Item 1. BUSINESS
Overview. Teradata Corporation ("we," "us," "Teradata," or the "Company") is a multi-cloud enterprise data warehouse platform provider focused on helping companies leverage all their data across an enterprise to uncover real-time intelligence, at scale. In doing so, we help companies to find answers to their toughest business challenges. All efforts we perform are in support of our purpose of transforming how businesses work and people live through the power of data.
Teradata has broadened its market opportunity by evolving from an on-premises only, enterprise data warehouse company to a multi-cloud, enterprise data warehouse platform provider. We help our customers integrate and simplify their data and analytics ecosystem, streamline access and management of data, and use analytics to derive business value from diverse data types. Our target market focuses on organizations that are the world's most demanding, large-scale users of data.
The largest companies in the world have spent decades building mission-critical, complex, and large-scale on-premises data environments. However, these companies face significant challenges from ecosystems that have grown over time, including siloed data and conflicting and duplicative solutions, resulting in environments that are highly complex and expensive to maintain and manage. Despite these companies investing heavily in technology, people, and infrastructure, their employees are unable to effectively access the data they need to efficiently run their businesses or activate data to make intelligent and innovative business decisions. In addition, most of these organizations are also experiencing a dramatic increase in data volumes and complexity due to digital transformation.
As companies seek greater agility and flexibility demanded by today’s digitalized and highly disruptive economy, they are turning to cloud infrastructures. By accessing a data warehouse platform integrated within a cloud-based ecosystem, companies can flexibly access and pay for capabilities on demand integrated with the elasticity of cloud. This provides companies the ability to deploy projects and initiatives, with agility and as needed. Given the petabytes of data and the millions of queries executed daily on-premises, we know that the journey to cloud will be a significant endeavor for our customers leading to ecosystems spanning on-premises and cloud for the foreseeable future. With companies pivoting to invest in the cloud, we believe it is essential for these businesses to be able to integrate ecosystems across on-premises and across multi-cloud environments, simplify access to data wherever it resides and accommodate analytics at massive scale and speed. As a result, we believe that the market for our solutions and services is large and growing.
Our solution, Teradata Vantage™, is our data warehouse platform that allows companies to leverage all of their data across an enterprise, whether in public or private clouds, on-premises, or in a multi-cloud environment. It connects multiple sources of data to drive ecosystem simplification, delivers multi-dimensional scale and integration, and it supports customers on their journey to cloud through an integrated migration. Teradata is a leader in enabling the migration of a company's data to a cloud based ecosystem by running the same software platform in all deployments (on-premises or public cloud), providing software license portability, data and workload automation tools, as well as associated services.
Teradata Vantage also contains a secure, highly concurrent and resilient analytics engine that addresses the scalability demands of our target market, the largest companies in the world. Vantage is an open platform offering full integration of datasets, tools, analytical languages and functions within one platform, including leading commercial and open source technologies. Teradata has also made it easier for customers to purchase our solution via subscription offerings, and flexible, "pay for what you use" consumption pricing. These combined capabilities enable companies to reduce complexity, risk, and cost, while leveraging data as an asset in solving their business challenges and driving business outcomes, which can include, among other things:
•Improving customer experience and profitability,
•Improving operational efficiency,
•Driving financial transformation with accurate and timely data,
•Creating a single integrated view of customers across digital and physical channels, and
•Creating more efficient utilization of assets through machine learning of sensor data.
Our business consulting services include a broad range of offerings, including support for organizations to establish a data and analytics vision, enable a multi-cloud ecosystem architecture and identify and operationalize analytical opportunities to ensure their ecosystem investments deliver significant value. In addition, we offer robust support and maintenance services for our offerings.
Teradata operates from numerous locations within the United States with the primary locations being San Diego, California, and Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, we have sales, services, research and development, and administrative offices located in 35 countries.
For the calendar year ended December 31, 2020, we had total revenues of $1.836 billion, of which approximately 56% was derived from the Americas region (North America and Latin America) and 44% from the International regions (Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Japan). For financial information about our segments and geographic information, see "Note 14-Segment, Other Supplemental Information and Concentrations" in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements elsewhere in this Annual Report.
History. Teradata originated as a startup in a garage in Brentwood, California, and was incorporated in 1979 as a Delaware corporation, driven by the need for robust computing power to harness the value of aggregated data. In 1991, Teradata was acquired and operated as a division until it was spun off as an independent, publicly-traded company named Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) on September 30, 2007.
Industry and Market Opportunity. Our view is that data and analytics continue to be a management priority for industry-leading companies. We believe that companies are facing significant ongoing increases in data volumes and proliferation of data silos. Furthermore, the agility provided by cloud-based technologies provides significant benefit, but also creates additional complexity, with the rise of and ecosystems that must span multiple cloud and on-premises environments. These factors all contribute to the increased complexity, cost, and risk associated with managing data and analytic environments. This is particularly true for our target market of global enterprise companies, and we believe that these companies require tightly integrated solutions that can accommodate significant scale and speed. We are focused on both new customer acquisition as well as growth of software consumption within our large and established customer base.
We believe Teradata’s strategy positions us to address this large market opportunity within the growing multi-billion dollar data management and analytics markets. We believe our multi-cloud data warehouse software solution will lead to reduced risk and cost for enterprise companies while enabling data insights and outcomes driving meaningful business value. We also believe our experience positions us to support these companies with the design and implementation of next generation secure, multi-cloud data and analytics ecosystems. We have tailored Teradata's offerings to provide flexibility and choice of deployment environments, whether on-premises or in one of the top public clouds, alongside portability of licenses, allowing companies to de-risk their investments.
Our Strategy. Teradata’s strategy is based on our differentiated value proposition for the top 10,000 largest enterprises in the world. Our strategy is to provide a multi-cloud data warehouse platform, Teradata Vantage. Teradata Vantage is a scalable, secure, highly concurrent and resilient data warehouse platform that is designed to help companies solve complex data challenges at scale. We enable enterprises with a data management solution to support their data and analytic ecosystems. Furthermore, as demand in the data warehouse market shifts to the cloud, we provide customers with the ability to migrate their data warehouse to a cloud-based platform.
We believe we are differentiated by providing our platform offering across a secure, multi-cloud ecosystem. This includes the ability to simplify the management of an ecosystem that spans on-premises or private cloud platform instances, alongside deployments in any of the top public cloud offerings including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Furthermore, we augment these offerings with our "pay as you go" consumption pricing to provide flexibility for customers to expand capabilities on an as-needed basis. The multi-cloud capability and consumption pricing combine to enable our customers to de-risk their investments and buying decisions, as well as provide public cloud vendor flexibility. With cloud elasticity and our multi-dimensional scalability, we provide a fast path for customers to grow analytics to scale, delivering robust business outcomes.
As customers seek to increasingly grow their footprint in cloud, our strategy supports existing and new on-premises customers on that journey with the fastest path to migration that is enabled through license portability, same software enabled in all environments, as well as data and workload migration tools and services. Through this differentiated set of offerings for our target market, we help customers build for the future, now.
By prioritizing the fundamental capabilities of a modern multi-cloud data warehouse, we are resetting expectations and market perceptions. We are enabling a competitive and compelling total cost of ownership by building out best-in-class capabilities that provide an easy experience for ingestion, exploration, development, consumption and operationalization of data and analytics. With an outstanding user experience and the flexibility of cloud, we are attracting new customers to grow from demos and trials, to scale.
Furthermore, with increasingly fragmented ecosystems consisting of best-of-breed tools, our strategy drives an open platform approach, enabling integration into cloud and partner ecosystems. This integration extends the data and analytical capabilities of our offerings, allowing our customers greater flexibility to leverage the tools of their choice, deployed on top of a scalable and robust data warehouse platform. By empowering customers and partners to build how they like, we enable hundreds of business outcomes and solutions.
Our strategic objectives are to:
•Strengthen our multi-cloud data warehouse offering by building out next generation cloud capabilities,
•Reset market perceptions to establish Teradata’s position in the cloud market,
•Enable end-to-end business outcomes through a seamless cloud user experience,
•Expand our product capabilities through deeper integration with cloud ecosystems,
•Focus on partner enablement to drive solution execution on Teradata Vantage,
•Accelerate our transition to the cloud by supporting our customers on their migration journeys,
•Expand strategic public Cloud Service Provider relationships,
•Expand our go-to-market reach through new customer acquisition, vertical investments, expanding customer success programs and strengthening our partner relationships, and
•Deliver operational excellence through efficient cost management and execution.
Our strategy is further supported by various people initiatives to drive a growth-oriented culture, as well as an increased focus on diversity, equity and inclusiveness, to attract and support high performing, top talent, and diverse teams.
Customers. Teradata concentrates on enterprise companies, the 10,000 largest businesses in the world, which view data as a strategic asset, with focus on both business users and technology buyers. We have an additional focus on the following industries: Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, Telecommunications, and Travel/Transportation. We believe that these industries provide a good fit for our analytic solutions and services as they typically have the greatest analytic potential with large and growing data volumes, as well as complex data management requirements, and large and varied groups of users. When looking at new customer acquisition, we aim to drive adoption of our Teradata Vantage software. In addition, we are targeting our existing customer base to increase the consumption of Teradata's software, and in particular, supporting our customers with their journeys to the cloud and to exploit new uses of data and analytics.
The extent to which any given customer contributes to our revenues has historically varied significantly from year to year and quarter to quarter, although we currently do not have any customer who represents 5% or more of our total revenue. We have been highly successful in converting customers from perpetual to subscription-based purchasing options, which results in more ratable revenue recognition and we believe this will increase the predictability of our revenue and the durability of our cash flows in the future. Due to the size and complexity of our sales transactions, the sales cycle can often be long.
Seasonality. Historically, our deal volume is seasonal, in line with customer spending patterns, with lower volume typically in the first quarter and higher volume generally in the fourth quarter of each calendar year. Such seasonality causes our working capital cash flow requirements to vary from quarter to quarter depending on the variability in the volume, timing, and mix of platform sales. As we have transitioned the business to subscription-based transactions, the business is becoming less seasonal as subscription renewals are more evenly distributed throughout the year. This is impacting timing of cash collection and billings. However, typical of the enterprise software market, Teradata will continue to have significant deal volume seasonality that skews to the fourth quarter. Historically, cash provided by operating activities is higher in the first half of the year due to collections of the higher receivable balances at December 31 driven by the higher volumes in the fourth quarter and receipts from annual renewals of our maintenance support agreements. In addition, deal volume in the third month of each quarter
has historically been significantly higher than in the first and second months. These factors, among others as more fully described in Item 1A, Risk Factors, elsewhere in this Annual Report, make forecasting more difficult and may adversely affect our ability to accurately predict financial results.
Backlog. Our backlog was approximately $2.9 billion at December 31, 2020, an increase from $2.7 billion on December 31, 2019. Approximately $1.5 billion of the backlog at December 31, 2020 is expected to be recognized as revenue in 2021. Backlog consists of firm contracts for work that has not yet been performed or goods that have not been delivered. Backlog includes $537 million at December 31, 2020 and $533 million at December 31, 2019 for backlog that had been invoiced, and therefore, was included in deferred revenue. Although we believe that the contract value included in backlog is firm, some contracts may provide that the Company is contractually obligated to perform but gives the customer the right to cancel for convenience by giving notice to Teradata.
Sales, Marketing and Partners
Sales and Marketing. We primarily sell and market our solutions and services through a direct sales force. We have greater than 80% of our employees in customer-facing and/or revenue-driving roles (including sales, marketing, consulting, customer service, and product engineering).
We support our sales force with marketing and training programs that are designed to:
•Grow awareness and increase perception of Teradata as a multi-cloud leader, highlighting our technology leadership, differentiation, cloud and analytics expertise;
•Lead customers on their cloud journeys with the benefits of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud capabilities;
•Create demand for and adoption of our Teradata Vantage data warehouse platform;
•Educate and enable the sales force with the skills and knowledge to deliver our value proposition; and
•Provide a robust set of tools for use by our sales teams.
Teradata focuses our brand messaging on the Company’s strength as a multi-cloud data warehouse platform provider. To support the Company’s growth objectives, we employ a broad range of marketing strategies, including programs to inform, educate and generate demand with customers and prospects, as well as keep our leading technology position at the forefront of the media, industry analysts, academics, and other influencers. These strategies include targeted account-based marketing, our global website, digital marketing, demos and trials of our software, webinars, virtual conferences and events now, and physical events when again safe to do so, post the global pandemic, public and media relations, social media, and an extensive customer reference program.
Strategic Partnerships. We seek to extend our sales and marketing reach by partnering with cloud service providers, alliance partners (including independent software vendors and open-source software distributors), leading global and regional systems integrators, consultants, and universities that we believe complement our differentiated offerings. Strategic partnerships are a key element in our ability to leverage the value and expand the scope of our data warehouse offering in the marketplace.
•Cloud Service Providers: Teradata has established partnerships with the top three global public cloud service providers: Amazon Web Services ("AWS"), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, so that Teradata can provide companies around the globe access to Teradata’s Vantage offering in the public cloud, both in a Do-It-Yourself or As-A-Service mode to accommodate customer preferences.
•Alliance Partners: Teradata has a focus on working collaboratively with independent software vendors in several areas, including tools, data and application integration solutions, data mining, analytics, business intelligence, and specific analytic and industry solutions. Our goal is to provide choices to our customers with partner offerings that are optimized and certified to work with Teradata Vantage to deliver end-to-end data warehouse analytic solutions and to provide comprehensive capabilities that support the customer’s analytic ecosystem.
•Systems Integrators and Consultants: We also work with a range of systems integrators and consultants who engage in the design, implementation, and integration of data warehouse and analytic solutions and analytic applications for our joint customers. Our strategic partnerships with select global consulting and
systems integration firms provide broad industry and technology expertise in the design of business solutions that leverage Teradata technology to enable enterprise analytics.
Competition. We compete in a large and growing data management and analytics market that is attractive to both current and new competitors. Participants in our general market include traditional data warehouse competitors such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, as well as new cloud-only data warehouse vendors (such as Amazon, Google, Snowflake), and open-source providers. We believe our focus on multi-cloud ecosystem simplification, solving for the most scalable and complex workloads and delivering business outcomes enables us to successfully compete within our target market. We believe that our Teradata Vantage platform is highly differentiated, delivers substantive scale and integration, and is uniquely positioned to provide significant business value to our customers. Furthermore, we provide our customers with the opportunity to de-risk their buying decisions with access to deploy across the top public clouds, private cloud and on-premises, coupled with flexibility in purchasing and portable licensing. For more information on competition, see Item 1A, Risk Factors, in this Annual Report.
We believe that the principal competitive factors for our products and services include: data and analytics experience; business outcome delivery; multi-cloud offerings and experience; customer references; technology leadership; product quality; performance, scalability, availability, and manageability; support and consulting services capabilities; management of technologies in a complex analytical ecosystem; industry knowledge; and total cost of ownership. We believe we have a competitive advantage in providing complete, integrated, and optimized data warehouse platform capabilities and analytic services that address customers’ business, technical, and architectural requirements. Our differentiation is especially strong in our target market of the world’s leading enterprises and their mission-critical, complex, large-scale environments and requirements.
Research and Development ("R&D"). We remain focused on designing and developing data warehouse technologies that anticipate our customers' evolving needs and support our customers in solving their most complex business challenges. Our teams are focused on extending our Teradata Vantage data warehouse platform to have differentiated capabilities for our customers’ multi-cloud and hybrid ecosystems. This includes simplifying the journey to cloud, as well as enabling a transformative cloud experience. With a focus on opening up the platform, we are building out deep integration with cloud data and analytic ecosystems, including advanced analytics and artificial intelligence tools. Furthermore, with a strong focus on partnerships, our R&D team is extending our platform to enable deeper partner integration with a broader range of solution and services providers.
We believe our extensive and deeply talented R&D workforce is one of our core strengths. Our R&D team is located in multiple locations around the world to take advantage of global engineering talent. We anticipate that we will continue to have significant R&D expenditures, which may include complementary strategic acquisitions, to help support the flow of innovative, high-quality cloud-based offerings with a superior user experience, as well as services, which are vital to our leading competitive position. For information regarding the accounting and costs included in R&D activities, see "Note 1-Description of Business, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies" in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements elsewhere in this Annual Report.
Intellectual Property and Technology. The Company owns 648 patents in the United States and 6 patents in foreign countries. The foreign patents are generally counterparts of the Company’s United States patents. The Company also is the exclusive licensee of four additional patents in the United States and three additional patents in foreign countries. Many of the patents that we own are licensed to others, and we are licensed to use certain patents owned by others. While our portfolio of patents and patent applications in aggregate is of significant value to our Company, we do not believe that any individual patent is by itself of material importance to our business.
In addition, the Company owns copyrights and trade secrets in our code base that comprises all of the Teradata software offerings, including analytic data platforms and analytic applications. Teradata’s software offerings reflect the investment of hundreds of person-years of development work.
The source code versions of our offerings are protected as trade secrets and, in all major markets, as unpublished copyright works. We take great efforts to protect our rights in all software offerings and related intellectual property; however, there can be no assurance that these measures will be successful. The Company owns the Teradata® word and logo trademarks, which are registered in the United States and in many foreign countries, as well as other trade names, service marks, and trademarks.
Sources of Materials. Our hardware components are assembled and configured by Flex Ltd. ("Flex"). Our platform line is designed to leverage the components from manufacturers that we believe are industry leaders. Our data storage devices and memory components utilize industry-standard technologies but are selected and configured to work optimally with our software and hardware platform. Flex also procures a wide variety of components used in the assembly process on our behalf. Although many of these components are available from multiple sources, Teradata utilizes preferred supplier relationships to better ensure more consistent quality, cost and delivery. Typically, these preferred suppliers maintain alternative processes and/or facilities to ensure business continuity of supply. Given our strategy to outsource product assembly activities to Flex and to source certain components from single suppliers, a disruption in production at Flex or at a supplier, or a global shortage of components, could impact the timing or profitability of customer shipments. In addition, a significant change in the forecasts to any of these preferred suppliers could result in purchase obligations for components that may be in excess of demand. Although the Company has not experienced significant disruptions in its supplier relationships due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing pandemic continues to present potential supply chain uncertainty, and the Company has implemented programs to mitigate these potential risks. For more information, see Item 1A Risk Factors in this Annual Report.
Human Capital
Teradata’s human capital management objectives are to attract, retain, and develop the highest quality of talent, which allows our employees to thrive while positioning us as to execute our Company strategy and drive profitable growth. Our future success depends on our ability to attract and retain the services of senior management and key personnel in all functional areas of our Company, with a heightened focus on sales and cloud talent. Competition for acquiring top talent and retaining our highly skilled personnel is intense throughout the IT industry. Our programs are designed to align to our core principles and focus on meaningful work, enabled management, a positive and inclusive workplace environment, career growth opportunities, and transparent and trustworthy leadership. We also provide competitive pay and offer comprehensive health and wellness benefits and programs.
As of December 31, 2020, we had approximately 7,543 employees globally, with approximately 30% employed in the United States and 70% across the rest of the world. Our global workforce is critical to our overall business strategy across target markets. During fiscal 2020, our overall headcount decreased by approximately 10% as we continued to align our talent needs to drive our Company’s cloud-first, profitable growth strategy, including through both voluntary and involuntary workforce rationalization measures.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Teradata’s core strength is our people, and creating an inclusive workplace where everyone feels safe and welcome being their genuine and authentic selves is a key focus for us. We are an equal opportunity employer, committed to sustaining a world-class team by providing an environment that is intentionally inclusive and fully encourages and leverages diversity in all aspects of our business.
We have many people and culture initiatives, with a strong focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion ("DEI").
•Our executive team has signed a pledge committing to DEI and racism.
•We created a DEI Advisory Board to support the Company’s mission to eradicate racism and inequality in the workplace.
•We provide resources and tools for our employees to help them engage within culturally- and geographically-dispersed work teams to enable a culture of growth, learning, and collaboration. In 2020, we launched our Culture Learning Lab, Inclusive Leadership Learning Lab, and Diversity Dialogues programs, all of which deliver interactive learning that heightens the behaviors and insights that build and support an inclusive culture and strive to erase bias.
•We continue to empower our Inclusion Communities, which are networks of employees who unite based on shared characteristics, life experiences, or common interests. These communities are designed to provide support, networking and enhanced career and personal development. These networks include Teradata Alliance of Black Employees, Blend, Veterans Community, Teradata Pride, HISPA (Hispanic and Latin Allies), Women of Teradata, Green Team, Terabytes (work-life integration), and Toastmasters International.
•In further support of the communities where we operate and live, we launched a Diversity in Technology Scholarship Program for underrepresented minorities who are pursuing STEM-related degrees; and
•Teradata earned a score of 90 out of 100 in the Human Rights Campaign 2021 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), a benchmarking survey and report that measures corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ equality.
We believe that a diverse workforce is critical to the Company’s success, and we will continue to focus on the hiring, retention and advancement of underrepresented minorities and women in technology.
Health, Safety, and Wellness. We are committed to the health, safety, and wellness of our employees. We provide our employees and their families with access to a variety of flexible and convenient health and wellness programs. In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we took several actions to promote the health and well-being of our employees, as described below under "COVID-19 Update" in Item 7, Management Discussion and Analysis Of Financial Condition and Results of Operations ("MD&A").
Compensation and Benefits. A key to our attraction, retention, and engagement strategies are the robust compensation and benefit programs we provide that are designed to meet the varied and evolving needs of a diverse workforce globally. In addition to our base pay scheme, these programs (which vary by country/region) include sales incentive, annual bonuses, stock awards, an Employee Stock Purchase Plan, a 401(k) Savings Plan, healthcare and insurance benefits, paid time off, family leave, and paid parental leave.
Talent Development. Teradata is continuously focused on promoting the professional development of our employees and providing tools that enable employees to manage their careers. Our talent development programs provide employees with the resources to advance their careers, build leadership skills, and lead within their organizations. We have launched on-demand learning resources, such as LinkedIn Learning and Country Navigator. Our Learning Labs focus on Understanding Culture, Inclusive Leadership and Creating Your Personal Brand. We also provide executive and management development programs.
Community Engagement. We believe that building connections between our employees, their families, and our communities creates a more meaningful, fulfilling, and enjoyable workplace. We support local STEM education programs to ensure emerging leaders in our communities have opportunities to explore their interests. Our Teradata Cares program empowers our employees to help build strong and vibrant communities, improve quality of life, and make a positive difference where we live and work through volunteerism and giving. We support our employees’ giving and volunteer efforts by providing matching donations for employee contributions to qualified not-for-profit agencies, project grants, Annual Days of Caring, and supporting communities where we have employee populations. To further enable employees to support the charity of their choice, we afford every employee four days a year, during normal working hours, for volunteer efforts of their choice.
Properties and Facilities. Our corporate headquarters is located in San Diego, California. As of December 31, 2020, we operated 79 facilities in 35 countries throughout the world. We own our San Diego complex, while all other facilities are leased.
Information About Our Executive Officers. The following table and biographies sets forth information as of February 26, 2021 regarding the individuals who are serving as our executive officers.
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Name
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Age
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Position(s)
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Stephen McMillan
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50
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President and Chief Executive Officer
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Hillary Ashton
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49
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Chief Product Officer
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Todd Cione
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51
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Chief Revenue Officer
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Mark Culhane
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61
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Chief Financial Officer
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Kathleen Cullen-Cote
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56
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Chief Human Resources Officer
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Martyn Etherington
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59
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Chief Marketing Officer
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Daniel Harrington
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57
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Chief Services Officer
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Margaret Treese
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54
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Chief Legal Officer
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Stephen McMillan. Stephen McMillan is the Company’s President and Chief Executive Officer and has served in this role since joining the Company in June 2020. Mr. McMillan has served on the Company’s Board of Directors since June 2020. Previously, he served as the Executive Vice President of Global Services for F5 Networks, Inc., a transnational company that specializes in application services and application delivery networking, from October 2017 when he joined F5 until May 2020. Prior to joining F5, from September 2015 until October 2017, he was Senior Vice President, Customer Success and Managed Cloud Services at Oracle, where he was responsible for developing, overseeing, and expanding a customer success organization focused on the company’s strategic SaaS portfolio .From May 2012 to September 2015, he served as Senior Vice President, Managed Cloud Services at Oracle. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. McMillan spent 19 years at IBM, where he held a number of leadership roles focused on global managed services, consulting, and IT.
Hillary Ashton. Hillary Ashton is the Company’s Chief Product Officer and has served in this role since August 2020. Prior to that Ms. Ashton served as the Executive Vice President of Teradata Products from November 2019, when she joined the Company, until August 2020. Prior to joining Teradata, she served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of PTC’s Augmented Reality (AR) business unit from July 2018 until November 2019. In this role, she was responsible for all operational aspects of the Vuforia business and its product lines, including executive leadership and vision, strategy, sales, and marketing. From 2014 to 2018, she served as SVP of Analytics SaaS solutions at Manthan and as Director, Customer Intelligence Solutions at SAS from 2003 to 2014.
Todd Cione. Todd Cione is the Company’s Chief Revenue Officer and has served in this role since joining Teradata in January 2021. Mr. Cione served as the Head of U.S. Enterprise Accounts for Apple, Inc., from the time he joined the company in July 2017 until December 2020. Prior to joining Apple, from 2016 until 2017, he was Senior Vice President, Oracle Digital, North America Applications, and from 2013 to 2015, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Rackspace. Prior to joining Rackspace, Mr.Cione spent 15 years at Microsoft, where he most recently served as the Asia-Pacific Chief Operating Officer, based in Singapore.
Mark Culhane. Mark Culhane is the Company’s Chief Financial Officer and has served in this role since joining Teradata in November 2017. He served as the Chief Financial Officer for Lithium Technologies, a software applications company, from 2012 to 2016, and as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at DemandTec, a provider of a cloud-based collaborative optimization network for retailers and consumer products companies that was acquired by IBM in 2012, from 2001 to 2012. He currently serves on the board of directors of a private cloud-based software company, UserZoom, Inc. From June 2010 until its acquisition in April 2018, he served on the board of directors of Callidus Software, Inc., a cloud software company and global leader in sales performance management software, where he was the chair of its audit committee. From 2016 until November 2017, Mr. Culhane ran Culhane Advisory Services which provided management consulting services to venture- and private-equity-backed cloud software companies.
Kathleen Cullen-Cote. Kathleen Cullen-Cote is the Company’s Chief Human Resources Officer and has served in this role since joining Teradata in July 2019. Prior to joining Teradata, Ms. Cullen-Cote served in human resource leadership roles at PTC Inc., a global computer software and services company, from 2002 to June 2019, including Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer from April 2019 to July 2019; Corporate Vice President, Human Resources from 2012 until March 2019; Senior Vice President, Human Resources, from December 2010 to 2012; and Vice President, Human Resources, from October 2009 until December 2010. Prior to that, Ms. Cullen-Cote served in human resource leadership roles at Imark Communications, Johnson and Johnson, Raytheon, and Barry Controls.
Martyn Etherington. Martyn Etherington is the Company’s Chief Marketing Officer and has served in this role since joining Teradata in March 2018. Prior to joining Teradata, from 2015 to 2017, he served as the Chief Marketing Officer, IoT Cloud, at Cisco Jasper, a global market leader for Internet of Things connectivity management. From 2012 to 2015, he served as Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief of Staff for Mitel Networks Corporation, a telecommunications company. Mr. Etherington served as Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President, Business Operations at Tektronix/Danaher from 2002 to 2012 with responsibility for companywide strategy development and deployment, global marketing and business operations.
Daniel Harrington. Daniel Harrington is the Company’s Chief Services Officer and has served in this role since 2012. Previously, from 2007 to 2012, Mr. Harrington served as Executive Vice President, Technology and Support
Services of Teradata. Prior to joining Teradata, he served as Vice President, Customer Services, Teradata Division of NCR Corporation, from 2005 until 2007. From 1999 to 2005, he was Vice President, Northern Europe, Teradata Division at NCR with responsibility for European sales. Prior to that, Mr. Harrington held a number of positions of increasing responsibility in the areas of sales, marketing and product management at NCR since joining the company in 1985.
Margaret Treese. Margaret Treese is the Company’s Chief Legal Officer and has served in this role since November 2020. Previously, from 2018 until January 2020, she served as Teradata’s Deputy General Counsel and Secretary. From 2007 until 2018, she served as the Chief Corporate and Governance Counsel and Assistant Secretary and was named Corporate Secretary of Teradata in 2018. Prior to joining Teradata, from 1995 to 2007, Ms. Treese held positions of increasing responsibility at NCR, including Law Vice President and Chief Americas Region Counsel for the Teradata Division Law Group, Chief Corporate Counsel and Assistant Secretary.
There are no family relationships between any of the executive officers or directors of Teradata.
There are no contractual obligations regarding the election of our executive officers or directors.
Information. Teradata makes available through its website, free of charge, its Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and Current Reports on Form 8-K, and all amendments to such reports, as soon as reasonably practicable after these reports are electronically filed or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act"). These reports and other information are available, free of charge, at www.sec.gov. Teradata will furnish, without charge to a security holder upon written request, the Notice of Meeting and Proxy Statement for the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Teradata will furnish the Code of Conduct and any other exhibit at cost (the Code of Conduct is also available through Teradata’s website at http://www.teradata.com/code-of-conduct/). Document requests are available by calling or writing to:
Teradata - Investor Relations
17095 Via Del Campo
San Diego, CA 92127
Phone: 858-485-2088
Website: www.teradata.com
Item 1A. RISK FACTORS
You should carefully consider each of the following risk factors and all other information set forth in this Annual Report. Based on the information currently known to us, we believe that the following information identifies the most significant risk factors affecting our company in each of these categories of risks. However, the risks and uncertainties our Company faces are not limited to those set forth in the risk factors described below. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial may also adversely affect our business.
In addition, past financial performance may not be a reliable indicator of future performance, and historical trends should not be used to anticipate results or trends in future periods.
If any of the following risks and uncertainties develops into actual events or occurrences, these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. In such case, the trading price of our common stock could decline.
RISKS RELATED TO OUR BUSINESS AND OPERATIONS
Our failure to successfully execute our cloud-first strategy and achieve the anticipated benefits of our business transformation could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
The successful implementation of our cloud-first strategy and completion of our business transformation presents organizational and infrastructure challenges. We may not be able to implement and realize some or all of the
anticipated benefits from our strategy or our business transformation plan on a timely basis, or at all. Events and circumstances, such as financial or unforeseen difficulties, delays and unexpected costs, may occur that could result in our not realizing desired outcomes. Any failure to substantially implement the transformation of the Company in accordance with our expectations could have a material adverse effect on our financial results. Even if the anticipated benefits and savings are substantially realized, there may be unforeseen consequences, internal control issues, or business impacts. Additionally, because of our restructuring efforts in connection with our business transformation, we may experience a loss of continuity, loss of accumulated knowledge or loss of efficiency during transitional periods. Reorganization and restructuring may require a significant amount of management and other employees' time and focus, which may divert attention from operating activities and growing our business. Failure to achieve some or all of the expected benefits of these activities could have a material adverse effect on our competitive position, business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.
A core component of our strategy is to expand and enhance our offerings for cloud environments. It is uncertain whether these new offerings and deployment models will prove successful or whether we will be able to develop the necessary business models, infrastructure and systems to support the business. This includes acquiring, retaining and developing the right human capital to execute our business strategy in a competitive job market. In addition, market acceptance of new product and service offerings will be dependent in part on our ability to include functionality and usability that address customer requirements, and to optimally price our offerings and services to meet customer demand and cover our costs. Our go-to-market, cloud and multi-cloud cloud strategies also must adjust to customers' changing buying preferences, and there can be no assurance that our go-to-market approach will adequately and completely address such preferences. New product and services offerings may increase our risk of liability and cause us to incur significant technical, legal or other costs. If we are unable to correctly respond to these issues, our business could be harmed.
As part of our business strategy, we also continue to dedicate a significant amount of resources to our research and development ("R&D") efforts in order to maintain and advance our competitive position, including our initiatives to provide and improve our offerings for cloud environments. However, we may not receive significant revenues from these investments for several years, if at all. R&D expenses represent a significant portion of our discretionary fixed costs. If we do not receive some or all of the expected benefits of our substantial investments in R&D, our results of operations could be adversely affected.
Our success depends on our product innovation, particularly with respect to the advancement of our cloud-based technologies. If we are unable to successfully develop and launch cloud-based products and product enhancements and/or enable our data warehouse platform to operate effectively in cloud environments, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be harmed.
To succeed in the intensely competitive IT industry, we must continually improve, refresh and expand our product and service offerings to include newer features, functionality, and deployment options and to keep pace with price-to-performance gains. This is particularly the case in the demand for analytic solutions in a cloud-based environment. The successful execution of our cloud-first strategy is dependent on the advancement of our cloud-based technologies. In furtherance of this strategy, we are focusing a significant amount of our R&D activities and resources to the development of cloud-based products and product enhancements and to enable our data warehouse platform to operate effectively in cloud environments. If we are unable to successfully develop and launch cloud-based products and product enhancements and/or enable our data warehouse platform to operate effectively in cloud environments, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be harmed.
Shortened product life cycles due to customer demands and competitive pressures impact the pace at which we must introduce and implement new technology. This requires a high level of innovation by both our software developers and the suppliers of the third-party software components included in our solutions. In addition, bringing new offerings to the market entails a costly and lengthy process, and requires us to accurately anticipate customer needs and technology trends. If we are unable to respond to market demands, develop leading technologies, timely deliver offerings to the market, and maintain leadership in analytic data solutions performance and scalability, our business operations may be adversely affected.
Because of these and other factors, our ability to introduce new or improved solutions could be adversely impacted. There can be no assurance that our innovations will be profitable, and if we cannot successfully market and sell both existing and newly developed solutions, our business and operating results could be impacted.
As we develop new offerings with greater capacity, delivery and performance capabilities, the increased difficulty and complexity associated with producing these offerings may increase the likelihood of reliability, quality or operability issues.
Our offerings may contain undetected errors or security flaws, which may be found after the offerings are introduced and delivered. This risk is enhanced when offerings are first introduced or when new versions are released, as well as when we develop offerings with more advanced technology, since the increased difficulty and complexity associated with producing these offerings may increase the likelihood of reliability, quality or operability issues. Due to such complexities, our products may also fail to perform to the full specifications and expectations of our customers. Additionally, third-party components that we integrate in our solutions may have undetected quality issues that may impact the performance of our offerings. The correction and detection of errors may cause delays, lost revenues, and incremental costs. Errors in our software offerings could also affect their ability to work with other components of our offerings, could delay the development or release of new offerings, and could adversely affect their market acceptance. We may not be able to detect or remedy all errors, including those that may be deemed critical by our customers, prior to release or deployment. Such reliability, quality and operability issues may negatively impact our ability to retain current customers, including due to customer cancellations or non-renewals, as well as our ability to obtain new customers.
Our customers who rely on our solutions for business-critical uses are more sensitive to errors, which could expose us to liability, performance and warranty claims, as well as harm our reputation. These and other risks associated with new offerings may have a material adverse impact on our results of operations and future performance.
If our existing customers fail to renew, or cancel, their subscription license arrangements or support agreements, or if customers do not renew on terms favorable to us, our business could be adversely affected.
Teradata’s platform offerings have been expanded to include a variety of subscription options, which impact the timing of when revenues are recognized and related cash flows are collected. In addition, due to the recent transition to subscription revenues, we currently derive a significant portion of our overall revenues from subscription services in which we have limited renewal experience, which carries additional risk. The IT industry generally has been experiencing increasing pricing pressure from customers when purchasing or renewing support agreements. Mergers and acquisitions in certain industries that we serve could result in a reduction of the software and hardware being supported and put pressure on our subscription and support terms with customers who have merged. Given these factors, there can be no assurance that our current customers will renew their subscription and/or support agreements or agree to the same terms when they renew, which could result in our reducing or losing subscription and/or support fees which could adversely impact operating results.
Unanticipated delays or accelerations in our sales cycles makes accurate estimation of our revenues difficult and could result in significant fluctuations in our quarterly operating results.
The length of our sales cycle varies depending on several factors over which we may have little or no control, including the size and complexity of a potential transaction, the level of competition that we encounter in our selling activities and our current and potential customers’ internal budgeting and approval process, as well as overall macro-economic conditions. Because of a generally long sales cycle, we may expend significant effort over a long period of time in an attempt to obtain an order, but ultimately not complete the sale, or the order ultimately received may be smaller than anticipated. The long sales cycle for our products also makes it difficult to predict the quarter in which sales will occur. Delays in sales could cause significant variability in our results for any particular period.
We may experience variability in our operating results based on the purchasing behavior of our customers.
As part of our strategy, our business has substantially shifted from traditional, perpetual pricing and revenue model to a subscription-based model in which less revenue is recognized upfront at the time the customer enters into a transaction. The pace and extent to which customers will continue to purchase and renew our offerings on a subscription basis is variable and therefore has impacts on our results and operations. In addition, we have recently
introduced flexible pricing options for our cloud customers, including consumption-based, "pay as you go" pricing. Under such a pricing model, we generally recognize revenue based on consumption. To the extent that customers opt for such a flexible pricing model, we may not be able to accurately forecast the timing of customer consumption of our offerings. As a result, our actual results may differ from our projections. Furthermore, our on-premises subscription arrangements may provide the customers with the right to cancel our agreement upon certain notice periods, which we may change in the future. Such arrangements may impact the timing of revenue recognition for these customers and result in fluctuations in our quarterly operating results.
Demand for the offerings and services we sell could decline if we fail to maintain positive brand perception and recognition.
We operate a portfolio of brands with a commitment to customer service and innovation. We believe that recognition and the reputation of our brands are key to our success, including our ability to retain our existing customers and attract new customers. Operational factors such as failure to deliver high quality offerings or services, uncompetitive pricing, failure to meet delivery or performance promises or business interruptions could damage our reputation.
External factors, such as negative public remarks or accusations, could also be damaging. Damage to the perception or reputation of our brands could result in, among other things, declines in customer loyalty, customer cancellations or non-renewals, lower employee retention and productivity and vendor relationship issues, all of which could materially affect our revenue and profitability.In addition, given our history as an on-premises platform provider, one of our strategic objectives is to reset market perceptions to establish our position in the cloud market. A misperception in the market regarding our cloud capabilities could negatively impact our ability to migrate existing on-premises customers to our cloud-based solutions and/or acquire new customers for our cloud business.
Our future results depend in part on our relationships with key suppliers, strategic partners and other third parties.
Our development, marketing and distribution plans depend in part on our ability to form strategic alliances with third parties that have complementary offerings, software, services and skills. Our strategic partners include consultants and system integrators, software and technology providers, hardware support service providers, and indirect channel distributors in certain countries. These relationships involve risks, including our partners changing their business focus, entering strategic alliances with other companies, being acquired by our competitors, failing to meet performance criteria or improperly using our confidential information. If we fail to maintain or expand our relationships with strategic partners, or if we are forced to seek alternative technology, or technology for new solutions, that may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, our business may be adversely affected.
Third-party vendors provide important elements to our solutions; if we do not maintain our relationships with these vendors or if these vendors cease to be going concerns, interruptions in the supply of our offerings may result. There are some components of our solutions that we purchase from single sources due to price, quality, technology or other reasons. For example, we rely on Flex as a key single source contract manufacturer for our on-premises hardware systems. In addition, we buy servers from Dell Technologies Inc. and storage disk systems from NetApp, Inc. Some components supplied by third parties may be critical to our solutions, and several of our suppliers may terminate their agreements with us without cause with 180-days notice. In addition, we rely on certain vendors for hardware support services and parts supply. If we were unable to purchase necessary services, parts, components or offerings from a particular vendor and had to find an alternative supplier, our shipments and deliveries could be delayed. Also, quality issues, a disruption in our supply chain or the need to find alternative suppliers could impact the costs and/or timing associated with procuring necessary offerings, components and services. In any case, our operations could be adversely impacted. Similarly, our suppliers’ offerings and services have certain dependencies with respect to their own supply chain networks, and supply issues among our suppliers’ suppliers may also adversely impact our business.
As part of our cloud-first strategy, the growth of our business is dependent on our relationships with public cloud service providers, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Our strategic partnerships with Amazon, Google and Microsoft for our cloud offerings on AWS, Google and Azure, respectively, require significant investments to ensure that our solutions are optimized in these cloud environments. In addition, these cloud service providers maintain
relationships with certain of our competitors, and may in the future establish relationships with additional competing cloud data warehouse platform providers. Any of these cloud service providers may decide to modify or terminate our business relationship, or may otherwise enter into preferred relationships with one or more competing cloud data warehouse platform providers. If we are unsuccessful in meeting performance requirements or obtaining future returns on these investments, or if we are otherwise unable to maintain adequate relationships with any of these cloud service providers, our financial results may be adversely impacted.
The Company's business, results of operations, and financial condition have been adversely affected, and could in the future be materially adversely affected, by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As more fully described elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, our business, results of operations, and financial condition have been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The degree to which the COVID-19 pandemic in the future affects our business, financial condition, and results of operations will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, including, but not limited to, the duration and spread of the unprecedented pandemic, its severity, the actions to contain the virus or respond to its impact, the successful distribution of vaccines and their effectiveness, and how quickly and to what extent normal economic and operating conditions can resume. The COVID-19 pandemic or any other adverse public health development could also inhibit our ability to execute our strategic initiatives including, without limitation, improving the experience of our customers, investing identified strategic growth platforms and shifting the mix of revenue in our business to cloud as well as subscription revenue.
Furthermore, negative economic conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted, and may in the future impact, our ability to close transactions and/or collect receivables from customers on a timely basis, or at all, and may also impact our customers' willingness to maintain or increase spending on data analytics, their ability to obtain adequate financing for the purchase of our products and services, or the amount of disposable income available to consumers, which may adversely impact the businesses of our customers in consumer-facing industries.
Additionally, governmental restrictions and public perceptions of the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have caused, and may continue to cause, consumers to avoid or limit gatherings in public places or social interactions, which could adversely affect the businesses of our customers in certain industries, such as transportation, entertainment and hospitality. Such customers have experienced, and may continue to experience,
significant near-term working capital and cash flow adverse impacts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, in turn, could adversely impact our ability to maintain or increase revenue from such customers. In addition, the global supply chain risks present a level of uncertainty due to the international and domestic pandemic recovery efforts. The uncertainty of an increase in the number of COVID-19 infections in areas where our suppliers source their parts could present sourcing challenges to our suppliers. Further, if countries in which we do business close their borders, it may impact the timing of closing sales transactions or the ability to service our customers in select geographies.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, including related governmental guidance or directives, we have required most employees to work remotely. We may experience reductions in productivity and disruptions to our business routines while our remote work policy remains in place.
Governmental authorities in the United States and throughout the world may increase or impose new income taxes or indirect taxes, or revise interpretations of existing tax rules and regulations, as a means of financing the costs of stimulus and other measures enacted or taken, or that may be enacted or taken in the future, to protect populations and economies from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such actions could have an adverse effect on our results of operations and cash flows.
While we have implemented programs to mitigate the impact of these risks on our results of operations, there can be no assurance that these programs will be successful and there are many aspects of this pandemic, particularly its impact on our customers, that are beyond our control. The spread of COVID-19 has caused us to modify our business practices, such as employee work locations, and we may take further actions as may be required by government authorities or that we determine is in the best interests of our employees, customers, distributors, suppliers and contractors. There is no certainty that such measures will be sufficient to mitigate the risks posed by the virus, and our ability to perform critical functions could be harmed. Moreover, these measures, and similar
measures at our customers, have resulted in, and in the future may result in, installation and payment delays. In addition, we have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, delays and cancellations of consulting projects due to work from home and shelter-in-place orders and also because of the discretionary nature of consulting projects which may be delayed or suspended as a result of more conservative spending patterns by our customers in light of the economic impacts of the pandemic.
Even after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, we may continue to experience adverse impacts to our business as a result of the economic recession that has occurred and any economic recession that may occur in the future. The COVID-19 pandemic could also exacerbate or trigger other risks, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.
A breach of security, disruption, or failure of our information systems or those of our third-party providers could adversely impact our business and financial results.
Our operations are dependent on our ability to protect our computer equipment and the information stored in our databases (and the computer equipment and database information of certain suppliers and other third parties) from damage by, among other things, earthquake, fire, natural disaster, cyber-attacks, power loss, telecommunications failures, unauthorized intrusions, malicious or unintended insider actions that cause loss of data or loss of systems, including phishing schemes, and other events. The occurrence of one or more of these events could result in system failures and other interruptions in our operations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. Additionally as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, including related governmental guidance or directives, we have required most employees to work remotely. This increases vulnerability to our systems as additional endpoints need to be managed.
Prior to our transition to a subscription-based business, our customers generally purchased or leased on-premises hardware systems used in connection with our software solutions, which our customers deployed and operated. With respect to these types of customer on-premises solutions, the customer, directly or through its selected services providers, manages all aspects of the data controls and security with respect to any confidential, private or otherwise sensitive information stored or processed through these solutions, including any personally identifiable data or information, such as non-public data regarding our customers’ employees, customers' customers, consumers, data subjects, individuals’ identities, individual financial accounts and health information. By contrast, our software-as-a-service or cloud offerings generally require us to deploy or operate solutions for our customers, directly or through the use of third-party services providers, either on-premises at customer-selected data center facilities, or at third-party-hosted data center facilities. With respect to these cloud and software-as-a-service offerings, we and such service providers have increased roles, responsibilities and risk exposures regarding some or all aspects of the data controls and security with respect to any confidential, private or otherwise sensitive information stored or processed through these solutions on our systems or those of selected third-party providers. If unauthorized access to or use of such information or systems occurs, despite data security measures and third-party commitments to protect them, our results of operation, reputation, and relationships with our customers could be adversely impacted.
Experienced computer programmers, Nation State Sponsored Advanced Persistent Code ("NSSAPC") attackers (from countries such as Iran, China, Russia and certain European Eastern Bloc countries) and hackers may be able to penetrate our network security or that of our third-party providers and misappropriate or compromise our intellectual property or other confidential information or that of our customers, create system disruptions or cause shutdowns. Computer programmers and hackers also may be able to develop and deploy viruses, worms, and other malicious software programs that attack our offerings or otherwise exploit any security vulnerabilities of our offerings. In addition, phishing-scheme-perpetrators may be able to lure employees or contractors into providing such perpetrators with information that may enable them to avoid some of our network security controls or those of third-party providers which could result in system disruptions or a loss of confidential and proprietary information.
We have been subject to actual and potential cyber-attacks, and there can be no assurance that our defensive measures will be adequate to prevent them in the future. There is risk that these types of activities will recur and persist, that one or more of them may be successful in the future, that one or more of them may have been or will be successful but not detected, prevented, remediated or mitigated by us, and the costs to us to eliminate, detect, prevent, remediate, mitigate or alleviate cyber or other security problems, viruses, worms, malicious software
programs, phishing schemes and security vulnerabilities could be significant, and our efforts to address these problems may not be successful and could adversely impact our future results of operations.
Inadequate internal control over financial reporting and accounting practices could lead to errors, which could adversely impact our ability to assure timely and accurate financial reporting.
Internal control over financial reporting, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the control objectives will be met. These inherent limitations include system errors, the potential for human error and unauthorized actions of employees or contractors, inadequacy of controls, temporary lapses in controls due to shortfalls in transition planning and oversight or resources, and other factors. Consequently, such controls may not prevent or detect misstatements in our reported financial results as required under SEC and NYSE rules, which could increase our operating costs or impair our ability to operate our business. Controls may also become inadequate due to changes in circumstances, and it is necessary to replace, upgrade or modify our internal information systems from time to time. In addition, unforeseen risks may arise in connection with financial reporting systems due to inefficient business processes, business process reengineering projects, or changes in accounting standards.
If management is not successful in maintaining a strong internal control environment, material weaknesses could occur, causing investors to lose confidence in our reported financial information. This could lead to a decline in our stock price, limit our ability to access the capital markets in the future, and require us to incur additional costs to improve our internal control systems and procedures.
Our business is affected by the global economies in which we operate and the economic climate of the industries we serve.
Our business and results of operations are affected by international, national and regional economic conditions. In particular, the IT industry in which we operate is susceptible to significant changes in the strength of the economy and the financial health of companies and governmental entities that make spending commitments for new technologies. Accordingly, adverse global economic and market conditions, including in certain economic sectors in which many of our customers operate (such as retail, manufacturing, financial services or government), may adversely impact our business. For example, adverse changes to the economy could impact the timing of purchases by our current and potential customers or the ability of our customers to fulfill their obligations to us. In addition, decreased or more closely scrutinized spending in our customers’ businesses and in the industries we serve, may adversely impact our business. Uncertainty about future economic conditions may make it difficult for us to forecast operating results and to make decisions about future investments. The Company’s success in periods of economic uncertainty may also be dependent, in part, on our ability to reduce costs in response to changes in demand and other activity.
Generating substantial revenues from our international operations poses several risks.
In 2020, the percentage of our total revenues from outside of the United States was 50%. We have exposure to more than 30 functional currencies. The risks associated with the geographic scope of our business operations include, among other things the following:
•Cultural and management challenges associated with operating in developing countries;
•Longer payment cycles for sales in foreign countries and difficulties in enforcing contracts and collecting accounts receivable;
•Fluctuations in the value of local currencies;
•Tariffs or other restrictions on foreign trade or investment;
•US-China trade disputes or other international trade disputes may adversely affect sales of our solutions and services and may result in longer sales cycles;
•The continued economic and legal uncertainty around how the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union (known as Brexit) will impact the United Kingdom’s access to the EU Single Market, the related regulatory environment, the global economy and the resulting impact on our business; and
•The impact of catastrophic weather or other negative effects of climate change and public health crises (such as the COVID-19 pandemic), on our facilities, operations and/or workforce, as well as those of our customers, supply chains and distribution channels, throughout the world, particularly those in coastal areas.
Any of these events, among others, could materially and adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.
Our offerings are subject to United States export controls and, when exported from the United States, or re-exported to another country, must be authorized under applicable United States export regulations. Changes in our offerings or changes in export regulations may create delays in the introduction of our offerings in international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from deploying our offerings throughout their global systems or, in some cases, prevent the export of our offerings to certain countries or customers altogether. Any change in export regulations or related legislation, shift in approach to the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, persons or technologies targeted by these regulations could result in decreased use of our offerings by, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our offerings to, existing or potential customers with international operations.
There is active enforcement and ongoing focus by the SEC and other governmental authorities on the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.K. Bribery Act of 2010 and similar anti-bribery, anti-corruption laws in other countries. Given the breadth and scope of our international operations, we may not be able to detect improper or unlawful conduct by our international partners and employees, despite our high ethics, governance and compliance standards, which could put the Company at risk regarding possible violations of such laws and could result in various civil or criminal fines, penalties or administrative sanctions, and related costs, which could negatively impact the Company's business, results of operations or financial condition.
RISKS RELATED TO OUR INDUSTRY
The IT industry is intensely competitive and evolving, and competitive pressures could adversely affect our pricing practices or demand for our offerings and services.
We operate in the intensely competitive IT industry, which is characterized by rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards and models for consuming and delivering business and IT services, frequent new product introductions, and frequent price and cost reductions. In general, as a participant in the data analytic solutions market, we face:
•Changes in customer IT spending preferences and other shifts in market demands, which drive changes in the Company's competition;
•Changes in pricing, marketing and product strategies, such as potential aggressive price discounting and the use of different pricing models by our competitors;
•Rapid changes in product delivery models, such as on-premises solutions versus cloud solutions;
•Rapid changes in computing technology and capabilities that challenge our ability to maintain differentiation at the lower range of business intelligence analytic functions;
•New and emerging analytic technologies, competitors, and business models;
•Continued emergence of open source software that often rivals current technology offerings at a much lower cost despite its limited functionality;
•Changing competitive requirements and deliverables in developing and emerging markets; and
•Continuing trend toward consolidation of companies, which could adversely affect our ability to compete, including if our key partners merge or partner with our competitors.
Our competitors include established companies within our industry, including Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP, which are well-capitalized companies with widespread distribution, brand recognition and penetration of platforms and service offerings. The significant purchasing and market power of these larger competitors, which have greater financial resources than we do, could allow them to surpass our market penetration and marketing efforts to promote and sell their offerings and services. In addition, many other companies participate in specific areas of our business, such as enterprise applications, analytic platforms and business intelligence software. In some cases, we may partner with a company in one area of our business and compete with them in another. In particular, in delivering our Vantage platform in a cloud environment to certain of our customers, we partner with each of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, which are public cloud service providers. The status of our business relationships with these companies can influence our ability to compete for analytic data solutions opportunities in such areas. In addition, we see additional competition from both established and emerging companies such as Cloudera, MongoDB, Pivotal Software and Snowflake. Failure to compete successfully with new or existing competitors in these and other areas could have a material adverse impact on our ability to generate additional revenues or sustain existing revenue levels.
Privacy concerns and laws such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, evolving regulation of cloud computing, cross-border data transfer restrictions and other domestic or foreign regulations may limit the use and adoption of our solutions and services and adversely affect our business.
Regulation related to the provision of services over the Internet is evolving, as federal, state and foreign governments continue to adopt new, or modify existing, laws and regulations addressing data privacy and the collection, processing, storage, transfer and use of data. In some cases, new data privacy laws and regulations, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation that took effect in May 2018, the California Consumer Privacy Act, which took effect in January 2020, and an amended Act on the Protection of Personal Information in Japan, expected to take effect in spring 2022, impose new obligations directly on the Company as both a data controller and a data processor, as well as on many of our customers. These new laws may require us to make changes to our solutions and services to enable Teradata and/or our customers to comply with the new legal requirements and may also increase our potential liability exposure through higher potential penalties for non-compliance. Further, laws such as the European Union’s proposed e-Privacy Regulation are increasingly aimed at the use of personal information for marketing purposes, and the tracking of individuals’ online activities. These new or proposed laws and regulations are subject to differing interpretations and may be inconsistent among jurisdictions. These and other requirements could reduce demand for our solutions and services, require us to take on more onerous obligations in our contracts, restrict our ability to store, transfer and process data or, in some cases, impact our ability to offer our solutions and services in certain locations or our customers' ability to deploy our solutions globally. For example, legal challenges in Europe regarding how companies transfer personal data from the European Economic Area to the United States could result in further limitations on the ability to transfer data across borders, particularly if governments are unable or unwilling to reach new or maintain existing agreements that support cross-border data transfers, such as renewing the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield framework. Additionally, certain countries have passed or are considering passing laws requiring local data residency. The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, privacy laws, regulations and standards may limit the use and adoption of our solutions and services, reduce overall demand for our solutions and services, make it more difficult to meet expectations from or commitments to customers, lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities for noncompliance, or slow the pace at which we close sales transactions, any of which could harm our business.
In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy and other industry groups have established or may establish new self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on our ability to provide our solutions and services globally. Our customers expect us to meet voluntary certification and other standards established by third parties, such as related International Organization for Standardization ("ISO") standards. If we are unable to maintain these certifications or meet these standards, it could adversely affect our ability to provide our solutions to certain customers and could harm our business
Furthermore, concerns regarding data privacy may cause our customers’ customers to resist providing the data necessary to allow our customers to use our solutions and services effectively. Even the perception that the privacy
of personal information is not satisfactorily protected or does not meet regulatory requirements could inhibit sales of our offerings or services and could limit adoption of our cloud-based solutions.
RISKS RELATED TO HUMAN CAPITAL
We depend on key employees and face competition in hiring and retaining qualified employees.
Our employees and access to talent are critical to our success. Our future success depends on our ability to attract and retain the services of senior management and key personnel in all functional areas of our Company, including engineering and development, marketing and sales professionals, and consultants. Competition for highly skilled personnel and acquired talent in the IT industry is intense. Furthermore, to advance our cloud-first strategy, we are required to attract and retain talent with expertise in cloud-based technologies, particularly with respect to our engineering and development teams. No assurance can be made that key personnel will remain with us, and it may be difficult and costly to replace such employees and/or obtain qualified talent who are not employees. Our failure to hire, retain and replace our key personnel could have a material adverse impact on our business operations.
RISKS RELATED TO LEGAL AND REGULATORY MATTERS
We face uncertainties regarding legal proceedings, complex and changing laws and regulations, and other related matters.
In the normal course of business, we are subject to proceedings, lawsuits, claims and other matters, including those that relate to the environment, health and safety, employee benefits, export compliance, intellectual property, a variety of local laws and regulations, and other regulatory compliance and general matters. See "Note 10-Commitments and Contingencies" in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements elsewhere in this Annual Report. Because such matters are subject to many uncertainties, their outcomes are not predictable. There can be no assurances that the amounts required to satisfy alleged liabilities from such matters will not impact future operating results.
In addition, we are subject to diverse and complex laws and regulations, including those relating to corporate governance, public disclosure and reporting, which are rapidly changing and subject to many possible changes in the future. From time to time, we may conduct internal investigations in connection with our efforts to ensure compliance with such laws and regulations, the costs or results of which could impact our financial results. In addition, we may be subject to unexpected costs in connection with new public disclosure or other regulatory requirements that are issued from time to time. Laws and regulations impacting our customers, such as those relating to privacy, data protection and digital marketing, could also impact our future business. Because we do business in the government sector, we are generally subject to audits and investigations which could result in various civil or criminal fines, penalties or administrative sanctions, including debarment from future government business, which could negatively impact the Company’s results of operations or financial condition.
In addition, our facilities and operations, including former facilities and former operations for which we may have liabilities, are subject to a wide range of environmental protection laws. There can be no assurances that the costs required to comply with applicable environmental laws will not adversely impact future operating results.
Management time and resources are spent to understand and comply with changing laws, regulations and standards relating to such matters as corporate governance, accounting principles, public disclosure, SEC regulations, Basel III and the rules of the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") where our shares are listed. Rapid changes in accounting standards, and federal securities laws and regulations, among others, may substantially increase costs to our organization, challenge our ability to timely comply with all of them and could have an impact on our future operating results.
Inadequate protection of Teradata’s intellectual property or infringement of intellectual property that is owned by others could impact our business and financial condition.
As a technology company, our intellectual property portfolio is crucial to our continuing ability to be a leading multi-cloud data warehouse platform provider. We strive to protect and enhance our proprietary intellectual property rights through patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as through technological
safeguards. These efforts include protection of the offerings and application, diagnostic and other software we develop.
If we are not successful in protecting our intellectual property, our business could be materially adversely impacted. We may be unable to prevent third parties from using our technology without our authorization or independently developing technology that is similar to ours, particularly in those countries where the laws do not protect our proprietary rights as fully as in the United States (such as Iran, China and certain European Eastern Bloc countries who may use NSSAPC to advance their own industries). With respect to our pending patent applications, we may not be successful in securing patents for these claims, and our competitors may already have applied for patents that, once issued, will prevail over our patent rights or otherwise limit our ability to sell our offerings.
While we take steps to provide for confidentiality obligations of employees and third parties with whom we do business (including customers, suppliers and strategic partners), there is a risk that such parties will breach such obligations and jeopardize our intellectual property rights. Many customers have outsourced the administration and management of their data warehouses to third parties, including some of our competitors, who then have access to our confidential information. Although we have agreements in place to mitigate this risk, there can be no assurance that such protections will be sufficient. In addition, our ability to capture and re-use field-based developed intellectual property is important to future business opportunities and margins.
We have seen a trend towards aggressive enforcement of intellectual property rights as the functionality of offerings in our industry increasingly overlaps and the volume of issued software patents continues to grow. As a result, we have been, and in the future could be, subject to infringement claims which, regardless of their validity, could:
•Be expensive, time consuming and divert management attention away from normal business operations;
•Require us to pay monetary damages or enter into non-standard royalty and licensing agreements;
•Require us to modify our product sales and development plans; or
•Require us to satisfy indemnification obligations to our customers.
Regardless of whether these claims have any merit, they can be burdensome to defend or settle and can harm our business, reputation, financial condition and results of operations.
A change in our effective tax rate can have a significant adverse impact on our business.
A number of factors may adversely impact our future effective tax rates, such as:
•The jurisdictions in which our profits are determined to be earned and taxed;
•The resolution of issues arising from tax audits with various tax authorities;
•Changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities;
•Adjustments to estimated taxes upon finalization of various tax returns; and
•Changes in available tax credits, especially surrounding tax credits in the United States for our research and development activities.
Tax rules may change in a manner that adversely affects our future reported results of operations or the way we conduct our business. Further changes in the tax laws of foreign jurisdictions could arise as a result of the base erosion and profit shifting project that was undertaken by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ("OECD"). The OECD, which represents a coalition of member countries, recommended changes to numerous long-standing tax principles related to transfer pricing. Our income tax obligations are based in part on our corporate structure and inter-company arrangements, including the manner in which we develop, value, and use our intellectual property and the valuations of our inter-company transactions. Tax authorities may disagree with certain positions we have taken and assess additional taxes. We regularly assess the likely outcomes of these audits to determine the appropriateness of our tax provision, however, there can be no assurance that we will accurately predict the outcomes of these audits, and the actual outcomes of these audits could have a material impact on our financial condition or results of operations.
RISKS RELATED TO OUR FINANCIAL CONDITION
Our indebtedness could adversely affect our financial condition and limit our financial flexibility.
The Company's indebtedness could:
•Expose us to interest rate risk;
•Increase our vulnerability to general adverse economic and industry conditions;
•Limit our ability to obtain additional financing or refinancing at attractive rates;
•Require the dedication of a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to the payment of principal of, and interest on, our indebtedness, thereby reducing the availability of such cash flow to fund our growth strategy, working capital, capital expenditures, share repurchases and other general corporate purposes;
•Limit our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, changes in our business and the industry; and
•Place us at a competitive disadvantage relative to our competitors with less debt.
Further, our outstanding indebtedness is subject to financial and other covenants, which may be affected by changes in economic or business conditions or other events that are beyond our control. If we fail to comply with the covenants under any of our indebtedness, we may be in default under the loan, which may entitle the lenders to accelerate the debt obligations. To avoid defaulting on our indebtedness, we may be required to take actions such as reducing or delaying capital expenditures, reducing or eliminating stock repurchases, selling assets, restructuring or refinancing all or part of our existing debt, or seeking additional equity capital, any of which may not be available on terms that are favorable to us, if at all.
In addition, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates the London Interbank Offered Rate ("LIBOR"), announced that it intends to phase out LIBOR by the end of 2021 or, for certain tenors of United States Dollar LIBOR, by the end of 2023. We have certain financial contracts, including our revolving credit agreement, term loan agreement, and interest rate swaps, that are indexed to LIBOR. The U.S. Federal Reserve has begun publishing a Secured Overnight Funding Rate, which is intended to replace U.S. dollar LIBOR. Plans for alternative reference rates for other currencies have also been announced. At this time, we cannot predict how markets will respond to these proposed alternative rates or the effect of any changes to LIBOR or the discontinuation of LIBOR. If LIBOR is no longer available or if our lenders have increased costs due to changes in LIBOR, we may experience potential increases in interest rates on our variable rate debt, which could adversely impact our interest expense, results of operations and cash flows.