Item 1. Business
Our Purpose and Mission
Our purpose is to empower people by simplifying work. As a result, our mission is to help organizations succeed with Apple.
Overview
We are the standard in Apple Enterprise Management, and our cloud software platform is the only vertically-focused Apple infrastructure and security platform of scale in the world. We help IT and security teams confidently protect the devices, data, and applications used by their workforce, while providing employees with consumer-simple, privacy-protecting technology. With Jamf’s software, devices can be deployed to employees brand new in the shrink-wrapped box, set up automatically and personalized at first power-on and administered continuously throughout the lifecycle of the device.
Jamf was founded in 2002, around the same time that Apple was leading an industry transformation. Apple transformed the way people access and utilize technology through its focus on creating a superior consumer experience. With the release of revolutionary products like the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, Apple built the world’s most valuable brand and became ubiquitous in everyday life.
We believe employees have come to expect the same high-quality Apple user experience at work as they enjoy in their personal lives. This is often not possible as many organizations rely on legacy solutions to administer devices or do not give employees a choice of device. Unlike competitors, our software solutions are Apple-first and Apple-best to preserve and extend the native Apple experience, allowing employees to use their devices as they do in their personal lives, while retaining their privacy and fulfilling IT’s enterprise requirements around deployment, access, and security.
We have built our company through a primary focus on being the leading solution for Apple in the enterprise because we believe that due to Apple’s broad range of devices, combined with the changing demographics of today’s workforce and their strong preference for Apple, that Apple will become the number one device ecosystem in the enterprise by the end of this decade. We believe that the enterprise management provider that is best at Apple will one day be the enterprise leader, and that Jamf is best positioned for that leadership. Through our long-standing relationship with Apple, we have accumulated significant Apple technical experience and expertise that give us the ability to fully and quickly leverage and extend the capabilities of Apple products, operating systems, and services. This expertise enables us to fully support new innovations and operating system releases the moment they are made available by Apple. This focus has allowed us to create a best-in-class user experience in the enterprise and grow to more than 60,000 customers deploying 26.6 million devices in more than 100 countries and territories as of December 31, 2021.
We sell our SaaS solutions via a subscription model, through a direct sales force, online, and indirectly via our channel partners, including Apple. Our multi-dimensional go-to-market model and cloud-deployed offering enable us to reach all organizations around the world, large and small, with our software solutions. As a result, we continue to see rapid growth and expansion of our customer base as Apple continues to gain momentum in the enterprise. Our customers include many highly recognizable brands and organizations including Apple itself, 9 of the largest 10 Fortune 500 companies, 8 of the top 10 Fortune 500 technology companies, 22 of the 25 most valuable brands (according to the Forbes Most Valuable Brands rankings), and 10 of the 10 largest U.S. banks (based on total assets according to bankrate.com) as of December 31, 2021. Additionally, we see opportunities to sell add-on products from our software platform into our current install base in order to provide greater value for our customers. Our focus on customer success and innovation has resulted in a Net Promoter Score of 50 as of December 31, 2021, which significantly exceeds industry averages.
Complementing our software platform is Jamf Nation, the world’s largest online community of IT and security professionals focused exclusively on Apple in the enterprise. This active, grassroots community serves as a highly-qualified and efficient crowd-sourced Q&A engine for anyone with questions about Apple deployments. This community selflessly acts as a resource for existing and potential customers and is also an important asset in providing feature feedback and ideas for our product roadmap.
On July 1, 2021, we completed our acquisition of Wandera, Inc. (“Wandera”), a leader in zero trust cloud security and access for mobile devices, extending our leadership in Apple Enterprise Management. The acquisition uniquely positions us to
help IT and security teams protect devices, data, and applications while extending the intended Apple experience through the most robust and scalable Apple Enterprise Management platform in the market. Further, as we strive to enable an outstanding Apple experience, we look beyond the device hardware and ensure the full technology stack between the user and the application is harmonized. This experience includes identity and access management that does not harshly interrupt user productivity and workflows, security monitoring that respects end user privacy, and traffic routing that is optimized for each specific application — regardless of the location of the end user. From advanced anti-phishing and network threat protection to privacy-aware content filtering and fast, secure zero trust access, our network-based technologies are designed for any end user working from any platform.
Industry Background
Key trends impacting how enterprises use and manage technology to engage employees and drive productivity include:
Apple’s democratization of technology
Apple is ubiquitous. It is the most valuable brand in the world according to Forbes, and in 2018, it became the first company to cross a market capitalization of $1 trillion. Apple’s success has been driven by delivering the best user experience to its customers through its innovative combination of hardware, software, and cloud services. It has transformed the technology landscape by placing the user first, creating a harmonious, interconnected experience across devices, and designing everything around maximizing the Apple user experience.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, endpoint technology was dominated by Microsoft Windows, particularly in the workplace. Many enterprises prioritized standardization over user experience in order to facilitate the deployment, security, and management of massive numbers of Windows PCs. Employees were not typically given a choice in their devices. In the 2000s, Apple introduced a series of revolutionary products that transformed how the world interacts with technology. Apple released the iPod in 2001, followed by the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010. These products, which utilized Apple iOS (Apple’s proprietary mobile operating system), shared a design element that placed the user first. The rapid rise in popularity of iOS devices, combined with the proliferation of web-based applications, created a “halo effect,” leading to a resurgence of Apple’s Mac computer. These devices empowered users to easily leverage powerful technology regardless of their technical expertise. Apple’s consumer-focused technology provided a significantly more capable, intuitive, and faster experience than the technology many employees previously had in the workplace.
Apple’s focus on the user experience has transformed employees’ expectations for technology overall. Employees expect a simple, intuitive, seamless experience that fosters creativity, productivity, and collaboration. Apple currently offers an entire ecosystem of desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, and wearable devices designed to interoperate seamlessly at home, at work, and everywhere in-between. This has made Apple the leading technology brand overall, with nearly 60% of Apple users “not being able to live without the brand,” according to a 2021 brand intimacy study by MBLM.
The consumerization of IT
The consumerization of IT refers to the migration of software and hardware products originally designed for personal use into the enterprise. Today, employees are often less inclined to draw a line between work and personal technology and commonly prefer not to settle for enterprise solutions that are harder to use than what they have at home. In response to the consumerization of IT movement, enterprises are transforming digitally to create a more engaged workforce, offering employees consumer-like tools and choice of technology brands. As the competition for talent escalates, we believe technology will play a central role in either improving or degrading the employee experience. Empowering employees to use their preferred devices is important to attract, engage, and retain productive employees. Today, with more organizations than ever before managing and onboarding new employees remotely, the technology experience and the employee experience are synonymous.
Rapidly evolving workplace demographics are also accelerating the consumerization of IT. Millennials currently represent the largest segment of the U.S. workforce, and have been since 2016, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center. Millennials are the first digitally-native generation that has grown up with broadband, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and a massive library of apps through which they interact with the world and each other. Millennials demand more from their enterprise IT organizations. They expect to work from anywhere at any time. They expect to be able to collaborate instantly. They expect to have a choice in the technology brand they use.
This trend is expected to continue as younger generations continue to enter the workforce and workplace technology continues to directly impact employment decision-making. In a 2021 survey conducted by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by us, 89% of workers are willing to make a salary sacrifice for device choice and nearly two-thirds would choose Apple.
Consumerization of IT has been one of the most significant trends impacting enterprise IT over the past decade. This trend is exemplified by Apple’s iPhone, introduced in 2007. The iPhone was quickly preferred by many employees for its superior user experience compared to the corporate issued mobile phones controlled by enterprise IT departments. Mass consumer adoption of the iPhone pushed organizations to develop corporate policies that support the use of personal devices for work. As a result, Apple — the ultimate consumer technology company — has become critically important to enterprise IT organizations.
Apple’s momentum in enterprise IT
Fueled by Apple’s popularity and the consumerization of IT, Apple devices have gained widespread acceptance across the enterprise, from the executive suite to new hires. As a result, Apple market share in the enterprise has grown significantly. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple is now in every Fortune 500 company, and “eight in ten companies are writing custom apps for their enterprise.” Apple’s enterprise revenue, disclosed as $25 billion in 2015, is estimated to have grown to over $40 billion in 2019 according to Atherton Research. Apple’s commitment to the enterprise has expanded through partnerships with enterprise giants, such as Accenture, Cisco, Deloitte, General Electric, IBM, Salesforce, and SAP.
Evidence of this momentum is further supported by Statcounter, an organization that aggregates data based on web traffic. According to Statcounter, Apple operating systems comprised 24% of global web traffic (both business and consumer) in December 2021, up from 4% in January 2009. Apple’s gains in the U.S. have been even more significant, with Apple operating systems now representing over 44% of web traffic in December 2021, compared to 30% for Microsoft and 24% for Google. Over that same period, the market share of Microsoft in the U.S. has declined from 92% to 30%. According to IDC data, the Mac has been the fastest growing computer worldwide for the past two years with a Compound Annual Growth rate of 25%, more than ten percentage points faster than growth of the PC industry, and faster than all other major PC brands.
The increased use of mobile devices to access the internet is largely responsible for the decline in market share of Windows over the past decade. Over this same decade, however, the Mac computer has grown in popularity and market share, further demonstrating that Apple’s increased use is not limited to iOS devices. While the Mac computer was once primarily associated with creative or artistic activities, it now represents a growing share of computers within the enterprise. According to a 2021 IDC Report (Worldwide Unified Endpoint Management Software for Apple Devices 2021 Vendor Assessment), adoption of Mac usage in the enterprise (firms with 1,000+ employees according to IDC) is growing by many measures. In the United States, average penetration of macOS devices was around 23% in 2020, compared with 17% in 2019, according to IDC’s 2020 and 2019 Enterprise Mobility and Workspace Software Surveys. This wave of new Mac devices requiring seamless remote access to business apps and resources is causing friction among many enterprise end-user computing support and management teams, which have historically focused more on Windows device management. Macs, of course, are not the entire story around Apple devices in the enterprise. According to IDC’s 2021 enterprise survey, iPhones account for 49% of the smartphone installed base among U.S. enterprises, and iPads make up the majority of tablets used in the enterprise.
Given the expectations of both current and future employees, offering employees a choice in technology brand is becoming imperative for many enterprises. When given a choice, more than 70% of employees surveyed worldwide would choose Mac over PC and iOS over Android, according to a 2018 survey conducted by us. Considering IDC’s estimate of current Mac enterprise penetration, we believe there is significant opportunity to fill the gap between how many employees want a Mac and how many currently use one.
Digital transformation in response to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for solutions to empower remote work, distance learning, and telehealth. While these trends were gaining mind share prior to the pandemic, the pandemic created momentum for these digital transformation changes that we believe will continue post COVID-19. Workflows that were once aspirational have become essential. For example, many companies with a remote workforce need to ship devices directly from the manufacturer to the end user and have all the enterprise requirements fulfilled without IT ever touching the devices. While this workflow has been used by some organizations in the past to increase IT efficiency and smooth the user experience, it now has become a logistical and scalable advantage for device distribution and employee safety. In healthcare, providers are attempting to conserve personal protective equipment and generally minimize in-person patient contact. As such, providers have used iPads to facilitate virtual inpatient care, serve patients at home, and connect isolated patients with loved ones, with some providers even loaning the
required devices to patients. In education, digital technology has never played a more important role, and many school districts continue to offer fully remote or hybrid learning models. These school districts require a solution that helps educators, students, and parents embrace distance learning technology. This sudden and significant shift from in-person to virtual interactions is forcing these modern workflows into the mainstream. The vision of employee or student empowerment delivered through Jamf solutions can help organizations operate at the level they did before the necessity to conduct their business or function in a remote environment.
We believe these trends will continue. According to a 2021 Gallup study, COVID-accelerated remote work trends have persisted with nearly half of employed Americans working exclusively or partially remote and over 90% of such remote workers hoping remote work continues post-pandemic. More organizations than ever before are examining their remote employee and work-from-home policies and looking for solutions to guide them. According to a 2021 PricewaterhouseCoopers study, over 70% of executives are planning new investment in tools for virtual collaboration and/or IT infrastructure to secure virtual connectivity to support remote work. Now, the technology experience and the employee experience are synonymous.
The limitations of legacy enterprise solutions
Legacy solutions do not deliver the full Apple user experience because they are either outdated, overly Windows-centric, or treat all devices the same across operating systems. In particular, cross-platform solutions that treat devices the same tend to rely on the lowest common denominator technology that is shared across the relevant ecosystems. Apple, Microsoft, and Google have each introduced device-specific cloud services to automate enterprise IT processes. Fully embracing these cloud services demands specific focus on the respective ecosystem. Legacy solutions do not leverage the native capabilities of Apple and do not deliver the full Apple experience across several key areas, including the following:
•Provisioning and deployment. Legacy solutions commonly rely on processes, such as disk imaging, that are manual or time-intensive for IT departments and diminish the Apple user experience. As a result, IT departments need to spend additional time and effort setting up and configuring devices similar to a traditional PC deployment, and users receive a muted Apple experience that is overly complex and falls short of expectations.
•Operating system updates. Cross-platform legacy solutions are unable to allocate sufficient resources to always support the latest operating systems from all manufacturers. As a result, IT departments are forced to place moratoriums on operating system upgrades (through manually distributed emails) so they can test and then slowly roll out operating system upgrades weeks or months after they become available. This approach is contrary to Apple user expectations and also delays deployment of potentially important security updates which often results in such solutions not supporting the latest Apple operating system features and can cause security vulnerabilities that put an organization at risk. This is exacerbated with the release of the Apple M1 chip on new Mac devices which revolutionizes its performance. Those not aligned with Apple and same-day support — be it management or security solution provider — are unable to support this new hardware which prevents users from being productive and protected.
•Application licensing and lifecycle. Cross-platform solutions offer limited options for application distribution and installation, which often require hands-on IT oversight. Microsoft, Apple, and Google each possess their own commerce solutions for third-party application purchases and distribution. Enterprise integrations for these commerce solutions require deep understanding of the platform and associated service. Cross-platform solutions have historically struggled to stay current with the standards of each platform’s features.
Additionally, the enterprise requirements for security and privacy result in the need to wrap applications with middleware, such as containers, degrading Apple’s intended user experience. License tracking in the cross-platform solution environment can also be manual. All of this effort creates extra and error-prone work for IT departments and dilutes the Apple user experience.
•Endpoint protection. Legacy solutions do not leverage Apple’s native security tools and Endpoint Security framework, thereby providing limited visibility into an organization’s fleet of devices and limited identification of potential security threats. Those not fully aligned with Apple’s native security tools and Endpoint Security framework are unable to support the Apple M1 chip for Mac and cannot apply new restrictions in Apple’s latest operating system, macOS Monterey, on M1 Mac devices.
In most cases, legacy solutions rely on endpoint protection solutions that were originally designed for Windows. As a result, these solutions deliver endpoint protection to devices in a manner which degrades the Apple user
experience and performance and may not function properly in an Apple environment. In addition, the signature-based approach utilized by these solutions can only identify backward-looking threats specific to Microsoft and does not communicate with native Apple security tools that could identify more relevant and immediate threats.
•Identity-based access to resources. The concept of a workplace perimeter is quickly fading as employees demand flexibility to work from anywhere with seamless access to enterprise applications and resources. Enterprises need to make it simple for users to authenticate and access enterprise resources from anywhere with a single identity. To provide users access to corporate resources, many organizations bind their devices with Azure Active Directory (“AAD”). While binding devices to AAD works well with Windows-based devices, it does not create an efficient experience for other ecosystems, including Apple. Additionally, to be able to service devices in the enterprise, IT often creates a secondary administrator account on each device that tends to become a management headache, user experience burden, and security risk.
For enterprise Apple deployments, the limitations of legacy solutions all add up to higher operational and support costs, greater security vulnerability, lower productivity, and a degraded user experience. While its devices may have higher upfront costs, implementing the full Apple experience results in higher productivity and lower total cost of ownership. Realizing these potential benefits requires an enterprise software solution specifically built for the Apple ecosystem.
Our Solution
We are the standard in Apple Enterprise Management, and our cloud software platform is the only vertically-focused Apple infrastructure and security platform of scale in the world. Our SaaS solutions provide a cloud-based platform for full lifecycle enterprise security and IT management of devices. We help IT and security teams confidently protect the devices, data, and applications used by their workforce, while providing employees with consumer-simple, privacy-protecting technology. Our solutions are purpose-built to provide both technical and non-technical IT personnel with a single software platform to administer their end-users’ devices, while preserving the legendary Apple experience end-users have come to expect. We believe that our success is born out of a primary focus on Apple and our commitment to optimizing the end-to-end user experience. As of December 31, 2021, we had more than 60,000 customers, over 24,000 of which became customers in the last two years, in more than 100 countries and territories.
We believe employees have come to expect the same high-quality Apple user experience at work as they enjoy in their personal lives. This is often not possible as many organizations rely on legacy solutions to administer devices or do not give employees a choice of device. Unlike competitors, our software solutions are Apple-first and Apple-best to preserve and extend the native Apple experience, allowing employees to use their devices as they do in their personal lives, while retaining their privacy and fulfilling IT’s enterprise requirements around deployment, access, and security. Our software platform provides the following key benefits:
•Device provisioning and deployment. We provide a scalable, zero-IT-touch deployment right out of the shrink-wrapped box, personalized for each end-user. Our offering makes it possible for IT professionals to easily manage the traditionally challenging tasks of deployment, information encryption, and loading and updating software, without ever touching the device. Jamf customer research has shown that our seamless cloud deployment capabilities lower the total cost of ownership of its devices, enable the native Apple experience in the enterprise, and ultimately make the devices more effective and secure.
•Self-service. We extend the Apple experience with a customizable enterprise self-service app that empowers end users to satisfy their own IT needs. With a single click, end users can install apps pre-approved by IT, request a new app, automatically resolve common technical issues, and easily connect and configure enterprise resources, like the nearest printer, without waiting for IT. While the end user experience is simple, the range of capabilities is immense. Our self-service app empowers users to be productive and self-sufficient while simultaneously reducing the labor burden on IT.
•Operating system updates. Many Apple users expect immediate access to new features by upgrading the moment Apple releases a new operating system. Given our primary focus on Apple, we are able to offer robust, immediate support for operating system feature updates — including Apple’s new M1 chip for Mac — so they can be effortlessly deployed on the same day they are released by Apple. IT teams have the flexibility to automate updates or let users initiate the updates, ensuring employees stay up-to-date with all of the latest security and privacy features, plus leverage new Apple hardware once available.
•Application lifecycle and licensing. We give IT teams the ability to automate key workflows related to the installation and deployment of both Apple App Store and third-party applications, all from the most expansive app catalog, ensuring a more efficient IT management process. These capabilities include automated targeted distribution of apps to employees based on their work needs, user-initiated app installed via a customized enterprise app store and automated volume purchasing and license management, and automated tracking, deployment, and updating of third-party applications.
•Endpoint protection. We safeguard and amplify device security through an enterprise endpoint protection solution purpose-built for Apple and mobile devices. Jamf endpoint protection is specifically designed to identify Apple and mobile targeted threats while preserving user experience and performance. Our software solution is built around the unique challenges that Apple and mobile devices face in enterprise security, with behavior-based detection and prevention of Apple-specific threats and enterprise visibility into native Apple security tools. Through close monitoring of a device’s network communications, Jamf endpoint protection detects and blocks extends its protections to advanced security threats and phishing attacks. Jamf endpoint protection is architected using native Apple application programming interfaces (“APIs”) and designed to co-exist within an organization’s existing enterprise security solutions. It supports Apple’s new M1 chip and empowers IT, InfoSec, and end users to take advantage of the revolutionary efficiency, speed, and performance the M1 chip offers.
•Identity-based access to resources. We enable end users to easily and securely connect to enterprise resources with a single cloud-based identity credential, simplified using biometrics on the Apple device. End users can then immediately access all of their corporate applications and shared resources. This eliminates the time-consuming need for multiple logins, reduces the number of IT tickets for password-related issues (which are frequently the leading cause of IT tickets) and removes the need for IT administrators to bind devices to AAD. Additionally, Jamf is able to dynamically block or grant administrative rights on the Apple device itself based on an end user’s cloud-based identity, thus removing the need for additional administrator accounts on the device.
•Network risk management. Regardless of end-user device type, network security is critical, especially with remote work and as workers expect to access company resources anywhere at any time. Jamf replaces legacy conditional access and VPN technology to deliver true zero trust network access (“ZTNA”). It ensures that after a user authenticates into their device, business connections are secured while enabling non-business applications to route directly to the internet. This preserves end-user privacy and optimizes network infrastructure. We are focused on securing connections, regardless if the end user leverages Apple or another device type. Network security is an extension of the Apple experience, and Jamf is focused on protecting every connect point.
Our software platform provides value to both end users and IT departments. Users receive the legendary Apple experience they have come to expect, and IT departments are able to empower employees, enhance productivity and lower total cost of ownership. According to a July 2021 Apple-commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic Impact Of Mac In Enterprise: M1 Update, an M1 Mac in the enterprise results in $843 cost savings per device versus a comparable PC (when considering three-year hardware, software, support, and operational costs), a 20% improvement in employee retention, and a 5% increase in productivity of all employees. An M1 Mac also results in 48 hours of increased productivity per employee over three years. These metrics result in a payback period of less than 6 months for an M1 Mac.
Furthermore, 2021 Jamf customer research conducted by Hobson & Company and commissioned by us found benefits from simplifying IT management, reducing the time spent provisioning devices, the time spent on ongoing device management, and the time spent managing apps all by 90%. Additionally, that research found Jamf improved end-user experience, reducing end-user productivity loss due to technical problems by 90% and the time spent on help desk tickets by 70%. According to this research, Jamf also helped mitigate risk by reducing the time IT spent remediating incidents and vulnerabilities by 70%. Overall, Hobson & Company found that a typical organization could expect a 781% three-year return on investment and a 2.7 month payback period when using Jamf.
Our Relationship with Apple
Jamf was founded in 2002 with the sole mission of helping organizations succeed with Apple, making it the first Apple-focused device management solution. Today, we have become the largest infrastructure and software platform built specifically for enterprise deployments of the Apple ecosystem. Our relationship with Apple has endured and grown to be multi-faceted over the past 20 years.
To continuously offer a software solution built specifically for Apple, we have always worked closely with Apple’s worldwide developer relations organization in an effort to support all new Apple innovations the moment their hardware and software is released. Additionally, throughout the course of our relationship, Jamf and Apple have formalized several contractual agreements:
•Apple as a customer. In 2010, Apple became a Jamf customer, using our software solution to deploy and secure its fleet of devices internally. For the year ended December 31, 2021, Apple as a customer represented less than 1% of our total revenue.
•Apple as a channel partner in education and in retail. In 2011, Apple became a Jamf channel partner in the education market, reselling our software solution to K-12 and higher education organizations within the United States. In 2012, Apple expanded their channel relationship by offering our software solution to businesses through Apple retail stores in the United States. For the year ended December 31, 2021, Apple as a channel partner facilitated approximately 6% of our bookings.
•Mobility Partner Program. In 2014, we became a member of Apple’s Mobility Partner Program, which focuses on solution development and effective go-to-market activities.
Each of these contractual relationships continue to this day and span all enterprise technology across the Apple ecosystem, including Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV. In addition to these contractual relationships, Apple and Jamf personnel frequently join forces to influence and collaborate as we work with customers, helping them succeed with Apple.
Market Opportunity
We believe our solution addresses a large and growing market covering the use of Apple technology in the enterprise. According to Frost & Sullivan, the global Total Addressable Market for Apple Enterprise Management was estimated to be $12.2 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17.7% to $23.4 billion by the end of 2024. This market represents the potential number of Apple mobile phones (iPhones), tablets (iPads), laptop and desktop computers (Macs), media streaming devices (Apple TVs), and portable media players (iPods) based on growing acceptance by education and business IT departments. Frost & Sullivan includes both devices purchased and provided by enterprises as well as bring your own devices (“BYODs”) owned by end-users that may require Apple Enterprise Management to provide necessary access to resources or services from the enterprises. The potential device numbers are multiplied by the Jamf average selling price (“ASP”) for each Apple device and enterprise type.
With the Wandera acquisition in 2021, we estimate that Jamf’s Total Addressable Market grew by $6 billion, to approximately $18 billion, as a result of the additional products we are able to sell to run on Apple devices. However, we believe our Total Addressable Market is even larger. While we strive to enable an outstanding Apple experience, we also look beyond the device hardware to ensure the full technology stack between the user and the application is optimized. This includes identity and access management that does not interrupt user productivity and workflows, security monitoring that respects end user privacy, and traffic routing that is optimized for each specific application. From advanced anti-phishing and network threat protection to privacy-aware content filtering and fast, secure zero trust access, our network-based technologies are designed for any end user working from any platform. We believe this cross-platform expansion knocks down barriers for customer adoption and will grow our Total Addressable Market. Additionally, we believe our Total Addressable Market could expand further as Apple may make additional devices available for enterprise management, such as the Apple Watch, and as we develop future solutions which provide value to enterprises managing their Apple ecosystem. We are currently in the process of refreshing our Total Addressable Market to incorporate a number of these factors.
Our Strengths
The following are key strengths which contribute directly to our ability to create value for customers, employees, partners, and stockholders:
•Long-standing relationship with and primary focus on Apple. We are the only vertically-focused Apple infrastructure and security platform of scale in the world, and we have built our company through a primary focus on being the leading solution for Apple in the enterprise. We have a collaborative relationship with Apple which, combined with our accumulated technical experience and expertise, gives us the ability to fully and quickly leverage and extend the capabilities of Apple products, operating systems, and services. This expertise and
collaboration with Apple development programs enables us to fully support new Apple innovations and operating system releases the moment they are made available by Apple.
•Strong support from Jamf Nation. Jamf Nation is the world’s largest online community of IT and security professionals exclusively focused on Apple in the enterprise. This active, grassroots community serves as a highly-qualified and efficient crowd-sourced Q&A engine for anyone with questions about Apple and Jamf deployments. Each year we celebrate this community through a customer event called Jamf Nation User Conference (“JNUC”). During the most recent JNUC in fall of 2021, which was held virtually, approximately 8,000 people attended from over 100 countries. This community of loyal Jamf supporters acts as a resource for existing and potential customers and is also an important asset in providing feature feedback and ideas for our product roadmap. Jamf Nation also serves as an efficient way to introduce potential customers to the Jamf brand and solutions.
•Standard for Apple in the enterprise. As the only vertically-focused software platform of scale entirely dedicated to the Apple ecosystem, we are the standard for Apple in the enterprise. This is evidenced by our growing number of more than 60,000 customers as of December 31, 2021, including 22 of the 25 most valuable brands (according to the Forbes Most Valuable Brands rankings). In addition, hundreds of independent customer ratings on popular software review websites, including Gartner Peer Insights, G2Crowd, and Capterra, have earned Jamf recognition as the “Customers’ Choice.” Through our intense focus on connecting, managing, and protecting devices, we are able to provide a differentiated solution when compared to other cross-platform providers who attempt to satisfy all requirements for all platforms.
•Strong partner ecosystem. Our meaningful expertise managing the Apple ecosystem and our unique understanding of enterprise customers have motivated us to publish a large catalog of open APIs so our customers can integrate and extend their existing software solutions. It is upon this robust APIs catalog that we have built a strong partner ecosystem that includes hundreds of integrations and solutions made available in our Jamf Marketplace.
In addition to our developer partners, we have relationships with solution partners. One example is the work we have done to integrate our products with Microsoft Endpoint Manager and AAD. Development activities with Microsoft have resulted in solutions that optimize the Apple ecosystem within a Microsoft-centric enterprise. Jamf’s authentication and account management solutions have deep integrations with AAD. Additionally, customers can sync their Jamf inventory data with Microsoft Endpoint Manager, providing a consolidated view of all devices from all manufacturers in the organization’s fleet. This integration provides customers with simple and unified visibility. In addition, the integration provides tremendous operational benefits, including enforcing compliance policies, ensuring only compliant devices can gain access to protected company resources like Office 365, and helping users remediate their device compliance issues via Jamf’s self-service application.
•Effective go-to-market capabilities. The combination of our strong partner ecosystem (including Apple and Microsoft), our e-commerce capability, and our extensive enterprise and inside sales organizations has created a differentiated and powerful go-to-market approach. We believe this robust go-to-market structure allows us to effectively and efficiently reach our entire addressable market, including both large and small organizations in all geographic regions throughout the world. This also allows us to “land and expand” within our customer base by beginning with a limited engagement at each customer and increasing that customer relationship over time.
•Differentiated technology. While Jamf technology has many powerful capabilities built to help promote digital transformation and satisfy the challenging requirements of connecting, managing, and protecting Apple in the enterprise, specific innovations that set us apart from others in the market include:
•Powerful architected-for-Apple agent. Apple IT administrators can access remote computers and file systems, collecting attributes and intelligence as if they were physically sitting with each and every Apple device in their fleet.
•Enterprise attributes and smart grouping. Through our smart grouping technology, Jamf can dynamically group devices, based on standard attributes, enterprise attributes, or a combination thereof to target and execute business workflows at scale.
•Leading security capabilities that extend cross-platform. Jamf is the only endpoint security vendor with natively integrated network security and secure connections to remote applications.
•Industry-specific workflows. We have created industry-specific workflows that go beyond device management to solve issues for particular industries such as education, healthcare, and hospitality, including solutions built around remote work, distance learning, and telehealth.
•High performance native Apple APIs. Jamf creatively utilizes extensive APIs from published Apple technologies which allows us to be ready instantly with each new Apple operating system.
•Enterprise self-service. Our simple-to-use enterprise self-service solution enables IT to empower end-users with a privately brandable application that allows users to install approved apps or perform complex tasks from a personalized enterprise catalog.
Our Growth Strategy
We help organizations succeed with Apple by connecting the Apple experience with the needs of the enterprise. By preserving and enhancing the Apple experience in an enterprise context, we believe we can drive our growth within the current Apple ecosystem as well as fuel further Apple penetration in enterprises, which will extend our opportunity. The key elements of our growth strategy include:
•Extend technology leadership through R&D investment and new products. We intend to continue investing in research and development and pursuing select technology acquisitions in order to enhance our existing solutions, add new capabilities and deployment options, and expand use cases. For example, in 2021 following the Wandera acquisition, we launched three new products, Jamf Private Access (a ZTNA solution), Jamf Data Policy (a solution to enforce acceptable usage policies and manage data consumption), and Jamf Threat Defense (a mobile device solution to protect users from malicious intent). We believe this strategy of continued innovation will allow us to reach new customers, cross-sell to existing customers, and maintain our position as the standard for Apple in the enterprise. In addition, many organizations with Apple also have non-Apple devices. The solutions they use to connect, manage, and protect devices, users, and data can vary in platform-centricity (i.e. the level of focus centered on a specific platform, like Apple) as you move from the device to the network. As you move further away from device-level capabilities and move closer to cloud security and identity functions like network security and identity-based focus, the broader our focus is, and that’s where solutions that offer cross-platform support, such as Jamf Private Access, provide Jamf with the ability to capture Windows and Android users in addition to our Apple base.
•Deliver unique industry-specific innovation. All industries today are experiencing new challenges related to social distancing, such as remote work, distance learning, and telehealth. We intend to continue developing and enhancing Apple-specific functionality for certain verticals, such as education, healthcare, and hospitality, to help these organizations serve the changing needs of their students, teachers, patients, and workers. For example, our patented mobile-to-mobile management technology provides teachers and parents control over school-issued iPads — whether they are ten feet away or ten miles. We have patent-pending healthcare listener functionality that empowers hospitals to launch device workflows based on events in the electronic medical record, giving patients access to their care plans and control over their room environment through a hospital-issued iPad. We have also launched a patented telehealth workflow, Virtual Visits, aimed to protect providers while still connecting patients to care and their communities. Providers are able to virtually round to their patients, and patients can simply connect with families outside the hospital without IT ever having to touch the device. Once patients are discharged, Virtual Visits can help to automatically digitally wipe the device to prepare it for the next patient. We believe targeted, vertical-specific functionality can help us further penetrate industries which already use devices, or provide a differentiated solution to enter a new industry or solve a new use case.
•Grow customer base with targeted sales and marketing investment. We aim to expand our customer base by continuing to make significant and targeted investments in our direct sales and marketing in an effort to attract new customers and drive broader awareness of our software solutions. In addition, with our expanded platform, we can reach beyond our historical sales efforts focused on IT executives and administrators and sell to Chief Information Officers, Chief Information Security Officers, and line-of-business leaders. We also plan to increase our channel sales and marketing organization to deepen and expand our joint go-to-market efforts through partners, including resellers, managed service providers, global systems integrators, carriers, and the Apple
consultant network, in order to reach new territories and further scale our business through their loyal customer network and expert service delivery. We believe the channel is an efficient way to sell to a wide variety of customers and reach new jurisdictions in a cost-effective manner while still focusing on customer satisfaction and retention.
•Increase sales to existing customers. We believe our base of more than 60,000 customers as of December 31, 2021 represents a significant opportunity for sales expansion. Our opportunities to deliver further value to existing customers include (1) growing the customers’ number of devices currently in use; (2) selling additional Jamf products; (3) expanding customers’ use of Jamf from one Apple product, like Mac, to additional Apple products used within the organization, like iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV; and (4) expanding the way customers use Apple products by showcasing capabilities available once customers fully embrace Jamf for deployment. Additionally, Apple continues to grow their ecosystem of solutions that can bring value to organizations, as they did with the introduction of tvOS management in 2017, making the Apple TV an attractive product to deliver new use cases in conference rooms, classrooms, hospitality environments, and for digital signage across a range of industries. The strength of Jamf’s “land and expand” strategy is evidenced by our dollar-based net retention rate, which has exceeded 116% as of the end of each of the twelve fiscal quarters ended December 31, 2021, calculated on a trailing twelve months basis.
•Expand global presence. We have a large international presence which we intend to continue growing. For the year ended December 31, 2021, approximately 34% of our new subscriptions originated outside of North America, compared to 32% for the prior year. We intend to continue making investments in our international sales and marketing channels to take advantage of this market opportunity, while refining our go-to-market approach based on local market dynamics. Furthermore, we will invest in our products and technology to fulfill the unique needs of the market we target.
•Grow and nurture Jamf Nation. Jamf Nation is the world’s largest online community of IT and security professionals focused exclusively on Apple in the enterprise. It consists of a knowledgeable and active community of Apple-focused administrators and Jamf users who come together to gain insight, share best practices, vet ideas with fellow administrators, and submit product feature requests. We intend to continue investing in our community platform and these relationships to ensure that our Jamf Nation community remains a vibrant forum for discussion and problem-solving for our users. We believe this community will continue to be a focal point for the Apple ecosystem and can also be helpful in introducing Jamf to potential new customers.
•Cultivate relationships with developer partners. We believe one of the most powerful elements of our software platform is the ability to use published APIs to extend its value with other third-party or custom solutions. As of December 31, 2021, more than 250 integrations and value-added solutions were published on the Jamf Marketplace. These solutions extend the value of Jamf, protect customers’ existing IT investments and encourage greater use and expansion of Jamf within the enterprise.
Our Products
We provide industry-leading software solutions that help empower users with Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV. We deploy our solutions through the following main products:
Jamf Pro
Jamf Pro offers a robust Apple ecosystem management software solution for complex IT environments, serving both commercial businesses and educational institutions. Since its introduction in 2002, Jamf Pro has been our flagship product, serving the largest portion of Jamf’s customer base.
Key capabilities of Jamf Pro include:
•providing a seamless initial device deployment, giving companies the ability to choose between a zero-touch experience or offering a more hands-on device enrollment and deployment;
•enrolling personally-owned devices with support of Apple’s user enrollment workflows, allowing for management of corporate resources while maintaining the user’s personal privacy.
•enabling customization of devices beyond configuration profiles, use policies, and scripts for the optimal user experience;
•facilitating pre-configuration of user settings before deployment;
•providing app management flexibility wherein apps can be made available automatically to users or through an enterprise self-service catalog;
•granting users the ability to update software and maintain their own devices through Jamf’s brandable self-service application without a help desk ticket;
•automating ongoing inventory management, such as automatic collection of hardware, software, and security configuration details from devices, creating custom reports and alerts, and managing software licenses and warranty records; and
•securing devices by leveraging native security features, such as encryption, managing device settings and configurations, restricting malicious software, and patching all devices without the need for user interaction.
Jamf Now
Jamf Now is an intuitive, pay-as-you-go Apple device management software solution for small-to-medium-sized businesses (“SMBs”). Jamf Now prioritizes simplicity through a design that is targeted for organizations with limited or no IT resources, and it can be adopted by such organizations without engaging Jamf sales, training, or services personnel. Jamf Now allows customers to set up their own accounts to enroll their devices and immediately benefit regardless of any prior experience with Jamf. Jamf Now facilitates the consistent configuration of devices remotely, provides a 360-degree view of inventory, and remotely enforces passcodes, encryption, installed software, and locking or wiping of devices. Jamf also makes it easy to leverage its other solutions within Jamf Now with Jamf Now Plus. Jamf Now Plus is an enhanced tier of service that offers all the functionality of Jamf Now and support for custom applications, custom profiles, and macOS package deployment while still designed to be a streamlined, easy-to-use management tool. Jamf Now Plus also includes password sync preview functionality powered by Jamf Connect, which helps keep Mac passwords in sync with cloud credentials and enforces password policies from identity providers Microsoft Azure AD and Okta to maintain consistency and security across all users. We expect that soon Jamf Now Plus will include malware prevention preview functionality powered by Jamf Protect, which helps prevent malicious software and other threats from running on Mac devices in an environment. These capabilities better equip small and mid-sized businesses with key functionality to manage and secure their Apple devices.
Jamf School
Jamf School is a purpose-built software solution for educators and is supported by value-add workflow apps that empower teachers to create a focused, active, and personal learning environment. We have a long and successful presence in the education market, dating back to the early 2000s, and we introduced Jamf School in early 2019 following the acquisition of ZuluDesk B.V. (“ZuluDesk”). Launching Jamf School significantly increased our value in the classroom and allows us to further empower teachers, students, and even parents.
Teachers using Jamf School are able to quickly and easily control all devices in their classroom, which ultimately aids the focus of students. Teachers design lesson plans leveraging content from Apple’s App Store combined with their own teaching materials to meet their curriculum needs to then easily deploy these lessons to students. They can also restrict specific functions during assessments and control what content and resources students have access to on their iPads at a specific time. This functionality works seamlessly whether the teacher and student(s) are in the same physical classroom or if they are learning from home or in different locations.
With Jamf School, parents can use their personal iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Android device to govern the access children have when using their school-issued iPads at home. Parents can control and limit their children’s device usage, applications, and functionality when the student is not in the school. Jamf School transforms processes that once required IT involvement into dynamic interactions that put the power in the hands of the people who have the greatest impact on meeting each student’s learning needs.
Jamf School also engages and connects the student. Students can gain automatic access to subject-specific materials and applications, while unrelated or irrelevant content is hidden to avoid distraction. Through a self-service portal, students are also able to choose applications from an approved list of content, empowering them to have control over their learning. Teachers and parents can be confident students are focused and connected, which is specifically important in situations where students may bring their devices home or have prolonged control of their devices outside of the school district’s possession.
Jamf Data Policy
Jamf Data Policy, launched in 2021 following the acquisition of Wandera, is a solution to enforce acceptable usage policies to eliminate shadow IT and block risky content and manage data consumption with real-time analytics and granular reporting.
Jamf Data Policy features include:
•configuring caps for when data usage thresholds are reached and setting real-time alerts and notifications for users and admins;
•setting rules to ensure only acceptable websites can be reached and data usage is compliant;
•implementing and enforcing policies to manage data usage based on locations;
•compressing data in real time to tackle rising data consumption without cutting performance or productivity;
•setting policies that apply to different groups in different circumstances; and
•accommodating all mobile and Windows 10 devices, allowing users to work with their preferred model.
Jamf Connect
Jamf Connect allows IT Admins to provision devices with business-critical applications based solely on an employee’s cloud-identity. Users will enjoy a seamless experience when accessing their device and applications by using either biometric passwordless access or a single password that is synchronized down to the local-account level, even when the password is changed— keeping employees on task. Jamf Connect transforms how users connect to their corporate identity and therefore provides users with a seamless connection to corporate resources.
Jamf Connect gives IT administrators the ability to monitor all company Mac devices and control who is accessing them, providing comfort that both the device and corporate information are protected. Jamf Connect substantially improves the user experience by reducing IT help desk tickets for password resets. Additionally, IT administrators are able to service each device using their cloud identity without requiring a separate admin account on the device, which is a management headache, security vulnerability, and a user experience hazard.
Jamf Private Access
Jamf Private Access, launched in 2021 following the acquisition of Wandera, is a ZTNA solution that replaces legacy conditional access and VPN technology. More employees than ever before are working from different locations and on various devices. Organizations need to be able to ensure secure access to company resources as devices are rarely being connected from within a traditional network perimeter. Jamf Private Access ensures that, after a user authenticates into their device, business connections are transparently secured while enabling non-business applications to route directly to the internet, preserving end-user privacy, maintaining the end-user experience without slowing it down, and optimizing secure network infrastructure. This solution works across device ecosystems and signifies Jamf’s expansion into cross-platform capabilities.
Jamf Protect
Jamf Protect provides protection of Mac-targeted malware and creates customized telemetry and detections that give enterprise security teams unprecedented visibility into their Macs, extending Apple’s security and privacy model to the enterprise while upholding the Apple user experience.
Based on historical needs, most endpoint security products have been designed for Windows and ported to Apple environments only when necessary. Jamf Protect was specifically designed to protect a customer’s fleet of Mac computers by leveraging in-depth knowledge of how adversaries attack Macs.
As market share for the Mac computer has grown in the enterprise, attackers have started focusing on and innovating malware for Macs. It is no longer sufficient to protect these devices with a solution designed for a different platform.
Capabilities of Jamf Protect include:
•mapping the security posture of a customer’s Mac fleet against the Center for Internet Security benchmarks;
•preventing execution and quarantining of known macOS malware and unwanted applications to keep end users safe;
•extending information security visibility into macOS built-in security tools for awareness and improved reporting, compliance, and security;
•receiving real-time alerts to analyze activity on the device and choose whether to proactively block, isolate, or remediate threats;
•providing granular control to information security teams over what data is collected and where it is sent, and allowing companies that monitor endpoint activity for compliance reasons to gather authentication and other activity tracked by macOS into their system of record; and
•supporting the latest operating system from the first day it’s available to ensure users receive the latest and most pressing security updates, while providing the user with a superior macOS experience.
Jamf Threat Defense
Jamf Threat Defense, launched in 2021 following the acquisition of Wandera, is a complete solution to protect workers from malicious attackers with minimal impact to the user experience by monitoring a device’s network activity. Jamf Threat Defense protects iOS, Android, and Windows endpoints from being compromised through mobile threat detection and zero-day phishing prevention with a streamlined app for notifications and remediation. Jamf Threat Defense operates across a diverse range of devices and ownership models, whether BYOD, corporate owned personally enabled (“COPE”), or corporate owned business only (“COBO”), empowering users with their preferred model in a way that protects the business.
Our Technology
Our software platform was purpose-built to help organizations succeed with Apple, ensuring the highest standards for security and performance while preserving the Apple user experience. Our platform is built on the following core tenets:
Optimized for cloud
We build products that provide Apple-focused device management, identity and access management, and endpoint protection solutions optimized for cloud environments. Our products are built on the market-leading cloud platform (Amazon Web Services (“AWS”)), but are architected for flexibility to utilize other cloud platforms. This foundation has enabled us to scale and support millions of devices since our SaaS offering launched in 2012.
Global availability
Our products are designed to deploy worldwide, using regional AWS servers to deliver the performance required by our customers. We are able to rapidly expand our global cloud footprint as demand for our products grows in new regions.
Scalable and reliable
Our products are designed to remove customers’ worry about availability, scalability, and maintenance of the infrastructure that powers their solution. Our customers are responsible for their fleet of devices, while Jamf handles all back-end management and scaling operations at the software layer and on a global basis for infrastructure management. Jamf employees are located worldwide to ensure we are available whenever and wherever our customers need us.
We are able to quickly provision new capacity and scale operations through automation on top of our cloud software platform. We continually demonstrate the success of our offering by supporting numerous Fortune 500 customers and large-scale education customers even at their most demanding peak periods.
Our SaaS offerings are designed for reliability with a highly available infrastructure design spanning numerous data centers for all regions in which we have operations. Jamf is built to be “always on” to all of our cloud customers. If infrastructure becomes unavailable for any reason, our offering reroutes traffic to a secondary location to ensure we deliver on our Service Level Agreements. This availability is monitored externally from an outside provider, and Jamf employees are proactively notified if availability is ever impacted.
Jamf empowers customers to seamlessly upgrade to our latest software. Our software platform streamlines automated backups, upgrades, and enables roll-back if required for any reason. Our extensive experience running distributed systems at scale helps our customers remain focused on meeting their organizational needs.
Enterprise-grade security
Security is a critical customer requirement and a guiding principle at Jamf. Our customers frequently use our products to manage integral platforms, which informs our approach to security and compliance. We integrate security principles into
development processes, test product code and infrastructure for potential security issues, and deploy security technologies. We have access controls to data in our production environments that are strictly assigned, monitored, and audited. To ensure our processes remain innovative and secure, we undergo continuous third-party testing for vulnerabilities within our software architecture. We also engage with a third-party audit firm to audit our security program against well-known security standards like SOC2 Type II and ISO27001.
Differentiated technology
While there are many powerful capabilities of our technologies, the following are a few that set us apart from others in the market:
•Powerful architected-for-Apple agent. Jamf has been perfecting its Apple device agent for nineteen years. Using the Jamf agent, Apple IT administrators can access remote computers and file systems, collecting attributes and intelligence as if they were physically sitting with each and every Apple device in their fleet. The Jamf agent is written at the user-level and therefore does not require loading code into the operating system kernel, known as a kernel extension (“kext”). Most Windows-based cross-platform competitors employ kexts when they are ported to the Mac, which results in a slower, less secure and less stable solution. Jamf’s agent is able to quickly and safely consolidate and scale Apple inventory data beyond any cross-platform solution.
•Enterprise attributes and smart grouping. Not only does Jamf have more inventory information about devices than our competitors, but because of our extensible enterprise attributes, we can consolidate data based on device usage or user. Through our patented smart grouping technology, Jamf is then able to dynamically group devices, based on standard attributes, enterprise attributes or a combination thereof to target and execute business workflows at scale. These workflows can be extremely advanced when tapping into the Jamf policies engine, which includes full scripting capabilities for maximum flexibility.
•Industry workflows. Part of filling the gap between what Apple provides and what the enterprise requires is providing technology that extends far beyond basic management to meet the unique needs of specific industries. For example, Jamf’s patented mobile-to-mobile management technology provides teachers the control of student iPads in the classroom they need. Jamf’s patent-pending healthcare listener functionality empowers hospitals to launch device workflows based on events in the electronic medical record. Jamf also has developed a patented telehealth workflow, Virtual Visits, aimed to protect providers while still connecting patients to care and their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. And Jamf’s patented setup and reset iOS applications create a shared device workflow that is required in these industries as well as retail, hospitality, field services and more.
•High performance native Apple APIs. Jamf creatively utilizes extensive APIs from published Apple technologies. Using native Apple APIs also allows us to be ready instantly with each new Apple operating system as Apple preserves forward-moving compatibility of their native APIs. We have a pending patent application for this innovative solution.
•Enterprise self-service. Jamf’s value is more than simply retaining the legendary Apple user experience as devices are deployed throughout the enterprise. We believe Jamf actually improves upon the Apple experience with a simple-to-use enterprise self-service solution. This application enables IT to empower end-users with a privately brandable application that allows users to install approved apps or perform complex tasks with a single mouse click from a personalized enterprise catalog. Jamf’s self-service app empowers users to setup resources, update configurations, apply policies and troubleshoot common issues with a single click. The self-service app taps into Jamf’s underlying technologies, allowing end-users to simply and quickly solve their own problems without submitting an IT ticket.
Sales and Marketing
Sales
We have a global, multi-faceted go-to-market approach that allows us to efficiently sell to and serve the needs of organizations of varying sizes. By offering a range of products and routes to the market, including through a direct sales force, online, and indirectly via our channel partners (including Apple), we can serve many types of organizations across the world.
Our direct sales force services larger organizations and those with more complex requirements. The direct sales organization is divided into inside and outside sales teams, organized by customer size, and is further segmented with teams focused on acquiring new logos or growing spend in our existing customer base. Our direct sales force is supported by sales development representatives that provide qualified leads as well as other technical resources.
To complement our direct sales teams, we have a large network of over 200 channel partners globally that resell our products located across the world. These channel partners provide us with expanded market coverage and an efficient way to reach smaller or emerging geographies, providing us with additional sales capacity and the ability to be present in more global markets. Approximately 54% of our bookings were facilitated via our channel partners for the year ended December 31, 2021.
One of our notable channel partners is Apple, which, as a channel partner, facilitated approximately 6% of our bookings for the year ended December 31, 2021. Apple education became a Jamf channel partner in 2011 and resells Jamf to K-12 and higher education organizations within the United States. In 2012, Apple expanded its channel relationship by offering Jamf products to businesses through Apple retail, which includes their stores in the United States and sales teams that are focused on SMBs. In 2014, we became a member of Apple’s Mobility Partner Program that focuses on solution development and effective go-to-market activities. We work closely with these various Apple teams across both sales and marketing to develop close relationships and expand our customer base.
For smaller businesses or those with less complex requirements, we provide an online self-service e-commerce model that allows organizations to find products best suited for their needs. This provides an efficient way to introduce smaller organizations to Jamf, with an opportunity for the relationship to grow over time.
Our global, multi-faceted go-to-market approach, combined with the ability for customers to easily trial our products, has allowed us to build an efficient, high velocity sales model.
Marketing
A key ingredient to our sales effectiveness and efficiency is our marketing engine. Our global marketing team builds market awareness of Jamf, generates preference and demand for our products, and enables our sales teams and channel partners to efficiently develop business with new and existing customers.
We focus our marketing strategy on building recognition of the Jamf brand through thought leadership and differentiated messaging that emphasizes the business value of our products. Our efforts include content marketing, social media, search engine optimization, events, and public and analyst relations. We leverage this brand awareness to acquire new customers and cross-market our software solutions to our existing customer base through global campaigns that integrate digital, social, web, email, customer advocacy, and field marketing tactics, such as regional customer/prospect conferences. To create maximum impact, these campaigns are created and adapted to serve all geographic regions and routes to market. We then accelerate prospects or customers through the buying journey by enabling our sales team and channel partners with a range of product/solution content, internal tools, such as return on investment calculators, competitive intelligence, and case studies. Finally, we capitalize on the voices of our highly satisfied and loyal customers using a variety of customer advocacy tactics including case studies and videos, software reviews, social amplification, references, and referrals.
The Jamf brand further benefits from Jamf Nation, the world’s largest online community of Apple administrators. Jamf Nation is our active community, including Jamf customers and potential customers, who share ideas and solutions related to their Apple deployments. Jamf Nation’s large volume of user-generated content serves as a great source of organic search traffic, introducing prospective customers to the Jamf brand and Jamf products. Complementing Jamf Nation, we host JNUC, the world’s largest enterprise Apple IT and security administrator conference. With thousands of attendees, publicly streamed keynotes and over 140 customer and Jamf-led sessions, we further tap into the power of our passionate customer base and garner significant market attention as the leader in our space.
Customers
As of December 31, 2021, we had more than 60,000 customers, over 24,000 of which became customers in the last two years, in more than 100 countries and territories. As of December 31, 2021, our customers include 9 of the largest 10 Fortune 500 companies, 8 of the top 10 Fortune 500 technology companies, 22 of the 25 most valuable brands (according to the Forbes Most Valuable Brands rankings), 10 of the 10 largest U.S. banks (based on total assets according to bankrate.com), 10 of the 10 best global universities (according to U.S. News and World Report), 7 of the 10 largest U.S. school districts (according to Niche), 8 of the 10 most prestigious consulting firms (according to Vault), 8 of the 10 largest U.S. retailers
(according to the National Retail Federation), 13 of the 20 top U.S. hospitals (according to U.S. News and World Report), 7 of the top 10 global apparel companies (according to BizVibe), and 8 of the 10 top U.S. media companies (according to Fortune). Our customer base is highly diversified, with no single end customer representing more than 1% of Annual Recurring Revenue (“ARR”). We have a highly satisfied customer base, as evidenced by our Net Promoter Score that significantly exceeds industry averages.
Customer Success
We believe that the value generated by the adoption of our products is strengthened by our strong dedication to ensuring customer success and developing long-term relationships, as demonstrated by our Net Promoter Score that significantly exceeds industry averages.
Our services department helps educate, support, and engage our customers to ensure their success with our software. We provide expertise to our customer base both virtually and onsite. We offer implementation services to encourage faster adoption of our products, and onsite instructor-led training courses for customers that have adopted our products. As part of this training, customers can obtain intermediate to expert-level certifications. We also offer consultative services specific to customer needs with both in-house professional service engineers and a vast array of integration partners who deliver services worldwide. Additionally, we offer consulting services specific for customers’ need to ensure rapid adoption of our products. These services are provided by in-house professional service engineers, and we utilize a vast array of integration partners that deliver services worldwide.
Our technical support department consists of a four-tier technical support model. The department is strategically located in five countries around the world. We offer 24/7 premium support for customers who have more complex environments or require more comprehensive support. We maintain a robust and up-to-date knowledge base and online technical documentation resource base for our customers, along with an online training catalog with hundreds of video-based training modules aimed at helping them better understand and use our products. We strive to provide the best possible support for our customers and maintained a high customer satisfaction score over 9.5 out of 10 in 2021 based on our surveys.
We value customer engagement and have a dedicated team of customer success professionals who work within three tiers of engagement models to proactively drive adoption, foster communication, and ensure the success of our products. We offer success planning exercises for our high-tier enterprise customers, and all customers benefit from our health scoring algorithm that uses multiple factors of product usage and company engagement to determine how we can best support their needs.
It is important to us that our customers have the resources they need to succeed with Apple, and customers are encouraged to connect and engage with the larger community of Apple administrators. This is best evidenced by Jamf Nation. Complementing our world-class technical support, this active, grassroots community serves as a highly-qualified and efficient crowd-sourced Q&A engine for anyone with questions about Apple and Jamf deployments. Jamf Nation members come together to gain insight, share best practices, vet ideas with fellow administrators, and submit product feature requests. We intend to continue investing in these relationships and ensure that our Jamf Nation community remains a vibrant forum for discussion and problem-solving for our customers.
Research and Development
Our research and development department is focused on enhancing our existing products and developing new products to maintain and extend our leadership position. Our department is built around small teams who practice agile development methodologies that enable us to innovate at a rapid pace and at scale on a global basis. The teams are organized to support our mission of helping organizations succeed with Apple and ensuring that we continue to deliver same-day support for Apple across our portfolio. In order to provide same day support for Apple, we deliberately schedule our annual efforts around Apple’s anticipated product release schedules and we reserve engineering capacity accordingly. This nimble approach enables us to successfully support the Apple enterprise by staying current on Apple releases and delivering differentiated solutions, many of which form the core of our intellectual property portfolio. Approximately 25% of our global employee base is dedicated to research and development. Our research and development teams are organized into teams that are focused by product and based principally in Minneapolis, MN, Eau Claire, WI, Katowice, Poland, and Brno, Czech Republic.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark, trade dress, and trade secret laws in the United States and other jurisdictions, as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual restrictions, to establish and protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights. These laws, procedures, and restrictions provide only limited protection. As of December 31, 2021, we owned nine issued U.S. patents and sixteen issued patents in foreign jurisdictions. Excluding any patent term adjustments or patent term extensions, our issued U.S. patents will expire between 2034 and 2040. We cannot be assured that any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will require us to narrow the scope of the claims sought. Our issued patents, and any future patents issued to us, may be challenged, invalidated, or circumvented, may not provide sufficiently broad protection, and may not prove to be enforceable in actions against alleged infringers.
We have registered “Jamf” and the “Jamf” logo as trademarks in the United States and other jurisdictions. We have also registered numerous Internet domain names related to our business.
We enter into agreements with our employees, contractors, customers, partners, and other parties with which we do business to limit access to and disclosure of our technology and other proprietary information. We cannot be certain that the steps we have taken will be sufficient or effective to prevent the unauthorized access, use, copying, or the reverse engineering of our technology and other proprietary information, including by third parties who may use our technology or other proprietary information to develop products and services that compete with ours. Moreover, others may independently develop technologies that are competitive with ours or that infringe on, misappropriate, or otherwise violate our intellectual property and proprietary rights, and policing the unauthorized use of our intellectual property and proprietary rights can be difficult. The enforcement of our intellectual property and proprietary rights also depends on any legal actions we may bring against any such parties being successful, but these actions are costly, time-consuming, and may not be successful, even when our rights have been infringed, misappropriated, or otherwise violated.
Furthermore, effective patent, copyright, trademark, trade dress, and trade secret protection may not be available in every country in which our products are available, as the laws of some countries do not protect intellectual property and proprietary rights to as great an extent as the laws of the United States. In addition, the legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability, and scope of protection of intellectual property and proprietary rights are uncertain and still evolving.
Companies in the software industry or non-practicing entities may own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual property and proprietary rights, and these companies and entities have and may in the future request license agreements, threaten litigation, or file suit against us based on allegations of infringement, misappropriation, or other violations of their intellectual property and proprietary rights.
See “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property and IT Systems” for a more comprehensive description of risks related to our intellectual property.
Competition
We generally compete with large cross-platform enterprise providers and early stage providers of Apple enterprise solutions. Large enterprise providers, such as VMware, Microsoft, and IBM, typically compete with us on one particular solution (e.g. device management, identity, or endpoint-security) intended for cross-platform use and not specialized for Apple. Given Jamf’s success, a number of companies are following our approach to deliver on an Apple ecosystem vision. While the latter category of competitors are Apple-focused, they lack the depth of our platform and none have grown to a meaningful scale to be considered material competitors.
Key competitive factors in our market include:
•user experience;
•breadth of product offerings;
•IT efficiency;
•total cost of ownership;
•reliability and performance of solutions;
•turnkey product capabilities;
•interoperability with other software solutions;
•speed, compatibility, and feature support of new operating systems;
•quality and availability of global service and support; and
•brand awareness, reputation, and influence among IT professionals.
We believe that we compete favorably on these factors.
Human Capital Resources
Jamf is a culmination of passionate, committed, and bright people who shape our culture and live our core values of Selflessness and Relentless Self-Improvement. We do not say we are the best, but we strive to be the best — for our customers, our employees, and our communities. Our leaders encourage autonomy, exploration, and innovation with spirit and enthusiasm. Through transparency, openness, and humility, we embrace the opportunity to challenge ourselves. We are a group of curious self-starters who thrive on taking initiative and are excited by global impact. We strive to provide an environment where our employees enjoy the freedom to be themselves and work how they work best. As of December 31, 2021, our voluntary retention rate for employees was 91%. Additionally, in our annual employee engagement survey conducted in September 2021, 88% of over 1,800 employees responding agreed that they would recommend Jamf as a great place to work. Furthermore, in December 2021, Jamf was certified by Great Place to Work®, a global leader in workplace culture, as a “Great Place to Work®,” with 90% of employees saying Jamf is a great place to work compared to 59% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company. In 2021, Jamf also ranked as a Fortune Best Workplaces for Women, Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology, Fortune Best Workplaces for Millennials, and Fortune Best Workplaces for Parents.
We believe that we can only be our best selves when given the freedom to be ourselves. To that end, we believe it is important to create a safe space where everyone is able to express their unique needs to propel Jamf to be a global leader of equality and fairness in the workplace. Our employee-led Inclusion & Diversity Global Steering Committee’s goal is to help others feel empowered for safe and authentic expression, to lead the projects, events and groups that they are passionate about, and take action on issues related to inclusion and diversity at Jamf. Our Employee Resource Groups, Womxn@Jamf, Accessibility@Jamf, The Shades of Jamf, and PROUD@Jamf, provide a safe space for empowerment and cultural education. As of December 31, 2021, based on employees who chose to identify their gender, approximately 31.1% of our workforce and 35.8% of new hires in 2021 were women. Women also made up approximately 34.5% of the Jamf management team as of December 31, 2021.
As of December 31, 2021, we had 2,212 employees, of which 1,407 were employed in the United States and 805 were employed outside of the United States. We have high employee engagement and consider our current relationship with our employees to be good. In certain countries in which we operate we are subject to, and comply with, local labor law requirements, which automatically make our employees subject to industry-wide collective bargaining agreements. An insubstantial number of our employees are currently subject to collective bargaining agreements. We have not experienced any work stoppages.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have implemented a number of measures focused on promoting employee choice, health, and safety and ensuring business continuity. We carefully assess, and reassess, safe working conditions for our offices on a case-by-case basis to ensure that we implement appropriate protective measures, such as capacity restrictions based on local government and health organization guidance. We believe that we have the opportunity to be a leader in a new approach to work, which is rooted in a flexible and hybrid model enabled by a digital-first mindset that puts employee choice, health, and safety first.
Government Regulation
We are subject to many U.S. federal and state and foreign laws and regulations that involve matters central to our business, including laws and regulations that involve data privacy and data protection, intellectual property, advertising, marketing, health and safety, competition, consumer protection, taxation, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and corruption,
economic or other trade prohibitions or sanctions, and securities law compliance. Our business may also be affected by the adoption of any new or existing laws or regulations or changes in laws or regulations that adversely affect our business. Many relevant laws and regulations are still evolving and may be interpreted, applied, created or amended in a manner that could harm our business, and new laws and regulations may be enacted, including in connection with the restriction or prohibition of certain content or business activities.
We receive, process, store, use and share data, some of which contains personal information. We are therefore subject to U.S. federal, state, local and foreign laws and regulations regarding data privacy and the collection, storage, sharing, use, processing, disclosure and protection of personal information and other data from users, employees or business partners, including the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the U.K. - General Data Protection Regulation” (“UK-GDPR”) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), among others. These laws expand the rights of individuals to control how their personal data is processed, collected, used and shared and create new regulatory and operational requirements for processing personal data, increase requirements for security and confidentiality and provide for significant penalties for non-compliance. The implementation of the expanded data protection regulation like the GDPR has led other jurisdictions to either amend, or propose legislation to amend their existing data privacy and cyber-security laws to resemble all or a portion of the requirements of such expanded regulation (e.g., for purposes of having an adequate level of data protection to facilitate data transfers from the EU) or enact new laws to do the same. Accordingly, the challenges we face in the with respect to the GDPR, UK-GDPR, and CCPA will likely also apply to other jurisdictions that adopt regulatory frameworks of equivalent complexity. Accordingly, there are also a number of legislative proposals recently enacted or pending before the U.S. Congress, various state legislatures and foreign governments concerning content regulation and data protection that could affect us. These and other laws and regulations that may be enacted, or new interpretation of existing laws and regulations, may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs in order to comply.
The foregoing description does not include an exhaustive list of the laws and regulations governing or impacting our business. See the discussion contained in Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for information regarding how actions by regulatory authorities or changes in legislation and regulation in the jurisdictions in which we operate may have a material adverse effect on our business.
Corporate Information
Jamf was founded in 2002. Our principal executive offices are located at 100 Washington Ave S, Suite 1100, Minneapolis, MN. Our telephone number is (612) 605-6625. Our website address is www.jamf.com. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and you should not consider any information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website as part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in deciding whether to purchase our common stock. We are a holding company, and all of our business operations are conducted through our subsidiaries.
This Annual Report on Form 10-K includes our trademarks and service marks, such as “Jamf,” which are protected under applicable intellectual property laws and are our property. This Annual Report on Form 10-K also contains trademarks, service marks, trade names, and copyrights of other companies, such as “Amazon,” “Apple,” and “Microsoft,” which are the property of their respective owners. Solely for convenience, trademarks and trade names referred to in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may appear without the ® or ™ symbols, but such references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights or the rights of the applicable licensor to these trademarks and trade names.
Available Information
We make available, free of charge through our investor relations website (ir.jamf.com), our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports, filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), as soon as reasonably practicable after they have been electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC.
The SEC also maintains a website (www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.
Item 1A. Risk Factors
A description of the risks and uncertainties associated with our business is set forth below. You should carefully consider the risks described below, together with the financial and other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, before you decide to purchase shares of our common stock. If any of the following risks actually occur, or if any additional risks not presently known to us or that we have currently deemed immaterial occur, our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In such an event, the trading price of our common stock could decline and you could lose all or part of your investment in our common stock.
Risk Factor Summary
The following summarizes certain of the principal factors that make an investment in our Company speculative or risky:
•the impact on our operations and financial condition from the effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic;
•the potential impact of customer dissatisfaction with Apple or other negative events affecting Apple services and devices, and failure of enterprises to adopt Apple products;
•the potentially adverse impact of changes in features and functionality by Apple and other third parties on our engineering focus or product development efforts;
•changes in our continued relationship with Apple;
•the fact that we are not party to any exclusive agreements or arrangements with Apple;
•our reliance, in part, on channel partners for the sale and distribution of our products;
•our ability to successfully develop new products or materially enhance current products through our research and development efforts;
•our ability to continue to attract new customers;
•our ability to retain our current customers;
•our ability to sell additional functionality to our current customers;
•our ability to correctly estimate market opportunity and forecast market growth;
•risks associated with failing to continue our recent growth rates;
•our dependence on one of our products for a substantial portion of our revenue;
•our ability to scale our business and manage our expenses;
•our ability to change our pricing models, if necessary to compete successfully;
•the impact of delays or outages of our cloud services from any disruptions, capacity limitations, or interferences of third-party data centers that host our cloud services, including AWS;
•our ability to meet service-level commitments under our subscription agreements;
•our ability to maintain, enhance, and protect our brand;
•our ability to maintain our corporate culture;
•the ability of Jamf Nation to thrive and grow as we expand our business;
•the potential impact of inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading content that is posted on Jamf Nation;
•our ability to offer high-quality support;
•risks and uncertainties associated with acquisitions and divestitures (such as our recent acquisition Wandera);
•our ability to predict and respond to rapidly evolving technological trends and our customers’ changing needs;
•our ability to compete with existing and new companies;
•the impact of adverse general and industry-specific economic and market conditions;
•the impact of reductions in IT spending;
•our ability to attract and retain highly qualified personnel;
•risks associated with competitive challenges faced by our customers;
•the impact of our often long and unpredictable sales cycle;
•the risks associated with sales to new and existing enterprise customers;
•our ability to develop and expand our marketing and sales capabilities;
•the risks associated with free trials and other inbound, lead-generation sales strategies;
•the risks associated with indemnity provisions in our contracts;
•our management team’s limited experience managing a public company;
•risks associated with cyber-security events;
•the impact of real or perceived errors, failures, or bugs in our products;
•the impact of general disruptions to data transmission;
•risks associated with stringent and changing privacy laws, regulations, and standards, and information security policies and contractual obligations related to data privacy and security;
•the risks associated with intellectual property infringement, misappropriation, or other claims;
•our reliance on third-party software and intellectual property licenses;
•our ability to obtain, protect, enforce, and maintain our intellectual property and proprietary rights;
•the risks associated with our use of open source software in our products; and
•risks related to our indebtedness, including our ability to raise the funds necessary to settle conversions of our convertible senior notes, repurchase our convertible senior notes upon a fundamental change, or repay our convertible senior notes in cash at their maturity.
These and other risks are more fully described below. If any of these risks actually occurs, our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. As a result, you could lose all or part of your investment in our common stock.
Risks Associated with Our Business, Operations, and Industry
The COVID-19 pandemic could materially adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and prospects.
The severity, magnitude, and duration of the current COVID-19 pandemic continues to be uncertain and rapidly changing. Efforts to combat the virus have been complicated by viral variants and uneven access to, and acceptance and effectiveness of, vaccines globally. Measures to control the virus have impacted and may continue to impact all or portions of Jamf’s workforce and operations and the operations of customers, dealers, and suppliers. Although certain restrictions related to the COVID pandemic have eased, uncertainty continues to exist regarding such measures and potential future measures.
In response to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have implemented a number of measures designed to protect the health and safety of our workforce, including a digital-first hybrid work model, restrictions on business travel, new operating guidelines for our offices based on local conditions, and additional wellness benefits for employees. Our employees may elect to return to the office in jurisdictions where both local requirements and our own health and safety standards have been met, and we may experience increased costs in order to comply with these requirements and provide our employees with a safe physical work environment. While most of our operations can be performed remotely, there is no guarantee that we will be as effective while working remotely because our team is dispersed, many employees may have additional personal needs to attend to (such as looking after children as a result of school closures or family who become sick), and employees may become sick themselves and be unable to work. Over time, our remote operations may decrease the cohesiveness of our teams and our ability to maintain our culture, both of which are critical to our success. In addition, at home technology infrastructure may not perform as well as the infrastructure available at our office workplaces. The increase in remote working may also result in privacy, data protection, data security, and fraud risks. Decreased effectiveness of our team could adversely affect our results due to our inability to meet in person with potential customers, cancellation and inability to participate in conferences and other industry events that lead to sales generation, longer time periods to review and approve work product and a corresponding reduction in innovation, longer time to respond to platform performance issues, or other decreases in productivity that could seriously harm our business. Such effects may adversely affect the productivity of our team members and overall operations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition, and cash flows.
The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacts our business operations in future periods continues to depend on multiple uncertain factors, including: the duration and impact of the resurgence in COVID-19 cases in any country, state, or region; the emergence, contagiousness, and threat of new and different strains of virus; the availability, acceptance, and effectiveness of vaccines, additional closures or other actions as mandated or otherwise made necessary by governmental authorities, including employee vaccine mandates; its overall negative impact on the global economy and, in some cases, the regional and national economies of areas experiencing a localized surge in COVID-19 cases, an increasingly competitive labor market due to the “Great Resignation”; challenges with respect to the supply chain, including those caused by industry capacity constraints, material availability, global logistics delays and constraints; and the impacts on customer buying decisions and budgets due to their own business and market uncertainties. These and other impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic could have the effect of heightening many of the other risks described in this “Risk Factors” section, such as those relating to our reputation, product sales, results of operations, or financial condition. We might not be able to predict or respond to all impacts on a timely basis to prevent near- or long-term adverse impacts to our results. As a result, we cannot at this time predict the ultimate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition, and cash flows.
Because our products focus primarily on Apple, potential customer dissatisfaction with Apple, other negative events affecting Apple services and devices, or failure of enterprises to adopt Apple products could have a negative effect on our results of operations.
Our products are primarily focused on Apple devices. Because of this, our customers’ satisfaction with our software and products is largely dependent in part upon their perceptions and satisfaction with Apple. Customer dissatisfaction with Apple could be attributed to us, impact our relationships with customers, and/or result in the loss of customers across all of our products if any of our customers chose to discontinue or reduce their use of Apple devices. For example, any incident broadly affecting the interaction of Apple devices with necessary Apple services (e.g., iCloud or Apple push notifications), including any delays or interruptions in such Apple services, could negatively affect our products and solutions. Similarly, any cyber-security events affecting Apple devices could result in a disruption to Apple services, regulatory investigations, reputational damage, and a loss of sales and customers for Apple. A prolonged disruption, cyber-security event, or any other negative event affecting Apple could lead to customer dissatisfaction and could in turn damage our reputation with current and potential
customers, expose us to liability, and cause us to lose customers or otherwise harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, since our products and solutions primarily focus on Apple devices, in the event of a prolonged disruption affecting Apple devices, we may not be able to provide our software to our customers. We may also incur significant costs for taking actions in preparation for, or in reaction to, events that damage Apple devices used by our customers.
Overall, Apple’s reputation and consumers’ views of Apple products could change if other technology companies release products that compete with Apple devices that customers view more favorably. For example, other technology companies could introduce new technology or devices that reduce demand for Apple devices. Our financial results could also be harmed if customers choose non-Apple products based on cost, availability, user experience, functionality, or other factors. The market for Apple products may not continue to grow, or may grow more slowly than we expect. As a result, enterprise adoption of Apple products may be slower than anticipated. Moreover, many enterprises use technology platforms other than Apple and have used other technologies for a long time. While this creates significant market opportunity for these enterprises to adopt Apple technology, we cannot be certain that enterprises will adopt Apple technology. There are many factors underlying an enterprise’s adoption of new technology, including cost, time, and knowledge required to implement such technology, data transfer, compatibility with existing technology, familiarity with and institutional loyalty to technology other than Apple, among other factors. If these enterprise users do not continue to adopt Apple technologies at recent historical rates and the rates that we anticipate, our revenue growth will be adversely affected, there will be adverse consequences to our results of operations and will reduce the number of potential new Jamf customers. See also “— Certain estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may prove to be inaccurate.” Any of these factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Changes in features and functionality by Apple and other third-party systems could cause us to make short-term changes in engineering focus or product development or otherwise impair our product development efforts or strategy, increase our costs, and harm our business.
Our products depend on interoperability with Apple operating systems and cloud services, including interoperability at the moment of each new Apple release. Apple does not typically preview its technology with us or other partners and, as such, we do not receive advanced notice of changes in features and functionality of Apple technologies with which our products need to interoperate. In addition, unforeseen events (such as discovery of vulnerabilities and release of patches) may constrain our ability to respond in a timely manner. In any such events, we may be forced to divert resources from our preexisting product roadmap in order to accommodate these changes. As a result of having a short time to implement and test changes to our products to accommodate these new features, there is an increased risk of product defects. The frequency and complexity of new Apple features and updates may make it difficult for us to continue to support new releases in a timely manner. If we fail to enable IT departments to support Apple upgrades upon release, our business and reputation could suffer. This could disrupt our product roadmap and cause us to delay introduction of planned solutions, features, and functionality, which could harm our business. In addition, the functionality and popularity of our platform also depends on its interoperability with other third-party operating systems and devices, such as Microsoft and Google.
We rely on open standards for many integrations between our products and third-party applications that our customers utilize, and in other instances on such third parties making available the necessary tools for us to create interoperability with their applications. If application providers were to move away from open standards, or if a critical, widely-utilized application provider were to adopt proprietary integration standards and not make them available for the purposes of facilitating interoperability with our products, the utility of our products for our customers would be decreased. Furthermore, some of the features and functionality in our products require interoperability with operating system APIs. We also offer a robust catalog of APIs that our developer partners utilize to build integrations and solutions that are made available in our Jamf Marketplace to enhance features and functionality of our products. If operating system providers decide to restrict our access to their APIs, or if our developer partners cease to build integrations and solutions for our Jamf Marketplace, that functionality would be lost and our business could be impaired.
Changes in our continued relationship with Apple may have an impact on our success.
We have a broad relationship with Apple that covers all aspects of our business. We have always worked closely with Apple’s worldwide developer relations organization in an effort to support all new Apple innovations the moment the hardware or software is released. Apple and Jamf personnel frequently join forces to influence and collaborate as we work with customers. We also have several direct contractual relationships with Apple that span all enterprise devices across the Apple ecosystem, including Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV. Additionally, Apple is a significant reseller of Jamf products, particularly in education. These contractual relationships can be terminated by Apple at any time with limited advance notice to us. In addition, Apple recently launched a beta release Apple Business Essentials and the full service is expected to be available
in the spring of 2022. While this platform is still in its early stages, Apple Business Essentials is focused on SMBs with 500 or fewer employees, and we believe its feature set will provide limited direct competition with our complete Apple Enterprise Management solutions. In the future, however, Apple could leverage this platform or create other offerings to compete more directly with the scale and breadth of product offerings we provide. Our future relationship with Apple is important to Jamf’s success. If we fail to maintain our current relationship and contracts with Apple, our ability to compete and grow our business may be materially impacted. For example, we may not be able to continue to support new Apple innovations and releases at the moment the hardware and software are released. While we do not rely on any private APIs or collaboration with Apple to provide our same-day support, reduced cooperation with Apple may make it more difficult for us to continue to support new releases in a timely manner and result in us devoting significant resources in order to meet our commitment to provide same-day support. If our relationship with Apple changes, it could become more difficult to integrate our products with Apple and could reduce or eliminate the sales we expect from Apple as a reseller. As a result, if we fail to maintain our current relationship with Apple, our business, financial condition, and results of operation could be adversely affected.
We are not party to any exclusive agreements or arrangements with Apple.
We are not party to any exclusive agreements or arrangements with Apple. Accordingly, while we believe our market opportunity expands as organizations increasingly adopt Apple technologies, the continued success and growth of our business is ultimately dependent upon our ability to compete effectively by reaching new customers, cross-selling to existing customers, and maintaining our position as the standard for Apple in the enterprise. As a result, even if organizations’ adoption of Apple technologies continues to increase, if we are not able to compete successfully, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be adversely affected. See “— If we fail to maintain, enhance, or protect our brand, our ability to expand our customer base will be impaired and our business, financial condition, and results of operations may suffer” and “— We are in a highly competitive market, and competitive pressures from existing and new companies, including as a result of consolidation in our market, may harm our business, revenues, growth rates, and market share.”
We rely, in part, on channel partners for the sale and distribution of our products and, in some instances, for the support of our products. A loss of certain channel partners, a decrease in revenues from certain of these channel partners, or any failure in our channel strategy could adversely affect our business.
We rely on channel partners for the sale and distribution of a substantial portion of our products. For the year ended December 31, 2021, approximately 54% of our bookings were through channel partners. We anticipate that we will continue to depend on relationships with third parties, such as our channel partners and system integrators, to sell, market, and deploy our products. Identifying partners, and negotiating and documenting relationships with them, requires significant time and resources. Our arrangements with our channel partners are generally non-exclusive, meaning they may offer customers the products of several different companies, including products that compete with us. Our competitors may be effective in providing incentives to channel partners and other third parties to favor their products or services over subscriptions to our products and a substantial number of our agreements with channel partners are non-exclusive such that those channel partners may offer customers the products of several different companies, including products that compete with ours. Our channel partners may cease marketing or reselling our products with limited or no notice and without penalty. If our channel partners do not effectively sell, market, or deploy our products, choose to promote our competitors’ products, or otherwise fail to meet the needs of our customers, our ability to grow our business and sell our products may be adversely affected. In addition, acquisitions of such partners by our competitors could result in a decrease in the number of our current and potential customers, as these partners may no longer facilitate the adoption of our applications by potential customers. Further, some of our partners are or may become competitive with certain of our products and may elect to no longer integrate with our products. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our channel partners and system integrators, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenue could be impaired, and our results of operations may suffer.
In addition, our service provider partners often provide support to our customers and enter into similar agreements directly with our mutual customers to host our software and/or provide other value-added services. Our agreements and operating relationships with our service provider partners are complex and require a significant commitment of internal time and resources. In addition, our service provider partners are large corporations with multiple strategic businesses and relationships, and thus our business may not be significant to them in the overall context of their much larger enterprise. These partnerships may require us to adhere to outside policies, which may be administratively challenging and could result in a decrease in our ability to complete sales. Even if the service provider partner considers us to be an important strategic relationship, internal processes at these large partners are sometimes difficult and time-consuming to navigate.
We invest significantly in research and development, and to the extent our research and development investments do not translate into new products or material enhancements to our current products, or if we do not use those investments efficiently, our business and results of operations would be harmed.
A key element of our strategy is to invest significantly in our research and development efforts to develop new products and enhance our existing products to address additional applications and markets. For the year ended December 31, 2021, our research and development expense was approximately 23% of our revenue. If we do not spend our research and development budget efficiently or effectively on compelling innovation and technologies, our business may be harmed and we may not realize the expected benefits of our strategy. Moreover, research and development projects can be technically challenging and expensive. The nature of these research and development cycles may cause us to experience delays between the time we incur expenses associated with research and development and the time we are able to offer compelling products and generate revenue, if any, from such investment. Additionally, anticipated customer demand for a product we are developing could decrease after the development cycle has commenced, rendering us unable to recover substantial costs associated with the development of such product. If we expend a significant amount of resources on research and development and our efforts do not lead to the successful introduction or improvement of products that are competitive in our current or future markets, it would harm our business and results of operations.
If we are unable to attract new customers, retain our current customers, or sell additional functionality and services to our existing customers, our revenue growth will be adversely affected.
To increase our revenue, we must continue to attract new customers and increase sales to existing customers. As our market matures, product and service offerings evolve, and competitors introduce lower cost or differentiated products or services that are perceived to compete with our products, our ability to sell our products could be adversely affected. Similarly, our sales could be adversely affected if customers or users within these organizations perceive that features incorporated into competitive products reduce the need for our products or if they prefer to purchase other products that are bundled with products offered by Apple or by other companies, including our partners, that operate in adjacent markets and compete with our products. As a result of these and other factors, we may be unable to attract new customers or increase sales to existing customers, which could have an adverse effect on our business, revenue, gross margins, and other operating results, and accordingly, on the trading price of our common stock.
We must also continually increase the depth and breadth of deployments of our products with our existing customers. While customers may initially purchase a relatively modest number of subscriptions or licenses, it is important to our revenue growth that they later expand the use of our software on substantially more devices or for more users throughout their business. We also need to upsell, or sell additional products, to the same customer in order to increase our revenues. Our ability to retain our customers and increase the amount of subscriptions or support and maintenance contracts our customers purchase could be impaired for a variety of reasons, including customer reaction to changes in the pricing of our products, competing priorities in IT budgets, or the other risks described herein. As a result, we may be unable to renew our subscriptions with existing customers or attract new business from existing customers, which would have an adverse effect on our business, revenue, gross margins and other operating results, and accordingly, on the trading price of our common stock.
In addition, our ability to sell additional functionality to our existing customers may require more sophisticated and costly sales efforts, especially as we target larger enterprises and more senior management who make these purchasing decisions, such as CIOs and CISOs and line-of-business leaders. Similarly, the rate at which our customers purchase additional products from us depends on a number of factors, including general economic conditions and the pricing of additional product functionality. If our efforts to sell additional functionality to our customers are not successful, our business and growth prospects would suffer.
Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions or support for our products after the expiration of the terms thereof. Our contracts are typically one year in duration. In addition, certain of our customers are able to terminate their contracts with us for any or no reason. In order for us to maintain or improve our results of operations, it is important that our customers maintain their subscriptions and renew their subscriptions with us on the same or more favorable terms. We cannot accurately predict renewal or expansion rates given the diversity of our customer base, in terms of size, industry, and geography. Our renewal and expansion rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including customer spending levels, customer dissatisfaction with our products, decreases in the number of users at our customers, changes in the type and size of our customers, pricing changes, competitive conditions, the acquisition of our customers by other companies, and general economic conditions. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions or licenses for our products, or if they reduce their subscription amounts at the time of renewal, our revenue and other results of operations will decline and our
business will suffer. If our renewal or expansion rates fall significantly below the expectations of the public market, securities analysts, or investors, the trading price of our common stock would likely decline.
Certain estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may prove to be inaccurate.
This Annual Report on Form 10-K includes our internal estimates of the addressable market for our products. Market opportunity estimates and growth forecasts, whether obtained from third-party sources or developed internally, are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may prove to be inaccurate. The estimates and forecasts in this Annual Report on Form 10-K relating to the size and expected growth of our target market, market demand and adoption, capacity to address this demand, and pricing may also prove to be inaccurate. In particular, our estimates regarding our current and projected market opportunity are difficult to predict. The addressable market we estimate may not materialize for many years, if ever, and even if the markets in which we compete meet the size estimates and growth forecasted in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all.
We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods, and our recent growth rates may not be indicative of our future growth. As our costs increase, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to achieve and, if achieved, maintain profitability.
We have experienced significant revenue growth in recent periods. In future periods, we may not be able to sustain revenue growth consistent with recent history, or at all. We have also experienced significant growth in our customer adoption and have expanded and intend to continue to expand our operations, including our domestic and international employee headcount. We believe our revenue growth depends on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to:
•price our products effectively so that we are able to attract and retain customers without compromising our profitability;
•maintain and grow our Jamf Nation community support network to support growth in existing products and new products;
•attract new customers, successfully deploy and implement our products, upsell or otherwise increase our existing customers’ use of our products, obtain customer renewals, and provide our customers with excellent customer support;
•increase our network of channel partners;
•adequately expand, train, integrate, and retain our sales force and other new employees, and maintain or increase our sales force’s productivity;
•effectively manage our hybrid work model;
•hire and retain sufficient numbers of sales and marketing, research and development, and general and administrative personnel, and expand our global operations;
•enhance our information, training, and communication systems to ensure that our employees are well-coordinated and can effectively communicate with each other and customers;
•improve our internal control over financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures to ensure timely and accurate reporting of our operational and financial results;
•successfully identify and enter into agreements with suitable acquisition targets, integrate any acquisitions and acquired technologies into our existing products or use them to develop new products;
•successfully introduce new products, enhance existing products, and address new use cases;
•successfully introduce our products to new markets outside of the United States;
•successfully compete against larger companies and new market entrants; and
•increase awareness of our brand on a global basis.
We may not successfully accomplish any of these objectives and, in particular, COVID-19 may impact our ability to successfully accomplish any of the above, and as a result, it is difficult for us to forecast our future results of operations. Our historical growth rate should not be considered indicative of our future performance and may decline in the future. In future periods, our revenue could grow more slowly than in recent periods or decline for any number of reasons, including those outlined above. We also expect our operating expenses to increase in future periods, particularly as we continue to invest in research and development and technology infrastructure, expand our operations globally, develop new products and enhancements for existing products, and as we support our operations as we grow and mature as a public company. If our revenue growth does not increase to offset these anticipated increases in our operating expenses, our business, financial position, and results of operations will be harmed, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability. In addition, the additional expenses we will incur may not lead to sufficient additional revenue to maintain historical revenue growth rates and profitability.
As we expand our business, it is important that we continue to maintain a high level of customer service and satisfaction. As our customer base continues to grow, we will need to expand our account management, customer service, and other personnel and our network of channel partners and system integrators to provide personalized account management and customer service. If we are not able to continue to provide high levels of customer service, our reputation, as well as our business, results of operations, and financial condition, could be adversely affected.
We derive a substantial portion of our revenue from one product.
For the year ended December 31, 2021, sales of subscriptions to our Jamf Pro product accounted for approximately 71% of our total revenue. We expect these subscriptions to account for a large portion of our total revenue for the foreseeable future. As a result, our operating results could suffer due to:
•any decline in demand for this product;
•the failure of our other products to achieve market acceptance;
•the market for Apple products not continuing to grow, or growing more slowly than we expect, and enterprise adoption of Apple products being slower than anticipated;
•the introduction of products and technologies that serve as a replacement or substitute for, or represent an improvement over, our products;
•the introduction of products and technologies that could serve as a replacement or substitute for our products that are offered with more limited functionality or are less advanced than our products, but are offered at a lower price point;
•technological innovations or new standards that our products do not address;
•sensitivity to current or future prices offered by us or our competitors; and
•our inability to release enhanced versions of our products on a timely basis.
Our inability to renew or increase sales of subscriptions to our products or market and sell additional products and functionality, or a decline in prices of our platform subscription levels, would harm our business and operating results more seriously than if we derived significant revenue from a variety of products. In addition, if the market for our products grows more slowly than anticipated, or if demand for our products does not grow as quickly as anticipated, whether as a result of competition, pricing sensitivities, product obsolescence, technological change, unfavorable economic conditions, uncertain geopolitical environment, budgetary constraints of our customers, or other factors, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
If we are not able to scale our business and manage our expenses, our operating results may suffer.
We have expanded specific functions over time in order to scale efficiently, improve our cost structure, and help scale our business. Our need to scale our business has placed, and will continue to place, a significant strain on our administrative and
operational business processes, infrastructure, facilities, and other resources. Our ability to manage our operations will require significant expenditures and allocation of valuable management resources to improve internal business processes and systems, including investments in automation. Further, we expect to continue to expand our business globally. International expansion may also be required for our continued business growth, and managing any international expansion will require additional resources and controls. If our operations, infrastructure, and business processes fail to keep pace with our business and customer requirements, customers may experience disruptions in service or support or we may not scale the business efficiently, which could adversely affect our reputation and adversely affect our revenues. There is no guarantee that we will be able to continue to develop and expand our infrastructure and business processes at the pace necessary to scale the business, and our failure to do so may have an adverse effect on our business. If we fail to efficiently expand our engineering, operations, customer support, professional services, cloud infrastructure, IT and financial organizations and systems, or if we fail to implement or maintain effective internal business processes, controls, and procedures, our costs and expenses may increase more than we planned or we may fail to execute on our product roadmap or our business plan, any of which would likely seriously harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We may need to change our pricing models to compete successfully.
The intense competition we face in the sales of our products and services and general economic and business conditions can put pressure on us to change our prices. If our competitors offer deep discounts on certain products or services or develop products that the marketplace considers more valuable than ours, we may need to lower prices or offer other favorable terms in order to compete successfully. Any such changes may reduce margins and could adversely affect operating results. Our competitors may offer lower pricing on their support offerings, which could put pressure on us to further discount our offerings. In addition, some of our competitors offer free or significantly discounted product offerings to our customers in order to incentivize switching from our products to such competitor’s products, or to otherwise enter the Apple ecosystem. This may require us to offer discounts or other incentives to keep such customers, and we may not be able to match free product offerings or significant discounts offered by these competitors. This may result in customers choosing such competitor’s products instead of ours. We also must determine the appropriate price of our offerings and services to enable us to compete effectively internationally. Our prices may also change because of discounts, a change in our mix of products toward subscription, enterprise-wide licensing arrangements, bundling of products, features and functionality by us or our competitors, potential changes in our pricing, anticipation of the introduction of new products or promotional programs for customers or channel partners. In response to macroeconomic conditions, including those resulting from COVID-19, we may be required to offer deeply discounted pricing, adopt new pricing models, and offer extended payment terms in order to attract new and retain existing customers, which could have a material adverse impact on our liquidity and financial condition.
Any broad-based change to our prices and pricing policies could cause our revenue to decline or be delayed as our sales force implements and our customers adjust to new pricing policies. We or our competitors may bundle products for promotional purposes or as a long-term go-to-market or pricing strategy or provide guarantees of prices and product implementations. These practices could, over time, significantly constrain the prices that we can charge for certain of our products. If we do not adapt our pricing models to reflect changes in customer use of our products or changes in customer demand, our revenue could decrease.
Disruptions, capacity limitations, or interference with our use of the data centers operated by third-party providers that host our cloud services, including AWS, could result in delays or outages of our cloud service and harm our business.
We currently host our cloud service from third-party data center facilities operated by AWS from several global locations. Any damage to, failure of, or interference with our cloud service that is hosted by AWS, or by third-party providers we may utilize in the future, whether as a result of our actions, actions by the third-party data centers, actions by other third parties, or acts of God, could result in interruptions in our cloud service and/or the loss of our or our customers’ data. While the third-party data centers host the server infrastructure, we manage the cloud services through our site reliability engineering team, and we need to support version control, changes in cloud software parameters, and the evolution of our products, all in a multi-OS environment. As we utilize third-party data centers, we may move or transfer our data and our customers’ data from one region to another. Despite precautions taken during this process, any unsuccessful data transfers may impair the delivery of our service. Many of our customer agreements contain contractual service level commitments to maintain uptime of at least 99.9% for our cloud services, and if we, AWS, or any other third-party data center facilities that we may utilize fail to meet these service level commitments, we may have to issue credits to these customers, which could adversely affect our operations. Impairment of, or interruptions in, our cloud services may reduce our subscription revenues, subject us to claims and litigation, cause our customers to terminate their subscriptions, and adversely affect our subscription renewal rates and our ability to attract new customers. Our business will also be harmed if our customers and potential customers believe our services are unreliable. Additionally, any limitation of the capacity of our third-party data centers could impede our ability to scale, onboard
new customers, or expand the usage of existing customers, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, our customers’ satisfaction with our offerings is dependent in part upon their perceptions and satisfaction with our cloud infrastructure service providers. Dissatisfaction with such providers could damage our relationships with customers and/or result in the loss of customers across one or more of our products.
We do not control, or in some cases have limited control over, the operation of the data center facilities we use, and they are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, and similar events. They may also be subject to cyberattacks, computer viruses, disabling devices, break-ins, sabotage, intentional criminal acts, acts of vandalism, and similar misconduct and to adverse events caused by operator error. Despite precautions taken at these facilities, the occurrence of a natural disaster, an act of terrorism, war, or other act of malfeasance, a decision to close the facilities without adequate notice, or other unanticipated problems at these facilities could result in lengthy interruptions in our service and the loss of customer data and business. We may also incur significant costs for using alternative equipment or facilities or taking other actions in preparation for, or in reaction to, any such events.
In the event that any of our agreements with our third-party service providers are terminated, there is a lapse or elimination of any services or features that we utilize or there is an interruption of connectivity or damage to facilities, whether due to actions outside of our control or otherwise, we could experience interruptions or delays in customer access to our platform and incur significant expense in developing, identifying, obtaining, and/or integrating replacement services, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all, and which would adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We provide service-level commitments under our subscription agreements. If we fail to meet contractual commitments for service level commitments or quality of professional services, we could be obligated to provide credits for future service or face subscription termination with refunds of prepaid amounts, which would lower our revenue and harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Many of our subscription agreements contain service-level commitments. If we are unable to meet the stated service-level commitments, including failure to meet the uptime and delivery requirements under our customer subscription agreements, we may be contractually obligated to provide these customers with service credits, which could significantly affect our revenue in the periods in which the uptime or delivery failure occurs and the credits are applied. We could also face subscription terminations, which could significantly affect both our current and future revenue. In addition, if the quality of our professional services does not meet contractual requirements, we may be required to re-perform the services at our expense or refund amounts paid for the services. Any failure to meet these contractual commitments could also damage our reputation, which could also adversely affect our business and results of operations.
If we fail to maintain, enhance, or protect our brand, our ability to expand our customer base will be impaired and our business, financial condition, and results of operations may suffer.
We believe that maintaining, enhancing and protecting the Jamf brand, including Jamf Nation, is important to support the marketing and sale of our existing and future products to new customers and expand sales of our products to existing customers. We also believe that the importance of brand recognition will increase as competition in our market increases. Successfully maintaining, enhancing, and protecting our brand will depend largely on the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, our ability to provide reliable products that continue to meet the needs of our customers at competitive prices, our ability to maintain our customers’ trust, our ability to continue to develop new functionality and use cases, our ability to successfully differentiate our products and product capabilities from competitive products, and our ability to obtain, maintain, protect, and enforce trademark and other intellectual property protection for our brand. Our brand promotion activities may not generate customer awareness or yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incur in building our brand. In addition, independent industry analysts provide reviews of our platform, as well as products and services offered by our competitors, and perception of our platform in the marketplace may be significantly influenced by these reviews. If these reviews are negative, or less positive as compared to those of our competitors’ products and services, our brand may be adversely affected. If we fail to successfully promote, maintain, or protect our brand, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may suffer.
If we cannot maintain our corporate culture as we grow, our business may be harmed.
We believe that our corporate culture has been a critical component to our success and that our culture creates an environment that drives and perpetuates our overall business strategy. We have invested substantial time and resources in building our team and we expect to continue to hire aggressively as we expand both locally and internationally. As we grow and
mature as a public company and grow internationally, we may find it difficult to maintain our corporate culture. Over time, our remote operations may decrease the cohesiveness of our teams and our ability to maintain our culture, both of which are critical to our success. Any failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our future success, including our ability to recruit and retain personnel and effectively focus on and pursue our business strategy.
If Jamf Nation does not continue to thrive as we grow and expand our business, or if content posted on Jamf Nation is inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, our business could be adversely affected.
Jamf Nation provides a critical support function for our products and solutions. We allow users of Jamf Nation to post content directly. While we monitor such posts, we cannot control what users post. As a result, we can provide no assurance that users of Jamf Nation will continue to provide support by responding to questions with respect to our existing products and solutions, or any new products and solutions we may develop as we grow and expand our business. Moreover, as we further expand our business into new geographies, we can provide no assurance that Jamf Nation users will provide support for any issues specific to those jurisdictions or in relevant languages. In addition, because we cannot control what users post, users may post content that may be inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, or that infringes, misappropriates, or otherwise violates third-party intellectual property or proprietary rights. It may take us time to correct any inaccuracies or remove such posts, and we can provide no assurance that we will successfully correct or remove all posts that are inaccurate or that allege to infringe, violate, or misappropriate third-party intellectual property or proprietary rights. As a result, customers relying on Jamf Nation for support for our products and solutions may suffer harm if the advice in a post is inaccurate, does not provide a thorough explanation, or is inconsistent with our best practices or intended use of our products, which could in turn damage our reputation and cause customers to lose faith in Jamf Nation. Any of these factors could adversely affect our reputation and/or confidence in Jamf Nation and could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
If we fail to offer high-quality support, our business and reputation could suffer.
Our customers rely on our customer support personnel to resolve issues and realize the full benefits that our products provide. High-quality support is also important for the renewal and expansion of our subscriptions with existing customers. The importance of our support function will increase as we expand our business and pursue new customers. Many of our enterprise customers, particularly large enterprise customers, have complex networks and require high levels of focused support, including premium support offerings, to fully realize the benefits of our products. Any failure by us to maintain the expected level of support could reduce customer satisfaction and hurt our customer retention, particularly with respect to our large enterprise customers.
Furthermore, as we sell our products internationally, our support organization faces additional challenges, including those associated with delivering support, training, and documentation in languages other than English. Any failure to maintain high-quality customer support, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality support, could materially harm our reputation, business, financial condition, and results of operations, and adversely affect our ability to sell our products to existing and prospective customers. The importance of high-quality customer support will increase as we expand our business and pursue new customers.
Acquisitions and divestitures could harm our business and operating results.
We have acquired in the past, and plan to acquire in the future, other businesses, products, or technologies. Since 2019, we have completed five acquisitions, including our acquisition of Wandera in July 2021, which represented our largest acquisition to date. Acquisitions and divestitures, including those completed to date, involve significant risks and uncertainties, which include:
•disrupting our ongoing operations, diverting management from day-to-day responsibilities, increasing our expenses, and adversely impacting our business, financial condition, and operating results;
•inherent uncertainties in valuation models;
•failure of an acquired business to further our business strategy;
•uncertainties in achieving the expected benefits of an acquisition or disposition, including enhanced revenue, technology, human resources, cost savings, operating efficiencies, and other synergies;
•reductions to our cash flows in subsequent periods, to the extent we defer the payment of the purchase price for any acquisition or license;
•reducing cash available for operations, stock repurchase programs, and other uses and resulting in potentially dilutive issuances of equity securities or the incurrence of debt;
•incurring amortization expense related to identifiable intangible assets acquired that could impact our operating results;
•difficulty integrating the operations, systems, technologies, products, and personnel of acquired businesses effectively;
• challenges with implementing adequate and appropriate controls, procedures, and policies in acquired businesses;
• increased exposure to risks related to foreign operations due to the increase in our employee presence outside the U.S.;
• potential difficulties in completing projects associated with in-process research and development of acquired businesses;
•the need to provide transition services in connection with a disposition, which may result in the diversion of resources and focus;
•difficulty achieving expected business results due to a lack of experience in new markets, products, or technologies or the initial dependence on unfamiliar distribution partners or vendors;
•retaining and motivating key personnel from acquired companies;
•declining employee morale and retention issues affecting employees of businesses that we acquire or dispose of, which may result from changes in compensation, or changes in management, reporting relationships, future prospects, or the direction of the acquired or disposed business;
•assuming the liabilities of an acquired business, including existing contractual obligations, acquired litigation-related liabilities and regulatory compliance issues, and potential litigation or regulatory action arising from a proposed or completed acquisition;
•issuing equity awards to new employees, which may more rapidly deplete share reserves available under our shareholder-approved equity incentive plans;
•lawsuits resulting from an acquisition or disposition;
•maintaining good relationships with customers or business partners of an acquired business or our own customers as a result of any integration of operations;
•unidentified issues not discovered during the diligence process, including issues with the acquired or divested business’s intellectual property, product quality, security, privacy practices, accounting practices, regulatory compliance, or legal contingencies;
•maintaining or establishing acceptable standards, controls, procedures, or policies with respect to an acquired business;
•risks relating to the challenges and costs of closing a transaction, including, for example, obtaining stockholders’ approval where applicable, including from a majority of the minority stockholders, tendering shares under terms of the cash tender offer where applicable and satisfaction of regulatory approvals, as well as completion of customary closing conditions for each transaction; and
•the need to later divest acquired assets at a loss if an acquisition does not meet our expectations.
We may not be able to respond to rapid technological changes with new products and services offerings. If we fail to predict and respond rapidly to evolving technological trends and our customers’ changing needs, we may not be able to remain competitive.
Our market is characterized by rapid technological change, changing customer needs, frequent new software product introductions, and evolving industry standards. The introduction of third-party products embodying new technologies and the emergence of new industry standards and Apple operating systems and products could make our existing and future software products obsolete and unmarketable. We may not be able to develop updated products and services that keep pace with these and other technological developments that address the increasingly sophisticated needs of our customers or that meet new industry standards or interoperate with new or updated operating systems and hardware devices. We may also fail to adequately anticipate and prepare for the commercialization of emerging technologies and the development of new markets and applications for our technology and thereby fail to take advantage of new market opportunities or fall behind early movers in those markets. Our customers require that our products effectively identify and respond to these challenges on a timely basis without disrupting the performance of our customers’ IT systems or interrupting their operations. As a result, we must continually modify and improve our offerings in response to these changes on a timely basis. If we are unable to evolve our products in time to respond to and remain ahead of new technological developments, our ability to retain or increase market share and revenue in our markets could be materially adversely affected.
Our ability to expand sales of our products depends on several factors, including potential customer awareness of our products; the timely completion, introduction and market acceptance of enhancements to our products or new products that we may introduce; our ability to attract, retain and effectively train inside and field sales personnel in a hybrid work environment; our ability to develop or maintain integrations with partners; the effectiveness of our marketing programs; and the costs of our products and the success of our competitors. If we are unsuccessful in developing and marketing our products, or if organizations do not perceive or value the benefits of our products, the market for our products might not continue to develop or might develop more slowly than we expect, either of which would harm our growth prospects and operating results.
In addition, the process of developing new technology is complex and uncertain, and if we fail to accurately predict customers’ changing needs and emerging technological trends, our business could be harmed. We believe that we must continue to dedicate significant resources to our research and development efforts, including significant resources to developing new products and product enhancements before knowing whether the market will accept them. Our new products and product enhancements could fail to attain sufficient market acceptance for many reasons, including:
•the failure to accurately predict market or customer demands;
•defects, errors or failures in the design or performance of our new products or product enhancements;
•negative publicity about the performance or effectiveness of our products;
•the introduction or anticipated introduction of competing products by our competitors; and
•the perceived value of our products or enhancements relative to their cost.
Our competitors, particularly those with greater financial and operating resources, may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards or customer requirements. With the introduction of new technologies, the evolution of our products and new market entrants, we expect competition to intensify in the future. For example, as we expand our focus into new use cases or other product offerings beyond our existing product portfolio, we expect competition to increase. Pricing pressures and increased competition generally could result in reduced sales, reduced margins, losses or the failure of our products to achieve or maintain more widespread market acceptance.
We are in a highly competitive market, and competitive pressures from existing and new companies, including as a result of consolidation in our market, may harm our business, revenues, growth rates, and market share.
Our products seek to serve multiple markets, and we are subject to competition from a wide and varied field of competitors. Some competitors, particularly new and early-stage companies and large cross-platform enterprise providers, could focus all of their energy and resources on one product line or use case and, as a result, any one competitor could develop a more successful product or service in a particular market, which could decrease our market share and harm our brand recognition and results of operation. In addition, some of our competitors may be able to leverage their relationships with customers based on an installed base of products or to incorporate functionality into existing products to gain business in a manner that discourages
customers from including us in competitive bidding processes, evaluating and/or purchasing our products. They have done this in the past, and may in the future do this, by selling at zero or negative margins, through product bundling or through enterprise license deals. Some potential customers, especially Global 2000 Companies, have already made investments in, or may make investments in, substantial personnel and financial resources and established deep relationships with these much larger enterprise IT vendors, which may make them reluctant to evaluate our products or work with us regardless of product performance or features. Potential customers may prefer to purchase a broad suite of products from a single provider, or may prefer to purchase products from an existing supplier rather than a new supplier, regardless of performance or features.
With the recent increase in merger and acquisition transactions in the technology industry, particularly transactions involving cloud-based technologies, we may face increased competitive pressures in the future as a result of industry consolidation. Strategic or financial buyers, including our existing competitors, could acquire one or more of our competitors and provide alternative products that compete more effectively against us. In addition, Apple could choose to develop competing technology, leverage its existing offerings and/or acquire one or more of our competitors and standardize those competing offerings for a particular Apple product line or use case, which could reduce or eliminate the utility of our products for that product line or use case. For example, Apple recently announced the launch of Apple Business Essentials in the spring of 2022. While this platform is still in its early stages, we believe it will be primarily focused on the Mac and U.S.-based SMB customers and will provide limited direct competition with our complete Apple Enterprise Management solutions. In the future, however, Apple could leverage this platform or create other offerings, whether through additional investment or the consolidation of other competitors of ours, to compete more directly with the scale and breadth of product offerings we provide. As a result of any such industry consolidation, our competitive position and our ability to retain or increase market share and revenue in our markets could be materially adversely affected.
For all of these reasons and others we cannot anticipate today, we may not be able to compete successfully against our current and future competitors, which could harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Adverse general and industry-specific economic and market conditions and reductions in IT spending may reduce demand for our products, which could harm our results of operations.
Our revenue, results of operations, and cash flows depend on the overall demand for our products. Concerns about the systemic impact of economic contraction (in the United States or internationally), geopolitical issues, or the availability and cost of credit could lead to increased market volatility, decreased consumer confidence, and diminished growth expectations in the U.S. economy and abroad, which in turn could result in reductions in IT spending by our existing and prospective customers. Prolonged economic slowdowns may result in customers delaying or canceling IT projects, choosing to focus on in-house development efforts, or seeking to lower their costs by requesting us to renegotiate existing contracts on less advantageous terms or defaulting on payments due on existing contracts or not renewing at the end of existing contract terms.
Our customers may merge with other entities who use alternatives to our products and, during weak economic times, there is an increased risk that one or more of our customers will file for bankruptcy protection, either of which may harm our revenue, profitability, and results of operations. We also face risk from international customers that file for bankruptcy protection in foreign jurisdictions, particularly given that the application of foreign bankruptcy laws may be more difficult to predict. In addition, we may determine that the cost of pursuing any claim may outweigh the recovery potential of such claim. As a result, broadening or protracted extension of an economic downturn could harm our business, revenue, results of operations, and cash flows.
We must attract and retain highly qualified personnel in order to execute our growth plan.
Competition for highly qualified personnel is intense, especially for experienced design and software development engineers and sales professionals. In recent years, recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees with expertise in our industry and in the geographies where we operate has become increasingly difficult as the demand for software professionals, particularly in the geographies where we maintain our facilities, has increased as a result of the proliferation of SaaS companies requiring these talents and an increasingly competitive labor market in part due to the effects of the “Great Resignation” and macro-economic consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic. We have, from time to time experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have. If we hire employees from competitors or other companies, their former employers may attempt to assert that these employees or we have breached certain legal obligations, resulting in a diversion of our time and resources. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects could be harmed.
In addition, job candidates and existing employees often consider the value of the equity awards they receive in connection with their employment. Volatility or lack of performance in our stock price may also affect our ability to attract and retain our key employees. Also, some of our employees have become, or will soon become, vested in a substantial amount of equity awards, which may give them a substantial amount of personal wealth. This may make it more difficult for us to retain and motivate these employees, and this wealth could affect their decision about whether or not they continue to work for us. Any failure to successfully attract, integrate, or retain qualified personnel to fulfill our current or future needs could adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
The loss of key management personnel could harm our business.
We depend on the continued services of key management personnel, including our Chief Executive Officer, Dean Hager. We generally do not have fixed-term employment agreements with our employees, and, therefore, they could terminate their employment with us at any time without penalty. While we do enter into non-compete agreements with certain of our employees, they could pursue employment opportunities with other parties, including, potentially any of our competitors and there are no assurances that our non-compete agreements with any such key management personnel would be enforceable. Additionally, our non-compete periods expire, at which time key management personnel could work for any of our competitors. In addition, we do not maintain any key-person life insurance policies. The loss of key management personnel could harm our business.
Our customers face numerous competitive challenges, which may materially adversely affect their business and ours.
Our customers include enterprises in a broad range of industries, including financial services, government, healthcare, legal, manufacturing, professional services, retail, technology, and telecommunications. Factors adversely affecting our customers may also adversely affect us. These factors include:
•recessionary periods in our customers’ markets, including the impact of COVID-19 on their budgets and financial condition;
•the inability of our customers to adapt to rapidly changing technology and evolving industry standards, which may contribute to short product life cycles or shifts in our customers’ strategies;
•regulation changes in our customers’ respective industries;
•the inability of our customers to develop, market, or gain commercial acceptance of their products, some of which are new and untested;
•the potential that our customers’ products become commoditized or obsolete;
•loss of business or a reduction in pricing power experienced by our customers;
•the emergence of new business models or more popular products and shifting patterns of demand; and
•a highly-competitive consumer products industry, which is often subject to shorter product lifecycles, shifting end-user preferences, and higher revenue volatility.
If our customers are unsuccessful in addressing these competitive challenges, their businesses may be materially adversely affected, reducing the demand for our services or decreasing our revenues, each of which could adversely affect our ability to cover fixed costs and our gross profit margins and results of operations.
Our sales efforts require considerable time and expense.
The timing of our sales can be difficult to predict. We and our channel partners are often required to spend significant time and resources to better educate and familiarize potential customers with the value proposition of our products. Customers often view the purchase of our products as a strategic decision and significant investment and, as a result, frequently require considerable time to evaluate, test, and qualify our products prior to purchasing them. In particular, for customers in highly-regulated industries, the selection of a software provider is a critical business decision due to the sensitive nature of these customers’ data, which results in particularly extensive evaluation prior to the selection of information security vendors. During
the sales cycle, we expend significant time and money on sales and marketing and contract negotiation activities, which may not result in a sale. Additional factors that may influence the length and variability of our sales cycle include:
•the discretionary nature of purchasing and budget cycles and decisions;
•impacts on customers’ business, cash flows, and financial condition as a result of COVID-19;
•lengthy purchasing approval processes;
•the industries in which our customers operate;
•the evaluation of competing products during the purchasing process;
•time, complexity, and expense involved in replacing existing products;
•announcements or planned introductions of new products, features, or functionality by our competitors or of new products or offerings by us; and
•evolving functionality demands.
If our efforts in pursuing sales and customers are unsuccessful, or if our sales cycles lengthen, our revenue could be lower than expected, which would adversely affect our business, results of operations, or financial condition.
As we continue to pursue sales to new and existing enterprise customers, our sales cycle, forecasting processes, and deployment processes may become more unpredictable and require greater time and expense.
Sales to new and existing enterprises involve risks that may not be present or that are present to a lesser extent with sales to smaller organizations. As we seek to increase our sales to enterprise customers, we face more complex customer requirements, substantial upfront sales costs, less predictability and, in some cases, longer sales cycles than we do with smaller customers. With enterprises, the decision to subscribe to our products may require the approval of multiple management personnel and more technical personnel than would be typical of a smaller organization, and accordingly, sales to enterprises may require us to invest more time educating these potential customers. Purchases by larger enterprises are also frequently subject to budget constraints and unplanned administrative, processing, and other delays, which are likely to extend given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which means we may not be able to come to agreement on the subscription or payment terms with enterprises. Our ability to successfully sell our products to larger enterprises is also dependent upon the effectiveness of our sales force, including new sales personnel, who currently represent the majority of our sales force. In addition, if we are unable to increase sales of our products to larger enterprise customers while mitigating the risks associated with serving such customers, our business, financial position, and operating results may be adversely affected.
Failure to effectively develop and expand our marketing and sales capabilities could harm our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our products.
Our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our products will depend to a significant extent on our ability to expand our marketing and sales operations. We plan to continue expanding our direct sales force and engaging additional channel partners, both domestically and internationally. This expansion will require us to invest significant financial and other resources. Our business will be harmed if our efforts do not generate a corresponding increase in revenue. We may not achieve anticipated revenue growth from expanding our direct sales force if we are unable to hire and develop talented direct sales personnel, if our new direct sales personnel are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time, or if we are unable to retain our existing direct sales personnel. We also may not achieve anticipated revenue growth from our channel partners if we are unable to attract and retain additional motivated channel partners, if any existing or future channel partners fail to successfully market, resell, implement, or support our products for their customers, or if they represent multiple providers and devote greater resources to market, resell, implement, and support the products and products of these other providers. We may not achieve our anticipated revenue growth. We may also experience labor market competition in expanding our sales force, particularly if we expand to new geographies and/or sectors. Any of these factors could harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We rely upon free trials of our products and other inbound lead-generation strategies to drive our sales and revenue. If these strategies fail to continue to generate sales opportunities or trial users do not convert into paying customers, our business and results of operations would be harmed.
We rely, in part, upon our marketing strategy of offering free trials of our products and other inbound, lead-generation strategies to generate sales opportunities. Many of our customers start with the free trial version of our products. These strategies may not be successful in continuing to generate sufficient sales opportunities necessary to increase our revenue. Many early users never convert from the trial version of a product to a paid version of such product. Further, we often depend on individuals within an organization who initiate the trial versions of our products being able to convince decision makers within their organization to convert to a paid version. Many of these organizations have complex and multi-layered purchasing requirements. To the extent that these users do not become, or are unable to convince others to become, paying customers, we will not realize the intended benefits of this marketing strategy, and our ability to grow our revenue will be adversely affected.
We have indemnity provisions under our contracts with our customers, channel partners, and other third parties, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.
In our agreements with customers, channel partners, and other third parties, we typically agree to indemnify them for losses related to claims by third parties of intellectual property infringement, misappropriation, or other violation. Additionally, from time to time, customers require us to indemnify them for breach of confidentiality or violation of applicable law, among other things. Although we normally seek to contractually limit our liability with respect to such obligations, some of these agreements provide for uncapped liability and the existence of any dispute may have adverse effects on our customer relationships and reputation, and we may incur substantial liability related to them. In addition, provisions regarding limitation of liability in our agreements with customers, channel partners or other third parties may not be enforceable in some circumstances or jurisdictions or may not protect us from claims and related liabilities and costs. We maintain insurance to protect against certain types of claims associated with the use of our products, but our insurance may not adequately cover any such claims and may not continue to be available to us on acceptable terms or at all. If any such indemnification obligations are triggered, we could face substantial liabilities or be forced to make changes to our products, enter into license agreements, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all, or terminate our agreements with customers, channel partners, and other third parties and provide refunds. In addition, even claims that ultimately are unsuccessful could result in expenditures of management’s time and other resources. Furthermore, any legal claims from customers and channel partners could result in reputational harm and the delay or loss of market acceptance of our products.
Our management team has limited experience managing a public company.
Many members of our management team have limited experience managing a publicly-traded company, interacting with public company investors, and complying with the increasingly complex laws pertaining to public companies. Our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage us as a public company that is subject to significant regulatory oversight and reporting obligations under the federal securities laws and the continuous scrutiny of securities analysts and investors. These obligations and constituents require significant attention from our senior management and could divert their attention away from the day-to-day management of our business, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property and IT Systems
If we or our third-party service providers suffer a cyber-security event, our reputation may be harmed, we may lose customers, and we may incur significant liabilities, any of which would harm our business and operating results.
Cyberattacks, computer malware, viruses, social engineering (including phishing and ransomware attacks), and general hacking are becoming more prevalent and more sophisticated in our industry, and we may in the future become the target of third parties seeking unauthorized access to our confidential or sensitive information or that of our customers. While we have security measures in place designed to protect our and our customers’ confidential and sensitive information and prevent data loss, these measures cannot provide absolute security and may not be effective to prevent a security breach, including as a result of employee error, theft, misuse, or malfeasance, third-party actions, unintentional events, or deliberate attacks by cyber criminals, any of which may result in someone obtaining unauthorized access to our customers’ data, our data, our intellectual property, and/or our other confidential or sensitive business information. In addition, third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce employees, contractors, or users to disclose information, including user names and passwords, to gain access to our customers’ data, our data, or other confidential or sensitive information, and we may be the target of email scams that attempt to acquire personal information or company assets. Because techniques used to sabotage or obtain unauthorized access to systems
change frequently, have increased in sophistication, and generally are not recognized until successfully launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques, react in a timely manner, or implement adequate preventative measures. Furthermore, our solutions may not help detect situations in which a valid user identity has been compromised, for example as part of a sophisticated cyberattack. We devote significant financial and personnel resources to implement and maintain security measures; however, these resources may not be sufficient, and as cyber-security threats develop, evolve, and grow more complex over time, it may be necessary to make significant further investments to protect our data and infrastructure.
We rely on certain third party software vendors to operate our business, including identity and access management, payment processing, and hosting services; however, our ability to monitor our third-party service providers’ data security is limited. Because we do not control our third-party service providers, or the processing of data by our third-party service providers, we cannot ensure the integrity or security of measures they take to protect and prevent unauthorized, accidental, or unlawful access or loss of our data or our customers’ data.
A security breach suffered by us or our third-party service providers, an attack against our service availability, any unauthorized, accidental, or unlawful access or loss of data, or the perception that any such event has occurred, could result in a disruption to our service, litigation, an obligation to notify regulators and affected individuals, the triggering of service availability, indemnification and other contractual obligations, regulatory investigations, government fines and penalties, reputational damage, loss of investor confidence, loss of sales and customers, mitigation and remediation expenses, and other significant costs and liabilities. In addition, we may incur significant costs and operational consequences of investigating, remediating, eliminating, and putting in place additional tools and devices designed to prevent future actual or perceived security incidents, as well as the costs to comply with any notification or other obligations resulting from any security incidents. We also cannot be certain that our existing insurance coverage will cover any indemnification claims against us relating to any security incident or breach, will be available in sufficient amounts to cover the potentially significant losses that may result from a security incident or breach, will continue to be available on acceptable terms or at all or that the insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could adversely affect our reputation, business, financial condition and results of operations.
We cannot assure you that our products or hosted services will not be subject to cyberattacks, or other security incidents, especially in light of the rapidly changing security threat landscape that our products and hosted services seek to address. Due to a variety of both internal and external factors, including, without limitation, defects or misconfigurations of our products, our products could become vulnerable to security incidents (both from intentional attacks and accidental causes). In addition, because the techniques used by computer hackers to access or sabotage networks and endpoints change frequently, are increasing in sophistication, and generally are not recognized until launched against a target, there is a risk that advanced attacks could emerge that attack our software that we are unable to detect or prevent until after some of our customers are affected.
If a Jamf security product fails to detect a security incident, there could potentially be claims against Jamf for such security incident, which could require Jamf to pay damages and could hurt Jamf’s reputation, whether or not the security incident was the fault of Jamf.
Further, our customers and their service providers administer access to data and control the entry of such data. We offer tools and support for what we believe are best practices to maintain security utilizing our services, but customers are not required to utilize those tools or follow our suggested practices, and the obligation to install and update security protection for our products lies with our customers. As a result, a customer may suffer a cyber-security event on its own systems, unrelated to our own, and a malicious actor could obtain access to the customer’s information held on our system. Even if such a breach is unrelated to our own security programs or practices, or if the customer failed to adequately protect our products, that breach could result in our incurring significant economic and operational costs in investigating, remediating, eliminating, and putting in place additional tools and devices to further protect our customers from their own vulnerabilities, and could also result in reputational harm to us.
As a result, the reliability and capacity of our information technology systems is critical to our operations and the implementation of our growth initiatives. Any cyber-security event or other material disruption in our information technology systems, or delays or difficulties in implementing or integrating new systems or enhancing current systems, could have an adverse effect on our business and results of operations.
Real or perceived errors, failures, or bugs in our products could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and growth prospects.
Our products are complex, and therefore, undetected errors, failures, bugs, or defects may be present in our products or occur in the future in our products, our technology or software or technology or software we license in from third parties, including open source software, especially when updates or new products are released. Such software and technology is used in IT environments with different operating systems, system management software, devices, databases, servers, storage, middleware, custom and third-party applications, and equipment and networking configurations, which may cause errors, failures, bugs, or defects in the IT environment into which such software and technology is deployed. This diversity increases the likelihood of errors, failures, bugs, or defects in those IT environments. Some of our product features are powered by ML and AI, which depend on datasets and algorithms that could be flawed, including through inaccurate, insufficient, outdated, or biased data. Despite testing by us, real or perceived errors, failures, bugs, or defects may not be found until our customers use our products. Real or perceived errors, failures, bugs, or defects in our products could result in negative publicity, loss of or delay in market acceptance of our products and harm to our brand, loss of investor confidence, weakening of our competitive position, claims by customers for losses sustained by them, or failure to meet the stated service level commitments in our customer agreements. In such an event, we may be required, or may choose, for customer relations or other reasons, to expend significant additional resources in order to help correct the problem. Any real or perceived errors, failures, bugs, or defects in our products could also impair our ability to attract new customers, retain existing customers, or expand their use of our products, which would adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Moreover, as our products are adopted by an increasing number of enterprises, including education, healthcare, and hospitality, it is possible that the individuals and organizations behind advanced cyberattacks will begin to focus on finding ways to hack our products. If this happens, our customers could be specifically targeted by attackers exploiting vulnerabilities in our products, which could adversely affect our reputation. Further, if a high profile security breach occurs with respect to any Apple operating systems, our customers and potential customers may lose trust in our products generally in addition to any Apple operating system products, such as ours in particular.
Organizations are increasingly subject to a wide variety of attacks on their networks, systems, and endpoints. If any of our customers experiences a successful third-party cyberattack on our products, such customer could be dissatisfied with our products, regardless of whether theft of any of such customer’s data occurred in such attack. Additionally, if customers fail to adequately deploy protection measures or update our products, customers and the public may erroneously believe that our products are especially susceptible to cyberattacks. Real or perceived security breaches against our products could cause disruption or damage to our customers’ networks or other negative consequences and could result in negative publicity to us, damage to our reputation, lead to other customer relations issues, and adversely affect our revenue and results of operations. We may also be subject to liability claims for damages related to real or perceived errors, failures, bugs, or defects in our products. A material liability claim or other occurrence that harms our reputation or decreases market acceptance of our products may harm our business and results of operations. Finally, since some our customers use our products for compliance reasons, any errors, failures, bugs, defects, disruptions in service, or other performance problems with our products may damage our customers’ business and could hurt our reputation.
If there are interruptions or performance problems associated with our technology or infrastructure, our existing customers may experience service outages, and our new customers may experience delays in the deployment of our products.
Our continued growth depends on the ability of our existing and potential customers to access our products and applications 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without interruption or degradation of performance. We may in the future experience disruptions, outages and other performance problems with our infrastructure due to a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, introductions of new functionality, service interruptions from our hosting or technology partners, human or software errors, capacity constraints, distributed denial of service attacks or other security-related incidents. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems immediately or in short order. We may not be able to maintain the level of service uptime and performance required by our customers or our contractual commitments, especially during peak usage times and as our products become more complex and our user traffic increases. If any of our products malfunction or if our customers are unable to access our products or deploy them within a reasonable amount of time, or at all, our business would be harmed. The adverse effects of any service interruptions on our reputation and financial condition may be disproportionately heightened due to the nature of our business and the fact that our customers expect continuous and uninterrupted access to our products and have a low tolerance for interruptions of any duration. Since our customers may rely on our products to secure their Apple products and systems, and because customers use our products to assist in necessary business and service interactions and to support customer and client-facing applications, any outage on our
products would impair the ability of our customers to operate their businesses and provide necessary services, which would negatively impact our brand, reputation and customer satisfaction.
If Apple experiences service outages, such failure could interrupt our customers’ access to our services, which could adversely affect their perception of our products’ reliability and our revenue. Additionally, customers may attribute Apple service outages to our products, which may harm our reputation and cause our customers to ask us for assistance with these outages that are outside of our control. Any disruptions in these services, including as a result of actions outside of our control, would significantly impact the continued performance of our products. In the future, these services may not be available to us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. If we do not accurately predict our infrastructure capacity requirements, our customers could experience service shortfalls. We may also be unable to effectively address capacity constraints, upgrade our systems as needed and continually develop our technology and network architecture to accommodate actual and anticipated changes in technology.
Any of the above circumstances or events may harm our reputation, cause customers to terminate their agreements with us, impair our ability to obtain subscription renewals from existing customers, impair our ability to grow our customer base, result in the expenditure of significant financial, technical and engineering resources, subject us to financial penalties and liabilities under our service level agreements, and otherwise could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Failures in internet infrastructure or interference with broadband or wireless access could cause current or potential customers to believe that our products are unreliable, leading these customers to switch to our competitors or to avoid using our products, which could negatively impact our revenue or harm our opportunities for customer growth.
Our products depend in part on our customers’ high-speed broadband or wireless access to the internet. Increasing numbers of customers and bandwidth requirements may degrade the performance of our products due to capacity constraints and other internet infrastructure limitations, and additional network capacity to maintain adequate data transmission speeds may be unavailable or unacceptably expensive. If adequate capacity is not available to us, our products may be unable to achieve or maintain sufficient data transmission, reliability, or performance. In addition, if internet service providers and other third parties providing internet services, including incumbent phone companies, cable companies and wireless companies, have outages or suffer deterioration in their quality of service, our customers may not have access to or may experience a decrease in the quality of our products. These providers may take measures that block, degrade, discriminate, disrupt, or increase the cost of customer access to our products. Any of these disruptions to data transmission could lead customers to switch to our competitors or avoid using our products, which could negatively impact our revenue or harm our opportunities for growth.
We are subject to stringent and changing privacy laws, regulations and standards, information security policies and contractual obligations related to data privacy and security. Our actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business.
We have legal and contractual obligations regarding the protection of confidentiality and appropriate use of personally identifiable information. We are subject to a variety of federal, state, local and international laws, directives and regulations relating to the collection, use, retention, security, disclosure, transfer and other processing of personally identifiable information. The regulatory framework for privacy and security issues worldwide is rapidly evolving and, as a result, implementation standards and enforcement practices are likely to remain uncertain for the foreseeable future. We publicly post documentation regarding our practices concerning the collection, processing, use and disclosure of data.
Although we endeavor to comply with our published policies and documentation, we may at times fail to do so or be alleged to have failed to do so. The publication of our privacy policy and other documentation that provide promises and assurances about privacy and security can subject us to potential state and federal action if they are found to be deceptive, unfair or misrepresentative of our actual practices. Any failure by us, our suppliers or other parties with whom we do business to comply with this documentation or with federal, state, local or international regulations could result in proceedings against us by governmental entities or others. In many jurisdictions, enforcement actions and consequences for noncompliance are rising. In the United States, these include enforcement actions in response to rules and regulations promulgated under the authority of federal agencies and state attorneys general and legislatures and consumer protection agencies. In addition, privacy advocates and industry groups have regularly proposed, and may propose in the future, self-regulatory standards with which we must legally comply or that contractually apply to us. If we fail to follow these security standards even if no customer information is compromised, we may incur significant fines or experience a significant increase in costs. Evolving and changing definitions of personal data and personal information within the European Union, the United States, and elsewhere may limit or inhibit our ability to operate or expand our business, including technology partnerships that may involve the sharing of data. Even the
perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may harm our reputation or inhibit adoption of our products by current and future customers.
Internationally, virtually every jurisdiction in which we operate has established its own data security and privacy legal framework with which we or our customers must comply, including, but not limited to, the EU. The EU’s data protection landscape is currently unstable, resulting in possible significant operational costs for internal compliance and risk to our business. The EU has adopted the GDPR, which went into effect in May 2018 and contains numerous requirements and changes from previously existing EU law, including more robust obligations on data processors and heavier documentation requirements for data protection compliance programs by companies. Among other requirements, the GDPR regulates transfers of personal data subject to the GDPR to third countries that have not been found to provide adequate protection to such personal data, including the United States. While we have taken steps to mitigate the impact on us with respect to transfers of data, the efficacy and longevity of these transfer mechanisms remains uncertain. The GDPR also introduced numerous privacy-related changes for companies operating in the EU, including greater control for data subjects (including, for example, the “right to be forgotten”), increased data portability for EU consumers, data breach notification requirements and increased fines. In particular, under the GDPR, fines of up to 20 million euros or up to 4% of the annual global revenue of the noncompliant company, whichever is greater, could be imposed for violations of certain of the GDPR’s requirements. Such penalties are in addition to any civil litigation claims by customers and data subjects. The GDPR requirements apply not only to third-party transactions, but also to transfers of information between us and our subsidiaries, including employee information. The UK GDPR is currently generally aligned with the EU GDPR, but Brexit has created the opportunity for the UK to develop its own data protection regime which may diverge from the European standard in the future.
In addition to the GDPR, the European Commission has adopted the Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications (the “ePrivacy Regulation”), which focuses on protection of personal data. New rules related to the ePrivacy Regulation are likely to include enhanced consent requirements in order to use communications content and communications metadata, which may negatively impact our products and our relationships with our customers.
Complying with the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation may cause us to incur substantial operational costs or require us to change our business practices. Despite our efforts to bring practices into compliance , we may not be successful in our efforts to achieve compliance either due to internal or external factors, such as resource allocation limitations or a lack of vendor cooperation. Non-compliance could result in proceedings against us by governmental entities, customers, data subjects or others. We may also experience difficulty retaining or obtaining new European or multi-national customers due to the legal requirements, compliance cost, potential risk exposure and uncertainty for these entities, and we may experience significantly increased liability with respect to these customers pursuant to the terms set forth in our engagements with them. While we utilize a data center in the European Economic Area to maintain certain customer data (which may include personal data) originating from the EU in the European Economic Area, we may find it necessary to establish additional systems and processes to maintain such data in the European Economic Area, which may involve substantial expense and distraction from other aspects of our business.
Transferring personal information across international borders is complex and subject to legal and regulatory requirements as well as active litigation and enforcement in a number of jurisdictions around the world, each of which could have an adverse impact to our ability to process and transfer personal data as part of our business operations. For example, European data transfers outside the European Economic Area are highly regulated and litigated. The mechanisms that we and many other companies rely upon for European data transfers (e.g., the Privacy Shield and Standard Contractual Clauses) have been the subject of recent judicial decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union resulting in the invalidation of the Privacy Shield, and revisions to the Standard Contractual Clauses as a means to legitimize transfer of personal data outside the EU. We are closely monitoring the impact of these recent developments in EU data transfer regulation and other developments related to the remaining valid transfer mechanisms available for transferring personal data in other countries that have similar trans-border data flow requirements and adjusting our practices accordingly. The invalidation of the Privacy Shield and the adoption of new Standard Contractual Clauses have resulted in some changes in the obligations required to provide our services in the EU and could expose us to potential sanctions and fines for non-compliance. Further, Brexit has created uncertainty with regard to data transfer regulation in the UK. We believe that the limited data required in order to use our products mitigates these risks, and we will continue to monitor best practices for European data transfer. Accordingly, we may need to invest in additional technical, legal and organizational safeguards in the future to avoid disruptions to data flows within our business and to and from our customers and service providers.
Domestic laws in this area are also complex and developing rapidly. Many state legislatures have adopted legislation that regulates how businesses operate online, including measures relating to privacy, data security and data breaches. Laws in all 50 states require businesses to provide notice to customers whose personally identifiable information has been disclosed as a
result of a data breach. The laws are not consistent, and compliance in the event of a widespread data breach is costly. States are also constantly amending existing laws, requiring attention to frequently changing regulatory requirements. For example, California enacted the CCPA, which became effective on January 1, 2020. The CCPA gives California residents expanded rights to access and delete their personal information, opt out of certain personal information sharing and receive detailed information about how their personal information is used. The CCPA provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for data breaches that is expected to increase data breach litigation. In addition, on November 3, 2020, California voters approved a new privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act (the “CPRA”), which significantly modifies the CCPA, including by expanding consumers’ rights with respect to certain personal information and creating a new state agency to oversee implementation and enforcement efforts. Many of the CPRA’s provisions will become effective on January 1, 2023. The CCPA, CPRA, and other state data regulation may increase our compliance costs and potential liability.
Because the interpretation and application of many privacy and data protection laws along with contractually imposed industry standards are uncertain, it is possible that these laws may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent with our existing data management practices or the features of our products and product capabilities. If so, in addition to the possibility of fines, lawsuits, regulatory investigations, imprisonment of company officials and public censure, other claims and penalties, significant costs for remediation and damage to our reputation, we could be required to fundamentally change our business activities and practices or modify our products and product capabilities, any of which could have an adverse effect on our business. Any inability to adequately address privacy and security concerns, even if unfounded, or comply with applicable privacy and data security laws, regulations and policies, could result in additional cost and liability to us, damage our reputation, inhibit sales and adversely affect our business. Furthermore, the costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, the laws, regulations and policies that are applicable to the businesses of our customers may limit the use and adoption of, and reduce the overall demand for, our products. Privacy and data security concerns, whether valid or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our products, particularly in certain industries and foreign countries. If we are not able to adjust to changing laws, regulations and standards related to the internet, our business may be harmed.
We may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement, misappropriation or other violation of their intellectual property and proprietary rights.
There is considerable patent and other intellectual property development activity in our industry. Our success depends, in part, on our ability to develop and commercialize our products without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual property or proprietary rights of others. From time to time, our competitors or other third parties have claimed and in the future could claim that we are infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating their intellectual property or proprietary rights, we have been and in the future may become subject to intellectual property disputes and we may be found to be infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating such rights. A claim may also be made relating to technology that we acquire or license from third parties.
We may be unaware of the intellectual property or proprietary rights of others that may cover some or all of our products. Regardless of merit, any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages, costs and/or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our products, require us to obtain a license, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all, require us to re-design our products, which could by costly, time-consuming or impossible or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. If any of our customers are sued, we would in general be required to defend and/or settle the litigation on their behalf. In addition, if we are unable to obtain licenses or modify our products to make them non-infringing, we might have to refund a portion of license fees prepaid to us and terminate those agreements, which could further exhaust our resources. In addition, we have paid, and may in the future pay, substantial settlement amounts or royalties on future product sales to resolve claims or litigation, whether or not legitimately or successfully asserted against us. Even if we were to prevail in the actual or potential claims or litigation against us, any claim or litigation regarding our intellectual property and proprietary rights could be costly and time-consuming and divert the attention of our management and key personnel from our business operations. Such disputes, with or without merit, could also cause potential customers to refrain from purchasing our products or otherwise cause us reputational harm.
We do not currently have a large patent portfolio, which could prevent us from deterring patent infringement claims through our own patent portfolio, and our competitors and others may now and in the future have significantly larger and more mature patent portfolios than we have. Any litigation may also involve non-practicing entities, patent holding companies or other adverse patent owners. We cannot predict the outcome of lawsuits and cannot ensure that the results of any such actions will not have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.
We rely on third-party software and intellectual property licenses.
Our products include software and other intellectual property and proprietary rights licensed from third parties. It may be necessary in the future to seek or renew licenses relating to various aspects of our products. We have the expectation, based on experience and standard industry practice, that such licenses generally can be obtained on commercially reasonable terms. However, there can be no assurance that the necessary licenses would be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. Our inability to obtain certain licenses or other rights or to obtain such licenses or rights on favorable terms could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial conditions. In any such case, we may be required to seek licenses to other software or intellectual property or proprietary rights from other parties and re-design our products to function with such technology, or develop replacement technology ourselves, which could result in increased costs and product delays. We may also be forced to limit the features available in our current or future products. Moreover, incorporating intellectual property or proprietary rights licensed from third parties on a nonexclusive basis in our products, including our software could limit our ability to protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights in our products and our ability to restrict third parties from developing similar or competitive technology using the same third-party intellectual property or proprietary rights.
If we are unable to obtain, maintain, protect or enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights, our competitive position could be harmed or we could be required to incur significant expenses.
Our ability to compete effectively is dependent in part upon our ability to obtain, maintain, protect and enforce our intellectual property and other proprietary rights, including proprietary technology. We establish and protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights, including our proprietary information and technology through a combination of licensing agreements, third-party nondisclosure agreements, confidentiality procedures and other contractual provisions, as well as through patent, trademark, trade dress, copyright, trade secret and other intellectual property laws in the United States and similar laws in other countries. However, the steps we take to obtain, maintain, protect and enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights may be inadequate. There can be no assurance that these protections will be available in all cases or will be adequate to prevent our competitors or other third parties from copying, reverse engineering, accessing or otherwise obtaining and using our technology, intellectual property or proprietary rights or products without our permission. The laws of some foreign countries, including countries in which our products are sold, may not be as protective of intellectual property and proprietary rights as those in the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property and proprietary rights may be inadequate. There can be no assurance that our competitors will not independently develop technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our technology or design around our intellectual property and proprietary rights. In each case, our ability to compete could be significantly impaired.
In addition, third parties may seek to challenge, invalidate or circumvent our patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets or other intellectual property and proprietary rights, or any applications for any of the foregoing, including through administrative processes such as re-examination, inter partes review, interference and derivation proceedings and equivalent proceedings in foreign jurisdictions (e.g., opposition proceedings) or litigation. The legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of intellectual property and proprietary rights are uncertain and still evolving. There can be no assurance that our patent applications will result in issued patents or whether the examination process will require us to narrow the scope of the claims sought. In addition, our issued patents, and any patents issued from our pending or future patent applications or licensed to us in the future may not provide us with competitive advantages, may be successfully challenged, invalidated or circumvented by third parties, or may not prove to be enforceable in actions brought against alleged infringers. The value of our intellectual property and proprietary rights could also diminish if others assert rights therein or ownership thereof, and we may be unable to successfully resolve any such conflicts in our favor or to our satisfaction.
To prevent substantial unauthorized use of our intellectual property and proprietary rights, it may be necessary to prosecute actions for infringement, misappropriation and/or other violation of our intellectual property and proprietary rights against third parties. Any such action may be time-consuming and could result in significant costs and diversion of our resources and management’s attention, and there can be no assurance that we will be successful in such action, even when our rights have been infringed, misappropriated or otherwise violated. Further, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property and proprietary rights, and if such defenses, counterclaims or countersuits are successful, we could lose valuable intellectual property and proprietary rights.
Furthermore, many of our current and potential competitors have the ability to dedicate substantially greater resources to enforce their intellectual property and proprietary rights than we do. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating our intellectual property and proprietary rights. Although we enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into
confidentiality agreements with other third parties, including customers and third-party service providers, we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that has or may have had access to our proprietary information, know-how and trade secrets. Moreover, no assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to, distribution, use, misuse, misappropriation, reverse engineering or disclosure of our proprietary information, know-how and trade secrets. Further, these agreements may not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our products and platform capabilities. These agreements may be breached, and we may not have adequate remedies for any such breach.
Our use of open source software could impose limitations on our ability to commercialize our products or subject us to litigation or other actions.
Our products contain software modules licensed for use from third-party authors under open source licenses, including MIT, Berkley Software Distribution and others, and we expect to continue to incorporate open source software in our products in the future. Use and distribution of open source software may entail greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement, misappropriation or other violation claims or the quality of the code. Some open source licenses contain requirements that we make available the source code of modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the type of open source software we use and that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of the applicable open source licenses. If we fail to comply, or are alleged to have failed to comply, with the terms and conditions of our open source licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending such allegations, subject to significant damages, enjoined from the sale of our proprietary products and required to comply with onerous conditions or restrictions on our proprietary products, any of which could be disruptive to our business.
Moreover, if we combine our proprietary products with open source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain of the open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary products to the public or offer our products to users at no cost. This could allow our competitors to create similar products with lower development effort and time and ultimately could result in a loss of sales for us. We cannot ensure that we have not incorporated open source software in our software in a manner that is inconsistent with the terms of the applicable license or our current policies, and we may inadvertently use open source in a manner that we do not intend or that could expose us to claims for breach of contract or intellectual property infringement, misappropriation or other violation.
The terms of many open source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to commercialize our products. In such an event, we could be required to seek licenses from third parties in order to continue offering our products, re-engineer our products, discontinue the sale of our products in the event re-engineering cannot be accomplished on a timely basis or make generally available, in source code form, all or a portion of our proprietary source code, any of which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results.
Risks Related to Laws and Regulations
We provide our products to state and local governments and to a lesser extent federal government agencies, and heavily regulated organizations in the U.S. and in foreign jurisdictions; as a result, we face risks related to the procurement process budget decisions driven by statutory and regulatory determinations, termination of contracts and compliance with government contracting requirements.
We sell our products and provide limited services to a number of state and local government entities (including, primarily, educational institutions) and, in limited instances, the U.S. government. We additionally have customers who operate in heavily-regulated organizations who procure our software products both through our partners and directly, and we have made, and may continue to make, significant investments to support future sales opportunities in these sectors. Doing business with government entities presents a variety of risks. Among other risks, the procurement process for governments and their agencies is highly competitive, can be time-consuming, requires us to incur significant up-front time and expense and subjects us to additional compliance risks and costs, without any assurance that we (or a third-party reseller) will win a contract. Beyond this, demand for our products and services may be impacted by public sector budgetary cycles and funding availability, impacts of COVID-19, and funding in any given fiscal cycle may be reduced or delayed, including in connection with an extended federal government shutdown, which could adversely impact demand for our products and services. In addition, public sector and heavily-regulated customers may have contractual, statutory or regulatory rights to terminate current contracts with us or our third-party distributors or resellers for convenience or due to a default. If a contract is terminated for convenience, we may only be able to collect fees for products or services delivered prior to termination and settlement expenses. If a contract is
terminated due to a default, we may be liable for excess costs incurred by the customer for procuring alternative products or services or be precluded from doing further business with government entities. Further, entities providing services to governments are required to comply with a variety of complex laws, regulations and contractual provisions relating to the formation, administration, or performance of government contracts that give public sector customers substantial rights and remedies, many of which are not typically found in commercial contracts. These may include rights with respect to price protection, the accuracy of information provided to the government, contractor compliance with supplier diversity policies and other terms that are particular to government contracts, such as termination rights. These rules may apply to us and/or third parties through whom we resell our products and services and whose practices we may not control, where such parties’ non-compliance could impose repercussions with respect to contractual and customer satisfaction issues. Federal, state and local governments routinely investigate and audit contractors for compliance with these requirements. If, as a result of an audit or review, it is determined that we have failed to comply with these requirements, we may be subject to civil and criminal penalties and administrative sanctions, including termination of contracts, forfeiture of profits, cost associated with the triggering of price reduction clauses, fines and suspensions or debarment from future government business, and we may suffer harm to our reputation.
Our customers also include a number of non-U.S. governments. Similar procurement, budgetary, contract and audit risks that apply in the context of U.S. government contracting also apply to our doing business with these entities, particularly in certain emerging markets where our customer base is less established. In addition, compliance with complex regulations and contracting provisions in a variety of jurisdictions can be expensive and consume significant management resources. In certain jurisdictions, our ability to win business may be constrained by political and other factors unrelated to our competitive position in the market. Additionally, many of our current and prospective customers, such as those in the financial services and health care industries, are highly regulated and may be required to comply with more stringent regulations in connection with subscribing to and implementing our services. Each of these difficulties could result in substantial compliance burdens and could materially adversely affect our business and results of operations.
We are subject to export controls and economic sanctions laws, and our customers and channel partners are subject to import controls that could subject us to liability if we are not in full compliance with applicable laws.
Certain of our products are subject to U.S. export controls and we would be permitted to export such products to certain countries outside the U.S. only by first obtaining an export license from the U.S. government, or by utilizing an existing export license exception, or after clearing U.S. government agency review. Obtaining the necessary export license or accomplishing a U.S. government review for a particular export may be time-consuming and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities. Furthermore, U.S. export control laws and economic sanctions, including economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, prohibit the sale or supply of our products and services to U.S. embargoed or sanctioned countries, regions, governments, persons, and entities.
Although we take precautions to prevent our solutions from being provided in violation of U.S. export control and economic sanctions laws, our solutions may have been in the past, and could in the future be, provided inadvertently in violation of such laws. If we were to fail to comply with U.S. export law requirements, U.S. customs regulations, U.S. economic sanctions or other applicable U.S. laws, we could be subject to substantial civil and criminal penalties, including fines, incarceration for responsible employees and managers and the possible loss of export or import privileges. U.S. export controls, sanctions and regulations apply to our channel partners as well as to us. Any failure by our channel partners to comply with such laws, regulations or sanctions could have negative consequences, including reputational harm, government investigations and penalties.
Changes in our products or changes in export and import regulations may create delays in the introduction of our products into international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from deploying our products globally or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our products to certain countries, governments or persons altogether. In addition, any change in export or import regulations, economic sanctions or related legislation, shift in the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons or technologies targeted by such regulations, could result in decreased use of our products by, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our products to, existing or potential customers with international operations. Any decreased use of our products or limitation on our ability to export or sell our products would likely adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results.
We are subject to anti-corruption, anti-bribery and similar laws, and non-compliance with such laws can subject us to criminal penalties or significant fines and harm our business and reputation.
We are subject to anti-corruption and anti-bribery and similar laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (the “FCPA”), the U.S. domestic bribery statute contained in 18 U.S.C. § 201, the U.S. Travel Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 and other anti-corruption, anti-bribery and anti-money laundering laws in countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws have been enforced aggressively in recent years and are interpreted broadly and prohibit companies and their employees and agents from promising, authorizing, making, offering, soliciting, or accepting, directly or indirectly, improper payments or other improper benefits to or from any person whether in the public or private sector. As we increase our international sales and business, our risks under these laws may increase. Noncompliance with these laws could subject us to investigations, sanctions, settlements, prosecution, other enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, significant fines, damages, other civil and criminal penalties or injunctions, adverse media coverage and other consequences. Any investigations, actions or sanctions could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Our international operations may give rise to potentially adverse tax consequences.
Our corporate structure and associated transfer pricing policies anticipate future growth into the international markets. The amount of taxes we pay in different jurisdictions may depend on the application of the tax laws of the various jurisdictions, including the United States, to our international business activities, changes in tax rates, new or revised tax laws or interpretations of existing tax laws and policies and our ability to operate our business in a manner consistent with our corporate structure and intercompany arrangements. The taxing authorities of the jurisdictions in which we operate may challenge our methodologies for pricing intercompany transactions, which are generally required to be computed on an arm’s-length basis pursuant to intercompany arrangements or disagree with our determinations as to the income and expenses attributable to specific jurisdictions. If such a challenge or disagreement were to occur, and our position was not sustained, we could be required to pay additional taxes, interest and penalties, which could result in one-time tax charges, higher effective tax rates, reduced cash flows and lower overall profitability of our operations. Our financial statements could fail to reflect adequate reserves to cover such a contingency.
As we continue to develop and grow our business globally, our success will depend in large part on our ability to anticipate and effectively manage these risks. The expansion of our existing international operations and entry into additional international markets will require significant management attention and financial resources. Our failure to successfully manage our international operations and the associated risks could limit the future growth of our business.
Changes in tax laws or regulations in the various tax jurisdictions we are subject to that are applied adversely to us or our customers could increase the costs of our products and harm our business.
New income, sales, use or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances could be enacted at any time. Those enactments could harm our domestic and international business operations, and our business and financial performance. Further, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be interpreted, changed, modified or applied adversely to us. These events could require us or our customers to pay additional tax amounts on a prospective or retroactive basis, as well as require us or our customers to pay fines and/or penalties and interest for past amounts deemed to be due. If we raise our prices to offset the costs of these changes, existing and potential future customers may elect not to purchase our products in the future. Additionally, new, changed, modified or newly interpreted or applied tax laws could increase our customers’ and our compliance, operating and other costs, as well as the costs of our products. Further, these events could decrease the capital we have available to operate our business. Any or all of these events could harm our business and financial performance.
Our ability to use our net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations.
In general, under Section 382 of the United States Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”), a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” is subject to annual limitations on its ability to utilize its pre-change net operating losses (“NOLs”) to offset future taxable income. Our ability to utilize the Company’s current U.S. federal NOLs may be limited under Section 382 of the Code. If we undergo an ownership change, our ability to utilize NOLs could be further limited by Section 382 of the Code. Future changes in our stock ownership, many of which are outside of our control, could result in an ownership change under Section 382 of the Code. Furthermore, our ability to utilize NOLs of companies that we have acquired or may acquire in the future may be subject to limitations. For these reasons, we may not be able to utilize a material portion of the NOLs, even if we were to achieve profitability.
Our NOL carryforwards may be unavailable to offset future taxable income because of restrictions under U.S. tax law. NOLs generated in taxable years ending on or prior to December 31, 2017 are only permitted to be carried forward for 20 taxable years under applicable U.S. federal tax law. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Tax Act”), as amended by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the “CARES Act”), our federal NOLs generated in taxable years ending after December 31, 2017 may be carried forward indefinitely and NOLs arising in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017 and before January 1, 2021 may be carried back to each of the five taxable years preceding the tax year of such loss, but NOLs arising in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020 may not be carried back. In addition, under the Tax Act, as modified by the CARES Act, for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020, the deductibility of federal NOLs generated in taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017 is limited to 80% of current year taxable income. It is uncertain if and to what extent various states will conform to the Tax Act, as modified by the CARES Act.
Risks Related to Our Financial Reporting and Capital Resources
Seasonality may cause fluctuations in our revenue.
We believe there are seasonal factors that may cause us to record higher revenue in some quarters compared with others. We believe this variability is largely due to our customers’ budgetary and spending patterns, as many customers spend the unused portions of their discretionary budgets prior to the end of their fiscal years. For example, we have historically recorded our highest level of total revenue in our fourth quarter, which we believe corresponds to the fourth quarter of a majority of our enterprise customers. We historically receive a higher number of orders from education customers in the summer months to coincide with their fiscal year end. As our rate of growth has slowed, seasonal or cyclical variations in our operations may become more pronounced, and our business, results of operations, and financial position may be adversely affected.
Our quarterly operating results and other metrics may vary significantly and be unpredictable, which could cause the trading price of our stock to decline.
Our operating results and other metrics have historically varied from period to period, and we expect that they will continue to do so as a result of a number of factors, many of which are outside of our control and may be difficult to predict, including:
•the impact of COVID-19 on our customers’ budgets and their ability to purchase or renew at similar volumes to prior periods;
•the level of demand for our products and services, including our newly-introduced products and services;
•the timing and use of new subscriptions and renewals of existing subscriptions;
•the timing and success of new product announcements and introductions by us and our competitors and the timing and success of device releases and software updates by Apple;
•our ability to maintain scalable internal systems for reporting, order processing, license fulfillment, product delivery, purchasing, billing and general accounting, among other functions;
•the extent to which customers subscribe for additional products, license additional products or increase the number use cases;
•significant security breaches of, technical difficulties with, or interruptions to, the delivery and use of our offerings;
•customer budgeting cycles and seasonal buying patterns where our customers often time their purchases and renewals of our products to coincide with their fiscal year end, which is typically December 31 for our enterprise customers;
•any changes in the competitive landscape of our industry, including consolidation among our competitors, customers, partners or resellers;
•timing of costs and expenses during a quarter;
•deferral of orders in anticipation of new products or enhancements announced by us or our competitors;
•price competition;
•changes in renewal rates and terms in any quarter;
•costs related to the acquisition of businesses, talent, technologies or intellectual property by us, including potentially significant amortization costs and possible write-downs;
•litigation-related costs, settlements or adverse litigation judgments;
•any disruption in our sales channels or termination of our relationship with channel and other strategic partners;
•general economic conditions, both domestically and in our foreign markets, and related changes to currency exchange rates;
•insolvency or credit difficulties confronting our customers, affecting their ability to purchase or pay for our products; and
•future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies.
Any one of the factors above or the cumulative effect of some of the factors referred to above may result in significant fluctuations in our financial and other operating results, including fluctuations in our key metrics. This variability and unpredictability could result in our failing to meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors for any period. If we fail to meet or exceed such expectations for these or any other reasons, the market price of our shares could fall substantially and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits.
We may fail to meet or exceed the expectations of securities analysts and investors, and the market price for our common stock could decline. If one or more of the securities analysts who cover us change their recommendation regarding our stock adversely, the market price for our common stock could decline. Additionally, our stock price may be based on expectations, estimates, or forecasts of our future performance that may be unrealistic or may not be achieved. Further, our stock price may be affected by financial media, including press reports and blogs.
Changes in accounting principles and guidance could result in unfavorable accounting charges or effects.
We prepare our consolidated financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”). These principles are subject to interpretation by the SEC and various bodies formed to create and interpret appropriate accounting principles and guidance. A change in these principles or guidance, or in their interpretations, may have a material effect on our reported results, as well as our processes and related controls, and may retroactively affect previously reported results. For example, during February 2016, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) No. 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842) (“ASU 2016-02”). The updated standard requires the recognition of a liability for lease obligations and a corresponding right-of-use asset on the balance sheet and disclosures of certain information regarding leasing arrangements. We adopted the new lease standard on January 1, 2021. See Part II, Item 8, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data — Summary of significant accounting policies” for more information.
Our revenue recognition and other factors may impact our financial results in any given period and make them difficult to predict.
Under ASU No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606) (“ASC 606”), we recognize revenue when our performance obligations have been satisfied in an amount that reflects the consideration that we expect to receive in exchange for those performance obligations. Our subscription revenue includes revenue from SaaS subscription and support and maintenance arrangements, which is recognized ratably over the contract period. Subscription revenue also includes sales of on-premise subscriptions. License revenue includes revenue from on-premise perpetual licenses. We recognize license revenue and sales of on-premise subscriptions up-front provided all revenue recognition criteria have been satisfied. Our services revenue consists of professional services and training provided to our customers, for which revenue is recognized as the services are performed. Our application of ASC 606 with respect to the nature of future contractual arrangements could impact the forecasting of our revenue for future periods, as both the mix of products and services we will sell in a given period, as well as the size of contracts, is difficult to predict.
Consequently, a shortfall in sales of our SaaS subscription and support and maintenance arrangements in any quarter may not significantly reduce our subscription revenues for that quarter but may negatively affect subscription revenues in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales of our SaaS subscription and support and maintenance arrangements may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. We may be unable to adjust our cost structure to compensate for this potential shortfall in subscription revenues. Our revenue recognition model for our SaaS subscription and support and maintenance arrangements also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenues through additional sales in any period, as a significant amount of our revenues are recognized over the applicable agreement term.
Furthermore, the presentation of our financial results requires us to make estimates and assumptions that may affect revenue recognition. In some instances, we could reasonably use different estimates and assumptions and changes in estimates may occur from period to period. See Part II, Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Critical Accounting Estimates — Revenue Recognition.”
Given the foregoing factors, comparing our revenue and operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful, and our past results may not be indicative of our future performance.
Impairment of goodwill and other intangible assets would result in a decrease in earnings.
We have in the past, and may in the future, acquire intangible assets. Current accounting rules require that goodwill and other intangible assets with indefinite useful lives that are not amortized be tested for impairment at least annually. These rules also require that intangible assets with definite useful lives be amortized over their respective estimated useful lives to their estimated residual values and reviewed for impairment whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying amount of an asset may not be recoverable. Events and circumstances considered in determining whether the carrying value of amortizable intangible assets and goodwill may not be recoverable include, but are not limited to, significant changes in performance relative to expected operating results, significant changes in the use of the assets, significant negative industry or economic trends, significant impacts to the economy (such as COVID-19), or a significant decline in our stock price and/or market capitalization for a sustained period of time. To the extent such evaluation indicates that the useful lives of intangible assets are different than originally estimated, the amortization period is reduced or extended and the quarterly amortization expense is increased or decreased. Any impairment charges or changes to estimated amortization periods could have a material adverse effect on our financial results.
We have identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting and, if we are unable to remediate this material weakness, we may not be able to accurately or timely report our financial condition or results of operations, which may adversely affect investor confidence in us and, as a result, the value of our common stock.
As disclosed in Part II, Item 9A, “Controls and Procedures,” we have identified a material weakness in internal control over financial reporting. A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of a company’s annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. Because the control deficiency described below could have resulted in a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements, we determined that this deficiency constitutes a material weakness. In connection with the preparation of our financial statements for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, we identified misstatements in our accounting related to certain commissions that were incorrectly capitalized in prior periods. The misstatements resulted from a deficiency in the controls over the commissions process. We did not design or maintain effective controls to identify commissions that should have been expensed as incurred rather than capitalized in accordance with GAAP. Specifically, we did not have controls over (i) the communication of commission plan changes between the sales and accounting teams to identify and correctly account for commission plan changes in the financial statements and (ii) reviewing the evaluation of various terms in the commission plans to the relevant accounting guidance. As a result, sales and marketing expenses were understated and deferred contract costs were overstated in prior periods. This material weakness resulted in the revision of our previously issued consolidated financial statements as of and for the years ended December 31, 2020, 2019 and 2018 and for each of the quarters during the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019 and the quarter ended March 31, 2021.
Our management is committed to remediating this material weakness and has implemented several steps to enhance our internal controls and commissions processes. Our steering committee, anchored by the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, has hired a third-party consultant to help us standardize and automate our commissions processes. The third-party consultant has implemented recommendations to standardize and automate our commission processes. Therefore, we intend to implement these new internal controls in 2022 with the intention of remediation later in the year. The material weakness will not be considered remediated until a sustained period of time has passed to allow management to test the design and operational effectiveness of the corrective actions. Until the material weakness is remediated, we plan to continue to
perform additional analyses and other procedures to ensure that our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with GAAP. In addition, we may discover additional material weaknesses that require additional time and resources to remediate and we may decide to take additional measures to address the material weaknesses or modify the remediation steps described above.
The existence of any material weakness, including our existing material weakness regarding capitalization of commissions, or significant deficiency requires management to devote significant time and incur significant expense to remediate any such material weaknesses or significant deficiencies and management may not be able to remediate any such material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in a timely manner. The existence of any material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting could also result in errors in our financial statements that could require us to restate our financial statements, cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations and cause shareholders to lose confidence in our reported financial information, all of which could materially and adversely affect our business and stock price.
We are subject to SEC rules and regulations regarding our internal control over financial reporting. If we fail to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures or identify material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, we may not be able to accurately report our financial results, or report them in a timely manner.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”) requires that we maintain effective internal control over financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures. In particular, we must perform system and process evaluation, document our controls and perform testing of our key control over financial reporting to allow management and our independent public accounting firm to report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, as required by Section 404 of SOX.
The process of designing and implementing internal control over financial reporting required to comply with Section 404 of the SOX has been and will continue to be time consuming, costly and complicated and has and will require significant accounting expense and management effort. We will continue to dedicate management effort and other internal resources, invest in more robust technology, and engage outside consultants to assess and document the adequacy of internal control over financial reporting, continue steps to improve control processes as appropriate, validate through testing that controls are functioning as documented and implement a continuous reporting and improvement process for internal control over financial reporting and to compile the system and process documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404. However, we cannot assure you that in future periods, after we remediate the current material weakness, our independent registered public accounting firm will be able to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. We may not be able to remediate any material weaknesses that may be identified, or to complete our evaluation, testing and any required remediation in a timely fashion and our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our controls are documented, designed or operating.
If our senior management continues to be unable to conclude in future periods that we have effective internal control over financial reporting or to certify the effectiveness of such controls or if our independent registered public accounting firm cannot render an unqualified opinion on management's assessment and the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, we could be subject to regulatory scrutiny, a loss of public and investor confidence, and to litigation from investors and stockholders, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and our stock price. In addition, if we do not maintain adequate financial and management personnel, processes and controls, we may not be able to manage our business effectively or accurately report our financial performance on a timely basis, which could cause a decline in our common stock price, adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition, and/or restrict our future access to the capital markets.
Our indebtedness could adversely affect our business and growth prospects.
As of December 31, 2021, we had total current and long-term indebtedness of $363.0 million, including (i) $362.0 million outstanding aggregate principal amount of the Convertible Senior Notes due 2026 (the “2026 Notes”), (ii) no borrowings outstanding under our 2020 Revolving Credit Facility, and (iii) $1.0 million of outstanding letters of credit outstanding under our 2020 Revolving Credit Facility. In addition, as of December 31, 2021, we had $149.0 million of additional borrowing capacity under our 2020 Revolving Credit Facility. Our indebtedness, or any additional indebtedness we may incur, could require us to divert funds identified for other purposes for debt service and impair our liquidity position. If we cannot generate sufficient cash flow from operations to service our debt, we may need to refinance our debt, dispose of assets, or issue equity to obtain necessary funds. We do not know whether we will be able to take any of these actions on a timely basis, on terms satisfactory to us or at all.
Our existing and future indebtedness, the cash flow needed to satisfy such indebtedness and the covenants governing such indebtedness, could have important consequences, including:
•limiting funds otherwise available for financing our capital expenditures by requiring us to dedicate a portion of our cash flows from operations to the repayment of debt and the interest on this debt;
•limiting our ability to incur additional indebtedness;
•limiting our ability to capitalize on significant business opportunities;
•making us more vulnerable to rising interest rates; and
•making us more vulnerable in the event of a downturn in our business.
Fluctuations in interest rates can increase borrowing costs. Increases in interest rates may directly impact the amount of interest we are required to pay and reduce earnings accordingly. In addition, developments in tax policy, such as the disallowance of tax deductions for interest paid on outstanding indebtedness, could have an adverse effect on our liquidity and our business, financial conditions and results of operations. Further, our existing debt agreements contain customary affirmative and negative covenants and certain restrictions on operations that could impose operating and financial limitations and restrictions on us, including restrictions on our ability to enter into particular transactions and to engage in other actions that we may believe are advisable or necessary for our business.
We expect to use cash flow from operations to meet current and future financial obligations, including funding our operations, debt service requirements and capital expenditures. The ability to make these payments depends on our financial and operating performance, which is subject to prevailing economic, industry, and competitive conditions and to certain financial, business, economic, and other factors beyond our control.
Despite our current debt levels, we may still incur substantially more debt or take other actions which would intensify the risks discussed above.
Despite our current consolidated debt levels, we may be able to incur substantial additional debt in the future, subject to the restrictions contained in our debt instruments, some of which may be secured debt. We are not restricted under the terms of the indenture governing the 2026 Notes (the “2026 Notes Indenture”) from incurring additional debt, securing existing or future debt, recapitalizing our debt or taking a number of other actions that are not limited by the terms of the 2026 Notes Indenture that could have the effect of diminishing our ability to make payments on our debt, including the 2026 Notes, when due. The 2020 Credit Agreement restricts our ability to incur certain additional indebtedness, including secured indebtedness, but if the 2020 Credit Agreement matures or is repaid, we may not be subject to such restrictions under the terms of any subsequent indebtedness.
We may not have the ability to raise the funds necessary to settle conversions of the 2026 Notes in cash or to repurchase the 2026 Notes upon a fundamental change, and our future debt may contain limitations on our ability to pay cash upon conversion or repurchase of the 2026 Notes.
Holders of the 2026 Notes will have the right, subject to certain conditions and limited exceptions, to require us to repurchase all or a portion of their 2026 Notes upon the occurrence of a fundamental change at a fundamental change repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the 2026 Notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if any, as provided in the 2026 Notes Indenture. In addition, upon conversion of the 2026 Notes, unless we elect to deliver solely shares of our common stock to settle such conversion (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we will be required to make cash payments in respect of the 2026 Notes being converted as provided in the 2026 Notes Indenture. However, we may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing at the time we are required to make repurchases of 2026 Notes surrendered therefor or pay cash with respect to 2026 Notes being converted. In addition, our ability to repurchase the 2026 Notes or to pay cash upon conversions of the 2026 Notes may be limited by law, by regulatory authority or by agreements governing our future indebtedness. Our failure to repurchase 2026 Notes at a time when the repurchase is required by the 2026 Notes Indenture or to pay any cash payable on future conversions of the 2026 Notes as required by the 2026 Notes Indenture would constitute a default under the 2026 Notes Indenture. A default under the 2026 Notes Indenture or the fundamental change itself could also lead to a default under agreements governing our future indebtedness. If the repayment of the related indebtedness were to be accelerated after any applicable notice or grace periods, we may not have sufficient funds to repay the indebtedness and repurchase the 2026 Notes or make cash payments upon conversions thereof.
The conditional conversion feature of the 2026 Notes, if triggered, may adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.
In the event the conditional conversion feature of the 2026 Notes is triggered, holders of such notes will be entitled to convert their 2026 Notes at any time during specified periods at their option, described in the 2026 Notes Indenture. If one or more holders elect to convert their notes, unless we elect to satisfy our conversion obligation by delivering solely shares of our common stock (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we would be required to settle a portion or all of our conversion obligation through the payment of cash, which could adversely affect our liquidity. In addition, even if holders do not elect to convert their notes, we could be required under applicable accounting rules to reclassify all or a portion of the outstanding principal of the 2026 Notes as a current rather than long-term liability, which would result in a material reduction of our net working capital.
Conversion of the 2026 Notes may dilute the ownership interest of our shareholders or may otherwise depress the price of our common stock.
The conversion of some or all of the 2026 Notes may dilute the ownership interests of our shareholders. Upon conversion of the 2026 Notes, we have the option to pay or deliver, as the case may be, cash, shares of our common stock, or a combination of cash and shares of our common stock. If we elect to settle our conversion obligation in shares of our common stock or a combination of cash and shares of our common stock, any sales in the public market of our common stock issuable upon such conversion could adversely affect prevailing market prices of our common stock. In addition, the existence of the 2026 Notes may encourage short selling by market participants because the conversion of the 2026 Notes could be used to satisfy short positions, or anticipated conversion of the 2026 Notes into shares of our common stock could depress the price of our common stock.
Changes in the accounting treatment for convertible debt securities that may be settled in cash, such as the 2026 Notes, could have a material effect on our reported financial results.
In August 2020, the FASB issued ASU No. 2020-06, Debt — Debt with Conversion and Other Options (Subtopic 470-20) and Derivatives and Hedging — Contracts in Entity’s Own Equity (Subtopic 815-40): Accounting for Convertible Instruments and Contracts in an Entity’s Own Equity (“ASU 2020-06”), which amends the accounting standards for convertible debt instruments that may be settled entirely or partially in cash upon conversion. ASU 2020-06 eliminates requirements to separately account for liability and equity components of such convertible debt instruments and eliminates the ability to use the treasury stock method for calculating diluted earnings per share for convertible instruments whose principal amount may be settled using shares. Instead, ASU 2020-06 requires (i) the entire amount of the security to be presented as a liability on the balance sheet and (ii) application of the “if-converted” method for calculating diluted earnings per share. Under the “if-converted” method, diluted earnings per share will generally be calculated assuming that all the 2026 Notes were converted solely into shares of common stock at the beginning of the reporting period, unless the result would be anti-dilutive, which could adversely affect our diluted earnings per share. However, if the principal amount of the convertible debt security being converted is required to be paid in cash and only the excess is permitted to be settled in shares, the if-converted method will produce a similar result as the “treasury stock” method prior to the adoption of ASU 2020-06 for such convertible debt security.
We early adopted ASU 2020-06, and as such we do not expect to bifurcate the liability and equity components of the 2026 Notes on our balance sheet and we expect to use the if-converted method of calculating diluted earnings per share. In order to qualify for the alternative treatment of calculating diluted earnings per share under the if-converted method, we would have to irrevocably fix the settlement method for conversions to combination settlement with a specified dollar amount of at least $1,000 per $1,000 principal amount of the 2026 Notes, which would impair our flexibility to settle conversions of notes, require us to settle conversions in cash in an amount at least equal to the principal amount of notes converted and could adversely affect our liquidity.
We cannot be sure whether other changes may be made to the current accounting standards related to the 2026 Notes, or otherwise, that could have a material effect on our reported financial results.
Certain provisions in the 2026 Notes Indenture may delay or prevent an otherwise beneficial takeover attempt of us.
Certain provisions in the 2026 Notes Indenture may make it more difficult or expensive for a third party to acquire us. For example, the 2026 Notes Indenture will require us, except as provided in that indenture, to repurchase the 2026 Notes for cash upon the occurrence of a fundamental change and, in certain circumstances, to increase the conversion rate for a holder that converts its notes in connection with a make-whole fundamental change. A takeover of us may trigger the requirement that
we repurchase the 2026 Notes and/or increase the conversion rate, which could make it more costly for a potential acquirer to engage in such takeover. Such additional costs may have the effect of delaying or preventing a takeover of us that would otherwise be beneficial to investors.
We entered into certain hedging positions that may affect the value of the 2026 Notes and the volatility and value of our common stock.
In connection with the issuance of the 2026 Notes, we entered into certain hedging positions with certain financial institutions (the “option counterparties”). These hedging positions are expected generally to reduce potential dilution of our common stock on any conversion of the 2026 Notes or offset any cash payments we are required to make in excess of the principal amount of such converted 2026 Notes, as the case may be, with such reduction or offset subject to a cap.
The option counterparties or their respective affiliates may modify their hedge positions by entering into or unwinding various derivatives with respect to our common stock or purchasing or selling our common stock in secondary market transactions prior to the maturity of the 2026 Notes (and are likely to do so during any observation period related to a conversion of 2026 Notes or following any repurchase of 2026 Notes by us on any fundamental change repurchase event or otherwise). This activity could cause or avoid an increase or a decrease in the market price of our common stock or the 2026 Notes. In addition, if any such hedging positions fail to become effective, the operation counterparties or their respective affiliates may unwind their hedge positions, which could adversely affect the value of our common stock.
We are subject to counterparty risk with respect to the capped call transactions.
The option counterparties are financial institutions, and we will be subject to the risk that any or all of them might default under the capped call transactions. Our exposure to the credit risk of the option counterparties will not be secured by any collateral. Past global economic conditions have resulted in the actual or perceived failure or financial difficulties of many financial institutions. If an option counterparty becomes subject to insolvency proceedings, we will become an unsecured creditor in those proceedings with a claim equal to our exposure at that time under the capped call transactions with such option counterparty. Our exposure will depend on many factors but, generally, an increase in our exposure will be correlated to an increase in the market price and in the volatility of our common stock. In addition, upon a default by an option counterparty, we may suffer more dilution than we currently anticipate with respect to our common stock. We can provide no assurance as to the financial stability or viability of the option counterparties.
We may not be able to generate sufficient cash flow to service all of our indebtedness, and may be forced to take other actions to satisfy our obligations under such indebtedness, which may not be successful.
Our ability to make any future scheduled payments or to refinance any future outstanding debt obligations depends on our financial and operating performance, which will be affected by prevailing economic, industry and competitive conditions and by COVID-19 as well as financial, business and other factors beyond our control. We may not be able to maintain a sufficient level of cash flow from operating activities to permit us to pay the principal, premium, if any, and interest on our indebtedness. Any failure to make payments of interest and principal on any of our future outstanding indebtedness on a timely basis would harm our ability to incur additional indebtedness.
If our cash flows and capital resources are insufficient to fund any of our future debt service obligations, we may be forced to reduce or delay capital expenditures, sell assets, seek additional capital or seek to restructure or refinance our indebtedness. Any such refinancing could be at higher interest rates and may require us to comply with more onerous covenants. These alternative measures may not be successful and may not permit us to meet our scheduled debt service obligations. In the absence of such cash flows and resources, we could face substantial liquidity problems and might be required to sell material assets or operations to attempt to meet our debt service obligations. Our 2020 Credit Agreement includes certain restrictions on our ability to conduct asset sales and/or use the proceeds from asset sales for general corporate purposes. We may not be able to consummate these asset sales to raise capital or sell assets at prices and on terms that we believe are fair and any proceeds that we do receive may not be adequate to meet any debt service obligations then due. If we cannot meet our debt service obligations, the holders of our indebtedness may accelerate such indebtedness and, to the extent such indebtedness is secured, foreclose on our assets. In such an event, we may not have sufficient assets to repay all of our indebtedness.
The terms of the 2020 Credit Agreement restrict our current and future operations, particularly our ability to respond to changes or to take certain actions.
Our 2020 Credit Agreement contains a number of restrictive covenants that impose significant operating and financial restrictions on us and may limit our ability to engage in acts that may be in our long-term best interests, including restrictions on our ability to:
•incur certain additional indebtedness;
•pay dividends on or make distributions in respect of capital stock or repurchase or redeem capital stock;
•prepay, redeem, or repurchase certain indebtedness;
•make loans and investments;
•pay dividends on or make distributions in respect of capital stock or repurchase or redeem capital stock;
•prepay, redeem, or repurchase certain indebtedness;
•make loans and investments;
•sell or otherwise dispose of assets, including capital stock of restricted subsidiaries;
•incur liens;
•enter into transactions with affiliates;
•enter into agreements restricting the ability of our subsidiaries to pay dividends; and
•consolidate, merge or sell all or substantially all of our assets.
The restrictive covenants in the 2020 Credit Agreement require us to maintain specified financial ratios and satisfy other financial condition tests to the extent applicable. Our ability to meet those financial ratios and tests can be affected by events beyond our control.
A breach of the covenants or restrictions under the 2020 Credit Agreement could result in an event of default under such agreement. In the event the holders of our indebtedness accelerate the repayment, we may not have sufficient assets to repay that indebtedness or be able to borrow sufficient funds to refinance it. Even if we are able to obtain new financing, it may not be on commercially reasonable terms or on terms acceptable to us. As a result of these restrictions, we may be:
•limited in how we conduct our business;
•unable to raise additional debt or equity financing to operate during general economic or business downturns; or
•unable to compete effectively or to take advantage of new business opportunities.
These restrictions, along with similar restrictions that may be contained in agreements evidencing or governing other future indebtedness, may affect our ability to grow in accordance with our growth strategy.
Our failure to raise additional capital or generate cash flows necessary to expand our operations and invest in new technologies in the future could reduce our ability to compete successfully and harm our results of operations.
We may need to raise additional funds, and we may not be able to obtain additional debt or equity financing on favorable terms or at all. If we raise additional equity financing, our security holders may experience significant dilution of their ownership interests. If we engage in additional debt financing, we may be required to accept terms that restrict our ability to incur additional indebtedness, force us to maintain specified liquidity or other ratios or restrict our ability to pay dividends or make acquisitions. If we need additional capital and cannot raise it on acceptable terms, or at all, we may not be able to, among other things:
•develop and enhance our products;
•continue to expand our product development, sales and marketing organizations;
•hire, train and retain employees;
•respond to competitive pressures or unanticipated working capital requirements; or
•pursue acquisition opportunities.
In addition, our 2020 Credit Agreement also limits our ability to incur certain additional debt and therefore we may need to amend our 2020 Credit Agreement or issue additional equity to raise capital. If we issue additional equity, your interest in us will be diluted.
We may face exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations.
Today, our international contracts are denominated in U.S. dollars and local currencies, and the majority of our international costs are denominated in local currencies. Over time, it is possible that an increasing portion of our international contracts may be denominated in local currencies. Therefore, fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies may affect our results of operations when translated into U.S. dollars. We do not currently engage in currency hedging activities to limit the risk of exchange rate fluctuations. However, in the future, we may use derivative instruments, such as foreign currency forward and option contracts, to hedge certain exposures to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. The use of such hedging activities may not offset any or more than a portion of the adverse financial effects of unfavorable movements in foreign exchange rates over the limited time the hedges are in place. Moreover, the use of hedging instruments may introduce additional risks if we are unable to structure effective hedges with such instruments.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
Vista Equity Partners owns a large portion of our common stock and thus can influence certain of our corporate actions, and its interests may conflict with ours or yours in the future.
As of December 31, 2021, Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”) beneficially owned approximately 45.5% of our common stock. Our bylaws provide that Vista has the right to designate the Chairman of our board of directors (our “Board”) for so long as Vista beneficially owns at least 30% or more of the voting power of the then outstanding shares of our capital stock then entitled to vote generally in the election of directors. Even though Vista does not own shares of our stock representing a majority of the total voting power, for so long as Vista continues to own a significant percentage of our stock, Vista will still be able to significantly influence the composition of our Board, including the right to designate the Chairman of our Board, and the approval of actions requiring shareholder approval. Accordingly, for such period of time, Vista will have significant influence with respect to our management, business plans and policies, including the appointment and removal of our officers, decisions on whether to raise future capital and amending our charter and bylaws, which govern the rights attached to our common stock. In particular, for so long as Vista continues to own a significant percentage of our stock, Vista will be able to cause or prevent a change of control of us or a change in the composition of our Board, including the selection of the Chairman of our Board, and could preclude any unsolicited acquisition of us. The concentration of ownership could deprive you of an opportunity to receive a premium for your shares of common stock as part of a sale of us and ultimately might affect the market price of our common stock.
In addition, we are party to a director nomination agreement with Vista that provides Vista the right to designate: (i) all of the nominees for election to our Board for so long as Vista beneficially owns 40% or more of the total number of shares of our common stock it owned on the date of our initial public offering (“IPO”); (ii) a number of directors (rounded up to the nearest whole number) equal to 40% of the total directors for so long as Vista beneficially owns at least 30% and less than 40% of the total number of shares of our common stock it owned on the date of our IPO; (iii) a number of directors (rounded up to the nearest whole number) equal to 30% of the total directors for so long as Vista beneficially owns at least 20% and less than 30% of the total number of shares of our common stock it owned on the date of our IPO; (iv) a number of directors (rounded up to the nearest whole number) equal to 20% of the total directors for so long as Vista beneficially owns at least 10% and less than 20% of the total number of shares of our common stock it owned on the date of our IPO; and (v) one director for so long as Vista beneficially owns at least 5% and less than 10% of the total number of shares of our common stock it owned on the date of our IPO. The director nomination agreement also provides that Vista may assign such right to a Vista affiliate. The director
nomination agreement prohibits us from increasing or decreasing the size of our Board without the prior written consent of Vista.
Vista and its affiliates engage in a broad spectrum of activities, including investments in the information and business services industry generally. In the ordinary course of their business activities, Vista and its affiliates may engage in activities where their interests conflict with our interests or those of our other shareholders, such as investing in or advising businesses that directly or indirectly compete with certain portions of our business or are suppliers or customers of ours. Our certificate of incorporation provides that none of Vista, any of its affiliates or any director who is not employed by us (including any non-employee director who serves as one of our officers in both his director and officer capacities) or its affiliates has any duty to refrain from engaging, directly or indirectly, in the same business activities or similar business activities or lines of business in which we operate. Vista also may pursue acquisition opportunities that may be complementary to our business, and, as a result, those acquisition opportunities may not be available to us. In addition, Vista may have an interest in pursuing acquisitions, divestitures and other transactions that, in its judgment, could enhance its investment, even though such transactions might involve risks to you.
An active, liquid trading market for our common stock may not be sustained, which may limit your ability to sell your shares.
An active trading market for our shares may not be sustained. The failure of an active and liquid trading market to continue to develop and sustain would likely have a material adverse effect on the value of our common stock. The market price of our common stock may decline, and you may not be able to sell your shares of our common stock at or above the price you paid, or at all. An inactive market may also impair our ability to raise capital to continue to fund operations by issuing shares and may impair our ability to acquire other companies or technologies by using our shares as consideration.
Provisions of our corporate governance documents could make an acquisition of us more difficult and may prevent attempts by our shareholders to replace or remove our current management, even if beneficial to our shareholders.
In addition to Vista’s beneficial ownership of 45.5% of our common stock as of December 31, 2021, our certificate of incorporation and bylaws and the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”) contain provisions that could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us, even if doing so might be beneficial to our shareholders. Among other things:
•these provisions allow us to authorize the issuance of undesignated preferred stock, the terms of which may be established and the shares of which may be issued without shareholder approval, and which may include supermajority voting, special approval, dividend, or other rights or preferences superior to the rights of shareholders;
•these provisions provide for a classified board of directors with staggered three-year terms;
•these provisions provide that, at any time when Vista beneficially owns, in the aggregate, less than 40% in voting power of our stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors, directors may only be removed for cause, and only by the affirmative vote of holders of at least 66 2∕3% in voting power of all the then-outstanding shares of our stock entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class;
•these provisions prohibit shareholder action by written consent from and after the date on which Vista beneficially owns, in the aggregate, less than 35% in voting power of our stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors;
•these provisions provide that any amendment, alteration, rescission or repeal of our bylaws by our shareholders will require the affirmative vote of the holders of at least 66 2∕3% in voting power of all the then-outstanding shares of our stock entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class; and
•these provisions establish advance notice requirements for nominations for elections to our Board or for proposing matters that can be acted upon by shareholders at shareholder meetings; provided, however, at any time when Vista beneficially owns, in the aggregate, at least 10% in voting power of our stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors, such advance notice procedure will not apply to it.
Our certificate of incorporation contains a provision that provides us with protections similar to Section 203 of the DGCL, and prevents us from engaging in a business combination with a person (excluding Vista and any of its direct or indirect
transferees and any group as to which such persons are a party) who acquires at least 15% of our common stock for a period of three years from the date such person acquired such common stock, unless Board or shareholder approval is obtained prior to the acquisition. These provisions could discourage, delay or prevent a transaction involving a change in control of our company. These provisions could also discourage proxy contests and make it more difficult for you and other shareholders to elect directors of your choosing and cause us to take other corporate actions you desire, including actions that you may deem advantageous, or negatively affect the trading price of our common stock. In addition, because our Board is responsible for appointing the members of our management team, these provisions could in turn affect any attempt by our shareholders to replace current members of our management team.
These and other provisions in our certificate of incorporation, bylaws and Delaware law could make it more difficult for shareholders or potential acquirers to obtain control of our Board or initiate actions that are opposed by our then-current Board, including delay or impede a merger, tender offer or proxy contest involving our company. The existence of these provisions could negatively affect the price of our common stock and limit opportunities for you to realize value in a corporate transaction.
Our certificate of incorporation designates the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware as the exclusive forum for certain litigation that may be initiated by our shareholders, which could limit our shareholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us.
Pursuant to our certificate of incorporation, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the sole and exclusive forum for (1) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, (2) any action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any of our directors, officers or other employees to us or our shareholders, (3) any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to any provision of the DGCL, our certificate of incorporation or our bylaws or (4) any other action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine; provided that for the avoidance of doubt, the forum selection provision that identifies the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware as the exclusive forum for certain litigation, including any “derivative action,” will not apply to suits to enforce a duty or liability created by the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), the Exchange Act or any other claim for which the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction. Our certificate of incorporation further provides that any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in shares of our capital stock is deemed to have notice of and consented to the provisions of our certificate of incorporation described above. The forum selection clause in our certificate of incorporation may have the effect of discouraging lawsuits against us or our directors and officers and may limit our shareholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Our operating results and stock price may be volatile, and the market price of our common stock may drop below the price you pay.
Our quarterly operating results are likely to fluctuate in the future. In addition, securities markets worldwide have experienced, and are likely to continue to experience, significant price and volume fluctuations. This market volatility, as well as general economic, market, or political conditions, could subject the market price of our shares to wide price fluctuations regardless of our operating performance. Our operating results and the trading price of our shares may fluctuate in response to various factors, including:
•market conditions in our industry or the broader stock market;
•sales of Apple devices, Apple’s reputation, and enterprise adoption of Apple devices;
•actual or anticipated fluctuations in our quarterly financial and operating results;
•introduction of new products or services by us, Apple, or our competitors;
•issuance of new or changed securities analysts’ reports or recommendations;
•sales, or anticipated sales, of large blocks of our stock;
•additions or departures of key personnel;
•regulatory or political developments;
•litigation and governmental investigations;
•changing economic conditions, including impacts from COVID-19;
•investors’ perception of us;
•events beyond our control such as weather and war; and
•any default on our indebtedness.
These and other factors, many of which are beyond our control, may cause our operating results and the market price and demand for our shares to fluctuate substantially. Fluctuations in our quarterly operating results could limit or prevent investors from readily selling their shares and may otherwise negatively affect the market price and liquidity of our shares. In addition, in the past, when the market price of a stock has been volatile, holders of that stock have sometimes instituted securities class action litigation against the company that issued the stock. If any of our shareholders brought a lawsuit against us, we could incur substantial costs defending the lawsuit. Such a lawsuit could also divert the time and attention of our management from our business, which could significantly harm our profitability and reputation.
Substantial blocks of our total outstanding shares may be sold into the market. If there are substantial sales of shares of our common stock, the price of our common stock could decline.
The price of our common stock could decline if there are substantial sales of shares of our common stock particularly sales by our directors, executive officers, and significant shareholders, if there is a large number of shares of our common stock available for sale, or if there is the perception that these sales could occur. As of December 31, 2021, we had 119,426,064 shares of our common stock outstanding. All of the shares of common stock sold in our IPO and follow-on offerings are available for sale in the public market. In addition, we have registered shares of common stock that we may issue under our equity compensation plans. Such shares can be freely sold in the public market upon issuance. Shares held by directors, executive officers and other affiliates are subject to volume limitations under Rule 144 under the Securities Act and various vesting agreements. Further, the 2026 Notes may become in the future convertible at the option of their holders prior to their scheduled terms under certain circumstances. Any sales in the public market of the common stock issuable upon such conversion could adversely affect prevailing market prices of our common stock.
In connection with our IPO, we entered into a registration rights agreement with Vista. Vista is entitled to request that we register Vista’s shares in the future, subject to the terms and conditions of the registration rights agreement, and our executive officers may also elect to participate in such offerings from time to time. Vista is also entitled to participate in certain of our registered offerings, subject to the restrictions in the registration rights agreement. We will pay Vista’s expenses in connection with Vista’s exercise of these rights. These registration rights would facilitate the resale of such securities into the public market, and any such resale would increase the number of shares of our common stock available for public trading.
The market price of the shares of our common stock could decline as a result of the sale of a substantial number of our shares of common stock in the public market or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of such shares intend to sell their shares.
In the future, we may also issue our securities in connection with investments or acquisitions. The number of shares issued in connection with an investment or acquisition could constitute a material portion of our then-outstanding common stock.
Because we have no current plans to pay regular cash dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future, you may not receive any return on investment unless you sell your common stock for a price greater than that which you paid for it.
We do not anticipate paying any regular cash dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future. Any decision to declare and pay dividends in the future will be made at the discretion of our Board and will depend on, among other things, our results of operations, financial condition, cash requirements, contractual restrictions and other factors that our Board may deem relevant. In addition, our ability to pay dividends is, and may be, limited by covenants of our existing indebtedness and any future outstanding indebtedness we or our subsidiaries incur, including under our 2020 Credit Agreement. Therefore, any
return on investment in our common stock is solely dependent upon the appreciation of the price of our common stock on the open market, which may not occur.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, if they adversely change their recommendations regarding our shares or if our results of operations do not meet their expectations, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our shares is influenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts publish about us or our business. We do not have any control over these analysts. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline. Moreover, if one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our stock, or if our results of operations do not meet their expectations, our stock price could decline.
We may issue shares of preferred stock in the future, which could make it difficult for another company to acquire us or could otherwise adversely affect holders of our common stock, which could depress the price of our common stock.
Our certificate of incorporation authorizes us to issue one or more series of preferred stock. Our Board has the authority to determine the preferences, limitations, and relative rights of the shares of preferred stock and to fix the number of shares constituting any series and the designation of such series, without any further vote or action by our shareholders. Our preferred stock could be issued with voting, liquidation, dividend, and other rights superior to the rights of our common stock. The potential issuance of preferred stock may delay or prevent a change in control of us, discouraging bids for our common stock at a premium to the market price, and materially adversely affect the market price and the voting and other rights of the holders of our common stock.
General Risk Factors
The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources and distract our management, which could make it difficult to manage our business.
As a public company, we incur legal, accounting, and other expenses that we did not previously incur. We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act and SOX, the listing requirements of NASDAQ, and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Compliance with these rules and regulations continue to increase our legal and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming, or costly and increase demand on our systems and resources. The Exchange Act requires that we file annual, quarterly, and current reports with respect to our business, financial condition, and results of operations. SOX requires, among other things, that we establish and maintain effective internal controls and procedures for financial reporting. Furthermore, the need to further develop and maintain the corporate infrastructure demanded of a public company may divert our management’s attention from implementing our growth strategy, which could prevent us from improving our business, financial condition, and results of operations. We have made, and will continue to make, changes to our internal controls and procedures for financial reporting and accounting systems to meet our reporting obligations as a public company. However, the measures we take may not be sufficient to satisfy our obligations as a public company. In addition, these rules and regulations will increase our legal and financial compliance costs and will make some activities more time-consuming and costly. For example, we expect these rules and regulations to make it more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to incur substantial costs to maintain the same or similar coverage. These additional obligations could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
In addition, changing laws, regulations, and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure are creating uncertainty for public companies, increasing legal and financial compliance costs, and making some activities more time consuming. These laws, regulations, and standards are subject to varying interpretations, in many cases due to their lack of specificity, and, as a result, their application in practice may evolve over time as new guidance is provided by regulatory and governing bodies. This could result in continuing uncertainty regarding compliance matters and higher costs necessitated by ongoing revisions to disclosure and governance practices. We intend to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations, and standards, and this investment may result in increased general and administrative expenses and a diversion of our management’s time and attention from sales-generating activities to compliance activities. If our efforts to comply with new laws, regulations, and standards differ from the activities intended by regulatory or governing bodies due to ambiguities related to their application and practice, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us and could have a material adversely effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Increasing scrutiny and changing expectations from investors, lenders, customers, government regulators, and other market participants with respect to our Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”) policies and activities may impose additional costs on us or expose us to additional risks.
Companies across all industries and around the globe are facing increasing scrutiny relating to their ESG policies, initiatives, and activities by investors, lenders, customers, government regulators, and other market participants. Regulatory requirements related to ESG have been issued in the E.U., its Member States and other countries, particularly with respect to climate change, emission reduction, and environmental stewardship. In the U.S., amongst other regulatory efforts, in February 2021, the Acting Chair of the SEC issued a statement directing the Division of Corporation Finance to enhance its focus on climate-related disclosure in public company filings, and in March 2021, the SEC announced the creation of a Climate and ESG Task Force in the Division of Enforcement. We expect regulatory requirements related to ESG matters to continue to expand globally and increase our costs of compliance. We risk damage to our brand and reputation, impacts to our ability to secure government contracts, or limited access to capital markets and loans if we fail to adapt to, or comply with, investor, lender, customer, or other stakeholder expectations and standards and potential government regulation with respect to ESG matters, including in areas such as diversity and inclusion, environmental stewardship, support for local communities, and corporate governance and transparency.
Catastrophic events may disrupt our business.
Natural disasters, pandemics, or other catastrophic events may cause damage or disruption to our operations, international commerce, and the global economy, thus harming our business. In the event of a major earthquake, hurricane, or catastrophic event such as fire, power loss, pandemics, telecommunications failure, cyberattack, war, or terrorist attack, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, delays in our application development, lengthy interruptions in our products, breaches of data security, and loss of critical data, all of which could adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. In addition, the insurance and incident response capabilities we maintain may not be adequate to cover or mitigate our losses resulting from disasters or other business interruptions.
Global economic conditions may harm our industry, business, and results of operations.
We operate globally and as a result our business and revenues are impacted by global macroeconomic conditions. Global financial developments seemingly unrelated to us or the software industry may harm us. From time to time, the United States and other key international economies have been impacted by geopolitical and economic instability, high levels of credit defaults globally, inflationary cycles, international trade disputes, falling demand for a variety of goods and services, high levels of persistent unemployment and wage and income stagnation in some geographic markets, restricted credit, poor liquidity, reduced corporate profitability, volatility in credit, equity and foreign exchange markets, bankruptcies, international trade agreements, trade restrictions, COVID-19, and overall uncertainty with respect to the economy. These conditions can arise suddenly and affect the rate of information technology spending and could adversely affect our customers’ ability or willingness to purchase our services, delay prospective customers’ purchasing decisions, reduce the value or duration of their subscriptions, or affect renewal rates, all of which could harm our operating results. Geopolitical events could directly or indirectly affect our business, including, because such political uncertainty and events adversely impact our or Apple’s business.
In addition, the effects, if any, of global financial conditions on our business can be difficult to distinguish from the effects on our business from product, pricing, and other developments in the markets specific to our products and our relative competitive strength. If we make incorrect judgments about our business for this reason our business and results of operations could be adversely affected.