Item 1A. Risk Factors.
Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should consider and read carefully all of the risks and uncertainties described below, as well as other information included in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, including our condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing Part 1, Item 1 of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, before making an investment decision. The risks described below are not the only ones facing us. The occurrence of any of the following risks or additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In such case, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you may lose all or part of your original investment. This Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q also contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of specific factors, including the risks and uncertainties described below.
Risks Factor Summary
Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those outside our control, that could cause our actual results to be harmed.
We have incurred net losses in the past, expect to incur net losses in the future and may never achieve or maintain profitability.
We may not continue to grow on pace with historical rates.
If we are unable to manage the anticipated growth of our business, our future revenue and operating results may be adversely affected.
Our operating results may fluctuate from quarter to quarter, which makes our future results difficult to predict.
Our growth depends on our ability to attract and retain a large community of buyers and sellers.
Our success depends on our ability to deliver products and manufacturing processes that meet the demand of buyers transacting on our marketplace and our ability to adapt to technological changes and improvements.
If we fail to maintain and improve the quality of our platform, customer support and ancillary services available through our platform, we may not be able to attract and retain buyers and sellers.
We provide quality assurance to buyers.
Our business model involves our agreeing to pricing with a buyer in advance of sourcing the opportunity to a seller.
We or our third-party partners or service providers may experience a security breach, including unauthorized parties obtaining access to buyers’ confidential information.
Failure to deal effectively with bad actors engaging on our marketplace or platform could harm our business.
We may be subject to disputes between sellers and suppliers on our platform.
We rely on a third-party payment processor to process payments made by buyers and payments made to sellers and suppliers.
We rely on third parties to fulfill buyer orders.
We face significant competition and expect to face increasing competition in many aspects of our business, which could cause our operating results to suffer.
We may not effectively expand into markets outside the United States.
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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and measures intended to prevent its spread have had a material effect on our business and results of operations.
Interruptions to or other problems with our website and platform, information technology systems, manufacturing processes or other operations could damage our reputation and brand and substantially harm our business and results of operations.
We are subject to stringent and evolving laws and regulations relating to consumer data privacy and data protection.
Our intellectual property and proprietary rights are valuable, and any inability to obtain, maintain, protect or enforce them could substantially harm our business, products, services, and brand.
We could incur substantial costs and other harms as a result of any claim of infringement, misappropriation or other violation of another party’s intellectual property or proprietary rights.
We rely on Amazon Web Services to operate our platform, and any disruption of service from Amazon Web Services or material change to our arrangement with Amazon Web Services could adversely affect our business.
Risks Related to Our Business
We have incurred net losses in the past, expect to incur net losses in the future and may never achieve or sustain profitability.
We have incurred net losses since our inception in 2013. We incurred a net loss of $31.1 million in 2020 and a net loss of $12.3 million and $22.8 million for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, and we expect to incur net losses for the foreseeable future. As a result of these losses, as of June 30, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $134.7 million. We expect to continue the development and expansion of our business, and we anticipate additional costs in connection with legal, accounting and other administrative expenses related to operating as a public company. If our revenue declines or fails to grow at a rate sufficient to offset increases in our operating expenses, we will not be able to achieve profitability in future periods or, if we do become profitable, sustain profitability. As a result, we may continue to generate net losses. We cannot ensure that we will achieve profitability in the future or that, if we do become profitable, we will be able to sustain profitability.
We may not continue to grow on pace with historical rates.
We have grown rapidly over the last several years, but our recent revenue growth rate and financial performance should not be considered indicative of our future performance. During the three months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020, our revenue was $50.6 million and $34.8 million, respectively, representing a growth rate of 45%. During the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020, our revenue was $94.5 million and $61.5 million, respectively, representing a growth rate of 54%. In addition, in 2020, unlike in many other industries, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to an increase in our revenue, particularly in the third quarter of 2020. The circumstances that have accelerated the growth of our business stemming from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic may not continue in the future. We may also experience declines in our revenue growth rate as a result of a number of factors, including slowing demand for our platform, insufficient growth in the number of buyers and sellers who transact on our marketplace, increasing competition, a decrease in the growth of our overall market, our failure to continue to capitalize on growth opportunities, failure to realize anticipated revenue growth from our seller services and the maturation of our business, among others. You should not rely on our revenue or key operational and business metrics for any previous quarterly or annual period as any indication of our revenue, revenue growth, key business metrics, or key operational and business metrics growth in future periods. In particular, our revenue growth rate has fluctuated in prior periods. We expect our revenue growth rate to continue to fluctuate over the short term and decline in the long term. We also expect to continue to make investments in the development and expansion of our business, which may not result in increased revenue or growth. If our revenue growth rate declines, investors’ perceptions of our business and the trading price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected.
If we are unable to manage the anticipated growth of our business, our future revenue and operating results may be adversely affected.
We have experienced substantial growth in our operations, and we expect to experience continued substantial growth in our business. This growth has placed, and will continue to place, significant demands on our management and our operational infrastructure. Any growth that we experience in the future could require us to expand our sales and marketing personnel and general and administrative infrastructure. In addition to the need to scale our organization, future growth will impose significant added responsibilities on management, including the need to identify, recruit, train and integrate additional employees. We cannot assure you that any increases in scale, related improvements and quality assurance will be successfully implemented or that appropriate personnel will be available to facilitate the growth of our business. Rapid and significant growth may strain our administrative and operational infrastructure and could require significant capital expenditures that may divert financial resources from other projects, such as product development. Our ability to manage our business and growth will require us to continue to improve our operational, financial
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and management controls, and reporting systems and procedures. If we do not effectively manage our growth effectively, such as by failing to implement necessary procedures, transition to new processes or hire necessary personnel, it may be difficult for us to execute our business strategy and our business could be adversely affected.
Our operating results may fluctuate from quarter to quarter, which makes our future results difficult to predict.
Our quarterly operating results have fluctuated in the past and may fluctuate in the future. You should take into account the risks and uncertainties frequently encountered by companies in rapidly evolving markets. Our operating results in any given quarter can be influenced by numerous factors, many of which are unpredictable or are outside of our control, including:
our ability to maintain and grow our community of buyers and sellers;
the demand for and types of manufacturing processes, capabilities and materials that are sourced on our marketplace to sellers;
spending patterns of buyers, including whether those buyers who transact on our marketplace frequently, or for larger services, reduce their use of our marketplace or stop transacting on our marketplace completely;
timing of large orders on our marketplace;
the impact of holidays on purchase activity;
fluctuations in the prices charged to buyers transacting on our marketplace;
changes to our pricing model;
our ability to introduce new features and services and enhance our existing platform and our ability to generate significant revenue from new features and services;
the impact of outages of our platform and associated reputational harm;
changes to financial accounting standards and the interpretation of those standards that may affect the way we recognize and report our financial results;
increases in, and timing of, operating expenses that we may incur to grow and expand our business and to remain competitive;
costs related to the acquisition of businesses, talent, technologies, or intellectual property, including potentially significant amortization costs and possible impairments;
actual or perceived breaches of, or failures relating to security or data privacy and associated remediation costs;
litigation, adverse judgments, settlements, or other litigation-related costs;
developments or disputes concerning our intellectual property or proprietary rights or our solutions, or third-party intellectual property or proprietary rights;
changes in the common law, statutory, legislative, or regulatory environment, such as with respect to privacy and data protection, wage and hour regulations, worker classification (including classification of independent contractors or similar service providers and classification of employees as exempt or non-exempt), internet regulation, payment processing, import and export controls, global trade, or tax requirements;
fluctuations in currency exchange rates;
general economic and political conditions and government regulations in the countries where we currently have significant numbers of users, or where we currently operate or may expand in the future; and
natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and threats to public health, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
The impact of one or more of the foregoing and other factors may cause our operating results to vary significantly. As such, we believe that quarter-to-quarter comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful and should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. If we fail to meet or exceed the expectations of investors or securities analysts, the trading price of our ordinary shares could fall substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits.
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Our growth depends on our ability to attract and retain a large community of buyers and sellers, and the loss of our buyers and sellers, or failure to attract new buyers and sellers, could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We derive substantially all of our revenue from sales to buyers transacting on our marketplace seeking sophisticated manufacturing solutions. The size and diversity of our community of buyers and sellers is critical to our success. Over the past few years, we have experienced strong growth in the number of buyers and sellers transacting on our marketplace, including the number of active buyers, but we do not know whether we will be able to achieve similar growth rates in the future. Sellers have alternative ways of marketing their services and finding buyers, including meeting and contacting prospective buyers through other platforms or marketplaces, advertising to prospective buyers online or offline through other methods, or interacting directly with a business. Buyers also have other ways to find sellers, such as engaging sellers directly, finding sellers through other online or offline platforms or marketplaces. Additionally, buyers may use in-house manufacturing processes. Use of these other options available to buyers and sellers may make our marketplace less attractive to them and could lead to decreased use of our marketplace, which could result in a decrease in revenue. In addition, a decrease in engagement from buyers, including due to a general decrease in spending or as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, could diminish the network effects that results from expanding the number of buyers within a particular account, or decrease the attractiveness of our marketplace to sellers. If we fail to attract new buyers and sellers or our existing buyers or sellers decrease their use of or cease using our marketplace, the breadth and diversity of manufacturing processes offered on our marketplace may be reduced, or the quality of products manufactured by sellers transacting on our marketplace is not satisfactory to buyers, buyers and sellers may decrease their use of our marketplace.
Key factors in attracting and retaining buyers include our ability to grow our brand awareness, attract and retain high-quality sellers and increase the quantity, quality and diversity of manufacturing processes, including with respect to technique and materials, offered on our marketplace. In addition, our AI-enabled instant quoting engine provides price quotes for buyers and offers the opportunity to fill buyer orders at a different price to sellers. The prices quoted must appeal to both buyers and sellers; if the quoted prices are unattractive to either buyers or sellers, we could incur losses on certain orders, or buyers or sellers could decrease their activity or stop transacting on our marketplace. A key factor in attracting and retaining sellers, in turn, is maintaining and increasing the number and diversity of buyers transacting on our marketplace. Achieving growth in our community of buyers and sellers may require us to increasingly engage in sophisticated and costly sales and marketing efforts that may not result in growth in our community of buyers and sellers.
Buyers or sellers can stop transacting on our marketplace at any time. Buyers or sellers may stop transacting on our marketplace if the quality of their experience on our platform, including our support capabilities in the event of a problem, or the quality of the manufactured product, does not meet expectations or keep pace with the quality of the user experience generally offered by competitors or manufactured parts sourced through other means. Buyers or sellers may also stop transacting on our marketplace if they perceive that our pricing is not in line with competitors. In addition, expenditures by buyers may be cyclical and be affected by adverse changes in overall economic conditions or budgeting patterns. If we fail to attract new buyers or new sellers or fail to maintain existing buyers and existing sellers, our revenue may grow more slowly than expected, or decline, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.
Our success depends on our ability to deliver products and manufacturing processes that meet the demand of buyers transacting on our marketplace and our ability to adapt to technological changes and improvements.
Our business may be affected by changes in buyer requirements and preferences, including as a result of decreased consumer demand for buyer products, seller manufacturing processes, availability of manufacturing materials and machinery, rapid technological change, and the emergence of new standards and practices, any of which could render our marketplace less attractive, uneconomical or obsolete. To the extent that our buyers’ demand for on-demand manufacturing decreases significantly for any reason, including because of shifting consumer preferences, it would likely have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and harm our competitive position. In addition, computer-aided design simulation and other technologies may reduce the demand for physical parts. Therefore, we believe that to remain competitive, we must continually expend resources to enhance and improve our technology and ability to provide buyers with traditional and emerging manufacturing processes.
In particular, we plan to expand the network of sellers transacting on our marketplace to increase the number of sellers available to fulfill orders, ensure production quality, expand upon the manufacturing processes, techniques and materials available to buyers, and continue to develop industry playbooks to offer increasingly customized solutions and serve additional industries over time. We believe successful execution of this part of our business plan is critical for our ability to grow our business and differentiate ourselves from our competition, and there are no guarantees we will be able to do so in a timely fashion, or at all. There are no guarantees that the resources devoted to executing on this aspect of our business plan will improve our business and operating results or result in increased demand for our offerings. Failures in this area could adversely impact our operating results and harm our reputation and brand. Even if we are successful in executing in these areas, our industry is subject to rapid and significant technological change, and our competitors may develop new technologies, processes and capabilities that are superior to ours.
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Any failure to properly meet the needs of buyers and sellers or respond to changes in our industry on a cost-effective and timely basis, or at all, would likely have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and harm our competitive position.
If we fail to maintain and improve the quality of our platform, customer support and ancillary services available through our platform, we may not be able to attract and retain buyers and sellers.
To satisfy both buyers and sellers, we need to continue to improve their user experience as well as innovate and introduce features and services that users find useful and that cause them to use our platform and transact on our marketplace more frequently. This includes improving our technology to optimize pricing and lead-time tools, improving upon and introducing new seller products and services, like Xometry Pay and the Xometry Advance Card, improving upon and introducing new design guides and industry playbooks, expanding the availability of sellers to additional geographic and industry segments and improving the user-friendliness of our platform and our ability to provide high-quality support. Our buyers and sellers depend on our support organization to resolve issues relating to our platform. Our ability to provide effective support is largely dependent on our ability to attract and retain employees who are well versed in our platform and the needs of buyers and sellers transacting on our marketplace. As we continue to grow our international user base, our support organization will face additional challenges, including those associated with continuing to deliver support in languages other than English. Any failure to maintain high-quality support, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality support, could harm our reputation or adversely affect our ability to market the benefits of our platform and marketplace to existing and prospective users. In addition, with the majority of our employees working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our information technologies and support systems may be temporarily strained.
In addition, we need to adapt, expand and improve our platform and user interfaces to keep up with changing user preferences. We invest substantial resources in researching and developing new seller products and services and enhancing our platform by incorporating these new features, improving functionality and adding other improvements to meet our users’ evolving demands. The success of any enhancements or improvements to our platform or any new features depends on several factors, including timely completion, adequate quality testing, integration with technologies on our platform and third-party partners’ technologies and overall market acceptance. Because further development of our platform is complex, challenging and dependent upon an array of factors, the timetable for the release of new features and enhancements to our platform is difficult to predict, and we may not offer new features as rapidly as users of our platform require or expect. Additionally, the time, money, energy and other resources we dedicate to developing new features or enhancements to our platform may be greater than the short-term, and potentially the total, returns from these new offerings.
It is difficult to predict the problems we may encounter in introducing new features to our platform, and we may need to devote significant resources to the creation, support and maintenance of these features. We provide no assurances that our initiatives to improve our user experience will be successful. We also cannot predict whether any new features will be well received by users, or whether improving our platform will be successful or sufficient to offset the costs incurred to offer these new features. If we are unable to improve or maintain the quality of our platform, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.
Our platform is dependent on our AI-enabled instant quoting engine. If pricing, lead time or other aspects of a quote to buyers either do not meet such buyer’s expectations or prove to be incorrect, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.
We provide quality assurance to buyers.
Our customer agreement with buyers provides that we will manufacture their order in accordance with their specifications. Whether or not the order is ultimately supplied by a seller, in the event that a buyer deems that an order does not conform to its specifications, we agree to replace the order. Our standard customer agreement allows buyers three days to specify non-conformance; however, the duration of our warranty varies by contract, and in some cases, we may be responsible for replacing non-conforming orders for longer periods. While we require sellers to meet certain quality standards before offering their services on our marketplace and provide operational support to our buyers and sellers, such efforts may not prevent us from losses due to poor quality of parts manufactured for our buyers.
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Our business model involves our agreeing to pricing with a buyer in advance of sourcing the opportunity to a seller. We are at risk that the price a buyer pays us may be less than the cost we ultimately pay a seller.
Buyers transacting on our marketplace enter into our customer agreement, which provides that we will manufacture their order in accordance with their specifications. In addition, our AI-enabled instant quoting engine provides a prospective buyer with pricing, design feedback and proposed shipping dates prior to our sourcing the manufacturing opportunity to a seller with requisite manufacturing process. From time to time, we may quote buyers prices that are lower than the cost we agree with a seller. If our platform is unable to find a seller to source a manufacturing opportunity from a particular buyer at below the price we quote such buyer, or at all, our results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.
We or our third-party partners or service providers may experience a security breach, including unauthorized parties obtaining access to buyers’ confidential information, personal or other data, or any other data privacy or data protection compliance issue. Any such security breach may harm our reputation and brand, and may expose us to liability.
Our business involves the collection, storage, processing, transmission and other use of proprietary, confidential and personal data of buyers and sellers and other parties, as well as the use of third-party partners and service providers who collect, store, process, transmit and otherwise use such data. In particular, our platform stores and transmits to sellers confidential buyer information, including the intellectual property in their part designs and other sensitive data. We also maintain certain other proprietary and confidential data relating to our business and personal data of our personnel and job applicants. In addition, a security breach or incident that we or our third-party partners or service providers experience could result in unauthorized access to, misuse of, or unauthorized acquisition of such data, the loss, corruption, or alteration of such data, interruptions in our operations, damage to our computers or systems or those of our platform’s users, or the loss of access to our systems by us or our buyers and sellers.
Any such incidents could expose us to claims, litigation, regulatory or other governmental investigations, administrative fines and potential liability in various jurisdictions, including under applicable data privacy and security laws and regulations. An increasing number of online platforms have disclosed breaches of their security, some of which have involved sophisticated and highly targeted attacks on portions of their networks or services. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, disable or degrade service, or sabotage systems change frequently and often are not foreseeable or recognized until launched against a target, we and our third-party partners and service providers may be unable to anticipate these techniques or implement adequate preventative measures. Further, we may need to expend significant resources to protect against, and to address issues created by, security breaches and other incidents.
If an actual or perceived breach of security of our networks or systems or those of any of our third-party partners’ or service providers’ security occurs, public perception of the effectiveness of our security measures and brand could be severely harmed, and we could lose buyers, sellers or third-party partners. Data security breaches and other cybersecurity incidents may also result from non-technical means, for example, intentional, accidental or negligent actions by employees or contractors. Any compromise of our or our third-party partners’ or service providers’ security could result in a violation of applicable security, privacy or data protection, consumer and other laws, regulatory or other governmental investigations, enforcement actions and legal and financial exposure, including potential contractual liability, in all cases that may not always be covered by our insurance, in whole or in part. Any such compromise could also result in damage to our brand and a loss of confidence in our security and privacy or data protection measures. Further, we may need to expend significant resources to protect against, and to address issues created by, security breaches and other incidents, including, potentially, payments for investigations, forensic analyses, regulatory compliance, breach notification, legal advice, public relations advice, system repair or replacement, or other services. Security breaches and other security incidents, including any breaches of our security measures or those of parties with which we have commercial relationships (e.g., third-party service providers who provide development or other services to us) that result in the unauthorized access of buyers’ confidential, proprietary or personal data, or the belief that any of these have occurred, could damage our reputation and expose us to a risk of loss or litigation and possible liability.
Our and our third-party partners’ along with those of our service may be vulnerable to computer viruses and other malicious software, physical or electronic break-ins, or weakness resulting from intentional or unintentional actions by us, our third-party partners or service providers, as well as similar disruptions that could make all or portions of our platform unavailable for periods of time. While we currently employ various antivirus and computer protection software in our operations, we cannot provide assurances that such protections will in all cases successfully prevent hacking or the transmission of any computer virus or malware, which could result in significant damage to our hardware and software systems and databases, disruptions to our business activities, including to our e-mail and other communications systems, breaches of security and the inadvertent disclosure of personal, confidential or sensitive data, interruptions in access to our website through the use of “denial of service” or similar attacks and other material adverse effects on our operations. Significant unavailability of our platform due to attacks could cause users to cease using our platform and transacting on our marketplace. Although we maintain cybersecurity liability insurance, we cannot be certain our coverage will be adequate for expenses or liabilities actually incurred or will continue to be available to us on reasonable terms, or at all. Any of the foregoing could materially and adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
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Failure to deal effectively with bad actors engaging on our marketplace or platform could harm our business.
We have adopted policies and procedures that are intended to ensure compliance with law, including, for example anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, export control, and trade sanctions requirements, and we have measures in place to detect and limit the occurrence of illegal activity on our marketplace. However, those policies, procedures, and measures may not always be effective. Further, the measures that we use to detect and limit the occurrence of illegal activity will require significant investment and resources, particularly as our marketplace increases in public visibility and we increase the number of buyers and sellers engaging on our marketplace. Regulations requiring marketplaces to detect and limit illegal activities are increasing. Our measures may not always keep up with these changes.
We may suffer reputational harm for actual or perceived bad acts or actual or perceived illegal activities of buyers and sellers on our marketplaces, particularly related to factory or other workplace conditions. Failure to limit the impact of actual or perceived illegal activity on our marketplaces, could subject us to penalties, fines, other enforcement actions and expenses, significant reputation harm and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
We rely upon third-party service providers to perform certain compliance services. If we or our service providers do not perform adequately, our compliance tools may not be effective, which could increase our expenses, lead to potential legal liability, and negatively impact our business.
We may be subject to disputes between sellers and suppliers on our platform.
Our business model involves, in part, connecting sellers to suppliers to purchase materials that enable sellers to fulfill orders on our marketplace. It is possible that disputes may arise between sellers and such suppliers with regard to the terms of orders, payment, confidentiality, work product and intellectual property ownership and infringement, misappropriation or other violation. While we are not parties to such contracts, we cannot guarantee that we will not be involved in disputes among sellers and the suppliers with whom we pair. If these disputes are not resolved amicably, the parties might escalate to formal proceedings, such as by filing claims with a court or arbitral authority. Given our role in facilitating and supporting the relationships between sellers and such suppliers, claims may be brought against us directly as a result of these disputes, or the parties may involve us in claims filed against each other. Even if these claims do not result in litigation or are resolved expediently, these claims, and the time and resources necessary to resolve them, could divert the resources of our management and result in unexpected expenses.
We rely on a third-party payment processor to process payments made by buyers and payments made to sellers and suppliers, and if we cannot manage our relationship with such third party and other payment-related risks, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
We rely on a third-party payment processor, Stripe, to process payments made by buyers and payments made to sellers and suppliers. We also rely on Stripe for our Xometry Pay, an integrated payment processing tool for sellers available through our platform, and the Xometry Advance Card. Under our commercial agreements with Stripe, Stripe may terminate the relationship with 120 days’ advance notice. If Stripe terminates its relationship with us or refuses to renew its agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, we would be required to find an alternate payment processor and may not be able to secure similar terms or replace such payment processor in an acceptable timeframe. Further, the software and services provided by Stripe may not meet our expectations, may contain errors or vulnerabilities, and could be compromised or experience outages. Any of these risks could cause us to lose our ability to accept online payments or other payment transactions, make timely payments to sellers or suppliers, or decrease the use of Xometry Pay or the Xometry Advance Card, any of which could disrupt our business for an extended period of time, make our platform less convenient, trustworthy and attractive to users, and adversely affect our ability to attract and retain qualified buyers, sellers and suppliers.
Most payments by our buyers are made by credit card or debit card or through third-party payment services, which subjects us to certain regulations and to the risk of fraud. We may in the future offer new payment options to buyers who may be subject to additional regulations and risks. We also receive payments in the form of bank checks, Fed wires or ACH. As a result, we are also subject to a number of other laws and regulations relating to the payments we accept from our buyers, including with respect to money laundering, money transfers, privacy, and information security. If we fail to, or are alleged to fail to, comply with applicable rules and regulations, we may be subject to claims and litigation, regulatory investigations and proceedings, civil or criminal penalties, fines and/or higher transaction fees and may lose the ability to accept online payments or other payment card transactions, which could make our platform less convenient and attractive to users. We also rely on data provided by Stripe for financial statement reporting, and there could be inaccuracies and other errors in such data. If any of these events were to occur, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.
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Further, if we are deemed to be a money transmitter as defined by applicable law, we could become subject to certain laws, rules, and regulations enforced by multiple authorities and governing bodies in the United States and numerous state and local agencies that may define money transmitter differently. For example, certain states may have a more expansive view of who qualifies as a money transmitter. Additionally, outside of the United States, we could be subject to additional laws, rules, and regulations related to the provision of payments and financial services, and if we expand into new jurisdictions, the foreign regulations governing our business that we are subject to will expand as well. If we are found to be a money transmitter under any applicable regulation and we are not in compliance with such regulations, we may be subject to fines or other penalties in one or more jurisdictions levied by federal or state or local regulators. In addition to fines, penalties for failing to comply with applicable rules and regulations could include criminal and civil proceedings, forfeiture of significant assets, or other enforcement actions. We could also be required to make changes to our business practices or compliance programs as a result of regulatory scrutiny.
Additionally, our third-party payment processor requires us to comply with payment card network operating rules, which are set and interpreted by the payment card networks. The payment card networks could adopt new operating rules or interpret or re-interpret existing rules in ways that might prohibit us from providing certain services to some users, be costly to implement, or difficult to follow. If we fail to comply with these rules or regulations, we may be subject to fines and higher transaction fees and lose our ability to accept credit and debit card payments from consumers or facilitate other types of online payments, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected. We have also agreed to reimburse our third-party payment processor for any reversals, chargebacks, and fines they are assessed by payment card networks if we violate these rules. Any of the foregoing risks could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We are required to comply with payment card network operating rules.
Payment networks, such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express, establish their own rules and standards that allocate liabilities and responsibilities among the payment networks and their participants. These rules and standards, including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, govern a variety of areas, including how consumers and customers may use their cards, the security features of cards, security standards for processing, data security and allocation of liability for certain acts or omissions, including liability in the event of a data breach. The payment networks may change these rules and standards from time to time as they may determine in their sole discretion and with or without advance notice to their participants. These changes may be made for any number of reasons, including as a result of changes in the regulatory environment, to maintain or attract new participants, or to serve the strategic initiatives of the networks, and may impose additional costs and expenses on or be disadvantageous to certain participants. Participants are subject to audit by the payment networks to ensure compliance with applicable rules and standards. The networks may fine, penalize or suspend the registration of participants for certain acts or omissions or the failure of the participants to comply with applicable rules and standards. Our removal from networks’ lists of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliant service providers could mean that existing merchants, customers, sales partners or other third parties may cease using or referring our services. Also, prospective merchants, customers, sales partners or other third parties may choose to terminate negotiations with us, or delay or choose not to consider us for their processing needs. In addition, the card networks could refuse to allow us to process through their networks. Any of the foregoing could materially adversely impact our business, financial condition or results of operations.
Changes to these network rules or how they are interpreted could have a significant impact on our business and financial results. For example, changes in the payment card network rules regarding chargebacks may affect our ability to dispute chargebacks and the amount of losses we incur from chargebacks. Changes to and interpretations of the network rules that were inconsistent with the way we operated has in the past required us to make changes to our business, and any future changes to or interpretations of the network rules that are inconsistent with the way we currently operate may require us to make changes to our business that could be costly or difficult to implement. If we fail to make such changes or otherwise resolve the issue with the payment card networks, the networks could pass on fines and assessments in respect of fraud or chargebacks related to our merchants or disqualify us from processing transactions if satisfactory controls are not maintained, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
We rely on third parties to fulfill buyer orders.
We rely on continued and unimpeded access to postal services and shipping carriers for us or our sellers to deliver manufactured parts reliably and timely to buyers. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, postal services and shipping carriers have experienced increased delays in delivery of their goods. If these shipping delays continue or worsen, or if shipping rates increase significantly, our sellers may have increased costs, and/or our buyers may have a poor purchasing experience and may lose trust in our marketplace, which could negatively impact our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
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We face significant competition and expect to face increasing competition in many aspects of our business, which could cause our operating results to suffer.
The manufacturing market is fragmented and highly competitive. We compete for buyers with a wide variety of manufacturers. Some of our current and potential competitors include captive in-house product lines, on-demand parts manufacturers, and other marketplaces for manufacturing services. Moreover, some of our existing and potential competitors are researching, designing, developing and marketing new manufacturing technologies and capabilities that may compete with or provide alternatives to our platform or our marketplace. We also expect that future competition may arise from the development of technologies that are not encompassed by our patents, from the issuance of patents to other companies that may inhibit our ability to develop our capabilities and from improvements to existing technologies. Furthermore, our competitors may attempt to adopt and improve upon key aspects of our business model, such as development of technology that automates much of the manual labor conventionally required to quote and manufacture on-demand parts, implementation of interactive web-based and automated user interface and quoting systems and/or building scalable operating models specifically designed for efficient on-demand production. We may, from time to time, establish alliances or relationships with other competitors or potential competitors, and our competitors may also be sellers transacting on our marketplace. To the extent companies terminate such relationships and establish alliances and relationships with our competitors, our business could be harmed.
Existing and potential competitors may have substantially greater financial, technical, marketing and sales, manufacturing, distribution and other resources and name recognition than us, as well as more substantial intellectual property portfolios and experience and expertise in intellectual property rights and operating within certain international locations, any of which may enable them to compete effectively against us.
Though we plan to expend resources to develop new technologies, processes and capabilities, we cannot assure you that we will be able to maintain our current position or continue to compete successfully against current and future sources of competition. Our challenge in developing new manufacturing processes is finding capabilities for which our marketplace offers an attractive value proposition. If we do not keep pace with technological change and introduce new technologies, processes and capabilities, the demand for our platform and transacting on our marketplace may decline and our business, financial condition, and results of operations may suffer.
Expansion into markets outside the United States is important to the growth of our business, and if we do not manage the business and economic risks of international expansion effectively, it could materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.
We expect to continue to expand our international operations, which may include opening offices in new jurisdictions, adding buyers in additional countries, and providing our platform in additional languages. Expansion into new markets or countries may not be successful. In addition, our legal, accounting, financial compliance and other administrative costs will increase as we expand internationally. In addition, our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations internationally requires considerable management attention and resources, and is subject to the particular challenges of supporting a rapidly growing business in an environment of multiple languages, cultures, customs, legal and regulatory systems, alternative dispute systems and commercial markets. International expansion requires investment of significant funds and other resources. Operating internationally subjects us to new risks and may increase risks that we currently face, including risks associated with:
recruiting, training and retaining talented and capable employees outside of the United States and Europe, and maintaining our company culture across all of our offices;
providing our platform and operating our business across a significant distance, in different languages and among different cultures, including the potential need to modify our platform and features to ensure that they are relevant in different countries;
compliance with applicable international laws and regulations, including laws and regulations with respect to privacy, data protection, labor and employment, consumer protection and unsolicited email, and the risk of penalties to our users and individual members of management or employees if our practices are deemed to be out of compliance;
operating in jurisdictions that do not protect intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights to the same extent as does the United States;
compliance by us and our business partners with anti-corruption laws, import and export control laws, tariffs, trade barriers, economic sanctions and other regulatory limitations on our ability to provide our platform and operate our marketplace in certain international markets;
political and economic instability;
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fluctuations in currency exchange rates;
potentially adverse tax consequences due to changes in the income and other tax laws of the United States or the international jurisdictions in which we operate; and
higher costs of doing business internationally, including increased legal, financial compliance, accounting, travel, infrastructure and other administrative costs.
We may be unable to keep current with changes in laws and regulations. Although we strive to comply with all applicable laws and regulations and are in the process of implementing policies and procedures designed to support compliance with such laws and regulations, there can be no assurance that we will always be in full compliance or that all of our employees, contractors, partners and agents will comply at all times. Any violations could result in enforcement actions, fines, civil and criminal penalties, damages, injunctions, or reputational harm. If we are unable comply with these laws and regulations or manage the complexity of our global operations successfully, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and measures intended to prevent its spread have had a material effect on our business and results of operations, and the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and any future pandemic (including variants of the COVID-19 pandemic) may have material and adverse effects on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Global health concerns relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and related government actions taken to reduce the spread of the virus have been weighing on the macroeconomic environment, and the pandemic has significantly increased economic uncertainty and reduced economic activity. Small businesses, which constitute a significant portion of our buyers and sellers, have been impacted particularly hard. The pandemic has resulted in government authorities and businesses implementing numerous measures to try to contain the virus, such as travel bans and restrictions, quarantines, shelter in place or total lock-down orders, school closures, and business limitations and shutdowns. Such measures have contributed significantly to increased unemployment and negatively impacted business spending.
The pandemic has caused us to modify our business practices to help minimize the risk of the virus to our employees, which could negatively impact our business. These measures include temporarily requiring employees to work remotely, suspending all non-essential business travel for our employees, limiting external guests visiting our offices, and canceling or postponing meetings and events or holding them virtually. Although we have made every effort to comply with applicable COVID-19 measures and precautions, in light of the continually evolving situation, there is no certainty that the measures we have taken will be sufficient to mitigate the risks posed by the virus. In addition, implementing COVID-19 measures and precautions has diverted, and may continue to divert, resources and attention of our management.
The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic, any future variants of the COVID-19 pandemic, or any future pandemic unrelated to COVID-19 impacts our business, results of operations, and financial condition will depend on developments that continue to be highly uncertain and difficult to predict, including, but not limited to, the duration and spread of any pandemic, its severity, the actions to contain a virus or treat its impact, the availability, distribution and efficacy of vaccines, and how quickly and to what extent normal economic and operating conditions can resume. Even after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, we may experience material and adverse impacts to our business as a result of the virus’s global economic impact, including the availability of credit, bankruptcies or insolvencies of buyers and sellers, and recession or economic downturn.
There are no comparable recent events that provide guidance as to the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic may have, and, as a result, the ultimate impact of the pandemic is highly uncertain and subject to change. We do not yet know the full extent of the impact on our business, our operations, or the global economy as a whole. However, the effects could have a material impact on our results of operations and heighten many of the known risks described throughout this “Risk Factors” section.
Our business could be adversely impacted by changes in the Internet and mobile device accessibility of users.
Our business depends on users’ access to our platform via a personal computer or mobile device and the Internet. We have started to enable sellers to access our platform via a mobile browser, which we believe is important to the growth of our business by adding sellers to our marketplace and enabling faster seller response times to orders. We may operate in jurisdictions that provide limited Internet connectivity, particularly as we expand internationally. Internet access and access to a mobile device or personal computer are frequently provided by companies with significant market power that could take actions that degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of users’ ability to access our platform. In addition, the Internet infrastructure that we and users of our platform rely on in any particular geographic area may be unable to support the demands placed upon it and could interfere with the speed and availability of our platform. Any such failure in Internet or mobile device or computer accessibility, even for a short period of time, could adversely affect our results of operations.
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Interruptions to or other problems with our website and platform, information technology systems, manufacturing processes or other operations could damage our reputation and brand and substantially harm our business and results of operations.
The satisfactory performance, reliability, consistency, integrity, security and availability of our websites, marketplace and platform, information technology systems, and other operations are critical to our reputation and brand, and to our ability to effectively service buyers and sellers. Any interruptions or other problems that cause any of our websites, marketplace, platform or information technology systems to malfunction or be unavailable, or negatively impact our operations, may damage our reputation and brand, result in lost revenue, cause us to incur significant costs seeking to remedy the problem and otherwise substantially harm our business and results of operations.
A number of factors or events could cause such interruptions or problems, including: human and software errors, hackers, viruses, malware or other malicious activity, design faults, bugs, challenges associated with upgrades, changes or new facets of our business, power loss, telecommunication failures, fire, flood, extreme weather, political instability, acts of terrorism, war, break-ins and security breaches, supply chain attacks, exploitation of vulnerabilities in our network or platform, contract disputes, labor strikes and other workforce-related issues, capacity constraints due to an unusually large number of users accessing our websites or ordering parts at the same time, and other similar events. Our buyers come to us in part for our instant pricing capabilities and that feature is often of critical importance to these buyers. We are dependent upon our facilities, in which we house computer hardware necessary to operate our websites and systems as well as managerial, customer service, sales, marketing and other similar functions, and we have not identified alternatives to these facilities or established fully redundant systems in multiple locations. We also utilize cloud computing and server capabilities with respect to each of our United States and European operations. In addition, we are dependent in part on third parties for the implementation and maintenance of certain aspects of our communications and production systems, and therefore preventing, identifying and rectifying problems with these aspects of our systems is to a large extent outside of our control.
Moreover, the business interruption insurance that we carry may not be sufficient to compensate us for the potentially significant losses, including the potential harm to the future growth of our business that may result from interruptions in the use of our marketplace or platform and delivery of parts as a result of system failures. Any of the foregoing could materially and adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
We are subject to stringent and evolving laws and regulations relating to consumer data privacy and data protection, and any actual or perceived failure by us to comply with such laws and regulations or our privacy policies could materially and adversely affect our business.
We receive, collect, store, process, transfer and otherwise use personal data and other sensitive data. The effectiveness of our technology, including our AI and platforms, and our ability to offer our platform to users rely on the collection, storage and use of this data, including personally identifying or other sensitive data. Our collection, storage, processing, transfer and other use of this data might raise privacy and data protection concerns, which could negatively impact the demand for our services. Privacy and data protection laws or misinterpretations of such laws could restrict or add regulatory and compliance processes to our ability to effectively use and profit from those services.
There are numerous federal, state and international laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection, information security and the collection, storing, sharing, use, processing, transfer, disclosure and protection of personal data and other content, the scope of which are changing, subject to differing interpretations, and may be inconsistent among countries or conflict with other laws and regulations. We are also subject to the terms of our privacy and information policies and contractual or other obligations to third parties related to privacy, data protection and information security. We strive to comply with applicable laws, regulations, policies and other legal obligations relating to privacy, data protection and information security to the extent possible. However, the regulatory framework for privacy and data protection worldwide is, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, uncertain and complex, and it is possible that these or other actual or alleged obligations may be interpreted and applied in a manner that we do not anticipate or that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other rules or our practices. Further, any significant change to applicable laws, regulations or industry practices regarding the collection, use, retention, security or disclosure of personal data, or their interpretation, or any changes regarding the manner in which the consent of users or other data subjects for the collection, use, retention or disclosure of such data must be obtained, could increase our costs and require us to modify our services and features, possibly in a material manner, which we may be unable to complete, and may limit our ability to store and process user data or develop new services and features.
If we were found to be in violation of any applicable privacy or data protection laws or regulations, our business may be materially and adversely affected, and we would likely have to change our business practices and potentially the services and features available through our platform. In addition, these laws and regulations could impose significant costs on us and could make it more difficult for us to use our current technology to and connect buyers and sellers. In addition, if a breach of data security were to occur,
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or other violation of privacy or data protection laws and regulations were to be alleged, our solutions may be perceived as less desirable and our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.
We expect that there will continue to be new laws, regulations and industry standards concerning privacy, data protection and information security proposed and enacted in various jurisdictions. For example, European legislators adopted the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which became effective on May 25, 2018, and are now in the process of finalizing the ePrivacy Regulation to replace the European ePrivacy Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC as amended by Directive 2009/136/EC). The GDPR further implemented through binding guidance by the European Data Protection Board (and supplemented by national laws in individual EU member states), applies extra-territorially, imposes stringent data protection compliance requirements and provides for significant penalties for noncompliance. The GDPR created new compliance obligations applicable to our business and users, including obligations and restrictions concerning the consent and rights of individuals to whom the personal data relates, security breach notifications and the security and confidentiality of personal data. The GDPR has caused us to change, and we may in the future need to make further changes to, our business practices, and includes significant financial penalties for noncompliance (including possible fines of up to the greater of €20 million and 4% of our global annual turnover for the preceding financial year for the most serious violations, as well as the right to compensation for financial or non-financial damages claimed by any individuals under Article 82 of the GDPR). We are taking steps to comply with the GDPR, but this is an ongoing compliance process. This may be onerous and if our efforts to comply with GDPR or other applicable EU laws and regulations are not successful, or are perceived to be unsuccessful, it could adversely affect our business in the EU.
Further, the exit of the United Kingdom, or UK, from the EU, often referred to as Brexit, has created uncertainty with regard to data protection regulation in the UK. Specifically, the UK exited the EU on January 1, 2020, subject to a transition period that ended December 31, 2020. Under the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and the UK, the UK and EU have agreed that transfers of personal data to the UK from EEA member states will not be treated as ‘restricted transfers’ to a non-EEA country for a period of up to four months from January 1, 2021, plus a potential further two months extension (the “Extended Adequacy Assessment Period”). Although the current maximum duration of the Extended Adequacy Assessment Period is six months, it may end sooner, for example, in the event that the European Commission adopts an adequacy decision in respect of the UK, or the UK amends the UK GDPR and/or makes certain changes regarding data transfers under the UK GDPR/Data Protection Act 2018 without the consent of the EU (unless those amendments or decisions are made simply to keep relevant UK laws aligned with the EU’s data protection regime). If the European Commission does not adopt an ‘adequacy decision’ in respect of the UK prior to the expiry of the Extended Adequacy Assessment Period, from that point onwards the UK will be an ‘inadequate third country’ under the GDPR and transfers of personal data from the EEA to the UK will require a ‘transfer mechanism’ such as the Standard Contractual Clauses.
Additionally, California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, which became effective on January 1, 2020. The CCPA provides new data privacy rights for consumers and new operational requirements for companies. Specifically, the CCPA mandates that covered companies provide new disclosures to California consumers and afford such consumers new data privacy rights that include, among other things, the right to request a copy from a covered company of the personal information collected about them and the right to request deletion of such personal information. The California Attorney General can enforce the CCPA, including seeking an injunction and civil penalties for violations. The CCPA also provides a private right of action for certain data breaches that is expected to increase data breach litigation. Additionally, a new privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act, or CPRA, was approved by California voters in the November 3, 2020 election. The CPRA generally takes effect on January 1, 2023 and significantly modifies the CCPA, including by expanding consumers’ rights with respect to certain personal information and creating a new state agency to oversee implementation and enforcement efforts, potentially resulting in further uncertainty and requiring us to incur additional costs and expenses in an effort to comply. The CPRA will, among other things, give California residents the ability to limit use of certain sensitive personal information, further restrict the use of cross-contextual advertising, establish restrictions on the retention of personal information, expand the types of data breaches subject to the CCPA’s private right of action and provide for increased penalties for CPRA violations concerning California residents under the age of 16. Given its nascency, we cannot yet predict the full impact of the CCPA on our business or operations, but it may require us to modify our data practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply. Additionally, the CCPA and other legal and regulatory changes are making it easier for certain individuals to opt out of having their personal data processed and disclosed to third parties through various opt-out mechanisms, which could result in an increase to our operational costs to ensure compliance with such legal and regulatory changes. In recent years, there has also been an increase in attention to and regulation of data protection and data privacy across the globe, including in the United States with the increasingly active approach of the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) with respect to data privacy issues under Section 5 of the FTC Act’s unfair and deceptive acts framework, as well as contemplated data privacy statutes and regulations in many states as well as at the federal level. Current pending or future proposed legislation may result in changes to the current regulatory landscape, including enforcement measures and sanctions.
Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with our posted privacy policies, our privacy-related obligations to users or other third parties, or any other legal obligations or regulatory requirements relating to privacy, data protection or information security may result in governmental investigations or enforcement actions, litigation, claims or public statements against us by consumer
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advocacy groups or others and could result in significant liability, cause our buyers, sellers or third-party partners to lose trust in us, and otherwise materially and adversely affect our reputation and business. Furthermore, the costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, the laws, regulations and policies that are applicable to the businesses of our users may limit the adoption and use of, and reduce the overall demand for, our marketplace and platform. Additionally, if third parties we work with violate applicable laws, regulations or agreements, such violations may put our users’ data at risk, could result in governmental investigations or enforcement actions, fines, litigation, claims, or public statements against us by consumer advocacy groups or others and could result in significant liability, cause our buyers, sellers or third-party partners to lose trust in us and otherwise materially and adversely affect our reputation and business. Further, public scrutiny of, or complaints about, technology companies or their data handling or data protection practices, even if unrelated to our business, industry or operations, may lead to increased scrutiny of technology companies, including us, and may cause government agencies to enact additional regulatory requirements, or to modify their enforcement or investigation activities, which may increase our costs and risks.
Additionally, certain actions of our users that are deemed to be a misuse of or unauthorized disclosure of another user’s personal data could negatively affect our reputation and brand and impose liability on us. While we have adopted policies regarding the misuse or unauthorized disclosure of personal data obtained through our services by our users and retain authority to put a hold on or permanently disable user accounts, users could nonetheless misuse or disclose another user’s personal data. The safeguards we have in place may not be sufficient to avoid liability on our part or avoid harm to our reputation and brand, especially if such misuse or unauthorized disclosure of personal data was high profile, which could adversely affect our ability to expand our user base, and our business and financial results.
Any court ruling or other governmental action that imposes liability on providers of online services for the activities of their users and other third parties could harm our business. In such circumstances, we may also be subject to liability under applicable law in a way which may not be fully mitigated by the user terms of service we require our users to agree to. Any of the foregoing could materially and adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
Government regulation of the Internet and e-commerce is evolving, and unfavorable changes could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We are subject to general business regulations and laws as well as federal and state regulations and laws specifically governing the Internet and e-commerce that are frequently evolving. Existing and future laws and regulations, or changes thereto, may impede the growth of the Internet and e-commerce, or other online services, and increase the cost of operating our platform or operating our marketplace online, require us to change our business practices, or raise compliance costs or other costs of doing business. These regulations and laws, which continue to evolve, may cover taxation, tariffs, user privacy, data protection, pricing and commissions, content, copyrights, distribution, social media marketing, advertising practices, sweepstakes, mobile, electronic contracts and other communications, consumer protection, broadband residential Internet access, and the characteristics and quality of services. It is not clear how existing laws governing issues such as property ownership, sales, use, and other taxes, libel, and personal privacy apply to the Internet and e-commerce. In addition, as we continue to expand internationally, it is possible that foreign government entities may seek to censor content available on our website or mobile application or may even attempt to block access to our website or mobile application. Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to comply with any of these laws or regulations could result in damage to our reputation and brand, a loss in business, and proceedings or actions against us by governmental entities or others, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Growth of our business will depend on a strong reputation and brand and any failure to maintain, protect, and enhance our brand would hurt our ability to retain or expand our base of buyers and sellers and our ability to increase their level of engagement.
We believe that building a strong reputation, identity and brand are critical to our ability to attract and retain buyers and sellers and increase their engagement with our platform and transactions on our marketplace, and will only become more important as competition in our industry intensifies. Successfully obtaining, maintaining, protecting, and enhancing our reputation and brand and increasing network effects of engagement on our platform and transactions on our marketplace will depend on the success of our sales and marketing efforts, our ability to provide consistent, high-quality services and support, and our ability to successfully secure, maintain, defend and enforce our intellectual property or other proprietary rights to use the “Xometry” mark, our logo, and other trademarks important to our brand, as well as a number of other factors, many of which are outside our control. We believe that our sales and marketing initiatives have been critical in promoting awareness of the products and services available to sellers on our platform and buyers organically expanding their accounts by adding more users and service, but future marketing efforts may not be successful or cost-effective. Our buyers’ preferences may change from time to time. In addition, to expand our buyer base, we must appeal to new buyers who may have historically used other manufacturing methods.
Our reputation, brand, and ability to build trust with existing and new buyers and sellers may be adversely affected by complaints and negative publicity about us, our buyers or our sellers, even if factually incorrect or based on isolated incidents.
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Negative perception of our platform, marketplace or company may harm our reputation, brand, and network effects, including as a result of:
complaints or negative publicity about us, our platform, our marketplace, our buyers, our sellers, or our policies and guidelines, including our pricing model;
price quote, production, lead time or shipping delays;
real or perceived manufacturing or quality control inadequacies;
illegal, negligent, reckless, or otherwise inappropriate behavior by buyers, sellers or third parties;
a pandemic or an outbreak of disease linked to us;
a failure to provide sellers with a sufficient level of orders or repeat business;
a failure to offer buyers or sellers competitive pricing and lead times;
a failure to provide a range of manufacturing processes sought by buyers;
a failure to provide manufacturing processes that limit environmental harm;
actual or perceived disruptions to or defects in our platform or similar incidents, such as privacy or data security breaches or other security incidents, site outages, payment disruptions, or other incidents that impact the reliability of our services, as discussed elsewhere in this “Risk Factors” section;
litigation over, or investigations by regulators into, our company or the industry in which we operate;
buyers’ or sellers’ lack of awareness of, or compliance with, our policies;
changes to our policies that users or others perceive as overly restrictive, unclear, inconsistent with our values or mission, or not clearly articulated;
a failure to comply with legal, tax, and regulatory requirements, as discussed elsewhere in this “Risk Factors” section;
a failure to enforce our policies in a manner that users perceive as effective, fair, and transparent;
a failure to operate our business in a way that is consistent with our values and mission;
inadequate or unsatisfactory support experiences;
illegal or otherwise inappropriate behavior by our management team or other employees or contractors;
negative responses by buyers or sellers to new services or manufacturing processes available on our marketplace;
a failure to register or to prevent infringement, misappropriation or other violation of our trademarks;
perception of our treatment of buyers and sellers and our response to buyer or seller sentiment related to political or social causes or actions of management; or
any of the foregoing with respect to our competitors, to the extent such resulting negative perception affects the public’s perception of us or our industry as a whole.
Our company culture and values have contributed to our success and if we cannot maintain and evolve our culture as we grow, our business could be adversely affected.
We believe that our company culture has been critical to our success. We face a number of challenges that may affect our ability to sustain our corporate culture, including:
failure to identify, attract, reward, and retain people in leadership positions in our organization who share and further our culture, values, and mission;
failure to further our diversity efforts with respect to our leadership team and our offerings;
the increasing size and geographic diversity of our workforce;
competitive pressures to move in directions that may divert us from our mission, vision, and values;
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the continued challenges of a rapidly evolving industry; and
the integration of new personnel and businesses from acquisitions.
If we are not able to maintain and evolve our culture, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
Any failure to offer high-quality support may harm our relationships with buyers and sellers and could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our ability to attract and retain buyers and sellers is dependent in part on our ability to provide high-quality support. Buyers and sellers depend on our support organization to resolve any issues relating to our platform or transactions on our marketplace. In particular, our operational support team is critical to delivering manufactured parts to buyers timely and in accordance with their orders. We rely on third parties to provide some support services and our ability to provide effective support is partially dependent on our ability to attract and retain third-party software to enable and optimize our support functions. As we continue to grow our business and improve our offerings, we will face challenges related to providing high-quality support services at scale. Additionally, as we continue to grow our international business and the number of international users on our platform and transacting on our marketplace, our support organization will face additional challenges, including those associated with delivering support in languages other than English. Any failure to maintain high-quality support, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality support, could harm our reputation and adversely affect our ability to scale our platform, marketplace and business, our financial condition, and results of operations.
Our business is subject to a variety of laws and regulations, both in the United States and internationally, many of which are evolving.
We are subject to a wide variety of laws and regulations. Laws, regulations and standards governing issues such as worker classification, employment, payments, worker confidentiality obligations, intellectual property, consumer protection, taxation, import and export controls, privacy and data security are often complex and subject to varying interpretations, in many cases due to their lack of specificity and, as a result, their application in practice may change or develop over time through judicial decisions or as new guidance or interpretations are provided by regulatory and governing bodies, such as federal and state administrative agencies. Many of these laws were adopted prior to the advent of the internet and related technologies and, as a result, do not contemplate or address the unique issues of the internet and related technologies. Other laws and regulations may be adopted in response to internet and related technologies. New and existing laws and regulations (or changes in interpretation of existing laws and regulations) may also be adopted, implemented, or interpreted to apply to us and other online marketplaces. As our marketplace’s geographical scope expands, regulatory agencies or courts may claim that we, or our buyers or sellers, are subject to additional requirements or that we are prohibited from conducting our business in or with certain jurisdictions. It is also possible that certain provisions in agreements with our service providers or between buyers and sellers may be found to be unenforceable or not compliant with applicable law.
Recent financial, political and other events may increase the level of regulatory scrutiny on larger companies, technology companies in general and, in particular, companies engaged in dealings with independent contractors or payments. Regulatory agencies may enact new laws or promulgate new regulations that are adverse to our business, or they may view matters or interpret laws and regulations differently than they have in the past or in a manner adverse to our business. Such regulatory scrutiny or action may create different or conflicting obligations on us from one jurisdiction to another. In particular, we have received letters from certain jurisdictions indicating that we are required to pay taxes based on having certain minimum contacts in such jurisdictions. We may become subject to taxation in additional jurisdictions in the future.
We are subject to U.S. and other anti-corruption laws, trade controls, economic sanctions and similar laws and regulations. Our failure to comply with these laws and regulations could subject us to civil, criminal and administrative penalties and harm our reputation.
We do business worldwide, which requires us to comply with the laws and regulations of the U.S. government and various foreign jurisdictions. These laws and regulations place restrictions on our operations, trade practices, partners and investments.
In particular, our operations are subject to U.S. and foreign anti-corruption and trade control laws and regulations, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, export controls and economic sanctions programs, including those administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, or DDTC, and the Bureau of Industry and Security, or BIS, of the Department of Commerce. As a result of doing business in foreign countries and with foreign customers, we are exposed to a heightened risk of violating anti-corruption and trade control laws and sanctions regulations.
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As part of our business, we may deal with state-owned business enterprises, the employees of which are considered foreign officials for purposes of the FCPA’s prohibition on providing anything of value to foreign officials for the purposes of obtaining or retaining business or securing any improper business advantage. In addition, the provisions of anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws in some jurisdictions extend beyond bribery of foreign public officials and also apply to transactions with individuals that a government does not employ. Some of the international locations in which we may operate lack a developed legal system and have higher than normal levels of corruption. Our continued expansion outside the U.S. could increase the risk of FCPA, OFAC or other similar violations in the future.
As an exporter, we must comply with various laws and regulations relating to the export of products and technology from the U.S. and other countries having jurisdiction over our operations. In the U.S., these laws include the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, administered by the DDTC, the Export Administration Regulations, or EAR, administered by the BIS and trade sanctions against embargoed countries and destinations administered by OFAC. The EAR governs products, parts, technology and software which present military or weapons proliferation concerns, so-called “dual use” items, and ITAR governs military items listed on the United States Munitions List. Prior to shipping certain items, we must obtain an export license or verify that license exemptions are available. Any failures to comply with these laws and regulations could result in fines, adverse publicity and restrictions on our ability to export our parts, and repeat failures could carry more significant penalties.
We are subject to various federal, state, local and non-U.S. laws and regulations relating to environmental protection.
We are subject to various federal, state, local and non-U.S. laws and regulations relating to environmental protection, including the discharge, treatment, storage, disposal and remediation of hazardous substances and wastes. We continually assess our compliance status and management of environmental matters to ensure our operations are in material compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations; however, there is no guarantee that we comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations, and as a result, we may incur costs associated with noncompliance, investigation, remediation, and operation and maintenance costs associated with environmental compliance. The cost of such compliance may increase over time, particularly as we expand our business into new jurisdictions.
Our intellectual property and proprietary rights are valuable, and any inability to obtain, maintain, protect or enforce them could substantially harm our business, products, services and brand.
Our trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property and proprietary rights are critical to our success. We rely on, and expect to continue to rely on, a combination of confidentiality, invention assignment, and license agreements with our employees, consultants, and third parties with whom we have relationships, as well as trademark, trade dress, domain name, copyright, trade secret, and patent rights, to protect our brand, proprietary technology and other intellectual property rights. If we do not adequately protect our intellectual property, our brand and reputation could be harmed and competitors may be able to use our technologies and erode or negate any competitive advantage we may have, which could harm our business, negatively affect our position in the marketplace, limit our ability to commercialize our technology and delay or render impossible our achievement of profitability. A failure to protect our intellectual property in a cost-effective and meaningful manner could have a material adverse effect on our ability to compete. We regard the protection of our current or future trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, trade dress, databases, domain names and patents as critical to our success.
We strive to protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights by relying on federal, state and common law rights and other rights provided under foreign laws. These laws are subject to change at any time and could further restrict our ability to obtain, maintain, protect or enforce our intellectual property rights. In addition, the existing laws of certain foreign countries in which we operate may not protect our intellectual property rights to the same extent as do the laws of the United States.
Effective protection of intellectual property rights is expensive and difficult to maintain, both in terms of application and maintenance costs, as well as the costs of monitoring, defending and enforcing those rights. We routinely apply for patents in the U.S. and internationally to protect innovative ideas embodied in our technology, but we may not always be successful in obtaining patent grants from these applications. Moreover, there is no assurance that any resulting patent rights will adequately protect our intellectual property or provide us with any competitive advantages. We also pursue registration of trademarks, and domain names in the United States and in certain jurisdictions outside of the United States and may pursue registrations of copyrights in the future, but doing so may not always be successful or cost-effective. We may be unable to prevent third parties from acquiring trademarks and domain names that are similar to, infringe upon, dilute or diminish the value of our trademarks and other proprietary rights. Additionally, our trademarks may be challenged, circumvented, declared generic, lapsed or determined to be infringing on or dilutive of other marks. We may not be able to protect our rights in our trademarks, which we need in order to build name recognition with customers. If third parties succeed in registering or developing common law rights in our trademarks and we are not successful in challenging such third-party rights, or if our trademark rights are otherwise damaged, we may not be able to use our trademarks to commercialize our products and services in certain relevant jurisdictions.
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Even where we have intellectual property rights, they may later be found to be unenforceable or have a limited scope of enforceability. In addition, we may not seek to pursue such protection in every jurisdiction. In particular, we believe it is important to maintain, protect and enhance our brands. Accordingly, we pursue the registration of domain names and our trademarks and service marks in the United States. Third parties may challenge our use of our trademarks, oppose our trademark applications or otherwise impede our efforts to protect our intellectual property in certain jurisdictions. We may encounter similar challenges in other international jurisdictions as we expand our business. In the event that we are unable to register our trademarks in certain jurisdictions, we could be forced to rebrand our products, which could result in loss of brand recognition and could require us to devote resources to advertising and marketing new brands.
Our competitors and others could attempt to capitalize on our brand recognition by using domain names or business names similar to ours. Domain names similar to ours have been registered in the United States and elsewhere. We may be unable to prevent third parties from acquiring or using domain names and other trademarks that infringe on, are similar to, or otherwise decrease the value of our brands, trademarks or service marks. Effective trade secret, copyright, trademark, domain name and patent protection are expensive to develop and maintain, both in terms of initial and ongoing registration requirements and the costs of defending our rights. We may be required to protect our intellectual property in an increasing number of jurisdictions, a process that is expensive and may not be successful or which we may not pursue in every location. We may, over time, increase our investment in protecting our intellectual property through additional patent filings that could be expensive and time-consuming.
Our intellectual property rights may be infringed, misappropriated, violated or challenged, which could result in them being narrowed in scope or declared invalid or unenforceable. In order to protect our intellectual property rights, we may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect these rights. We may not be able to detect infringement misappropriation or unauthorized use of our intellectual property rights, and defending or enforcing our intellectual property rights, even if successfully detected, prosecuted, enjoined or remedied, could result in the expenditure of significant financial and managerial resources. Litigation may be necessary to enforce our intellectual property rights, protect our proprietary rights or determine the validity and scope of proprietary rights claimed by others. Any litigation of this nature, regardless of outcome or merit, could result in substantial costs and diversion of management and technical resources, any of which could adversely affect our business and results of operations. We may also incur significant costs in enforcing our trademarks against those who attempt to imitate our brand and other valuable trademarks and service marks. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims, countersuits and adversarial proceedings such as oppositions, inter partes review, post-grant review, re-examination or other post-issuance proceedings, that attack the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. An adverse determination of any litigation proceedings could put our patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly and could put our related pending patent applications at risk of not issuing. Further, because of the substantial amount of discovery required in connection with intellectual property litigation, there is a risk that some of our confidential or sensitive information could be compromised by disclosure in the event of litigation. In addition, during the course of litigation there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments. If securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our Class A common stock. If we fail to maintain, protect and enhance our intellectual property rights, our business may be harmed, and the market price of our Class A common stock could decline.
Similarly, our reliance on unpatented proprietary information and technology, such as trade secrets and confidential information, depends in part on agreements we have in place with employees and third parties that place restrictions on the use and disclosure of this intellectual property. However, we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that may have or has had access to our trade secrets or proprietary technology and processes. Despite these efforts, any of these parties may breach the agreements and disclose our proprietary information, including our trade secrets, and we may not be able to obtain adequate remedies for such breaches. There can be no assurance that these agreements will be self-executing or otherwise provide meaningful protection for our trade secrets or other intellectual property or proprietary information. Further, our competitors could independently develop technology similar to our unpatented proprietary information and technology, which could cause us to lose any competitive advantage resulting from this intellectual property. Agreements restricting the use and disclosure of unpatented proprietary information may be insufficient or may be breached, or we may not enter into sufficient agreements with such individuals in the first instance, in either case potentially resulting in the unauthorized use or disclosure of our trade secrets and other intellectual property, including to our competitors, which could cause us to lose any competitive advantage resulting from this intellectual property. Individuals not subject to invention assignment agreements may make adverse ownership claims to our current and future intellectual property. There can be no assurance that our intellectual property rights will be sufficient to protect against others offering a platform, products or services that are substantially similar to ours and that compete with our business.
Our competitors may also independently develop similar technology that does not infringe on or misappropriate our intellectual property rights. The laws of some foreign countries do not protect, or may not be as protective, of intellectual property rights as those in the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be inadequate. Effective patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret protection may not be available to us in every country in which our solutions or technology are hosted or available. Further, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of
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intellectual property rights are uncertain. The laws in the United States and elsewhere change rapidly, and any future changes could adversely affect us and our intellectual property. Our intellectual property rights may be contested, circumvented or found unenforceable or invalid, in whole or in part, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing, misappropriating, diluting or otherwise violating them. Our failure to meaningfully protect our intellectual property could result in competitors offering solutions that incorporate our most technologically advanced features, which could seriously reduce demand for our products and services.
Additionally, our intellectual property rights and other confidential business information are subject to risks of compromise or unauthorized disclosure if our security measures or those of our third-party service providers are unable to prevent cyber-attacks. Significant impairments of our intellectual property rights, and limitations on our ability to assert our intellectual property rights against others, could have a material and adverse effect on our business.
In order to protect and monitor for infringement, misappropriation or other violation of our intellectual property and proprietary rights, we may be required to spend significant resources. Litigation may be necessary to enforce and protect our trade secrets and other intellectual property and proprietary rights, which could be costly, time-consuming, and distracting to management, and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Further, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims, and countersuits attacking the ownership, scope, validity and enforceability of such rights. Our inability to protect our proprietary technology against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation or diversion of our management’s attention and resources, could delay further sales or the implementation of our offerings or impair their functionality, delay introductions of new offerings, result in our substituting inferior or more costly technologies into our offerings, or injure our reputation. Any of the foregoing could materially and adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
We could incur substantial costs and other harms as a result of any claim of infringement, misappropriation or other violation of another party’s intellectual property or proprietary rights.
Whether merited or not, we may face claims of intellectual property infringement allegations and claims from individuals or companies, including such parties who have acquired or developed patents in the fields of injection molding, CNC machining, 3D printing, sheet metal fabrication, or other manufacturing processes for products manufactured by sellers transacting on our marketplace, or technologies for automatically calculating pricing information for products manufactured according to such techniques. We may also be subject to claims from individuals or companies asserting that we are liable for alleged violations of intellectual property rights associated with parts created for buyers. Any claims that such products, processes or parts infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate the intellectual property rights of others, regardless of the merit or resolution of such claims, could cause us to incur significant costs in responding to, defending and resolving such claims, and as a result, could have a material and adverse effect on our business.
Additionally, in recent years, individuals and groups have begun purchasing intellectual property assets for the purpose of making claims of infringement, misappropriation or other violation and attempting to extract settlements from companies like ours. We may also face allegations that our employees have infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated the intellectual property or proprietary rights of their former employers or other third parties. It may be necessary for us to initiate litigation to defend ourselves in order to determine the scope, enforceability and validity of third-party intellectual property or proprietary rights, or to establish our respective rights. Regardless of whether claims that we are infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating patents or other intellectual property or proprietary rights have merit, such claims can be time-consuming, divert management’s attention and financial resources and can be costly to evaluate and defend. Results of any such litigation are difficult to predict and may require us to stop commercializing or using our products or technology, obtain licenses, modify our services and technology while we develop non-infringing substitutes or incur substantial damages, settlement costs or face a temporary or permanent injunction prohibiting us from marketing or providing the affected products and services. If we require a third-party license, it may not be available on reasonable terms or at all, and we may have to pay substantial royalties, upfront fees or grant cross-licenses to intellectual property rights for our products and services. We may also have to redesign our products or services so they do not infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate third-party intellectual property or other proprietary rights, which may not be possible or may require substantial monetary expenditures and time, during which our technology and products may not be available for commercialization or use. Even if we have an agreement to indemnify us against such costs, the indemnifying party may be unable to uphold its contractual obligations. If we cannot or do not obtain a third-party license to the infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated technology, license the technology on reasonable terms or obtain similar technology from another source, our revenue and earnings could be adversely impacted.
From time to time, we may be subject to legal proceedings and claims in the ordinary course of business with respect to intellectual property. Some third parties may be able to sustain the costs of complex litigation more effectively than we can because they have substantially greater resources. Even if resolved in our favor, litigation or other legal proceedings relating to intellectual property claims may cause us to incur significant expenses and could distract our technical and management personnel from their normal responsibilities. In addition, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim
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proceedings or developments, and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a material adverse effect on the price of our Class A common stock. Moreover, any uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of any legal proceedings could have a material adverse effect on our ability to raise the funds necessary to continue our operations. Assertions by third parties that we violate their intellectual property rights could therefore harm our business.
Any intellectual property litigation to which we might become a party, or for which we are required to provide indemnification, may require us to do one or more of the following:
cease selling or using offerings that incorporate or are otherwise covered by the intellectual property rights that we allegedly infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate;
make substantial payments for legal fees, settlement payments or other costs or damages, including potentially treble damages and attorneys’ fees if we are found liable for willful infringement;
obtain a license to sell or use the relevant technology, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all, may be non-exclusive and thereby allow our competitors and other parties access to the same technology, and may require the payment of substantial licensing, royalty or other fees; or
redesign the allegedly infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating offerings to avoid infringement, misappropriation or other violation, which could be costly, time-consuming or impossible.
Any of the foregoing could materially and adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
We may not be able to successfully execute future acquisitions or efficiently manage any acquired business.
We have acquired, and may in the future seek to acquire or invest in, additional businesses, products or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our marketplace, enhance the technical capabilities, products and services available on our platform, or otherwise offer growth opportunities. The success of any acquisition will depend upon several factors, including our ability to: identify and cost-effectively structure and acquire businesses; integrate acquired user data, operations, products and technologies into our organization effectively; and retain and motivate key personnel.
The process of integrating an acquired company, business or technology may create unforeseen operating challenges, risks and expenditures, including that the acquisitions do not advance our corporate strategy, that we get an unsatisfactory return on our investment, that the acquisitions distract management, or that we may have difficulty: (i) integrating an acquired company’s accounting, financial reporting, management information and information security, human resource and other administrative systems to permit effective management; (ii) integrating the controls, procedures and policies at companies we acquire into our internal control over financial reporting; and (iii) transitioning the acquired company’s operations, suppliers and customers to us. It may take longer than expected to realize the full benefits from these acquisitions, such as increased revenue, enhanced efficiencies or increased market share, or the benefit may ultimately be smaller than we expected. Moreover, if any of our acquisitions or investments increase our international operations, it would expose us to additional risks relating to operating outside the United States, including increased operational and regulatory risks. Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with our past or future acquisitions and investments could cause us to fail to realize the anticipated benefits of such acquisitions or investments, incur unanticipated liabilities and harm our business generally. If an acquired business, product or technology fails to meet our expectations or results in unanticipated costs and expenses, our business, financial condition and results of operations may suffer.
In addition, we cannot be certain that any acquisition, if completed, will be successfully integrated into our existing operations. If we are unable to effectively integrate an acquired business, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected. The pursuit of potential acquisitions may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various costs and expenses in identifying, investigating and pursuing suitable acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated. We may not be able to identify desirable acquisition targets or be successful in entering into an agreement with any particular target or obtain the expected benefits of any acquisition or investment.
Acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity or equity-linked securities, the use of our available cash, or involve us taking on debt or give rise to new liabilities, whether to fund the upfront purchase price of the transaction or deferred or contingent payments we agree to as part of the transaction.
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Natural or man-made disasters affecting the manufacturing facilities of our sellers or of our facilities could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Sellers manufacture orders in a number of geographic locations; however, these facilities and the manufacturing equipment used would be costly to replace and could require substantial lead time to repair or replace. Such facilities and manufacturing equipment may be harmed by natural or man-made disasters, including, without limitation, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, fires, hurricanes, tsunamis and nuclear disasters.
In the event any of our sellers’ facilities or manufacturing equipment are affected by a disaster, sellers may:
be unable to meet the shipping deadlines of our buyers;
experience disruptions in our ability to process orders, manufacture and ship orders;
be forced to rely on third-party manufacturers or otherwise fail to fulfill orders of our buyers; or
be unable to source materials required for orders.
In the event of any of our facilities are affected by a disaster, we may:
experience disruptions in our ability to process orders, provide sales and marketing support and customer service, and otherwise operate our business, any of which could negatively impact our business; or
need to expend significant capital and other resources to address any damage caused by the disaster.
Any disruption as a result of natural or man-made disaster strikes of the manufacturing facilities of our sellers or of our facilities, we may lose buyers, damage our brand and reputation, and we may be unable to regain those buyers or fail to attract new buyers.
Although we possess insurance for damage to our property and the disruption of our business from casualties, this insurance may not be sufficient to cover all of our potential losses and may not continue to be available to us on acceptable terms, or at all, nor will it address the impact that a disruption of sellers’ facilities or manufacturing equipment may cause.
We depend upon talented employees to grow, operate and improve our business, and if we are unable to retain and motivate our personnel and attract new talent, we may not be able to grow effectively.
We believe our success has depended, and our future success depends, in part on the efforts and talents of our senior management, including Randolph Altschuler, our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. There can be no assurance that the services of any employee will continue to be available to us in the future. Further, while we carry a key man life insurance policy covering Mr. Altschuler, we do not carry any key man life insurance policies on any of our other executive officers.
To maintain and grow our business, we will need to continue to identify, attract, hire, develop, motivate, and retain highly skilled employees. This requires significant time, expense, and attention. In addition, from time to time, there may be changes in our management team that may be disruptive to our business. If our management team, fails to work together effectively and to execute our plans and strategies on a timely basis, our business could be harmed. Competition for highly skilled personnel in our business sector is intense, particularly in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area where our headquarters are located. We may need to invest significant amounts of cash and equity to attract and retain new employees, and we may never realize returns on these investments. Additionally, potential changes in U.S. immigration policy may make it difficult to renew or obtain visas for any highly skilled foreign personnel that we have hired or are actively recruiting. Furthermore, our international expansion and our business in general may be materially adversely affected if legislative or administrative changes to applicable immigration or visa laws and regulations impair our hiring processes or projects involving personnel who are not citizens of the country where the work is to be performed. If we cannot add and retain employees effectively, our ability to achieve our strategic objectives will be adversely affected, and our business and growth prospects may be harmed.
Our management team has limited experience managing a public company.
Most members of our management team have limited experience managing a publicly traded company, interacting with public company investors and complying with the increasingly complex laws pertaining to public companies in the United States. It is possible that our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage our transition to a public company subject to significant regulatory oversight and reporting obligations under the U.S. federal securities laws and the continuous scrutiny of securities analysts and investors. These new obligations and constituents will require significant attention from our senior management
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and could divert their attention away from the day-to-day management of our business, which could adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
Changes in, or in the interpretation of, tax rules and regulations may impact our effective tax rate and future profitability.
We are a multinational company based in the United States and subject to tax in multiple tax jurisdictions, both domestic and abroad. Our future effective tax rates could be adversely affected by changes in statutory tax rates or in the interpretation of tax rules and regulations in jurisdictions in which we do business, including those set forth in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted in 2017, or the Tax Act, changes in the amount of revenue or earnings in countries with varying statutory tax rates, obligations to pay sales, use, value-added, goods and services and similar taxes in jurisdictions in which we do not currently pay such taxes, or changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities.
In addition, we may be subject to audits and examinations of previously filed tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, and other domestic and foreign tax authorities. We regularly assess the potential impact of such examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income and other taxes. We believe such estimate to be reasonable, but there is no guarantee that will be the case.
Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.
As of December 31, 2020, we have net operating loss (“NOL”) carryforwards for U.S. federal income tax purposes, and similar state amounts, of approximately $90.1 million available to reduce future income subject to income taxes before limitations of which $90.1 million is utilizable. U.S. federal NOL carryforwards generated prior to 2018 in the approximate amount of $26.6 million will begin to expire, if not utilized, in 2033. It is possible that we will not generate taxable income in time to use NOLs before their expiration, or at all. Under Section 382 and Section 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change NOLs and other tax attributes, including R&D tax credits, to offset its post-change income may be limited. In general, an “ownership change” will occur if there is a cumulative change in our ownership by “5 percent stockholders” that exceeds 50 percentage points over a rolling three-year period. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws.
Under the Tax Act, as amended by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or the CARES Act, net operating losses arising in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017 and before January 1, 2021 may be carried back to each of the five taxable years preceding the tax year of such loss, but net operating losses arising in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020 may not be carried back. Additionally, under the Tax Act, as modified by the CARES Act, net operating losses from tax years that began after December 31, 2017 may offset no more than 80% of current taxable income annually for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020, but the 80% limitation on the use of net operating losses from tax years that began after December 31, 2017 does not apply for taxable income in tax years beginning before January 1, 2021. NOLs arising in tax years ending after December 31, 2017 can be carried forward indefinitely, but NOLs generated in tax years ending before January 1, 2018 will continue to have a two-year carryback and twenty-year carryforward period. As we maintain a full valuation allowance against our U.S. NOLs, these changes will not impact our balance sheet as of December 31, 2020. However, in future years, if and when a net deferred tax asset is recognized related to our NOLs, the changes in the carryforward and carryback periods as well as the new limitation on use of NOLs may significantly impact our valuation allowance assessments for NOLs generated after December 31, 2020.
There is also a risk that due to regulatory changes, such as suspensions on the use of NOLs and tax credits by certain jurisdictions, including in order to raise additional revenue to help counter the fiscal impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly with retroactive effect, or other unforeseen reasons, our existing NOLs and tax credits could expire or otherwise be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities. A temporary suspension of the use of certain NOLs and tax credits has been enacted in California, and other states may enact suspensions as well. For these reasons, we may not be able to realize a tax benefit from the use of our NOLs and tax credits.
Our use of “open source” software could adversely affect our ability to offer our services and subject us to possible litigation.
We use open source software in connection with our products and services, and we expect to continue to incorporate open source software in our offerings in the future. Some open source software licenses contain certain requirements, including requirements that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating, linking to or using the open source software (which could include valuable proprietary code), and that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of a particular open source license or other license granting third-parties certain rights of further use. By the terms of certain open source licenses, we could be required to release the source code of our proprietary software, and to make our proprietary software available under open source licenses, if we combine and/or distribute our proprietary software with open source software in certain manners, for reduced or no cost. Although we monitor our use of open source software, we do not have a formal open source policy and we cannot be sure that all open source software is reviewed prior to use in our proprietary
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software, that our programmers have not incorporated open source software into our proprietary software, or that they will not do so in the future. Additionally, the terms of many open source licenses to which we are subject have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts. There is a risk that open source software licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to provide our solutions to our clients. In addition, the terms of open source software licenses may require us to provide software that we develop, using such open source software, to others, including our competitors, on unfavorable license terms.
As a result of our current or future use of open source software, we may face claims or litigation, be required to release our proprietary source code, pay damages for breach of contract, re-engineer our technology, discontinue sales in the event re-engineering cannot be accomplished on a timely basis or at all, or take other remedial action that may divert resources away from our development efforts, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or operating results. If an author or other third party that distributes such open source software were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from the sale of our offerings that contain the open source software and required to comply with onerous conditions or restrictions on these offerings, which could disrupt the distribution and sale of these offerings. In addition, the licensors of such open source software may provide no warranties or indemnities with respect to such claims. In any of these events, we and our buyers could be required to seek licenses from third parties in order to continue offering or utilizing our platform, products and solutions, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all. We and our buyers may also be subject to suits by parties claiming infringement, misappropriation or other violation of third-party intellectual property or proprietary rights due to the reliance by our solutions on certain open source software, and such litigation could be costly for us to defend and subject us to injunctions, payments for damages and other liabilities and obligations. Some open source projects provided on an “as-is” basis have known or unknown vulnerabilities and architectural instabilities which, if not properly addressed, could negatively affect the performance of any offering incorporating the relevant software. Any of the foregoing could result in lost revenue, require us to devote additional research and development resources to re-engineer our solutions, cause us to incur additional costs and expenses, and result in customer dissatisfaction and damage to our reputation, any of which could materially and adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.
We rely on Amazon Web Services to operate our platform, and any disruption of service from Amazon Web Services or material change to our arrangement with Amazon Web Services could adversely affect our business.
The operation of our platform depends on certain third-party service providers. In particular, we currently host our platform, serve our users and support our operations using Amazon Web Services, or AWS, a provider of cloud infrastructure services. We do not have control over the operations of the facilities of AWS that we use. AWS’ facilities are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, cybersecurity attacks, terrorist attacks, power losses, telecommunications failures and similar events, including any disruptions in light of increased usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the event that AWS’ or any other third-party provider’s systems or service abilities are hindered by any of the events discussed above, our ability to operate our platform may be impaired, resulting in missing financial targets for a particular period. A decision to close the facilities without adequate notice, or other unanticipated problems, could result in lengthy interruptions to our platform. All of the aforementioned risks may be augmented if our or our partners’ business continuity and disaster recovery plans prove to be inadequate. The facilities also could be subject to break-ins, computer viruses, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism and other misconduct. Our platform’s continuing and uninterrupted performance is critical to our success. Users may become dissatisfied by any system failure that interrupts our ability to provide our platform to them. We may not be able to easily switch our AWS operations to another cloud or other data center provider if there are disruptions or interference with our use of or relationship with AWS, and, even if we do switch our operations, other cloud and data center providers are subject to the same risks. Sustained or repeated system failures would reduce the attractiveness of our platform to users, thereby reducing revenue. Moreover, negative publicity arising from these types of disruptions could damage our reputation and may adversely impact use of our platform. We may not carry sufficient business interruption insurance to compensate us for losses that may occur as a result of any events that cause interruptions in our service.
Our failure to meet our buyers’ price expectations would adversely affect our business and results of operations.
Demand for manufactured products is sensitive to price. We believe our algorithmic pricing tool has been an important factor in our results to date. Therefore, changes in our pricing strategies could have a significant impact on our business and ability to generate revenue. If we fail to meet our buyer’s price expectations with respect to any given order, demand for our platform could be negatively impacted and our business and results of operations could suffer.
Our business depends in part on our ability to process a large volume of new part designs from a diverse group of buyers and successfully identify significant opportunities for our business based on those submissions.
We believe the volume and variety of designs and manufacturing processes we process, and the size and diversity of our buyers give us valuable insight into the needs of our prospective buyers and the ability of our community of sellers to meet those needs. We utilize this industry knowledge to better match buyers and sellers and to improve pricing. If the number and diversity of
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designs and manufacturing processes we process, or the size and diversity of our buyer or seller bases decrease, our ability to expand our business and improve pricing could be negatively impacted. In addition, even if we do continue to process a large number and variety of designs and manufacturing processes and work with significant and diverse buyer and seller bases, there are no guarantees that we will successfully identify significant business opportunities, improve the products and services available on our platform or increase the number of transactions on our platform as a result.
If our present single or limited source sellers become unavailable or inadequate, our buyer relationships, results of operations and financial condition may be adversely affected.
While most manufacturing equipment and materials for our buyers’ orders are available from multiple sellers, certain of those items are only available from single or limited sources. Should any of our present single or limited source sellers for manufacturing equipment or materials become unavailable or inadequate, or impose terms unacceptable to us such as increased pricing terms, we may fail to procure alternate sources of supply, and we may not be successful in doing so on terms acceptable to us, or at all. As a result, the loss of a single or limited source seller could adversely affect our relationship with our buyers and our results of operations and financial condition.
Our reported results of operations may be adversely affected by changes in GAAP.
GAAP is subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, the SEC, and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported results of operations and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement of a change. As discussed in Note 2 to the condensed consolidated financial statements, we changed our method of accounting for leases as of January 1, 2019 due to the adoption of Accounting Standards Update 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842), as amended. It is difficult to predict the impact of future changes to accounting principles or our accounting policies, any of which could negatively affect our reported results of operations.
The impact of economic conditions, including the resulting effect on consumer spending, may adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our performance is in part subject to economic conditions and their impact on levels of consumer spending, as consumer spending impacts buyers and sellers transacting on our marketplace. Some of the factors having an impact on consumer spending include general economic conditions, unemployment, consumer debt, reductions in net worth, residential real estate and mortgage markets, taxation, energy prices, interest rates, consumer confidence, and other macroeconomic factors. Consumer purchases of generally decline during recessionary periods and other periods in which disposable income is adversely affected, contributing to small business closures. Economic conditions in certain regions may also be affected by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and threats to public health, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Further, small businesses that do not have substantial resources, like some of the buyers and sellers transacting on our marketplace, tend to be more adversely affected by poor economic conditions than large businesses. If buyers or sellers on our platform were to cease operations, temporarily or permanently, or face financial distress or other business disruption, our business, financial condition, and results of operation may be materially and adversely affected.
Currency exchange rate fluctuations affect our results of operations, as reported in our financial statements.
We report our financial results in U.S. dollars. We collect our revenue primarily in U.S. dollars. A portion of the cost of revenue, product development, sales and marketing and general and administrative expenses of our operations in jurisdictions outside the United States are incurred in foreign currency. As a result, we are exposed to exchange rate risks that may materially and adversely affect our financial results. If the foreign currency appreciates against the U.S. dollar or if the value of the foreign currency declines against the U.S. dollar at a time when the rate of inflation in the cost of goods and services in such jurisdictions exceeds the rate of decline in the relative value of the applicable foreign currency, then the U.S. dollar cost of our operations in non-U.S. jurisdictions would increase and our results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. We do not currently enter into hedging transactions and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected if we are unable to effectively hedge against currency fluctuations in the future.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock
Our stock price may be volatile, and the value of our Class A common stock may decline.
The market price of our Class A common stock may be highly volatile and may fluctuate or decline substantially as a result of a variety of factors, some of which are beyond our control, including:
actual or anticipated fluctuations in our operating results or financial condition;
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variance in our financial performance from expectations of securities analysts;
changes to our pricing model;
changes in our projected operating and financial results;
changes in laws or regulations applicable to our business;
announcements by us or our competitors of significant business developments, acquisitions, or new offerings;
our involvement in any litigation;
future sales of our Class A common stock by us or our stockholders, as well as the anticipation of lock-up releases;
actual or perceived data breaches, disruptions or other incidents involving our platform, marketplace or products or services;
developments or disputes concerning our intellectual property or proprietary rights or our solutions, or third-party intellectual or proprietary rights;
changes in senior management or key personnel;
the trading volume of our Class A common stock;
changes in the anticipated future size and growth rate of our market; and
general economic and market conditions.
Broad market and industry fluctuations, as well as general economic, political, regulatory, and market conditions, may also negatively impact the market price of our Class A common stock. In addition, technology stocks have historically experienced high levels of volatility. In the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their securities have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future, which could result in substantial expenses and divert our management’s attention.
Our issuance of additional capital stock in connection with financings, acquisitions, investments, our equity incentive plans, or otherwise will dilute all other stockholders.
We expect to issue additional capital stock in the future that will result in dilution to all other stockholders. We expect to grant equity awards to employees, directors, and consultants under our equity incentive plans. We may also raise capital through equity financings in the future. As part of our business strategy, we may acquire or make investments in companies, products, or technologies and issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition or investment. Any such issuances of additional capital stock may cause stockholders to experience significant dilution of their ownership interests and the per share value of our Class A common stock to decline.
If our operating and financial performance in any given period does not meet the guidance that we provide to the public or the expectations of investment analysts, the market price of our Class A common stock may decline.
We may, but are not obligated to, provide public guidance on our expected operating and financial results for future periods. Any such guidance will comprise forward-looking statements, subject to the risks and uncertainties described in this filing and in our other public filings and public statements. Our ability to provide this public guidance, and our ability to accurately forecast our results of operations, may be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our actual results may not always be in line with or exceed any guidance we have provided, especially in times of economic uncertainty, such as the current global economic uncertainty being experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. If, in the future, our operating or financial results for a particular period do not meet any guidance we provide or the expectations of investment analysts, or if we reduce our guidance for future periods, the market price of our Class A common stock may decline as well. Even if we do issue public guidance, there can be no assurance that we will continue to do so in the future.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish unfavorable or inaccurate research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
Our stock price and trading volume is heavily influenced by the way analysts and investors interpret our financial information and other disclosures. Securities and industry analysts do not currently, and may never, publish research on our business. We do not have control over these analysts. If few securities analysts commence coverage of us, or if industry analysts cease coverage of us, our stock price would be negatively affected. If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, downgrade our Class A common stock, or publish negative reports about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or
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more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our Class A common stock could decrease, which might cause our stock price to decline and could decrease the trading volume of our Class A common stock.
We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future and, as a result, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our Class A common stock.
We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our capital stock, and we do not intend to pay any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Instead, we anticipate that all of our earnings, if any, in the foreseeable future will be used to provide working capital, to support our operations and to finance the growth and development of our business. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Accordingly, investors must rely on sales of their common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investments.
We may require additional capital to support the growth of our business, and this capital might not be available on acceptable terms, if at all.
We have funded our operations since inception primarily through equity financings and sales. We cannot be certain when or if our operations will generate sufficient cash to fully fund our ongoing operations or the growth of our business. We intend to continue to make investments to support our business, which may require us to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. In addition, we may require increasing amounts of working capital or other sources of liquidity to support our financial service offerings, including Xometry Pay and FastPay, as they become more widely used by sellers. Additional financing may not be available on terms favorable to us, or at all. If adequate funds are not available on acceptable terms, we may be unable to invest in future growth opportunities, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. If we incur additional debt, the debt holders would have rights senior to holders of common stock to make claims on our assets, and the terms of any debt could restrict our operations, including our ability to pay dividends on our Class A common stock.
Furthermore, if we issue additional equity securities, stockholders will experience dilution, and the new equity securities could have rights senior to those of our Class A common stock. Because our decision to issue securities in the future will depend on numerous considerations, including factors beyond our control, we cannot predict or estimate the amount, timing, or nature of any future issuances of debt or equity securities. As a result, our stockholders bear the risk of future issuances of debt or equity securities reducing the value of our Class A common stock and diluting their interests.
As of June 30, 2021, we had $37.4 million in cash and cash equivalents. While we believe the net proceeds from our initial public offering, together with our existing cash and cash equivalents, will be sufficient to meet our anticipated cash needs for at least twelve months, we cannot assure you that we will be able to generate sufficient liquidity as and when needed, or that our revenue will be adequate to fund our operating needs or achieve or sustain profitability. We have based this estimate on assumptions that may prove to be wrong, and we could use our capital resources sooner than we currently expect. Changing circumstances, some of which may be beyond our control, could cause us to consume capital significantly faster than we currently anticipate, and we may need to seek additional funds sooner than planned.
The dual-class structure of our common stock will have the effect of concentrating voting control with our co-founders, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions and to influence corporate governance matters, such as electing directors, and to approve material mergers, acquisitions, or other business combination transactions that may not be aligned with your interests.
Our Class B common stock has twenty votes per share, whereas our Class A common stock has one vote per share. Our co-founders collectively own shares representing approximately 56.2% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, based on the number of shares outstanding as of the closing of our initial public offering.
As a result, the holders of our Class B common stock will have the ability to control the outcome of most matters requiring stockholder approval for the foreseeable future, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or our assets, even if their stock holdings represent less than a majority of the outstanding shares of our capital stock. This concentration of ownership will limit the ability of other stockholders to influence corporate matters and may cause us to make strategic decisions that could involve risks to you or that may not be aligned with your interests. This control may adversely affect the market price of our Class A common stock. In addition, this may prevent or discourage unsolicited acquisition proposals or offers for our capital stock that you may feel are in your best interest as one of our stockholders.
Our Class B common stock will convert automatically into Class A common stock, on a one-to-one basis, upon: (1) the sale or transfer of such shares of Class B common stock (except for certain transfers described in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, including transfers for tax and estate planning purposes, so long as the transferring holder continues to hold sole voting and dispositive power with respect to the shares transferred); (2) the death or incapacity of the Class B common stockholder; (3) such holder’s departure from our board of directors; and (4) on the final conversion date, defined as the earlier of (a) the seventh
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anniversary of our initial public offering; or (b) the date specified by vote of the holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of Class B common stock.
In addition, while we do not expect to issue any additional shares of Class B common stock following the listing of our Class A common stock on The Nasdaq Global Select Market, any future issuances of Class B common stock would be dilutive to holders of Class A common stock. Such issuances would also reduce the voting power of our Class A common stock as compared to Class B common stock and could further concentrate the voting power of holders of our Class B common stock relative to holders of our Class A common stock.
We cannot predict the impact our dual-class structure may have on the market price of our Class A common stock.
We cannot predict whether our dual-class structure, combined with the concentrated control of our co-founders, will result in a lower or more volatile market price of our Class A common stock or in adverse publicity or other adverse consequences. For example, certain index providers have announced restrictions on including companies with multiple class share structures in certain of their indices. In July 2017, FTSE Russell and Standard & Poor’s announced that they would cease to allow most newly public companies utilizing dual or multi-class capital structures to be included in their indices. Under the announced policies, our dual-class capital structure would make us ineligible for inclusion in any of these indices. Given the sustained flow of investment funds into passive strategies that seek to track certain indexes, exclusion from stock indices would likely preclude investment by many of these funds and could make our Class A common stock less attractive to other investors. As a result, the market price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected.
We will incur increased costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management will be required to devote substantial time to compliance with our public company responsibilities and corporate governance practices.
As a public company, we will incur significant legal, accounting, and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company, which we expect to further increase after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of The Nasdaq Global Select Market, and other applicable securities rules and regulations impose various requirements on public companies. Our management and other personnel devote a substantial amount of time to compliance with these requirements. Moreover, these rules and regulations will increase our legal and financial compliance costs and will make some activities more time-consuming and costly. We cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we will incur as a public company or the specific timing of such costs.
In addition, changing laws, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure are creating uncertainty for public companies, increasing legal and financial compliance costs and making some activities more time-consuming. These laws, regulations and standards are subject to varying interpretations, in many cases due to their lack of specificity, and, as a result, their application in practice may evolve over time as new guidance is provided by regulatory and governing bodies. This could result in continuing uncertainty regarding compliance matters and higher costs necessitated by ongoing revisions to disclosure and governance practices. We intend to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations and standards, and this investment may result in increased general and administrative expense and a diversion of management’s time and attention from revenue-generating activities to compliance activities. If our efforts to comply with new laws, regulations and standards differ from the activities intended by regulatory or governing bodies, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us, and our business and prospects may be harmed. As a result of disclosure of information in the filings required of a public company and in this filing, our business and financial condition will become more visible, which may result in threatened or actual litigation, including by competitors and other third parties. If such claims are successful, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be materially harmed, and even if the claims do not result in litigation or are resolved in our favor, these claims, and the time and resources necessary to resolve them, could divert the resources of our management and materially harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.
We also expect that being a public company and these new rules and regulations will make it more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain coverage. These factors could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified executive officers and members of our board of directors, particularly to serve on our audit and compensation committees.
In addition, as a result of our disclosure obligations as a public company, we will have reduced strategic flexibility and will be under pressure to focus on short-term results, which may materially and adversely affect our ability to achieve long-term profitability.
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Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could make an acquisition of our company more difficult, limit attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management and limit the market price of our Class A common stock.
Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws will include provisions that:
authorize our board of directors to issue, without further action by the stockholders, shares of undesignated preferred stock with terms, rights, and preferences determined by our board of directors that may be senior to our Class A common stock;
require that any action to be taken by our stockholders be effected at a duly called annual or special meeting and not by written consent;
specify that special meetings of our stockholders can be called only by our board of directors, the chairperson of our board of directors, or our chief executive officer;
establish an advance notice procedure for stockholder proposals to be brought before an annual meeting, including proposed nominations of persons for election to our board of directors;
establish that our board of directors is divided into three classes, with each class serving three-year staggered terms;
prohibit cumulative voting in the election of directors;
provide that our directors may be removed for cause only upon the vote of sixty-six and two-thirds percent (66 2/3%) of our outstanding shares of our voting common stock;
provide that vacancies on our board of directors may be filled only by a majority of directors then in office, even though less than a quorum; and
require the approval of our board of directors or the holders of at least sixty-six and two-thirds percent (66 2/3%) of our outstanding shares of common stock to amend our bylaws and certain provisions of our certificate of incorporation.
These provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management. In addition, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which generally, subject to certain exceptions, prohibits a Delaware corporation from engaging in any of a broad range of business combinations with any “interested” stockholder for a period of three years following the date on which the stockholder became an “interested” stockholder. Any of the foregoing provisions could limit the price that investors might be willing to pay in the future for shares of our Class A common stock, and they could deter potential acquirers of our company, thereby reducing the likelihood that you would receive a premium for your shares of our Class A common stock in an acquisition.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will designate the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware and, to the extent enforceable, the federal district courts of the United States of America as the exclusive forums for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which will restrict our stockholders’ ability to choose the judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (or, if and only if the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware lacks subject matter jurisdiction, any state court located within the State of Delaware or, if and only if all such state courts lack subject matter jurisdiction, the federal district court for the District of Delaware) is the exclusive forum for actions or proceedings brought under Delaware statutory or common law: (1) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; (2) any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty; (3) any action asserting a claim against us arising under the Delaware General Corporation Law; (4) any action regarding our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws; (5) any action as to which the Delaware General Corporation Law confers jurisdiction to the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware; or (6) any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine. This provision does not apply to suits brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or any other claim for which the U.S. federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction.
In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the federal district courts of the United States of America is the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause or causes of action arising under the Securities Act, including all causes of action asserted against any defendant to such complaint. For the avoidance of doubt, this provision is intended to benefit and may be enforced by us, our officers and directors, the underwriters to any offering giving rise to such complaint, and any other professional entity whose profession gives authority to a statement made by that person or entity and who has prepared or certified any part of the documents underlying the offering.
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These exclusive-forum provisions may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in any of our securities shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to these provisions. 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. It is possible that a court could find these types of provisions to be inapplicable or unenforceable, and if a court were to find either exclusive-forum provision in our amended and restated 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 seriously harm our business. For example, under the Securities Act, federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction over all suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act, and investors cannot waive compliance with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder.
General Risk Factors
If we fail to retain and motivate members of our management team or other key personnel, our business and future growth prospects would be harmed.
Our success and future growth depend largely upon the continued services of our executive officers as well as other key personnel. These executives and key personnel have been primarily responsible for determining the strategic direction of the business and executing our growth strategy and are integral to our brand, culture and reputation with buyers and sellers. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team or other key personnel resulting from the hiring or departure of these personnel. The loss of one or more of executive officers, or the failure by the executive team to effectively work with employees and lead the company, could harm our business.
Litigation or legal proceedings could expose us to significant liabilities and have a negative impact on our reputation or business.
From time to time, we may be party to various claims and litigation proceedings. We evaluate these claims and litigation proceedings to assess the likelihood of unfavorable outcomes and to estimate, if possible, the amount of potential losses. Based on these assessments and estimates, we may establish reserves, as appropriate. These assessments and estimates are based on the information available to management at the time and involve a significant amount of management judgment. Actual outcomes or losses may differ materially from our assessments and estimates. We are not currently party to any material litigation.
Even when not merited, the defense of these lawsuits may divert management’s attention, and we may incur significant expenses in defending these lawsuits. The results of litigation and other legal proceedings are inherently uncertain, and adverse judgments or settlements in some of these legal disputes may result in adverse monetary damages, penalties or injunctive relief against us, which could negatively impact our financial position, cash flows or results of operations. Any claims or litigation, even if fully indemnified or insured, could damage our reputation and make it more difficult to compete effectively or to obtain adequate insurance in the future.
Furthermore, while we maintain insurance for certain potential liabilities, such insurance does not cover all types and amounts of potential liabilities and is subject to various exclusions as well as caps on amounts recoverable. Even if we believe a claim is covered by insurance, insurers may dispute our entitlement to recovery for a variety of potential reasons, which may affect the timing and, if the insurers prevail, the amount of our recovery.
Changes in tax laws may materially adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and operating results.
New income, sales, use or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be enacted at any time, which could adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and operating results. Further, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be interpreted, changed, modified or applied adversely to us. For example, the Tax Act enacted many significant changes to the U.S. tax laws. Future guidance from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, or the IRS, with respect to the Tax Act may affect us, and certain aspects of the Tax Act could be repealed or modified in future legislation. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or the CARES Act, has already modified certain provisions of the Tax Act. In addition, it is uncertain if and to what extent various states will conform to the Tax Act, the CARES Act or any newly enacted federal tax legislation.
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We qualify as an “emerging growth company” within the meaning of the Securities Act, and if we take advantage of certain exemptions from disclosure requirements available to emerging growth companies, it could make our securities less attractive to investors and may make it more difficult to compare our performance to the performance of other public companies.
We qualify as an “emerging growth company” as defined in Section 2(a)(19) of the Securities Act, as modified by the JOBS Act. As such, we are eligible for and intend to take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies for as long as we continue to be an emerging growth company, including, but not limited to, (a) not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, (b) reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements and (c) exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. As a result, our stockholders may not have access to certain information they may deem important. We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest of (i) the last day of the fiscal year in which the market value of our common stock that is held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of June 30 of that fiscal year, (ii) the last day of the fiscal year in which it has total annual gross revenue of $1.07 billion or more during such fiscal year (as indexed for inflation), (iii) the date on which it has issued more than $1 billion in non-convertible debt in the prior three-year period or (iv) the last day of the fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of the date of the first sale of our Class A common stock in our initial public offering. We cannot predict whether investors will find our securities less attractive because it will rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our securities less attractive as a result of our reliance on these exemptions, the trading prices of our securities may be lower than they otherwise would be, there may be a less active trading market for our securities and the trading prices of our securities may be more volatile.
Further, Section 102(b)(1) of the JOBS Act exempts emerging growth companies from being required to comply with new or revised financial accounting standards until private companies (that is, those that have not had a Securities Act registration statement declared effective or do not have a class of securities registered under the Exchange Act) are required to comply with the new or revised financial accounting standards. The JOBS Act provides that a company can elect to opt out of the extended transition period and comply with the requirements that apply to non-emerging growth companies but any such an election to opt out is irrevocable. 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, as an emerging growth company, can adopt the new or revised standard at the time private companies adopt the new or revised standard. This may make comparison of our financial statements with another public emerging growth company which has opted out of using the extended transition period difficult or impossible because of the potential differences in accounting standards used.
If we fail to maintain an effective system of disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable regulations could be impaired.
As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or the Sarbanes- Oxley Act, and the rules and regulations of the applicable listing standards of The Nasdaq Global Select Market. We expect that the requirements of these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting, and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming, and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems, and resources.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. We are continuing to develop and refine our disclosure controls and other procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we will file with the SEC is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms and that information required to be disclosed in reports under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our principal executive and financial officers. We are also continuing to improve our internal control over financial reporting, which includes hiring additional accounting and financial personnel to implement such processes and controls.
In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting, we have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources, including accounting-related costs and significant management oversight. If any of these new or improved controls and systems do not perform as expected, we may experience deficiencies in our controls.
Our current controls and any new controls that we develop may become inadequate because of changes in conditions in our business. Further, weaknesses in our disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting may be discovered in the future. Any failure to develop or maintain effective controls or any difficulties encountered in their implementation or improvement could harm our results of operations or cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations and may result in a restatement of our financial statements for prior periods. Any failure to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting also could adversely affect the results of periodic management evaluations and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports regarding the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting that we will eventually be required to include in our
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periodic reports that will be filed with the SEC. Ineffective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting could also cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial and other information, which would likely have a negative effect on the trading price of our Class A common stock. In addition, if we are unable to continue to meet these requirements, we may not be able to remain listed on The Nasdaq Global Select Market. We are not currently required to comply with the SEC rules that implement Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and are therefore not required to make a formal assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting for that purpose. As a public company, we will be required to provide an annual management report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting commencing with our second annual report on Form 10-K.
Our independent registered public accounting firm is not required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting until after we are no longer an emerging growth company as defined in the JOBS Act. At such time, our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our internal control over financial reporting is documented, designed, or operating. Any failure to maintain effective disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting could have an adverse effect on our business and results of operations and could cause a decline in the price of our Class A common stock.