Item 1A. Risk Factors
Our business, operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those described below, that could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and the trading price of our Class A Common Stock. The following material factors, among others, could cause our actual results to differ materially from historical results and those expressed in forward-looking statements made by us or on our behalf in filings with the SEC, press releases, communications with investors, and oral statements. If any of the following risks or others not specified below materialize, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. In that case, the trading price of our Class A Common Stock could decline, and you could lose all or part of your investment in our Class A Common Stock.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
We have incurred net losses in each year since inception, and we may not be able to achieve profitability.
We incurred net losses of $(154.6) million, $(92.3) million, and $(84.9) million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. Historically, we have invested significantly in efforts to grow our homeowner base, both through our individual and portfolio strategies, as well as through strategic acquisitions, and to grow our guest community, and have increased our marketing spend, expanded our operations, hired additional employees, and enhanced our platform. While we significantly reduced our fixed and variable costs beginning in the second quarter of 2020 as a result of certain cost reduction measures we undertook in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we resumed investing in our business in the first quarter of 2021 and expect our fixed and variable costs to increase in the future as we continue making significant investments in our business, including escalating acquisition activities, making improvements in our owner tools and portal, improving our field tools, and investing in technology and infrastructure.
These efforts may prove more expensive than we currently anticipate, and we may not succeed in increasing our revenue sufficiently, or at all, to offset these higher expenses. We also expect to incur additional expenses on an ongoing basis, including additional legal, accounting and other expenses as a result of becoming a public company, and additional stock-based compensation expense as a result of the satisfaction, in connection with the Business Combination, of the liquidity-based vesting condition with respect to stock appreciation rights (SARs), and such awards (Vacasa SAR Awards) held by certain of our employees and other persons. If our revenue does not increase to offset the expected increases in our operating expenses, we will not achieve profitability in future periods and our net losses may increase.
Revenue growth may slow or revenue may decline for a number of possible reasons, many of which are beyond our control, including slowing demand for our offerings, increasing competition, or any of the other factors discussed in this “Risk Factors” section. Certain types of homes and certain regions in which we operate result in listings with lower commission rates and/or lower service fees, which could have a materially negative impact on our overall operating margins. In addition, we have changed, and may in the future reduce, our commission rates and service fees for strategic or competitive reasons. Any failure to increase our revenue or manage the increase in our operating expenses could prevent us from achieving or sustaining profitability as measured by net income, operating income, or Adjusted EBITDA at all or on a consistent basis, which would cause our business, results of operations and financial condition to suffer and the market price of our Class A Common Stock to decline.
Our business and operations have experienced rapid growth, and if we do not appropriately manage this growth and any future growth, or if we are unable to improve our systems, processes and controls, our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects will be adversely affected.
The growth and expansion of our business places a continuous and significant strain on our management, operational, financial and other resources. In order to manage our growth effectively, we must continue to improve and expand our information technology and financial infrastructure, our security and compliance requirements, our operating and administrative systems, our customer service and support capabilities, our relationships with various distribution partners and other third parties, and our ability to manage headcount and processes in an efficient manner.
We may not be able to sustain the pace of improvements to our platform and services, or the development and introduction of new offerings, successfully, or implement systems, processes, and controls in an efficient or timely manner or in a manner that does not negatively affect our results of operations. Our failure to improve our systems, processes, and controls, or their failure to operate in the intended manner, may result in our inability to manage the growth of our business and to forecast our revenue, expenses, and earnings accurately, or to prevent losses.
As we continue to expand our business and operate as a public company, we may find it difficult to maintain our corporate culture while managing our employee growth. Any failure to manage our anticipated growth and related organizational changes in a manner that preserves our culture could negatively impact future growth and achievement of our business objectives. Additionally, our productivity and the quality of our offerings may be adversely affected if we do not integrate and train our new employees quickly and effectively. These challenges have been, and may continue to be, heightened due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the related stay-at-home, travel and other restrictions instituted by governments in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Failure to manage our growth to date, and any future growth, effectively could result in increased costs, negatively affect homeowner and guest satisfaction and adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects.
Our recent growth may not be indicative of our future growth, and we may not be able to sustain a similar revenue growth rate in the future. Our recent growth also makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects and may increase the risk that we will not be successful.
Our recent growth may not be indicative of our future growth, and we may not be able to sustain a similar revenue growth rate in the future. Our recent growth also makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects and may increase the risk that we will not be successful. Our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019 were $889.1 million, $491.8 million, and $299.3 million, respectively, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 81% compared to 2020 and 64% compared to 2019. You should not rely on the revenue growth of any prior period as an indication of our future performance. Our future revenue growth depends on the growth of supply of homes for our platform and demand for vacation rentals on our platform and the platforms of our distribution partners, and our business is affected by general economic and business conditions worldwide as well as trends in the global travel and hospitality industries. In addition, we believe that our revenue growth depends upon a number of additional factors, including, among other things:
•the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the travel and accommodations industries;
•our ability to retain and grow the number of guests and Nights Sold;
•our ability to retain and grow the number of homeowners and available listings on our platform, as well as the number of nights available to be booked;
•the occurrence of events beyond our control, such as any future pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of infectious disease and other health concerns, increased or continuing restrictions on travel and immigration, trade disputes, economic downturns, significant labor shortages, political, civil or social unrest (such as the conflict involving Russia and Ukraine), and the impact of climate change on travel (including fires, floods, severe weather and other natural disasters) and on seasonal destinations;
•our ability to maintain our relationships with our existing distribution partners and enter into relationships with additional distribution partners, and the availability of, and accessibility of our listings on, their platforms;
•our ability to consummate portfolio transactions and to effectively manage the risks associated with these transactions;
•our ability to successfully compete against established companies and new market entrants;
•our ability to price our offerings effectively and establish appropriate contract terms;
•the legal and regulatory landscape, including changes in the application of existing laws and regulations or the adoption of new laws and regulations that impact our business, homeowners, and/or guests, including changes in short-term occupancy and tax laws, and our ability to comply with applicable laws and regulations;
•the level of consumer awareness and perception of our brand;
•the level of spending on, and effectiveness of, brand, performance and other marketing initiatives to attract homeowners and guests to our service;
•our ability to introduce and grow new offerings, and to deepen our presence in certain geographic regions;
•the timing, effectiveness, and costs of expansion and upgrades to our services, platform and infrastructure;
•our ability to hire, integrate, train and retain skilled personnel;
•our ability to determine the most appropriate investments for our limited resources; and
•other risks described elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
A softening of demand, whether caused by events outside of our control, such as COVID-19 or any other pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of infectious disease, changes in homeowner and guest preferences, any of the other factors described above, or elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K or otherwise, will impair our ability to grow our revenue. Furthermore, our revenue growth has declined in recent periods and, even if our revenue continues to increase, we expect our revenue growth to decline in the future. If our revenue growth continues to decline, we may not achieve profitability and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
In addition, our recent growth may make it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects. Our ability to forecast our future results of operations is subject to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to effectively plan for and model future growth. We have encountered in the past, and may encounter in the future, risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in changing industries that may prevent us from achieving the objectives discussed elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. If we fail to achieve the necessary level of efficiency in our organization as it grows, or if we are not able to accurately forecast future growth, our business would be adversely affected. Moreover, if the assumptions that we use to plan our business are incorrect or change in reaction to changes in our industry and the markets in which we operate, or if we are unable to maintain consistent revenue or revenue growth, the market price of our Class A Common Stock could be volatile, and it may be difficult to achieve and maintain profitability.
If we are unable to attract new vacation rental homeowners to our platform and maintain relationships with existing vacation rental homeowners, or if homeowners reduce the availability of their homes on our platform, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
Our business depends on our ability to attract new vacation rental homeowners to our platform and maintain relationships with our existing homeowner base, and on those homeowners allowing us to make their homes available for rental through our service. We deploy focused outbound sales efforts to identify and convert homeowners to our platform, and also utilize a variety of marketing, public relations and communications strategies to increase homeowner awareness regarding our brand. If our sales personnel are unable to accurately identify and convert a sufficient number of prospective homeowners, if they fail to accurately predict the value of these homeowners’ properties on our platform, or if our sales and marketing efforts are otherwise unsuccessful, our revenue and growth prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In addition, homeowners are able to limit the number of nights available through our services. These practices are outside of our direct control. If homeowners do not establish or maintain availability of their vacation rentals, or if the number of Nights Sold declines for a particular period, then our revenue would decline and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
While we plan to continue to invest in our homeowner base and in tools to assist homeowners, these investments may not be successful in growing our homeowner base or the vacation rental listings published on our platform and through our distribution partners. In addition, homeowners may not continue their contractual arrangements with us if we cannot attract prospective guests to our platform, generate bookings from a large number of guests and create attractive returns to homeowners. If we are unable to retain existing homeowners or add new homeowners, we may be unable to offer a sufficient supply and variety of properties to attract guests to use our platform. If we are unable to attract and retain individual homeowners in a cost-effective manner, or at all, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
We work with certain homeowner associations to manage their association activities and we often act to manage vacation rental properties for homeowners within these associations. If our fee structure and payment terms are not as competitive as those of our competitors, these homeowner associations may choose to end their business relationships with us thereby reducing the number of homeowners using our platform and vacation rentals listed with our service.
While the number of homeowners using our platform increased year-over-year in 2020, we also saw an increase in homeowner terminations during 2020 due to COVID-19. For the year ended December 31, 2020, approximately 7% of homeowner terminations were directly attributable to COVID-19 based on information provided to the Company by homeowners regarding their reason for terminating. For the year ended December 31, 2021, homeowner terminations directly attributable to COVID-19 began to normalize and were less than half of the rate observed during the year ended December 31, 2020. A number of factors affecting homeowners could cause homeowner attrition, including: the continuing COVID-19 pandemic or the occurrence of any other pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of infectious disease; changes to, or the enforcement or threatened enforcement of, laws and regulations, including short-term occupancy and tax laws; homeowners’, condominium and neighborhood associations adopting and enforcing governing documents or contracts that prohibit or restrict short term rental activities; regulations that purport to ban or otherwise restrict short term rentals; homeowners opting for long-term rentals outside of our service; economic, social, and political factors; perceptions of trust and safety on and off our platform and within our homes; or negative experiences with guests, including guests who damage homeowner property, throw unauthorized parties, or engage in violent and unlawful acts. A number of our homeowners are individuals who have acquired properties specifically for rental. Our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected if our homeowners are unable or unwilling to allow us to list and manage their properties and return to normal operations in the near to immediate term.
We believe that our supplemental homeowner protection program is integral to retaining and acquiring homeowners. Our homeowner insurance program offers a layer of vacation rental liability protection, including $1.0 million liability coverage due to homeowner negligence, $1.0 million coverage in damage protection for homeowners’ homes, coverage for damage to furnishings and valuables up to $25,000 and bedbug protection up to $15,000. While we currently have no intention to discontinue or reduce our homeowner protection programs, if our intentions change in the future, if the third-party insurance provider ends the program and we cannot implement a comparable program on similar terms, or if the cost of the program rises significantly and becomes less attractive to homeowners, then the number of homeowners who list with us may decline.
Owners whose reservations were cancelled during COVID-19, whether by us or by guests, have had and may continue to have a negative view of our cancellation policy and may experience negative financial impacts as a result of such cancellations. This could materially negatively impact our relationship with our homeowners and guests, resulting in homeowners leaving our service, removing their listings and/or offering less availability, or fewer repeat guests, which in turn could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition, as well as on our ability to grow our business.
If we are unable to attract new guests and retain existing guests, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
Our success depends significantly on existing guests continuing to book and attracting new guests to book our homeowners’ vacation rentals through the Vacasa platform and through listings on the platforms of our distribution partners. Our ability to attract and retain guests could be materially adversely affected by a number of factors, including, among others:
•the occurrence of events beyond our control, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, any other pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of infectious disease and other health concerns, increased or continuing restrictions on travel and immigration, trade disputes, economic downturns, significant labor shortages, political, civil or social unrest, and the impact of climate change on travel (including fires, floods, severe weather and other natural disasters) and seasonal destinations;
•homes failing to meet guests’ expectations;
•increased competition and use of our competitors’ platforms and services;
•our failure to provide differentiated, high-quality, and an adequate supply of homes at competitive prices;
•guests not receiving timely and adequate customer support from us;
•declines or inefficiencies in our marketing efforts;
•negative associations with, or reduced awareness of, our brand;
•problems with our distribution partners;
•negative perceptions of the trust and safety on our platform or in our homeowners’ homes;
•macroeconomic and other conditions outside of our control affecting travel and hospitality industries generally; and
•other risks described elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
In addition, for guests who book directly with us, if our platform is not easy to navigate, guests have an unsatisfactory sign-up, search, booking, or payment experience on our platform, the listings and other content provided on our platform are not displayed effectively to guests, we fail to make our brand known to guests during their rental experience or we fail to provide a rental experience in a manner that meets rapidly changing demand, we could fail to convert first-time guests into repeat customers and fail to engage with existing guests, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Bookings through our distribution partners account for a significant portion of our revenue, and if we are unable to maintain our relationships with our existing distribution partners and develop and maintain successful relationships with additional distribution partners, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially and adversely affected. These relationships also subject us to certain risks.
We believe that the continued growth of our business depends, in part, on our ability to maintain our relationships with our existing distribution partners and to identify, develop, and maintain strategic relationships with additional distribution partners, particularly as we continue to grow our brand recognition and our own booking platform. For the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, we generated approximately 70% and 65%, respectively, of our GBV through our distribution partners. The impairment or termination of these relationships for any reason, or the failure of our distribution partners to effectively market our listings and provide satisfactory user experiences could materially and adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. Our agreements with our existing distribution partners are non-exclusive, meaning our distribution partners can and do provide users looking for vacation rentals in the markets in which we operate access to listings other than ours. These parties are not bound by any requirement to continue to market our listings, and may take actions that promote their or other third-party listings above ours. In addition, certain of these companies are now, or may in the future become, competitors of ours. While we view our distribution partners more as partners than competitors and believe our relationships with these parties are mutually beneficial, we cannot guarantee that our distribution partners will continue to share this view. If our distribution partners view us as competitive, they could limit our access to their platforms, allow access only at an unsustainable cost, or make changes to their platforms that make our listings less desirable to users or harder to access.
In addition, bookings through Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo account for a significant portion of our GBV. For the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, GBV generated through Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo accounted for approximately 95% and 95%, respectively, of the GBV generated through our distribution partners. The loss of any one or more of these distribution partners, or a material reduction in the number of listings booked through their platforms, including for any of the reasons described above, would adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Any further and continued decline or disruption to the travel and hospitality industries or economic downturn would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our financial performance is dependent on the strength of the travel and hospitality industries. The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused many governments to implement quarantines and significant restrictions on travel or to advise that people remain at home where possible and avoid crowds, which has had a particularly negative impact on air and other types of travel. In addition, most airlines that suspended or significantly limited their flights at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to operate on reduced flight schedules and at lower passenger capacities, further decreasing opportunities for travel. This led to a decrease in our bookings and an increase in cancellations and associated claims for refunds or credits for the period of time from March 2020 through the third quarter of 2020. We expect that COVID-19 may continue to impact our bookings and business during 2022. The extent and duration of such impact over the longer term remains uncertain and is dependent on future developments that cannot be accurately predicted at this time, such as the severity and transmission rate of COVID-19, potential new strains and variants of the virus, the timing, availability, and effectiveness of vaccines, the extent and effectiveness of containment actions taken, including mobility restrictions, and the impact of these and other factors on travel behavior in general, and on our business in particular. See our risk factor titled “The COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of actions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic have materially adversely impacted and will continue to materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.”
Other events beyond our control, such as unusual or extreme weather or natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, tsunamis, floods, significant snow storms, other severe weather, droughts, and volcanic eruptions, and travel-related health concerns including pandemics and epidemics, restrictions related to travel, trade or immigration policies, wars (such as the conflict involving Russia and Ukraine), terrorist attacks, sources of political uncertainty, such as the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union (Brexit), protests, foreign policy changes, regional hostilities, imposition of taxes or surcharges by regulatory authorities, changes in regulations, policies, or conditions related to sustainability, including climate change, work stoppages, labor unrest or travel-related accidents can disrupt travel globally or otherwise result in declines in travel demand. Because these events or concerns, and the full impact of their effects, are largely unpredictable, they can dramatically and suddenly affect travel behavior by consumers, and therefore demand for our platform and services, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Increasing awareness around the impact of air travel on climate change and the impact of over-tourism may also adversely impact the travel and hospitality industries and demand for our platform and services.
In March 2020, we began to offer future stay credits in lieu of refunds to guests who had reservations cancelled due to COVID-19 or who cancelled their reservations within a certain period of time prior to the reservation date. Subsequently, we began issuing future stay credits in response to a more broad variety of events that led to cancellations. As of December 31, 2021, we accrued approximately $31.0 million of value of unused future stay credits. Revenue from future stay credits is recognized when the future stay credits are redeemed by customers, net of the portion of the booking attributable to funds payable to owners and hospitality and sales taxes payable. Unredeemed future stay credits will be recognized as revenue upon expiration, or earlier if we are able to reliably estimate expected breakage. As a result, customer redemption activity could lead to volatility in our results of operations. Given the uncertainty associated with customer redemption activity, a material amount of future stay credits may expire unused beginning in the first quarter of 2022 and be recognized as revenue.
Our financial performance is also subject to global economic conditions and their impact on levels of discretionary consumer spending. Some of the factors that have an impact on discretionary consumer spending include general economic conditions, worldwide or regional recessions, unemployment, consumer debt, reductions in net worth, fluctuations in exchange rates, wage inflation, residential real estate and mortgage markets, taxation, energy prices, interest rates, consumer confidence, tariffs, and other macroeconomic factors.
Consumer preferences tend to shift to lower-cost alternatives during recessionary periods and other periods in which disposable income is adversely affected, which could lead to a decline in the bookings and prices for rentals through our platform and an increase in cancellations, and thus result in lower revenue. Leisure travel in particular, which accounts for a substantial majority of our current business, is dependent on discretionary consumer spending levels. Downturns in worldwide or regional economic conditions, such as the downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a general decrease in leisure travel and travel spending, and similar downturns in the future may materially adversely impact demand for our platform and services. Such a shift in consumer behavior would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our continued growth depends, in part, on our ability to consummate portfolio transactions and to effectively manage the risks associated with these transactions.
Our ability to successfully execute portfolio transactions is critical to our ability to enter new markets and build local market density at a faster rate than we can achieve through individual homeowner additions. As a result, we believe our portfolio approach contributes to our ability to grow revenue and increase our profitability over time. Our ability to execute our portfolio strategy depends, in part, on our ability to identify and maintain a robust pipeline of local professionally managed vacation home businesses in new and existing markets, enter into transaction arrangements and optimize the performance of these properties upon onboarding. If we are unable to identify a sufficient number of property portfolios, or if local property managers are unwilling to transact with us, our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects could be materially and adversely affected.
In addition, onboarding the properties we acquire through our portfolio approach can entail significant costs and risks that have the potential to erode the profitability we may expect to achieve through these transactions. The onboarding process for these properties involves, among other things, understanding and standardizing accounting systems and bookkeeping practices and moving homeowners onto our standardized contracts. It is possible homeowners may choose not to enter into agreements with us once their existing agreements expire. Our ability to successfully execute these transactions also depends on our ability to retain key staff members of the businesses we acquire, particularly in cases where we are entering new markets, which we cannot guarantee we will be able to do. Executing these transactions in new markets also entails additional costs and risks, including the need to understand and comply with new regulatory requirements and build our local operations network and other local resources. If we are unable to successfully and efficiently manage these risks and their associated costs, these
transactions may be less profitable than we anticipate, fail to be profitable at all, or otherwise adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Furthermore, certain of the businesses we acquire through our portfolio approach may not initially have the accounting systems necessary to provide the information we need to report certain key metrics, such as GBV, Nights Sold, and GBV per Night Sold. As a result, for the period during which they are being integrated, such metrics may be reported exclusive of these non-integrated homes, which could adversely affect investor perceptions regarding our business and the trading price of our Class A Common Stock.
The failure to successfully execute and integrate strategic acquisitions at our historical rate and at acceptable prices, and to enter into other strategic transactions and relationships that support our long-term strategy, could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition, as well as our ability to grow our business. These strategic transactions and relationships also subject us to certain risks.
We have acquired multiple businesses, including our October 2019 acquisition of Wyndham Vacation Rentals North America, LLC (WVRNA) and our April 2021 acquisition of TurnKey, and we regularly evaluate potential strategic acquisitions and other strategic transactions in the ordinary course as part of our business strategy. Promising acquisitions, investments and other strategic transactions are difficult to identify and complete for a number of reasons, including high valuations, competition among prospective buyers, the availability of affordable funding in the capital markets and the need to satisfy applicable closing conditions and obtain applicable antitrust and other regulatory approvals on acceptable terms. Changes in accounting or regulatory requirements or instability in the credit markets could also adversely impact our ability to consummate these transactions on acceptable terms or at all. As a result, we may enter into negotiations for strategic acquisitions that are not ultimately consummated, and those negotiations could result in diversion of management’s time and significant out-of-pocket costs. In addition, competition for strategic acquisitions, investments and other strategic transactions may result in higher purchase prices or other terms less economically favorable to us. We may expend significant cash or incur substantial debt to finance such acquisitions, which indebtedness could result in restrictions on our business and significant use of available cash to make payments of interest and principal. In addition, we may finance such acquisitions by issuing equity or convertible debt securities, which could result in further dilution to our existing stockholders. If we fail to evaluate and execute strategic acquisitions and other strategic transactions successfully, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
In addition, even if we are able to consummate strategic acquisitions and enter into other strategic transactions and relationships, we cannot assure you that any such strategic transactions or relationships will be successful. Integrating any strategic transactions into our existing business may create unforeseen operating difficulties and costs, which may be further exacerbated by factors and events beyond our control. For example, in October 2019, we completed the acquisition of WVRNA and its related subsidiaries from Wyndham Destinations, Inc. and took over Wyndham’s vacation rental property management operations in North America. This included management of over 9,000 new properties, 100 homeowner and community association arrangements, management of resort operations and certain ancillary services. Soon after the acquisition, we began the process of integrating the vacation rental management activities of various operating entities under the WVRNA umbrella, each of which had different and varied business operations and practices. In the first quarter of 2020, as we began to execute a number of key integration initiatives, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and negatively impacted our ability to effectively and efficiently integrate the business, significantly delaying our business harmonization efforts. In addition, in April 2021, we acquired TurnKey’s vacation rental property management business, adding approximately 6,000 homes to our platform and approximately 500 employees to our workforce. With the TurnKey integration, we have encountered similar, expected challenges of rationalizing and combining disparate business practices and processes.
Furthermore, strategic acquisitions and other strategic transactions and relationships involve a number of financial, accounting, managerial, operational, legal, compliance and other risks and challenges, including the following, any of which could negatively affect our growth rate and the trading price of our Class A Common Stock, and may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition:
•Any business that we acquire or invest in could under-perform relative to our expectations and the price that we paid or not perform in accordance with our anticipated timetable, or we could fail to operate any such business profitably;
•Any debt we incur or assume in connection with our strategic acquisitions and other strategic transactions and relationships could cause a deterioration of our credit ratings, increase our borrowing costs and interest expense, and diminish our future access to the capital markets;
•Acquisitions and other strategic transactions and relationships could cause our financial results to differ from our own or the investment community’s expectations in any given period, or over the long-term;
•Pre-closing and post-closing earnings charges could adversely impact operating results in any given period, and the impact may be substantially different from period to period;
•Acquisitions and other strategic transactions and relationships could create demands on our management, operational resources and financial and internal control systems that we are unable to effectively address;
•We may be unable to achieve cost savings or other synergies anticipated in connection with a strategic acquisition or other strategic transaction or relationship;
•We may assume unknown liabilities, known contingent liabilities that become realized, known liabilities that prove greater than anticipated, internal control deficiencies or exposure to regulatory sanctions resulting from the acquired company’s or investee’s activities and the realization of any of these liabilities or deficiencies may increase our expenses, adversely affect our financial position and/or cause us to fail to meet our public financial reporting obligations;
•In connection with strategic acquisitions and other strategic transactions and relationships, we often enter into post-closing financial arrangements such as purchase price adjustments, earn-out obligations and indemnification obligations, which may have unpredictable financial results;
•As a result of our strategic acquisitions, we have recorded significant goodwill and other assets on our balance sheet and if we are not able to realize the value of these assets, or if the fair value of our investments declines, we may be required to incur impairment charges; and
•We may have interests that diverge from those of our strategic partners and we may not be able to direct the management and operations of the strategic relationship in the manner we believe is most appropriate, exposing us to additional risk.
Our failure to raise additional capital or generate the significant capital necessary to expand our operations and invest in new offerings could reduce our ability to compete and could adversely affect our business.
Prior to the Business Combination, our principal sources of liquidity have been from proceeds we have received through the issuance of preferred equity and debt financing. We have incurred significant operating losses and generated negative cash flows from operations as we have invested to support the growth of our business and expect to continue to do so in the future as we execute on our strategic initiatives to grow our business. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including, but not limited to, our growth, our ability to attract and retain new homeowners and guests that utilize our services, the extent and profitability of our portfolio transaction activity, the continuing market acceptance of our offerings, the timing and extent of spending to enhance our technology, and the expansion of our sales and marketing activities and, as a result, we may require additional financing. We evaluate financing opportunities from time to time, and our ability to obtain financing will depend, among other things, on our development efforts, business plans, operating performance, and the condition of the capital markets at the time we seek financing. We cannot assure you that additional financing will be available to us on favorable terms when required, or at all. If we raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences, and privileges superior to those of holders of our Class A Common Stock. In addition, our stockholders will experience additional dilution when stock appreciation rights holders and option holders exercise their rights to purchase our Class A Common Stock under our equity incentive plans, any restricted stock units we may grant from time to time vest and settle, we issue equity awards to our employees under our equity incentive plans or our employee stock purchase plan, and we otherwise issue additional equity interests.
If we need additional capital and cannot raise it on acceptable terms, we may not be able to, among other things:
•develop or enhance our platform, products or services;
•consummate portfolio transactions and strategic acquisitions in order to grow our supply in existing markets and enter new markets;
•continue to expand our research and development and sales and marketing organizations;
•acquire complementary technologies, products or businesses;
•effectively expand our operations in the United States and internationally;
•hire, train, and retain employees; or
•respond to competitive pressures or unanticipated working capital requirements.
If we are unable to raise additional funds when we need them and on terms that are acceptable to us, our ability to continue to support our business, respond to business challenges and opportunities, and execute our growth strategy would be significantly limited, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
The business and industry in which we participate are highly competitive, and we may be unable to compete successfully with our current or future competitors.
We operate in a highly competitive environment and we face significant competition in attracting and retaining homeowners and guests.
Homeowners. Homeowners have two primary options for online listing, demand generation and distribution and care of their homes, self-management or using local property management businesses. Homeowners who self-manage are able to list on sites such as Airbnb and Vrbo, and may choose to leverage additional software tools to handle aspects of the process such as pricing or scheduling, or fully self- manage. We compete for homeowners based on many factors, including the volume of bookings generated by guests on our platform and those of our distribution partners; ease of onboarding onto our platform; the service fees and commissions we charge; the owner protections we offer, such as our insurance programs; and the strength of our brand. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have also competed based on our cancellation and shut down policies in response to regulatory actions.
Guests. We also compete to attract guests to our platform. Guests have a wide range of options for finding and booking accommodations, and as such, we compete with other forms of accommodations including hotels, other vacation rental companies, and serviced apartment providers, both online and offline. We also compete for traffic and demand generation through our direct booking channel, with Airbnb, Booking Holdings (including the brands Agoda.com, Booking.com, KAYAK, and Priceline.com), Expedia Group (including the brands Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity and Vrbo), Google, Tripadvisor, Trivago, and regional booking sites and online travel agencies, and to a lesser degree, urban rental sites such as Sonder, and niche programs such as Inspirato. We compete for guests based on many factors, including the uniqueness and quality of our homes and the availability of homes; the value and all-in cost of our offerings relative to other options, our brand; and the ease of use of our platform. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have also competed based on the availability of homes close to where guests live, as well as the perceived safety and cleanliness of the listings on our platform.
Our competitors are adopting aspects of our business model, which could affect our ability to differentiate our offerings from competitors. Increased competition could reduce demand for our platform from homeowners and guests, slow our growth, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Many of our current and potential competitors are larger and have greater financial, technical and other resources that provide substantial competitive advantages, such as greater brand name recognition, longer operating histories, larger marketing budgets and established marketing relationships, and significantly greater resources for the development of their offerings. In addition, many of our current and potential competitors have access to larger user bases and/or inventory for accommodations, and may provide multiple travel products, including flights. As a result, our competitors may be able to provide consumers with a better or more complete product experience and respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards, or homeowner and guest requirements or preferences. The global travel industry has experienced significant consolidation, and we expect this trend may continue as companies attempt to strengthen or hold their market positions in a highly competitive industry. Consolidation amongst our competitors will give them increased scale and may enhance their capacity, abilities, and resources, and lower their cost structures. In addition, emerging start-ups may be able to innovate and focus on developing a new product or service faster than we can or may foresee consumer need for new offerings or technologies before us.
Some of our competitors and potential competitors have more established or varied relationships with consumers than we do, and they could use these advantages in ways that could affect our competitive position, including by entering the travel and accommodations businesses. For example, some competitors and potential competitors are creating “super-apps” where consumers can use many online services without leaving that company’s app. If any of these platforms are successful in offering services to consumers that are similar to ours, or if we are unable to offer our services to consumers within these super-apps, our customer acquisition efforts could be less effective and our customer acquisition costs, including our brand and performance marketing expenses, could increase, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We also face increasing competition from search engines, including Google. The way Google presents travel search results, and its promotion of its own travel meta-search services, such as Google Travel and Google Vacation Rental Ads, or similar actions from other search engines, and their practices concerning search rankings, could decrease our search traffic, increase traffic acquisition costs, and/or disintermediate our platform. These parties can also offer their own comprehensive travel planning and booking tools, or refer leads directly to suppliers, other favored partners, or themselves, which could also disintermediate our platform. In addition, if Google or Apple use their own mobile operating systems or app distribution channels to favor their own or other preferred travel service offerings, or impose policies that effectively disallow us to continue our full product offerings in those channels, it could materially adversely affect our ability to engage with homeowners and guests who access our platform via mobile apps or search, which would negatively impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of actions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic have materially adversely impacted and may continue to materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. In an attempt to limit the spread of the virus, governments imposed various restrictions, including emergency declarations at the international, federal, state, and local levels, school and business closings, quarantines, “shelter at home” & “stay-at-home” orders, restrictions on travel, limitations on social or public gatherings, and other social distancing measures, which have had and may continue to have a material adverse impact on our business and operations and on travel behavior and demand.
In response to the economic challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our business, we took cost reduction measures to mitigate the adverse impacts of COVID-19 during the first two quarters of 2020, which included lower discretionary and overhead spending, as well as an internal reorganization that reduced the size of our workforce, primarily in North America, resulting in the elimination of approximately 850 positions. Additionally, we furloughed approximately 3,000 employees, which primarily occurred in the second quarter of 2020. This reduction in workforce impacted all of our teams with significant reductions in our operations, customer service and sales teams. These organizational changes also resulted in the loss of institutional knowledge, relationships, and expertise for critical roles, which may not have been effectively transferred to continuing employees and diverted attention from operating our business. These actions resulted in personnel capacity constraints and had an adverse effect on our ability to grow, integrate acquired businesses and resources, develop innovative products, and compete. These actions resulted in increased employee attrition, reduced employee morale and productivity and problems retaining existing and recruiting future employees due to brand damage, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. The reduction in force and other restructuring activities resulted in charges of $5.0 million in 2020.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic materially and adversely impacted our operating and financial results for the year ended December 31, 2020. Beginning at the end of the first quarter of 2020, we experienced a significant decline in revenue resulting from a decrease in bookings and an increase in cancellations, which in turn impacted Nights Sold. Due to the impact the reduction in bookings initially had on our financial condition, we issued $108.1 million in aggregate principal amount of senior secured convertible notes (D-1 Convertible Notes) to provide for liquidity and fund other general corporate initiatives. While we began to experience a significant increase in bookings and reduction in cancellations in the second half of 2020, management made the decision to realign our business and strategic priorities based on our core operating strengths, which resulted in the wind-down of a significant portion of our international business by December 31, 2020. Additionally, our additions of new homes were significantly muted in 2020 due to the reduction in sales staff and portfolio spend associated with COVID-19 furloughs, layoffs and cash preservation strategies. As a result, we did not grow our total vacation rental home listings in 2020 to the same extent we have historically, which impacted our revenue growth in 2021. In light of the evolving nature of COVID-19 and the uncertainty it has produced around the world, we do not believe it is possible to predict the COVID-19 pandemic’s cumulative and ultimate impact on our future business, results of operations, and financial condition. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic will impact our business, results of operations and financial condition will depend largely on future developments, including the duration and extent of the spread of COVID-19 both globally and within the United States, the availability, adoption and effectiveness of vaccines for COVID-19, the prevalence of local, national, and international travel restrictions, the duration and extent of reduced flight volume, the impact on capital and financial markets and on the U.S. and global economies, including foreign currencies exchange, and the effects of governmental or regulatory orders that impact our business, all of which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted. Moreover, even as stay-at-home orders and travel advisories are lifted, demand for our offerings may remain depressed in some markets for a significant length of time, and we cannot predict if and when demand will return to pre-COVID-19 levels.
In addition, COVID-19 has disrupted and may continue to disrupt the operations of our business partners and third-party vendors, suppliers, and service providers. We cannot predict the impact the COVID-19 pandemic will ultimately have on these parties, and we may continue to be materially adversely impacted as a result of any material adverse impact our business partners and third-party vendors, suppliers, and service providers suffer now and in the future.
In 2020, some homeowners chose to impose owner blocks or take their properties out of service or out of our portfolio entirely due to either changed personal economic circumstances or concern for safety relating to COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has also resulted in, and may continue to result in, significant disruption of global financial markets, reducing our ability to access capital, which could in the future negatively affect our liquidity. If a natural disaster, power outage, connectivity issue, or other event occurs that impacts our employees’ ability to work remotely, it may be difficult or, in certain cases, impossible, for us to continue our business for a substantial period of time. The increase in remote working may also result in material consumer privacy, information technology security, and fraud risks. The manner in which we have adjusted our business following the COVID-19 pandemic is based on our understanding of applicable legal and regulatory requirements, as well as the latest guidance from regulatory authorities, and is subject to legal or regulatory challenge, particularly as regulatory guidance evolves in response to future developments.
It is not possible to quantify the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our business and operations to date as a result of the factors discussed above, or to estimate the long-term impact that COVID-19 could have on our business, financial condition and results of operations as the impact will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted. Even after the outbreak of COVID-19 has subsided, we may experience materially adverse impacts to our business as a result of its global economic impact, including any recession that has occurred or may occur in the future. These uncertainties may increase variability in our results of operations and adversely affect our ability to accurately forecast changes in our operating and financial performance in future periods. To the extent the COVID-19 pandemic continues to materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition, it may also have the effect of heightening many of the other risks described in this “Risk Factors” section. Any of the foregoing factors, or other cascading effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that are not currently foreseeable, could materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We may experience significant fluctuations in our results of operations from quarter to quarter and year to year as a result of seasonality and other factors, which make it difficult to forecast our future results.
Our results of operations may vary significantly from quarter to quarter and year to year and are not an indication of our future performance. Our overall business is seasonal, reflecting typical travel behavior patterns over the course of the calendar year. In addition, each market where we operate has unique seasonality, events, and weather that can increase or decrease demand for our offerings. Certain holidays can have an impact on our revenue by increasing Nights Sold on the holiday itself or during the preceding and subsequent weekends. Typically, our second and third quarters have higher revenue due to increased Nights Sold. Our GBV typically follows the seasonality patterns of Nights Sold. Our operations and support costs also increase in the second and third quarters as we increase our hourly staffing to handle increased activity on our platform in those periods. In 2020, we saw COVID-19 overwhelm the historical seasonality pattern in our revenue as well as in our Nights Sold, GBV and Adjusted EBITDA.
These changes were primarily the result of shelter-in-place orders and changing travel preferences relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. We expect this impact on typical seasonality to continue as long as COVID-19 continues to impact travel restrictions and customer preferences globally. As our business matures, other seasonal trends may develop, or these existing seasonal trends may become more extreme. In addition to seasonality, our results of operations may fluctuate as a result of a variety of other factors, many of which are beyond our control, may be difficult to predict, and may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business, including:
•reduced travel and cancellations due to other events beyond our control such as health concerns, including the COVID-19 pandemic or other pandemics, epidemics or outbreaks of infectious disease, natural disasters, wars, regional hostilities or law enforcement demands and other regulatory actions;
•periods with increased investments in our platform for existing offerings, new offerings and initiatives, marketing, and the accompanying growth in headcount;
•our ability to maintain growth and effectively manage that growth;
•increased competition;
•our ability to expand our operations in new and existing regions;
•changes in governmental or other regulations affecting our business;
•changes to our internal policies or strategies;
•harm to our brand or reputation; and
•other risks described elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
As a result, it may be more difficult to accurately forecast our results of operations and, if our forecasts are not accurate, we may fail to meet the expectations of investors and securities analysts, which could cause the trading price of our Class A Common Stock to fall substantially and potentially subject us to costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits. Moreover, we base our expense levels and investment plans on estimates for revenue that may turn out to be inaccurate. A significant portion of our expenses and investments are fixed, and we may not be able to adjust our spending quickly enough if our revenue is less than expected, resulting in losses that exceed our expectations. If our assumptions regarding the risks and uncertainties that we use to plan our business are incorrect or change, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our results of operations could differ materially from our expectations and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
Demand for vacation rental properties has increased in recent periods compared to demand for other forms of accommodations, and we cannot guarantee that this trend will continue once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.
Despite the uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for vacation rental properties has increased over the last two years and we believe that COVID-19 helped to accelerate that trend. For instance, according to the Skift study, which we commissioned, approximately 19% of travelers stayed in a vacation rental for the first time during the pandemic. We believe
that social distancing requirements and concerns about cleanliness made vacation rental properties more appealing to travelers than traditional accommodations, such as hotels, due to the increased privacy that vacation rentals provide. We experienced significant strength in the fourth quarter of 2020 due to pent up demand from COVID-19 limiting travel in the second and third quarters of 2020, which drove Nights Sold per home and revenue per home up above typical seasonal levels.
Despite the increased demand for vacation rental properties over the last two years, we cannot be certain that this trend will continue after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. As social distancing measures are lifted and international destinations reopen for tourism, it is possible that travelers may prefer to stay in traditional accommodations or vacation in international locations where we do not operate. If the demand for vacation rental properties decreases and reduces our overall number of Nights Sold, our results of operations could differ materially from our expectations and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
Our customer support function is critical to the success of our platform, and any failure to provide high-quality service could affect our ability to retain our existing homeowners and guests and attract new ones.
Our ability to provide high-quality support to our homeowners and guests is important for the growth of our business and any failure to maintain such standards of customer support, or any perception that we do not provide high-quality service, could affect our ability to retain and attract homeowners and guests. Meeting the customer support expectations of our homeowners and guests requires significant time and resources from our customer support team and significant investment in staffing, technology, including automation and machine learning to improve efficiency, infrastructure, policies, and customer support tools. The failure to develop the appropriate technology, infrastructure, policies, and customer support tools, or to manage or properly train our customer support team, could compromise our ability to resolve questions and complaints quickly and effectively. The number of our homeowners and guests has grown significantly and such growth, as well as any future growth, will put additional pressure on our internal customer support organization, our external customer support contracting team and our technology organization. In addition, as we service an international customer base, we need to be able to provide effective support that meets our homeowners’ and guests’ needs and languages globally at scale. As part of the reduction in force we undertook in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we significantly reduced the number of employees in our customer support organization and our technology organization, which impacted our ability to provide effective support to our homeowners and guests. Our service is staffed based on business forecasts. Any volatility in those forecasts could lead to staffing gaps that could impact the quality of our service. We have in the past experienced and may in the future experience backlog incidents that lead to substantial delays or other issues in responding to requests for customer support, which may reduce our ability to effectively retain homeowners and guests.
Our customer support is performed by a mix of employees and outside contracted customer support providers. We rely on our internal team and such third party providers to provide timely and appropriate responses to the inquiries of homeowners and guests that come to us via telephone, email, social media, and chat. Over the last twelve months we have begun to rely more heavily on third party services for customer support. Reliance on third parties requires that we provide proper guidance for their employees, maintain proper controls and procedures for interacting with our customers, and ensure acceptable levels of quality and customer satisfaction are achieved.
We provide customer support to homeowners and guests and help to mediate disputes between homeowners and guests. We rely on information provided by homeowners and guests and are at times limited in our ability to provide adequate support or help homeowners and guests resolve disputes due to our lack of information or control. To the extent that homeowners and guests are not satisfied with the quality or timeliness of our customer support, we may not be able to retain homeowners or guests, and our reputation as well as our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
When a homeowner or guest has a poor experience on our platform or with our service, we may issue refunds or future stay credits. These refunds and future stay credits are generally treated as a reduction to revenue. In addition, where there is property damage to a home below the threshold for our homeowner protection insurance, in certain cases, we may make payouts for property damage claims based on our damage waiver program, which we account for as consideration paid to a customer and is also generally treated as a reduction in revenue. A robust customer support effort is costly, and we expect such cost to continue to rise in the future as we grow our business. We have historically seen a significant number of customer support inquiries from homeowners and guests. Our efforts to reduce the number of customer support requests may not be effective, and we could incur increased costs without corresponding revenue, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our business depends on our ability to attract and retain capable management and employees, and if we lose any of our key personnel, or if we are unable to attract, retain and motivate a sufficient number of skilled personnel, our business, results of
operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected and we may be unable to execute our growth strategy.
Our success depends in large part on our ability to attract and retain high-quality management and employees. Our CEO, CFO and other members of our senior management team, as well as other employees, may terminate their employment with us at any time. Losing the services of members of our senior management team could materially harm our business until a suitable replacement is found, and such replacement may not have equal experience and capabilities. In addition, we have not purchased life insurance on any members of our senior management team. Furthermore, given the importance of our key executives to our business, we are also vulnerable to the risk that they may take actions, either within or outside the scope of their duties, that intentionally or unintentionally tarnish our brand and reputation or otherwise adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
As we continue to grow, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to attract and retain the personnel we need. Our business requires highly skilled technical, engineering, design, product, data analytics, marketing, business development, and customer support personnel, including executive-level employees, who are in high demand and are often subject to competing offers. Competition for qualified employees and executive-level employees is intense in our industry. The loss of qualified employees, or an inability to attract, retain, and motivate employees required for the planned expansion of our business would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition and impair our ability to grow.
To attract and retain key personnel, we use various measures, including an equity incentive program. As we continue to mature, the incentives to attract, retain, and motivate employees provided by our programs or by future arrangements may not be as effective as in the past. We have a number of current employees who hold equity in our company or whose equity awards are or will become substantially vested one hundred and eighty (180) days following the completion of the Business Combination. As a result, it may be difficult for us to continue to retain and motivate these employees, and the value of their holdings could affect their decisions about whether or not they continue to work for us. Our ability to attract, retain, and motivate employees may be adversely affected by declines in our stock price. If we issue significant equity to attract employees or to retain our existing employees, we would incur substantial additional stock-based compensation expense and the ownership of our existing stockholders would be further diluted.
In response to the economic challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our business, in March 2020, we took measures to reduce our workforce. This has led to increased attrition and could lead to reduced employee morale and productivity and problems retaining existing and recruiting future employees, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We may face increased personnel costs or labor shortages that could slow our growth and adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Personnel costs are a primary component of our operating expenses. If we face labor shortages or increased personnel costs because of increased competition for employees, higher employee turnover rates, increases in the federally-mandated or state-mandated minimum wage, changes in exempt and non-exempt status, or other employee benefits costs (including costs associated with health insurance coverage or workers’ compensation insurance), our operating expenses could increase and our growth could be adversely affected.
We have a substantial number of employees who are paid wage rates near, at or based on the applicable federal or state minimum wage, and increases in the applicable minimum wage will increase our personnel costs. From time to time, legislative proposals are made to increase the minimum wage at the federal or state level. As federal, state or other applicable minimum wage rates increase, we may be required to increase not only the wage rates of minimum wage employees, but also the wages paid to our other hourly employees. It may not be possible to increase prices in order to pass future increased personnel costs on to homeowners and/or guests, in which case our margins would be negatively affected. Even if we are able to increase prices to cover increased personnel costs, the higher prices could result in lower revenues, which may also reduce margins.
Furthermore, as discussed elsewhere in this “Risk Factors” section, the successful operation of our business depends upon our ability to attract, retain and motivate a sufficient number of qualified management and other employees. Competition for qualified employees and executive-level employees is intense in our industry, and we may face shortages of skilled labor from time to time in the markets in which we operate. For example, we are currently facing an industry-wide shortage in available housekeeping and field labor, and we expect this shortage to continue in the near future. Furthermore, inability to adequately
staff can be particularly challenging during peak season in certain markets, when we are required to hire a large number of seasonal workers in order to scale our local operations networks. Shortages of skilled labor may make it increasingly difficult and expensive to attract, train and retain the services of a sufficient number of qualified employees, which could adversely affect homeowner and guest satisfaction and impair our ability to attract new homeowners and guests and retain our
relationships with our existing homeowners and guests. Furthermore, competition for qualified employees, particularly in markets where such shortages exist, could require us to pay higher wages, which could result in higher personnel costs. Certain Canadian employees of one of our Canadian subsidiaries are under collective bargaining agreements which regulate certain aspects of our employment terms, including compensation, for such individuals. Although none of our U.S. employees are currently covered under collective bargaining agreements, we cannot guarantee that our U.S. employees will not elect to be represented by labor unions in the future. If a significant number of our employees were to become unionized and collective bargaining agreement terms were significantly different from our current compensation arrangements, it could increase our costs and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
In addition, we are subject to a number of other federal, state, local, and foreign laws regulating employment and employee working conditions, including employment dispute and employee bargaining processes, collective and representative actions, and other employment compliance requirements. Compliance with these regulations is costly and requires significant resources, and we may suffer losses from or incur significant costs to defend claims alleging non-compliance with these regulations. In addition, immigration reform continues to attract significant attention in the public arena and the U.S. Congress. If new immigration legislation is enacted, such laws may contain provisions that could increase our costs in recruiting, training and retaining employees.
Maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation is critical to our growth, and negative publicity could damage our brand and thereby harm our ability to compete effectively, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our brand and our reputation are two of our most important assets. Maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation is critical to our ability to attract homeowners, guests, and employees, to compete effectively, to maintain relationships with our distribution partners, to preserve and deepen the engagement of our existing homeowners, guests, and employees, to maintain and improve our standing in the communities where our homeowners operate (including our standing with community leaders and regulatory bodies), and to mitigate legislative or regulatory scrutiny, litigation, and government investigations. As our brand grows, we expect to depend more heavily on the perceptions of homeowners and guests who use our platform and our services to help make word-of-mouth recommendations that contribute to our growth.
Any incident, whether actual or rumored to have occurred, involving the safety or security of vacation rental homes, homeowners, guests, or other members of the public, fraudulent transactions, or incidents that are mistakenly attributed to Vacasa, and any media coverage resulting therefrom, could create a negative public perception of our platform, which would adversely impact our ability to attract homeowners and guests. In addition, when homeowners cancel reservations or if we fail to provide timely refunds to guests in connection with cancellations, guest perception of the value of our platform is adversely impacted and may cause guests to not use our platform in the future. The impact of these issues may be more pronounced if we are seen to have failed to provide prompt and appropriate customer support or if our platform policies are perceived to be too permissive or restrictive, or as providing homeowners and/or guests with unsatisfactory resolutions. We have been the subject of media reports, social media posts, blog posts, and content in other forums that contain allegations about our business or activity on our platform that create negative publicity. As a result of these complaints and negative publicity, some homeowners have refrained from, and may in the future refrain from, listing with us, and some guests have refrained from, and may in the future refrain from, using our platform, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In addition, our brand and reputation could be harmed if we fail to act responsibly or are perceived as not acting responsibly, or if we fail to comply with regulatory requirements as interpreted by certain governments or agencies thereof, in a number of areas, such as safety and security, data security, privacy practices, provision of information about users and activities on our platform, sustainability, human rights, diversity, non-discrimination, and support for employees and local communities. Media, legislative, or government scrutiny around our company, including the perceived impact on affordable housing and over- tourism, neighborhood nuisance, privacy practices, provision of information as requested by certain governments or agencies thereof, content on our platform, business practices and strategic plans, impact of travel on the environment, and public health policies that may cause geopolitical backlash, our business partners, private companies where we have minority investments, and our practices relating to our platform, offerings, employees, competition, litigation, and response to regulatory activity, could adversely affect our brand and our reputation with our homeowners, guests, and communities. Social media compounds the potential scope of the negative publicity that could be generated and the speed with which such negative publicity may spread. Any resulting damage to our brand or reputation could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In addition, we rely on our homeowners and guests to provide trustworthy reviews and ratings that our homeowners or guests may rely upon to help decide whether or not to book a particular listing or accept a particular booking and that we use to enforce quality standards. We rely on these reviews to further strengthen trust among members of our customer-base. Our
homeowners and guests may be less likely to rely on reviews and ratings if they believe that our review system does not generate trustworthy reviews and ratings. We have procedures in place to combat fraud or abuse of our review system, but we cannot guarantee that these procedures are or will be effective.
In addition, if our homeowners and guests do not leave reliable reviews and ratings, other potential homeowners or guests may disregard those reviews and ratings, and our systems that use reviews and ratings to enforce quality standards would be less effective, which could reduce trust within our customer-base and damage our brand and reputation, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition
Owner, guest, or third-party actions that are criminal, violent, inappropriate, or dangerous, or fraudulent activity, may undermine the safety or the perception of safety of our services, affect our ability to attract and retain homeowners and guests and materially adversely affect our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.
While we take certain measures to reduce the risk of fraudulent or criminal activity in connection with use of our services, we do not have complete control over or the ability to predict the actions of our users and other third parties, such as neighbors or invitees, either during the guest’s stay, or otherwise, and therefore, we cannot guarantee the safety of our employees, homeowners, guests, and third parties. The actions of homeowners, guests, and other third parties have resulted and can further result in fatalities, injuries, other bodily harm, fraud, invasion of privacy, property damage, discrimination, and brand and reputational damage, which have created and could continue to create potential legal or other liabilities for us. We do not verify the identity of all of our homeowners and guests nor do we verify or screen third parties who may be present during a reservation made through our platform. Our identity verification processes rely on, among other things, information provided by homeowners and guests, and our ability to validate that information and the effectiveness of third-party service providers that support our verification processes may be limited.
Certain verification processes, including legacy verification processes on which we previously relied, may be less reliable than others. These processes are beneficial but are currently minimal and have limitations due to a variety of factors, including laws and regulations that prohibit or limit our ability to conduct effective background checks in some jurisdictions, the unavailability of information, and the inability of our systems to detect all suspicious activity. There can be no assurances that the measures we take will significantly reduce criminal or fraudulent activity on our platform.
In addition, we may not adequately police the safety, suitability, location, quality, availability of recreational items or other amenities, compliance with our policies or standards, and legal compliance, such as fire code compliance or the presence of carbon monoxide detectors, of all our homeowners’ properties. We have in the past taken steps to investigate issues raised by guests and homeowners and endeavor to require our local home care staff, including maintenance and housekeeping teams, to do periodic compliance checks, but we cannot ensure that these are consistently performed. We have created policies and standards to respond to issues reported with properties, but some vacation rentals may pose heightened safety risks to individual users because those issues have not been reported to us or because our local operations team has not taken the requisite action based on our policies. We rely, in part, on reports of issues from homeowners and guests to investigate and enforce many of our policies and standards. In addition, our policies may not contemplate certain safety risks posed by rental homes or individual homeowners or guests or may not sufficiently address those risks. For example, we have been in the past, and may be in the future, subject to legal claims and potential liability relating to injuries or other damages sustained in connection with guests’ use of recreational items and other amenities on our homeowners’ properties. Though we typically seek to obtain waivers from liabilities associated with guest use of these items, homeowners do not always inform us that such items are present on their properties and, in any event, we cannot guarantee that any waiver we are able to obtain will be found to be enforceable.
We have also faced civil litigation, regulatory investigations, and inquiries involving allegations of, among other things, unsafe or unsuitable rental homes, discriminatory policies, data processing, practices or behavior on and off our platform or by homeowners, guests, and third parties, general misrepresentations regarding the safety or accuracy of offerings on our platform, and other homeowner, guest, or third-party actions that are criminal, violent, inappropriate, dangerous, or fraudulent. While we recognize that we need to continue to build trust and invest in innovations that will support trust when it comes to our policies, tools, and procedures to protect homeowners, guests, and the communities in which our homeowners operate, we may not be successful in doing so. Similarly, listings that are inaccurate, of a lower than expected quality, or that do not comply with our policies may harm guests and public perception of the quality and safety of rental homes on our platform and materially adversely affect our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.
If homeowners, guests, or third parties engage in criminal activity, misconduct, fraudulent, negligent, or inappropriate conduct or use our platform as a conduit for criminal activity, consumers may not consider our platform and the listings on our platform safe, and we may receive negative media coverage, or be subject to involvement in a government investigation concerning such activity, which could adversely impact our brand and reputation, and lower the adoption rate of our platform. For example:
•there have been shootings and other criminal or violent acts on properties booked on our platform, including as a result of unsanctioned house parties;
•there have been undisclosed hidden cameras and claims of invasion of privacy at properties; and
•there have been incidents of homeowners and guests engaging in criminal, fraudulent, or unsafe behavior and other misconduct while using our platform.
The methods used by perpetrators of fraud and other misconduct are complex and constantly evolving, and our trust and security measures have been, and may currently or in the future be, insufficient to detect and help prevent all fraudulent activity and other misconduct. For example, there have been incidents where guests have caused substantial property damage to listings or misrepresented the purpose of their stay and used listings for unauthorized or inappropriate conduct including parties, drug-related activities, or to perpetrate criminal activities.
In addition, certain regions where we operate have higher rates of violent crime or more relaxed safety standards, which can lead to more safety and security incidents, and may adversely impact the adoption of our platform and services in those regions and elsewhere.
If criminal, inappropriate, fraudulent, or other negative incidents continue to occur due to the conduct of homeowners, guests, or third parties, our ability to attract and retain homeowners and guests would be harmed, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected. Such incidents have prompted, and may in the future prompt, stricter regulations or regulatory inquiries into our platform, policies and business practices. In the United States and other countries, we have had listings being used for parties in violation of our policies which have in some cases resulted in neighborhood disruption or violence. Further, claims have been asserted against us from our homeowners, guests, and third parties for compensation due to accidents, injuries, assaults, theft, property damage, privacy and security issues, and other incidents that are caused by other homeowners, guests, or third parties while using our platform. These claims subject us to potentially significant liability and increase our operating costs and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We have obtained third-party insurance, which is subject to certain conditions and exclusions, for claims and losses incurred based on incidents related to bookings on our platform. Even where we do have third-party insurance, such insurance may be inadequate to fully cover alleged claims of liability, investigation costs, defense costs, and/or payouts. Even if these claims do not result in liability, we could incur significant time and cost investigating and defending against them. If the quantity or severity of incidents increases, our insurance rates and our financial exposure will grow, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Measures that we are taking to improve the trust and safety of our platform may cause us to incur significant expenditures and may not be successful.
We have taken and continue to take measures to improve the trust and safety on our platform, combat fraudulent activities and other misconduct and improve community trust, such as implementing enhanced guest screening procedures and removing homeowners and guests who fail to comply with our policies. These measures are long-term investments in our business and the trust and safety of our community; however, some of these measures increase friction on our platform by increasing the number of steps required to list or book, which reduces homeowner and guest activity on our platform, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Implementing these trust and safety initiatives, which include, among other things, limited verification of homeowners and listings, restrictions on “party” houses, manual screening of high-risk reservations, restrictions on certain types of bookings, and providing rental home neighbors with the contact information for our local staff, or other initiatives, has caused and will continue to cause us to incur significant ongoing expenses and may result in fewer listings and bookings or reduced homeowner and guest retention, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. As we operate an international platform, the timing and implementation of these measures will vary across geographic regions. We have invested and plan to continue to invest significantly in the trust and safety of our platform and services, but there can be no assurances that these measures will be successful, significantly reduce criminal or fraudulent activity on or off our platform, or be sufficient to protect our reputation in the event of such activity.
In addition, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we instituted a number of policies and measures to address the health and safety of guests, homeowners and employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we launched enhanced cleaning and safety practices that are intended to help prevent transmission of COVID-19. We provide substantial additional resources and use best practices communicated by the Centers for Disease Control and other public health authorities to drive our cleaning practices. Our employees are trained and expected to follow an enhanced cleaning protocol, checklists, and other written and visual materials. To the extent our employees do not follow these protocols, in addition to potentially putting our guests and homeowners at risk, they also risk damaging our brand and reputation. We have received, and continue to receive, complaints by employees and third parties regarding lack of adherence to our safety protocols by certain employees, such as failure to
wear a mask or social distance. To the extent our employees do not comply with our policies and protocols, they expose us to potential financial liability and brand risk. Additionally, homeowners and guests must also agree to follow COVID-19-related safety practices when coming into contact with our employees, such as social distancing. If prospective homeowners or guests disagree with these or any similar safety practices we may implement in the future, they may be less likely to use our platform and services. Furthermore, such policies may not be successful in preventing the transmission of COVID-19. Cases of suspected COVID-19 exposure or infection during Vacasa reservations have been reported to us. If guests or homeowners believe that booking stays or experiences on our platform poses heightened risks for contracting COVID-19 or other diseases, our reputation and business could be materially adversely affected, and it could give rise to legal claims against us.
We rely on traffic to our platform to grow revenue, and if we are unable to drive traffic cost-effectively, it would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We believe that increasing awareness of our brand among potential homeowners and guests is an important aspect of our efforts to increase traffic on our platform and grow our revenue. We rely on performance marketing, brand marketing, and other marketing initiatives, as well as a variety of public relations and communications activities, to drive homeowner and guest acquisition and increase awareness regarding our brand. We have invested considerable resources in these efforts to date, and expect to continue to invest in sales and marketing activities and personnel as a key component of our growth strategy. Our marketing efforts are expensive and may not be cost-effective or successful. If our competitors spend increasingly more on marketing efforts or are more effective in such efforts, we may not be able to maintain and grow traffic to our platform.
A critical factor in attracting homeowners and guests to our platform is how prominently listings are displayed in response to search queries for key search terms. The success of vacation rentals and the alternative accommodation industry has led to increased costs for relevant keywords as our competitors competitively bid on our keywords. We may not be successful at our efforts to drive traffic growth cost-effectively. If we are not able to effectively increase our traffic growth without increases in spend on performance marketing, we may need to increase our performance marketing spend in the future, including in response to increased spend on performance marketing from our competitors, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
The technology that powers much of our performance marketing is increasingly subject to strict regulation, and regulatory or legislative changes could adversely impact the effectiveness of our performance marketing efforts and, as a result, our business. For example, we rely on the placement and use of “cookies” — text files stored on a homeowner’s or guest’s web browser or device — to support tailored marketing to consumers. Many countries have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, regulations governing the use of cookies and similar technologies, and individuals may be required to “opt-in” to the placement of cookies used for purposes of marketing. For example, to the extent we send direct electronic marketing communications to EU/UK residents and/or place cookies on electronic devices used by EU residents within the EU, we may be subject to evolving EU privacy laws on cookies and e-marketing. In the EU and UK, regulators are increasingly focusing on compliance with requirements in the online behavioral advertising ecosystem, and current national laws that are derived from the ePrivacy Directive may be replaced across the EU (but not directly in the UK) by an EU Regulation, known as the ePrivacy Regulation, which will significantly increase fines for non-compliance. In the EU, informed consent is required for the placement of certain types of cookie on a user’s device. The European General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) also imposes conditions on obtaining valid consent. While the text of the ePrivacy Regulation is still under development, a recent European Court of Justice decision and regulators’ recent guidance are driving increased attention to cookies and tracking technologies under existing law. For example, the French data protection regulator (the CNIL) is increasingly active in enforcement in this area, as are other regulators as a result of actions by NYOB (a not-for-profit privacy activist group), that has issued approximately 750 complaints to European website operators regarding their cookie banners and referred 422 of these to relevant national regulators – and has said that it aims to seek enforcement on up to 10,000 websites in Europe. If we are required to change our practices this could lead to substantial costs, require significant systems changes, limit the effectiveness of our marketing activities, divert the attention of our technology personnel, adversely affect our margins, increase costs, and subject us to additional liabilities. Widespread adoption of regulations that significantly restrict our ability to use performance marketing technology could adversely affect our ability to market effectively to current and prospective homeowners and guests, and thus materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We focus on unpaid channels such as search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves developing our platform in a way that enables a search engine to rank our platform prominently for search queries for which our platform’s content may be relevant. Changes to search engine algorithms or similar actions are not within our control, and could adversely affect our search-engine rankings and traffic to our platform. To the extent that our brand and platform are listed less prominently or fail to appear in search results for any reason, we would need to increase our paid marketing spend which would increase our overall customer acquisition costs and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. If Google or Apple uses its own mobile operating systems or app distribution channels to favor its own or other preferred travel service offerings,
or impose policies that effectively disallow us to continue our full product offerings in those channels, there could be an adverse effect on our ability to engage with homeowners and guests who access our platform via mobile apps or search.
Moreover, as guests increase their booking activity across multiple travel sites or compare offerings across sites, our marketing efficiency and effectiveness is adversely impacted, which could cause us to increase our sales and marketing expenditures in the future, which may not be offset by additional revenue, and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. In addition, any negative publicity or public complaints, including those that impede our ability to maintain positive brand awareness through our marketing and consumer communications efforts, could harm our reputation and lead to fewer homeowners and guests using our platform, and attempts to replace this traffic through other channels will require us to increase our sales and marketing expenditures.
If we are unable to expand our international operations and manage the risks presented by our business model internationally, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
We currently operate in a number of international markets and believe that expanding our international operations is a key component of our future growth strategy. Until December 31, 2020, we operated vacation rental property management services in the United States, Canada, South Africa and a number of countries in Europe and Latin America. As of the beginning of 2021 and in part as a result of the business downturn caused by COVID-19, we reduced our international operations by winding down vacation rental operations in Europe, South Africa and several countries in Central and South America. Currently, we provide vacation rental management services domestically in the United States and internationally in Canada, Belize, Mexico and Costa Rica. We also operate offices for design and technology activities in Chile and in New Zealand. As of December 31, 2021, we had approximately 400 employees outside the United States. For the years ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, approximately 1% and 3% of our revenue, respectively, was generated from vacation rental management activities outside of the United States. As part of our growth strategy, we expect to make investments to expand our international operations in the countries that we are currently operating in. We also anticipate making selective entry into new international markets over time, primarily in Europe and the Americas.
Managing an international organization is difficult, time consuming, and expensive, and requires significant management attention and careful prioritization, and any international expansion efforts that we previously undertook were not deemed entirely successful and future undertakings could also prove unsuccessful. In addition, conducting international operations subjects us to risks, which include:
•operational and compliance challenges caused by distance, language, and cultural differences;
•the cost and resources required to localize our platform and services, which often requires the translation of our platform into foreign languages and adaptation of our platform and services for local practices and regulatory requirements;
•unexpected, more restrictive, differing, and conflicting laws and regulations, including those laws governing Internet activities, short-term and long-term rentals (including those implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic), tourism, tenancy, taxes, licensing, payments processing, messaging, marketing activities, registration and/or verification of guests, ownership of intellectual property, content, data collection and privacy, security, data localization, data transfer and government access to personal information, and other activities important to our business;
•uncertainties regarding the interpretation of national and local laws and regulations, uncertainty in the enforceability of legal rights, and uneven application of laws and regulations to businesses, in particular U.S. companies;
•competition with companies that understand local markets better than we do, or that have a local presence and pre-existing relationships with potential homeowners and guests in those markets;
•differing levels of social acceptance of our brand and offerings;
•legal uncertainty regarding our liability for the listings, services, and content provided by homeowners, guests, and other third parties;
•uncertain resolutions of litigation or regulatory inquiries;
•variations in payment forms for homeowners and guests, increased operational complexity around payments, and inability to offer local payment forms like cash or country-specific digital forms of payment;
•lack of familiarity and the burden of complying with a wide variety of U.S. and foreign laws, legal standards, and regulatory requirements, which are complex, sometimes inconsistent, and subject to unexpected changes;
•potentially adverse tax consequences, including resulting from the complexities of foreign corporate income tax systems, value added tax (VAT) regimes, tax withholding rules, lodging taxes, often known as transient or occupancy taxes, hotel taxes, and other indirect taxes, tax collection or remittance obligations, and restrictions on the repatriation of earnings;
•difficulties in managing and staffing international operations, including due to differences in legal, regulatory, and collective bargaining processes;
•fluctuations in currency exchange rates, and in particular, decreases in the value of foreign currencies relative to the U.S. dollar;
•regulations governing the control of local currencies and impacting the ability to collect and remit funds to homeowners in those currencies or to repatriate cash into the United States;
•oversight by foreign government agencies whose approach to privacy or human rights may be inconsistent with that taken in other countries;
•increased financial accounting and reporting burdens, and complexities and difficulties in implementing and maintaining adequate internal controls in an international operating environment;
•political, social, and economic instability abroad, terrorist attacks, and security concerns in general;
•operating in countries that are more prone to crime or have lower safety standards;
•operating in countries that have higher risk of corruption; and
•reduced or varied protection for our intellectual property rights in some countries.
Increased operating expenses, decreased revenue, negative publicity, negative reaction from our homeowners and guests and other stakeholders, or other adverse impacts from any of the above factors or other risks related to our international operations, including if our international expansion efforts are unsuccessful, could materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, financial condition, and growth prospects.
Our failure to properly manage funds held on behalf of customers could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
When a guest books and pays for a stay on our platform, we do not recognize the amount the guest has paid until the stay occurs, at which time we recognize our commission and fees as revenue and (other than in certain locations in which the homeowner is paid upon booking) initiate the process to remit the payment to the homeowner, which occurs monthly following the stay, barring any alterations or cancellations, which may result in funds being returned to the guest. Accordingly, at any given time, we hold on behalf of our homeowners and guests a substantial amount of funds, which are generally held in bank deposit accounts and in U.S. treasury bills and recorded on our consolidated balance sheets as funds receivable and amounts held on behalf of customers. In certain jurisdictions, we are required to either safeguard customer funds in bankruptcy-remote bank accounts, or hold such funds in eligible liquid assets, as defined by the relevant regulators in such jurisdictions, equal to at least 100% of the aggregate amount held on behalf of customers. Our ability to manage and account accurately for the cash underlying our customer funds requires a high level of internal controls. As our business continues to grow and we expand our offerings and tiers, we must continue to strengthen our associated internal controls. Our success requires significant public confidence in our ability to handle large and growing transaction volumes and amounts of customer funds. Any failure to maintain the necessary controls or to manage the assets underlying our customer funds accurately could result in reputational harm, lead customers to discontinue or reduce their use of our platform and services, and result in significant penalties and fines from regulators, each of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Because we recognize revenue during the guest stay and not at booking, upticks or downturns in bookings are not immediately reflected in our results of operations.
We experience a difference in timing between when a booking is made and when we recognize revenue, which is at the time of the stay. The effect of significant downturns in bookings in a particular quarter may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods because of this timing in revenue recognition. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we began issuing future stay credits to guests who chose to cancel within our enhanced cancellation policy. Such future stay credits are recognized as a liability on our consolidated balance sheets. Alternatively, in certain instances, we may offer a refund in lieu of a future stay credit. We account for these refunds as variable consideration, which results in a reduction to revenue.
We track certain operational metrics, which are subject to inherent challenges in measurement, and real or perceived inaccuracies in such metrics may harm our reputation and materially adversely affect our stock price, business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We track certain operational metrics, including metrics such as GBV, Nights Sold and GBV per Night Sold, which may differ from estimates or similar metrics published by third parties due to differences in sources, methodologies, or the assumptions on which we rely. Our internal systems and tools are subject to a number of limitations, and our methodologies for tracking these metrics may change over time, which could result in unexpected changes to our metrics, including the metrics we publicly disclose. If the internal systems and tools we use to track these metrics undercount or overcount performance or contain algorithmic or other technical errors, the data we report may not be accurate. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our metrics for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our platform is used across populations globally.
The calculation of GBV and Nights Sold requires the ongoing collection of data on new offerings that are added to our platform over time. Our business is complex, and the methodology used to calculate GBV and Nights Sold may require future adjustments to accurately represent the full value of new offerings.
Limitations or errors with respect to how we measure data or with respect to the data that we measure may affect our understanding of certain details of our business, which could affect our long-term strategies. If our operational metrics are not accurate representations of our business, or if investors do not perceive these metrics to be accurate, or if we discover material inaccuracies with respect to these figures, our reputation may be significantly harmed, our stock price could decline, we may be subject to stockholder litigation, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
Our efforts to create new offerings and initiatives are costly, and if we are unable to successfully pursue such offerings and initiatives, we may fail to grow, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
In order to grow our business, we will need to continue to invest in the development of new offerings and initiatives that differentiate us from our competitors. Developing and delivering new offerings and initiatives increase our expenses and our organizational complexity, and we may experience difficulties in developing and implementing these new offerings and initiatives.
Our new offerings and initiatives have a high degree of risk, as they may involve significant investment and upfront costs. For example, we have begun investing resources to incorporate smart home technology across our portfolio in order to improve our brand, provide peace of mind for homeowners and elevate the guest experience, and expect to continue to invest significant resources to support these efforts in 2022. There can be no assurance that homeowner demand for smart home technology or other offerings and initiatives we may develop or otherwise introduce from time to time will exist or be sustained at the levels that we anticipate, that we will be able to successfully manage the development and delivery of such offerings and initiatives, or that any of these offerings or initiatives will gain sufficient market acceptance to generate sufficient revenue to offset associated expenses or liabilities. It is also possible that offerings developed by others will render our offerings and initiatives noncompetitive or obsolete. Further, these efforts entail investments in our systems and infrastructure, payments platform, and increased legal and regulatory compliance expenses, could distract management from our core business operations, and will divert capital and other resources from our more established offerings and geographic regions. Even if we are successful in developing new offerings and initiatives, regulatory authorities may subject us or our homeowners and guests to new rules, taxes, or restrictions or more aggressively enforce existing rules, taxes, or restrictions that could increase our expenses or otherwise prevent us from successfully commercializing these initiatives. If we do not realize the expected benefits of our investments, we may fail to grow, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected.
We face possible risks associated with natural disasters and the physical effects of climate change, which may include more frequent or severe storms, hurricanes, flooding, rising sea levels, shortages of water, droughts and wildfires, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We are subject to the risks associated with natural disasters and the physical effects of climate change, which may include more frequent or severe storms, hurricanes, flooding, rising sea levels, shortages of water, droughts, and wildfires, any of which could affect our business infrastructure and the rental homes that we manage and, consequently, have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. To the extent climate change causes changes in weather patterns, our coastal destinations could experience increases in storm intensity and rising sea-levels causing damage to our homeowners’ properties and result in a reduced number of listings in these areas. Short-term, extreme weather patterns may also make it unsafe or impractical for guests, or employees or contractors providing home care services, to travel to affected locations, which may in turn result in homeowners choosing not to rent their properties during certain times and reduce the overall number of nights available. Climate change may also affect our business by increasing the cost of, or making unavailable, property insurance on terms our homeowners find acceptable in areas most vulnerable to such events, increasing operating costs for our homeowners, including the cost of water or energy, and requiring our homeowners to expend funds as they seek to repair and protect their properties in connection with such events. As a result of the foregoing and other climate-related issues, our homeowners may decide to remove their listings from our platform. If we are unable to provide vacation rentals for booking in certain areas due to climate change, we may lose both homeowners and guests, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
The coverage afforded under our insurance policies may be inadequate for the needs of our business or our third-party insurers may be unable or unwilling to meet our coverage requirements, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We use a combination of third-party insurance and self-insurance, to manage the exposures related to our business operations. We support our homeowners by maintaining a variety of homeowner protection programs, including supplemental homeowner insurance. Our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected if (i) cost per claim, premiums or the number of claims significantly exceeds our expectations; (ii) we experience a claim in excess of our coverage limits; (iii) our insurance providers become insolvent or otherwise fail to pay on our insurance claims; (iv) we experience a claim for which coverage is not provided; or (v) the number of claims under our deductibles or self-insured retentions differs from historic averages. Our overall spend on insurance has increased as our business has grown and losses from covered claims have increased. Premiums have increased as a result, and we have experienced and expect to continue to experience increased difficulty in obtaining appropriate policy limits and levels of coverage at a reasonable cost and with reasonable terms and conditions. Our costs for obtaining these policies will continue to increase as our business grows and continues to evolve. Furthermore, as our business continues to develop and diversify, we may experience difficulty in obtaining insurance coverage for new and evolving offerings and tiers, which could require us to incur greater costs and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Additionally, if we fail to comply with insurance regulatory requirements in the regions where we operate, or other regulations governing insurance coverage, our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
Owner Protection Insurance
In order to offset our potential exposure related to stays and experiences and to comply with certain short-term rental regulatory requirements, we have procured homeowner protection liability insurance, which is subject to certain terms, conditions, and exclusions, for claims from guests and third parties for bodily injury or property damage arising from bookings of stays through our platform. We and our homeowners are insured parties, and landlords, homeowners’ or condo-owners’ associations, and any other similar entities, are additional insured parties. Our homeowners also benefit from coverage provided through our distribution partners such as Airbnb, Vrbo and Homeaway when bookings of Vacasa rental homes are made through their platforms.
However, these insurance programs may not provide coverage for certain types of claims, including those relating to contagious diseases such as COVID-19, and may be insufficient to fully cover costs of investigation, costs of defense, and payments or judgments arising from covered claims. In addition, extensive or costly claims could lead to premium increases or difficulty securing coverage, which may result in increased financial exposure and an inability to meet insurance regulatory requirements. Increased claim frequency and severity and increased fraudulent claims could result in greater payouts, premium increases, and/or difficulty securing coverage. Further, disputes with homeowners as to whether an insurance program applies to alleged losses or damages and the increased submission of fraudulent payment requests could require significant time and financial resources.
Corporate Insurance
We procure insurance policies to cover various operations-related risks, including general business liability, workers’ compensation, cyber liability and data breaches, crime, directors’ and officers’ liability, and property insurance. We do not have sufficient coverage for certain catastrophic events, including certain business interruption losses, such as those resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, certain policies may not be available to us and the policies we have and obtain in the future may not be sufficient to cover all of our business exposure.
We are subject to payment-related fraud and an increase in or failure to deal effectively with fraud, fraudulent activities, fictitious transactions, or illegal transactions would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We process a significant volume and dollar value of transactions on a daily basis. We have incurred and will continue to incur losses from claims by homeowners, fraudulent bookings and fraudulent refund requests, and these losses may be substantial. Such instances have and can lead to the reversal of payments received by us for such bookings, referred to as a “chargeback.” For the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, total chargeback expense was $2.8 million, $3.1 million, and $1.1 million, respectively. Our ability to detect and combat fraud, which has become increasingly common and sophisticated, could be adversely impacted by the adoption of new payment methods, the emergence and innovation of new technology platforms, including mobile and other devices, and our growth in certain regions, including in regions with a history of elevated fraudulent activity. We expect that technically-knowledgeable criminals will continue to attempt to circumvent our anti-fraud systems. In addition, the payment card networks have rules around acceptable chargeback ratios. If we are unable to effectively identify
fraudulent bookings on our platform, combat the use of fraudulent credit cards, or otherwise maintain or lower our current levels of charge-backs, we may be subject to fines and higher transaction fees or processors holding significant reserves against us, or be unable to continue to accept card payments because payment card networks have revoked our access to their networks, any of which would materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We rely on third-party payment service providers to process payments made by guests and certain payments made to homeowners on our platform. If these third-party payment service providers become unavailable or we are subject to increased fees, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
We rely on a number of third-party payment service providers, including payment card networks, banks, payment processors, and payment gateways, to link us to payment card and bank clearing networks to process payments made by our guests and to remit payments to homeowners on our platform. We have agreements with these providers, some of which are the sole providers of their particular service.
If these companies become unwilling or unable to provide these services to us on acceptable terms or at all, our business may be disrupted, we would need to find alternate payment service providers, and we may not be able to secure similar terms or replace such payment service providers in an acceptable time frame.
If we are forced to migrate to other third-party payment service providers for any reason, the transition would require significant time and management resources, and may not be as effective, efficient, or well-received by our homeowners and guests. Any of the foregoing could cause us to incur significant losses and, in certain cases, require us to make payments to homeowners out of our funds, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In addition, the software and services provided by our third-party payment service providers may fail to meet our expectations, contain errors or vulnerabilities, be compromised, or experience outages. Any of these risks could cause us reputational harm or cause us to lose our ability to accept online payments or other payment transactions or make timely payments to homeowners on our platform, which could make our platform less convenient and desirable to customers and adversely affect our ability to attract and retain homeowners and guests.
Moreover, our agreements with payment service providers may allow these companies, under certain conditions, to hold an amount of our cash as a reserve. They may be entitled to a reserve or suspension of processing services upon the occurrence of specified events, including material adverse changes in our business, results of operations, and financial condition. An imposition of a reserve or suspension of processing services by one or more of our processing companies, could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
If we fail to invest adequate resources into the payment processing infrastructure on our platform, or if our investment efforts are unsuccessful or unreliable, our payments activities may not function properly or keep pace with competitive offerings, which could adversely impact their usage. Further, our ability to expand our payments activities into additional countries is dependent upon the third-party providers we use to support these activities. As we expand the availability of our payments activities to additional geographic regions or begin to offer new payment methods to our homeowners and guests in the future, we may become subject to additional regulations and compliance requirements, and exposed to heightened fraud risk, which could lead to an increase in our operating expenses.
For certain payment methods, including credit and debit cards, we pay interchange and other fees, and such fees result in significant costs. Payment card network costs have increased, and may continue to increase in the future, the interchange fees and assessments that they charge for each transaction that accesses their networks, and may impose special fees or assessments on any such transaction. Our payment card processors have the right to pass any increases in interchange fees and assessments on to us. Credit card transactions result in higher fees to us than transactions made through debit cards. Any material increase in interchange fees in the United States or other geographic regions, including as a result of changes in interchange fee limitations imposed by law in some geographic regions, or other network fees or assessments, or a shift from payment with debit cards to credit cards could increase our operating costs and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We are subject to payment network rules and any material modification of our payment card acceptance privileges could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
The loss of our credit and debit card acceptance privileges or the significant modification of the terms under which we obtain card acceptance privileges would significantly limit our business model since a vast majority of our guests pay using credit or debit cards. We are required by our payment processors to comply with payment card network operating rules, including the
Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (the PCI DSS). Under the PCI DSS, we are required to adopt and implement internal controls over the use, storage, and transmission of card data to help prevent credit card fraud. If we fail to comply with the rules and regulations adopted by the payment card networks, including the PCI DSS, we would be in breach of our contractual obligations to payment processors and merchant banks. Such failure to comply may damage our relationship with payment card networks, subject us to restrictions, fines, penalties, damages, and civil liability, and could eventually prevent us from processing or accepting payment cards, which would have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Moreover, the payment card networks could adopt new operating rules or interpret or reinterpret existing rules that we or our payment processors might find difficult or even impossible to comply with, or costly to implement. As a result, we could lose our ability to give consumers the option of using payment cards to make their payments or the choice of currency in which they would like their payment card to be charged. Further, there is no guarantee that, even if we comply with the rules and regulations adopted by the payment card networks, we will be able to maintain our payment card acceptance privileges. We also cannot guarantee that our compliance with network rules or the PCI DSS will prevent illegal or improper use of our payments platform or the theft, loss, or misuse of the credit or debit card data of customers or participants, or a security breach. We are also required to submit to periodic audits, self-assessments, and other assessments of our compliance with the PCI DSS. If an audit, self-assessment, or other assessment indicates that we need to take steps to remediate any deficiencies, such remediation efforts may distract our management team and require us to undertake costly and time-consuming remediation efforts, and we could lose our payment card acceptance privileges.
We are also subject to network operating rules and guidelines promulgated by the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) relating to payment transactions we process using the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network. Like the payment networks, NACHA may update its operating rules and guidelines at any time, which can require us to take more costly compliance measures or to develop more complex monitoring systems.
Our focus on the long-term best interests of our company and our consideration of all of our stakeholders, including our stockholders, homeowners, guests, employees, the communities in which we operate, and other stakeholders that we may identify from time to time, may conflict with short- or medium-term financial interests and business performance, which may negatively impact the value of our Class A Common Stock.
We believe that focusing on the long-term best interests of our company and our consideration of all of our stakeholders, including our stockholders, homeowners, guests, employees, the communities in which we operate, and other stakeholders we may identify from time to time, is essential to the long-term success of our company and to long-term stockholder value. Therefore, we have made decisions, and may in the future make decisions, that we believe are in the long-term best interests of our company and our stockholders, even if such decisions may negatively impact the short- or medium-term performance of our business, results of operations, and financial condition or the short- or medium-term performance of our Class A Common Stock. Our commitment to pursuing long-term value for the company and its stockholders, potentially at the expense of short- or medium-term performance, may materially adversely affect the trading price of our Class A Common Stock, including by making owning our Class A Common Stock less appealing to investors who are focused on returns over a shorter time horizon. Our decisions and actions in pursuit of long-term success and long-term stockholder value, which may include changes to our platform to enhance the experience of our homeowners, guests, and the communities in which we operate, including by improving the trust and safety of our platform, changes in the manner in which we deliver customer support, investing in our relationships with our homeowners, guests, and employees, investing in and introducing new products and services, or changes in our approach to working with local or national jurisdictions on laws and regulations governing our business, may not result in the long-term benefits that we expect, in which case our business, results of operations, and financial condition, as well as the trading price of our Class A Common Stock, could be materially adversely affected.
Any indebtedness we may incur from time to time could adversely affect our ability to raise additional capital to fund operations, limit our ability to react to changes in the economy or our industry and prevent us from meeting our financial obligations.
As described elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K under Part II., Item 7. “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Liquidity and Capital Resources — Revolving Credit Facility,” in October 2021, we entered into a Revolving Credit Facility, which, as subsequently amended in December 2021, provides for senior secured borrowings in an aggregate principal amount of up to $105.0 million, which amount may be borrowed and repaid from time to time. As of December 31, 2021, we did not have any borrowings outstanding under the Revolving Credit Facility.
If we cannot generate sufficient cash flow from operations to service the amounts we borrow under the Revolving Credit Facility, we may need to refinance, dispose of assets or issue equity to obtain necessary funds. We do not know whether we will
be able to do any of this on a timely basis, on terms satisfactory to us, or at all. In addition, indebtedness could have important consequences, including but not limited to:
•our ability to obtain additional debt or equity financing for working capital, capital expenditures, debt service requirements, acquisitions and general corporate or other purposes may be limited;
•any cash flows from operations that we use to repay principal and interest on our debt will not be available for other purposes, such as funding our operations, capital expenditures and future business opportunities;
•to the extent our borrowings are at variable rates of interest, we will be exposed to the risk of increased interest rates;
•our ability to adjust to changing market conditions may be limited and may place us at a competitive disadvantage compared to less-leveraged competitors; and
•we may be more vulnerable during a downturn in general economic conditions or in our business.
In addition, the agreement governing our Revolving Credit Facility contains, and any agreements evidencing or governing other future indebtedness may also contain, certain restrictive covenants that limit or otherwise restrict the ability of the borrower and its restricted subsidiaries to, among other things:
•create, incur, assume or permit to exist any debt or liens;
•merge into or consolidate or amalgamate with any other person, or permit any other person to merge into or consolidate with it, or liquidate or dissolve;
•make or hold certain investments;
•sell, transfer, lease, license or otherwise dispose of its assets, including equity interests (and, in the case of restricted subsidiaries, the issuance of additional equity interests);
•pay dividends or make certain other restricted payments;
•substantively alter the character of the business of the Borrower and its restricted subsidiaries, taken as a whole; and
•sell, lease or otherwise transfer any property or assets to, or purchase, lease or otherwise acquire any property or assets from, or otherwise engage in any other transactions with, any of its affiliates.
The agreement governing the Revolving Credit Facility also contains, and any agreements evidencing or governing other future indebtedness may also contain, certain financial covenants and financial reporting and other requirements, as described elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K under Part II., Item 7. under “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Liquidity and Capital Resources — Revolving Credit Facility.” Our ability to comply with these covenants and requirements may be affected by events and factors beyond our control. We may not be able to generate sufficient revenue or maintain sufficient liquidity to meet the financial covenants (at such time as we are required to do so) or pay any principal and interest due under the Revolving Credit Facility when required. If we fail to make payments or otherwise experience an event of default thereunder, the lending banks would be permitted to take certain actions, including terminating all outstanding commitments and declaring all amounts to be immediately due and payable. In addition, following the Collateral Trigger Event Date (as defined under Part II., Item 7. “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Liquidity and Capital Resources — Revolving Credit Facility”), the lenders have the right to proceed against the collateral granted to them, which includes substantially all of our assets. The occurrence of any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. Furthermore, future working capital, borrowings, or equity financing could be unavailable to repay or refinance amounts borrowed under the Revolving Credit Facility. In the event of a liquidation, our lenders would be repaid all outstanding principal and interest prior to distribution of assets to unsecured creditors, and the holders of our Class A Common Stock would receive a portion of any liquidation proceeds only if all of our creditors, including our lenders, were first repaid in full.
Risks Related to Information Technology, Data Security and Data Privacy
If we fail to comply with federal, state, and foreign laws relating to privacy and data protection, we may face potentially significant liability, negative publicity, an erosion of trust, and increased regulation, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Privacy and data protection laws, rules, and regulations are complex, and their interpretation is rapidly evolving, making implementation and enforcement, and thus compliance requirements, ambiguous, uncertain, and potentially inconsistent. Compliance with such laws may require changes to our data collection, use, transfer, disclosure, other processing, and certain other related business practices and may thereby increase compliance costs or have other material adverse effects on our business. As part of homeowner and guest registration and business processes, we may collect and use personal data, such as names, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, and, in some cases, identity verification information (for example, government issued identification or passport information), as well as payment card or other financial information that homeowners and guests provide to us for registration purposes. The laws of many states and countries require businesses,
which maintain such personal data to implement reasonable security measures to keep such information secure and otherwise restrict the ways in which such information can be collected, processed, disclosed, transferred and used.
The U.S. government, including Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce, has announced that it is reviewing the need for greater regulation for the collection of information concerning consumer behavior on the Internet, including regulation aimed at restricting certain targeted advertising practices. In addition, numerous states have enacted or are in the process of enacting state level data privacy laws and regulations governing the collection, use, and processing of state residents’ personal data. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) took effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA establishes a new privacy framework for covered businesses such as ours, and may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and incur compliance related costs and expenses. The CCPA provides new and enhanced data privacy rights to California residents, such as affording consumers the right to access and delete their information and to opt out of certain sharing and sales of personal information. The law also prohibits covered businesses from discriminating against consumers (for example, charging more for services) for exercising any of their CCPA rights. The CCPA imposes potentially severe statutory damages as well as a private right of action for certain data breaches that result in the loss of personal information. This private right of action is expected to increase the likelihood of, and risks associated with, data breach litigation. It remains unclear how various provisions of the CCPA will be interpreted and enforced. In November 2020, California voters passed the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (CPRA). The CPRA further expands the CCPA with additional data privacy compliance requirements that may impact our business, and establishes a regulatory agency dedicated to enforcing those requirements. Further, on March 2, 2021, Virginia enacted the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA), a comprehensive privacy statute that shares similarities with the CCPA and CPRA. Similar laws have been proposed in other states and at the federal level, reflecting a trend toward more stringent privacy legislation in the United States. The effects of the CCPA, CPRA, CDPA, and any enactment of any other similar state or federal laws, are and will continue to be significant and may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and may thereby increase compliance costs (and our potential liability) or have other material adverse effects on our business.
In the European Union, the GDPR, which became effective on May 25, 2018, has also resulted and may, if we re-enter the EU market, continue to result in significantly greater compliance burdens and costs for companies like ours. As of March 31, 2021, or shortly thereafter, and other than a few resources to assist with wind-down and liquidation, we no longer have any employees, contractors, homeowners, offices, property listings, or financial accounts established in any EU member state, thus we no longer have any “establishment” or “stable arrangement” in the EU. Further, we ceased all direct marketing and advertising campaigns directed at EU audiences, ceased operating all EU top-level domains, stopped offering EU currency and language customization options on our website, and stopped offering all EU member state dedicated addresses and phone numbers that an EU resident could use to contact us. None of our current core business activities offer goods or services to, or monitor the behavior of individuals in the EU. We therefore take the position that we no longer target the EU market. Finally, while we passively collect IP addresses of devices used by individuals in the EU to access our website, we do not use IP addresses to monitor individuals.
To the extent we were subject to GDPR during the period of May 25, 2018 until March 31, 2021, we remain obligated to handle and safeguard all personal data we collected from EU residents during such time in accordance with the GDPR for as long as we retain such personal data. This obligation extends to compliance with laws, rules, and regulations regarding cross-border transfers of personal data. Recent legal developments in Europe have created complexity and uncertainty in this area; for example, on July 16, 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework (Privacy Shield) under which personal data could be transferred from the EEA to the United States. While the CJEU upheld the adequacy of the standard contractual clauses, it noted that reliance on them alone may not necessarily be sufficient in all circumstances. The European Commission adopted new standard contractual clauses on June 4, 2020. While the previous standard contractual clauses may be relied upon and considered adequate for a transitional period of 18 months, as of December 27, 2022, entities relying on the standard contractual clauses to transfer personal data outside the EEA will need to have the new standard contractual clauses in place. We continue to rely on the standard contractual clauses to transfer personal data outside the EEA, including to the United States. In addition, the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office has published new data transfer standard contracts for transfers from the UK under the UK GDPR. This new documentation will be mandatory for relevant data transfers from September 21, 2022; existing standard contractual clauses arrangements must be migrated to the new documentation by March 21, 2024. Additionally, in certain circumstances, we rely on derogations provided for by law.
Failure to comply with the GDPR may result in fines of up to 20 million Euros or up to 4% of the annual global revenue of the infringer, whichever is greater. It may also lead to civil litigation, with the risks of damages or injunctive relief, or regulatory orders adversely impacting the ways in which our business can use personal data. Canada is in the process of passing comparable or other robust data privacy legislation or regulation, which may lead to additional costs and increase our overall risk exposure.
To the extent we send direct electronic marketing communications to EU residents and/or place cookies on electronic devices used by EU or UK residents within the EU/UK, we may also be subject to evolving EU and UK privacy laws on cookies and e-marketing. In the European Union and the United Kingdom, regulators are increasingly focusing on compliance with requirements in the online behavioral advertising ecosystem, and current national laws that are derived from the ePrivacy Directive are highly likely to be replaced across the EU (but not directly in the UK) by an EU regulation known as the ePrivacy Regulation which will significantly increase fines for non-compliance. In the European Union and the United Kingdom, informed consent is required for the placement of a cookie or similar technologies on a user’s device and for direct electronic marketing. The GDPR also imposes conditions on obtaining valid consent, such as a prohibition on pre-checked consents and a requirement to ensure separate consents are sought for each type of cookie or similar technology. While the text of the ePrivacy Regulation is still under development, a recent European court decision and regulators’ recent guidance are driving increased attention to cookies and tracking technologies. For example, the French data protection regulator (the CNIL) is increasingly active in enforcement in this area, as are other regulators as a result of actions by NYOB (a not-for-profit privacy activist group), that has issued approximately 750 complaints to European website operators regarding their cookie banners and referred 422 of these to relevant national regulators – and has said that it aims to seek enforcement on up to 10,000 websites in Europe. To the extent we place cookies on electronic devices used by EU residents, we may be required to change our practices, which could lead to substantial costs, require significant systems changes, limit the effectiveness of our marketing activities, divert the attention of our technology personnel, adversely affect our margins, increase costs and subject us to additional liabilities.
Further, we are subject to the PCI DSS, which is a standard designed to protect credit and debit card account data as mandated by payment card industry entities. As a ‘level 2’ vendor, we self-attest to PCI compliance. We perform certain internal compliance activities and also rely on vendors to manage PCI compliance. Despite our compliance efforts, we may become subject to claims that we have violated the PCI DSS based on past, present, and future business practices. Our actual or perceived failure to comply with the PCI DSS can subject us to fines, termination of banking relationships, and increased transaction fees.
Various other governments and consumer agencies around the world have also called for new regulation and changes in industry practices and many have enacted different and often contradictory requirements for protecting personal information collected and maintained electronically. Compliance with numerous and contradictory requirements of different jurisdictions is particularly difficult and costly for an online business such as ours, which collects personal information from homeowners, guests, and other individuals in multiple jurisdictions. If any jurisdiction in which we operate adopts news laws or changes its interpretation of its laws, rules, or regulations relating to data residency or localization such that we are unable to comply in a timely manner or at all, we could risk losing our rights to operate in such jurisdictions. While we have invested and continue to invest significant resources to comply with GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, CDPA, and other privacy regulations around the world, many of these regulations expose us to the possibility of material penalties, significant legal liability, changes in how we operate or offer our products, and interruptions or cessation of our ability to operate in key geographic regions, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Furthermore, to improve trust and safety on our platform, we conduct certain verification procedures aimed at our homeowners, guests, and listings in certain jurisdictions. Such verification procedures may include utilizing public information on the Internet, accessing public databases such as court records, utilizing third-party vendors to analyze homeowner or guest data, or physical inspection. These types of activities may expose us to additional compliance requirements, increased compliance costs, and the risk of regulatory enforcement from privacy regulators and civil litigation.
We also conduct certain verification procedures, including background checks, in relation to prospective employees. Such verification procedures include using a third-party service provider which acquires information from a variety of sources, such as consumer credit reporting agencies and other providers of public data. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) applies to consumer credit reporting agencies as well as data furnishers and users of consumer reports, as those terms are defined in the FCRA. The FCRA promotes the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of information in the files of consumer reporting agencies that engage in the practice of assembling or evaluating information relating to consumers for certain specified purposes, including for employment. The FCRA limits the distribution and use of consumer reports, and establishes consumer rights to access and dispute their own credit files, among other rights and obligations. Many states have enacted laws with requirements similar to the federal FCRA. Some of these laws impose additional, or more stringent, requirements than the federal FCRA. Despite our compliance efforts, we may become subject to claims that we have violated the federal FCRA or state equivalents based on past, present, and future business practices. Violation of the FCRA can result in civil and criminal penalties. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the State Attorneys’ General, acting alone or in cooperation with one another, actively enforce the FCRA. In addition to regulatory risks, verification procedures for prospective employees may not expose all potentially relevant information, and our third-party service provider may fail to conduct background checks adequately or disclose information that could be relevant to a determination of eligibility.
When we are required to disclose personal data pursuant to demands from government agencies, including tax authorities, state and city regulators, law enforcement agencies, and intelligence agencies, our homeowners, guests, and privacy regulators could perceive such disclosure as a failure by us to comply with privacy and data protection policies, notices, and laws, which could result in proceedings or actions against us in the same or other jurisdictions. Conversely, if we do not provide the requested information to government agencies due to a disagreement on the interpretation of the law, we are likely to face enforcement action from such government, engage in litigation, face increased regulatory scrutiny, and experience an adverse impact on our relationship with governments or our ability to offer our services within certain jurisdictions. Any of the foregoing could materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition. Our business also increasingly relies on AI and automated decision making to improve our services and tailor our interactions with our customers. However, in recent years, use of these methods has come under increased regulatory scrutiny. New laws, guidance and/or decisions in this area may limit our ability to use our AI models, or require us to make changes to our operations that may decrease our operational efficiency, result in an increase to operating costs and/or hinder our ability to improve our services. For example, there are specific rules on the use of automated decision making under the GDPR that require the existence of automated decision making to be disclosed to the data subject with a meaningful explanation of the logic used in such decision making in certain circumstances, and safeguards must be implemented to safeguard individual rights, including the right to obtain human intervention and to contest any decision. Further, California recently introduced a law requiring disclosure of chatbot functionality.
Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with privacy and data protection policies, notices, laws, rules, and regulations could result in proceedings or actions against us by individuals, consumer rights groups, government agencies, or others. We could incur significant costs in investigating and defending such claims and, if found liable, pay significant damages or fines or be required to make changes to our business. Further, these proceedings and any subsequent adverse outcomes may subject us to significant negative publicity, and an erosion of trust. If any of these events were to occur, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
If we or our third-party service providers fail to prevent data security breaches, there may be damage to our brand and reputation, material financial penalties, and legal liability, along with a decline in use of our platform, which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We are an innovative technology company dependent on sophisticated software applications and computing infrastructure. The security of data when engaging in e-commerce is essential to maintaining consumer and travel service provider confidence in our platform and services. There are risks of security breaches both on and off our systems as we increase the types of technology we use to operate our platform, including mobile apps and third-party payment processing providers, and as we collaborate with third parties that may need to process our homeowner or guest data or have access to our infrastructure. The evolution of technology systems introduces ever more complex security risks that are difficult to predict and defend against. An increasing number of companies, including those with significant online operations, have recently disclosed breaches of their security, some of which involved sophisticated tactics and techniques allegedly attributable to criminal enterprises or nation-state actors. These risks are likely to increase as we expand our offerings, integrate our products and services, and store and process more data, including personal information. While we have taken measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our systems and the sensitive, proprietary, and confidential information and to guard against the type of activity that can lead to data breaches, we cannot assure you that every third party and service provider we utilize has taken similar measures or that the measures that we or the third parties and service providers we work with have implemented are sufficient security safeguards or that any implemented measures, including policies and procedures, will always be followed and/or be effective against current or future security threats. In addition, we cannot assure you that any process for vetting the security of service providers will identify all risks to the security or integrity of their systems. Further, the techniques used by bad actors to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently and often are unknown until launched against a target. As such, we and our service providers may be unable to anticipate these tactics and techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures.
Certain of our third-party providers provide smart lock hardware and the software to control it in order to secure physical access to many of the properties we manage. We rely on these third-party providers to ensure adequate security measures for these services. Any interruption in the services provided by these third parties could impair our ability to provide guests, owners, and housekeepers/maintenance staff with access to homes, which could result in breaches of contract or loss of business. A security breach or material failure on the part of one of these providers could also result in providing a bad actor with access to one or more of our managed properties, therefore compromising the physical security of such properties. Any such delay or breach may harm our reputation or our ability to retain the confidence of existing homeowners, protect the safety of our guests, or attract new homeowners or guests.
Further, with a large geographically disparate employee base, we are not immune from the possibility of a malicious insider compromising our information systems and infrastructure. This risk has grown in light of the greater adoption of remote work
as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We also have a distributed customer support organization including third-party providers that have access to personal information. We and other companies in our industry (and the service providers that we/they use) have dealt with incidents involving such insiders exfiltrating the personal data of customers, stealing corporate trade secrets and key financial metrics, and illegally diverting funds. No series of measures can fully safeguard against a sufficiently determined and skilled insider threat.
In addition, bad actors have targeted and will continue to target us and our homeowners and guests directly with attempts to breach the security of our and their email accounts or management systems, such as through phishing attacks where a third party attempts to infiltrate our systems or acquire information by posing as a legitimate inquiry or electronic communication, which are fraudulent identity theft schemes designed to appear as legitimate emails from us or from our homeowners or guests, partners, or vendors or other third parties that we do business with. We have experienced and have seen many instances of our homeowners and guests falling prey to such schemes, which result in accounts being taken over by fraudsters intent on perpetrating fraud. Bad actors have also and may in the future employ other schemes aimed at defrauding us, our homeowners or guests in ways that we may not anticipate or be able to adequately guard against. For example, consumers who use certain of our services provide us with their credit card information. We require usernames and passwords in order to access our information technology systems. We also use encryption and authentication technologies to secure the transmission and storage of data and prevent unauthorized access to our data or accounts. Computer circumvention capabilities, new discoveries or advances or other developments, including our own acts or omissions, could result in a compromise or breach of consumer data. For example, third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce employees, travel partners and other service providers or consumers to disclose user names, passwords or other sensitive information, or to make payments to fraudulent accounts (e.g., we had an incident in January 2021 where funds were sent to a fraudulent account, although we have since been reimbursed most of these funds). As such, even if phishing and spamming attacks and other fraud schemes are not carried out through our systems, victims may nevertheless seek recovery from us. In addition, we may not always be able to fully recover any payments made through such fraud. Because of our prominence, we believe that we are a particularly attractive target for such attacks. Though it is difficult to determine what, if any, harm may directly result from any specific scheme or attack, any failure to maintain performance, reliability, security, and availability of our offerings, services, and technical infrastructure to the satisfaction of our homeowners and guests may harm our reputation and our ability to retain existing homeowners and guests and attract new homeowners and guests. The ability of fraudsters to directly target our homeowners and guests with fraudulent communications, or cause an account takeover, exposes us to significant financial fraud risk, including costly litigation, which is difficult to fully mitigate. Such an incident may also require us to involve significant expense and expend material resources to investigate and correct the issue and to prevent recurrence, expose us to legal liabilities, including regulatory enforcement and indemnity obligations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.
Generally, our practice is to encrypt certain sensitive data when it is in transit and at rest. However, we do not know whether our current practice will be deemed sufficient under applicable laws or whether new regulatory requirements or techniques used by bad actors might make our current practice insufficient. Moreover, the existence of encryption, in-and-of itself, is not a completely perfect security solution. If there is a breach of our computer systems and we know or suspect that certain personal data has been exfiltrated, accessed, or used inappropriately, we may need to inform the homeowners, guest, or others whose data was stolen, accessed, or used, relevant regulators such as state Attorneys General, and may be subject to enforcement action and significant fines and penalties. Further, under certain regulatory schemes, such as the CCPA, we may be liable for statutory damages on a per breached record basis, irrespective of any actual damages or harm to the individual. This means that in the event of a breach we could face government scrutiny or consumer class actions alleging statutory damages amounting to hundreds of millions, and possibly billions of dollars.
Our information technology infrastructure may be vulnerable to computer viruses or physical or electronic intrusions that our security measures may not detect. We have experienced security incidents in the past, and we may face additional attempted security intrusions in the future. Any circumvention of our security measures could result in the misappropriation of confidential or proprietary information, interrupt our operations, result in financial loss, damage our computers or those of our homeowners and guests, or otherwise cause damage to our reputation and business. Further, the ability to bypass our information security controls could degrade our trust and safety programs, which could expose individuals to a risk of physical harm or violence.
We rely on third-party service providers, including financial institutions, to process some of our data and that of our homeowners and guests, including payment information, and any failure by such third parties to prevent or mitigate security breaches or improper access to, or disclosure of, such information could have adverse consequences for us, similar to an incident directly on our systems. We also, in the context of acquiring companies, sometimes receive transition services from the sellers of such companies and like our other service providers, any security-related failures by such providers may have similar adverse consequences for us.
We have acquired and will continue to acquire companies that are vulnerable to security breaches, and we may be responsible for any security breaches of these acquired companies. While we conduct due diligence of these companies, we do not have access to the full operating history of the companies and cannot be certain there have not been security breaches prior to our acquisition. In addition, our diligence may not discover all issues with the security safeguards, policies and procedures of such acquired companies, and it may take time to improve the security safeguards, policies and procedures of such companies, so we cannot be certain that there will not be a security breach after our acquisition.
Laws in all states and U.S. territories require businesses to notify affected individuals, governmental entities, and/or credit reporting agencies of certain security breaches affecting personal information. Such laws are inconsistent, and compliance in the event of a widespread security breach is complex and costly and may be difficult to implement. Our existing general liability and cyber liability insurance policies may not cover, or may cover only a portion of, any potential claims related to security breaches to which we are exposed or may not be adequate to indemnify us for all or any portion of liabilities that may be imposed. We also cannot be certain that our existing insurance coverage will continue to be available on acceptable terms or in amounts sufficient to cover the potentially significant losses that may result from a security breach or that the insurer will not deny coverage of any future claim. Security breaches also could harm our reputation and result in litigation against us. Any of these results could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We expend, and expect to continue to expend, significant resources to protect against security related incidents and address problems caused by such incidents. Even if we were to expend more resources, regulators and complainants may not deem our efforts sufficient, and regardless of the expenditure, the risk of security related incidents cannot be fully mitigated. Any actual or alleged security breaches or alleged violations of federal, state, or foreign laws or regulations relating to privacy and data security could result in mandated user notifications, litigation, government investigations, significant fines, and expenditures; divert management’s attention from operations; deter people from using our platform; damage our brand and reputation; force us to cease operations for some length of time; and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Defending against claims or litigation based on any security breach or incident, regardless of their merit, will be costly and may cause reputation harm. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, denial of coverage as to any specific claim, or any change or cessation in our insurance policies and coverages, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We rely primarily on Amazon Web Services to host and deliver our platform, and on a number of other third-party service providers in connection with other key aspects of our platform and operations, and any interruptions or delays in services from these third parties could impair the delivery of our platform and services, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
We rely primarily on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United States and abroad to host and deliver our platform. Third parties also provide services to key aspects of our operations, including Internet connections and networking, data storage and processing, trust and safety, security infrastructure, source code management, and software testing and deployment. In addition, we rely on third parties for many aspects of our payments processing platform and a significant portion of our customer support operations are conducted by third parties at their facilities. We also rely on third-party services for maps and location data that are core to the functionality of our platform, and we integrate applications, content, and data from third parties to deliver our platform and services.
We do not control the operation, physical security, or data security of any of these third-party providers. Despite our efforts to use commercially reasonable diligence in the selection and retention of such third-party providers, such efforts may be insufficient or inadequate to prevent or remediate such risks. Our third-party providers, including our cloud computing providers and our payment processing providers, may be subject to intrusions, computer viruses, denial-of-service attacks, sabotage, ransomware attacks, acts of vandalism, acts of terrorism, and other misconduct. Our third-party providers are also vulnerable to damage or interruption from power loss, telecommunications failures, fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and similar events, and they may be subject to financial, legal, regulatory, and labor issues, each of which may impose additional costs or requirements on us or prevent these third parties from providing services to us or our customers on our behalf. In addition, these third parties may breach their agreements with us, disagree with our interpretation of contract terms or applicable laws and regulations, refuse to continue or renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms or at all, fail to or refuse to process transactions or provide other services adequately, take actions that degrade the functionality of our platform and services, increase prices, impose additional costs or requirements on us or our customers, or give preferential treatment to our competitors. If we are unable to procure alternatives in a timely and efficient manner and on acceptable terms, or at all, we may be subject to business disruptions, losses, or costs to remediate any of these deficiencies. Our systems currently do not provide complete redundancy of data storage or processing, including payment processing. Although we are in the process of developing comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery plans for all of our operations, there is no guarantee that such plans will be effective. The occurrence of any of the above events could result in
homeowners or guests ceasing to use our platform, reputational damage, legal or regulatory proceedings, or other adverse consequences, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our platform is highly complex, and any undetected errors could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our platform is a complex system composed of many interoperating components and software. Our business is dependent upon our ability to prevent system interruption on our platform. Our software, including open source software that is incorporated into our code, may now or in the future contain undetected errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities. Some errors in our software code have not been and may not be discovered until after the code has been released. We have, from time to time, found defects or errors in our system and software limitations that have resulted in, and may discover additional issues in the future that could result in, platform unavailability or system disruption. For example, defects or errors have resulted in and could result in the delay in making payments to homeowners or overpaying or underpaying homeowners, which would impact our cash position and may cause homeowners to lose trust in our payment operations. Any errors, bugs, or vulnerabilities discovered in our code or systems released to production or found in third-party software, including open source software that is incorporated into our code, any misconfigurations of our systems, or any unintended interactions between systems could result in poor system performance, an interruption in the availability of our platform, incorrect payments, negative publicity, damage to our reputation, loss of existing and potential homeowners and guests, loss of revenue, liability for damages, a failure to comply with certain legal, regulatory or tax reporting obligations, and regulatory inquiries or other proceedings, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
System capacity constraints, system or operational failures, or denial-of-service or other attacks could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Since our founding, we have experienced rapid growth in consumer traffic to our platform. If our systems and network infrastructure cannot be expanded or are not scaled to cope with increased demand or fail to perform, we could experience unanticipated disruptions in service, slower response times, decreased customer satisfaction, and delays in the introduction of new offerings and tiers. It may be particularly difficult for us to manage these issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result of which few, if any, of our employees are physically present in our headquarters.
Our corporate headquarters, a significant portion of our research and development activities, and certain other critical business operations are located on the West Coast of the United States. Our systems and operations are vulnerable to damage or interruption from human error, computer viruses, earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, and similar events. A catastrophic event that results in the destruction or disruption of our headquarters, any third-party cloud facilities, or our critical business or information technology systems could severely affect our ability to conduct normal business operations and result in lengthy interruptions or delays of our platform and services.
Our systems and operations are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism, terrorism, and similar misconduct from external sources and malicious insiders. Our existing security measures may not be successful in preventing attacks on our systems, and any such attack could cause significant interruptions in our operations. For instance, from time to time, we have experienced denial-of- service attacks on our systems that have made portions of our platform slow or unavailable for periods of time. There are numerous other potential forms of attack, such as phishing, account takeovers, malicious code injections, ransomware, and the attempted use of our platform to launch a denial-of-service attack against another party, each of which could cause significant interruptions in our operations or involve us in legal or regulatory proceedings. Accordingly, reductions in the availability and response time of our online platform could cause loss of substantial business volumes during the occurrence of any such attack on our systems and measures that we may take to divert suspected traffic in the event of such an attack could result in the diversion of bona fide customers. These issues are likely to become more difficult to manage as we expand the number of places where we operate and the variety of services we offer, and as the tools and techniques used in such attacks become more advanced and available. Successful attacks could result in negative publicity and damage to our reputation, and could prevent consumers from booking or visiting our platform during the attack, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In the event of certain system failures, we may not be able to switch to back-up systems immediately and the time to full recovery could be prolonged. We have experienced system failures from time to time, which have not only placed increased burdens on our engineering staff, but these outages can create, and have created, a significant amount of consumer questions and complaints that need to be addressed by our customer support team. Any unscheduled interruption in our service could result in an immediate and significant loss of revenue, an increase in customer support costs, and harm to our reputation, and could result in some consumers switching to our competitors. If we experience frequent or persistent system failures, our brand and reputation could be permanently and significantly harmed, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. While we have taken and continue to take steps to increase the reliability and
redundancy of our systems, these steps are expensive and may not be completely effective in reducing the frequency or duration of unscheduled downtime. We do not carry business interruption insurance sufficient to compensate us for all losses that may occur.
In addition, we use both internally developed systems and third-party systems to operate our platform, including transaction and payment processing, and financial and accounting systems. If the number of consumers using our platform increases substantially, or if critical third-party systems stop operating as designed, we may need to significantly upgrade, expand, or repair our transaction and payment processing systems, financial and accounting systems, and other infrastructure. We may not be able to upgrade our systems and infrastructure to accommodate such conditions in a timely manner, and depending on the systems affected, our transaction and payment processing, and financial and accounting systems could be impacted for a meaningful amount of time, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our business depends on the performance and reliability of the Internet, mobile, telecommunications network operators, and other infrastructures that are not under our control. As consumers increasingly turn to mobile devices, we also become dependent on consumers’ access to the Internet through mobile carriers and their systems. Disruptions in Internet access, whether generally, in a specific region or otherwise, could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
The continued proliferation of devices and platforms other than desktop computers creates challenges. If we are unable to operate effectively on these platforms, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
We anticipate that consumer use of mobile devices and platforms other than desktop computers will continue to grow and that usage of desktop computers will continue to decline, especially in certain regions of the world experiencing the highest rate of Internet adoption. The functionality and user experiences associated with these alternative devices, such as a smaller screen size or lack of a screen, may make the use of our platform through such devices more difficult than through a desktop computer, lower the use of our platform, and make it more difficult for our homeowners to upload content to our platform. In addition, consumer purchasing patterns can differ on alternative devices, and it is uncertain how the continued proliferation of mobile devices will impact the use of our platform and services. Mobile consumers may also be unwilling to download multiple apps from multiple companies providing similar services meaning that such consumers may opt to use one of our competitors’ services instead of ours. As a result, brand recognition and the consumer experience with our mobile app will likely become increasingly important to our business. In addition, these new modalities create opportunities for device or systems companies, such as Amazon, Apple, and Google, to control the interaction with our consumers and disintermediate existing platforms such as ours.
We need to provide solutions for consumers who are limited in the size of the app they can support on their mobile devices and address latency issues in countries with lower bandwidth for both desktop and mobile devices. Because our platform contains data-intensive media, these issues are exacerbated. As new devices, operating systems, and platforms continue to be released, it is difficult to predict the problems we may encounter in adapting our offerings and features to them, and we may need to devote significant resources to the creation, support, and maintenance of our offerings and features.
Our success will also depend on the interoperability of our offerings with a range of third-party technologies, systems, networks, operating systems, and standards, including iOS and Android; the availability of our mobile apps in app stores and in “super-app” environments; and the creation, maintenance, and development of relationships with key participants in related industries, some of which may also be our competitors. In addition, if accessibility of various apps is limited by executive order or other government actions, the full functionality of devices may not be available to our customers. Moreover, third-party platforms, services and offerings are constantly evolving, and we may not be able to modify our platform to assure its compatibility with those of third parties. If we lose such interoperability, we may experience difficulties or increased costs in integrating our offerings into alternative devices or systems, or manufacturers or operating systems elect not to include our offerings, make changes that degrade the functionality of our offerings, or give preferential treatment to competitive products, the growth of our community and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. This risk may be exacerbated by the frequency with which consumers change or upgrade their devices. In the event consumers choose devices that do not already include or support our platform or do not install our mobile apps when they change or upgrade their devices, our traffic and homeowner and guest engagement may be harmed.
If we are unable to adapt to changes in technology and the evolving demands of homeowners and guests, our business, our brand, market share, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
The industries in which we compete are characterized by rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, consolidation, frequent new offering announcements, introductions, and enhancements, and changing consumer demands and
preferences. Our future success will depend, in part, on our ability to adapt our platform and services to evolving industry standards and local preferences and to continually innovate and improve the performance, features, and reliability of our platform and services in response to competitive offerings and the evolving demands of homeowners and guests. We believe our future success will also depend on our ability to adapt to emerging technologies such as tokenization, cryptocurrencies, new authentication technologies, such as biometrics, distributed ledger and blockchain technologies, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and cloud technologies. As a result, we intend to continue to spend significant resources maintaining, developing, and enhancing our technologies and platform; however, these efforts may be more costly than expected and may not be successful. For example, we may not make the appropriate investments in new technologies, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Further, technological innovation often results in unintended consequences such as bugs, vulnerabilities, and other system failures. Any such bug, vulnerability, or failure, especially in connection with a significant technical implementation or change, could result in lost business, harm to our brand or reputation, consumer complaints, and other adverse consequences, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Furthermore, in the future the competitive pressure to innovate could encompass a wider range of services and technologies, including services and technologies that may be outside of our historical core business, and our ability to keep pace may slow. Our current and potential competitors range from large and established companies to emerging start-ups. Emerging start-ups may be able to innovate and focus on developing a new product or service faster than we can or may foresee consumer need for new services or technologies before we do. Some of our larger competitors or potential competitors have more resources or more established or varied relationships with consumers than we have, and they could use these advantages in ways that could affect our competitive position, including by making acquisitions, entering or investing in travel reservation businesses, investing in research and development and competing aggressively for highly-skilled employees.
In addition, the widespread adoption of new internet, networking or telecommunications technologies or other technological changes could require us to incur substantial expenditures to modify or adapt our services or infrastructure to these new technologies, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Any failure to implement or adapt to new technologies in a timely manner or at all could adversely affect our ability to compete, increase our consumer acquisition costs or otherwise adversely affect our business, and therefore adversely affect our brand, market share, results of operations, and financial condition.
If we do not adequately protect our intellectual property rights and our data, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
We hold a broad collection of intellectual property rights related to our brand; certain content and design elements on our platform; inventions and knowhow related to our platform, services, and research and development efforts; an extensive repository of wholly-owned audio and visual assets; marketing and promotional concepts and materials; a collection of editorial content; and certain entertainment-related assets. This includes registered domain names, registered and unregistered trademarks, service marks, copyrights, patents and patent applications, trade secrets, licenses of intellectual property rights of various kinds, and other forms of intellectual property rights in the United States and in a number of countries around the world. In addition, to further protect our proprietary rights, from time to time, we have purchased trademarks, domain name registrations, patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property and intellectual property rights from third parties. In the future, we may acquire or license additional patents or patent portfolios, or other intellectual property assets and rights, from third parties, which could require significant cash expenditures.
We rely on a combination of trademark, patent, copyright, and trade secret laws, international treaties, our terms of service, other contractual provisions, user policies, restrictions on disclosure, technological measures, and confidentiality and inventions assignment agreements with our employees and consultants to protect our intellectual property assets from infringement and misappropriation. Our pending and future trademark, patent, domain name and copyright applications may not be approved.
We also rely on unpatented proprietary technology. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our technology or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. It is possible that others will independently develop the same or similar technology or otherwise obtain access to our unpatented technology. To protect our trade secrets and other proprietary information, we require employees, consultants, and independent contractors to enter into confidentiality agreements. However, such agreements may not be enforceable in full or in part in all jurisdictions and any breach could have a negative effect on our business and our remedy for such breach may be limited. The contractual provisions that we enter into may not prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property rights and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property rights. As such, we cannot guarantee that the steps taken by us will prevent unauthorized use or infringement or misappropriation of our technology. We cannot assure you that these agreements will provide meaningful protection for our trade secrets, know-how, or other proprietary information in the event of any unauthorized use,
misappropriation, or disclosure of such trade secrets, know-how, or other proprietary information. If we are unable to maintain the proprietary nature of our technologies, our business would be materially adversely affected.
Furthermore, effective intellectual property protection may not be available in every country in which we operate or intend to operate our business. As such, there can be no assurance that others will not offer technologies, products, services, features, or concepts that are substantially similar to ours and compete with our business, or copy or otherwise obtain, disclose and/or use our brand, content, design elements, creative, editorial, and entertainment assets, or other proprietary information without authorization.
We may be unable to prevent third parties from seeking to register, acquire, or otherwise obtain or maintain trademarks, service marks, domain names, or social media handles that are similar to, infringe upon, violate, or diminish the value of our trademarks, service marks, copyrights, and our other proprietary rights. Third parties have also obtained or misappropriated certain of our data through website scraping, robots, aggregating our data for their internal use, or by featuring or providing our data through their respective websites, and/or launch businesses monetizing this data. While we routinely employ technological, operational, and legal measures in an attempt to divert, halt, or mitigate such operations, we may not always be able to detect or halt the underlying activities as technologies used to accomplish these operations continue to rapidly evolve.
Our intellectual property assets and rights are essential to our business. If the protection of our proprietary rights and data is inadequate to prevent unauthorized infringement, use, violation or misappropriation by third parties, the value of our brand and other intangible assets may be diminished and competitors may be able to more effectively mimic our branding technologies, offerings, or features or methods of operations. Even if we do detect infringements, violations or misappropriations and decide to enforce our rights, litigation may be necessary to enforce our rights, and any enforcement efforts we undertake could be time-consuming and expensive, could divert our management’s attention, and may result in a court determining that certain of our intellectual property rights are unenforceable. If we fail to protect our intellectual property and data in a cost-effective and meaningful manner, our competitive standing could be harmed; our homeowners, guests, other consumers, and corporate and community partners could devalue the content of our platform; and our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
We have been, and may in the future be, subject to claims that we or others violated certain third-party intellectual property rights, which, even where meritless, can be costly to defend and could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Companies in technology industries own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets, as well as domain names, and frequently enter into litigation based on allegations of infringement, misappropriation or other violations of intellectual property rights. The Internet and technology industries are characterized by significant creation and protection of intellectual property rights and by frequent litigation based on allegations of infringement, misappropriation, or other violations of such intellectual property rights. There may be intellectual property rights held by others, including issued or pending patents, registered or unregistered trademarks, domain names and copyrights, and applications for the foregoing, that such holders allege cover significant aspects of our platform, technologies, content, branding, or business methods. Moreover, companies in the Internet and technology industries are frequent targets of practicing and non-practicing entities and cyber-squatters seeking to profit from royalties in connection with grants of licenses or settlement of claims. Like many other companies in the Internet and technology industries, we sometimes enter into agreements which include indemnification provisions related to intellectual property which can subject us to costs and damages in the event of a claim against an indemnified third party.
We have received in the past, and may receive in the future, communications from third parties, including practicing and non-practicing entities, claiming that we have infringed, misused, or otherwise misappropriated their intellectual property rights, including alleged patent infringement. Additionally, we have been, and may in the future be, involved in claims, suits, regulatory proceedings, and other proceedings involving alleged infringement, misuse, or misappropriation of third-party intellectual property rights, or relating to our intellectual property holdings and rights. While a number of the infringement claims raised against us have been based on our use or implementation of third-party technologies for which those third parties have been required to defend against the claims on our behalf and indemnify us from liability, intellectual property claims against us, regardless of merit, could be time consuming and expensive to litigate or settle and could divert our management’s attention and other resources. See the section titled “Information About the Company — Legal Proceedings” for additional information.
Claims involving intellectual property could subject us to significant liability for damages and could result in our having to stop using certain technologies, content, branding, domain names or business methods or practices found to be in violation of another party’s rights. We might be required or may opt to seek a license for rights to intellectual property held by others, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Even if a license is available, we could be required to pay significant royalties, which would increase our operating expenses. We may also be required to develop alternative non-
infringing technology, content, branding, business methods, or practices. The development of alternative non-infringing technology or practices could require significant effort and expense and make us less competitive, or may not be technically feasible. Any of these results could materially adversely affect our ability to compete and our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Furthermore, we may introduce new offerings or changes to existing offerings or make other business changes, including in areas where we currently do not compete, which could increase our exposure to patent, copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property rights claims from competitors, other practicing entities, and non-practicing entities. Similarly, our exposure to risks associated with various intellectual property claims may increase as a result of acquisitions of other companies. Third parties may make infringement and similar or related claims after we have acquired a company or technology that had not been asserted prior to the acquisition. As a result, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected as a result of the occurrence of any of the foregoing.
Our use of “open source” software could adversely impact the value or enforceability of our intellectual property in proprietary software, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition, and affect our ability to offer our platform and services and subject us to costly litigation and other disputes.
We have in the past incorporated and may in the future incorporate “open source” software into our codebase as we continue to develop our platform and services. Certain open source software licenses require a user who intends to distribute the open source software as a component of the user’s software to disclose publicly part or all of the source code to the user’s software. The use and distribution of open source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. Open source software is generally licensed by its authors or other third parties under open source licenses. Some of these licenses (often called “copyleft” or “viral” licenses) contain requirements that could cause us to make available the source code of the modifications or derivative works that we create based upon the licensed open source software, and require that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of a particular open source license granting third parties certain rights of further use. By the terms of such open source licenses, we could also be required to release the source code of our proprietary products or services, and to make our proprietary products or services available under open source licenses, if we combine and/or distribute our proprietary software with such open source software in a manner that triggers the obligation of the license. In addition to using open source software, we also license to others some of our software through open source projects. If our own software contains viral or copyleft open source code, it could require us to make the source code publicly available, and therefore could limit our ability to protect our intellectual property rights with respect to that software. From time to time, companies that use open source software have faced claims challenging the use of open source software or compliance with open source license terms. Furthermore, there is an increasing number of open-source software license types, almost none of which have been tested in a court of law, resulting in a dearth of guidance regarding the proper legal interpretation of such licenses. As such, we could be subject to suits by parties claiming ownership of what we believe to be open source software or claiming noncompliance with open source licensing terms, including claims for infringement of intellectual property rights or for breach of contract. If we receive an allegation that we have violated an open source license, we may incur significant legal expenses, be subject to damages, be required to redesign our product to remove the open source software or may be required to publicly release certain portions of our proprietary source code, all of which could have a material impact on our business. Even in the absence of a claim, if we discover the use of open source software inconsistent with our practices, we could expend significant time and resources to replace the open source software or obtain a commercial license, if available. All of these risks are heightened by the fact that the ownership of or disclosure requirements regarding open source software can be uncertain, leading to litigation, and many of the licenses applicable to open source software have not been interpreted by courts, and these licenses could be construed to impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to commercialize our products. Any use of open source software inconsistent with our policies or licensing terms could harm our business and financial position.
While we employ practices designed to monitor our compliance with the licenses of third-party open source software and protect our proprietary source code, there is a risk that we may incorporate open source software with unfavorable licensing terms, including the obligation to make our source code available for others to use or modify without compensation to us, or inadvertently use open source software, which is fairly common in software development in the Internet and technology industries. Such inadvertent use of open source software could expose us to claims of non-compliance with the applicable terms of the underlying licenses, which could lead to unforeseen business disruptions, including being restricted from offering parts of our product that incorporate the software, being required to publicly release proprietary source code, being required to re-engineer parts of our code base to comply with license terms, or being required to extract the open source software at issue. Our exposure to these risks may be increased as a result of evolving our core source code base, introducing new offerings, integrating acquired-company technologies, or making other business changes, including in areas where we do not currently compete. Any of the foregoing could adversely impact the value or enforceability of our intellectual property, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Risks Related to Other Legal, Regulatory and Tax Matters
Laws, regulations, and rules that affect the short-term rental business have limited and may continue to limit the ability or willingness of homeowners to rent through Vacasa and expose our homeowners or us to significant penalties, which have had and could continue to have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
There have been and continue to be legal and regulatory developments that affect the short-term rental business. Hotels and groups affiliated with hotels have engaged and will likely continue to engage in various lobbying and political efforts for stricter regulations governing our business model in both local and national jurisdictions. Other private groups, such as homeowners, landlords, and condominium and neighborhood associations, have adopted contracts or regulations that purport to ban or otherwise restrict short-term or seasonal vacation rentals, and third-party lease agreements between landlords and tenants, home insurance policies, and mortgages may prevent or restrict the ability of homeowners to list their spaces. These groups and others cite concerns around affordable housing and over-tourism in major cities, and some state and local governments have implemented or have considered implementing rules, ordinances, or regulations governing the short-term rental of properties. Such regulations include ordinances that restrict or ban homeowners from short-term rentals, set annual caps on the number of days homeowners can share their homes, require homeowners to register with the municipality or city, or require homeowners to obtain permission before offering short-term rentals. In addition, some jurisdictions regard short-term rental as “hotel use” and claim that such use constitutes a conversion of a residential property to a commercial property requiring a permitting process.
Macroeconomic pressures and public policy concerns could continue to lead to new laws and regulations, or interpretations or reinterpretations of existing laws and regulations, that limit the ability of homeowners to rent out their homes. If laws, regulations, rules, or agreements significantly restrict or discourage homeowners in certain jurisdictions from renting their properties, it would have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
While a number of cities and countries have implemented legislation to address short-term rentals, there are many others that have not addressed or are not yet explicitly enforcing short-term rental laws, and could follow suit and enact or enforce regulations. New laws, regulations, government policies, or changes in their interpretations or changes in enforcement of laws in the markets where we operate could present significant challenges and uncertainties. In the event of any such changes, we may be unable to operate in some jurisdictions, our short-term rental properties could be limited, current and future rental listings and bookings could decline significantly, and our relationship with our homeowners and guests could be negatively impacted, which would have a materially adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and reputation.
Certain jurisdictions have adopted laws and regulations that seek to impose lodging taxes, often known as transient or occupancy taxes, on our guests, collection and remittance obligations on our homeowners and/or us, and withholding obligations on us, as more fully described in our risk factor titled “Uncertainty in the application of taxes to our homeowners, guests, or platform could increase our tax liabilities and may discourage homeowners and guests from conducting business on our platform.” In addition, we are subject to regulations with respect to short-term rentals, owner registration, licensing, and other requirements for the listing of accommodations, such as real estate broker or agent licenses and travel agency licenses in some jurisdictions. We could be held liable and incur significant financial and potential criminal penalties if we are found to have not complied with any of these requirements.
We have historically not taken an active role in advocacy but we may in the future determine that it is necessary for us to defend against the application of laws and regulations that limit our ability to do business and we cannot guarantee we would be successful in those efforts. Further, if we or our homeowners and guests were required to comply with laws and regulations, government requests, or agreements with government agencies that adversely impact our relations with homeowners and guests, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected. Moreover, if we enter an agreement with a government or governmental agency to resolve a dispute, the terms of such agreement will likely be publicly available and could create a precedent that may put us in a weaker bargaining position in future disputes with other governments.
We are subject to a wide variety of complex, evolving, and sometimes inconsistent and ambiguous laws and regulations that may adversely impact our operations and discourage homeowners and guests from using our services, and that could cause us to incur significant liabilities including fines and criminal penalties, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Complying with the laws and regulations of different jurisdictions that impose varying standards and requirements is burdensome for businesses like ours, imposes added cost, increases potential liability to our business, and makes it more
difficult to realize business efficiencies and economies of scale. For example, we incur significant operational costs to comply with requirements of jurisdictions and cities that have disparate requirements around tax collection, tax reporting, owner registration, limits on lengths of stays, and other regulations, each of which require us to dedicate significant resources to provide the infrastructure and tools needed on and outside our platform for our homeowners to meet these legal requirements and for us to fulfill any obligations we may have. The complexity of our services and changes required to comply with the large number of disparate and constantly evolving requirements can lead to compliance gaps if our internal resources cannot keep up with the pace of regulatory change and new requirements imposed on our platform or services, or if our platform does not work as intended or has errors or bugs, or if the manual processes we put in place to comply with certain requirements are not followed properly or at all.
While we endeavor to monitor the changing legal landscape relating to short term rentals, it may be difficult or impossible for us to investigate or evaluate laws or regulations in all cities, countries, and regions in which we do business. The application of existing laws and regulations to our business and platform can be unclear, may be difficult for homeowners, guests, and us to understand and apply, and are subject to change, as governments or government agencies seek to apply legacy systems of laws or adopt new laws to new online business models in the travel and accommodations industries, including ours. Uncertain and unclear application of such laws and regulations to homeowner and guest activity and our platform and services could cause and has caused some homeowners and guests to leave or choose not to use our platform, reduce supply and demand for our platform and services, increase the costs of compliance with such laws and regulations, and increase the threat of litigation or enforcement actions related to our platform and services, all of which would materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. See also our risk factor titled “We could face liability for information or content on or accessible through, our platform.”
There are laws that apply to us, and there are laws that apply to our homeowners and/or guests. While we require our homeowners and guests to comply with their own independent legal obligations under our contracts, we have limited means of enforcing or ensuring the compliance of our homeowners and guests with all applicable legal requirements. Certain governments have attempted, and may attempt in the future, to hold us responsible for laws that apply to our homeowners and/or guests. Whether applicable to us, our homeowners, and/or our guests, the related consequences arising out of such laws and regulations, including costs of complying with audits, and penalties for violations of and costs to maintain compliance with such laws and regulations, have had and could continue to have a material adverse effect on our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We take certain measures to comply and to help homeowners comply with laws and regulations, such as requiring registration numbers to be displayed on a listing profile for listings in some jurisdictions where such registration is required. These measures, changes to them, and any future measures we adopt could increase friction on our platform, and reduce the number of listings available on our platform from homeowners and bookings by guests, and could reduce the activity of homeowners and guests on our platform. We may be subject to additional laws and regulations which could require significant changes to our platform that discourage homeowners and guests from using our platform.
In addition to laws and regulations directly applicable to the short-term rental business as discussed in our risk factor titled “Laws, regulations, and rules that affect the short-term rental business have limited and may continue to limit the ability or willingness of homeowners to rent through Vacasa and expose our homeowners or us to significant penalties, which have had and could continue to have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition,” we are subject to laws and regulations governing our business practices, the Internet, e-commerce, and electronic devices, including those relating to taxation, privacy, data protection, pricing, content, advertising, discrimination, consumer protection, protection of minors, copyrights, distribution, messaging, mobile communications, electronic device certification, electronic waste, electronic contracts, communications, Internet access, competition, and unfair commercial practices. We are also subject to laws and regulations governing the provision of online payment services, the design and operation of our platform, and the operations, characteristics, and quality of our platform and services.
We are also subject to federal, state, local, and foreign laws regulating employment, employee working conditions, including wage and hour laws, employment dispute and employee bargaining processes, collective and representative actions, and other employment compliance requirements.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many jurisdictions have also adopted laws, rules, regulations, and/or decrees intended to address the COVID-19 pandemic, including implementing travel restrictions or restricting access to city centers or limiting accommodation offerings in surrounding areas. In addition, many jurisdictions have limited social mobility and gatherings. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, governments, corporations, and other authorities may continue to implement restrictions or policies that could further restrict the ability of our homeowners and guests to participate on our platform.
There is increased governmental interest in regulating technology companies in a number of areas including privacy, tax, data localization and data access, algorithm-based discrimination, and competition. In addition, climate change and greater emphasis on sustainability could lead to regulatory efforts to address the carbon impact of housing and travel. As a result, governments may enact new laws and regulations and/or view matters or interpret laws and regulations differently than they have in the past, and in a manner that could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Any new or existing laws and regulations applicable to existing or future business areas, including amendments to or repeal of existing laws and regulations, or new interpretations, applications, or enforcement of existing laws and regulations, could expose us to substantial liability, including significant expenses necessary to comply with such laws and regulations, and materially adversely impact bookings on our platform, thereby materially adversely affecting our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Our current and future efforts to influence legislative and regulatory proposals have an uncertain chance of success, could be limited by laws regulating lobbying or advocacy activity in certain jurisdictions, and even if successful, could be expensive and time consuming, and could divert the attention of management from our core business operations.
We rely on a mix of independent contractors and employees to provide operational services to us, and any potential reclassification of independent contractors as deemed employees could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We rely on a mix of independent contractors and employees to provide operational services to our business. The state of the law regarding independent contractor status varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and is subject to change based on court decisions and regulation. Regulatory authorities and other parties have increasingly asserted within several industries that certain independent contractors should be classified as employees. As a result, there is significant uncertainty regarding the future of the worker classification regulatory landscape. It is possible that legislative, judicial and regulatory (including tax) authorities may introduce proposals or assert interpretations of existing rules and regulations that would change the classification of a significant number of independent contractors doing business with us from independent contractor to employee. In addition, we could also be involved in lawsuits and claims that assert that certain independent contractors should be classified as our employees. Adverse determinations regarding the status of any of our independent contractors, or the enactment of rules and regulations (or changes in the interpretations of existing rules and regulations) that lead to the reclassification of such independent contractors as employees, would result in a significant increase in employment-related costs, such as wages, benefits and taxes, and may subject us to potential penalties, any of which would adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We are subject to regulatory audits, inquiries, litigation, and other disputes from time to time which have in the past materially adversely affected, and may in the future materially adversely affect, our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We have been, and expect to continue to be, a party to various legal and regulatory claims, litigation or pre- litigation disputes, and proceedings arising in the normal course of business. The number and significance of these claims, disputes, and proceedings have increased as our company has grown larger, the number of bookings has increased, awareness of our brand has grown, our presence on well-known platforms has increased, and the scope and complexity of our business has expanded, and we expect the number and significance of these claims, disputes and proceedings will continue to increase in the future.
We have been, and expect to continue to be, subject to various government audits, inquiries, investigations, and proceedings related to legal and regulatory requirements such as compliance with laws related to short-term rentals, tax, consumer protection, pricing, advertising, discrimination, data protection, data sharing, payment processing, privacy, and competition. In many cases, these inquiries, investigations, and proceedings can be complex, time consuming, costly to investigate, and require significant company and management attention. For certain matters, we are implementing recommended changes to our products, operations, and compliance practices and removal of noncompliant listings and homes from our service. We are unable to predict the outcomes and implications of such audits, inquiries, investigations, and proceedings on our business, and such audits, inquiries, investigations, and proceedings could result in large fines and penalties, require changes to our products and operations, restrict our ability to operate in certain regions and materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition. In some instances, applicable laws and regulations do not yet exist or are being adapted and implemented to address certain aspects of our business, and such adoption or change in their interpretation could further alter or impact our business and subject us to future government audits, inquiries, investigations, and proceedings.
Legal claims have been asserted against us for alleged discriminatory conduct undertaken by homeowners against certain guests (such as conduct relating to acceptance of service animals), and for our own platform policies or business practices. Changes to the interpretation of the applicability of fair housing, civil rights or other statutes to our business or the conduct of
our users could materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We may also become more vulnerable to third-party claims as U.S. laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Stored Communications Act, and non-U.S. laws such as the European E-Commerce Directive, are interpreted by the courts or otherwise modified or amended, as our platform and services to our homeowners and guests continue to expand, and as we expand geographically into jurisdictions where the underlying laws with respect to the potential liability of online intermediaries such as ourselves are either unclear or less favorable.
In addition, we face claims and litigation relating to fatalities, shootings, other violent acts, illness (including COVID-19), cancellations and refunds, personal injuries, property damage, carbon monoxide incidents, and privacy violations that occurred in connection with a rental through our platform. We also have faced putative class action litigation and government inquiries, and could face additional litigation and government inquiries and fines relating to our business practices, cancellations and other consequences due to natural disasters or other unforeseen events beyond our control such as wars, regional hostilities, health concerns, including epidemics and pandemics such as COVID-19, or law enforcement demands and other regulatory actions.
In addition, in the ordinary course of business, disputes may arise because we are alleged to have infringed third parties’ intellectual property or in which we agree to provide indemnification to third parties with respect to certain matters, including losses arising from our breach of such agreements or from intellectual property infringement claims, or where we make other contractual commitments to third parties. We also have indemnification agreements with certain of our directors and executive officers that require us, among other things, to indemnify them against certain liabilities that may arise by reason of their status or service as directors or officers. We may be subject to litigation stemming from these obligations.
Adverse results in any regulatory audit, inquiry, litigation, legal proceedings, or claims may include awards of potentially significant monetary damages, including statutory damages for certain causes of action in certain jurisdictions, penalties, fines, injunctive relief, royalty or licensing agreements, or orders preventing us from offering certain services. Moreover, many regulatory audits, inquiries, litigation, legal proceedings, or claims are resolved by settlements that can include both monetary and nonmonetary components. Adverse results or settlements may result in changes in our business practices in significant ways, increased operating and compliance costs, and a loss of revenue. In addition, any litigation or pre-litigation claims against us, whether or not meritorious, are time consuming, require substantial expense, and result in the diversion of significant operational resources. We use various software platforms that in some instances have limited functionality which may impede our ability to retrieve records in the context of a governmental audit, inquiry or litigation. In addition, our insurance may not cover all potential claims to which we are exposed and may not be adequate to indemnify us for all liability that may be imposed. As we continue to grow, regulatory audits, inquiries, litigation, legal proceedings, and other claims will continue to consume significant company resources and adverse results in future matters could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We could face liability for information or content that is on, or accessible through, our platform.
We could face claims relating to information or content that is published or made available on our platform. We generally manage the content that is posted on our site as part of our property management services. As such, we are exposed to potential claims of defamation, disparagement, negligence, warranty, personal harm, intellectual property infringement, and other alleged damages that could be asserted against us, in addition to our homeowners and guests.
While we rely on a variety of statutory and common-law frameworks and defenses, including those provided by the DMCA and the fair-use doctrine in the United States, differences among statutes, limitations on immunity, requirements to maintain immunity, and moderation efforts in the many jurisdictions in which we operate may affect our ability to rely on these frameworks and defenses, or may create uncertainty regarding liability for information or content on our platform. Moreover, regulators in the United States and in other countries may introduce new regulatory regimes that increase potential liability for information or content available on our platform.
Because liability often flows from information or content on our platform and/or services accessed through our platform, as we continue to expand our offerings, tiers, and scope of business, both in terms of the range of offerings and services and geographical operations, we may face or become subject to additional or different laws and regulations. Our potential liability for information or content created by third parties and posted to our platform could require us to implement additional measures to reduce our exposure to such liability, may require us to expend significant resources, may limit the desirability of our platform to homeowners and guests, may cause damage to our brand and reputation, and may cause us to incur time and costs defending such claims in litigation, thereby materially adversely affecting our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In the European Union, the Consumer Rights Directive and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive harmonized consumer rights across the EU member states. If consumer protection regulators find that we are in breach of consumer protection laws, we may be fined or required to change our terms and processes, which may result in increased operational costs. Consumers and certain consumer protection associations may also bring individual claims against us if they believe that our terms and/or business practices are not in compliance with local consumer protection laws. Currently, class actions may also be brought in certain countries in the European Union, and the Collective Redress Directive will extend the right to collective redress across the European Union.
We are subject to governmental economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations that limit the scope of our offering. Additionally, failure to comply with applicable economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations could subject us to liability and negatively affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We are required to comply with economic and trade sanctions administered by governments where we operate, including the U.S. government (including without limitation regulations administered and enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the U.S. Department of State). These economic and trade sanctions prohibit or restrict transactions to or from or dealings with certain specified countries, regions, their governments and, in certain circumstances, their nationals, and with individuals and entities that are specially-designated, such as individuals and entities included on OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN List) or other sanctions measures. Any future economic and trade sanctions imposed in jurisdictions where we have significant business could materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Our ability to track and verify transactions and otherwise comply with these regulations require a high level of internal controls, and we cannot guarantee that we have not engaged in dealings with persons sanctioned under applicable sanctions laws. Any non-compliance with economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations or related investigations could result in claims or actions against us and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. As our business continues to grow and regulations change, we may be required to make additional investments in our internal controls or modify our business.
We have operations in countries known to experience high levels of corruption and any violation of anti-corruption laws could subject us to penalties and other adverse consequences.
We are subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other laws in the United States and elsewhere that prohibit improper payments or offers of payments to foreign governments and their officials, political parties, state-owned or controlled enterprises, and/or private entities and individuals for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. We have operations in and deal with countries known to experience corruption. Our activities in these countries create the risk of unauthorized payments or offers of payments by one of our employees, contractors, agents, or users that could be in violation of various laws, including the FCPA and anti-bribery laws in these countries. We have implemented policies, procedures, systems, and controls designed to ensure compliance with applicable laws and to discourage corrupt practices by our employees, consultants, and agents, and to identify and address potentially impermissible transactions under such laws and regulations; however, our existing and future safeguards, including training and compliance programs to discourage corrupt practices by such parties, may not prove effective, and we cannot ensure that all such parties, including those that may be based in or from countries where practices that violate U.S. or other laws may be customary, will not take actions in violation of our policies, for which we may be ultimately responsible. Additional compliance requirements may require us to revise or expand our compliance programs, including the procedures we use to monitor international and domestic transactions. Failure to comply with any of these laws and regulations may result in extensive internal or external investigations as well as significant financial penalties and reputational harm, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Uncertainty in the application of taxes to our homeowners, guests, or platform could increase our tax liabilities and may discourage homeowners and guests from conducting business on our platform.
We are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the United States (federal, state, and local) and several foreign jurisdictions. New or revised foreign, federal, state, or local tax regulations may subject us or our homeowners and guests to additional indirect taxes, such as lodging, hotel, sales and use, privilege, excise, VAT, goods and services, harmonized sales, business, and gross receipt (together, “indirect taxes”), income, and other taxes, and depending upon the jurisdiction could subject us or our homeowners and guests to significant monetary penalties and fines for non-payment of taxes. Any additional tax expenses and other liabilities to which we or our homeowners and/or guests are subject would likely increase the cost of doing business for our homeowners, increase the price paid by guests, and may discourage homeowners and guests from using our platform, which would lead to a decline in revenue. As a result, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected by additional taxes of this nature or additional taxes or penalties resulting from our failure to comply with any reporting, collection, and payment obligations. We accrue a reserve for such taxes, and upon
examination or audit, such reserves may be insufficient. We are currently subject to tax audit in several states, local jurisdictions, and in Spain.
The application of taxes, particularly indirect taxes, to activities such as ours and to our homeowners and guests is a complex and evolving issue. Laws and regulations relating to taxes as applied to our platform, and to our homeowners and guests, vary greatly among jurisdictions, and it is difficult or impossible to predict how such laws and regulations will be applied. We devote significant resources, including management time, to the application and interpretation of laws and working with various jurisdictions to clarify whether taxes are applicable and the amount of taxes that apply. The application of indirect taxes to our homeowners, guests, and our platform significantly increases our operational expenses as we build the infrastructure and tools to capture data and to report, collect, and remit taxes. The lack of uniformity in the laws and regulations relating to indirect taxes as applied further increases the operational and financial complexity of our systems and processes, and introduces potential for errors or incorrect tax calculations, all of which are costly to our business and results of operations. In addition, certain regulations may be so complex as to make it infeasible for us to be fully compliant. As our business operations expand or change, including as a result of introducing new or enhanced offerings, tiers or features, or due to acquisitions, the application of indirect taxes to our business and to our homeowners and guests will further change and evolve, and could further increase our liability for taxes, discourage homeowners and guests from using our platform, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We may have exposure to greater than anticipated tax liabilities.
The application of domestic and international income and non-income tax laws, rules and regulations to our business is subject to interpretation by the relevant taxing authorities. Given a focus on revenue generation, taxing authorities have become more aggressive in their enforcement of such laws, rules and regulations, resulting in increased audit activity and audit assessments, and legislation. The lack of uniformity in the laws and regulations relating to indirect taxes as applied to our business increases the operational and financial complexity of our systems and processes, and introduces potential for errors or incorrect tax calculations.
We are subject to regular review and audit by U.S. federal, state, local, and foreign tax authorities. As such, potential tax liabilities may exceed our current tax reserves or may require us to modify our business practices and incur additional cost to comply, any of which may have a material adverse effect on our business.
The determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment by management, and there are many transactions where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. Our provision for income taxes is also determined by the manner in which we operate our business, and any changes to such operations or laws applicable to such operations may affect our effective tax rate.
Our tax positions or tax returns are subject to change, and therefore we cannot accurately predict whether we may incur material additional tax liabilities in the future, which would materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.
Changes in tax laws or tax rulings could materially affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
The tax regimes we are subject to or operate under, including income and non-income (including indirect) taxes, are unsettled and may be subject to significant change. Changes in tax laws or tax rulings, or changes in interpretations of existing laws, could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.
In addition, we are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the United States (federal, state, and local) and numerous foreign jurisdictions. A number of jurisdictions have proposed or implemented new tax laws or interpreted existing laws to explicitly apply various taxes to businesses like ours. Laws and regulations relating to taxes vary greatly among jurisdictions, and it is difficult or impossible to predict how such laws and regulations will be applied. The application of indirect taxes to activities such as ours is a complex and evolving issue.
We may recognize additional tax expenses and be subject to additional tax liabilities, and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected by additional taxes of this nature or additional taxes or penalties resulting from our failure to comply with any reporting, collection, and payment obligations. We accrue a reserve for such taxes when the likelihood is probable that such taxes apply to us, and upon examination or audit, such reserves may be insufficient. New or revised taxes and, in particular, the taxes described above and similar taxes would generally increase the price paid by guests and could discourage guests from using our properties, and lead to a decline in revenue, and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.
We expect to have material net operating loss carryforwards for U.S. federal and state income tax purposes. As of December 31, 2021, our federal net operating loss carryforwards were approximately $144.7 million and our state net operating loss carryforwards were approximately $209.9 million. Realization of tax savings from these net operating loss carryforwards will depend on our future taxable income, and there is a risk that our existing carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future taxable income, which could materially adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition. In addition, under Sections 382 and 383 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code), if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” generally defined as a greater than 50% change (by value) in its equity ownership by significant stockholders or groups of stockholders over a three-year period, the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other pre-change tax attributes, to offset its post-change taxable income or tax liabilities may be limited. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. We expect that our net operating losses will be subject to limitations under these rules (but are still evaluating the extent of such limitations), and we may experience ownership changes in the future because of shifts in our stock ownership, many of which are outside of our control. Our ability to use our pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes to offset future U.S. federal taxable income may be subject to limitations, which could result in increased future tax liability to us. In addition, tax benefits that we derive from certain tax attributes, including net operating losses, that are allocable to us as a result of the transactions undertaken in connection with the Closing are subject to the terms of, and may give rise to payments that we will be required to make under, the Tax Receivable Agreement, as discussed below.
Risks Related to our Organizational Structure
Our principal stockholders have significant influence over us, including over decisions that require the approval of stockholders, and their interests may conflict with yours.
The Silver Lake Stockholders, the Riverwood Stockholders, the Level Equity Stockholders and the EB Stockholder control, as a group, approximately 63.7% of the combined voting power of our Common Stock as a result of their ownership of Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock. These parties, together with TPG Sponsor, have entered into the Stockholders Agreement, which grants the parties thereto certain director nomination rights with respect to the members of our Board, including removal rights with respect to any director elected pursuant to their respective nomination rights and the right to designate a director to fill any vacancy created by reason of death, removal or resignation of any such director. The Stockholders Agreement automatically terminates 18 months after the Closing. As a result, these stockholders and their affiliates have significant influence over the management and affairs of our company and, acting together, will have the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and the approval of significant corporate transactions, including any merger, consolidation or sale of all or substantially all of our assets and the issuance or redemption of equity interests in certain circumstances. The interests of these stockholders may not always coincide with, and in some cases may conflict with, our interests and the interests of our other stockholders. For instance, these stockholders could attempt to delay or prevent a change in control of our company, even if such change in control would benefit our other stockholders, which could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock. This concentration of ownership may also affect the prevailing market price of our common stock due to investors’ perceptions that conflicts of interest may exist or arise. As a result, this concentration of ownership may not be in your best interests.
In addition, because these stockholders hold part of their economic interest in our business through Vacasa Holdings LLC (OpCo), rather than through Vacasa, Inc., their interests may further conflict with the interests of holders of Class A Common Stock. For example, such holders may have different tax positions from us, which could influence their decisions regarding whether and when we should dispose of assets or incur new or refinance existing indebtedness, and whether and when we should undergo certain changes of control within the meaning of the Tax Receivable Agreement or terminate the Tax Receivable Agreement. In addition, the structuring of future transactions may take into consideration these tax or other considerations even where no similar benefit would accrue to us. These holders’ significant ownership in us and resulting ability, acting together, to effectively control us may discourage someone from making a significant equity investment in us, or could discourage transactions involving a change in control, including transactions in which holders of shares of our Class A Common Stock might otherwise receive a premium for their shares over the then-current market price.
We are a “controlled company” within the meaning of the Nasdaq listing rules and, as a result, will qualify for, and may rely on, exemptions from certain corporate governance requirements. You will not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to such requirements.
The parties to the Stockholders Agreement beneficially own, in the aggregate, more than 50% of the combined voting power for the election of the Board. As a result, we qualify as a “controlled company” within the meaning of the Nasdaq listing rules.
Under these rules, a listed company of which more than 50% of the voting power is held by an individual, group or another company is a “controlled company” and may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance requirements, including, but not limited to, requirements that:
•a majority of its board of directors consist of directors who qualify as “independent” as defined under Nasdaq listing rules;
•its board of directors have a compensation committee composed entirely of independent directors with a written charter addressing the committee’s purpose and responsibilities;
•its board of directors have a nominating and corporate governance committee composed entirely of independent directors with a written charter addressing the committee’s purpose and responsibilities; and
•its board of directors conduct an annual performance evaluation of its compensation committee and the nominating and corporate governance committee.
We may elect to rely on the foregoing exemptions so long as we remain a “controlled company.” Accordingly, you may not have the same protections as those afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of these corporate governance requirements.
Our Certificate of Incorporation provides that the doctrine of “corporate opportunity” will not apply with respect to any director or stockholder who is not employed by us or our subsidiaries.
The doctrine of corporate opportunity generally provides that a corporate fiduciary may not develop an opportunity using corporate resources, acquire an interest adverse to that of the corporation or acquire property that is reasonably incident to the present or prospective business of the corporation or in which the corporation has a present or expectancy interest, unless that opportunity is first presented to the corporation and the corporation chooses not to pursue that opportunity. The doctrine of corporate opportunity is intended to preclude officers, directors and other fiduciaries from personally benefiting from opportunities that belong to the corporation. Our Certificate of Incorporation provides that the doctrine of “corporate opportunity” does not apply with respect to any stockholder or director (other than any director who is also an officer) of Vacasa, Inc. (each, an “Exempted Person”).
The Exempted Persons will therefore have no duty to communicate or present corporate opportunities to us, and will have the right to either hold any corporate opportunity for their own account and benefit or to recommend, assign or otherwise transfer such corporate opportunity to persons other than us, including to any other director or stockholder who is not employed by us or our subsidiaries.
As a result, the Exempted Persons will generally not be prohibited from operating or investing in competing businesses. We therefore may find ourselves in competition with any one or more of these parties, and we may not have knowledge of, or be able to pursue, transactions that could potentially be beneficial to us. To the extent we find ourselves in competition with Exempted Persons, we may lose a corporate opportunity or suffer competitive harm, which could negatively impact our business, results of operations, financial condition or prospects.
We are a holding company and our principal asset is our indirect equity interests in OpCo and, accordingly, we are dependent upon distributions from OpCo to pay taxes and other expenses.
We are a holding company and our principal asset is our indirect ownership of OpCo. We have no independent means of generating material revenue. As the initial sole manager of OpCo, we generally intend to cause OpCo to make distributions to its equity holders in amounts sufficient to cover the taxes on their allocable share of the taxable income of OpCo, including for this purpose any payments we are obligated to make under the Tax Receivable Agreement and other costs or expenses, but we may be limited in our ability to cause OpCo to make distributions to its equity holders (including for purposes of paying corporate and other overhead expenses and dividends) by our contractual arrangements, including the terms of our Revolving Credit Facility and any additional debt facilities that we may enter into in the future. In addition, certain laws and regulations may result in restrictions on OpCo’s ability to make distributions to Vacasa, Inc., or the ability of OpCo’s subsidiaries to make distributions to it.
To the extent that we need funds and OpCo or its subsidiaries are restricted from making such distributions, under applicable law or regulation or otherwise, we may not be able to obtain such funds on terms acceptable to us or at all and, as a result, could suffer an adverse effect on our liquidity and financial condition. In certain situations, including where OpCo does not have sufficient cash to make tax distributions to all of its members in the full amounts that may be payable in connection with the Fourth Amended and Restated Limited Liability Company Agreement of OpCo (the OpCo LLC Agreement) (or where tax distributions to the members of OpCo would materially exceed a set percentage of our aggregate taxable income), tax distributions to the equity holders of OpCo may be reduced (such that each member of OpCo may not receive tax distributions
sufficient to cover its tax liability). Tax distributions will generally be treated as advances of other distributions made under the OpCo LLC Agreement.
Although OpCo may not always make such distributions, under the OpCo LLC Agreement, we generally expect OpCo, from time to time, to make distributions in cash to its equity holders in amounts sufficient to cover the taxes on their allocable share of the taxable income of OpCo (in addition, Vacasa, Inc. may receive certain non-pro rata distributions from OpCo to cover certain overhead and other expenses, as provided in the OpCo LLC Agreement). As a result of (i) potential differences in the amount of net taxable income indirectly allocable to us and to OpCo’s other equity holders, (ii) the lower tax rate applicable to corporations as opposed to the assumed tax rate for making such distributions in the OpCo LLC Agreement, (iii) the favorable tax benefits that we anticipate from Vacasa, Inc’s acquisition of common units of OpCo (OpCo Units), in exchange for, at our election, either cash (based on the market price of a share of our Class A Common Stock) or shares of our Class A Common Stock and payments under the Tax Receivable Agreement and (iv) the fact that tax distributions made in respect of OpCo Units will generally be made pro rata in respect of such Units as described in the OpCo LLC Agreement, we expect that these tax distributions may be in amounts that exceed our tax liabilities. Our Board will determine the appropriate uses for any excess cash so accumulated, which may include, among other uses, the payment of obligations under the Tax Receivable Agreement and the payment of other expenses. We will have no obligation to distribute such cash (or other available cash) to our stockholders. No adjustments to the exchange ratio for OpCo Units will be made as a result of any cash distribution by us or any retention of cash by us. To the extent we do not distribute such cash as dividends on our Class A Common Stock and instead, for example, hold such cash balances, or lend them to OpCo, this may result in shares of our Class A Common Stock increasing in value relative to the value of OpCo Units. The holders of OpCo Units (the OpCo Unitholders) may benefit from any value attributable to such cash balances if they acquire shares of our Class A Common Stock in exchange for their OpCo Units.
We may incur certain tax liabilities attributable to the Blockers as a result of the Business Combination.
In connection with the Business Combination Agreement, the Blockers were merged with and into Vacasa, Inc. As the successor to these merged entities, Vacasa, Inc. has generally succeeded to and is responsible for any outstanding or historical tax liabilities of the merged entities, including any liabilities that might be incurred as a result of the mergers described in the previous sentence. The pre-Business Combination owners of the Blockers will not indemnify Vacasa, Inc. for any such liabilities, and such liabilities could have an adverse effect on our liquidity and financial condition.
We may bear certain tax liabilities that are attributable to audit adjustments for taxable periods (or portions thereof) ending prior to the Business Combination, or that are disproportionate to our ownership interest in OpCo in the taxable period for which the relevant adjustment is imposed.
Pursuant to certain provisions of the Code enacted as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (such provisions, the “Partnership Tax Audit Rules”), partnerships (and not the partners of the partnerships) can be liable for U.S. federal income taxes (and any related interest and penalties) resulting from adjustments made pursuant to an IRS audit or judicial proceedings to the items of income, gain, loss, deduction, or credit shown on the partnership’s tax return (or how such items are allocated among the partners), notwithstanding the fact that liability for taxes on partnership income is generally borne by the partners rather than the partnership.
Under the Partnership Tax Audit Rules, a partnership’s liability for taxes resulting from adjustments made pursuant to an IRS audit or judicial proceedings may be reduced or avoided in certain circumstances depending on the status or actions of its partners. For example, if partners agree to amend their tax returns and pay the resulting taxes, the partnership’s liability can be reduced. Partnerships also may be able to make elections to “push out” the tax liability resulting from the adjustment to the persons who were partners in the prior taxable year that is the subject of the adjustment, and, as a result, avoid having the relevant liability paid at the partnership-level and instead be borne by the persons who are partners at the time the relevant liability is paid.
A representative of holders of Vacasa Holdings equity (including for this purpose the owners of the Blockers with respect to their indirect interest in Vacasa Holdings equity and the holders of vested Vacasa Holdings unit appreciation rights and the holders of vested options to purchase shares of TK Newco common stock) existing prior to the Business Combination (the Existing VH Holders) will be entitled to direct whether or not OpCo or its subsidiaries will make the “push out” election described above for adjustments attributable to taxable periods (or portions thereof) ending on or prior to the date of the Business Combination, and whether any such entity will pay any applicable liability at the entity level. The provisions of the OpCo LLC Agreement prohibit OpCo from seeking indemnification or other recoveries from the Existing VH Holders in respect of such liabilities. With respect to the representative’s exercise of this authority, its interests will generally differ from the interests of our other equity holders. Moreover, with respect to taxable periods beginning after the business combination, there is no requirement that OpCo or any of its subsidiaries make any “push- out” election. We accordingly may be required to bear a share of any taxes, interest, or penalties associated with any adjustments to applicable tax returns that exceeds our proportionate share of such liabilities based on our ownership interest in OpCo in the taxable period for which such
adjustments are imposed (including periods prior to the effective date of the business combination during which we had no interest in OpCo), which could have an adverse effect on our operating results and financial condition.
Vacasa, Inc. will be required to pay the TRA Parties for certain tax benefits it may claim (or is deemed to realize) in the future, and the amounts it may pay could be significant.
In connection with the Business Combination, Vacasa, Inc. acquired existing equity interests from certain Existing VH Holders in exchange for the issuance of shares of Class A Common Stock and rights to receive payments under the Tax Receivable Agreement. As a result of these acquisitions, Vacasa, Inc. has succeeded to certain tax attributes of the Blockers and will receive the benefit of tax basis in assets of OpCo and its subsidiaries. In addition, redemptions or exchanges of OpCo Units in exchange for shares of our Class A Common Stock or cash may produce favorable tax attributes that would not be available to Vacasa, Inc. in the absence of such redemptions or exchanges. Such transactions are also expected to result in increases in Vacasa, Inc’s allocable share of the tax basis in OpCo’s tangible and intangible assets. These increases in tax basis may increase (for income tax purposes) depreciation and amortization deductions and therefore reduce the amount of income or franchise tax that Vacasa, Inc. would otherwise be required to pay in the future had such sales and exchanges never occurred.
We have entered into the tax receivable agreement (the Tax Receivable Agreement) with the Existing VH Holders (other than the holders of Vacasa Holdings unit appreciation rights and other than holders of options to purchase shares of TK Newco common stock, but including for this purpose current and former members of management that hold interests in Vacasa Holdings indirectly through a management holding vehicle), which we refer to in this Annual Report on Form 10-K collectively as the “TRA Parties,” that provides for the payment by Vacasa, Inc. to such TRA Parties (or their transferees or assignees) of 85% of the net cash savings, if any, in U.S. federal, state and local income tax or franchise tax that Vacasa, Inc. actually realizes (determined by using certain assumptions) in periods after the Business Combination as a result of (i) certain increases in tax basis that occur as a result of (A) any acquisition of OpCo Units from certain Existing VH Holders in the Business Combination, (B) exercises of the redemption rights under the OpCo LLC Agreement (the Redemption Rights) by certain OpCo Unitholders to exchange their OpCo Units for shares of Class A Common Stock of or cash, and (C) payments made under the Tax Receivable Agreement; (ii) any net operating losses or certain other tax attributes that become available to Vacasa, Inc. to offset income or gain realized after the Blocker Mergers; (iii) any existing tax basis associated with assets of OpCo or its subsidiaries, the benefit of which is allocable to Vacasa, Inc. as a result of the exchanges of OpCo Units for Class A Common Stock of Vacasa, Inc. or cash; and (iv) tax benefits related to imputed interest deemed to be paid by Vacasa, Inc. as a result of any payments that Vacasa, Inc. makes under the Tax Receivable Agreement. The Tax Receivable Agreement makes certain simplifying assumptions regarding the determination of the cash savings that Vacasa, Inc. realizes or is deemed to realize from the covered tax attributes, which may result in payments pursuant to the Tax Receivable Agreement in excess of those that would result if such assumptions were not made.
The actual tax benefit, as well as the amount and timing of any payments under the Tax Receivable Agreement, will vary depending upon a number of factors, as further set forth under Part III, Item 13, "Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions — Tax Receivable Agreement."
In addition, the TRA Parties (or their transferees or assignees) will not reimburse Vacasa, Inc. for any payments previously made if any covered tax benefits are subsequently disallowed, except that any excess payments made to any TRA Party (or its transferees or assignees) will be netted against future payments that would otherwise be made under the Tax Receivable Agreement, if any, after the determination of such excess. Vacasa, Inc. could make payments to the TRA Parties under the Tax Receivable Agreement that are greater than its actual cash tax savings and may not be able to recoup those payments, which could negatively impact its liquidity.
Finally, the Tax Receivable Agreement provides that in the case of a change in control (as defined in the Tax Receivable Agreement), the Tax Receivable Agreement will automatically terminate, and in the case of a material breach of Vacasa, Inc.’s obligations under the Tax Receivable Agreement and certain other events, Vacasa, Inc. may be required to make a payment to the TRA Parties in an amount equal to the present value of future payments (calculated using a discount rate equal to the lesser of 6.50% and LIBOR plus 150 basis points, which may differ from our, or a potential acquirer’s, then-current cost of capital) under the Tax Receivable Agreement, which payment would be based on certain assumptions, including those relating to Vacasa, Inc.’s future taxable income. In these situations, Vacasa, Inc.’s obligations under the Tax Receivable Agreement could have a substantial negative impact on its, or a potential acquirer’s, liquidity and could have the effect of delaying, deferring, modifying, or preventing certain mergers, asset sales, other forms of business combinations, or other changes of control. These provisions of the Tax Receivable Agreement may result in situations where the TRA Parties have interests that differ from or are in addition to those of our other stockholders. In addition, Vacasa, Inc. could be required to make payments under the Tax Receivable Agreement that are due in advance of any actual realization of such further tax benefits, that are in excess of Vacasa, Inc.’s (or a potential acquirer’s) actual cash tax savings, and which could negatively impact our liquidity.
Risks Related to Ownership of our Class A Common Stock
An active trading market for our Class A Common Stock may not develop and you may not be able to sell your shares of Class A Common Stock.
Although we have listed our Class A Common Stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, an active trading market may never develop or be sustained. If an active market for our Class A Common Stock does not develop or is not sustained, it may be difficult for you to sell shares at an attractive price or at all.
The trading price of the shares of our Class A Common Stock may be volatile, and holders of the Class A Common Stock could incur substantial losses.
Our stock price may be volatile. The stock market has experienced extreme volatility that has often been unrelated to the operating performance of particular companies. As a result of this volatility, investors may not be able to sell our Class A Common Stock at or above the price paid for the shares in the TPG Pace IPO. The market price for our Class A Common Stock may be influenced by many factors, including:
•actual or anticipated variations in our operating results;
•changes in financial estimates by us or by any securities analysts who might cover our stock;
•conditions or trends in our industry;
•impacts from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic or other public health crises;
•stock market price and volume fluctuations of comparable companies and, in particular, those that operate in the software and information technology industries;
•announcements by us or our competitors of new product or service offerings, significant acquisitions, strategic partnerships or divestitures;
•announcements of investigations or regulatory scrutiny of our operations or lawsuits filed against us;
•capital commitments;
•investors’ general perception of our company and our business;
•changes in financial markets or general economic conditions, including the effects of a recession or slow economic growth in the U.S. or abroad, interest rates, fuel prices, international currency fluctuations, corruption, political instability, acts of war, including impacts from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, or similar macroeconomic conditions;
•recruitment or departure of key personnel; and
•sales of our Class A Common Stock, including sales by our directors and officers or specific stockholders.
In the past few years, stock markets have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations. In the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market price of a company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against these companies. This litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs and a diversion of our management’s attention and resources.
We are an “emerging growth company” within the meaning of the Securities Act, and as a result of the reduced disclosure and governance requirements applicable to emerging growth companies, our Class A Common Stock may be less attractive to investors.
We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, and we may take advantage of certain exemptions and relief from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies.” In particular, while we are an “emerging growth company,” we will not be required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; we are exempt from any rules that could be adopted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board requiring mandatory audit firm rotations or a supplement to the auditor’s report on financial statements; we are subject to reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in its periodic reports and proxy statements; and we are not be required to hold non-binding advisory votes on executive compensation or stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved.
In addition, the JOBS Act provides that an emerging growth company can take advantage of an extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards. This allows an emerging growth company to delay the adoption of certain accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. We have elected not to “opt out” of such extended transition period, which means that when a standard is issued or revised and it has different application dates for public or private companies, we will adopt the new or revised standard at the time private companies adopt the new or revised standard and will do so until such time that we either (i) irrevocably elect to “opt out” of such extended transition period or (ii) no longer qualify as an emerging growth company. This may make comparison of our financial statements with
another public company that is not an emerging growth company that has opted out of using the extended transition period difficult or impossible because of the potential differences in accounting standards used.
We may be an “emerging growth company” until the fiscal year-end following the fifth anniversary of the completion of TPG Pace’s initial public offering, though we may cease to be an “emerging growth company” earlier under certain circumstances, including: (i) the last day of the fiscal year (a) in which we have total annual gross revenue of at least $1.07 billion, or (b) in which we are deemed to be a large accelerated filer, which means the market value of our common equity that is held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of the last business day of its most recently completed second fiscal quarter; and (ii) the date on which we have issued more than $1.00 billion in non-convertible debt securities during the prior three-year period.
The exact implications of the JOBS Act are subject to interpretation and guidance by the SEC and other regulatory agencies, and we cannot assure you that we will be able to take advantage of all of the benefits of the JOBS Act. In addition, investors may find our Class A Common Stock less attractive to the extent we rely on the exemptions and relief granted by the JOBS Act. If some investors find our Class A Common Stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our Class A Common Stock and our stock price may decline or become more volatile.
Because we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our Class A Common Stock in the foreseeable future, capital appreciation, if any, will be your sole source of gains and you may never receive a return on your investment.
You should not rely on an investment in our Class A Common Stock to provide dividend income. We currently intend to retain our future earnings, if any, to fund the development and growth of our business. In addition, the terms of our Revolving Credit Facility restrict our ability to pay dividends, and the terms of any future debt agreements we may elect to utilize are likely to contain similar restrictions. As a result, capital appreciation, if any, of our Class A Common Stock will be your sole source of gain for the foreseeable future. Investors seeking cash dividends should not purchase our Class A Common Stock. Vacasa, Inc. is subject to risks related to taxation.
The capital structure and business arrangements of Vacasa, Inc. OpCo, and their affiliates are complicated, and it is often unclear how the tax laws in various jurisdictions should apply to our structure and business activities. Significant judgments and interpretations of existing tax laws or regulations are required in determining the valuation of our assets, the amount of income we will report, the allocation of income among the equity holders of Vacasa Holdings, and our provision for income taxes. Our effective income tax rate could be adversely affected by various factors, including, but not limited to, changes in the mix of earnings in tax jurisdictions with different statutory tax rates, changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities, changes in existing tax policies, laws, regulations or rates, changes in the level of non- deductible expenses (including share-based compensation), changes in the location of our operations, changes in our future levels of research and development spending, mergers and acquisitions or the result of examinations by various tax authorities. Although we believe that the tax positions we have taken and expect to take in the future and our tax estimates are reasonable, if the United States Internal Revenue Service or other taxing authority disagrees with the positions taken on our tax returns, we could have additional tax liability, including interest and penalties. If material, payment of such additional amounts upon final adjudication of any disputes could have a material impact on our results of operations and financial position.
We are subject to risks related to taxation.
Our capital structure and business arrangements and those of OpCo, our affiliates and OpCo’s affiliates are complicated, and it is often unclear how the tax laws in various jurisdictions should apply to our structure and business activities. Significant judgments and interpretations of existing tax laws or regulations are required in determining the valuation of our assets, the amount of income we will report, the allocation of income among the equity holders of Vacasa Holdings, and our provision for income taxes. Our effective income tax rate could be adversely affected by various factors, including, but not limited to, changes in the mix of earnings in tax jurisdictions with different statutory tax rates, changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities, changes in existing tax policies, laws, regulations or rates, changes in the level of non-deductible expenses (including share-based compensation), changes in the location of our operations, changes in our future levels of research and development spending, mergers and acquisitions or the result of examinations by various tax authorities. Although we believe that the tax positions we have taken and expect to take in the future and our tax estimates are reasonable, if the United States Internal Revenue Service or other taxing authority disagrees with the positions taken on our tax returns, we could have additional tax liability, including interest and penalties. If material, payment of such additional amounts upon final adjudication of any disputes could have a material impact on our results of operations and financial position.
Our Certificate of Incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (Court of Chancery) will be the exclusive forum for certain disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.
Our Certificate of Incorporation specifies that, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, (x) the Court of Chancery (or, in the event that the Court of Chancery does not have jurisdiction, the federal district court for the District of Delaware or other state courts of the State of Delaware), will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for (a) any derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of us, (b) any action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any of our current or former director, officer, employee, agent to us or our stockholders, (c) any action asserting a claim arising pursuant to any provision of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (DGCL), the Governing Documents or as to which the DGCL confers jurisdiction on the Court of Chancery or (d) any action asserting a claim governed by the internal affairs doctrine, in each such case subject to such Court of Chancery having personal jurisdiction over the indispensable parties named as defendants therein; and (y) the federal district courts of the United States will be the exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act. To the fullest extent permitted by law, any person purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in shares of our capital stock will be deemed to have notice of and consented to the provisions of the Certificate of Incorporation. We believe these provisions may benefit us by providing increased consistency in the application of Delaware law and federal securities laws by chancellors and judges, as applicable, particularly experienced in resolving corporate disputes, efficient administration of cases on a more expedited schedule relative to other forums and protection against the burdens of multi-forum litigation. However, these provisions may have the effect of discouraging lawsuits against our directors and officers. The choice of forum provision requiring that the Court of Chancery be the exclusive forum for certain actions would not apply to suits brought to enforce any liability or duty created by the Exchange Act.
There is uncertainty as to whether a court would enforce such provisions, and the enforceability of similar choice of forum provisions in other companies’ charter documents has been challenged in legal proceedings. While the Delaware courts have determined that such choice of forum provisions are facially valid, a stockholder may nevertheless seek to bring a claim in a venue other than those designated in the exclusive forum provisions, and there can be no assurance that such provisions will be enforced by a court in those other jurisdictions. If a court were to find these types of provisions to be inapplicable or unenforceable, and if a court were to find the exclusive forum provision in the Certificate of Incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving the dispute in other jurisdictions, which could materially adversely affect our business.
General Risk Factors
We will incur significant expenses as a result of being a public company, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
As a newly public company, we incur significant legal, accounting, and other expenses that we have not incurred as a private company. We are subject to various laws, regulations and other standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure, including the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Act, the rules and regulations of the SEC, and the Nasdaq listing rules. These laws, regulations and standards are also subject to varying interpretations, and as a result, their application in practice may evolve over time as new guidance is provided by regulatory and governing bodies. In addition, changing laws, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure, including regulations implemented by the SEC and Nasdaq, may increase legal and financial compliance costs and make some activities more time-consuming. We intend to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations and standards, and this investment may result in increased general and administrative expenses and a diversion of management’s time and attention from revenue-generating activities to compliance activities. If, notwithstanding our efforts to comply with new laws, regulations and standards, we fail to comply, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us and our business may be adversely affected. Stockholder activism and the level of government intervention and regulatory reform may also lead to substantial new laws, regulations and disclosure obligations, which may lead to additional significant compliance costs and impact the manner in which we operate our business in ways we cannot currently anticipate. The increased costs will increase our net loss or decrease our net income, and may require us to reduce costs in other areas of our business or increase our service fees which could result in a reduction in bookings. Furthermore, we expect these rules and regulations to make it more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced policy limits and coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain the same or similar coverage. The impact of these requirements could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our Board, on our Board committees, or as executive officers.
Further, our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage our transition to being a public company and the continuous scrutiny of securities analysts and investors. These new obligations and constituents will require significant attention from our senior management and are likely to divert their attention away from revenue-generating activities and the day-to-day management of our business, which may prevent us from implementing our business strategy and growing our business. Furthermore, we may not be successful in establishing the corporate infrastructure required of a public company. For example, while we have made, and will continue to make, changes to our internal control over financial reporting and our
procedures for financial reporting and accounting systems to meet our reporting obligations as a public company, the measures we take may not be sufficient to satisfy our obligations. Failure to satisfy our obligations as a public company may result in the delisting of our Class A Common Stock and may subject us to fines, sanctions, and other regulatory action and potentially civil litigation. If we do not effectively and efficiently manage our transition into a public company and continue to develop and implement the right processes and tools to manage our changing enterprise and maintain our culture, our ability to compete successfully and achieve our business objectives could be impaired, which could negatively impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Additionally, as a public company, we may from time to time be subject to proposals by stockholders urging us to take certain corporate actions. If activist stockholder activity ensues, we may be required to incur additional costs to retain the services of professional advisors, management’s time and attention will be diverted from our core business operations, and perceived uncertainties as to our future direction, strategy or leadership may cause us to lose potential business opportunities and impair our brand and reputation, any of which could materially and adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Failure to establish and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act could have a material adverse effect on our business and stock price.
As a public reporting company, we are subject to the rules and regulations established from time to time by the SEC and Nasdaq. These rules and regulations require, among other things, that we establish and periodically evaluate procedures with respect to our internal control over financial reporting. Reporting obligations as a public company are likely to place a considerable strain on our financial and management systems, processes and controls, as well as on our personnel, including senior management.
In addition, as a public company, we are required to document and test our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act so that our management can certify as to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. Though we will be required to disclose changes made to our internal controls and procedures on a quarterly basis, we will not be required to make our first annual assessment of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 until the year following our first annual report required to be filed with the SEC. Furthermore, as an emerging growth company, our independent registered public accounting firm will not be required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 until the later of our second annual report required to be filed with the SEC and our annual report for any fiscal year following such date that we are no longer an emerging growth company. In support of such certifications, we will be required to document and make significant changes and enhancements to our internal controls, including potentially hiring additional personnel. As a result, we anticipate investing significant resources to enhance and maintain our financial and managerial controls, reporting systems, and procedures.
If our senior management team is unable to conclude that we have effective internal control over financial reporting, or to certify the effectiveness of such controls, or if our independent registered public accounting firm cannot render an unqualified opinion on management’s assessment and the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting at such time as it is required to do so, or if material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting are identified, we could be subject to regulatory scrutiny, a loss of public and investor confidence, and litigation from investors and stockholders, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and our stock price. In addition, if we do not maintain adequate financial and management personnel, processes and controls, we may not be able to manage our business effectively or accurately report our financial performance on a timely basis, which could cause a decline in the price of our Class A Common Stock and adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition. Failure to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act could potentially subject us to sanctions or investigations by the SEC, Nasdaq, and other regulatory authorities, which would require additional financial and management resources.
The failure to successfully implement and maintain accounting systems could materially adversely impact our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
In 2019, we implemented a new third-party cloud-based ERP system in order to provide scalability in our accounting and reporting processes. We continue to enhance our use of this third-party ERP system, including integrations with other third-party applications as well as our own internally developed software. System implementations of this scale are complex and time-consuming projects that require transformations of business and financial processes. Such transformations involve risk inherent in the conversion to a new system, including loss of information and potential disruption to normal operations. Additionally, if our third-party systems do not operate as intended or do not scale with anticipated growth in our business, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting could be adversely affected. Any failure to develop, implement, or maintain effective internal controls related to our accounting or reporting systems could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition or cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations. In addition, if we
experience interruptions in service or operational difficulties with our third-party systems, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.
Our results of operations and financial condition could be materially adversely affected by changes in accounting principles.
Generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the SEC and various other organizations formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. The accounting for our business is subject to change based on the evolution of our business model, interpretations of relevant accounting principles, enforcement of existing or new regulations, and changes in policies, rules, regulations, and interpretations, of accounting and financial reporting requirements of the SEC or other regulatory agencies. Adoption of a change in accounting principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported results of operations and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the adoption of such change. It is difficult to predict the impact of future changes to accounting principles and accounting policies over financial reporting, any of which could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition and could require significant investment in systems and personnel.
The estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this report may prove to be inaccurate, and even if the markets in which we compete achieve the forecasted growth, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, or at all.
The estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth that may be included in this report may prove to be inaccurate. Market opportunity estimates and growth forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may not prove to be accurate, including as a result of any of the risks described in this report.
In addition, the variables that go into the calculation of our market opportunity are subject to change over time. Our ability to expand in any of our target markets depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with our platform and services and those of our competitors. Even if the markets in which we compete meet the size estimates and growth forecasted in this report, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, or at all. Our growth is subject to many factors, including our success in implementing our business strategy, which is subject to many risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, the forecasts of market growth included in this report should not be taken as indicative of our future growth.
If industry or financial analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, or if they issue inaccurate or unfavorable research regarding our Class A Common Stock, the market price and trading volume of our Class A Common Stock could decline.
The trading market for our Class A Common Stock is influenced by the research and reports that industry or financial analysts publish about us and our business. We do not control these analysts or the content and opinions included in their reports. As a new public company, we may be slow to attract research coverage and the analysts who publish information about our Class A Common Stock will have had relatively little experience with our company, which could affect their ability to accurately forecast our results and make it more likely that we fail to meet their estimates. In the event we obtain industry or financial analyst coverage, if any of the analysts who cover us issues an inaccurate or unfavorable opinion regarding our company, the market price of our Class A Common Stock would likely decline. In addition, the share prices of many companies in our industry have declined significantly after those companies have failed to meet, or significantly exceed, the financial guidance they have publicly announced or the expectations of analysts and investors. If our financial results fail to meet, or significantly exceed, our announced guidance or the expectations of analysts or investors, analysts could downgrade our Class A Common Stock or publish unfavorable research about us. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our company or fail to publish reports on us regularly, our visibility in the financial markets could decrease, which in turn could cause the market price or trading volume of our Class A Common Stock to decline.
Our disclosure controls and procedures may not prevent or detect all errors or acts of fraud.
As a public company, we are subject to the periodic reporting requirements of the Exchange Act. Our disclosure controls and procedures are designed to provide reasonable assurance that information we must disclose in reports we file or submit under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to management, and recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the rules and forms of the SEC. We believe that any disclosure controls and procedures, no matter how well conceived and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the control system are met.
These inherent limitations include the realities that judgments in decision making can be faulty, and that breakdowns can occur because of simple error or mistake. Additionally, controls can be circumvented by the individual acts of some persons, by
collusion of two or more people or by an unauthorized override of the controls. Accordingly, because of the inherent limitations in our control system, misstatements due to error or fraud may occur and not be detected.
If our estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies are based on assumptions that change or prove to be incorrect, our results of operations could fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors, resulting in a decline in the trading price of our Class A Common Stock.
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, as discussed in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” included elsewhere in this report, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities, equity, revenue, and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. Our results of operations may be adversely affected if our assumptions change or if actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, which could cause our results of operations to fall below our publicly announced guidance or the expectations of securities analysts and investors, resulting in a decline in the market price of our Class A Common Stock.