Overview
Guidewire Software, Inc. is a provider of software products and subscription services for the global property and casualty (“P&C”) industry. Our software serves as a technology platform for P&C insurance primary carriers. Guidewire InsurancePlatform
TM
consists of applications to support core operations, data management and analytics, and digital engagement and is connected to numerous data sources and third party applications. Our applications are designed to work together to strengthen our customers’ ability to adapt and succeed. Guidewire InsuranceSuite™ and Guidewire InsuranceNow
TM
provide core transactional systems of record that support the entire insurance lifecycle, including product definition, distribution, underwriting, policy holder services and claims management. Guidewire InsuranceSuite is a highly-configurable and scalable system comprised primarily of three applications (ClaimCenter, PolicyCenter and BillingCenter) that can be licensed separately or together and can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. Guidewire InsuranceNow is a cloud-based system that offers policy, billing, and claims management functionality to insurers that prefer an all-in-one solution. Our data and analytics applications enable insurers to manage data more effectively and gain insights into their business. Our digital engagement applications enable digital sales, omni-channel service and enhanced claims experiences for policyholders, agents, vendor partners and field personnel. The applications and services of Guidewire InsurancePlatform can be deployed on-premise, in the cloud or in a hybrid mode. To support P&C insurers globally, we have and will continue to localize our software for use in a variety of international regulatory, language and currency environments.
Our customers range from some of the largest global insurance carriers or their subsidiaries, such as Aviva, AXA and Zurich to predominantly national carriers such as Basler Versicherung (Switzerland), Direct Line Group (U.K.), Farmers Insurance (U.S.), IAG (Australia), MS&AD (Japan), Nationwide (U.S.), PZU (Poland) and San Cristobal Seguros S.A. (Argentina) and carriers that serve specific states and/or regions such as Automobile Club of Southern California (California), Canadian Automobile Association Insurance Company (Ontario), Kentucky Farm Bureau (Kentucky), and Vermont Mutual Insurance Group (Vermont).
We began our principal business operations in 2001. To date, we have generated a substantial majority of our software license revenues through annual or quarterly license fees that recur during the term of a customer’s contract and any subsequent renewal periods. We also generate perpetual license revenues and subscription revenues. We anticipate that subscription revenue will increase as a percentage of total revenue as we develop and bring to market more cloud-based solutions to meet increasing industry demand. Thus far, more than 100 customers have subscribed to or licensed one or more applications that are cloud-delivered by us or our partners. Services revenues are primarily derived from implementation and training services performed for our customers. Substantially all of our services revenues are currently billed on a time and materials basis.
Industry Background
The P&C insurance industry is large, fragmented, highly regulated and complex. It is also highly competitive, with carriers competing primarily on the following factors: product differentiation, pricing options, customer service, marketing and advertising, affiliate programs and channel strategies.
P&C insurers continue to actively modernize the transactional systems that support the key functional areas of P&C insurance: product definition, underwriting and policy administration, claims management and billing. Product definition specifies the insurance coverage, pricing, financial and legal terms of insurance policies. Underwriting and policy administration includes collecting information from potential policyholders, determining appropriate coverages and terms, pricing policies, issuing policies and updating and maintaining policies over their lifetimes. Claims management includes loss intake, investigation and evaluation of incidents, settlement negotiation, vendor management, litigation management and payment processing. Billing includes policyholder invoicing, payment collection, agent commission calculation and disbursement. We believe that insurers that adopt modern infrastructures can enhance customer experience, operate more efficiently and introduce innovative products more rapidly.
We believe the P&C industry is experiencing a significant change in how insurers engage with, sell to and manage relationships with individual and business customers. Today, P&C insurers are striving to respond to significant changes in their competitive marketplace and the character of the risks they underwrite. The most significant changes include:
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a rise in customer expectations for digital, omni-channel interaction;
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a growth in demand for personalized products and services;
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an increase in technology-driven changes in vehicular risk;
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demand for coverage of “21
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century risks” such as terrorism, cybersecurity and reputational risk;
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advances in the use of data to better market to and engage with customers, price policies and manage claims;
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development of opportunities to compete or partner with non-traditional players that offer disruptive technology-based value propositions; and
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the introduction of new technologies to leverage, such as drones, artificial intelligence, the “Internet of Things” and blockchain technology.
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In response to these challenges and opportunities, we believe that the P&C insurance industry is entering a phase of increasing investment in technology, characterized by a moderated pace of core modernization programs, and growing adoption of new digital engagement and data analytics offerings.
While each insurer may have different goals and priorities when pursuing new IT investments, there are several major themes that we believe guide these investments:
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Legacy Modernization
. A significant portion of the market continues to rely on legacy systems. We believe new claims, policy management and billing systems will continue to be adopted as insurers that rely on legacy systems seek to gain operating efficiencies, expand into new markets and lines of business, and introduce new digital and data offerings.
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New Digital Engagement Models
. We believe that insurers will need to provide a more intuitive, digital user experience to reduce the risk of customer dissatisfaction and loss. Investment in digital user experience will allow insurers to deepen their engagement with customers and transition from passive and transactional, customer interactions to active and advisory relationships. This transition will require investments in software products that are designed to model user journeys and enable more frequent, informed and dynamic interactions between insurers and their customers. We believe these efforts can improve financial performance for insurers through increased lead conversions and lower customer churn.
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Smarter Decision-Making
. Insurers are seeking to explore, visualize, and analyze operational and third-party data to optimize decision-making across the insurance lifecycle. These efforts may include the application of machine learning technologies. We believe that such predictive analytical solutions are most effective when they provide predictive scores and other analytical insights to insurers’ employees as they perform their underwriting and claims management activities.
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Insurers may also apply data and machine learning to automate certain tasks whenever possible, thereby enabling efficiencies, such as straight-through processing, that lessen the burden on subject matter experts.
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Cloud-Delivered Solutions
. We believe that increased recognition of the compelling economic benefits of deploying software solutions on public infrastructure combined with reduced concerns about the security and reliability of such platforms will cause more insurers to consider cloud-deployed solutions. Insurers benefit from an optimized division of labor and risk, allowing third parties to manage their infrastructure as they focus on competitively differentiating activities.
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Products
Guidewire InsurancePlatform is designed to offer insurers the ability to adapt and succeed in meeting these challenges and capitalizing on new opportunities. We believe that the proliferation of modern back-office infrastructures have significantly increased the ability of insurers to utilize new solutions to grow revenues, reduce costs and losses, improve pricing and engage more deeply and in more intuitive ways with a customer base that is increasingly comfortable with mobile and automated forms of self-service and communication. We anticipate that we will continue to invest in research and development and strategic investments so that we may further assist insurers in reaching their business goals.
Core Operational Platforms
We offer two core operational platforms: Guidewire InsuranceSuite and Guidewire InsuranceNow.
Guidewire InsuranceSuite
Guidewire InsuranceSuite is comprised of three primary applications: PolicyCenter, ClaimCenter and BillingCenter. We offer several add-on products designed to work seamlessly with these primary applications. InsuranceSuite is built on a unified technology platform that provides enhanced functionality and a common data model across applications.
Guidewire PolicyCenter is our flexible underwriting and policy administration application that serves as a comprehensive system-of-record supporting the entire policy lifecycle, including product definition, underwriting, quoting, binding, issuances, endorsements, audits, cancellations and renewals. Guidewire ClaimCenter offers end-to-end claims lifecycle management, including product definition, distribution, underwriting, policy holder services and claims management. Guidewire BillingCenter automates the billing lifecycle, enables the design of a wide variety of billing and payment plans, manages agent commissions and integrates with external payment systems.
Guidewire InsuranceNow
Guidewire InsuranceNow is a cloud-based platform for P&C insurers that offers policy, billing and claims management functionality to insurers that prefer to subscribe to a cloud-based, all-in-one solution. Guidewire InsuranceNow is only offered in the cloud, and is currently only available in the United States, though we intend to introduce it to select international markets in the future.
Guidewire InsuranceSuite: Add-on Applications
We offer a number of additional add-on applications for Guidewire InsuranceSuite.
Guidewire Underwriting Management
Guidewire Underwriting Management is a cloud-based, integrated business application designed for commercial and specialty line insurers to drive premium growth and profit from better underwriting. This feature-rich workstation delivers straight-through processing, exception-based underwriting, real-time collaboration, and knowledge management in one integrated solution. Guidewire Underwriting Management is typically sold alongside Guidewire PolicyCenter, although it functions with other policy administration systems as well.
Guidewire Rating Management
Guidewire Rating Management enables P&C insurers to manage the pricing of their insurance products.
Guidewire Reinsurance Management
Guidewire Reinsurance Management enables P&C insurers to use rules-based logic to execute their reinsurance strategy through their underwriting and claims processes.
Guidewire Client Data Management
Guidewire Client Data Management helps P&C insurers capitalize on customer information more coherently, overcoming traditional siloed practices that impair efficiency and customer service.
Guidewire Product Content Management
Guidewire Product Content Management provides software tools and standards-based, line-of-business templates to enable insurers to more rapidly introduce and modify products by reducing product configuration and maintenance efforts. Any such product introduction or modification must connect to and incorporate regulatory or industry-standard data and content, such as ISO content.
Data Management and Analytics
We offer a variety of applications that allow insurers to consolidate, explore and analyze the data that is generated from their own operations and the data they capture from third-party sources.
Guidewire DataHub
Guidewire DataHub is an operational data store that unifies, standardizes and stores data from the patchwork of an insurer’s systems as well as from external sources. DataHub enables carriers to accelerate legacy system replacement.
Guidewire InfoCenter
Guidewire InfoCenter is a business intelligence warehouse for P&C insurers which provides information in easy-to-use formats for business intelligence, analysis and enhanced decision making. With InfoCenter, customers gain flexible operational insights as well as the ability to optimize their business.
Guidewire Live
Guidewire Live is a cloud-based suite of analytical applications that aggregates data from internal and third-party sources and analyzes and visualizes the data in ways that provide insurers with valuable insights into their business. These insights can be acted upon through the processes managed by InsuranceSuite.
Guidewire Predictive Analytics
Guidewire Predictive Analytics is a cloud-based tool which allows insurers to make data-driven decisions throughout the insurance lifecycle. By building predictive models from multiple data sets, analyzing model output, and deploying predictive models, insurers can realize significant reductions in loss ratio and expenses.
Digital Engagement
Guidewire Digital Engagement Applications
Our Digital Engagement Applications enable insurers to provide digital experiences to customers, agents, vendors and field personnel through their device of choice. As consumers increasingly use self-service functions on the Internet and on mobile devices, we believe that many of them prefer to interact with their insurance providers digitally and they expect to have consistent and efficient transactional experience through multiple channels, whether online, in-person or by phone. Our Digital Engagement applications also benefit agents and brokers who are seeking to automate business processes with insurers to improve customer service and productivity.
Technology
Our applications are designed to assist P&C insurers to grow their business, improve customer and agent engagement, lower operating costs and improve decision making. We have increased the scope of Guidewire InsurancePlatform through internal development and acquisitions. This growing scope has required greater investment in the development of application interfaces and shared services necessary to unify the operations and user experience across our applications. To meet the anticipated increased demand for cloud-delivered solutions, we have increased investments to leverage the growing number of technology services provided by on-demand infrastructure vendors such as Amazon with AWS and Microsoft with Azure. The shift to cloud-delivered solutions has also required significant focus in improving our ability to manage and operate our applications since our cloud-based deployments, unlike our on-premise implementations, shift many operational responsibilities to us. Finally, we continue to improve the scalability of our applications, which are required to perform millions of complex transactions that must balance on a daily basis. This accuracy must be maintained not only during normal business operations, but also during extraordinary events such as catastrophes, which may result in extremely high transaction volume in a short period of time.
Services
Implementation Services
We provide implementation and integration services to help our customers realize the benefits of our software products and subscription services. Our implementation teams assist customers in building implementation plans, integrating our software with their existing systems and defining business rules and specific requirements unique to each customer and installation. We also partner with leading system integration consulting firms, certified on our software, to achieve scalable, cost-effective implementations for our customers. As of July 31, 2017, we had 730 employees in our professional services organization, compared to 573 as of July 31, 2016.
Guidewire Production Services
Customers that contract with us for a cloud-based version of any Guidewire InsurancePlatform application receive access to our software, 24x7 technical management, monitoring and, in some cases, version upgrades. Customers may also receive additional services, such as defect fixes, regulatory updates and minor platform delivery enhancements.
Customers
We market and sell our products to a wide variety of global P&C insurers ranging from some of the largest global insurers to national and regional carriers. We believe strong customer relationships are a key driver of our success given the long-term nature of our customer engagements and importance of customer references for new sales. We focus on developing and maintaining our customer relationships through customer service and account management. As of July 31, 2017, we had 328 customers using one or more of our products in 37 countries.
Strategic Relationships
We have extensive relationships with system integration, consulting and industry partners. Our network of partners has expanded as interest in and adoption of our products has grown. We encourage our partners to co-market, pursue joint sales initiatives and drive broader adoption of our technology, helping us grow our business more efficiently and enabling us to focus our engineering resources on continued innovation and further enhancement of our solutions.
As part of our PartnerConnect alliance program, we have a community of Solution Partners developing integration accelerators that enable their on-premise and cloud-based software solutions to interoperate with our products. As of July 31, 2017, approximately 70 of these partner-developed integrations have been validated by us and awarded Ready for Guidewire branding. Guidewire Marketplace provides our customers with an online forum to learn about and download Ready for Guidewire integration accelerators for use with our products. These accelerators help customers reduce implementation risk and effort, and lower the total cost of implementation and operation. We anticipate expanding the reach of Guidewire Marketplace.
Sales and Marketing
Consistent with our industry focus and the mission-critical needs our products address, our sales and marketing efforts are tailored to communicate effectively to senior executives within the P&C industry. Our sales, marketing and executive teams work together to cultivate long-term relationships with current and prospective customers in each of the geographies in which we are active.
As of July 31, 2017, we employed 298 employees in a sales and marketing capacity, including 56 direct sales representatives organized by geographic region across the Americas, EMEA and APAC. This team serves as both our exclusive sales channel and our account management function. We augment our sales professionals with a presales team possessing insurance domain and technical expertise, who engage customers in sessions to understand their specific business needs and then represent our products through demonstrations tailored to address those needs.
Our marketing team supports sales with competitive analysis and sales tools, while investing to strengthen our brand name and reputation. We participate at industry conferences, are published frequently in the industry press and have active relationships with all of the major industry analysts. We also host Connections, our annual user conference where customers both participate in and deliver presentations on a wide range of Guidewire and insurance technology topics. We invite potential customers and partners to our user conference, as we believe customer references are a key component of driving new sales. Our strong relationships with leading system integrators enhance our direct sales through co-marketing efforts and by providing additional market validation of the distinctiveness and quality of our offerings.
Research and Development
Our research and development efforts focus on enhancing our products to meet the increasingly complex requirements of P&C insurers by broadening the capabilities and delivery options of Guidewire InsurancePlatform and its associated applications. These efforts are intended to help our customers improve their operations, drive greater digital engagement with their customers, agents and brokers; and gather, store and analyze data to improve business decisions. We also invest significantly in developing the product definitions and integrations necessary to have our applications meet the market requirements of each country or state in which we sell our software. This market-segment specific functionality must be updated regularly in order to stay current with regulatory changes in each market. We rely on a multi-national engineering team, which has grown organically and through acquisitions. As of July 31, 2017, our research and development department had 581 employees.
Competition
The software market that caters to the P&C insurance industry is highly competitive and fragmented. Increased spending by carriers on software solutions and the emergence of new platform ambitions that have broadened from core system modernization to new digital engagement and data and analytics solutions, have generated significant interest among investors and entrepreneurs. Increased capital allows market participants to adopt more aggressive go-to-market strategies, improve existing products and introduce new ones, and consolidate with other vendors. This market is also subject to changing technology preferences, shifting customer needs and the introduction of new cloud-delivered models. This creates an environment of increasing competition. Our current and future competitors vary in size and in the breadth and scope of the products and services they offer. Our current competitors include, but are not limited to:
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Internally developed software
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Many large insurance companies have sufficient IT resources to maintain and augment their own proprietary internal systems, or to consider developing new custom systems;
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IT services firms
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Firms such as DXC Technology, NTT Data and Tata Consultancy Services Limited offer software and systems or develop custom, proprietary solutions for the P&C insurance industry;
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P&C insurance software vendors
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Vendors such as 1insurer (formerly Innovation Group), CodeObjects, Duck Creek, eBaoTech Corporation, EIS Group, Fadata AD, FINEOS, Insurity, Inc., Keylane/Quinity, Majesco, One, Inc., OneShield, Inc., Patriot Technology Solutions, Prima Solutions, RGI, Sapiens International Corporation, StoneRiver, Inc., and TIA Technology A/S provide software solutions that are specifically designed to meet the needs of P&C insurers; and
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Horizontal software vendors
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Vendors such as Pegasystems Inc. and SAP AG offer software that can be customized to address the needs of P&C insurers.
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Competitive factors in our industry depend on the product being offered, and the size, geographic market and line of business of potential customers. The principal competitive factors include product functionality, performance, customer references, total cost of ownership, solution completeness, implementation track record, and in-depth knowledge of the P&C insurance industry. We typically compete favorably on the basis of these factors in most geographies.
As we expand our product portfolio, we may begin to compete with software and service providers we have not previously competed against. For example, companies such as Verisk, SAS, IBM and Towers Watson offer data and analytics tools that may, in time, be more competitive with our offerings. Some of these potential competitors may also acquire companies which offer P&C insurance software.
Intellectual Property
The software industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent claims and related litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights. Our success and ability to compete depend in part upon our ability to protect our proprietary technology, to establish and adequately protect our intellectual property rights, and to protect against third-party claims and litigation related to intellectual property. To accomplish these objectives, we rely on a combination of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret laws in the United States and other jurisdictions, as well as license agreements and other contractual protections. We own or have pending a significant number of patents and patent applications, which generally apply to our software. Our owned patents have expiration dates starting in 2025. We also rely on several registered and unregistered trademarks, as well as pending applications for such registrations, in order to protect our brand both in the United States and internationally.
Employees
As of
July 31, 2017
, we had
1,893
employees, including
730
in professional services,
95
in technical support and licensing operations,
581
in research and development,
298
in sales and marketing, and
189
in general and administrative roles. As of
July 31, 2017
, we had
1,232
employees in the United States and
661
employees internationally. Our employees in the United States are not represented by a labor union, however, for certain foreign subsidiaries, there are workers’ councils that represent our employees. We have not experienced any work stoppages and we consider our relations with our employees to be good.
Information about Segment and Geographic Revenue
Information about segment and geographic revenue is set forth in Note 10 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements under Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Seasonality
We have historically experienced seasonal variations in our license and other revenues as a result of increased customer orders in our second and fourth fiscal quarters. We generally see a modest increase in orders in our second fiscal quarter, which is the quarter ending January 31, due to customer buying patterns. We also see significantly increased orders in our fourth fiscal quarter, which is the quarter ending July 31, due to efforts by our sales team to achieve annual incentives. This seasonal pattern, however, may be absent in any given year. For example, the timing of a small number of large transactions or the receipt of early payments may be sufficient to disrupt seasonal revenue trends. On an annual basis, our maintenance revenues, which are recognized ratably, may also be impacted in the event that seasonal patterns change significantly. As we increase subscription sales, a concentration of such sales in our fiscal fourth quarter will reduce the revenues we can recognize in the fiscal year, which will impact the revenues reported in the fiscal year and our revenue growth.
Our services revenues are also subject to seasonal fluctuations, though to a lesser degree than our license revenues. Our services revenues are impacted by the number of billable days in a given fiscal quarter. The quarter ended January 31 usually has fewer billable days due to the impact of the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The quarter ended July 31 usually also has fewer billable days due to the impact of vacation times taken by our professional staff. Because we pay our services professionals the same amounts throughout the year, our gross margins on our services revenues are usually lower in these quarters. This seasonal pattern, however, may be absent in any given year.
WHERE YOU CAN FIND MORE INFORMATION
The following filings are available through our investor relations website after we file them with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”): Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and our Proxy Statement for our annual meeting of stockholders. These filings are also available for download free of charge on our investor relations website. Our website is located at
www.guidewire.com
, and our investor relations website is located at
http://ir.guidewire.com
/. We also provide a link to the section of the SEC’s website at
www.sec.gov
that has all of our public filings, including periodic reports, proxy statements and other information. Further, a copy of this Annual Report on Form 10-K is located at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, D.C. 20549. Information on the operation of the Public Reference Room can be obtained by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330.
We webcast our earnings calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we provide notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, press and earnings releases as part of our investor relations website. Investors and others can receive notifications of new information posted on our investor relations website in real time by signing up for email alerts and RSS feeds. Further corporate governance information, including our governance guidelines and code of business conduct and ethics, is also available on our investor relations website under the heading “Corporate Governance.” The contents of our websites are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.
Table of Contents
A description of the risks and uncertainties associated with our business is set forth below. You should carefully consider such risks and uncertainties, together with the other information contained in this report, and in our other public filings. If any of such risks and uncertainties actually occurs, our business, financial condition or results of operations could differ materially from the plans, projections and other forward-looking statements included in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and elsewhere in this report and in our other public filings. In addition, if any of the following risks and uncertainties, or if any other risks and uncertainties, actually occurs, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be harmed substantially, which could cause the market price of our stock to decline, perhaps significantly.
We may experience significant quarterly and annual fluctuations in our results of operations due to a number of factors.
Our quarterly and annual results of operations may fluctuate significantly due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. This variability may lead to volatility in our stock price as investors and research analysts respond to quarterly fluctuations. In addition, comparing our results of operations on a period-to-period basis, particularly on a sequential quarterly basis, may not be meaningful. You should not rely on our past results as an indication of our future performance.
Factors that may affect our results of operations include:
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the timing of new orders and revenue recognition for new and prior year orders;
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seasonal buying patterns of our customers;
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the proportion and timing of subscription sales as opposed to software licenses, and the variations in revenue recognition between the two sales methods;
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volatility in the sales of our products and the execution timing of new and renewal agreements within such periods;
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our ability to increase sales to and renew agreements with our existing customers, particularly larger customers;
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our ability to attract new customers in both domestic and international markets;
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the structure of our licensing contracts, including delayed payment or acceptance terms and escalating payments, including fluctuations in perpetual licenses from period to period;
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our ability to enter into contracts on favorable terms, including terms related to price, payment timing and product delivery with customers and prospects that possess substantial negotiating leverage and procurement expertise;
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introduction of new, or the increase of existing, licensing models that feature ratable revenue recognition;
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our ability to develop and achieve market adoption of cloud-based services;
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increases in cloud-related development and services costs;
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the incurrence of penalties for failing to meet certain contractual obligations, including service levels and implementation times;
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the impact of a recession or any other adverse global economic conditions on our business, including uncertainties that may cause a delay in entering into or a failure to enter into significant customer agreements;
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the lengthy and variable nature of our product implementation cycles;
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reductions in our customers’ budgets for information technology purchases and delays in their purchasing cycles;
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variations in the amount of policies sold by our customers, where pricing to such customers is based on the direct written premium that is managed by our solutions;
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erosion in services margins or significant fluctuations in services revenues caused by changing customer demand;
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our ability to realize expected benefits from our acquisitions;
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timing of commissions expense related to large transactions;
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bonus expense based on the bonus attainment rate;
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the timing and cost of hiring personnel and of large expenses such as third-party professional services;
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stock-based compensation expenses, which vary along with changes to our stock price;
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fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates;
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unanticipated trade sanctions and other restrictions that may impede our ability to sell internationally; and
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future accounting pronouncements or changes in accounting rules or our accounting policies.
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In addition, our license and other revenue may fluctuate if our customers make early payments of their annual license fees in advance of the invoice due date. This may cause an unexpected increase in revenues in one quarter, reducing revenue and growth rates in future periods.
The foregoing factors are difficult to forecast, and these, as well as other factors, could materially adversely affect our quarterly and annual results of operations. We believe our ability to adjust spending quickly enough to compensate for a revenue shortfall is very limited and our inability to do so could magnify the adverse impact of such revenue shortfall on our results of operations. If we fail to achieve our quarterly forecasts, if our forecasts fall below the expectations of investors or research analysts, or if our actual results fail to meet the expectations of investors or research analysts, our stock price may decline.
Seasonal sales patterns and other variations related to our revenue recognition may cause significant fluctuations in our results of operations and cash flows and may prevent us from achieving our quarterly or annual forecasts, which may cause our stock price to decline.
We have signed a significantly higher percentage of software license orders in the second and fourth quarters of each fiscal year. We generally see increased orders in our second fiscal quarter, which is the quarter ended January 31, due to customer buying patterns, and our sales are typically greatest in the fourth quarter due to efforts by our sales team to achieve annual incentives. As a result, a significantly higher percentage of our annual license revenues have historically been recognized in our second and fourth fiscal quarters. Since a substantial majority of our license revenues recur annually under our multi-year contracts, we expect to continue to experience this seasonality effect in subsequent years. However, we currently anticipate that sales of subscription services will increase as a percentage of new and total yearly sales. Subscriptions are recognized ratably over the term of the agreement after provisioning of the software, which may take as many as 90 days for our more complex implementations. Over time, this may reduce the impact of our historic seasonality, but in the near term the introduction of proportionally more subscription services into our revenue stream, together with their delayed and ratable recognition, will likely impact quarter over quarter and year over year revenue growth comparisons. The concentration of sales in the fourth quarter, including sales of subscription services, may exacerbate this effect.
Our quarterly growth in license revenues also may not match up to new orders we receive in a given quarter, which could mask the impact of seasonal variations. This mismatch is primarily due to the following reasons:
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for the initial year of a multi-year term license, revenue recognition may not occur in the period when the order is placed due to certain revenue recognition criteria not being met;
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we may enter into license agreements with future product delivery requirements or specified terms for product upgrades or functionality, which may require us to delay revenue recognition for the initial period;
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our term licenses may include payment terms that escalate every year and may be modest in the first year; and
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our subscription arrangements are recognized ratably and only a portion of the revenue from an order is recognized in the same fiscal period of the order.
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Additionally, seasonal patterns may be affected by the timing of particularly large transactions. For example, in fiscal year 2017, we achieved higher revenue growth in the third fiscal quarter than in the fourth fiscal quarter due to the effects of a single large contract that was entered into in the third fiscal quarter.
Our revenues may fluctuate versus comparable prior periods or prior quarters within the same fiscal year based on when new orders are executed in the quarter and the payment terms of each order. Our ability to renew existing contracts for multiple year terms versus annual automatic renewals may also impact revenue recognition.
We generally charge annual software license fees for our multi-year term licenses and price our licenses based on the amount of direct written premiums (“DWP”) that will be managed by our solutions. However, in certain circumstances, our customers desire the ability to purchase our products on a perpetual license basis, resulting in an acceleration of revenue recognition. Milestone payments in a perpetual license order also cause seasonal variations. Our perpetual license revenues are not necessarily consistent from period to period. In addition, a few of our multi-year term licenses provide the customer with the option to purchase a perpetual license at the end of the initial contract term, which we refer to as a perpetual buyout right. The mix of our contract terms for our licenses and the exercise of perpetual buyout rights at the end of the initial contract term by our customers may lead to variability in our results of operations. Increases in perpetual license sales and exercises of perpetual buyout rights by our customers may affect our ability to show consistent growth in license revenues in subsequent periods. Reductions in perpetual licenses in future periods could cause adverse period-to-period comparisons of our financial results.
Seasonal and other variations related to our revenue recognition may cause significant fluctuations in our results of operations and cash flows, may make it challenging for an investor to predict our performance on a quarterly basis and may prevent us from achieving our quarterly or annual forecasts or meeting or exceeding the expectations of research analysts or investors, which in turn may cause our stock price to decline.
We have relied and expect to continue to rely on orders from a relatively small number of customers in the P&C insurance industry for a substantial portion of our revenues, and the loss of any of these customers would significantly harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Our revenues are dependent on orders from customers in the P&C insurance industry, which may be adversely affected by economic, environmental and world political conditions. A relatively small number of customers have historically accounted for a significant portion of our revenues. While the composition of our individual top customers will vary from year to year, in fiscal years 2017, 2016 and 2015, our ten largest customers accounted for 27%, 27% and 31% of our revenues, respectively. While we expect this reliance to decrease over time, we expect that we will continue to depend upon a relatively small number of customers for a significant portion of our revenues for the foreseeable future. As a result, if we fail to successfully sell our products and services to one or more of these anticipated customers in any particular period or fail to identify additional potential customers or such customers purchase fewer of our products or services, defer or cancel orders, fail to renew their license or subscription agreements or otherwise terminate its relationship with us, our business, results of operations and financial condition would be harmed. Additionally, if our sales to one or more of these anticipated customers in any particular period are ratable in nature, or if we fail to achieve the required performance or acceptance criteria for one or more of these relatively small number of customers, our quarterly and annual results of operations may fluctuate significantly.
If we are required to, and fail to successfully manage any changes to our business model, including the transition of our products to cloud offerings, our results of operations could be harmed.
To address demand trends in the P&C insurance industry, we now offer customers the use of our software products through a cloud-based offering in addition to our on-premises offering. This adjustment to our business model requires a considerable investment of technical, financial, legal and sales resources. Our transition to cloud offerings will continue to divert resources and increase costs, especially in cost of license and other revenues, in any given period. Such investments may not improve our long-term growth and results of operations. Further, the increase in some costs associated with our cloud services, such as the cost of public infrastructure, may be difficult to predict over time, especially in light of our lack of historical experience with the costs of delivering cloud-based versions of our applications. Our subscription contracts also contain penalty clauses, for matters such as failing to meet stipulated service levels, which represent new risks we are not accustomed to managing. Should these penalties be triggered, our results of operations may be adversely affected. Furthermore, we may assume greater responsibilities for implementation related services during this transition. As a result, we may face risks associated with new and complex implementations, the cost of which may differ from original estimates. As with our stated history, the consequences in such circumstances could include: monetary credits for current or future service engagements, reduced fees for additional product sales, and a customer’s refusal to pay their contractually-obligated subscription or service fees.
We expect the revenue we would recognize under our cloud-based subscription model to be recognized ratably over the term of the contract. The transition to ratable revenue recognition may reduce license revenue we otherwise would have recognized in those periods in which the portion of our revenues attributable to ratable subscription contracts grows. This effect on recognized revenue may be magnified in any fiscal year due to the concentration of our orders in the fourth quarter. A combination of increased costs and delayed recognition of revenue would adversely impact our gross and operating margins during those periods.
In addition, market acceptance of our cloud-based offerings may be affected by a variety of factors, including but not limited to: price, security, reliability, performance, customer preference, public concerns regarding privacy and the enactment of restrictive laws or regulations. We are in the early stages of rearchitecting our existing products and developing new products in an effort to offer customers greater choices on how they consume our software. As our business practices in this area develop and evolve over time, we may be required to revise the subscription agreements we initially develop in connection with this transition, which may result in revised terms and conditions that impact how we recognize revenue and the costs and risks associated with these offerings. Whether our product development efforts or business model transition will prove successful and accomplish our business objectives is subject to numerous uncertainties and risks, including but not limited to: customer demand, our ability to further develop and scale infrastructure, our ability to include functionality and usability in such offerings that address customer requirements, tax and accounting implications, and our costs. In addition, the metrics we and our investors use to gauge the status of our business model transition may evolve over the course of the transition as significant trends emerge. It may be difficult, therefore, to accurately determine the impact of this transition on our business on a contemporaneous basis, or to clearly communicate the appropriate metrics to our investors. If we are unable to successfully establish these new cloud offerings and navigate our business model transition in light of the foregoing risks and uncertainties, our reputation could suffer and our results of operations could be harmed, which may cause our stock price to decline.
Increases in services revenues as a percentage of total revenues or lower services margins could adversely affect our overall gross margins and profitability.
Our services revenues were 34%, 34% and 40% of total revenues for each of fiscal years 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. Our services revenues produce lower gross margins than our license revenues. The gross margin of our services revenues was 7%,
8% and 12% for fiscal years 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively, while the gross margin for license revenues was 94%, 97% and 97% for fiscal years 2017, 2016 and 2015. An increase in the percentage of total revenues represented by services revenues or lower services margins could reduce our overall gross margins and operating margins. We anticipate that in fiscal year 2018, services revenues will grow significantly as a percentage of total revenues, which will likely reduce our overall gross margin and operating margin for the year. Such a trend can be the result of several factors, some of which may be beyond our control, including increased customer demand for our service team involvement in new products and services, the rates we charge for our services, and the extent to which system integrators are willing and able to provide services directly to customers. Erosion in our services margins would also adversely affect our gross and operating margins. Services margins may erode for a period of time as we work to grow our business and overall revenue; for instance, services margins may erode if we hire and train additional services personnel to support new products including cloud-based services, if we require additional service personnel to support entry into new markets, or if we require additional personnel on unexpectedly difficult projects to ensure customer success, perhaps without commensurate compensation.
Services margins may also decline if we are required to defer services revenues in connection with an engagement. This may happen for a number of reasons, including if there is a specific product deliverable associated with a broader services engagement. In these situations, we would defer only the direct costs associated with the engagement. Deferring all revenue but only direct costs will reduce margins. In fiscal year 2017, for example, we deferred a significant amount of revenue and direct costs associated with one project, which reduced margins and reported services revenues during fiscal year 2017.
Assertions by third parties of infringement or other violation by us of their intellectual property rights could result in significant costs and substantially harm our business and results of operations.
The software industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent claims and related litigation regarding patents and other intellectual property rights. In particular, leading companies in the software industry own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets, which they may use to assert claims against us. From time to time, third parties holding such intellectual property rights, including leading companies, competitors, patent holding companies and/or non-practicing entities, may assert patent, copyright, trademark or other intellectual property claims against us, our customers and partners, and those from whom we license technology and intellectual property.
Although we believe that our products and services do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of third parties, we cannot assure that third parties will not assert infringement or misappropriation claims against us with respect to current or future products or services, or that any such assertions will not require us to enter into royalty arrangements or result in costly litigation, or result in us being unable to use certain intellectual property. We cannot assure that we are not infringing or otherwise violating any third-party intellectual property rights. Infringement assertions from third parties may involve patent holding companies or other patent owners who have no relevant product revenues, and therefore our own issued and pending patents may provide little or no deterrence to these patent owners in bringing intellectual property rights claims against us.
If we are forced to defend against any infringement or misappropriation claims, whether they are with or without merit, are settled out of court, or are determined in our favor, we may be required to expend significant time and financial resources on the defense of such claims. Furthermore, an adverse outcome of a dispute may require us to pay damages, potentially including treble damages and attorneys’ fees, if we are found to have willfully infringed a party’s intellectual property; cease making, licensing or using our products or services that are alleged to infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property of others; expend additional development resources to redesign our products or services; enter into potentially unfavorable royalty or license agreements in order to obtain the right to use necessary technologies or works; and to indemnify our partners, customers, and other third parties. Any of these events could seriously harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We may expand through acquisitions or partnerships with other companies, which may divert our management’s attention and result in unexpected operating and technology integration difficulties, increased costs and dilution to our stockholders.
Our business strategy includes the potential acquisition of shares or assets of companies with software, technologies or businesses complementary to ours. Our strategy also includes alliances with such companies. For example, in March 2016, we acquired EagleEye Analytics Inc., a provider of cloud-based predictive analytics products designed for P&C insurers; in August 2016, we acquired FirstBest Systems, Inc., a provider of an underwriting management system for P&C insurers; and in February 2017, we acquired ISCS, Inc., a provider of a cloud-based, all-in-one platform that offers policy, billing, and claims management functionality for P&C insurers. Each of these acquisitions was initially dilutive to earnings. Acquisitions and alliances may result in unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures and may not result in the benefits anticipated by such corporate activity. In particular, we may fail to: assimilate or integrate the businesses, technologies, services, products, personnel or operations of the acquired companies; retain key personnel necessary to favorably execute the combined companies’ business plan; or retain existing customers or sell acquired products to new customers. Acquisitions and alliances may also disrupt our ongoing business, divert our resources and require significant management attention that would otherwise be available for ongoing development of our
current business. In addition, we may be required to make additional capital investments or undertake remediation efforts to ensure the success of our acquisitions, which may reduce the benefits of such acquisitions. We also may be required to use a substantial amount of our cash or issue debt or equity securities to complete an acquisition or realize the potential of an alliance, which could deplete our cash reserves and/or dilute our existing stockholders. Following an acquisition or the establishment of an alliance offering new products, we may be required to defer the recognition of revenues that we receive from the sale of products that we acquired or that result from the alliance, or from the sale of a bundle of products that includes such new products, if we have not established vendor-specific objective evidence (“VSOE”) for the undelivered elements in the arrangement. In addition, our ability to maintain favorable pricing of new products may be challenging if we bundle such products with sales of existing products. A delay in the recognition of revenues from sales of acquired or alliance products, or reduced pricing due to bundled sales, may cause fluctuations in our quarterly financial results, may adversely affect our operating margins and may reduce the benefits of such acquisitions or alliances.
Additionally, competition within the software industry for acquisitions of businesses, technologies and assets has been, and may continue to be, intense. As such, even if we are able to identify an acquisition that we would like to pursue, the target may be acquired by another strategic buyer or financial buyer such as a private equity firm, or we may otherwise not be able to complete the acquisition on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. Moreover, in addition to our failure to realize the anticipated benefits of any acquisition, including our revenues or return on investment assumptions, we may be exposed to unknown liabilities or impairment charges as a result of acquisitions we do complete.
We face intense competition in our market, which could negatively impact our business, results of operations and financial condition and cause our market share to decline.
The market for our software and services is intensely competitive. The competitors we face in any sale may change depending on, among other things, the line of business purchasing the software, the application being sold, the geography in which we are operating and the size of the insurance carrier to which we are selling. For example, we are more likely to face competition from small independent firms when addressing the needs of small insurers. These competitors may compete on the basis of price, the time and cost required for software implementation, custom development, or unique product features or functions. Outside of the United States, we are more likely to compete against vendors that may differentiate themselves based on local advantages in language, market knowledge and pre-built content applicable to that jurisdiction. We also complete with vendors of horizontal software products that may be customized to address needs of the P&C insurance industry.
Additionally, many of our prospective customers operate firmly entrenched legacy systems, some of which have been in operation for decades. Our implementation cycles may be lengthy, variable and require the investment of significant time and expense by our customers. These expenses and associated operating risks attendant on any significant process of re-engineering and technology implementation exercise, may cause customers to prefer maintaining legacy systems. Also, maintaining these legacy systems may be so time consuming and costly for our customers that they do not have adequate resources to devote to the purchase and implementation of our products. We also compete against technology consulting firms that either helped create such legacy systems or may own, in full or in part, subsidiaries that develop software and systems for the P&C insurance industry.
As we expand our product portfolio, we may begin to compete with software and service providers we have not competed against previously. Such potential competitors offer data and analytics tools that may, in time, become more competitive with our offerings.
We expect the intensity of competition to remain high in the future, as the amount of capital invested in current and potential competitors has increased significantly in recent years, and this may lead to improved product or sales capabilities, which in turn could lead to new or expanded partnerships with systems integrators. Continuing intense competition could result in increased pricing pressure, increased sales and marketing expenses, and greater investments in research and development, each of which could negatively impact our profitability. In addition, the failure to increase, or the loss of market share, would harm our business, results of operations, financial condition and/or future prospects. Our larger current and potential competitors may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products than we can devote to ours, which could allow them to respond more quickly than we can to new technologies and changes in customer needs, thus leading to their wider market acceptance. We may not be able to compete effectively and competitive pressures may prevent us from acquiring and maintaining the customer base necessary for us to increase our revenues and profitability.
In addition, our industry is evolving rapidly and we anticipate the market for cloud-based solutions will become increasingly competitive. If our current and potential customers move a greater proportion of their data and computational needs to the cloud, new competitors may emerge that offer services either comparable or better suited than ours to address the demand for such cloud-based solutions, which could reduce demand for our offerings. To compete effectively we will likely be required to increase our investment in research and development, as well as the personnel and third party services required to improve reliability and lower the cost of delivery of our cloud-based solutions. This may increase our costs more than we anticipate and may adversely impact our results of operations.
Our current and potential competitors may also establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties to further enhance their resources and offerings. Current or potential competitors may be acquired by other vendors or third parties with greater available resources. As a result of such acquisitions, our current or potential competitors might be more able than we are to adapt quickly to new technologies and customer needs, to devote greater resources to the promotion or sale of their products and services, to initiate or withstand substantial price competition, or to take advantage of emerging opportunities by developing and expanding their product and service offerings more quickly than we can. Additionally, they may hold larger portfolios of patents and other intellectual property rights as a result of such relationships or acquisitions. If we are unable to compete effectively with these evolving competitors for market share, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected.
If our products or cloud-based services experience data security breaches, and there is unauthorized access to our customers’ data, we may lose current or future customers and our reputation and business may be harmed.
If our security measures are breached or unauthorized access to customer data is otherwise obtained, our products may be perceived as not being secure, customers may reduce the use of or stop using our products, and we may incur significant liabilities. Our software and cloud services involve the storage and transmission of data, including in some cases, personal data, and security breaches could result in the loss of this information, which in turn could result in litigation, breach of contract claims, indemnity obligations and other liability for our company. While we have taken steps to protect the confidential information to which we have access, including confidential information we may obtain through our customer support services or customer usage of our cloud-based services, our security measures could be breached. We rely on third-party technology and systems for a variety of services, including, without limitation, encryption and authentication technology, employee email, content delivery to customers, back-office support and other functions, and our ability to control or prevent breaches of any of these systems may be beyond our control. Because techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not identified until they are launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Although we have developed systems and processes that are designed to protect customer information and prevent data loss and other security breaches, including systems and processes designed to reduce the impact of a security breach at a third-party vendor, such measures cannot provide absolute security. Any or all of these issues could negatively impact our ability to attract new customers or to increase engagement by existing customers, could cause existing customers to elect not to renew their term licenses, or could subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, thereby adversely affecting our results of operations.
We have begun the process of implementing a new enterprise resource planning system as well as other accounting and sales IT systems. If these new systems prove ineffective, or if we experience issues with the transition from our current systems, we may be unable to timely or accurately prepare financial reports, or invoice and collect from our customers.
In fiscal year 2017, we began the process of implementing a new enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) system and other accounting systems, including a new revenue reporting system in advance of the adoption of ASC 606 in fiscal year 2019. These systems are critical for accurately maintaining books and records and preparing our financial statements. We intend to transition to our new ERP and revenue systems during fiscal year 2018. While we will invest significant amounts, including for additional personnel and third-party consultants, to implement these systems, we cannot assure you that the implementation will be successful or that we will not experience difficulties following the transition. Any delay or error in the implementation or transition could adversely affect our operations, including our ability to accurately report our financial results in a timely manner, file our quarterly or annual reports with the SEC, and invoice and collect from our customers, each of which may harm our operations and reduce investor confidence. Even if we are able to complete the implementation, data integrity problems or other issues may subsequently be discovered which, if not corrected, could impact our business, reputation or results of operations. If we encounter unforeseen difficulties with our new ERP and revenue system implementations, there will be additional demands on our management team and our business, operations and results of operations could be adversely affected.
Our customers may defer or forego purchases of our products or services in the event of weakened global economic conditions political transitions and industry consolidation.
General worldwide economic conditions remain unstable. Prolonged economic uncertainties or downturns could harm our business operations or financial results. For example, the decision by referendum to withdraw the United Kingdom (U.K.) from the European Union (“Brexit”) in June 2016 caused significant volatility in global stock markets and fluctuations in currency exchange rates and the impending Brexit has arguably caused and may continue to cause delays in purchasing decisions by our potential and current customers affected by this transition. The results of this referendum, or other global events, may continue to create global economic uncertainty not only in the U.K., but in other regions in which we have significant operations. These conditions make it difficult for our customers and us to forecast and plan future business activities accurately, and they could cause our customers to reevaluate their decision to purchase our products, which could delay and lengthen our sales cycles or result in cancellations of planned purchases. Furthermore, during challenging economic times our customers may face issues in gaining
timely access to sufficient credit, which could result in an impairment of their ability to make timely payments to us. If that were to occur, we may be required to record an allowance for doubtful accounts, which would adversely affect our financial results. A substantial downturn in the P&C insurance industry may cause firms to react to worsening conditions by reducing their capital expenditures in general or by specifically reducing their spending on information technology. P&C insurance companies may delay or cancel information technology projects or seek to lower their costs by renegotiating vendor contracts. Negative or worsening conditions in the general economy both in the United States and abroad, including conditions resulting from financial and credit market fluctuations, could cause a decrease in corporate spending on enterprise software in general, and in the insurance industry specifically, and negatively affect the rate of growth of our business.
The increased pace of consolidation in the P&C insurance industry may result in reduced overall spending on our products. Acquisitions of customers can delay or cancel sales cycles and because we cannot predict the timing or duration of such acquisitions, our results of operations could be materially impacted by the change in the industry.
Factors outside of our control including but not limited to natural catastrophes and terrorism may adversely impact the P&C insurance industry, preventing us from expanding or maintaining our existing customer base and increasing our revenues.
Our customers are P&C insurers which have experienced, and will likely experience in the future, losses from catastrophes or terrorism that may adversely impact their businesses. Catastrophes can be caused by various events, including, without limitation, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, windstorms, earthquakes, hail, tornadoes, explosions, severe weather and fires. Global warming trends are contributing to an increase in erratic weather patterns globally and intensifying the impact of certain types of catastrophes. Moreover, acts of terrorism or war could cause disruptions to our business or our customers’ businesses or the economy as a whole. The risks associated with natural catastrophes and terrorism are inherently unpredictable, and it is difficult to forecast the timing of such events or estimate the amount of losses they will generate. In 2017, for example, parts of the United States suffered extensive damage due to multiple hurricanes and fires. We anticipate the combined effect of those losses to be very large. Such losses and losses due to future events may adversely impact our current or potential customers, which may prevent us from maintaining or expanding our customer base and increasing our revenues as such events may cause customers to postpone purchases of new offerings and professional service engagements or to discontinue existing projects.
Our sales and implementation cycles are lengthy and variable, depend upon factors outside our control, and could cause us to expend significant time and resources prior to generating revenues.
The typical sales cycle for our products and services is lengthy and unpredictable, requires pre-purchase evaluation by a significant number of employees in our customers’ organizations, and often involves a significant operational decision by our customers. Our sales efforts involve educating our customers about the use and benefits of our products, including the technical capabilities of our products and the potential cost savings achievable by organizations deploying our products. Customers typically undertake a significant evaluation process, which frequently involves not only our products, but also those of our competitors and can result in a lengthy sales cycle. We spend substantial time, effort and money in our sales efforts without any assurance that our efforts will produce sales. Even if we succeed at completing a sale, we may be unable to predict the size of an initial license until very late in the sales cycle. In addition, we sometimes commit to include specific functions in our base product offering at the request of a customer or group of customers and are unable to recognize license revenues until the specific functions have been added to our products. Providing this additional functionality may be time consuming and may involve factors that are outside of our control. Customers may also insist that we commit to certain time frames in which systems built around our products will be operational, or that once implemented our products will be able to meet certain operational requirements. Our ability to meet such timeframes and requirements may involve factors that are outside of our control, and failure to meet such timeframes and requirements could result in us incurring penalties, costs and/or additional resource commitments, which would adversely affect our business and results of operations.
The implementation and testing of our products by our customers typically lasts 6 to 24 months or longer and unexpected implementation delays and difficulties can occur. Implementing our products typically involves integration with our customers’ and third-party’s systems, as well as adding customer and third-party data to our platform. This can be complex, time consuming and expensive for our customers and can result in delays in the implementation and deployment of our products. Failing to meet the expectations of our customers for the implementation of our products could result in a loss of customers and negative publicity about us and our products and services. Such failure could result from deficiencies in our product capabilities or inadequate service engagements by us, our system integrator partners or our customers’ IT employees, the latter two of which are beyond our direct control. The consequences of such failure could include, and have included: monetary credits for current or future service engagements, reduced fees for additional product sales or upon renewals of existing licenses, and a customer’s refusal to pay their contractually-obligated license, maintenance or service fees. In addition, time-consuming implementations may also increase the amount of services personnel we must allocate to each customer, thereby increasing our costs and adversely affecting our business, results of operations and financial condition.
If we are unable to continue the successful development of our global direct sales force and the expansion of our relationships with our strategic partners, sales of our products and services will suffer and our growth could be slower than we project.
We believe that our future growth will depend on the continued recruiting, retention and training of our global direct sales force and their ability to obtain new customers, both large and small P&C insurers, and to manage our existing customer base. Our ability to achieve significant growth in revenues in the future will depend, in large part, on our success in recruiting, training and retaining a sufficient number of global direct sales personnel. New hires require significant training and may, in some cases, take more than a year before becoming productive, if at all. If we are unable to hire and develop sufficient numbers of productive global direct sales personnel, sales of our products and services will suffer and our growth will be impeded.
We believe our future growth also will depend on the retention and expansion of successful relationships with system integrators, including with system integrators that will focus on InsuranceNow and other products we may acquire in the future. Our system integrators as channel partners help us reach additional customers. Our growth in revenues, particularly in international markets, will be influenced by the development and maintenance of this indirect sales channel which, in some cases, may require the establishment of effective relationships with regional systems integrators. Although we have established relationships with some of the leading system integrators, our products and services may compete directly against products and services that such leading system integrators support or market. We are unable to control the quantity or quality of resources that our system integrator partners commit to implementing our products, or the quality or timeliness of such implementation. If our partners do not commit sufficient or qualified resources to these activities, our customers will be less satisfied, be less supportive with references, or may require the investment of our resources at discounted rates. These, and other failures by our partners to successfully implement our products, will have an adverse effect on our business and our results of operations could fail to grow in line with our projections.
Our large customers have substantial negotiating leverage, which may require that we agree to terms and conditions that result in increased cost of sales, decreased revenues and lower average selling prices and gross margins, all of which could harm our results of operations.
Some of our customers include the world’s largest P&C insurers. These customers have significant bargaining power when negotiating new licenses or subscriptions, or renewals of existing agreements, and have the ability to buy similar products from other vendors or develop such systems internally. These customers have and may continue to seek advantageous pricing and other commercial terms and may require us to develop additional features in the products we sell to them. We have been required to, and may continue to be required to, reduce the average selling price, or increase the average cost, of our products in response to these pressures. If we are unable to avoid reducing our average selling prices or increasing our average costs, our results of operations could be harmed.
Failure of any of our established products or services to satisfy customer demands or to maintain market acceptance would harm our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects.
We derive a significant majority of our revenues and cash flows from our established product offerings, including InsuranceSuite, InsuranceNow and our Digital and Data Products. We expect to continue to derive a substantial portion of our revenues from these sources. As such, continued market acceptance of these products is critical to our growth and success. Demand for our products is affected by a number of factors, some of which are beyond our control, including the successful implementation of our products, the timing of development and release of new products by us and our competitors, technological advances which reduce the appeal of our products, and the growth or contraction in the worldwide market for technological solutions for the P&C insurance industry. If we are unable to continue to meet customer demands, to achieve and maintain a technological advantage over competitors, or to maintain market acceptance of our products, our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects may be adversely affected.
Our business depends on customers renewing and expanding their license, maintenance and subscription contracts for our products. A decline in our customer renewals and expansions could harm our future results of operations.
Our customers have no obligation to renew their term licenses or subscriptions after their contract period expires, and these licenses and subscriptions, if renewed, may be done so on less favorable terms. Moreover, under certain circumstances, our customers have the right to cancel their licenses or subscriptions before they expire. We may not accurately predict future trends in customer renewals. In addition, our term and perpetual license customers have no obligation to renew their maintenance arrangements after the expiration of the initial contractual period. Our customers’ renewal rates may fluctuate or decline because of several factors, including their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with our products and services, the prices of our products and services, the prices of products and services offered by our competitors or reductions in our customers’ spending levels due to the macroeconomic environment or other factors, or the sale of their operations to a buyer that is not a current customer.
Also, in some cases, our customers have a right to exercise a perpetual buyout of their term licenses at the end of the initial contract term, which if exercised would eliminate future term license payments. If our customers do not renew their term licenses
or subscriptions for our solutions or renew on less favorable terms, our revenues may decline or grow more slowly than expected and our profitability may be harmed.
If we are unable to develop, introduce and market new and enhanced versions of our products, we may be put at a competitive disadvantage.
Our success depends on our continued ability to develop, introduce and market new and enhanced versions of our products to meet evolving customer requirements. Because some of our products are complex and require rigorous testing, development cycles can be lengthy, taking us multiple years to develop and introduce new products or provide updates to our existing products. Additionally, market conditions may dictate that we change the technology platform underlying our existing products or that new products be developed on different technology platforms, potentially adding material time and expense to our development cycles. The nature of these development cycles may cause us to experience delays between the time we incur expenses associated with research and development and the time we generate revenues, if any, from such expenses.
If we fail to develop new products or enhancements to our existing products, our business could be adversely affected, especially if our competitors are able to introduce products with enhanced functionality. It is critical to our success for us to anticipate changes in technology, industry standards and customer requirements and to successfully introduce new, enhanced and competitive products to meet our customers’ and prospective customers’ needs on a timely basis. We have invested and intend to increase investments in research and development to meet these challenges. Revenues may not be sufficient to support the future product development that is required for us to remain competitive. If we fail to develop products in a timely manner that are competitive in technology and price or develop products that fail to meet customer demands, our market share will decline and our business and results of operations could be harmed.
Real or perceived errors or failures in our products or implementation services may affect our reputation, cause us to lose customers and reduce sales which may harm our business and results of operations and subject us to liability for breach of warranty claims.
Because we offer complex products, undetected errors or failures may exist or occur, especially when products are first introduced or when new versions are released. Our products are often installed and used in large-scale computing environments with different operating systems, system management software and equipment and networking configurations, which may cause errors or failures in our products or may expose undetected errors, failures or bugs in our products. Despite testing by us, we may not identify all errors, failures or bugs in new products or releases until after commencement of commercial sales or installation. In the past, we have discovered software errors, failures and bugs in some of our product offerings after their introduction.
We provide our customers with upfront estimates regarding the duration, resources and costs associated with the implementation of our products. Failure to meet these upfront estimates and the expectations of our customers could result from our product capabilities or service engagements by us, our system integrator partners or our customers’ IT employees, the latter two of which are beyond our direct control. The consequences could include, and have included: monetary credits for current or future service engagements, reduced fees for additional product sales, and a customer’s refusal to pay their contractually-obligated license, maintenance or service fees. In addition, time-consuming implementations may also increase the amount of services personnel we must allocate to each customer, thereby increasing our costs and adversely affecting our business, results of operations and financial condition.
The license and support of our software creates the risk of significant liability claims against us. Our license and subscription agreements with our customers contain provisions designed to limit our exposure to potential liability claims. It is possible, however, that the limitation of liability provisions contained in such agreements may not be enforced as a result of international, federal, state and local laws or ordinances or unfavorable judicial decisions. Breach of warranty or damage liability, or injunctive relief resulting from such claims, could harm our results of operations and financial condition.
Failure to protect our intellectual property could substantially harm our business and results of operations.
Our success depends in part on our ability to enforce and defend our intellectual property rights. We rely upon a combination of trademark, trade secret, copyright, patent and unfair competition laws, as well as license agreements and other contractual provisions, to do so.
We have filed, and may in the future file, patent applications related to certain of our innovations. We do not know whether those patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will require us to narrow our claims. In addition, we may not receive competitive advantages from the rights granted under our patents and other intellectual property. Our existing patents and any patents granted to us or that we otherwise acquire in the future, may be contested, circumvented or invalidated, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing these patents. Therefore, the extent of the protection afforded by these patents cannot be predicted with certainty. In addition, given the costs, effort, risks and downside
of obtaining patent protection, including the requirement to ultimately disclose the invention to the public, we may choose not to seek patent protection for certain innovations; however, such patent protection could later prove to be important to our business.
We also rely on several registered and unregistered trademarks to protect our brand. Nevertheless, competitors may adopt service names similar to ours, or purchase our trademarks and confusingly similar terms as keywords in Internet search engine advertising programs, thereby impeding our ability to build brand identity and possibly leading to confusion in the marketplace. In addition, there could be potential trade name or trademark infringement claims brought by owners of other registered trademarks or trademarks that incorporate variations of our trademarks. Any claims or customer confusion related to our trademarks could damage our reputation and brand and substantially harm our business and results of operations.
We attempt to protect our intellectual property, technology, and confidential information by generally requiring our employees and consultants to enter into confidentiality and assignment of inventions agreements and third parties to enter into nondisclosure agreements, all of which offer only limited protection. These agreements may not effectively prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our confidential information, intellectual property or technology and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure of our confidential information, intellectual property or technology. Despite our efforts to protect our confidential information, intellectual property, and technology, unauthorized third parties may gain access to our confidential proprietary information, develop and market products or services similar to ours, or use trademarks similar to ours, any of which could materially harm our business and results of operations. In addition, others may independently discover our trade secrets and confidential information, and in such cases, we could not assert any trade secret rights against such parties. Existing U.S. federal, state and international intellectual property laws offer only limited protection. The laws of some foreign countries do not protect our intellectual property rights to as great an extent as the laws of the United States, and many foreign countries do not enforce these laws as diligently as governmental agencies and private parties in the United States. Moreover, policing our intellectual property rights is difficult, costly and may not always be effective.
From time to time, legal action by us may be necessary to enforce our patents and other intellectual property rights, to protect our trade secrets, to determine the validity and scope of the intellectual property rights of others or to defend against claims of infringement or invalidity. Such litigation could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and could negatively affect our business, reputation, results of operations and financial condition. If we are unable to protect our technology and to adequately maintain and protect our intellectual property rights, we may find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to others who need not incur the additional expense, time and effort required to create the innovative products that have enabled us to be successful to date.
We may be obligated to disclose our proprietary source code to our customers, which may limit our ability to protect our intellectual property and could reduce the renewals of our support and maintenance services.
Our software license agreements typically contain provisions permitting the customer to become a party to, or a beneficiary of, a source code escrow agreement under which we place the proprietary source code for our applicable products in escrow with a third party. Under these escrow agreements, the source code to the applicable product may be released to the customer, typically for its use to maintain, modify and enhance the product, upon the occurrence of specified events, such as our filing for bankruptcy, discontinuance of our maintenance services and breaching our representations, warranties or covenants of our agreements with our customers. Additionally, in some cases, customers have the right to request access to our source code upon demand. Some of our customers have obtained the source code for certain of our products by exercising this right, and others may do so in the future.
Disclosing the content of our source code may limit the intellectual property protection we can obtain or maintain for that source code or the products containing that source code and may facilitate intellectual property infringement claims against us. It also could permit a customer to which a product’s source code is disclosed to support and maintain that software product without being required to purchase our support or maintenance services. Each of these could harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We and our customers rely on technology and intellectual property of third parties, the loss of which could limit the functionality of our products and disrupt our business.
We use technology and intellectual property licensed from unaffiliated third parties in certain of our products, and we may license additional third-party technology and intellectual property in the future. Any errors or defects in this third-party technology and intellectual property could result in errors that could harm our brand and business. In addition, licensed technology and intellectual property may not continue to be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. The loss of the right to license and distribute this third-party technology could limit the functionality of our products and might require us to redesign our products.
Some of our services and technologies may use “open source” software, which may restrict how we use or distribute our services or require that we release the source code of certain products subject to those licenses.
Some of our services and technologies may incorporate software licensed under so-called “open source” licenses. In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on origin of the software. Additionally, some open source licenses require that source code subject to the license be made available to the public and that any modifications or derivative works to open source software continue to be licensed under open source licenses. These open source licenses typically mandate that proprietary software, when combined in specific ways with open source software, become subject to the open source license. If we combine our proprietary software in such ways with open source software, we could be required to release the source code of our proprietary software.
We take steps to ensure that our proprietary software is not combined with, and does not incorporate, open source software in ways that would require our proprietary software to be subject to many of the restrictions in an open source license. However, few courts have interpreted open source licenses, and the manner in which these licenses may be interpreted and enforced is therefore subject to some uncertainty. Additionally, we rely on hundreds of software programmers to design our proprietary technologies, and although we take steps to prevent our programmers from including objectionable open source software in the technologies and software code that they design, write and modify, we do not exercise complete control over the development efforts of our programmers and we cannot be certain that our programmers have not incorporated such open source software into our proprietary products and technologies or that they will not do so in the future. In the event that portions of our proprietary technology are determined to be subject to an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code, re-engineer all or a portion of our technologies, or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our technologies, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our services and technologies and materially and adversely affect our business, results of operations and prospects.
Incorrect or improper use of our products or our failure to properly train customers on how to utilize our products could result in customer dissatisfaction and negatively affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects.
Our products are complex and are deployed in a wide variety of network environments. The proper use of our products requires training of the customer. If our products are not used correctly or as intended, inadequate performance may result. Our products may also be intentionally misused or abused by customers or their employees or third parties who are able to access or use our products. Because our customers rely on our products, services and maintenance support to manage a wide range of operations, the incorrect or improper use of our products, our failure to properly train customers on how to efficiently and effectively use our products, or our failure to properly provide maintenance services to our customers may result in negative publicity or legal claims against us. Also, as we continue to expand our customer base, any failure by us to properly provide these services will likely result in lost opportunities for follow-on sales of our products and services.
In addition, if there is substantial turnover of customer personnel responsible for use of our products, or if customer personnel are not well trained in the use of our products, customers may defer the deployment of our products, may deploy them in a more limited manner than originally anticipated or may not deploy them at all. Further, if there is substantial turnover of the customer personnel responsible for use of our products, our ability to make additional sales may be substantially limited.
Our ability to sell our products is highly dependent on the quality of our professional services and technical support services and the support of our system integration providers, and the failure of us or our system integration providers to offer high-quality professional services or technical support services could damage our reputation and adversely affect our ability to sell our products and services to new customers and renew agreements with our existing customers.
If we or our system integration providers do not effectively assist our customers in deploying our products, succeed in helping our customers quickly resolve post-deployment issues, and provide effective ongoing support, our ability to sell additional products and services to existing customers would be adversely affected and our reputation with potential customers could be damaged. Once our products are deployed and integrated with our customers’ existing information technology investments and data, our customers may depend on our technical support services and/or the support of system integrators or internal resources to resolve any issues relating to our products. High-quality support is critical for the continued successful marketing and sale of our products. In addition, as we continue to expand our operations internationally, our support organization will face additional challenges, including those associated with delivering support, training and documentation in languages other than English. Many enterprise customers require higher levels of support than smaller customers. If we fail to meet the requirements of our larger customers, it may be more difficult to increase our penetration with larger customers, a key group for the growth of our revenues and profitability. In addition, as we further expand our products to include a cloud-based offering, our professional services and support organization will face new challenges, including hiring, training and integrating a large number of new professional services personnel with experience in delivering high-quality support for cloud-based offerings. Alleviating any of these problems could require significant capital expenditures which could adversely affect our growth prospects. Further, as we continue to rely on
system integrators to provide deployment and on-going services, our ability to ensure a high level of quality in addressing customer issues is diminished. Our failure to maintain high-quality implementation and support services, or to ensure that system integrators provide the same, could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects.
If we are unable to retain our personnel and hire and integrate additional skilled personnel, we may be unable to achieve our goals and our business will suffer.
Our future success depends upon our ability to continue to attract, train, integrate and retain highly skilled employees, particularly those on our management team, including Marcus Ryu, one of our co-founders and our current president and chief executive officer, and our sales and marketing personnel, professional services personnel and software engineers. Our inability to attract and retain qualified personnel, or delays in hiring required personnel, may seriously harm our business, results of operations and financial condition. U.S. immigration policy is currently being reviewed by the federal government, which may or may not result in significant changes and could hamper our efforts to hire highly skilled foreign employees. If future changes to U.S. immigration policy restrict our access to highly specialized engineers, our business would be adversely impacted.
Any one of our executive officers and other key employees could terminate his or her relationship with us at any time. The loss of any member of our senior management team could significantly delay or prevent us from achieving our business and/or development objectives, and could materially harm our business.
We face competition for qualified individuals from numerous software and other technology companies. Competition for qualified personnel is particularly intense in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters are located, though we also face significant competition in all of our domestic and foreign development centers. Further, significant amounts of time and resources are required to train technical, sales, services and other personnel. We may incur significant costs to attract, train and retain such personnel, and we may lose new employees to our competitors or other technology companies before we realize the benefit of our investment after recruiting and training them.
Also, to the extent that we hire personnel from competitors, we may be subject to allegations that such personnel have been improperly solicited or have divulged proprietary or other confidential information. In addition, we have a limited number of sales people and the loss of several sales people within a short period of time could have a negative impact on our sales efforts. We may be unable to attract and retain suitably qualified individuals who are capable of meeting our growing technical, operational and managerial requirements, or we may be required to pay increased compensation in order to do so.
Our ability to expand geographically depends, in large part, on our ability to attract, retain and integrate managers to lead the local business and employees with the appropriate skills. Similarly, our profitability depends on our ability to effectively utilize personnel with the right mix of skills and experience to perform services for our clients, including our ability to transition employees to new assignments on a timely basis. If we are unable to effectively deploy our employees globally on a timely basis to fulfill the needs of our clients, our reputation could suffer and our ability to attract new clients may be harmed.
Because of the technical nature of our products and services and the dynamic market in which we compete, any failure to attract, integrate and retain qualified direct sales, professional services and product development personnel, as well as our contract workers, could harm our ability to generate sales or successfully develop new products, customer and consulting services and enhancements of existing products.
Failure to manage our expanding operations effectively could harm our business.
We have experienced consistent growth and expect to continue to expand our operations, among other factors, in the number of employees and in the locations and scope of our international operations. This expansion has placed, and will continue to place, a significant strain on our operational and financial resources and our personnel. To manage our anticipated future operational expansion effectively, we must continue to maintain and may need to enhance our information technology infrastructure, financial and accounting systems and controls and manage expanded operations and employees in geographically distributed locations. For example, in fiscal 2018, we anticipate implementing a new enterprise resource planning system, as well as related revenue recognition modules. Our growth could require significant capital expenditures and may divert financial resources from other projects, such as the development of new products. If we increase the size of our organization without experiencing an increase in sales of our products and services, we will experience reductions in our gross and operating margins and net income. If we are unable to effectively manage our expanding operations and related system implementations, our expenses may increase more than expected, our revenues could decline or grow more slowly than expected and we may be unable to implement our business strategy.
Our international sales and operations subject us to additional risks that can adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We sell our products and services to customers located outside the United States and Canada, and we are continuing to expand our international operations as part of our growth strategy. In fiscal years 2017, 2016 and 2015, $162.1 million, $148.8 million and $134.6 million of our revenues, respectively, were derived from outside of the United States and Canada. Our current international operations and our plans to expand our international operations subject us to a variety of risks, including:
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increased management, travel, infrastructure and legal compliance costs associated with having multiple international operations;
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unique terms and conditions in contract negotiations imposed by customers in foreign countries;
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longer payment cycles and difficulties in enforcing contracts and collecting accounts receivable;
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the need to localize our products and licensing and subscription programs for international customers;
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lack of familiarity with and unexpected changes in foreign regulatory requirements;
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increased exposure to fluctuations in currency exchange rates;
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the burdens and costs of complying with a wide variety of foreign laws and legal standards;
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compliance with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (“FCPA”), the U.K. Bribery Act and other anti-corruption regulations, particularly in emerging market countries;
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compliance by international staff with accounting practices generally accepted in the United States, including adherence to our accounting policies and internal controls;
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import and export license requirements, tariffs, taxes and other trade barriers;
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increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities;
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weaker protection of intellectual property rights in some countries;
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multiple and possibly overlapping tax regimes;
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government sanctions that may interfere with our ability to sell into particular countries, such as Russia; and
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political, social and economic instability abroad, terrorist attacks and security concerns in general.
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As we continue to expand our business globally, our success will depend, in large part, on our ability to anticipate and effectively manage these and other risks associated with our international operations. Any of these risks could harm our international operations and reduce our international sales, adversely affecting our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects.
Our revenues, results of operations and cash flows are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates, particularly changes in the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Euro, British Pound, Japanese Yen, Polish Zloty and Brazilian Real.
The volatility of exchange rates depends on many factors that we cannot forecast with reliable accuracy. Although we believe our operating activities act as a natural hedge for a substantial portion of our foreign currency exposure at the cash flow or operating income level because we typically collect revenues and incur costs in the currency in the location in which we provide our application, our contracts with our customers are long term in nature so it is difficult to predict if our operating activities will provide a natural hedge in the future. In addition, because our contracts are characterized by large annual payments, significant fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates that coincide with annual payments may affect our revenues or financial results in such quarter. Our results of operations may also be impacted by transaction gains or losses related to revaluing certain current asset and liability balances that are denominated in currencies other than the functional currency of the entities in which they are recorded. Moreover, significant and unforeseen changes in foreign currency exchange rates may cause us to fail to achieve our stated projections for revenue and operating income, which could have an adverse effect on our stock price. We will continue to experience fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, which, if material, may harm our revenues or results of operations.
Privacy concerns could result in regulatory changes and impose additional costs and liabilities on us, limit our use of information, and adversely affect our business.
Our current and predominant business model does not significantly collect and transfer personal information from our customers to us, however, as adoption of our cloud-based services occurs, the amount of customer data we manage, hold and/or collect will increase significantly. In addition, a limited number of our product solutions may collect, process, store, and use transaction-level data aggregated across insurers using our common data model. We anticipate that over time we will expand the use and collection of personal information as greater amounts of such personal information may be transferred from our customers to us and we recognize that personal privacy has become a significant issue in the United States, Europe, and many other jurisdictions where we operate. Many federal, state, and foreign legislatures and government agencies have imposed or are considering imposing restrictions and requirements about the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information.
Changes to laws or regulations affecting privacy could impose additional costs and liabilities on us and could limit our use of such information to add value for customers. If we were required to change our business activities or revise or eliminate services,
or to implement burdensome compliance measures, our business and results of operations could be harmed. In addition, we may be subject to fines, penalties, and potential litigation if we fail to comply with applicable privacy and/or data security laws, regulations, standards and other requirements. The costs of compliance with and other burdens imposed by privacy-related laws, regulations and standards may limit the use and adoption of our product solutions and reduce overall demand.
Furthermore, concerns regarding data privacy and/or security may cause our customers’ customers to resist providing the data and information necessary to allow our customers to use our product solutions effectively. Even the perception that the privacy and/or security of personal information is not satisfactorily managed, or does not meet applicable legal, regulatory and other requirements, could inhibit sales of our products or services, and could limit adoption of our solutions, resulting in a negative impact on our sales and results from operations.
Privacy concerns in the European Union are evolving and we may face fines and other penalties if we fail to comply with these evolving standards, and compliance with these standards may increase our expenses and adversely affect our business and results of operations.
In the European Community, Directive 95/46/EC (the “Directive”) has required European Union member states to implement data protection laws to meet the strict privacy requirements of the Directive, which has resulted in changes in previously accepted practices.
Among other changes, EU Commission has formally adopted a new mechanism for the transfer of personal data from the European Union (the “EU”) to the United States, branded the “EU-US Privacy Shield” (“Privacy Shield”). We are currently certified with the U.S. Department of Commerce (“DOC”) to comply with the Privacy Shield a Framework, however, companies will continue to face uncertainty to the extent they operate in both jurisdictions and transfer any Personal Data between the two. If we are investigated by a European data protection authority and found to be out of compliance, we could 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.
While we will continue to undertake efforts to conform to current regulatory obligations and evolving best practices, we may be unsuccessful in conforming to means of transferring Personal Data from the EEA. We may also experience hesitancy, reluctance, or refusal by European or multi-national customers to continue to use some of our services due to the potential risk exposure of Personal Data transfers and the current data protection obligations imposed on them by certain data protection authorities. Such customers may also view any alternative approaches to the transfer of any Personal Data as being too costly, too burdensome, or otherwise objectionable, and therefore may decide not to do business with us if the transfer of Personal Data is a necessary requirement.
Though our current and predominant business model does not significantly collect and transfer personal information from our customers to us, the potential transition to more cloud-based services, and the current data protection landscape in the EU may subject us to greater risk of potential inquiries and/or enforcement actions. We may find it necessary to establish alternative systems to maintain Personal Data originating from the EU in the EEA, which may involve substantial expense and may cause us to need to divert resources from other aspects of our business, all of which may adversely affect our results from operations. Further, any inability to adequately address privacy concerns in connection with our cloud-based services, or comply with applicable privacy or data protection laws, regulations and policies, could result in additional cost and liability to us, and adversely affect our ability to offer cloud-based services.
Anticipated further evolution of EU regulations on this topic may increase substantially the penalties to which we could be subject in the event of any non-compliance. We may incur substantial expense in complying with the new obligations to be imposed by new regulations and we may be required to make significant changes to our software applications and expanding business operations, all of which may adversely affect our results of operations.
The nature of our business requires the application of complex revenue and expense recognition rules that require management to make estimates and assumptions. Additionally, the current legislative and regulatory environment affecting U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("GAAP") is uncertain and significant changes in current principles could affect our financial statements going forward.
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with U.S. GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in the consolidated financial statements. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities, equity, revenues and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources.
While we believe that our financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, we cannot predict the impact of future changes to accounting principles or our accounting policies on our financial statements going forward. In addition, were we to change our critical accounting estimates, including the timing
of recognition of license revenue and other revenue sources, our reported revenues and results of operations could be significantly impacted.
The accounting rules and regulations that we must comply with are complex. Additionally, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (the "FASB") and the Securities and Exchange Commission have focused on the integrity of financial reporting. In addition, many companies' accounting policies are being subject to heightened scrutiny by regulators and the public. Further, the accounting rules and regulations are continually changing in ways that could materially impact our financial statements.
The FASB issued new accounting guidance on revenue recognition that becomes effective for us beginning August 1, 2018. The standard permits the use of either the full retrospective or cumulative effect transition method. We currently intend to select the cumulative effect transition method. While we continue to evaluate the impact this guidance will have on our financial condition and results of operations, any change in how we recognize revenues can have a significant impact on our quarterly or annual financial results from operations. In order to reduce the risk of financial statement volatility, we revised our contracting practices primarily by shortening the initial non-refundable term of our licenses. If we are unsuccessful in adapting our business to the requirements of the new revenue standard, or if changes to our go-to-market strategy create new risks, then we may experience greater volatility in our quarterly and annual results, which may cause our stock price to decline. In addition to greater volatility, the application of this new standard may result in the exclusion of a portion of the licensing revenues from contracts in effect prior to the adoption date, which, despite no change in associated cash flows, could have a material adverse effect on our recognized revenues and net income.
If we fail to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting in the future, the accuracy and timing of our financial reporting may be adversely affected.
Preparing our consolidated financial statements involves a number of complex manual and automated processes, which are dependent upon individual data input or review and require significant management judgment. One or more of these elements may result in errors that may not be detected and could result in a material misstatement of our consolidated financial statements. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act”) requires, among other things, that as a publicly-traded company we disclose whether our internal control over financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures are effective.
If a material misstatement occurs in the future, we may fail to meet our future reporting obligations. For example, we may fail to file periodic reports in a timely manner or may need to restate our financial results, either of which may cause the price of our common stock to decline. Any failure of our internal controls could also adversely affect the results of the periodic management evaluations and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports regarding the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting that are required under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Effective internal controls are necessary for us to produce reliable financial reports and are important to helping prevent financial fraud. Furthermore, transition in enterprise resource planning or other major operational systems could impact the timely generation of our financial statements. In fiscal 2017, we began implementing a new financial management system, as well as applications to help us manage the recognition of our revenues under a new standard. We currently anticipate completing implementation of these applications by the third quarter of fiscal year 2018. If as a result of implementing this new system or otherwise, we cannot provide timely reliable financial reports, our business and results of operations could be harmed, investors could lose confidence in our reported financial information, and the trading price of our stock could drop significantly.
If tax laws change or we experience adverse outcomes resulting from examination of our income tax returns, it could adversely affect our results of operations.
We are subject to federal, state and local income taxes in the United States and in foreign jurisdictions. Our future effective tax rates and the value of our deferred tax assets could be adversely affected by changes in tax laws. In addition, we are subject to the examination of our income tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service and other tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from such examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes. Significant judgment is required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes. Although we believe we have made appropriate provisions for taxes in the jurisdictions in which we operate, changes in the tax laws or challenges from tax authorities under existing tax laws could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
We may not be able to obtain capital when desired on favorable terms, if at all, and we may not be able to obtain capital or complete acquisitions through the use of equity without dilution to our stockholders.
We may need additional financing to execute on our current or future business strategies, including to develop new or enhance existing products and services, acquire businesses and technologies, or otherwise to respond to competitive pressures.
If we raise additional funds through the issuance of equity or convertible debt securities, the percentage ownership of our stockholders could be significantly diluted, and newly-issued securities may have rights, preferences or privileges senior to those of existing stockholders. If we accumulate additional funds through debt financing, a substantial portion of our operating cash
flow may be dedicated to the payment of principal and interest on such indebtedness, thus limiting funds available for our business activities. We cannot assure you that additional financing will be available on terms favorable to us, or at all. If adequate funds are not available or are not available on acceptable terms, when we desire them, our ability to fund our operations, take advantage of unanticipated opportunities, develop or enhance our products and services, or otherwise respond to competitive pressures would be significantly limited. Any of these factors could harm our results of operations.
Our business is subject to the risks of earthquakes, fire, floods and other natural catastrophic events, and to interruption by man-made problems such as computer viruses.
Our corporate headquarters and the majority of our operations are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region known for seismic activity. A significant natural disaster, such as an earthquake, tsunami, fire or a flood, could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations and financial condition. In addition, our information technology systems are vulnerable to computer viruses, break-ins and similar disruptions from unauthorized tampering. To the extent that such disruptions result in delays or cancellations of customer orders or collections, or the deployment of our products, our business, results of operations and financial condition would be adversely affected.
Our stock price may be volatile, which could result in securities class action litigation against us.
The market price of our common stock could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to, among other things, the risk factors described in this report, and other factors beyond our control, such as fluctuations in the valuation of companies perceived by investors to be comparable to us and research analyst coverage about our business.
Furthermore, the stock markets have experienced price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. These fluctuations often have been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. These broad market and industry fluctuations, as well as general economic, political and market conditions, such as recessions, interest rate changes or international currency fluctuations, have and may continue to affect the market price of our common stock.
In the past, many companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may become the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, which could seriously harm our business.
We currently do not intend to pay dividends on our common stock and, consequently, your only opportunity to achieve a return on your investment is if the price of our common stock appreciates.
We currently do not plan to declare dividends on shares of our common stock in the foreseeable future. Consequently, the only opportunity to achieve a return on investment in our company will be if the market price of our common stock appreciates and shares are sold at a profit.
Certain provisions of our certificate of incorporation and bylaws and of Delaware law could prevent a takeover that stockholders consider favorable and could also reduce the market price of our stock.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws contain provisions that could delay or prevent a merger, acquisition or other change in control that stockholders may consider favorable, including transactions in which stockholders might otherwise receive a premium for their shares. These provisions may also prevent or delay attempts by stockholders to replace or remove our current management or members of our board of directors. These provisions include:
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providing for a classified board of directors with staggered three-year terms, which could delay the ability of stockholders to change the membership of a majority of our board of directors;
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not providing for cumulative voting in the election of directors, which limits the ability of minority stockholders to elect director candidates;
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authorizing our board of directors to issue, without stockholder approval, preferred stock rights senior to those of common stock, which could be used to significantly dilute the ownership of a hostile acquirer;
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prohibiting stockholder action by written consent, which forces stockholder action to be taken at an annual or special meeting of our stockholders;
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limiting the persons who may call special meetings of stockholders, which could delay the ability of our stockholders to force consideration of a proposal or to take action, including the removal of directors; and
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requiring advance notification of stockholder nominations and proposals, which may discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirer’s own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of us.
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The affirmative vote of the holders of at least 66
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% of our shares of capital stock entitled to vote is generally necessary to amend or repeal the above provisions that are contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. Also, absent approval of our board of directors, our amended and restated bylaws may only be amended or repealed by the affirmative vote of the holders of at least 50% of our shares of capital stock entitled to vote.
In addition, we are subject to the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. These provisions may prohibit large stockholders, in particular those owning 15% or more of our outstanding common stock, from engaging in certain business combinations without approval of substantially all of our stockholders for a certain period of time.
These and other provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, our amended and restated bylaws and under Delaware law could discourage potential takeover attempts, reduce the price that investors might be willing to pay for shares of our common stock in the future and result in the market price being lower than it would be without these provisions.