UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

 

Form 10-K

 

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013

OR

For transition period from                     to                    

Commission File Number: 001-36089

 

RingCentral, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

1400 Fashion Island Boulevard, Suite 700

San Mateo, California 94404

(Address of principal executive offices)

(650) 472-4100

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

 

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the Act:

None

 

Indicate by a check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.    Yes  ¨    No  x

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act.    Yes  ¨    No  x

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.    Yes  x    No  ¨

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit and post such files).    Yes  x    No  ¨

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of Registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K.  x

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer” and “smaller reporting company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

 

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).    Yes  ¨    No   x

The aggregate market value of voting stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant on September 27, 2013, based on the closing price of $18.20 for shares of the Registrant’s common stock as reported by the New York Stock Exchange, was approximately $481.2 million. The Registrant has elected to use September 27, 2013 as the calculation date, which was the initial trading date of the Registrant’s common stock on the New York Stock Exchange, because on June 30, 2013 (the last business day of the Registrant’s second fiscal quarter), the Registrant was a privately-held company. Shares of common stock held by each executive officer, director, and their affiliated holders have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes.

As of February 21, 2014, there were approximately 10,186,210 shares of Class A common stock and 52,913,219 shares of Class B common stock outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Information required in response to Part III of Form 10-K (Items 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14) is hereby incorporated by reference to portions of the Registrant’s Proxy Statement for the Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held in 2014. Such Proxy Statement will be filed by the Registrant with the Securities and Exchange Commission no later than 120 days after the end of the Registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART I.

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements that are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts and can be identified by terms such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “could,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “may,” “plans,” “potential,” “predicts”, “projects,” “should,” “will,” “would” or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about:

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. We discuss these risks in greater detail in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent our management’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect.

Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

 

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Overview

We are a leading provider of software-as-a-service, or SaaS, solutions for business communications. We believe that our innovative, cloud-based approach disrupts the large market for business communications solutions by providing flexible and cost-effective services that support distributed workforces, mobile employees and the proliferation of “bring-your-own” communications devices. We enable convenient and effective communications for our customers across all their locations, all their employees, all the time, thus enabling a more productive and dynamic workforce. RingCentral Office, our flagship service, is a multi-user, enterprise-grade communications solution that enables our customers and their employees to communicate via voice, text, HD video and web conferencing and fax, on multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones.

Traditionally, businesses have used on-premise hardware-based communications systems, commonly referred to as private branch exchanges, or PBXs. These systems generally require specialized and expensive hardware that must be deployed at every business location and are primarily designed for employees working only at that location and using only their desk phones. In addition, these systems generally require significant upfront investment and ongoing maintenance and support costs.

Our solutions have been developed with a mobile-centric approach and can be configured, managed and used from a smartphone or tablet. We have designed our user interfaces to be intuitive and easy to use for both administrators and end-users. We believe that we can provide substantial savings to our customers because our services do not require the significant upfront investment in on-premise infrastructure hardware or ongoing maintenance costs commonly associated with on-premise systems. Our solutions generally use existing broadband connections. We design our solutions to be delivered to our customers with high reliability and quality of service using our proprietary high-availability and scalable infrastructure.

We primarily generate revenues by selling subscriptions for our cloud-based services. We focus on acquiring and retaining our customers and increasing their spending with us through adding additional users, upselling current customers to premium service editions, and providing additional features and functionality. We market and sell our services directly, through both our website and inside sales teams, as well as indirectly through a network of over 1,500 sales agents and resellers, including AT&T, which we refer to collectively as resellers. We have a differentiated business model that reduces the time and cost to purchase, activate and begin using our services. We generally offer free trials to prospective customers, allowing them to evaluate our solutions before making a purchasing decision.

We have a diverse and growing customer base comprised of over 300,000 businesses across a wide range of industries, including advertising, consulting, finance, healthcare, legal, real estate, retail and technology. To date, we have focused our principal efforts on the market for small- and medium-sized businesses, defined by IDC as less than 1,000 employees, in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. We are making investments in an effort to address larger customers. We also believe that there is an additional growth opportunity in international markets.

Our Solutions

Our cloud-based business communications solutions provide a single user identity across multiple locations and devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones, and allow for communication across multiple channels, including voice, text, HD video and web conferencing and fax. Our proprietary solutions enable a more productive and dynamic workforce, and have been architected using industry standards to meet modern business communications requirements, including workforce mobility, “bring-your-own” communications device environments and multiple communications channels.

Our solutions are delivered using a high-availability and, scalable infrastructure and are designed for easy self-service activation, provisioning and management with minimal technical expertise or training required. Our solutions scale easily and rapidly, allowing our customers to add new users regardless of where they are located. They are generally affordable, requiring little to no upfront infrastructure hardware costs or ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs commonly associated with on-premise systems. RingCentral Office, our flagship offering, is a multi-user, enterprise-grade communications solution. We sell RingCentral Office in three editions: Standard, Premium and Enterprise. We also offer RingCentral Professional, primarily an inbound call routing service with additional text and fax capabilities targeting smaller deployments, and RingCentral Fax, an Internet fax service that permits sending and receiving faxes over the Internet.

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We believe that our solutions provide not only the core functionality of existing on-premise communications solutions, but also additional key benefits that address the changing requirements of business to allow business communications using voice, SMS, fax and HD video and web conferencing. The key benefits of our solutions include:

Our Services

Our services are RingCentral Office, RingCentral Professional and RingCentral Fax. RingCentral Office is our most comprehensive solution and provides our full suite of features and functionality for businesses, while RingCentral Professional and RingCentral Fax deliver subsets of RingCentral Office’s features and functionality.

RingCentral Office.    RingCentral Office, our flagship service, is a multi-location, multi-user, enterprise-grade communications solution that enables employees to communicate via different channels and on multiple devices. This service is designed primarily for businesses that require a communications solution, regardless of location, type of device, expertise, size or budget. Businesses are able to seamlessly connect users working in multiple office locations on smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones. We sell RingCentral Office in three editions: Standard, Premium and Enterprise.  Our Standard Edition of RingCentral Office includes call management, mobile applications, voice, business SMS, integration with Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and Microsoft Office & Outlook, and conferencing capabilities. Our Premium Edition includes the Standard Edition functionality together with Salesforce CRM integration, automatic call recording and premium support. Our Enterprise Edition adds multipoint HD video and web conferencing and online meetings.

Key features of RingCentral Office include:

 

 

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RingCentral Professional.    Our RingCentral Professional solution provides a subset of our RingCentral Office solution capabilities designed primarily for smaller businesses. RingCentral Professional is principally used as an inbound call routing service with text and fax capabilities.

RingCentral Fax.    Our RingCentral Fax solution provides Internet fax capabilities that allow businesses to send and receive fax documents without the need for a fax machine.

Our Customers

We have a diverse and growing customer base comprised of over 300,000 businesses across a wide range of industries, including advertising, consulting, finance, healthcare, legal, real estate, retail and technology. Our revenues are highly diversified across our customer base, with no single non-reseller customer accounting for more than 1% of our total revenues in fiscal 2011, 2012 or 2013. No single reseller accounted for more than 10% of our total revenues during any period presented in this prospectus. To date, we have focused our principal efforts on the market for small- and medium-sized businesses, defined by IDC as less than 1,000 employees, in the U.S., Canada and the UK. We believe that there is an additional growth opportunity in international markets. We are also making investments that will allow us to address larger enterprise customers.

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Marketing, Sales and Support

We use a variety of marketing, sales and support activities to generate and cultivate ongoing customer demand for our services, acquire new customers, and engage with our existing customers. We sell through both direct and indirect channels. We provide on-boarding implementation support to help our customers set up and configure their newly purchased communications system, as well as ongoing self-service, phone support and training. We also closely track and monitor customer acquisition costs to assess how we are deploying our marketing, sales and customer support spending.

Research and Development

We believe that continued investment in research and development is critical to expanding our leadership position within the cloud-based business communications solutions market. We devote the majority of our research and development resources to software development. Our engineering team has significant experience in various disciplines related to our platform, such as, voice, text, video and fax processing, mobile application development, IP networking and infrastructure, user experience, security and robust multi-tenant cloud-based system architecture.

Our development methodology, in combination with our SaaS delivery model, allows us to provide new and enhanced capabilities on a regular basis. Based on feedback from our customers and prospects and our review of the broader business communications and SaaS markets, we continuously develop new functionality while maintaining and enhancing our existing solution.

Our research and development expenses were $33.4 million, $24.5 million and $12.2 million in fiscal 2013, 2012 and 2011, respectively.

Technology and Operations

Our platform is built on a highly scalable and flexible infrastructure comprised of commercially available hardware and software components. We believe that both hardware and software components of our platform can be replaced, upgraded or added with minimal or no interruption in service. The system is designed to have no single point-of-failure.

We host our services and serve our customers in North America from two third-party data center facilities in San Jose, California and Vienna, Virginia, and we host our services and serve our customers in the United Kingdom from two third-party data center facilities in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Zurich, Switzerland. Our data centers are designed to host mission-critical computer and communications systems with redundant, fault-tolerant subsystems and compartmentalized security zones. We maintain a security program designed to ensure the security and integrity of customer data, protect against security threats or data breaches, and prevent unauthorized access to our customers’ data. We limit access to on-demand servers and networks at our production and remote backup facilities.

We serve North American customers out of two Points of Presence, known as POPs, one in San Jose, California and the other in Vienna, Virginia. RingCentral subscribers are divided into Parts of Data, or PODs, each comprised of two symmetrical, synchronized units, one per POP. POPs and PODs are redundant with switchover and failover capabilities between POPs. This architecture enables us to deliver our services in a scalable and reliable manner. We can manage our customer growth by adding additional PODs and POPs into our delivery infrastructure as required. We leverage third-party network service providers, including of Level 3 Communications, Inc., Bandwidth.com, Inc., Novatel Wireless, Inc. and AT&T, for network connectivity.  We also obtain connectivity and network services in certain regions from our subsidiary, RCLEC, Inc.

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Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, and trade secret laws in the U.S. and other jurisdictions, as well as license agreements and other contractual protections, to protect our proprietary technology. We also rely on a number of registered and unregistered trademarks to protect our brand. In addition, we seek to protect our intellectual property rights by implementing a policy that requires our employees and independent contractors involved in development of intellectual property on our behalf to enter into agreements acknowledging that all works or other intellectual property generated or conceived by them on our behalf are our property, and assigning to us any rights, including intellectual property rights, that they may claim or otherwise have in those works or property, to the extent allowable under applicable law.

Our intellectual property portfolio includes 28 issued U.S. patents, which expire between 2026 and 2032. We also have 45 patent applications pending for examination in the U.S. and 22 patent applications pending for examination in foreign jurisdictions, all of which are related to U.S. applications. In general our patents and patent applications apply to certain aspects of our SaaS and mobile applications and underlying communications infrastructure. We are also a party to various license agreements with third parties that typically grant us the right to use certain third-party technology in conjunction with our products and services.

Competition

The market for business communications solutions is rapidly evolving, complex, fragmented and defined by changing technology and customer needs. We expect competition to continue to increase in the future. We believe that the principal competitive factors in our market include:

We believe that we generally compete favorably on the basis of the factors listed above.

We face competition from a broad range of providers of business communications solutions. Some of these competitors include:

Employees and Contractors

As of December 31, 2013, we had 445 full-time employees, including 133 in research and development, 186 in sales and marketing, 27 in operations, 29 in customer technical support, and 70 in general and administrative. As of such date, we had 349 employees located in the U.S. and 96 internationally, including 86 in China. None of our employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements. We believe that our employee relations are good and we have never experienced any work stoppages.

 

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We also contract with third-party contractors whose employees or subcontractors’ employees perform services for us. We refer to our third-party contractors’ employees and subcontractors’ employees as our contractors. As of December 31, 2013, we had 1,106 of these contractors, including 271 in research and development, 92 in operations, 289 in sales and marketing, 326 in customer technical support and 128 in general and administrative. As of such date, we had 32 contractors located in the U.S. and 1,074 internationally, including 701 in the Philippines, 359 in Russia and Ukraine and 14 in other countries.

Regulatory

As a provider of Internet communications services, we are subject to regulation in the U.S. by the FCC. Some of these regulatory obligations include contributing to the Federal Universal Service Fund, Telecommunications Relay Service Fund and federal programs related to number administration; providing access to E-911 services; protecting customer information; and porting phone numbers upon a valid customer request. We are also required to pay state and local 911 fees and contribute to state universal service funds in those states that assess Internet voice communications services. In addition, we have certified a wholly owned subsidiary as a competitive local exchange carrier in six states and currently intend to obtain certificates for our subsidiary in six additional states. This subsidiary, RCLEC, is subject to the same FCC regulations applicable to telecommunications companies, as well as regulation by the public utility commissions in states where the subsidiary provides services. Specific regulations vary on a state-by-state basis, but generally include the requirement for our subsidiary to register or seek certification to provide its services, to file and update tariffs setting forth the terms, conditions and prices for our intrastate services and to comply with various reporting, record-keeping, surcharge collection and consumer protection requirements.

As we expand internationally, we will be subject to laws and regulations in the countries in which we offer our services. Regulatory treatment of Internet communications services outside the U.S. varies from country to country, is often unclear, and may be more onerous than imposed on our services in the U.S. In the United Kingdom, for example, our service is regulated by Ofcom, which, among other things, requires electronic communications providers such as our company to provide all users access to both 112 (EU-mandated) and 999 (UK-mandated) emergency service numbers at no charge.  Similarly in Canada, our service is regulated by the CRTC, which, among other things, imposes requirements similar to the U.S. related to the provision of E-911 services in all areas of Canada where the wireline incumbent carrier offers such 911 services.  Our regulatory obligations in foreign jurisdictions could have a material adverse effect on the use of our services in international locations. See the section entitled “Risk Factors” for more information.

 

 

This Report contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth below. The risks and uncertainties described in this Report are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also affect our business. If any of these known or unknown risks or uncertainties actually occurs and have a material adverse effect on us, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be seriously harmed.

Risks Related to Our Business and Our Industry

We have incurred significant losses and negative cash flows in the past and anticipate continuing to incur losses and negative cash flows for the foreseeable future, and we may therefore not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.

We have incurred substantial net losses since our inception, including net losses of $46.1 million for fiscal 2013, $35.4 million for fiscal 2012 and $13.9 million for fiscal 2011, and had an accumulated deficit of $129.8 million as of December 31, 2013. Over the past two years, we have spent considerable amounts of time and money to develop new business communications solutions and enhanced versions of our existing business communications solutions to position us for future growth. Additionally, we have incurred substantial losses and expended significant resources upfront to market, promote and sell our solutions and expect to continue to do so in the future. We also expect to continue to invest for future growth, including for advertising, customer acquisition, technology infrastructure, storage capacity, services development and international expansion. In addition, as a public company, we incur significant accounting, legal and other expenses.

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As a result of our increased expenditures, we will have negative operating cash flows for the foreseeable future and will have to generate and sustain increased revenues to achieve future profitability. Achieving profitability will require us to increase revenues, manage our cost structure and avoid significant liabilities. Revenue growth may slow, revenues may decline or we may incur significant losses in the future for a number of possible reasons, including general macroeconomic conditions, increasing competition (including competitive pricing pressures), a decrease in the growth of the markets in which we compete, or if we fail for any reason to continue to capitalize on growth opportunities. Additionally, we may encounter unforeseen operating expenses, difficulties, complications, delays, service delivery and quality problems and other unknown factors that may result in losses in future periods. If these losses exceed our expectations or our revenue growth expectations are not met in future periods, our financial performance will be harmed and our stock price could be volatile or decline.

Our limited operating history makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, which may increase the risk of investing in our stock.

Although we were incorporated in 1999, we did not formally introduce RingCentral Office, our current flagship service, until 2009. We have encountered and expect to continue to encounter risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing markets. If our assumptions regarding these uncertainties are incorrect or change in reaction to changes in our markets, or if we do not manage or address these risks successfully, our results of operations could differ materially from our expectations, and our business could suffer. Any success that we may experience in the future will depend, in large part, on our ability to, among other things:

 

Our quarterly and annual results of operations have fluctuated in the past and may continue to do so in the future. As a result, we may fail to meet or to exceed the expectations of research analysts or investors, which could cause our stock price to fluctuate.

Our quarterly and annual results of operations have varied historically from period to period, and we expect that they will continue to fluctuate due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control, including:

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Any one of the factors above, or the cumulative effect of some or all of the factors referred to above, may result in significant fluctuations in our quarterly and annual results of operations. This variability and unpredictability could result in our failure to meet our internal operating plan or the expectations of securities analysts or investors for any period, which could cause our stock price to decline. In addition, a significant percentage of our operating expenses is fixed in nature and is based on forecasted revenues trends. Accordingly, in the event of revenue shortfalls, we may not be able to mitigate the negative impact on net income (loss) and margins in the short term. If we fail to meet or exceed the expectations of research analysts or investors, the market price of our shares could fall substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class-action suits.

To deliver our services, we rely on third parties for our network connectivity and co-location facilities, and for certain of the features in our services.

We currently use the infrastructure of third-party network service providers, in particular, the services of Level 3 Communications, Inc. and Bandwidth.com, Inc., to deliver our services over their networks. Our third party network service providers provide access to their Internet protocol, or IP, networks, and public switched telephone networks, or PSTN, and provide call termination and origination services, including 911 emergency calling in the U.S. and equivalent services in Canada and the United Kingdom, or UK, and local number portability for our customers. We expect that we will continue to rely heavily on third-party network service providers to provide these services for the foreseeable future. Recently, we have begun obtaining certain connectivity and network services from our wholly owned subsidiary, RCLEC, Inc. in certain geographic markets; however RCLEC also uses the infrastructure of third party network service providers to deliver its services. Historically, our reliance on third-party networks has reduced our operating flexibility and ability to make timely service changes and control quality of service, and we expect that this will continue for the foreseeable future. If any of these network service providers stop providing us with access to their infrastructure, fail to provide these services to us on a cost-effective basis, cease operations, or otherwise terminate these services, the delay caused by qualifying and switching to another third-party network service provider, if one is available, could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

In addition, we currently use and may in the future use third-party service providers to deliver certain features of our services. For example, we rely on Free Conference Call Global, LLC for some conference calling features, Zoom Video Communications for our HD video and web conferencing and screen sharing features, and Layered Communications for our texting capabilities. If any of these service providers elects to stop providing us with access to their services, fails to provide these services to us on a cost-effective basis, ceases operations, or otherwise terminates these services, the delay caused by qualifying and switching to another third-party service provider, if one is available, or building a proprietary replacement solution could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

Finally, if problems occur with any of these third-party network or service providers, it may cause errors or poor call quality in our service, and we could encounter difficulty identifying the source of the problem. The occurrence of errors or poor call quality in our service, whether caused by our systems or a third-party network or service provider, may result in the loss of our existing customers, delay or loss of market acceptance of our services, termination of our relationships and agreements with our resellers or liability for failure to meet service level agreements, and may seriously harm our business and results of operations.

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Interruptions or delays in service from our third-party data center hosting facilities and co-location facilities could impair the delivery of our services and harm our business.

We currently serve our North American customers from two data center hosting facilities located in northern California and northern Virginia, where we lease space from Equinix, Inc. We also serve customers in the UK, and expect to serve customers in other European countries, from two third-party data center hosting facilities in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Zurich, Switzerland. In addition, RCLEC uses two third-party co-location facilities to provide us with network services, and we expect RCLEC to use additional third-party co-location facilities in the future. Any damage to, or failure of, these facilities, the communications network providers with whom we or they contract, or with the systems by which our communications providers allocate capacity among their customers, including us, could result in interruptions in our service. Additionally, in connection with the expansion or consolidation of our existing data center facilities, we may move or transfer our data and our customers’ data to other data centers. Despite precautions that we take during this process, any unsuccessful data transfers may impair or cause disruptions in the delivery of our service. Interruptions in our service may reduce our revenues, may require us to issue credits or pay penalties, subject us to claims and litigation, cause customers to terminate their subscriptions and adversely affect our renewal rates and our ability to attract new customers. Because our ability to attract and retain customers depends on our ability to provide customers with a highly reliable service, even minor interruptions in our service could harm our brand and reputation and have a material adverse effect on our business.

As part of our current disaster recovery arrangements, our North American infrastructure and all of our North American customers’ data is currently replicated in near real-time at our two data center facilities in the U.S., and our European production environment and all of our UK and other European customers’ data will be replicated in near real-time at our two European data center facilities. We do not control the operation of these facilities or of RCLEC’s co-location facilities, and they are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, and similar events. They may also be subject to break-ins, sabotage, acts of vandalism, and similar misconduct. Despite precautions taken at these facilities, the occurrence of a natural disaster or an act of terrorism or other unanticipated problems at these facilities could result in lengthy interruptions in our service. Even with the disaster recovery arrangements in place, our service could be interrupted.

We may also be required to transfer our servers to new data center facilities in the event that we are unable to renew our leases on acceptable terms, if at all, or the owners of the facilities decide to close their facilities, and we may incur significant costs and possible service interruption in connection with doing so. In addition, any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy or foreclosure, faced by our third-party data center operators, or any of the service providers with which we or they contract may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. Additionally, if our data centers are unable to keep up with our increasing needs for capacity, our ability to grow our business could be materially and adversely impacted.

Failures in Internet infrastructure or interference with broadband access could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems are unreliable, leading our customers to switch to our competitors or to avoid using our services.

Unlike traditional communications services, our services depend on our customers’ high-speed broadband access to the Internet, usually provided through a cable or digital subscriber line, or DSL, connection. Increasing numbers of users and increasing bandwidth requirements may degrade the performance of our services and applications due to capacity constraints and other Internet infrastructure limitations. As our customer base grows and their usage of communications capacity increases, we will be required to make additional investments in network capacity to maintain adequate data transmission speeds, the availability of which may be limited, or the cost of which may be on terms unacceptable to us. If adequate capacity is not available to us as our customers’ usage increases, our network may be unable to achieve or maintain sufficiently high data transmission capacity, reliability or performance. In addition, if Internet service providers and other third parties providing Internet services have outages or deteriorations in their quality of service, our customers will not have access to our services or may experience a decrease in the quality of our services. Furthermore, as the rate of adoption of new technologies increases, the networks on which our services and applications rely may not be able to sufficiently adapt to the increased demand for these services, including ours. Frequent or persistent interruptions could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems or services are unreliable, leading them to switch to our competitors or to avoid our services, and could permanently harm our reputation and brands.

In addition, users who access our services and applications through mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, must have a high-speed connection, such as Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G or LTE, to use our services and applications. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have significant and increasing market power in the broadband and Internet access marketplace, including incumbent phone companies, cable companies and wireless companies. Some of these providers offer products and services that directly compete with our own offerings, which can potentially give them a competitive advantage. Also, these providers could take measures that degrade, disrupt or increase the cost of user access to third-party services, including our services, by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate third-party services or by charging increased fees to third parties or the users of third-party services, any of which would make our services less attractive to users, and reduce our revenues.

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In the U.S., there is some uncertainty regarding whether suppliers of broadband Internet access have a legal obligation to allow their customers to access and use our services without interference. In December 2010, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, adopted net neutrality rules that make it more difficult for broadband Internet access service providers to block, degrade or discriminate against our services. These rules apply to wired broadband Internet providers, but not all of the rules apply to wireless broadband service. In January 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated portions of the FCC’s net neutrality rules relating to anti-discrimination and anti-blocking.  On February 19, 2014, the FCC announced that it was opening a new docket in which to accept public comments, and to consider the court’s decision and what actions the FCC should take in response. Any instances of broadband interference could result in a loss of existing users and increased costs, which could impair our ability to attract new users, and materially and adversely affect our business and opportunities for growth.

Most of our customers may terminate their subscriptions for our service at any time without penalty, and increased customer turnover, or costs we incur to retain our customers and encourage them to add users and, in the future, to purchase additional functionalities and premium service editions, could materially and adversely affect our financial performance.

Our customers generally do not have long-term contracts with us and these customers may terminate their subscription for our service at any time without penalty or early termination charges. We cannot accurately predict the rate of customer terminations or average monthly service cancellations or failures to renew, which we refer to as turnover. Our customers with subscription agreements have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our service after the expiration of their initial subscription period, which is typically between one and three years. In the event that these customers do renew their subscriptions, they may choose to renew for fewer users, shorter contract lengths, or for a less expensive service plan or edition. We cannot predict the renewal rates for customers that have entered into subscription contracts with us.

Customer turnover, as well as reductions in the number of users for which a customer subscribes, each have a significant impact on our results of operations, as does the cost we incur in our efforts to retain our customers and encourage them to upgrade their services and increase their number of users. Our turnover rate could increase in the future if customers are not satisfied with our service, the value proposition of our services or our ability to otherwise meet their needs and expectations. Turnover and reductions in the number of users for whom a customer subscribes may also increase due to factors beyond our control, including the failure or unwillingness of customers to pay their monthly subscription fees due to financial constraints and the impact of a slowing economy. Because of turnover and reductions in the number of users for whom a customer subscribes, we have to acquire new customers, or acquire new users within our existing customer base, on an ongoing basis simply to maintain our existing level of customers and revenues. If a significant number of customers terminate, reduce or fail to renew their subscriptions, we may be required to incur significantly higher marketing expenditures than we currently anticipate in order to increase the number of new customers or to upsell existing customers, and such additional marketing expenditures could harm our business and results of operations.

 

Our future success also depends in part on our ability to sell additional subscriptions and additional functionalities to our current customers. This may also require increasingly sophisticated and more costly sales efforts and a longer sales cycle. Any increase in the costs necessary to upgrade, expand and retain existing customers could materially and adversely affect our financial performance. If our efforts to convince customers to add users and, in the future, to purchase additional functionalities are not successful, our business may suffer. In addition, such increased costs could cause us to increase our subscription rates, which could increase our turnover rate.

If we are unable to attract new customers to our services on a cost-effective basis, our business will be materially and adversely affected.

In order to grow our business, we must continue to attract new customers and expand the number of users in our existing customer base on a cost-effective basis. We use and periodically adjust the mix of advertising and marketing programs to promote our services. Significant increases in the pricing of one or more of our advertising channels would increase our advertising costs or may cause us to choose less expensive and perhaps less effective channels to promote our services. As we add to or change the mix of our advertising and marketing strategies, we may need to expand into channels with significantly higher costs than our current programs, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations. We will incur advertising and marketing expenses in advance of when we anticipate recognizing any revenues generated by such expenses, and we may fail to otherwise experience an increase in revenues or brand awareness as a result of such expenditures. We have made in the past, and may make in the future, significant expenditures and investments in new advertising campaigns, and we cannot assure you that any such investments will lead to the cost-effective acquisition of additional customers. If we are unable to maintain effective advertising programs, our ability to attract new customers could be materially and adversely affected, our advertising and marketing expenses could increase substantially, and our results of operations may suffer.

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Some of our potential customers learn about us through leading search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. While we employ search engine optimization and search engine marketing strategies, our ability to maintain and increase the number of visitors directed to our website is not entirely within our control. If search engine companies modify their search algorithms in a manner that reduces the prominence of our listing, or if our competitors’ search engine optimization efforts are more successful than ours, or if search engine companies restrict or prohibit us from using their services, fewer potential customers may click through to our website. In addition, the cost of purchased listings has increased in the past and may increase in the future. A decrease in website traffic or an increase in search costs could materially and adversely affect our customer acquisition efforts and our results of operations.

We market our products and services principally to small and medium-sized businesses, which may have fewer financial resources to weather an economic downturn.

We market our products and services principally to small and medium-sized businesses. These customers may be materially and adversely affected by economic downturns to a greater extent than larger, more established businesses. These businesses typically have more limited financial resources, including capital-borrowing capacity, than larger entities. Because the vast majority of our customers pay for our services through credit and debit cards, weakness in certain segments of the credit markets and in the U.S. and global economies has resulted in and may in the future result in increased numbers of rejected credit and debit card payments, which could materially affect our business by increasing customer cancellations and impacting our ability to engage new customers. If small and medium-sized businesses experience financial hardship as a result of a weak economy, industry consolidation or the overall demand for our services could be materially and adversely affected.

 

We face significant risks in our strategy to target medium-sized and larger businesses for sales of our services and, if we do not manage these efforts effectively, our business and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

We currently derive only a small portion of our revenues from sales to medium-sized and larger businesses. As we target more of our sales efforts to medium-sized and larger businesses, we expect to incur higher costs and longer sales cycles and we may be less effective at predicting when we will complete these sales. In this market segment, the decision to purchase our services may require the approval of more technical personnel and management levels within a potential customer’s organization than we have historically encountered, and if so, these types of sales would require us to invest more time educating these potential customers about the benefits of our services. In addition, larger customers may demand more features, integration services and customization. Also, we have only limited experience in developing and managing sales channels and distribution arrangements for larger businesses. As a result of these factors, these sales opportunities may require us to devote greater research and development resources and sales, support and professional services resources to individual customers, resulting in increased costs and would likely lengthen our typical sales cycle, which could strain our limited sales and professional services resources. Moreover, these larger transactions may require us to delay recognizing the associated revenues we derive from these customers until any technical or implementation requirements have been met. Furthermore, because we have limited experience selling to larger businesses, our investment in marketing our services to these potential customers may not be successful, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations and our overall ability to grow our customer base. Following sales to medium-sized or larger customers, we may experience fewer opportunities to expand these customers’ user base or sell them additional functionalities, or experience increased subscription terminations as compared to our experience with smaller businesses, any of which could materially and adversely impact our results of operations.

We rely significantly on a network of resellers to sell our services; our failure to effectively develop, manage, and maintain our indirect sales channels could materially and adversely affect our revenues.

Our future success depends on our continued ability to establish and maintain a network of channel relationships, and we expect that we will need to maintain and expand our network as we sell to larger customers and expand into international markets. An increasing portion of our revenues is derived from our network of over 1,500 sales agents and resellers, including AT&T, which we refer to collectively as resellers, many of which sell or may in the future decide to sell their own services or services from other cloud-based business communications providers. We generally do not have long-term contracts with these resellers, and the loss of or reduction in sales through these third parties could materially reduce our revenues. Our competitors may in some cases be effective in causing our resellers or potential resellers to favor their services or prevent or reduce sales of our services. If we fail to maintain relationships with our resellers, fail to develop relationships with new resellers in new markets or expand the number of resellers in our network in existing markets, or if we fail to manage, train, or provide appropriate incentives to our existing resellers, or if our resellers are not successful in their sales efforts, sales of our services may decrease and our results of operations would suffer. In this regard, we recently entered into an agreement with TELUS Corporation under which TELUS will market and resell services in Canada that incorporate our cloud platform.  If we are unable to implement our service with TELUS or maintain our relationship with TELUS or other carrier resellers, or if TELUS reduces resources committed to reselling the service, our results of operations may suffer.

Recruiting and retaining qualified resellers in our network and training them in our technology and service offerings requires significant time and resources. To develop and expand our indirect sales channels, we must continue to scale and improve our processes and procedures to support these channels, including investment in systems and training. Many resellers may not be willing to invest the time and resources required to train their staff to effectively market our services.

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Support for smartphones and tablets are an integral part of our solutions. If we are unable to develop robust mobile applications that operate on mobile platforms that our customers use, our business and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

Our solutions allow our customers to use and manage our cloud-based business communications solution on smart devices. As new smart devices and operating systems are released, we may encounter difficulties supporting these devices and services, and we may need to devote significant resources to the creation, support, and maintenance of our mobile applications. In addition, if we experience difficulties in the future integrating our mobile applications into smart devices or if problems arise with our relationships with providers of mobile operating systems, such as those of Apple Inc. or Google Inc., our future growth and our results of operations could suffer.

We face intense competition in our markets and may lack sufficient financial or other resources to compete successfully.

The cloud-based business communications industry is competitive, and we expect it to become increasingly competitive in the future. We face intense competition from other providers of business communications systems and solutions. Our competitors include traditional on-premise, hardware business communications providers such as Alcatel-Lucent, S.A., Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Mitel Networks Corporation, ShoreTel, Inc., Siemens Enterprise Networks, LLC, their resellers and others; as well as companies such as Microsoft Corporation and Broadsoft, Inc. that generally license their software, and their resellers. In addition, certain of our resellers are also our competitors. For example, AT&T serves, and we expect that TELUS will serve, as a reseller to us but they are also competitors for business communications. All of these companies do now or may in the future also host their solutions through the cloud. We also face competition from other cloud companies such as j2 Global, Inc., 8x8, Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp., Nextiva, Inc. and Jive Communications, Inc., as well as from established communications providers, such as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corporation in the United States, and TELUS and others in Canada, that resell on-premise hardware, software and hosted solutions. We may also face competition from other large Internet companies, such as Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc., any of which might launch its own cloud-based business communications services or acquire other cloud-based business communications companies in the future.

Many of our current and potential competitors have longer operating histories, significantly greater resources and name recognition, more diversified service offerings and larger customer bases than we have. As a result, these competitors may have greater credibility with our existing and potential customers and may be better able to withstand an extended period of downward pricing pressure. In addition, certain of our competitors have partnered with, or been acquired by, and may in the future partner with or acquire, other competitors to offer services, leveraging their collective competitive positions, which makes it more difficult to compete with them and could materially and adversely affect our results of operations. They also may be able to adopt more aggressive pricing policies and devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their services than we can to ours. Some of these service providers have in the past and may choose in the future to sacrifice revenues in order to gain market share by offering their services at lower prices or for free. Our competitors may also offer bundled service arrangements offering a more complete service offering, despite the technical merits or advantages of our services. Competition could force us to decrease our prices, slow our growth, increase our customer turnover, reduce our sales or decrease our market share. The adverse impact of a shortfall in our revenues may be magnified if we are unable to adjust spending adequately to compensate for such shortfall.

If we are unable to develop, license or acquire new services or applications on a timely and cost-effective basis, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.

The cloud-based business communications industry is an emerging market that is characterized by rapid changes in customer requirements, frequent introductions of new and enhanced services, and continuing and rapid technological advancement. We cannot predict the effect of technological changes on our business. To compete successfully in this emerging market, we must anticipate and adapt to technological changes and evolving industry standards, and continue to design, develop, manufacture and sell new and enhanced services that provide increasingly higher levels of performance and reliability at lower cost. Currently, we derive a majority of our revenues from subscriptions to RingCentral Office, and we expect this will continue for the foreseeable future. However, our future success will also depend on our ability to introduce and sell new services, features and functionality that enhance or are beyond the voice, fax and text communications services we currently offer, as well as to improve usability and support and increase customer satisfaction. Our failure to develop solutions that satisfy customer preferences in a timely and cost-effective manner may harm our ability to renew our subscriptions with existing customers and create or increase demand for our services, and may materially and adversely impact our results of operations.

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The introduction of new services by competitors or the development of entirely new technologies to replace existing offerings could make our solutions obsolete or adversely affect our business and results of operations. Announcements of future releases and new services and technologies by our competitors or us could cause customers to defer purchases of our existing services, which also could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. We may experience difficulties with software development, operations, design or marketing that could delay or prevent our development, introduction or implementation of new or enhanced services and applications. We have in the past experienced delays in the planned release dates of new features and upgrades, and have discovered defects in new services and applications after their introduction. We cannot assure you that new features or upgrades will be released according to schedule, or that, when released, they will not contain defects. Either of these situations could result in adverse publicity, loss of revenues, delay in market acceptance or claims by customers brought against us, all of which could harm our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition. Moreover, the development of new or enhanced services or applications may require substantial investment, and we must continue to invest a significant amount of resources in our research and development efforts to develop these services and applications to remain competitive. We do not know whether these investments will be successful. If customers do not widely adopt any new or enhanced services and applications, we may not be able to realize a return on our investment. If we are unable to develop, license, or acquire new or enhanced services and applications on a timely and cost-effective basis, or if such new or enhanced services and applications do not achieve market acceptance, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.

A security breach could delay or interrupt service to our customers, harm our reputation, or subject us to significant liability.

Our operations depend on our ability to protect our network from interruption by damage from unauthorized entry, computer viruses or other events beyond our control. In the past, we may have been subject to denial or disruption of service, or DDOS, attacks by hackers intent on bringing down our services, and we may be subject to DDOS attacks in the future. We cannot assure you that our backup systems, regular data backups, security protocols and other procedures are currently in place, or that may be in place in the future, will be adequate to prevent significant damage, system failure or data loss. Also, our services are web-based, and the amount of data we store for our users on our servers has been increasing as our business has grown. Despite the implementation of security measures, our infrastructure may be vulnerable to hackers, computer viruses, worms, other malicious software programs or similar disruptive problems caused by our customers, employees, consultants or other Internet users who attempt to invade public and private data networks. Further, in some cases we do not have in place disaster recovery facilities for certain ancillary services, such as email delivery of messages. Currently, nearly all of our customers authorize us to bill their credit or debit card accounts directly for all transaction fees that we charge. We rely on encryption and authentication technology to ensure secure transmission of confidential information, including customer credit and debit card numbers. Advances in computer capabilities, new discoveries in the field of cryptography or other developments may result in a compromise or breach of the technology we use to protect transaction data.

Additionally, third parties may have attempted in the past, and may attempt in the future, to fraudulently induce domestic and international employees, consultants or customers into disclosing sensitive information, such as user names, passwords or customer proprietary network information, or CPNI, or other information in order to gain access to our customers’ data or to our data. CPNI includes information such as the phone numbers called by a consumer, the frequency, duration, and timing of such calls, and any services purchased by the consumer, such as call waiting, call forwarding, and caller ID, in addition to other information that may appear on a consumer’s bill. Third parties may also attempt to fraudulently induce employees, consultants or customers into disclosing sensitive information regarding our intellectual property and other confidential business information, or our information technology systems. In addition, because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, or to sabotage systems, change frequently and generally are not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Any system failure or security breach that causes interruptions or data loss in our operations or in the computer systems of our customers or leads to the misappropriation of our or our customers’ confidential or personal information, or CPNI, could result in significant liability to us, cause our service to be perceived as not being secure, cause considerable harm to us and our reputation (including requiring notification to customers, regulators or the media), and deter current and potential customers from using our services. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We rely on third parties for some of our software development, quality assurance, operations and customer support.

We currently depend on various third parties for some of our software development efforts, quality assurance, operations and customer support services. Specifically, we outsource some of our software development and design, quality assurance and operations activities to third-party contractors that have employees and consultants located in St. Petersburg, Russia and Odessa, Ukraine. In addition, we outsource a significant portion of our customer support, inside sales and network operation control functions to a third-party contractor located in Manila, the Philippines. Our dependence on third-party contractors creates a number of risks, in particular, the risk that we may not maintain service quality, control or effective management with respect to these business operations.

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Our agreements with these third-party contractors are either not terminable by them (other than at the end of the term or upon an uncured breach by us) or require at least 60 days’ prior written notice of termination. If we experience problems with our third-party contractors, the costs charged by our third-party contractors increase or our agreements with our third-party contractors are terminated, we may not be able to develop new solutions, enhance or operate existing solutions or provide customer support in an alternate manner that is equally or more efficient and cost-effective.

We anticipate that we will continue to depend on these and other third-party relationships in order to grow our business for the foreseeable future. If we are unsuccessful in maintaining existing and, if needed, establishing new relationships with third parties, our ability to efficiently operate existing services or develop new services and provide adequate customer support could be impaired, and, as a result, our competitive position or our results of operations could suffer.

Growth may place significant demands on our management and our infrastructure.

We have recently experienced substantial growth in our business. This growth has placed and may continue to place significant demands on our management and our operational and financial infrastructure. As our operations grow in size, scope and complexity, we will need to increase our sales and marketing efforts and add additional sales and marketing personnel in various regions worldwide, and improve and upgrade our systems and infrastructure to attract, service and retain an increasing number of customers. For example, we expect the volume of simultaneous calls to increase significantly as our customer base grows. Our network hardware and software may not be able to accommodate this additional simultaneous call volume. The expansion of our systems and infrastructure will require us to commit substantial financial, operational, and technical resources in advance of an increase in the volume of business, with no assurance that the volume of business will increase. Any such additional capital investments will increase our cost base. Continued growth could also strain our ability to maintain reliable service levels for our customers and resellers, develop and improve our operational, financial and management controls, enhance our reporting systems and procedures and recruit, train and retain highly skilled personnel. In addition, given our expected growth, we expect to move our headquarters offices and our Denver offices, or secure additional space in our current buildings or other buildings, within the next 12 months. If we fail to achieve the necessary level of efficiency in our organization as we grow, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected.

Accusations of infringement of third-party intellectual property rights could materially and adversely affect our business.

There has been substantial litigation in the areas in which we operate regarding intellectual property rights. In the past, we have been sued by third parties claiming infringement of their intellectual property rights and we may be sued for infringement from time to time in the future. In the past, we have settled infringement litigation brought against us; however, we cannot assure you that we will be able to settle any future claims or, if we are able to settle any such claims, that the settlement will be on terms favorable to us. Our broad range of technology may increase the likelihood that third parties will claim that we infringe their intellectual property rights. In this regard, in June 2011, j2 Global, Inc. and Advanced Messaging Technologies, Inc. named us in a patent infringement lawsuit seeking a permanent injunction, damages and attorneys’ fees. In April 2013, we entered into a license and settlement agreement with j2 Global, Inc. and one of its affiliates to settle the matter. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the parties granted each other certain patent cross licenses for over 10 years and the parties have dismissed all claims in these matters without prejudice. In addition, in December 2012, we were named as a defendant in a patent infringement lawsuit by CallWave Communications, LLC, or CallWave, which we believe to be a non-practicing entity. In September 2013, we entered into a license and settlement agreement with Callwave to settle the matter. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, CallWave granted us a non-exclusive license and agreed to dismiss all claims in these matters without prejudice.

We have in the past received, and may in the future receive, notices of claims of infringement, misappropriation or misuse of other parties’ proprietary rights. Furthermore, regardless of their merits, accusations and lawsuits like these may require significant time and expense to defend, may negatively affect customer relationships, may divert management’s attention away from other aspects of our operations and, upon resolution, may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

Certain technology necessary for us to provide our services may, in fact, be patented by other parties either now or in the future. If such technology were validly patented by another person, we would have to negotiate a license for the use of that technology. We may not be able to negotiate such a license at a price that is acceptable to us or at all. The existence of such a patent, or our inability to negotiate a license for any such technology on acceptable terms, could force us to cease using the technology and cease offering services incorporating the technology, which could materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

If we were found to be infringing on the intellectual property rights of any third party, we could be subject to liability for such infringement, which could be material. We could also be prohibited from using or selling certain services, prohibited from using certain processes, or required to redesign certain services, each of which could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

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These and other outcomes may:

Our limited ability to protect our intellectual property rights could materially and adversely affect our business.

We rely, in part, on patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret law to protect our intellectual property in the U.S. and abroad. We seek to protect our technology, software, documentation and other information under trade secret and copyright law, which afford only limited protection. For example, we typically enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants, third-party contractors, customers and vendors in an effort to control access to use and distribution of our technology, software, documentation and other information. These agreements may not effectively prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of confidential information and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of such unauthorized use or disclosure, and it may be possible for a third party to legally reverse engineer, copy or otherwise obtain and use our technology without authorization. In addition, improper disclosure of trade secret information by our current or former employees, consultants, third-party contractors, customers or vendors to the public or others who could make use of the trade secret information would likely preclude that information from being protected as a trade secret.

We also rely, in part, on patent law to protect our intellectual property in the U.S. and internationally. Our intellectual property portfolio includes 28 issued U.S. patents, which expire between 2026 and 2032. We also have 45 patent applications pending for examination in the U.S. and 22 patent applications pending for examination in foreign jurisdictions, all of which are related to U.S. applications. We cannot predict whether such pending patent applications will result in issued patents or whether any issued patents will effectively protect our intellectual property. Even if a pending patent application results in an issued patent, the patent may be circumvented or its validity may be challenged in various proceedings in United States District Court or before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, such as reexamination, which may require legal representation and involve substantial costs and diversion of management time and resources. In addition, we cannot assure you that every significant feature of our solutions is protected by our patents, or that we will mark our products with any or all patents they embody.  As a result, we may be prevented from seeking damages in whole or in part for infringement of our patents.

The unlicensed use of our brand, including domain names, by third parties could harm our reputation, cause confusion among our customers and impair our ability to market our products and services. To that end, we have registered numerous trademarks and service marks and have applied for registration of additional trademarks and service marks and have acquired a large number of domain names in and outside the U.S. to establish and protect our brand names as part of our intellectual property strategy. If our applications receive objections or are successfully opposed by third parties, it will be difficult for us to prevent third parties from using our brand without our permission. Moreover, successful opposition to our applications might encourage third parties to make additional oppositions or commence trademark infringement proceedings against us, which could be costly and time consuming to defend against. If we are not successful in protecting our trademarks, our trademark rights may be diluted and subject to challenge or invalidation, which could materially and adversely affect our brand.

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Despite our efforts to implement our intellectual property strategy, we may not be able to protect or enforce our proprietary rights in the U.S. or internationally (where effective intellectual property protection may be unavailable or limited). For example, we have entered into agreements containing confidentiality and invention assignment provisions in connection with the outsourcing of certain software development and quality assurance activities to third-party contractors located in St. Petersburg, Russia and Odessa, Ukraine. We have also entered into an agreement containing a confidentiality provision with a third-party contractor located in Manila, the Philippines, where we have outsourced a significant portion of our customer support function. We cannot assure you that agreements with these third-party contractors or their agreements with their employees and contractors will adequately protect our proprietary rights in the applicable jurisdictions and foreign countries, as their respective laws may not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the U.S. In addition, our competitors may independently develop technologies that are similar or superior to our technology, duplicate our technology in a manner that does not infringe our intellectual property rights or design around any of our patents. Furthermore, detecting and policing unauthorized use of our intellectual property is difficult and resource-intensive. Moreover, litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights, to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, or to defend against claims of infringement or invalidity. Such litigation, whether successful or not, could result in substantial costs and diversion of management time and resources and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our success depends on the public acceptance of our services and applications.

Our future success depends on our ability to significantly increase revenues generated from our cloud-based business communications solutions. The market for cloud-based business communications is evolving rapidly and is characterized by an increasing number of market entrants. As is typical of a rapidly evolving industry, the demand for, and market acceptance of, these applications is uncertain. If the market for cloud-based business communications fails to develop, develops more slowly than we anticipate or develops in a manner different than we expect, our services could fail to achieve market acceptance, which in turn could materially and adversely affect our business.

Our growth depends on the continued use of voice communications by businesses, as compared to email and other data-based methods. A decline in the overall rate of voice communications by businesses would harm our business. Furthermore, our continued growth depends on future demand for and adoption of Internet voice communications systems and services. Although the number of broadband subscribers worldwide has grown significantly in recent years, a small percentage of businesses have adopted Internet voice communications services to date. For demand and adoption of Internet voice communications services by businesses to increase, Internet voice communications networks must improve the quality of their service for real-time communications by managing the effects of and reducing packet loss, packet delay and packet jitter, as well as unreliable bandwidth, so that toll-quality service can be consistently provided. Additionally, the cost and feature benefits of Internet voice communications must be sufficient to cause customers to switch from traditional phone service providers. We must devote substantial resources to educate customers and their end users about the benefits of Internet voice communications solutions, in general, and our services in particular. If any or all of these factors fail to occur, our business may be materially and adversely affected.

Interruptions in our services could harm our reputation, result in significant costs to us, and impair our ability to sell our services.

Because our services are complex and we have incorporated a variety of new computer hardware, as well as software that is developed in-house or licensed or acquired from third-party vendors, our services may have errors or defects that customers identify after they begin using them that could result in unanticipated interruptions of service. Internet-based services frequently contain undetected errors and bugs when first introduced or when new versions or enhancements are released. While the substantial majority of our customers are small and medium-sized businesses, the use of our services in complicated, large-scale network environments may increase our exposure to undetected errors, failures or bugs in our services. Although we test our services to detect and correct errors and defects before their general release, we have from time to time experienced significant interruptions in our service as a result of such errors or defects and may experience future interruptions of service if we fail to detect and correct these errors and defects. The costs incurred in correcting such defects or errors may be substantial and could harm our results of operations. In addition, we rely on hardware purchased or leased and software licensed from third parties to offer our services.

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Any defects in, or unavailability of, our or third-party software or hardware that cause interruptions of our services could, among other things:

If we fail to continue to develop our brand or our reputation is harmed, our business may suffer.

We believe that continuing to strengthen our current brand will be critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our services and will require continued focus on active marketing efforts. The demand for and cost of online and traditional advertising have been increasing and may continue to increase. Accordingly, we may need to increase our investment in, and devote greater resources to, advertising, marketing, and other efforts to create and maintain brand loyalty among users. Brand promotion activities may not yield increased revenues, and even if they do, any increased revenues may not offset the expenses incurred in building our brands. If we fail to promote and maintain our brand, or if we incur substantial expense in an unsuccessful attempt to promote and maintain our brands, our business could be materially and adversely affected.

Our services, as well as those of our competitors, are regularly reviewed and commented upon by online and social media sources, as well as computer and other business publications. Negative reviews, or reviews in which our competitors’ products and services are rated more highly than our solutions, could negatively affect our brand and reputation. From time to time, our customers have expressed dissatisfaction with our services, including dissatisfaction with our customer support, our billing policies and the way our services operate. If we do not handle customer complaints effectively, our brand and reputation may suffer, we may lose our customers’ confidence, and they may choose to terminate, reduce or not to renew their subscriptions. In addition, many of our customers participate in social media and online blogs about Internet-based services, including our services, and our success depends in part on our ability to minimize negative and generate positive customer feedback through such online channels where existing and potential customers seek and share information. If actions we take or changes we make to our services upset these customers, their blogging could negatively affect our brand and reputation. Complaints or negative publicity about our services or customer service could materially and adversely impact our ability to attract and retain customers and our business, financial condition and results of operations.

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If we experience excessive fraudulent activity or cannot meet evolving credit card association merchant standards, we could incur substantial costs and lose the right to accept credit cards for payment, which could cause our customer base to decline significantly.

Nearly all of our customers authorize us to bill their credit card accounts directly for service fees that we charge. If people pay for our services with stolen credit cards, we could incur substantial third-party vendor costs for which we may not be reimbursed. Further, our customers provide us with credit card billing information online or over the phone, and we do not review the physical credit cards used in these transactions, which increases our risk of exposure to fraudulent activity. We also incur charges, which we refer to as chargebacks, from the credit card companies from claims that the customer did not authorize the credit card transaction to purchase our service, something that we have experienced in the past. If the number of unauthorized credit card transactions becomes excessive, we could be assessed substantial fines for excess chargebacks and we could lose the right to accept credit cards for payment. In addition, credit card issuers may change merchant standards, including data protection and documentation standards, required to utilize their services from time to time. We are compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI, in the United States and Canada. We are developing a plan to become PCI-compliant in the UK; however, if we fail to maintain compliance with current merchant standards, such as PCI, or fail to meet new standards, the credit card associations could fine us or terminate their agreements with us, and we would be unable to accept credit cards as payment for our services. Our services may also be subject to fraudulent usage, including but not limited to revenue share fraud, domestic traffic pumping, subscription fraud, premium text message scams, and other fraudulent schemes. Although our customers are required to set passwords and Personal Identification Numbers, or PINs, to protect their accounts and may configure in which destinations international calling is enabled from their extensions, third parties have in the past and may in the future be able to access and use their accounts through fraudulent means. In addition, third parties may have attempted in the past, and may attempt in the future, to fraudulently induce domestic and international employees or consultants into disclosing customer credentials and other account information. Communications fraud can result in unauthorized access to customer accounts and customer data, unauthorized use of customers’ services, charges to customers for fraudulent usage and expense that we must pay to carriers. We may be required to pay for these charges and expenses with no reimbursement from the customer, and our reputation may be harmed if our services are subject to fraudulent usage. Although we implement multiple fraud prevention and detection controls, we cannot assure you that these controls will be adequate to protect against fraud. Substantial losses due to fraud or our inability to accept credit card payments, which could cause our paid customer base to significantly decrease, could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition and ability to grow our business.

Potential problems with our information systems could interfere with our business and operations.

We rely on our information systems and those of third parties for processing customer orders, distribution of our services, billing our customers, processing credit card transactions, customer relationship management, supporting financial planning and analysis, accounting functions and financial statement preparation and otherwise running our business. Information systems may experience interruptions, including interruptions of related services from third-party providers, which may be beyond our control. Such business interruptions could cause us to fail to meet customer requirements. All information systems, both internal and external, are potentially vulnerable to damage or interruption from a variety of sources, including without limitation, computer viruses, security breaches, energy blackouts, natural disasters, terrorism, war and telecommunication failures and employee or other theft, as well as third-party provider failures. Any disruption in our information systems and those of the third parties upon which we rely could have a significant impact on our business.

In addition, we recently transitioned from a number of disparate systems and implemented NetSuite, a SaaS enterprise resource planning system, to handle various business, operating and financial processes. We plan to transition from a spreadsheet-based financial modeling system and implement a third-party corporate performance management system. In addition, in the future we intend to implement a third-party SaaS billing system to replace our current internally developed billing system. We may also implement further and enhanced information systems in the future to meet the demands resulting from our growth and to provide additional capabilities and functionality. The implementation of new systems and enhancements is frequently disruptive to the underlying business of an enterprise, and can be time-consuming and expensive, increase management responsibilities and divert management attention. Any disruptions relating to our systems enhancements or any problems with the implementation, particularly any disruptions impacting our operations or our ability to accurately report our financial performance on a timely basis during the implementation period, could materially and adversely affect our business. Even if we do not encounter these material and adverse effects, the implementation of these enhancements may be much more costly than we anticipated. If we are unable to successfully implement the information systems enhancements as planned, our financial position, results of operations and cash flows could be negatively impacted.

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Our use of open source technology could impose limitations on our ability to commercialize our services.

We use open source software in our platform on which our services operate. There is a risk that the owners of the copyrights in such software may claim that such licenses impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market or provide our services. If such owners prevail in such claim, we could be required to make the source code for our proprietary software (which contains our valuable trade secrets) generally available to third parties, including competitors, at no cost, to seek licenses from third parties in order to continue offering our services, to re-engineer our technology, or to discontinue offering our services in the event re-engineering cannot be accomplished on a timely basis or at all, any of which could cause us to discontinue our services, harm our reputation, result in customer losses or claims, increase our costs or otherwise materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

 

Our services are subject to regulation, and future legislative or regulatory actions could adversely affect our business and expose us to liability.

Federal Regulation

Our business is regulated by the FCC. As a communications services provider, we are subject to existing or potential FCC regulations relating to privacy, disability access, porting of numbers, Federal Universal Service Fund, or USF, contributions, E-911, and other requirements. FCC classification of our Internet voice communications services as telecommunications services could result in additional federal and state regulatory obligations. If we do not comply with FCC rules and regulations, we could be subject to FCC enforcement actions, fines, loss of licenses, and possibly restrictions on our ability to operate or offer certain of our services. Any enforcement action by the FCC, which may be a public process, would hurt our reputation in the industry, possibly impair our ability to sell our services to customers and could have a materially adverse impact on our revenues.

Through RCLEC, we also provide competitive local exchange carrier services, or CLEC services, which are regulated by the FCC as traditional telecommunications services. Our CLEC services depend on certain provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that permit us to procure facilities and services from incumbent local exchange carriers, or ILECs, that are necessary to provide our services. Over the past several years, the FCC has reduced or eliminated a number of regulations governing ILECs’ offerings. If ILECs are not required by law to provide services to us or do not continue to permit us to purchase these services from them under commercial arrangements at reasonable rates, our business could be adversely affected and our cost of providing CLEC services could increase. This could have a materially adverse impact on our results of operations and cash flows.

Our services are also subject to a number of other FCC regulations. Among others, we must comply (in whole or in part) with:

If we do not comply with any current or future rules or regulations that apply to our business, we could be subject to substantial fines and penalties, we may have to restructure our service offerings, exit certain markets or raise the price of our services, any of which could ultimately harm our business and results of operations.

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State Regulation

States currently may not regulate our Internet voice communications services. However, a small number of states have ruled that non-nomadic Internet voice communications services may or do fall within the definition of “telecommunications services” and therefore those states assert that they have jurisdiction to regulate the service.  No states currently require certification for nomadic Internet voice communications service providers. Even if a state does not require Internet voice communications service providers to be certified, a number of states have imposed traditional telecommunications requirements on such services, including assessing state USF or other surcharge requirements, E-911 support and fees and other surcharges on nomadic VoIP providers. A number of states require us to contribute to state USF, contribute to E-911 and pay other surcharges, while others are actively considering extending their public policy programs to include the services we provide. We pass USF, E-911 fees and other surcharges through to our customers, which may result in our services becoming more expensive or require that we absorb these costs. We expect that state public utility commissions will continue their attempts to apply state telecommunications regulations to Internet voice communications services like ours.

 

Our subsidiary’s CLEC services are subject to regulation by the public utility regulatory agency in those states where we provide local telecommunications services. This regulation includes the requirement to obtain a certificate of public convenience and necessity or other similar licenses prior to offering our CLEC services. We may also be required to file tariffs that describe our CLEC’s services and provide rates for those services. We are also required to comply with state regulations that vary from state to state concerning service quality, disconnection and billing requirements. State commissions also have authority to review and approve interconnection agreements between incumbent phone carriers and CLECs such as our subsidiary, and to conduct arbitration of disputes arising in the negotiation of such agreements.

 

Both we and our CLEC subsidiary are also subject to state consumer protection laws, as well as U.S. state or municipal sales, use, excise, utility user and ad valorem taxes, fees or surcharges.

International Regulation

As we expand internationally, we may be subject to telecommunications, consumer protection, data privacy and other laws and regulations in the foreign countries where we offer our services. Internationally, we currently offer our services in Canada and the UK.

We are a provider of Internet voice telecommunications services in Canada. As a provider of Internet voice communications services, we are subject to regulation in Canada by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC. We are registered with the CRTC as a reseller of telecommunications services and have been issued a basic international telecommunications services, or BITS, license by the CRTC. As an Internet voice communications provider, we are subject to obligations imposed by the CRTC, including providing access to emergency calling services, providing access to operator assistance, directory information services, number portability, providing minimum customer information, charging customers certain regulatory charges and paying contribution charges. We are also subject to Canadian federal privacy laws and provincial consumer protection legislation. As a holder of a BITS license, we also must comply with various annual reporting requirements.

As a provider of electronic communications services in the UK, we, through our subsidiary, are subject to regulation in the UK by the Office of Communications, or Ofcom. Some of these regulatory obligations include providing access to emergency call services (E999/112); providing access to operator assistance, directories and directory enquiry services, offering contracts with minimum terms, providing and publishing certain information transparently, providing itemized billing, protecting customer information (including personal data); porting phone numbers upon a valid customer request and implementing a code of practice. We are required to comply with laws and matters relating to, among other things, competition law, distance selling, e-commerce and consumer protection. We must also comply with various reporting and recordkeeping requirements.

In addition, our international operations are potentially subject to country-specific governmental regulation and related actions that may increase our costs or impact our product and service offerings or prevent us from offering or providing our products and services in certain countries. Certain of our services may be used by customers located in countries where VoIP and other forms of IP communications may be illegal or require special licensing or in countries on a U.S. embargo list. Even where our products are reportedly illegal or become illegal or where users are located in an embargoed country, users in those countries may be able to continue to use our products and services in those countries notwithstanding the illegality or embargo. We may be subject to penalties or governmental action if consumers continue to use our products and services in countries where it is illegal to do so, and any such penalties or governmental action may be costly and may harm our business and damage our brand and reputation. We may be required to incur additional expenses to meet applicable international regulatory requirements or be required to discontinue those services if required by law or if we cannot or will not meet those requirements.

 

We process, store, and use personal information and other data, which subjects us and our customers to a variety of evolving governmental regulation, industry standards and self-regulatory schemes, contractual obligations, and other legal obligations related to privacy, which may increase our costs, decrease adoption and use of our products and services and expose us to liability.

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There are a number of federal, state, local and foreign laws and regulations, as well as contractual obligations and industry standards, that provide for certain obligations and restrictions with respect to data privacy and security, and the collection, storage, retention, protection, use, processing, transmission, sharing, disclosure and protection of personal information and other customer data. The scope of these obligations and restrictions is changing, subject to differing interpretations, and may be inconsistent among countries or conflict with other rules, and their status remains uncertain. Within the European Union, or EU, strict laws already apply in connection with the collection, storage, retention, protection, use, processing, transmission, sharing, disclosure and protection of personal information and other customer data. The EU model has been replicated in many jurisdictions outside the U.S., including Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation countries. Regulators have the power to fine non-compliant organizations significant amounts. There are proposals to increase the maximum level of fines that EU regulators may impose to the greater of €100 million or 5% of worldwide annual sales. As Internet commerce and communication technologies continue to evolve, increasing online service providers’ and network users’ capacity to collect, store, retain, protect, use, process and transmit large volumes of personal information, increasingly restrictive regulation by federal, state or foreign agencies becomes more likely. For example, a variety of regulations that would increase restrictions on online service providers in the area of data privacy are currently being proposed, both in the U.S. and in other jurisdictions, and we believe that the adoption of increasingly restrictive regulation in the field of data privacy and security is likely, possibly as restrictive as the EU model. In Canada, new anti-spam legislation that prescribes certain rules regarding the use of electronic messages for commercial purposes will take effect on July 1, 2014.  This new law also contains provisions that will take effect in January 2015, imposing certain restrictions on a service provider’s ability to electronically automatically update or change software used in a customer’s service without the customer’s consent.  Penalties for non-compliance with the new Canadian anti-spam legislation are considerable, including administrative monetary penalties of up to $10 million and a private right of action. Obligations and restrictions imposed by current and future applicable laws, regulations, contracts and industry standards may affect our ability to provide all the current features of our products and services and our customers’ ability to use our products and services, and could require us to modify the features and functionality of our products and services. Such obligations and restrictions may limit our ability to collect, store, process, use, transmit and share data with our customers, and to allow our customer to collect, store, retain, protect, use, process, transmit, share and disclose data with others through our products and services. Compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, such obligations and restrictions could increase the cost of our operations. Failure to comply with obligations and restrictions related to data privacy and security could subject us to lawsuits, fines, criminal penalties, statutory damages, consent decrees, injunctions, adverse publicity and other losses that could harm our business.

Our customers can use our services to store contact and other personal or identifying information, and to process, transmit, receive, store and retrieve a variety of communications and messages, including information about their own customers and other contacts. In addition, customers may use our services to transmit protected health information, or PHI, that is protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA; further, some customers also may use our services to store protected HIPAA information, notwithstanding that we inform customers that our services should not be used for such storage purposes. Noncompliance with laws and regulations relating to privacy and HIPAA may lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities. Our actual compliance, our customers’ perception of our compliance, costs of compliance with such regulations and customer concerns regarding their own compliance obligations (whether factual or in error) may limit the use and adoption of our service and reduce overall demand. Furthermore, privacy concerns, including the inability or impracticality of providing advance notice to customers of privacy issues related to the use of our services, may cause our customers’ customers to resist providing the personal data necessary to allow our customers to use our services effectively. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our service in certain industries.

In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy groups and industry groups have adopted and are considering the adoption of various self-regulatory standards and codes of conduct that may place additional burdens on us and our customers, which may further reduce demand for our services and harm our business.

While we try to comply with all applicable data protection laws, regulations, standards, and codes of conduct, as well as our own posted privacy policies and contractual commitments to the extent possible, any failure by us to protect our users’ privacy and data, including as a result of our systems being compromised by hacking or other malicious or surreptitious activity, could result in a loss of user confidence in our services and ultimately in a loss of users, which could materially and adversely affect our business. Our customers may also accidentally disclose their passwords or store them on a mobile device that is lost or stolen, creating the perception that our systems are not secure against third-party access. Additionally, our third-party contractors in the Philippines, Russia, Ukraine, India and Poland may have access to customer data. If these or other third-party vendors violate applicable laws or our policies, such violations may also put our customers’ information at risk and could in turn have a material and adverse effect on our business.

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Use or delivery of our services may become subject to new or increased regulatory requirements, taxes or fees.

The increasing growth and popularity of Internet voice communications heighten the risk that governments will regulate or impose new or increased fees or taxes on Internet voice communications services. To the extent that the use of our services continues to grow, regulators may be more likely to seek to regulate or impose new or additional taxes, surcharges or fees on our services. Similarly, advances in technology, such as improvements in locating the geographic origin of Internet voice communications, could cause our services to become subject to additional regulations, fees or taxes, or could require us to invest in or develop new technologies, which may be costly. In addition, as we continue to expand our user base and offer more services, we may become subject to new regulations, taxes, surcharges or fees. Increased regulatory requirements, taxes, surcharges or fees on Internet voice communications services, which could be assessed by governments retroactively or prospectively, would substantially increase our costs, and, as a result, our business would suffer. In addition, the tax status of our services could subject us to conflicting taxation requirements and complexity with regard to the collection and remittance of applicable taxes. Any such additional taxes could harm our results of operations.

Our emergency and E-911 calling services may expose us to significant liability.

The FCC requires Internet voice communications providers, such as our company, to provide E-911 service in all geographic areas covered by the traditional wire-line E-911 network. Under the FCC’s rules, Internet voice communications providers must transmit the caller’s phone number and registered location information to the appropriate public safety answering point, or PSAP, for the caller’s registered location. Our CLEC services are also required by the FCC and state regulators to provide E-911 service to the extent that they provide services to end users.

In Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or the CRTC, has imposed similar requirements related to the provision of E-911 services in all areas of Canada where the wireline incumbent carrier offers such 911 services.  The CRTC also mandates certain customer notification requirements pursuant to which new customers are required to be notified of 911 service limitations and to consent to the same before their service with us commences and we are required to provide annual update notifications to our customers of the 911 limitations of our service.  The CRTC has recently concluded a proceeding that canvassed issues in relation to the provision of 911 services in Canada and the decision rendered by the CRTC in this proceeding may result in changes to how 911 services are to be offered by service providers in Canada such as us.

Additionally, as a provider of electronic communications services in the UK, we are subject to regulation in the UK by Ofcom.  Similar to the position in the U.S., Ofcom requires electronic communications providers, such as our company, to provide all users access to both 112 (EU-mandated) and 999 (UK-mandated) emergency service numbers at no charge.  Ofcom also requires us to clearly and transparently inform our users of any emergency service limitations on their device including by way of labels and network announcements.

We provide E-911/999/112 service in compliance with the Ofcom, the CRTC and the FCC’s rules, as applicable, to substantially all of our customers’ interconnected VoIP lines. In some circumstances, 911/999/112 calls may be routed to a national emergency call center that routes the call to the appropriate PSAP. In addition, certain of our Internet voice communications services that work with mobile devices and are accessed through Wi-Fi networks may not be able to complete 911/999/112 calls. The FCC is considering requiring providers of Internet voice communications services on mobile devices and softphones to provide E-911 service, if such service may be used to make calls to the public telephone network. The adoption of such a requirement could increase our costs and make our service more expensive, which could adversely affect our results of operations.

In May 2013, the FCC issued an order requiring all providers of interconnected text messaging services to provide, by September 30, 2013, an automatic bounce-back text message in situations where a consumer attempts to text message to 911 and text-to-911 is not available. We believe we are in compliance with this order. The FCC is considering requiring, by December 31, 2014, providers of interconnected text messaging services to route text messages to PSAPs that are capable of receiving text messages.

In connection with the regulatory requirements that we provide E-911/999/112 to all of our interconnected VoIP customers, we must obtain from each customer, prior to the initiation of or changes to service, the physical locations at which the service will first be used for each VoIP line. For services that can be utilized from more than one physical location, we must provide customers one or more methods of updating their physical location. Because we do not validate the physical address at each location where the services may be used by our customers, and because customers may use the services in locations that differ from the registered location without providing us with the updated information, it is possible that E-911/999/112 calls may get routed to the wrong public safety answering point, or PSAP. We are also aware that certain customer registered addresses are incorrect, or may not have been updated. If E-911/999/112 calls are not routed to the correct PSAP, and if the delay results in serious injury or death, we could be sued and the damages substantial. We are evaluating measures to attempt to verify and update the addresses for locations where our services are used.  The FCC is also considering requiring interconnected VoIP providers to automatically update subscriber location information, for purposes of routing 911 calls.

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We could be subject to enforcement action by the FCC, the CRTC or Ofcom for our customer lines that do not have E-911/999/112 service. This enforcement action could result in significant monetary penalties and restrictions on our ability to offer non-compliant services.

Customers may in the future attempt to hold us responsible for any loss, damage, personal injury, or death suffered as a result of delayed, misrouted or uncompleted emergency service calls. The New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008 provides that Internet voice communications providers have the same protections from liability for the operation of 911 service as traditional wire-line and wireless providers. Limitations on liability for the provision of 911 service are normally governed by state law, and these limitations typically are not absolute. It is also unclear under the FCC’s rules whether the limitations on liability would apply to those customer lines for which we do not provide E-911 service. In the UK, by law we cannot limit our liability for any death or injury arising out of our negligence, including as a result of emergency service calls that are delayed, misrouted or uncompleted due to our negligence. In Canada, the CRTC does not permit any limitation of liability related to the provision of E-911 services that is due to our gross negligence or where negligence on the part of a service provider results in physical injury, death or damage to the customer's property or premises.  In addition, Canadian provincial consumer protection laws may constrain our ability to limit liability to our non-business customers for any liability caused due to the 911 shortfalls inherent in Internet voice communications services.  In the UK, by law we cannot limit our liability for any death or injury arising out of our negligence, including as a result of emergency service calls that are delayed, misrouted or uncompleted due to our negligence.

We rely on third parties to provide the majority of our customer service and support representatives and to fulfill various aspects of our E-911 service. If these third parties do not provide our customers with reliable, high-quality service, our reputation will be harmed, and we may lose customers.

We offer customer support through both our online account management website and our toll-free customer support number. Our customer support is currently provided via a third-party provider located in the Philippines, as well as our employees in the U.S. We currently offer support almost exclusively in English. Our third-party providers generally provide customer service and support to our customers without identifying themselves as independent parties. The ability to support our customers may be disrupted by natural disasters, inclement weather conditions, civil unrest, strikes and other adverse events in the Philippines. Furthermore, as we expand our operations internationally, we may need to make significant expenditures and investments in our customer service and support to adequately address the complex needs of international customers, such as support in multiple foreign languages.

We also contract with third parties to provide E-911 services, including assistance in routing emergency calls and terminating E-911 calls. Our providers operate a national call center that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to receive certain emergency calls and maintain PSAP databases for the purpose of deploying and operating E-911 services. On mobile devices, we generally rely on the underlying cellular or wireless carrier to provide E-911 services. Interruptions in service from our vendors could cause failures in our customers’ access to E-911 services and expose us to liability and damage our reputation.

If any of these third parties do not provide reliable, high-quality service, our reputation and our business will be harmed. In addition, industry consolidation among providers of services to us may impact our ability to obtain these services or increase our costs for these services.

 

We are in the process of expanding our international operations, which exposes us to significant risks.

To date, we have not generated significant revenues from outside of the U.S. and Canada. However, we already have significant operations outside the U.S. and Canada, including expansion into the UK in the fourth quarter of 2013, and we expect to grow our international revenues in the future. The future success of our business will depend, in part, on our ability to expand our operations and customer base worldwide. Operating in international markets requires significant resources and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, economic and political risks that are different from those in the U.S. Because of our limited experience with international operations and developing and managing sales and distribution channels in international markets, our international expansion efforts may not be successful. In addition, we will face risks in doing business internationally that could materially and adversely affect our business, including:

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Our failure to manage any of these risks successfully could harm our future international operations and our overall business.

 

We depend largely on the continued services of our senior management and other key employees, the loss of any of whom could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our future performance depends on the continued services and contributions of our senior management and other key employees to execute on our business plan, and to identify and pursue opportunities and services innovations. The loss of services of senior management or other key employees could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our development and strategic objectives. In particular, we depend to a considerable degree on the vision, skills, experience and effort of our co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Vladimir Shmunis. None of our executive officers or other senior management personnel is bound by a written employment agreement and any of them may therefore terminate employment with us at any time with no advance notice. The replacement of any of these senior management personnel would likely involve significant time and costs, and such loss could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our business objectives. In addition, certain members of our senior management team, including our President, who joined us in June 2013, and our Chief Financial Officer, who joined us in August 2013, have worked together for only a relatively short period of time and it may be difficult to evaluate their effectiveness, on an individual or collective basis, and ability to address future challenges to our business. The loss of the services of our senior management or other key employees for any reason could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

If we are unable to hire, retain and motivate qualified personnel, our business will suffer.

Our future success depends, in part, on our ability to continue to attract and retain highly skilled personnel. We believe that there is, and will continue to be, intense competition for highly skilled technical and other personnel with experience in our industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located, and in other locations where we maintain offices. We must provide competitive compensation packages and a high-quality work environment to hire, retain and motivate employees. If we are unable to retain and motivate our existing employees and attract qualified personnel to fill key positions, we may be unable to manage our business effectively, including the development, marketing and sale of existing and new services, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. To the extent we hire personnel from competitors, we may be subject to allegations that they have been improperly solicited or divulged proprietary or other confidential information.

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Volatility in, or lack of performance of, our stock price may also affect our ability to attract and retain key personnel. Many of our key personnel are, or will soon be, vested in a substantial amount of shares of common stock, stock options or restricted stock units. Employees may be more likely to terminate their employment with us if the shares they own or the shares underlying their vested options have significantly appreciated in value relative to the original purchase prices of the shares or the exercise prices of the options, or if the exercise prices of the options that they hold are significantly above the market price of our Class A common stock. If we are unable to retain our employees, our business, results of operations, and financial condition will be harmed.

We may expand through acquisitions of, or investments in, other companies, each of which may divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders, increase expenses, disrupt our operations and harm our results of operations.

Our business strategy may, from time to time, include acquiring or investing in complementary services, technologies or businesses. We cannot assure you that we will successfully identify suitable acquisition candidates, integrate or manage disparate technologies, lines of business, personnel and corporate cultures, realize our business strategy or the expected return on our investment, or manage a geographically dispersed company. Any such acquisition or investment could materially and adversely affect our results of operations. Acquisitions and other strategic investments involve significant risks and uncertainties, including:

Any acquisition or investment could expose us to unknown liabilities. Moreover, we cannot assure you that we will realize the anticipated benefits of any acquisition or investment. In addition, our inability to successfully operate and integrate newly acquired businesses appropriately, effectively, and in a timely manner could impair our ability to take advantage of future growth opportunities and other advances in technology, as well as on our revenues, gross margins and expenses.

We may be subject to liabilities on past sales for taxes, surcharges and fees.

Prior to 2012, we did not collect or remit U.S. state or municipal sales, use, excise, utility user and ad valorem taxes, fees or surcharges on the charges to our customers for our services or goods, except that we have historically complied with the collection of certain California sales/use taxes and financial contributions to the California 9-1-1 system (the Emergency Telephone Users Surcharge) and federal USF. For periods prior to 2012, with limited exception, we believe that we were generally not subject to taxes, fees, or surcharges imposed by other U.S. state and municipal jurisdictions or that such taxes, fees, or surcharges did not apply to our service. There is uncertainty as to what constitutes sufficient “in state presence” for a state to levy taxes, fees and surcharges for sales made over the Internet. Therefore, taxing authorities may challenge our position and may decide to audit our business and operations with respect to sales, use, telecommunications and other taxes, which could result in increased tax liabilities for us or our customers, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations and our relationships with our customers.

In 2012, we voluntarily began collecting and remitting U.S. state sales, use or other taxes, surcharges, and fees. The collection of these taxes, fees, or surcharges could have the effect of decreasing or eliminating price advantages we may have had over other providers. We may not accurately calculate these taxes, particularly in foreign jurisdictions. In addition, we have recorded a contingent sales tax liability for sales prior to 2012. If our ultimate liability exceeds the collected and accrued amount, it could result in significant charges to our earnings.

 

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Finally, the application of other indirect taxes (such as sales and use tax, value added tax, or VAT, goods and services tax, business tax, and gross receipt tax) to e-commerce businesses, such as ours, is a complex and evolving area. In November 2007, the U.S. federal government enacted legislation extending the moratorium on states and other local authorities imposing access or discriminatory taxes on the Internet through November 2014. This moratorium does not prohibit federal, state, or local authorities from collecting taxes on our income or from collecting taxes that are due under existing tax rules. The application of existing, new, or future laws, whether in the U.S. or internationally, could have adverse effects on our business, prospects, and results of operations. There have been, and will continue to be, substantial ongoing costs associated with complying with the various indirect tax requirements in the numerous markets in which we conduct or will conduct business.

Changes in effective tax rates, or adverse outcomes resulting from examination of our income or other tax returns, could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

Our future effective tax rates could be subject to volatility or adversely affected by a number of factors, including:

Any changes in our effective tax rate could adversely affect our results of operations.

We may be unable to use some or all of our net operating loss carryforwards, which could materially and adversely affect our reported financial condition and results of operations.

As of December 31, 2013, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards, or NOLs, of $94.7 million and $77.9 million, respectively, available to offset future taxable income, due to prior period losses, which, if not utilized, will begin to expire in 2023 and 2014 for federal and state purposes, respectively. We also have federal research tax credit carryforwards that will begin to expire in 2028. Realization of these net operating loss and research tax credit carryforwards depends on future income, and there is a risk that our existing carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations.

In addition, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, our ability to utilize net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes, such as research tax credits, in any taxable year may be limited if we experience an “ownership change.” A Section 382 “ownership change” generally occurs if one or more stockholders or groups of stockholders, who own at least 5% of our stock, increase their ownership by more than 50 percentage points over their lowest ownership percentage within a rolling three-year period. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws.

No deferred tax assets have been recognized on our balance sheet related to these NOLs, as they are fully reserved by a valuation allowance. If we have previously had, or have in the future, one or more Section 382 “ownership changes,” including in connection with our initial public offering or another offering, or if we do not generate sufficient taxable income, we may not be able to utilize a material portion of our NOLs, even if we achieve profitability. If we are limited in our ability to use our NOLs in future years in which we have taxable income, we will pay more taxes than if we were able to fully utilize our NOLs. This could materially and adversely affect our results of operations.

As a result of being a public company, we need to further develop and maintain our internal control over financial reporting. If our internal control over financial reporting is not effective, it may adversely affect investor confidence in our company.

We will be required, pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2014. This assessment will need to include disclosure of any material weaknesses identified by our management in our internal control over financial reporting.

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We are in the early stages of the costly and challenging process of compiling the system and processing documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404. We may not be able to complete our evaluation, testing and any required remediation in a timely fashion. During the evaluation and testing process, if we identify one or more material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, we will be unable to assert that our internal controls are effective. For example, in connection with the audit of our consolidated financial statements for fiscal 2011, our independent registered public accounting firm identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting. A “material weakness” is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. The material weakness that our independent registered public accounting firm identified related to our lack of sufficient, qualified personnel in accounting and financial reporting matters to perform process level controls and other controls. We believe that we remediated this material weakness in 2012.

However, in connection with the audit of our consolidated financial statements for fiscal 2012, our independent registered public accounting firm identified two significant deficiencies. A “significant deficiency” is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting that is less severe than a material weakness, yet important enough to merit attention by those responsible for oversight of our financial reporting. The significant deficiencies that our independent registered public accounting firm identified in connection with our fiscal 2012 audit related to our lack of sufficient controls to enable our timely remittance of sales tax liabilities and inadequate controls related to the accounting process and incomplete documentation of accounting and financial period close procedures. While we believe we remediated the first of these two significant deficiencies in 2013, in connection with the audit of our consolidated financial statements for 2013, our independent registered public accounting firm determined that the second significant deficiency still remained as of December 31, 2013.

If we are unable to conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion on the effectiveness of our internal controls when it is required to do so by the applicable rules, we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, which could cause the price of our Class A common stock to decline, and we may be subject to investigation or sanctions by the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC.

We will be required to disclose changes made in our internal control and procedures on a quarterly basis. However, our independent registered public accounting firm will not be required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 until the later of the year following our first annual report required to be filed with the SEC, or the date we are no longer an “emerging growth company” as defined in the recently enacted Jumpstart our Business Startups Act of 2012, or JOBS Act, if we take advantage of the exemptions contained 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 controls are documented, designed or operating. As a result, we may need to undertake various actions, such as implementing new internal controls and procedures and hiring accounting or internal audit staff. Our remediation efforts may not enable us to avoid a material weakness in the future.

We may not be successful in obtaining local access services through our newly-created CLEC.

We have formed a competitive local exchange carrier subsidiary, RCLEC, to allow us to purchase network services directly from ILECs and from other CLECs in certain geographic markets, at lower prices than we pay for such services through third-party network service providers, such as Level 3 Communications, Inc. and Bandwidth.com, Inc., and to help us improve our quality of service. However, the ILECs may favor themselves and their affiliates and may not provide network services to us at lower prices than we could obtain through Level 3 Communications, Inc., Bandwidth.com, Inc., other third-party CLECs, or at all. If we are unable to reduce our pricing as a result of obtaining network services through our subsidiary, we may be forced to rely on other third-party network service providers and be unable to effectively lower our cost of service. Further, creation and maintenance of a CLEC requires significant expenditures, and we may not realize much or any benefit from our investment in our subsidiary if we do not reduce our costs of network service through our subsidiary. In addition, if ILECs or other CLECs do not provide us with any access, we will not be able to use our RCLEC subsidiary as intended to improve the quality of our services or lower the cost of our services.

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If we are unable to effectively process local number and toll-free number portability provisioning in a timely manner, our growth may be negatively affected.

We support local number and toll-free number portability, which allows our customers to transfer to us and thereby retain their existing phone numbers when subscribing to our services. Transferring numbers is a manual process that can take up to 15 business days or longer to complete. A new customer of our services must maintain both our service and the customer’s existing phone service during the number transferring process. Any delay that we experience in transferring these numbers typically results from the fact that we depend on third-party carriers to transfer these numbers, a process that we do not control, and these third-party carriers may refuse or substantially delay the transfer of these numbers to us. Local number portability is considered an important feature by many potential customers, and if we fail to reduce any related delays, we may experience increased difficulty in acquiring new customers. Moreover, the FCC requires Internet voice communications providers, which are companies like us that provide services similar to traditional phone companies, including the ability to make calls to and receive calls from the public phone network, to comply with specified number porting timeframes when customers leave our service for the services of another provider. In Canada, the CRTC has imposed a similar number portability requirement on service providers like us. Similarly in the UK, Ofcom requires providers of electronic communications services, like us, to provide number portability as soon as practicable and on reasonable terms. If we, or our third-party carriers, are unable to process number portability requests within the requisite timeframes, we could be subject to fines and penalties, including, in the UK, compensation payable to our customers. Additionally, in the U.S., both customers and carriers may seek relief from the relevant state public utility commission, the FCC, or in state or federal court for violation of local number portability requirements.

Our business could suffer if we cannot obtain or retain direct inward dialing numbers, or DIDs, are prohibited from obtaining local or toll-free numbers, or are limited to distributing local or toll-free numbers to only certain customers.

Our future success depends on our ability to procure large quantities of local and toll-free DIDs in the U.S. and foreign countries in desirable locations at a reasonable cost and without restrictions. Our ability to procure and distribute DIDs depends on factors outside of our control, such as applicable regulations, the practices of the communications carriers that provide DIDs, the cost of these DIDs, and the level of demand for new DIDs. Due to their limited availability, there are certain popular area code prefixes that we generally cannot obtain. Our inability to acquire DIDs for our operations would make our services less attractive to potential customers in the affected local geographic areas. In addition, future growth in our customer base, together with growth in the customer bases of other providers of cloud-based business communications, has increased, which increases our dependence on needing sufficiently large quantities of DIDs.

We rely on third-party hardware and software that may be difficult to replace or which could cause errors or failures of our service.

We rely on purchased or leased hardware and software licensed from third parties in order to offer our service. In some cases, we integrate third-party licensed software components into our platform. This hardware and software may not continue to be available at reasonable prices or on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Any loss of the right to use any of this hardware or software could significantly increase our expenses and otherwise result in delays in the provisioning of our service until equivalent technology is either developed by us, or, if available, is identified, obtained and integrated. Any errors or defects in third-party hardware or software could result in errors or a failure of our service which could harm our business.

We depend on two vendors and one fulfillment agent to configure and deliver the phones that we sell, and any delay or interruption in manufacturing, configuring and delivering by these third parties would result in delayed or reduced shipments to our customers and may harm our business.

We rely on Cisco Systems, Inc. and Polycom, Inc. for phones that we offer for sale to our customers that use our services. In addition, we rely on one fulfillment agent to configure and deliver our phones to our customers. We currently do not have long-term contracts with these vendors or with the fulfillment agent. As a result, these third parties are not obligated to provide products to or perform services for us for any specific period, in any specific quantities or at any specific price, except as may be provided in a particular purchase order. If these third parties are unable to deliver phones of acceptable quality or in a timely manner, our ability to bring services to market, the reliability of our services and our reputation could suffer. We expect that it could take several months to effectively transition to new third-party manufacturers or fulfillment agents.

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If our vendor-supplied phones are not able to interoperate effectively with our own back-end servers and systems, our customers may not be able to use our service, which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Phones must interoperate with our back-end servers and systems, which contain complex specifications and utilize multiple protocol standards and software applications. Currently, the phones we sell are manufactured by only two third-party providers, Cisco Systems, Inc. and Polycom, Inc. If either of these providers changes the operation of their phones, we will be required to undertake development and testing efforts to ensure that the new phones interoperate with our system. These efforts may require significant capital and employee resources, and we may not accomplish these development efforts quickly or cost-effectively, if at all. If our vendor-supplied phones do not interoperate effectively with our system, our customers’ ability to use our services could be delayed or orders for our services could be cancelled, which would harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We may not be able to manage our inventory levels effectively, which may lead to inventory obsolescence that would force us to incur inventory write-downs.

Our vendor-supplied phones have lead times of up to 20 weeks for delivery and are built to forecasts that are necessarily imprecise. It is likely that from time to time we will have either excess or insufficient product inventory. In addition, because we rely on third-party vendors for the supply of our vendor-supplied phones, our inventory levels are subject to the conditions regarding the timing of purchase orders and delivery dates that are not within our control. Excess inventory levels would subject us to the risk of inventory obsolescence, while insufficient levels of inventory may negatively affect relations with customers. For instance, our customers rely upon our ability to meet committed delivery dates, and any disruption in the supply of our services could result in loss of customers or harm to our ability to attract new customers. Any of these factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We may require additional capital to pursue our business objectives and to respond to business opportunities, challenges or unforeseen circumstances. If capital is not available to us, our business, results of operations and financial condition may be adversely affected.

We intend to continue to make expenditures and investments to support the growth of our business and may require additional capital to pursue our business objectives and respond to business opportunities, challenges or unforeseen circumstances, including the need to develop new solutions or enhance our existing solutions, enhance our operating infrastructure, and acquire complementary businesses and technologies. Accordingly, we may need to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. However, additional funds may not be available when we need them on terms that are acceptable to us, or at all. Any debt financing that we secure in the future could involve further restrictive covenants, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities.

During 2013, we were temporarily out of compliance with the covenant in our credit agreement with Silicon Valley Bank regarding maintaining a minimum cash balance. Silicon Valley Bank waived this non-compliance effective August 14, 2013. We cannot assure you that we will be able to comply with this covenant or any other affirmative or negative covenants in future quarters, as required by our credit agreement. In the event that we are unable to comply with these covenants in the future, we would seek an amendment or waiver of the covenants. We cannot assure you that any such waiver or amendment would be granted. In such event, we may be required to repay any or all of our existing borrowings, and we cannot assure you that we will be able to borrow under our existing credit agreements, or obtain alternative funding arrangements on commercially reasonable terms, or at all.

In addition, volatility in the credit markets may have an adverse effect on our ability to obtain debt financing. If we raise additional funds through further issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences, and privileges superior to those of holders of our Class A common stock. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us, when we require it, our ability to continue to pursue our business objectives and to respond to business opportunities, challenges or unforeseen circumstances could be significantly limited, and our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects could be materially and adversely affected.

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Our corporate headquarters, one of our data centers and co-location facilities, our sole third-party customer service and support facility, and a research and development facility are located near known earthquake fault zones, and the occurrence of an earthquake, tsunami or other catastrophic disaster could damage our facilities or the facilities of our contractors, which could cause us to curtail our operations.

Our corporate headquarters, one of our data centers and one of our subsidiary’s co-location facilities are located in northern California, our customer service call center operated by our contractor is located in the Philippines, and one of our research and development facilities is located on the coast of China. All of these locations are on the Pacific Rim near known earthquake fault zones and, therefore, are vulnerable to damage from earthquakes and tsunamis. Additionally, our China facility, our sole third-party customer service and support facility in the Philippines, and our CLEC subsidiary’s co-location facility in Florida are located in areas subject to hurricanes. We and our contractors are also vulnerable to other types of disasters, such as power loss, fire, floods, pandemics, cyber-attack, war, political unrest and terrorist attacks and similar events that are beyond our control. If any disasters were to occur, our ability to operate our business could be seriously impaired, and we may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, loss of intellectual property, delays in our services development, lengthy interruptions in our services, breaches of data security and loss of critical data, all of which could harm our future results of operations. In addition, we do not carry earthquake insurance and we may not have adequate insurance to cover our losses resulting from other disasters or other similar significant business interruptions. Any significant losses that are not recoverable under our insurance policies could seriously impair our business and financial condition.

The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources, divert management’s attention and affect our ability to attract and retain executive management and qualified board members.

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, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or the Dodd-Frank Act, the listing requirements of the New York Stock Exchange and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Compliance with these rules and regulations may increase our legal and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming or costly and increase demand on our systems and resources, particularly after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” The Exchange Act requires, among other things, that we file annual, quarterly, and current reports with respect to our business and results of operations. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and, if required, improve our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting to meet this standard, significant resources and management oversight may be required. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could harm our business and results of operations. Although we have already hired additional employees to comply with these requirements, we may need to hire more employees in the future or engage outside consultants, which will increase our costs and expenses.

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 expenses and a diversion of management’s time and attention from revenue-generating activities to compliance activities. Our failure to comply with these laws, regulations and standards could materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

However, for as long as we remain an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act we will take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies,” including, but not limited to, exemption from the requirement to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We will take advantage of these reporting exemptions until we are no longer an “emerging growth company.”

We will cease to be an “emerging growth company” upon the earliest of (i) January 1, 2019, (ii) the first fiscal year after our annual gross revenues are $1.0 billion or more, (iii) the date on which we have, during the previous three-year period, issued more than $1.0 billion in non-convertible debt securities or (iv) as of the end of any fiscal year in which the market value of our common stock held by non-affiliates exceeded $700 million as of the end of the second quarter of that fiscal year.

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As a result of filings required of a public company, our business and financial condition has become more visible, which we believe may result in more litigation, including by competitors and other third parties. If such claims are successful, our business and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected, 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 and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

We are an “emerging growth company,” and the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies may make our Class A common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, and we will take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that apply to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies” including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We cannot predict if investors will find our Class A common stock less attractive because we may rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our Class A common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our Class A common stock and our stock price may be more volatile.

In addition, Section 107 of the JOBS Act also provides that an “emerging growth company” can take advantage of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act for complying with new or revised accounting standards. In other words, an “emerging growth company” can delay the adoption of certain accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. However, we are choosing to “opt out” of this extended transition period, and as a result, we will comply with new or revised accounting standards on the relevant dates on which adoption of such standards is required for non-emerging growth companies. Section 107 of the JOBS Act provides that our decision to opt out of the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards is irrevocable.

The market price of our Class A common stock is likely to be volatile and could decline.

The stock market in general, and the market for technology-related stocks in particular, has been highly volatile. As a result, the market price and trading volume for our Class A common stock may also be highly volatile, and investors in our Class A common stock may experience a decrease in the value of their shares, including decreases unrelated to our operating performance or prospects. Factors that could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to fluctuate significantly include:

Any of these factors may result in large and sudden changes in the trading volume and market price of our Class A common stock and may prevent investors from being able to sell their shares at or above the price they paid for your shares of our Class A common stock. Following periods of volatility in the market price of a company’s securities, stockholders often file securities class-action lawsuits against such company. Our involvement in a class-action lawsuit could divert our senior management’s attention and, if adversely determined, could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

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Sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock in the public market, or the perception that these sales might occur, could cause our share price to decline.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock in the public market, or the perception that these sales might occur, could depress the market price of our Class A common stock and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. As of December 31, 2013, we had 53,043,295 shares of Class B common stock and 9,200,774 shares of Class A common stock outstanding.

Of the shares of our Class A common stock outstanding, 8,625,000 shares are freely tradable without restriction or further registration under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, except for any shares held by our “affiliates” as defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act. The remaining 53,619,069 shares of Class A and Class B common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2013, are restricted as a result of securities laws, lock-up agreements, or other contractual restrictions until at least March 26, 2014, subject in each case to certain exceptions.

As of December 31, 2013, the holders of an aggregate of 31,956,794 shares of Class B common stock, or 51.3% of the total number of outstanding shares of our Class A and Class B common stock, based on shares outstanding as of December 31, 2013, including holders of warrants exercisable for 210,316 shares of Class B common stock, in each case calculated on a fully diluted basis, or their permitted transferees, will be entitled to rights with respect to registration of these shares under the Securities Act pursuant to an investors’ rights agreement. Shares of our Class B common stock automatically will convert into shares of our Class A common stock upon any sale or transfer, whether or not for value, except for certain transfers described in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to become effective upon completion of this offering. If these holders of our Class B common stock, by exercising their registration rights, sell a large number of shares, they could materially and adversely affect the market price for our Class A common stock. If we file a registration statement for the purposes of selling additional shares to raise capital and are required to include shares held by these holders pursuant to the exercise of their registration rights, our ability to raise capital may be impaired. In addition, as of December 31, 2013, there were outstanding options to purchase 11,155,743 shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock, 5,023,406 shares of which were vested as of December 31, 2013. As of December 31, 2013, there were also 68,100 shares of restricted stock units of our Class B common stock, none of which were vested as of December 31, 2013.  These shares are freely tradable, although they are subject to the lock-up arrangements we describe below and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and vesting limitations.

In connection with our initial public offering, we, our directors and officers, and substantially all of our stockholders and holders of options to purchase our stock who held such shares or options prior to the offering, agreed, subject to certain limited exceptions, not to offer, sell, contract to sell or otherwise dispose of, or enter into, any transaction that is designed to, or could be expected to, result in the disposition of any shares of our common stock or other securities convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for shares of our common stock until March 26, 2014 without the prior written consent of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC. In the case of releases with respect to our officers or directors, the representatives of the underwriters will, at least three business days before the effective date of such release, notify us of the impending release. We have agreed to announce such release by press release through a major news service at least two business days before the effective date of the release. We cannot predict what effect, if any, market sales of securities held by our stockholders or the availability of these securities for future sale will have on the market price of our Class A common stock.

We may also issue shares of our Class A common stock or other securities from time to time as consideration for future acquisitions and investments. If any such acquisition or investment is significant, the number of shares of our Class A common stock, or the number or aggregate principal amount, as the case may be, of other securities that we may issue may in turn be substantial. We may also grant registration rights covering those shares of our Class A common stock or other securities in connection with any such acquisitions and investments.

The dual class structure of our common stock as contained in our charter documents has the effect of concentrating voting control with a limited number of stockholders that held our stock prior to our initial public offering, including our founders and our executive officers, employees and directors and their affiliates, and venture capital investors, and limiting other stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters.

Our Class B common stock has 10 votes per share, and our Class A common stock has one vote per share. Stockholders who hold shares of Class B common stock, including our founders, previous investors and our executive officers, employees and directors and their affiliates, together hold approximately 98.3% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. As a result, for the foreseeable future, our pre-offering stockholders will have significant influence over the management and affairs of our company and over the outcome of all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger, consolidation or sale of substantially all of our assets.

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In addition, the holders of Class B common stock collectively will continue to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval even if their stock holdings represent less than 50% of the outstanding shares of our common stock. Because of the ten-to-one voting ratio between our Class B and Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock collectively will continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock so long as the shares of Class B common stock represent at least 10% of all outstanding shares of our Class A and Class B common stock. This concentrated control will limit your ability to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future, and, as a result, the market price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected.

Future transfers by holders of Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting to Class A common stock, which will have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of Class B common stock who retain their shares in the long term. If, for example, Mr. Shmunis retains a significant portion of his holdings of Class B common stock for an extended period of time, he could, in the future, control a majority of the combined voting power of our Class A and Class B common stock. As a board member, Mr. Shmunis owes a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our stockholders. As a stockholder, even a controlling stockholder, Mr. Shmunis is entitled to vote his shares in his own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our stockholders generally.

We have never paid cash dividends and do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our common stock.

We currently do not plan to declare dividends on share of our common stock in the foreseeable future and plan to, instead, retain any earnings to finance our operations and growth. Because we have never paid cash dividends and do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future, the only opportunity to achieve a return on an investor’s investment in our company will be if the market price of our Class A common stock appreciates and the investor sells its shares at a profit. There is no guarantee that the price of our Class A common stock that will prevail in the market will ever exceed the price that an investor pays.

 

If research analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, or if they issue unfavorable commentary or downgrade our Class A common stock, our stock price and trading volume may decline.

The trading market for our Class A common stock will depend in part on the research and reports that research analysts publish about us and our business. If we do not establish and maintain adequate research coverage or if one or more analysts who covers us downgrades our stock or publishes inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, the price of our Class A common stock may decline. If one or more of the research analysts ceases coverage of our company or fails to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our Class A common stock may decrease, which could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.

Anti-takeover provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and bylaws and under Delaware corporate law could make an acquisition of us 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 certificate of incorporation and bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws include provisions that:

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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 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.

 

None.

 

Our corporate headquarters is located in San Mateo, California, and consists of approximately 31,000 square feet of office space, under a lease expiring on May 31, 2017.

We also lease offices in Denver, Colorado; London, England and Xiamen, China. In addition, we lease space from third party datacenter hosting facilities under co-location agreements that support our cloud infrastructure, the most significant locations being Vienna, Virginia; San Jose, California; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Zurich, Switzerland.  We expect to expand our facilities and datacenter capacity, including at our corporate headquarters and in certain field locations, during the year ended December 31, 2014. We believe that we will be able to obtain additional space at other locations at commercially reasonable terms to support our continuing expansion.

 

 

We are subject to certain legal proceedings described below, and from time to time may be involved in a variety of claims, lawsuits, investigations, and proceedings relating to contractual disputes, intellectual property rights, employment matters, regulatory compliance matters, and other litigation matters relating to various claims that arise in the normal course of business. Defending such proceedings is costly and can impose a significant burden on management and employees, we may receive unfavorable preliminary or interim rulings in the course of litigation, and there can be no assurances that favorable final outcomes will be obtained.

We determine whether an estimated loss from a contingency should be accrued by assessing whether a loss is deemed probable and can be reasonably estimated. We assess our potential liability by analyzing specific litigation and regulatory matters using reasonably available information. We develop our views on estimated losses in consultation with inside and outside counsel, which involves a subjective analysis of potential results and outcomes, assuming various combinations of appropriate litigation and settlement strategies. Legal fees are expensed in the period in which they are incurred. As of December 31, 2013, we did not have any accrued liabilities recorded for such loss contingencies. At December 31, 2012, we recorded accrued liabilities of $1.1 million, for the probable and estimable amount of all loss contingencies related to legal matters.

In June 2011, j2 Global, Inc. (“j2”), and Advanced Messaging Technologies, Inc. (“Advanced Messaging”), filed a joint complaint against us in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Case No. 2:11-cv-04686-DDP-AJW, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,208,638, 6,350,066, and 7,020,132, and seeking a permanent injunction, damages, and attorneys’ fees should judgment be found against us. On March 4, 2013, Advanced Messaging filed a second complaint against us in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Case No. 2:13-CV-01526, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,975,368. On April 26, 2013, we entered into a license and settlement agreement with j2 and one of its affiliates to settle the matters. Under the terms of the settlement, the parties granted each other certain patent cross-licenses for over 10 years and the parties have dismissed all claims in these matters with prejudice.

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On December 21, 2012, CallWave Communications, LLC (“CallWave”), which we believe is a non-practicing entity, filed a lawsuit against us in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, CallWave Communications, LLC v. RingCentral, Inc., Case No. 1:12-cv-01748-RGA alleging patent infringement by us and AT&T, a reseller of our products and services. CallWave has asserted similar claims against other companies, including Google Inc., AT&T Inc., AT&T Mobility LLC, Sprint Nextel Corp., T-Mobile US, Inc., Verizon Communications, Inc., Research in Motion Limited and Telovations, Inc. Since then, CallWave amended its complaint twice such that they asserted U.S. Patents Nos. 7,397,910 (the ‘910 patent), 7,555,110 (the ‘110 patent), 7,822,188 (the ‘188 patent), 8,325,901 (the ‘901 patent), 7,636,428 (the ‘428 patent), 8,351,591 (the ‘591 patent), 8,064,588 (the ‘588 patent), and 7,839,987 (the ‘987 patent) against our products and services and AT&T’s Office@Hand products and services, seeking damages but no injunction. On April 1, 2013, we filed an Answer and Counterclaims denying all claims by CallWave in its first amended complaint. On June 3, 2013, we filed an Answer and Counterclaims denying all claims by CallWave in its second amended complaint. In September 2013, we entered into a license and settlement agreement with CallWave to settle the matter. Under the terms of the settlement, CallWave granted us a non-exclusive license and agreed to dismiss all claims in these matters with prejudice, including any claims for which we were required to indemnify and defend AT&T.   As part of the settlement, we agreed to pay CallWave cash consideration which it recognized as general and administrative expense during the second quarter as it determined the payment to be a cost to settle a loss contingency, and the amount was probable and estimable.  During the third quarter of 2013, we paid substantially all of the cash consideration due under the settlement agreement.

On September 6, 2013, we received a letter from Capital Legal Group, LLC on behalf of Cronos Technologies LLC, which we believe is a non-practicing entity, asserting that we should consider engaging in licensing discussions regarding U.S. Patent No. 5,664,110 (the “Cronos patent”). In October 2013, we obtained non-exclusive rights to the Cronos patent through August 19, 2016. No complaint or other action has been filed, no specific demand for a license has been made, and the letter does not allege any infringement by us of the referenced patent.

 

 

Not applicable.

 

 

 

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PART II

 

Market Information for Common Stock

Our Class A common stock has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “RNG” since September 27, 2013.

The following table sets forth for the indicated periods the high and low closing sales prices of our Class A common stock as reported by the New York Stock Exchange:

 

Our Class B common stock is not listed or traded on any stock exchange.

Dividend Policy

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not intend to declare or pay any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Any further determination to pay dividends on our capital stock will be at the discretion of our board of directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors considers relevant.

Stockholders

As of February 21, 2014, there were 31 stockholders of record of our Class A common stock and 166 stockholders of record of our Class B common stock. Because most of our shares of Class A common stock are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of beneficial stockholders represented by these record holders.

Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans

Information regarding the securities authorized for issuance under our equity compensation plans can be found under Item 12 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Stock Performance Graph

The following shall not be deemed “filed” for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or incorporated by reference into any of our other filings under the Exchange Act or the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, except to the extent we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing. The graph below compares the cumulative total return on our Class A common stock with that of the Russell 2000 Index and the Nasdaq Computer Index. The period shown commences on September 27, 2013 and ends on December 31, the end of our last fiscal year.  The graph assumes $100 was invested at the close of market on September 27, 2013 in the Class A common stock of RingCentral, Inc., or on September 30, 2013 in the Russell 2000 Index and the Nasdaq Computer Index, and assumes the reinvestment of any dividends. The stock price performance on the following graph is not intended to forecast or be indicative of future stock price performance of our Class A common stock.

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The consolidated statements of operations data and the consolidated balance sheets data are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements and should be read together with “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”, our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this filing. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of our results in any future period.

 

 

 

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You should read the following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included elsewhere in this report. As discussed in the section titled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements,” the following discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this report, particularly in “Risk Factors.”

Overview

We are a leading provider of software-as-a-service, or SaaS, solutions for business communications. We believe that our innovative, cloud-based approach disrupts the large market for business communications solutions by providing flexible and cost-effective services that support distributed workforces, mobile employees and the proliferation of “bring-your-own” communications devices. We enable convenient and effective communications for our customers, across all their locations, all their employees, all the time, thus enabling a more productive and dynamic workforce. RingCentral Office, our flagship service, is a multi-user, enterprise-grade communications solution that enables our customers and their employees to communicate via different channels and on multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones. We sell RingCentral Office in three editions: Standard, Premium and Enterprise.  Our Standard Edition of RingCentral Office includes call management, mobile applications, voice, business SMS, integration with Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and Microsoft Office and Outlook, and conferencing capabilities. Our Premium Edition includes the Standard Edition functionality together with Salesforce CRM integration, automatic call recording and premium support. Our Enterprise Edition, which we launched in January 2014, adds multipoint HD video and web conferencing and online meetings.

We founded our business in 1999 and currently offer three services: RingCentral Office, RingCentral Professional, and RingCentral Fax. Prior to 2009, substantially all of our revenues were derived from RingCentral Professional, which we previously sold as RingCentral Mobile, from RingCentral Fax, and from Extreme Fax, a discontinued service. In 2009, we began selling RingCentral Office, our current flagship service, to deliver an enterprise-grade SaaS multi-user communications solution, with advanced inbound and outbound voice, text, fax and HD video and web conferencing capabilities, delivered as a scalable solution.

We primarily generate revenues by selling subscriptions for our RingCentral Office, RingCentral Professional, and RingCentral Fax offerings. RingCentral Office is offered at monthly subscription rates, varying with the specific functionalities and services and the number of users. RingCentral Office customers generally pay higher monthly subscription rates than customers of our other service offerings. RingCentral Professional is offered at monthly subscription rates that vary based on the desired number of minutes usage and extensions allotted to the plan. RingCentral Fax is offered at monthly subscription rates that vary based on the desired number of pages and phone numbers allotted to the plan.

Our subscription plans have historically had monthly or annual contractual terms and over 90% of our current customers are on monthly contractual terms, although we also have subscription plans with multi-year contractual terms, generally with larger customers. We believe that this flexibility in contract duration is important to meet the different needs of our customers. Generally, our fees for subscription plans have been billed in advance via credit card. However, as the number of RingCentral Office customers grows, we expect to bill more customers through commercial invoices with customary payment terms and, accordingly, our levels of accounts receivable may increase. For fiscal 2013, 2012 and 2011, services revenues accounted for more than 90% of our total revenues. The remainder of our revenues is primarily comprised of product revenues from the sale of pre-configured office phones, which we offer as a convenience to our customers in connection with subscriptions to our services.

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We make significant upfront investments to acquire customers. Until 2009, we acquired most of our customer subscriptions through e-commerce transactions on our website driven by online marketing channels. Beginning in 2009, in connection with our introduction of RingCentral Office, we established a direct, inside sales force. Since then, we have continued investing in our direct, inside sales force while also developing indirect sales channels to market our brand and our service offerings. Our indirect sales channel consists of a network of over 1,500 sales agents and resellers, including AT&T, which we refer to collectively as resellers. We intend to continue to foster this network and to expand our network with other resellers. Beginning in 2011, we also began expanding into more traditional forms of media advertising, such as radio and billboard advertising.

Since its launch, our revenue growth has primarily been driven by our flagship RingCentral Office service offering, which has resulted in an increased number of customers, increased average subscription revenues per customer, and increased retention of our existing customer and user base. We define a “customer” as one individual billing relationship for the subscription to our services, which generally correlates to one company account per customer. We define a user as one person within a customer who has been granted a subscription license to use our services, such that the number of users per customer generally correlates closely to the number of employees within a customer account. For the fiscal years ended December 31, 2013, 2012 and 2011, no single customer accounted for more than 10% of our total revenues, and our 10 largest non-reseller customers accounted for less than 10% of our total revenues. As of December 31, 2013, we had over 300,000 customers from industries including advertising, finance, healthcare, legal services, non-profit organizations, real estate, retail and technology, and ranging in size from businesses with fewer than 10 users to more than 900 users. In October of 2013, we launched our United Kingdom operations, however for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2013, 2012 and 2011, 99% of our total revenues were generated in the U.S. and Canada, although we expect the percentage of our total revenues derived outside of the U.S. and Canada to grow as we expand internationally in the United Kingdom and beyond.  

The growth of our business and our future success depend on many factors, including our ability to expand our customer base to medium-sized and larger customers, continue to innovate, grow revenues from our existing customer base, expand our distribution channels and scale internationally. For example, as a result of our efforts to expand our customer base to target medium-sized and larger businesses, we expect to incur additional research and development and support and professional services costs and may experience longer sales cycles that may delay revenues associated with these costs.  Furthermore, because we have limited experience selling to larger businesses and international customers, our investment in marketing our services to these potential customers may not be successful, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations and our overall ability to grow our customer base. While these areas represent significant opportunities for us, they also pose risks and challenges that we must successfully address in order to sustain the growth of our business and improve our operating results. In addition, there has been substantial litigation in the areas in which we operate regarding intellectual property rights, including third parties claiming patent infringement which we have been subjected to and is further described under “Item 3—Legal Proceedings” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and in Note 5 to our consolidated financial statements. We cannot assure you that we will be successful in defending against any such claims or that we will be able to settle any ongoing or future claims or that any such settlement would be on terms that are favorable to us.

We have experienced significant growth in recent periods, with total revenues of $160.5 million, $114.5 million and $78.9 million in fiscal years ended December 31, 2013, 2012 and 2011, respectively, generating year-over-year increases of 40% and 45%, respectively. We have continued to make significant expenditures and investments, including those in sales and marketing, research and development, infrastructure and operations and incurred net losses of $46.1 million, $35.4 million and $13.9 million, in fiscal years 2013, 2012 and 2011, respectively.

Components of Results of Operations

Revenues

Our revenues consist of services revenues and product revenues. Our services revenues include all fees billed in connection with subscriptions to our RingCentral Office, RingCentral Professional, and RingCentral Fax services. These fees include recurring fixed plan subscription fees, variable usage-based fees for usage in excess of plan limits, recurring administrative cost recovery fees, one-time fees and other recurring fees related to our services. We provide our services to our customers pursuant to contractual arrangements that range in duration from one month to three years. We provide our services to our customers pursuant to either “click through” online agreements for service terms up to one year or written agreements when the arrangement is expected to be one year or longer. Our multi-year engagements do not typically exceed three years. We offer our services based on the functionalities and services selected by a customer, and generally our service arrangements automatically renew for some additional period at the end of the initial subscription term. We believe that this flexibility in contract duration is important to meet the different needs of our customers.

We generally bill our service fees in advance. We recognize services revenues over the term of the subscription, except for one-time fees, which we recognize ratably on a straight-line basis over the period of the estimated average customer life and for variable usage-based fees, which we recognize over the estimated usage period in a manner that approximates actual usage. Amounts billed in excess of revenues recognized for the period are reported as deferred revenue on our consolidated balance sheet.

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Our services revenues are primarily driven by recurring subscription services. Historically, we have acquired more new customers in the first and third quarters of a fiscal year. However, we have seen this trend become less pronounced as our business has grown and sales of RingCentral Office have accounted for a higher percentage of our total revenues.

Our product revenues consist primarily of the sale of pre-configured office phones used in connection with our services and include shipping and handling fees. Product revenues are billed at the time the order is received and recognized when the product has been delivered to the customer.

We also generate services revenues and product revenues through sales of our services and products by resellers. When we assume a majority of the business risks associated with performance of the contractual obligations, we record the revenues on a gross basis and amounts retained by our resellers are recorded as sales and marketing expenses. Our assumption of such business risks is evidenced when, among other things, we take responsibility for delivery of the service or product, establish pricing of the arrangement, assume credit and inventory risk, and are the primary obligor in the arrangement. When a reseller assumes the majority of the business risks associated with the performance of the contractual obligations, we record the associated revenues at the net amount remitted to us by the reseller. Revenues from resellers have predominantly been recorded on a gross basis for all periods presented.

Cost of Revenues and Gross Margin

Our cost of services revenues primarily consists of fees that we pay to third-party telecommunications providers, network operations, costs to build out and maintain data centers, including co-location fees for the right to place our servers in data centers owned by third parties, depreciation of equipment, along with related utilities and maintenance costs, personnel costs associated with customer care and support of the functionality of our platform and data center operations, including share-based compensation expenses, and allocated costs of facilities and information technology.

Services gross margin, which we define as services revenues minus cost of services revenues expressed as a percentage of services revenues, can fluctuate based on a number of factors, including the costs we pay to third-party telecommunications providers, the timing of capital expenditures and related depreciation charges and changes in headcount. We expect to continue investing in our network infrastructure and customer support function to maintain high availability, quality of service, and security. As our business grows, we expect to continue to reduce the percentage of our services revenues that we spend on telecommunications origination and termination, driven by increased purchasing leverage and from increased deployment of hardware to carry our own telecommunications traffic in several regional markets. We also expect to realize economies of scale in network infrastructure, personnel, and customer support. We expect our services gross margin to increase modestly over time, although it may fluctuate from period to period depending on all of these factors including seasonality.

Cost of product revenues is comprised primarily of the cost associated with purchased phones, as well as personnel costs for contractors, and allocated costs of facilities and information technology related to the procurement, management, and shipment of phones.

We sell our products as a convenience to our customers when they subscribe to our services. We often offer significant product discounts and may sell our products at or below cost as an incentive for customers to subscribe to our services. We therefore expect our product gross margin, which we define as product revenues minus cost of product revenues expressed as a percentage of product revenues, to remain negligible to negative for the foreseeable future.

 

Operating Expenses

We classify our operating expenses as research and development, sales and marketing and general and administrative expenses.

Our research and development efforts are focused on developing new and expanded features for our services, integrations with distributors and other software platforms and improvements to our backend architecture. Research and development expenses consist primarily of personnel costs for employees and contractors, including share-based compensation expenses, and allocated costs of facilities and information technology, software tools, and product certification. We expense research and development costs as incurred, except for certain internal-use software development costs that we capitalize. We believe that continued investment in our services is important for our future growth, and we expect our research and development expenses to continue to increase in absolute dollars for the foreseeable future, although these expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of our total revenues from period to period depending on the timing of these expenses.

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Sales and marketing expenses are the largest component of our operating expenses and consist primarily of personnel costs for employees and contractors directly associated with our sales and marketing activities, including share-based compensation expenses, Internet advertising fees, radio and billboard advertising, public relations, commissions paid to resellers and other third parties, trade shows, travel expenses, credit card fees, marketing and promotional activities and allocated costs of facilities and information technology. We expect our sales and marketing expenses to continue to increase in absolute dollars for the foreseeable future as we expand our sales and marketing efforts domestically and internationally and continue to build our brand, although these expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of our total revenues from period to period depending on the timing of these expenses.

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel costs, including share-based compensation expenses, for employees and contractors engaged in infrastructure and administrative activities to support the day-to-day operations of our business. Other significant components of general and administrative expenses include professional service fees, allocated costs of facilities and information technology, cost of compliance with certain government imposed taxes, and the costs of legal matters and loss contingencies. We incur additional expenses as a result of operating as a public company, including costs to comply with the rules and regulations applicable to companies listed on a national securities exchange, costs related to compliance and reporting obligations pursuant to the rules and regulations of the SEC, and increased expenses for insurance, investor relations, and professional services. We expect our general and administrative expenses to continue to increase in absolute dollars for the foreseeable future, although these expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of our total revenues from period to period, depending on the timing of these expenses.

Results of Operations

The following tables set forth selected consolidated statement of operations data and such data as a percentage of total revenues.  The historical results presented below are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for any future period (in thousands):

 

 

 

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Percentage of Total Revenues