronic security, contractual protections with employees, contractors, customers and partners, and domestic and foreign copyright laws.
Despite our efforts to protect our trade secrets and proprietary rights and other intellectual property rights by following sound business practices, licenses, and confidentiality agreements, there is risk that unauthorized parties may still copy or otherwise obtain and use our software and technology. In addition, we have been expanding our international operations, and effective patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret protection may not be available or may be limited in foreign countries. Further, expansion of our business with additional employees, locations, and legal jurisdictions may create greater risk that our trade secrets and proprietary rights will be harmed. If we fail to effectively protect our intellectual property and other proprietary rights, our business could be harmed.
Third parties could claim that our products or technologies infringe their proprietary rights. The Internet content delivery services industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents, trademarks, and copyrights and by frequent litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. We expect that infringement claims may further increase as the number of products, services, and competitors in our market increases. Further,
continued success in this market may provide an impetus to those who might use intellectual property litigation as a weapon against us. We have been the target of intellectual property infringement claims in the past and may be the target of such claims by third parties in the future.
During 2017, we were party to the 2016 Akamai Litigations, which alleged that aspects of our content delivery network infringed upon third party patent rights. More information about the cases are described in further detail under Note 11 “Contingencies - Legal Matters" of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this annual report on Form 10-K.
Employees
As of December 31, 2017, we had 533 employees and employee equivalents. Of these, 364 are based in the Americas, 120 are based in EMEA and 49 are based in Asia Pacific. None of our employees are represented by a labor union, and we have not experienced any work stoppages to date. We consider the relationships with our employees to be positive.
Executive Officers of the Registrant
Our executive officers and their ages and positions as of February 1, 2017 are as follows:
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Name
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Age
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Position
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Robert A. Lento
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56
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President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
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Sajid Malhotra
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54
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Chief Financial Officer
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Michael D. DiSanto
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45
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Chief Administrative and Legal Officer and Secretary
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Kurt Silverman
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61
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Senior Vice President, Development & Delivery
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George E. Vonderhaar
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57
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Chief Sales Officer
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Robert A. Lento
has served as our Chief Executive Officer since November 2012 and has served as a member of our board of directors since January 2013. Prior to joining us, Mr. Lento was a senior sales executive at Convergys Corporation, a provider of customer management services, from July 1998 to May 2012, most recently serving as President - Information Management Division from September 2007 to May 2012. Prior to that, from 1997 to 1998, Mr. Lento served as President of LAN Systems for Donnelly Enterprise Solutions, Inc., a provider of information management solutions. From 1989 to 1996, Mr. Lento served in leadership positions at ENTEX Information Services, Inc., a provider of computing infrastructure services. Mr. Lento received a B.S. in Management from the State University of New York.
Sajid Malhotra
has served as our Chief Financial Officer since April 2016. Mr. Malhotra has also served as our Interim Chief Financial Officer from December 2015 to April 2016, Chief Strategy Officer from June 2015 to December 2015 and was our Senior Vice President, Strategy, Facilities, Investor Relations and Procurement from March 2014 to June 2015. Prior to joining us, from September 2012 to March 2013, Mr. Malhotra was an independent consultant focused on strategic and financial consulting, communication, and value creation. Prior to that, from 2006 to 2012, Mr. Malhotra was the Senior Vice President of Strategy, Marketing and Mergers and Acquisitions for Convergys Corporation. Prior to joining Convergys, Mr. Malhotra held several senior executive positions with NCR Corporation and AT&T. Mr. Malhotra earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree of business administration in finance from PACE University in New York.
Michael D. DiSanto
has served as our Senior Vice President, Chief Administrative and Legal Officer and Secretary since April 2015. Prior to joining us, Mr. DiSanto was a partner at the law firm Bingham McCutchen LLP from 2013 to 2014. From 2010 to 2013, Mr. DiSanto was a partner at the law firm Dinsmore & Shohl LLP. From 2008 to 2010, Mr. DiSanto was a partner at the law firm Reed Smith. Mr. DiSanto received a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law.
Kurt Silverman
has served as our Senior Vice President, Development & Delivery since September 2013. Prior to joining Limelight, Mr. Silverman was CEO and President of Slashsoft Corp., a strategic technology consulting firm for large scale real time systems from May 2012 until September 2013. Prior to that, Mr. Silverman served as SVP of Development and Delivery for Convergys Information Management Group from August 2011 to May 2012. Prior to that, Mr. Silverman held multiple executive management positions, including most recently as Global CTO and SVP Large Global Accounts at Comverse Networks, Inc., CTO and SVP R&D at CSG International, CTO & VP at Lucent/Bell Labs, and VP Development at Kenan Systems Corporation. Mr. Silverman received both a B.S. and M.S from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
George E. Vonderhaar
has served as our Chief Sales Officer since January 2013. Prior to joining us, Mr. Vonderhaar served in various capacities for Convergys Corporation, a provider of customer management services, from 1984 through 2012, including as Senior Vice President, General Manager - Cable and Satellite from January 2011 until the division was acquired by
NEC Corporation in May 2012, where Mr. Vonderhaar then served as Vice President, General Manager North America Cable from May 2012 to July 2012. Mr. Vonderhaar also was Senior Vice President - Human Resources Management at Convergys Corporation from April 2006 through June 2010, when the Human Resources Outsourcing division was acquired by NorthgateArinso, where Mr. Vonderhaar then served as Vice President, Client Services and General Manager from June 2010 to December 2010. Mr. Vonderhaar also served as General Manager - Mobile Cable Solutions Group at Convergys Corporation from November 2004 to April 2006. Mr. Vonderhaar received a B.S. in Business Administration from Marquette University.
Item 1A. Risk Factors
Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7, and our consolidated financial statements and related notes, before making a decision to invest in our common stock. The risks and uncertainties described below may not be the only ones we face. If any of the risks actually occur, our business, financial condition, operating results and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the market price of our common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment. All information is presented in thousands, except per share amounts, customer count, head count and where specifically noted.
Risks Related to Our Business
We currently face competition from established competitors and may face competition from others in the future.
We compete in markets that are intensely competitive, rapidly changing and characterized by frequently declining prices. In these markets, vendors offer a wide range of alternate solutions. We have experienced and expect to continue to experience increased competition on price, features, functionality, integration and other factors. Several of our current competitors, as well as a number of our potential competitors, have longer operating histories, greater name recognition, broader customer relationships and industry alliances, and substantially greater financial, technical and marketing resources than we do. As a consequence of the competitive dynamics in our markets, we have experienced reductions in our prices, and an increased requirement for product advancement and innovation in order to remain competitive, which in turn have adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect our revenue, gross margin and operating results.
Our primary competitors for the content delivery service offering of our Orchestrate Platform include Akamai, Level 3, Amazon, Fastly, CDNetworks, Highwinds and Verizon Digital Media Services. In addition, a number of companies have recently entered or are currently attempting to enter our market, either directly or indirectly, as a result of the growth in the content delivery market. These new entrants include companies that have built internal content delivery networks to solely deliver their own traffic, rather than relying solely, largely or in part on content delivery specialists, such as us. Some of these new entrants may become significant competitors in the future. Given the relative ease by which customers typically can switch among content delivery service providers, differentiated offerings or pricing by competitors could lead to a rapid loss of customers. Some of our current or potential competitors may bundle their offerings with other services, software or hardware in a manner that may discourage content providers from purchasing the services that we offer. In addition, we face different market characteristics and competition with local content delivery service providers as we expand internationally. Many of these international competitors are very well positioned within their local markets. Increased competition could result in price reductions and revenue shortfalls, loss of customers and loss of market share, which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.
We face different competitors for the other service offerings of our Orchestrate Platform. However, the competitive landscape is different from content delivery in this area in that the process of changing vendors can be more costly and complicated for the customer, which could make it difficult for us to attract new customers and increase our market share.
Several of our competitors have greater financial and sales resources than we do. Many have been offering similar services in the markets in which we compete longer than we have. We may not be able to successfully compete against these or new competitors. If we are unable to increase our customer base and increase our market share, our business, financial condition and results of operations may suffer.
Any unplanned interruption or degradation in the functioning or availability of our network or services, or attacks on or disruptions to our internal information technology systems, could lead to increased costs, a significant decline in our revenue and harm to our reputation.
Our business is dependent on providing our customers with fast, efficient, and reliable distribution of content delivery and digital asset management services over the Internet every minute of every day. Many of our customers depend primarily or
exclusively on our services to operate their businesses. Consequently, any disruption, or substantial and extensive degradation, of our services could have a material impact on our customers’ businesses. Our network or services could be disrupted by numerous events, including natural disasters, failure or refusal of our third-party network providers to provide the necessary capacity or access, failure of our software or global network infrastructure and power losses. In addition, we deploy our servers in third-party co-location facilities, and these third-party co-location providers could experience system outages or other disruptions that could constrain our ability to deliver our services. We may also experience disruptions caused by software viruses, unauthorized hacking of our systems, security breaches or other cyberattacks by unauthorized users. Any hacking of our systems or other cyberattacks could lead to the unauthorized release of confidential information that could damage our customers’ business and reputation, as well as our own. The economic costs to us to eliminate or alleviate cyber or other security problems, viruses, worms, malicious software programs, and other security vulnerabilities could be significant, and our efforts to address these problems may not be successful and could result in interruptions, delays, cessation of service, and loss of existing or potential customers. In addition, our release of a security-related solution may increase our visibility as a security-focused company and make us a more attractive target for attacks on our infrastructure intended to steal information about our technology, financial data, or customer information or take other actions that would be damaging to our customers and us.
We could experience a significant, unplanned disruption, or substantial and extensive degradation of our services, or our network may fail in the future. Despite our significant infrastructure investments, we may have insufficient communications and server capacity to address these or other disruptions, which could result in interruptions in our services. Any widespread interruption or substantial and extensive degradation in the functioning of our Orchestrate Platform services for any reason would reduce our revenue and could harm our business and results of operations. If such a widespread interruption occurred, or if we failed to deliver content to users as expected during a high-profile media event, game release or other well-publicized circumstance, our reputation could be damaged severely. Moreover, any disruptions, significant degradation, cybersecurity threats, security breaches, or attacks on our internal information technology systems could undermine confidence in our services and cause us to lose customers or make it more difficult to attract new ones, either of which could harm our business and results of operations.
We have a history of losses and we may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future.
Since 2006, we have been profitable only one year, which was as a result of a reversal of a significant reserve for litigation. We incur significant share-based compensation expense, which has substantial impact on our results of operations. We have also incurred, and may continue to incur, significant costs associated with litigation. Our share-based compensation expense and any material ongoing litigation costs could adversely affect our ability to achieve and maintain profitability in the future.
We also may not achieve sufficient revenue to achieve or maintain profitability and thus may continue to incur losses in the future for a number of reasons, including, among others:
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slowing demand for our services;
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increasing competition and competitive pricing pressures;
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any inability to provide our services in a cost-effective manner;
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the incurrence of unforeseen expenses, difficulties, complications and delays; and
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other risks described in this report.
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If we fail to achieve and maintain profitability, the price of our common stock could decline, and our business, financial condition and results of operations could suffer.
If we are unable to sell our services at acceptable prices relative to our costs, our revenue and gross margins will decrease and our business and financial results will suffer.
Prices for content delivery services have fallen in recent years and are likely to fall further in the future. We have invested significant amounts in purchasing capital equipment as part of our effort to increase the capacity of our global content delivery network. Our investments in our infrastructure are based upon our assumptions regarding future demand, as well as prices that we will be able to charge for our services. These assumptions may prove to be wrong. If the price that we are able to charge customers to deliver their content falls to a greater extent than we anticipate, if we over-estimate future demand for our services, or if our costs to deliver our services do not fall commensurate with any future price declines, we may not be able to achieve acceptable rates of return on our infrastructure investments, and our gross profit and results of operations may suffer dramatically.
As we further expand our global network and the Orchestrate Platform, and as we refresh our network equipment, we are dependent on significant future growth in demand for our services to justify additional capital expenditures. If we fail to
generate significant additional demand for our services, our results of operations will suffer, and we may fail to achieve planned or expected financial results. There are numerous factors that could, alone or in combination with other factors, impede our ability to increase revenue, moderate expenses or maintain gross margins, including:
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continued price declines arising from significant competition;
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increasing settlement fees for certain peering relationships;
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failure to increase sales of our Orchestrate Platform services;
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increases in electricity, bandwidth and rack space costs or other operating expenses, and failure to achieve decreases in these costs and expenses relative to decreases in the prices we can charge for our Orchestrate Platform services and products;
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failure of our current and planned services and software to operate as expected;
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loss of any significant customers or loss of existing customers at a rate greater than our increase in new customers or our sales to existing customers;
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failure to increase sales of our Orchestrate Platform services to current customers as a result of their ability to reduce their monthly usage of our services to their minimum monthly contractual commitment;
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failure of a significant number of customers to pay our fees on a timely basis or at all or to continue to purchase our Orchestrate Platform services in accordance with their contractual commitments; and
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inability to attract high quality customers to purchase and implement our current and planned services.
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A significant portion of our revenue is derived collectively from our video content management services, website and web application acceleration services, cloud security and cloud storage services. These services tend to have higher gross margins than our content delivery services. We may not be able to achieve the growth rates in revenue from such services that we or our investors expect or have experienced in the past. If we are unable to achieve the growth rates in revenue that we expect for these service offerings, our revenue and operating results could be significantly and negatively affected.
Our ability to use our net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations.
Our ability to use our net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations. As of December 31, 2017, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards, or NOLs, of $176,000 and $115,500, respectively, due to prior period losses. In general, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” can be subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its NOLs to offset future taxable income. Our existing NOLs may be subject to limitations arising from past ownership changes. Future changes in our stock ownership, some of which are outside of our control, could result in an ownership change under Section 382 of the Code. In addition, under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the Tax Act), the amount of post 2017 NOLs that we are permitted to deduct in any taxable year is limited to 80% of our taxable income in such year, where taxable income is determined without regard to the NOL deduction itself. In addition, the Tax Act generally eliminates the ability to carry back any NOL to prior taxable years, while allowing post 2017 unused NOLs to be carried forward indefinitely. There is a risk that due to changes under the Tax Act, regulatory changes, or other unforeseen reasons, our existing NOLs could expire or otherwise be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities. For these reasons, we may not be able to realize a tax benefit from the use of our NOLs, whether or not we attain profitability.
Our involvement in litigation may have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and operations.
We are currently involved in multiple intellectual property lawsuits (see discussion of such lawsuits in Note 11 "Contingencies - Legal Matters" of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this annual report on Form 10-K).
The outcome of all litigation, including intellectual property litigation, is inherently unpredictable. If we are ultimately held liable for patent infringement in the Akamai and XO Litigation, it could seriously impact our ability to conduct our business and to offer our products and services to our customers. For example, a permanent injunction could prevent us from offering one or more of our current or planned services, which could impact the viability of those portions of our business. Similarly, if we are ultimately held liable for patent infringement in the 2016 Akamai Litigation, one or more of our products and services could be adversely affected. Any such finding of infringement in either case could also harm our revenue, expenses, market share, reputation, liquidity and overall financial position.
Further, if we are unsuccessful in asserting our claims in the Akamai and XO Litigation, our rights to enforce the intellectual property asserted by us may be impaired or we could lose some or all of our rights to such intellectual property. Similarly, if we are unsuccessful with our counterclaims of patent infringement in the 2016 Akamai Litigation, our rights to enforce the intellectual property asserted by us in that case may be impaired or we could lose some or all of our rights to such intellectual property.
We are from time to time party to other lawsuits in addition to that described above. The expenses of defending these lawsuits, particularly fees paid to our lawyers and expert consultants, have been significant to date. If the cost of prosecuting or defending current or future lawsuits continues to be significant, it may continue to adversely affect our operating results during the pendency of such lawsuits. Lawsuits also require a diversion of management and technical personnel time and attention away from other activities to pursue the defense or prosecution of such matters. In addition, adverse rulings in such lawsuits either alone or cumulatively may have an adverse impact on our revenue, expenses, market share, reputation, liquidity and financial condition.
If we are required to seek funding, such funding may not be available on acceptable terms or at all.
We may need to obtain funding due to a number of factors, including a shortfall in revenue, increased expenses, final adverse judgments in litigation matters, increased investment in capital equipment or the acquisition of significant businesses or technologies. We believe that our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities classified as current plus cash from operations will be sufficient to fund our operations and proposed capital expenditures for at least the next 12 months. However, we may need or desire funding before such time. If we do need to obtain funding, it may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all. If we are unable to obtain sufficient funding, our business would be harmed. Even if we were able to find outside funding sources, we might be required to issue securities in a transaction that could be highly dilutive to our investors or we may be required to issue securities with greater rights than the securities we have outstanding today. We might also be required to take other actions that could lessen the value of our common stock, including borrowing money on terms that are not favorable to us. If we are unable to generate or raise capital that is sufficient to fund our operations, we may be required to curtail operations, reduce our capabilities or cease operations in certain jurisdictions or completely.
We may have difficulty scaling and adapting our existing architecture to accommodate increased traffic and technology advances or changing business requirements. This could lead to the loss of customers and cause us to incur unexpected expenses to make network improvements.
Our content delivery and other Orchestrate Platform services are highly complex and are designed to be deployed in and across numerous large and complex networks. Our global network infrastructure has to perform well and be reliable for us to be successful. The greater the user traffic and the greater the complexity of our solutions and services, the more resources we will need to invest in additional infrastructure and support. Further, as a result of the ’703 Litigation, we made significant investment in designing and implementing changes to our network architecture. We have spent and expect to continue to spend substantial amounts on the purchase and lease of equipment and data centers and the upgrade of our technology and network infrastructure to handle increased traffic over our network, implement changes to our network architecture and integrate existing solutions and to roll out new solutions and services. This expansion is expensive and complex and could result in inefficiencies, operational failures or defects in our network and related software. If we do not implement such changes or expand successfully, or if we experience inefficiencies and operational failures, the quality of our solutions and services and user experience could decline. From time to time, we have needed to correct errors and defects in our software or in other aspects of our network. In the future, there may be additional errors and defects that may harm our ability to deliver our services, including errors and defects originating with third party networks or software on which we rely. These occurrences could damage our reputation and lead to the loss of current and potential customers, which would harm our operating results and financial condition. We must continuously upgrade our infrastructure in order to keep pace with our customers’ evolving demands. Cost increases or the failure to accommodate increased traffic or these evolving business demands without disruption could harm our operating results and financial condition.
If we are unable to develop new services and enhancements to existing services or fail to predict and respond to emerging technological trends and customers’ changing needs, our operating results and market share may suffer.
The market for our Orchestrate Platform services is characterized by rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, and new product and service introductions. Our operating results depend on our ability to understand user preferences or predict industry changes. Our operating results also depend on our ability to modify our solutions and services on a timely basis or develop and introduce new services into existing and emerging markets. The process of developing new technologies is complex and uncertain. We must commit significant resources to developing new services or enhancements to our existing services before knowing whether our investments will result in services the market will accept. Furthermore, we may not successfully execute our technology initiatives because of errors in planning or timing, technical hurdles that we fail to overcome in a timely fashion, misunderstandings about market demand or a lack of appropriate resources. As prices for content delivery services fall, we will increasingly rely on new product offerings and other Orchestrate Platform service offerings to maintain or increase our gross margins. Failures in execution, delays in bringing new or improved products or services to market, failure to effectively integrate service offerings, or market acceptance of new services we introduce could result in competitors providing those solutions before we do, which could lead to loss of market share, revenue and earnings.
We depend on a limited number of customers for a substantial portion of our revenue in any fiscal period, and the loss of, or a significant shortfall in demand from, these customers could significantly harm our results of operations.
During any given fiscal period, a relatively small number of customers typically account for a significant percentage of our revenue. For the year ended December 31, 2017, sales to our top 20 customers accounted for approximately 66% of our total revenue. During the year ended December 31, 2017, we had one customer, Amazon, who represented 10% or more of our total revenue.
In the past, the customers that comprised our top 20 customers have continually changed, and we also have experienced significant fluctuations in our individual customers’ usage of, or decreased usage of, our services. As a consequence, we may not be able to adjust our expenses in the short term to address the unanticipated loss of a large customer during any particular period. As such, we may experience significant, unanticipated fluctuations in our operating results that may cause us to not meet our expectations or those of stock market analysts, which could cause our stock price to decline.
Rapidly evolving technologies or new business models could cause demand for our Orchestrate Platform services to decline or could cause these services to become obsolete.
Customers, potential customers or third parties may develop technological or business model innovations that address digital delivery requirements in a manner that is, or is perceived to be, equivalent or superior to our Orchestrate Platform service offerings. This is particularly true as our customers increase their operations and begin expending greater resources on delivering their content using third party solutions. If we fail to offer content delivery, video content management and other related services that are competitive to in-sourced solutions, we may lose additional customers or fail to attract customers that may consider pursuing this in-sourced approach, and our business and financial results would suffer.
If competitors introduce new products or services that compete with or surpass the quality or the price or performance of our services, we may be unable to renew our agreements with existing customers or attract new customers at the prices and levels that allow us to generate attractive rates of return on our investment. We may not anticipate such developments and may be unable to adequately compete with these potential solutions. In addition, our customers’ business models may change in ways that we do not anticipate, and these changes could reduce or eliminate our customers’ needs for our services. If this occurred, we could lose customers or potential customers, and our business and financial results would suffer.
As a result of these or similar potential developments, it is possible that competitive dynamics in our market may require us to reduce our prices faster than we anticipate, which could harm our revenue, gross margin and operating results.
Failure to effectively enhance our sales capabilities could harm our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our services.
Increasing our customer base and achieving broader market acceptance of our services will depend to a significant extent on our ability to enhance our sales and marketing operations. We have a concentration of our sales force at our headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, but we also have a widely deployed field sales force. We have aligned our sales resources to improve our sales productivity and efficiency and to bring our sales personnel closer to our current and potential customers. Adjustments to our sales force have been and will continue to be expensive and could cause some near-term productivity impairments. As a result, we may not be successful in improving the productivity and efficiency of our sales force, which could cause our results of operations to suffer.
We believe that there is significant competition for both inside and direct sales personnel with the sales skills and technical knowledge that we require. Our ability to achieve significant growth in revenue in the future will depend, in large part, on our success in recruiting, training and retaining sufficient numbers of inside and direct sales personnel. New hires require significant training and, in most cases, take a significant period of time before they achieve full productivity. Our recent hires and planned hires may not become as productive as we would like, and we may be unable to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the future in the markets where we do business. Our business will be seriously harmed if our sales force productivity efforts do not generate a corresponding significant increase in revenue.
Many of our significant current and potential customers are pursuing emerging or unproven business models, which, if unsuccessful, or ineffective at monetizing delivery of their content, could lead to a substantial decline in demand for our content delivery and other Orchestrate Platform services.
Because the proliferation of broadband Internet connections and the subsequent monetization of content libraries for distribution to Internet users are relatively recent phenomena, many of our customers’ business models that center on the delivery of rich media and other content to users remain unproven. Some of our customers will not be successful in selling advertising, subscriptions, or otherwise monetizing the content we deliver on their behalf and consequently may not be
successful in creating a profitable business model. This will result in some of our customers discontinuing their Internet or web-based business operations and discontinuing use of our services and solutions. Further, any deterioration and related uncertainty in the global financial markets and economy could result in, among other things, reductions in available capital and liquidity from banks and other providers of credit, fluctuations in equity and currency values worldwide, and concerns that portions of the worldwide economy may be in a prolonged recessionary period. Any one or more of these occurrences could materially adversely impact our customers’ access to capital or willingness to spend capital on our services or, in some cases, ultimately cause the customer to file for protection from creditors under applicable insolvency or bankruptcy laws or simply go out of business. This uncertainty may also impact our customers’ levels of cash liquidity, which could affect their ability or willingness to timely pay for services that they will order or have already ordered from us. From time to time we discontinue service to customers for non-payment of services. We expect further customers may discontinue operations or not be willing or able to pay for services that they have ordered from us. Further loss of customers may adversely affect our financial results.
If we are unable to attract new customers or to retain our existing customers, our revenue could be lower than expected and our operating results may suffer.
To increase our revenue, we must add new customers and sell additional services to existing customers and encourage existing customers to increase their usage levels. If our existing and prospective customers do not perceive our services to be of sufficiently high value and quality, we may not be able to retain our current customers or attract new customers. We sell our services pursuant to service agreements that generally include some form of financial minimum commitment. Our customers have no obligation to renew their contracts for our services after the expiration of their initial commitment, and these service agreements may not be renewed at the same or higher level of service, if at all. Moreover, under some circumstances, some of our customers have the right to cancel their service agreements prior to the expiration of the terms of their agreements. Aside from minimum financial commitments, customers are not obligated to use our services for any particular type or amount of traffic. These facts, in addition to the changing competitive landscape in our market, means that we cannot accurately predict future customer renewal rates or usage rates. Our customers’ renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including:
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their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with our services;
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the quality and reliability of our content delivery network;
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the prices of our services;
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the prices of services offered by our competitors;
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discontinuation by our customers of their Internet or web-based content distribution business;
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mergers and acquisitions affecting our customer base; and
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reductions in our customers’ spending levels.
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If our customers do not renew their service agreements with us, or if they renew on less favorable terms, our revenue may decline and our business may suffer. Similarly, our customer agreements often provide for minimum commitments that are often significantly below our customers’ historical usage levels. Consequently, even if we have agreements with our customers to use our services, these customers could significantly curtail their usage without incurring any penalties under our agreements. In this event, our revenue would be lower than expected and our operating results could suffer.
It also is an important component of our growth strategy to market our services and solutions to particular industries or market segments. As an organization, we may not have significant experience in selling our services into certain of these markets. Our ability to successfully sell our services into these markets to a meaningful extent remains unproven. If we are unsuccessful in such efforts, our business, financial condition and results of operations could suffer.
Rapid increase in the use of mobile and alternative devices to access the Internet present significant development and deployment challenges.
The number of people who access the Internet through devices other than PCs, including mobile devices, game consoles and television set-top devices, has increased dramatically in the past few years. The capabilities of these devices are advancing dramatically and the increasing need to provide a high-quality video experience will present us and other providers with significant challenges. If we are unable to deliver our service offerings to a substantial number of alternative device users and at a high quality, or if we are slow to develop services and technologies that are more compatible with these devices, we may fail to capture a significant share of an increasingly important portion of the market. Such a failure could limit our ability to compete effectively in an industry that is rapidly growing and changing, which, in turn, could cause our business, financial condition and results of operations to suffer.
We need to defend our intellectual property and processes against patent or copyright infringement claims, which may cause us to incur substantial costs and threaten our ability to do business.
Companies, organizations or individuals, including our competitors and non-practicing entities, may hold or obtain patents or other proprietary rights that would prevent, limit or interfere with our ability to make, use or sell our services or develop new services, which could make it more difficult for us to operate our business. From time to time, we may receive inquiries from holders of patents inquiring whether we infringe their proprietary rights. Companies holding Internet-related patents or other intellectual property rights are increasingly bringing suits alleging infringement of such rights or otherwise asserting their rights and seeking licenses. Any litigation or claims, whether or not valid, could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources from the defense of such claims. In addition, many of our agreements with customers require us to defend and indemnify those customers for third-party intellectual property infringement claims against them, which could result in significant additional costs and diversion of resources. If we are determined to have infringed upon a third party’s intellectual property rights, we may also be required to do one or more of the following:
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cease selling, incorporating or using products or services that incorporate the challenged intellectual property;
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pay substantial damages;
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obtain a license from the holder of the infringed intellectual property right, which license may or may not be available on reasonable terms or at all; or
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redesign products or services.
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If we are forced to litigate any claims or to take any of these other actions, our business may be seriously harmed.
Our business may be adversely affected if we are unable to protect our intellectual property rights from unauthorized use or infringement by third parties.
We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws and restrictions on disclosure to protect our intellectual property rights. We have applied for patent protection in the United States and a number of foreign countries. These legal protections afford only limited protection and laws in foreign jurisdictions may not protect our proprietary rights as fully as in the United States. Monitoring infringement of our intellectual property rights is difficult, and we cannot be certain that the steps we have taken will prevent unauthorized use of our intellectual property rights. Developments and changes in patent law, such as changes in interpretations of the joint infringement standard, could restrict how we enforce certain patents we hold. We also cannot be certain that any pending or future patent applications will be granted, that any future patent will not be challenged, invalidated or circumvented, or that rights granted under any patent that may be issued will provide competitive advantages to us.
Our results of operations may fluctuate in the future. As a result, we may fail to meet or exceed the expectations of securities analysts or investors, which could cause our stock price to decline.
Our results of operations may fluctuate as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. If our results of operations fall below the expectations of securities analysts or investors, the price of our common stock could decline substantially. In addition to the effects of other risks discussed in this section, fluctuations in our results of operations may be due to a number of factors, including, among others:
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our ability to increase sales to existing customers and attract new customers to our content delivery and other Orchestrate Platform services;
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the addition or loss of large customers, or significant variation in their use of our content delivery and other Orchestrate Platform services;
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costs associated with current or future intellectual property lawsuits and other lawsuits;
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service outages or third party security breaches to our platform or to one or more of our customers’ platforms;
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the amount and timing of operating costs and capital expenditures related to the maintenance and expansion of our business, operations and infrastructure and the adequacy of available funds to meet those requirements;
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the timing and success of new product and service introductions by us or our competitors;
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the occurrence of significant events in a particular period that result in an increase in the use of our content delivery and other Orchestrate Platform services, such as a major media event or a customer’s online release of a new or updated video game or operating system;
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changes in our pricing policies or those of our competitors;
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the timing of recognizing revenue;
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limitations of the capacity of our global network and related systems;
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the timing of costs related to the development or acquisition of technologies, services or businesses;
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the potential write-down or write-off of intangible or other long-lived assets;
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general economic, industry and market conditions (such as fluctuations experienced in the stock and credit markets during times of deteriorated global economic conditions) and those conditions specific to Internet usage;
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limitations on usage imposed by our customers in order to limit their online expenses; and
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war, threat of war or terrorist actions, including cyber terrorism targeted at us, our customers, or both, and inadequate cybersecurity.
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We believe that our revenue and results of operations may vary significantly in the future and that period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. You should not rely on the results of one period as an indication of future performance.
We generate our revenue primarily from the sale of content delivery services, and the failure of the market for these services to expand as we expect or the reduction in spending on those services by our current or potential customers would seriously harm our business.
While we offer our customers a number of services and solutions associated with our Orchestrate Platform, we generate the majority of our revenue from charging our customers for the content delivered on their behalf through our global network. We are subject to an elevated risk of reduced demand for these services. Furthermore, if the market for delivery of rich media content in particular does not continue to grow as we expect or grows more slowly, then we may fail to achieve a return on the significant investment we are making to prepare for this growth. Our success, therefore, depends on the continued and increasing reliance on the Internet for delivery of media content and our ability to cost-effectively deliver these services. Many different factors may have a general tendency to limit or reduce the number of users relying on the Internet for media content, the amount of content consumed by our customers’ users, or the number of providers making this content available on-line, including, among others:
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a general decline in Internet usage;
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third party restrictions on on-line content (including copyright restrictions, digital rights management and restrictions in certain geographic regions);
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system impairments or outages, including those caused by hacking or cyberattacks; and
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a significant increase in the quality or fidelity of off-line media content beyond that available online to the point where users prefer the off-line experience.
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The influence of any of these or other factors may cause our current or potential customers to reduce their spending on content delivery services, which would seriously harm our operating results and financial condition.
We could incur charges due to impairment of goodwill and long-lived assets.
As of December 31, 2017, we had a goodwill balance of approximately $77,054, which is subject to periodic testing for impairment. Our long-lived assets also are subject to periodic testing for impairment. A significant amount of judgment is involved in the periodic testing. Failure to achieve sufficient levels of cash flow could result in impairment charges for goodwill or fixed asset impairment for long-lived assets, which could have a material adverse effect on our reported results of operations. Our goodwill impairment analysis also includes a comparison of the aggregate estimated fair value of our reporting unit to our total market capitalization. If our stock trades below our book value, a significant and sustained decline in our stock price and market capitalization could result in goodwill impairment charges. During times of financial market volatility, significant judgment will be used to determine the underlying cause of the decline and whether stock price declines are short-term in nature or indicative of an event or change in circumstances. Impairment charges, if any, resulting from the periodic testing are non-cash.
Our operations are dependent in part upon communications capacity provided by third party telecommunications providers. A material disruption of the communications capacity we have leased could harm our results of operations, reputation and customer relations.
We lease private line capacity for our backbone from third party providers. Our contracts for private line capacity generally have terms of three to four years. The communications capacity we have leased may become unavailable for a variety of reasons, such as physical interruption, technical difficulties, contractual disputes, or the financial health of our third party providers. Also, industry consolidation among communications providers could result in fewer viable market alternatives, which could have an impact on our costs of providing services. Alternative providers are currently available; however, it could be time consuming and expensive to promptly identify and obtain alternative third party connectivity. Additionally, as we grow, we anticipate requiring greater private line capacity than we currently have in place. If we are unable to obtain such capacity from third party providers on terms commercially acceptable to us or at all, our business and financial results would suffer. Similarly, if we are unable to timely deploy enough network capacity to meet the needs of our customer base or effectively manage the demand for our services, our reputation and relationships with our customers would be harmed, which, in turn, could harm or business, financial condition and results of operations.
We face risks associated with international operations that could harm our business.
We have operations in numerous foreign countries and may continue to expand our sales and support organizations internationally. As part of our business strategy, we intend to expand our international network infrastructure. Expansion could require us to make significant expenditures, including the hiring of local employees or resources, in advance of generating any revenue. As a consequence, we may fail to achieve profitable operations that will compensate our investment in international locations. We are subject to a number of risks associated with international business activities that may increase our costs, lengthen our sales cycle and require significant management attention. These risks include:
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increased expenses associated with sales and marketing, deploying services and maintaining our infrastructure in foreign countries;
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competition from local content delivery service providers, many of which are very well positioned within their local markets;
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challenges caused by distance, language and cultural differences;
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unexpected changes in regulatory requirements preventing or limiting us from operating our global network or resulting in unanticipated costs and delays;
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interpretations of laws or regulations that would subject us to regulatory supervision or, in the alternative, require us to exit a country, which could have a negative impact on the quality of our services or our results of operations;
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longer accounts receivable payment cycles and difficulties in collecting accounts receivable;
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corporate and personal liability for violations of local laws and regulations;
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currency exchange rate fluctuations and repatriation of funds;
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potentially adverse tax consequences;
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credit risk and higher levels of payment fraud; and
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foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned in countries outside the United States.
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International operations are subject to significant additional risks not generally faced in our domestic operations, including, but not limited to, risks relating to legal systems that may not adequately protect contract and intellectual property rights, policies and taxation, the physical infrastructure of the country, as well as risks relating to potential political turmoil and currency exchange controls. There can be no assurance that these international risks will not materially adversely affect our business. For example, our operations include software development and quality assurance activities in Ukraine, which has experienced social unrest in recent years. Should there be significant productivity losses, or if we become unable to conduct operations in Ukraine in the future, and our contingency plans are unsuccessful in addressing the related risks, our business could be adversely affected.
Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to third party controlled end-user access networks.
Our content delivery services depend on our ability to access certain end-user access networks in order to complete the delivery of rich media and other on-line content to end-users. Some operators of these networks may take measures that could degrade, disrupt or increase the cost of our or our customers’ access to certain of these end-user access networks. Such measures may include restricting or prohibiting the use of their networks to support or facilitate our services, or charging increased fees to us, our customers or end-users in connection with our services. In 2015, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released network neutrality and open internet rules that reclassified broadband Internet access services as a telecommunications service subject to some elements of common carrier regulation. Among other things, the FCC order prohibited blocking or discriminating against lawful services and applications and prohibited "paid prioritization," or providing faster speeds or other benefits in return for compensation. In December 2017, the FCC overturned these rules. As a result, we or our customers could experience increased cost or slower data on these third-party networks. If we or our customers experience increased cost in delivering content to end users, or otherwise, or if end users perceive a degradation of quality, our business and that of our customers may be significantly harmed. This or other types of interference could result in a loss of existing customers, increased costs and impairment of our ability to attract new customers, thereby harming our revenue and growth.
In addition, the performance of our infrastructure depends in part on the direct connection of our global network to a large number of end-user access networks, known as peering, which we achieve through mutually beneficial cooperation with these networks. In some instances, network operators charge us for the peering connections. If, in the future, a significant percentage of these network operators elected to no longer peer with our network or peer with our network on less favorable economic terms, then the performance of our infrastructure could be diminished, our costs could increase and our business could suffer.
If our ability to deliver media files in popular proprietary content formats was restricted or became cost-prohibitive, demand for our content delivery services could decline, we could lose customers and our financial results could suffer.
Our business depends on our ability to deliver media content in all major formats. If our legal right or technical ability to store and deliver content in one or more popular proprietary content formats, such as HTTP Live Streaming and Multimedia Messaging Services, was limited, our ability to serve our customers in these formats would be impaired and the demand for our content delivery and other Orchestrate Platform services would decline by customers using these formats. Owners of propriety content formats may be able to block, restrict or impose fees or other costs on our use of such formats, which could lead to additional expenses for us and for our customers, or which could prevent our delivery of this type of content altogether. Such interference could result in a loss of existing customers, increased costs and impairment of our ability to attract new customers, which would harm our revenue, operating results and growth.
We use certain “open-source” software the use of which could result in our having to distribute our proprietary software, including our source code, to third parties on unfavorable terms, which could materially affect our business.
Certain of our service offerings use software that is subject to open-source licenses. Open-source code is software that is freely accessible, usable and modifiable. Certain open-source code is governed by license agreements, the terms of which could require users of such open-source code to make any derivative works of such open-source code available to others on unfavorable terms or at no cost. Because we use open-source code, we may be required to take remedial action to protect our proprietary software. Such action could include replacing certain source code used in our software, discontinuing certain of our products or features or taking other actions that could divert resources away from our development efforts.
In addition, the terms relating to disclosure of derivative works in many open-source licenses are unclear. We periodically review our compliance with the open-source licenses we use and do not believe we will be required to make our proprietary software freely available. Nevertheless, if a court interprets one or more such open-source licenses in a manner that is unfavorable to us, we could be required to make some components of our software available at no cost, which could materially and adversely affect our business and financial condition.
If we are unable to retain our key employees and hire qualified sales and technical personnel, our ability to compete could be harmed.
Our future success depends upon the continued services of our executive officers and other key technology, sales, marketing and support personnel who have critical industry experience and relationships that they rely on in implementing our business plan. There is increasing competition for talented individuals with the specialized knowledge to deliver Orchestrate Platform services and this competition affects both our ability to retain key employees and hire new ones. Historically, we have experienced a significant amount of employee turnover, especially with respect to our sales personnel. As a result, a significant number of our sales personnel are relatively new and may need time to become fully productive. The loss of the services of any of our key employees could disrupt our operations, delay the development and introduction of our services, and negatively impact our ability to sell our services.
We are subject to the effects of fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, which could affect our operating results.
The financial condition and results of operations of our operating foreign subsidiaries are reported in the relevant local currency and are then translated into U.S. dollars at the applicable currency exchange rate for inclusion in our consolidated U.S. dollar financial statements. Also, although a large portion of our customer and vendor agreements are denominated in U.S. dollars, we may be exposed to fluctuations in foreign exchange rates with respect to customer agreements with certain of our international customers. Exchange rates between these currencies and U.S. dollars in recent years have fluctuated significantly and may do so in the future. In addition to currency translation risk, we incur currency transaction risk whenever one of our operating subsidiaries enters into a transaction using a different currency than the relevant local currency. Given the volatility of exchange rates, we may be unable to manage our currency transaction risks effectively. Currency fluctuations could have a material adverse effect on our future international sales and, consequently, on our financial condition and results of operations.
As part of our business strategy, we may acquire businesses or technologies and may have difficulty integrating these operations.
We have completed a number of business acquisitions and may seek to acquire businesses or technologies that are complementary to our business in the future. Acquisitions are often complex and involve a number of risks to our business, including, among others;
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the difficulty of integrating the operations, services, solutions and personnel of the acquired companies;
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the potential disruption of our ongoing business;
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the potential distraction of management;
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the possibility that our business culture and the business culture of the acquired companies will not be compatible;
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the difficulty of incorporating or integrating acquired technology and rights with or into our other services and solutions;
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expenses related to the acquisition and to the integration of the acquired companies;
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the impairment of relationships with employees and customers as a result of any integration of new personnel;
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employee turnover from the acquired companies or from our current operations as we integrate businesses;
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risks related to the businesses of acquired companies that may continue to impact the businesses following the merger; and
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potential unknown liabilities associated with acquired companies.
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Any inability to integrate services, solutions, operations or personnel in an efficient and timely manner could harm our results of operations.
If we are not successful in completing acquisitions that we may pursue in the future, we may be required to reevaluate our business strategy, and we may incur substantial expenses and devote significant management time and resources without a productive result. In addition, future acquisitions will require the use of our available cash or dilutive issuances of securities. Future acquisitions or attempted acquisitions could also harm our ability to achieve profitability.
Internet-related and other laws relating to taxation issues, privacy, data security, and consumer protection and liability for content distributed over our network could harm our business.
Laws and regulations that apply to communications and commerce conducted over the Internet are becoming more prevalent, both in the United States and internationally, and may impose additional burdens on companies conducting business on-line or providing Internet-related services such as ours. Increased regulation could negatively affect our business directly, as well as the businesses of our customers, which could reduce their demand for our services. For example, tax authorities abroad may impose taxes on the Internet-related revenue we generate based on where our internationally deployed servers are located. In addition, domestic and international taxation laws are subject to change. Our services, or the businesses of our customers, may become subject to increased taxation, which could harm our financial results either directly or by forcing our customers to scale back their operations and use of our services in order to maintain their operations. Also, the Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the Act), and the regulations promulgated by the FCC under Title II of the Act, may impose obligations on the Internet and those participants involved in Internet-related businesses. In addition, the laws relating to the liability of private network operators for information carried on, processed by or disseminated through their networks are unsettled, both in the United States and abroad. Network operators have been sued in the past, sometimes successfully, based on the content of material disseminated through their networks. We may become subject to legal claims such as defamation, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement in connection with content stored on or distributed through our network. In addition, our reputation could suffer as a result of our perceived association with the type of content that some of our customers deliver. If we need to take costly measures to reduce our exposure to the risks posed by laws and regulations that apply to communications and commerce conducted over the Internet, or are required to defend ourselves against related claims, our financial results could be negatively affected.
Several other federal laws also could expose us to liability and impose significant additional costs on us. For example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has provisions that limit, but do not eliminate, our liability for the delivery of customer content that infringe copyrights or other rights, so long as we comply with certain statutory requirements. In addition, the Children’s On-line Privacy Protection Act restricts the ability of on-line services to collect information from minors and the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act of 1998 requires on-line service providers to report evidence of violations of federal child pornography laws under certain circumstances. Also, there are emerging regulation and industry standards regarding the collection and use of personal information and protecting the security of data on networks. Compliance with these laws, regulations and standards is complex and any failure on our part to comply with these regulations may subject us to additional liabilities.
Privacy concerns could lead to regulatory and other limitations on our business, including our ability to use “cookies” and video player “cookies” that are crucial to our ability to provide services to our customers.
Our ability to compile data for customers depends on the use of “cookies” and video player “cookies” to identify certain on-line behavior that allows our customers to measure a website or video’s effectiveness. A cookie is a small file of information stored on a user’s computer that allows us to recognize that user’s browser or video player when the user makes a request for a web page or to play a video. Government authorities inside the United States concerned with the privacy of Internet users have suggested the enactment of legislation that would regulate cookies and/or require certain disclosures regarding cookies. Bills aimed at regulating the collection, use and/or storage of personal data from Internet users are currently pending in United States Congress and many state legislatures. Attempts at such regulation may be drafted in such a way as to limit or otherwise regulate the collection of certain technology like cookies, thereby creating restrictions that could reduce our
ability to use them. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce have conducted hearings regarding user profiling, the collection of non-personally identifiable information and on-line privacy.
Our foreign operations may also be adversely affected by regulatory action outside the United States. These regulations, which can be enforced by private parties or governmental entities, are constantly evolving and can be subject to significant change. For example, the European Union has enacted an electronic communications directive that imposes certain restrictions on the use of cookies, requires certain disclosures with respect to cookie usages and also places restrictions on the sending of unsolicited communications. Each European Union member country was required to enact legislation to comply with the provisions of the electronic communications directive. Germany has also enacted additional laws limiting the use of user profiling, and other countries, both in and out of the European Union, may impose similar limitations.
Internet users may directly limit or eliminate the placement of cookies on their computers by using third-party software that blocks cookies, or by disabling or restricting the cookie functions of their Internet browser software and in their video player software. Internet browser software upgrades also may result in limitations on the use of cookies. Technologies like the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project may limit collection of cookies. Plaintiffs’ attorneys also have organized class action suits against companies related to the use of cookies and several companies, including companies in the Internet advertising industry, have had claims brought against them before the Federal Trade Commission regarding the collection and use of Internet user information. We may be subject to such suits in the future, which could limit or eliminate our ability to collect such information. If our ability to use cookies were substantially restricted due to the foregoing, or for any other reason, we would have to generate and use other technology or methods that allow the gathering of user data in order to provide services to customers. This change in technology or methods could require significant re-engineering time and resources, and may not be complete in time to avoid negative consequences to our business. In addition, alternative technology or methods might not be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. If the use of cookies is prohibited and we are not able to efficiently and cost effectively create new technology, our business, financial condition and results of operations would be materially adversely affected. In addition, any compromise of security that results in the release of Internet users’ and/or our customers’ data could seriously limit the adoption of our service offerings as well as harm our reputation and brand, expose us to liability and subject us to reporting obligations under various state laws, which could have an adverse effect on our business. The risk that these types of events could seriously harm our business is likely to increase as the amount of data stored for customers on our servers and the number of countries where we operate has been increasing, and we may need to expend significant resources to protect against security breaches, which could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.
Also, a number of new privacy laws coming into effect and/or proposals pending could affect our business. For example, the European Commission has enacted a general data protection regulation that becomes effective in May 2018 and will supersede current EU data protection legislation, impose more stringent EU data protection requirements, and provide for greater penalties for noncompliance. Additionally, in October 2015, the European Court of Justice invalidated the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor framework that had been in place since 2000, which allowed companies to meet certain European legal requirements for the transfer of personal data from the European Economic Area to the United States. Although U.S. and EU authorities reached a political agreement regarding a new potential means for legitimizing personal data transfers from the European Economic Area to the United States, the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, there continue to be concerns about whether the EU-US Privacy Shield will face additional challenges (similar to the fate of the Safe Harbor framework). We expect that for the immediate future, we will continue to face uncertainty as to whether our efforts to comply with our obligations under European privacy laws will be sufficient. If we are investigated by a European data protection authority, we may face fines and other penalties. Any such investigation or charges by European data protection authorities could have a negative effect on our existing business and on our ability to attract and retain new customers. These existing and proposed laws and regulations can be costly to comply with, could expose us to significant penalties for non-compliance, can delay or impede the development or adoption of our products and services, reduce the overall demand for our services, result in negative publicity, increase our operating costs, require significant management time and attention, slow the pace at which we close (or prevent us from closing) sales transactions, and subject us to claims or other remedies, including fines or demands that we modify or cease existing business practices.
Our business requires the continued development of effective business support systems to support our customer growth and related services.
The growth of our business depends on our ability to continue to develop effective business support systems. This is a complicated undertaking requiring significant resources and expertise. Business support systems are needed for:
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implementing customer orders for services;
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delivering these services; and
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timely and accurate billing for these services.
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Because our business plan provides for continued growth in the number of customers that we serve and services offered, there is a need to continue to develop our business support systems on a schedule sufficient to meet proposed service roll-out dates. The failure to continue to develop effective business support systems could harm our ability to implement our business plans and meet our financial goals and objectives.
We have incurred, and will continue to incur significant costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management is required to devote substantial time to compliance initiatives.
As a public company, we have incurred, and will continue to incur, significant expenses, including accounting, legal and other professional fees, insurance premiums, investor relations costs, and costs associated with compensating our independent directors. In addition, rules implemented by the SEC and the Nasdaq Global Select Market impose additional requirements on public companies, including requiring changes in corporate governance practices. For example, the listing requirements of the Nasdaq Global Select Market require that we satisfy certain corporate governance requirements relating to independent directors, audit committees, distribution of annual and interim reports, stockholder meetings, stockholder approvals, solicitation of proxies, conflicts of interest, stockholder voting rights and codes of conduct. Our management and other personnel need to devote a substantial amount of time to these compliance initiatives. Moreover, these rules and regulations increase our legal and financial compliance costs and make some activities more time-consuming and costly. For example, these rules and regulations make it more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance.
If the accounting estimates we make, and the assumptions on which we rely, in preparing our financial statements prove inaccurate, our actual results may be adversely affected.
Our financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments about, among other things, taxes, revenue recognition, share-based compensation costs, contingent obligations and doubtful accounts. These estimates and judgments affect the reported amounts of our assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses, the amounts of charges accrued by us, and related disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances and at the time they are made. If our estimates or the assumptions underlying them are not correct, we may need to accrue additional charges or reduce the value of assets that could adversely affect our results of operations, investors may lose confidence in our ability to manage our business and our stock price could decline.
If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal controls or fail to implement our controls and procedures with respect to acquired or merged operations, our ability to produce accurate financial statements could be impaired, which could adversely affect our operating results, our ability to operate our business and investors’ views of us.
We must ensure that we have adequate internal financial and accounting controls and procedures in place so that we can produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis. We are required to spend considerable effort on establishing and maintaining our internal controls, which is costly and time-consuming and needs to be re-evaluated frequently.
We have operated as a public company since June 2007, and we will continue to incur significant legal, accounting, and other expenses as we comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as well as new rules implemented from time to time by the SEC and the Nasdaq Global Select Market. These rules impose various requirements on public companies, including requiring changes in corporate governance practices, increased reporting of compensation arrangements and other requirements. Our management and other personnel will continue to devote a substantial amount of time to these compliance initiatives. Moreover, new rules and regulations will likely increase our legal and financial compliance costs and make some activities more time-consuming and costly. These rules and regulations could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our board of directors, our board committees or as executive officers.
Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires that we include in our annual report our assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and our audited financial statements as of the end of each fiscal year. Furthermore, our independent registered public accounting firm, Ernst & Young LLP (EY), is required to report on whether it believes we maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of the end of the year. Our continued compliance with Section 404 will require that we incur substantial expense and expend significant management time on compliance related issues, including our efforts in implementing controls and procedures related to acquired or merged operations. We currently do not have an internal audit group and use an international accounting firm to assist us with our assessment of the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting. In future years, if we fail to timely complete this assessment, or if EY cannot timely attest, there may be a loss of public confidence in our internal controls, the market price of our stock could decline, and we could be subject to regulatory sanctions or investigations by the Nasdaq Global Select Market, the SEC or other regulatory authorities, which would require additional financial and management
resources. In addition, any failure to implement required new or improved controls, or difficulties encountered in their implementation, could harm our operating results or cause us to fail to timely meet our regulatory reporting obligations.
Changes in financial accounting standards or practices may cause adverse, unexpected financial reporting fluctuations and affect our reported results of operations.
A change in accounting standards or practices can have a significant effect on our operating results and may affect our reporting of transactions completed before the change is effective. New accounting pronouncements and varying interpretations of existing accounting pronouncements have occurred and may occur in the future. Changes to existing rules or the questioning of current practices may adversely affect our reported financial results or the way we conduct our business.
Divestiture of our businesses or product lines, including those that we have acquired or will acquire, may materially adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations or cash flows, or may result in impairment charges that may adversely affect our results of operations.
Divestitures involve risks, including difficulties in the separation of operations, services, products and personnel, the diversion of management’s attention from other business concerns, the disruption of our business, the potential loss of key employees and the retention of uncertain contingent liabilities related to the divested business, any of which could result in a material adverse effect to our financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. Divestitures of previously acquired businesses may result in significant asset impairment charges, including those related to goodwill and other intangible assets, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations. Future impairment may result from, among other things, deterioration in the performance of the acquired business or product line, adverse market conditions and changes in the competitive landscape, adverse changes in applicable laws or regulations, including changes that restrict the activities of the acquired business or product line, changes in accounting rules and regulations, and a variety of other circumstances. The amount of any impairment is recorded as a charge to the statement of operations. We may never realize the full value of our goodwill and intangible assets, and any determination requiring the write-off of a significant portion of these assets may have an adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations. We cannot assure you that we will be successful in managing these or any other significant risks that we encounter in divesting a business or product line.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
The trading price of our common stock has been, and is likely to continue to be, volatile.
The trading prices of our common stock and the securities of technology companies generally have been highly volatile. Factors affecting the trading price of our common stock will include:
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variations in our operating results;
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announcements of technological innovations, new services or service enhancements, strategic alliances or significant agreements by us or by our competitors;
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commencement or resolution of, our involvement in and uncertainties arising from litigation;
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recruitment or departure of key personnel;
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changes in the estimates of our operating results or changes in recommendations by any securities analysts that elect to follow our common stock;
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if we or our stockholders sell substantial amounts of our common stock (including shares issued upon the exercise of options and warrants);
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developments or disputes concerning our intellectual property or other proprietary rights;
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the gain or loss of significant customers;
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market conditions in our industry, the industries of our customers and the economy as a whole; and
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adoption or modification of regulations, policies, procedures or programs applicable to our business.
In addition, if the market for technology stocks or the stock market in general experiences loss of investor confidence, the trading price of our common stock could decline for reasons unrelated to our business, operating results or financial
condition. The trading price of our common stock might also decline in reaction to events or speculation of events that affect other companies in our industry even if these events do not directly affect us.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business or if they issue an adverse or misleading opinion or report, our stock, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common stock will be influenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts publish about us or our business. If any of the analysts who cover us issue an adverse or misleading opinion regarding our stock, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our company or fail to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.
Insiders have substantial control over us and will be able to influence corporate matters.
As of December 31, 2017, our directors and executive officers and their affiliates beneficially owned, in the aggregate, approximately 18% of our outstanding common stock, including approximately 14% beneficially owned by investment entities affiliated with Goldman, Sachs & Co. These stockholders are able to exercise significant influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets. This concentration of ownership could limit other stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters and may have the effect of delaying or preventing a third party from acquiring control over us.
Future equity issuances or a sale of a substantial number of shares of our common stock may cause the price of our common stock to decline.
Because we may need to raise additional capital in the future to continue to expand our business and our research and development activities, among other things, we may conduct additional equity offerings. If we or our stockholders sell substantial amounts of our common stock (including shares issued upon the exercise of options and warrants) in the public market, the market price of our common stock could fall. For example, in November 2017 investment entities affiliated with Goldman, Sachs & Co. sold 15,000,000 shares of our commons stock in a registered public offering, and such entities may sell additional shares in the future. A decline in the market price of our common stock could make it more difficult for us to sell equity or equity-related securities in the future at a time and price that we deem appropriate.
Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and Delaware law could discourage, delay or prevent a change in control of our company and may affect the trading price of our common stock.
Provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and bylaws, as well as provisions of Delaware law, could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us, even if doing so would benefit our stockholders. These provisions:
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establish that members of the board of directors may be removed only for cause upon the affirmative vote of stockholders owning a majority of our capital stock;
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authorize the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock that could be issued by our board of directors to increase the number of outstanding shares and thwart a takeover attempt;
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limit who may call special meetings of stockholders;
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prohibit stockholder action by written consent, thereby requiring stockholder actions to be taken at a meeting of the stockholders;
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establish advance notice requirements for nominations for election to the board of directors or for proposing matters that can be acted upon at stockholder meetings;
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provide for a board of directors with staggered terms; and
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provide that the authorized number of directors may be changed only by a resolution of our board of directors.
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In addition, Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which imposes certain restrictions relating to transactions with major stockholders, may discourage, delay or prevent a third party from acquiring us.
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
None.