Company: JUNIPER NETWORKS INC
CIK: 1043604
SIC: 3576
Filing Date: 2022-02-11 00:00:00

ITEM 1 - BUSINESS
ITEM 1. Business
Overview
Juniper Networks designs, develops, and sells products and services for high-performance networks to enable customers to build scalable, reliable, secure, and cost-effective networks for their businesses, while achieving agility and improved operating efficiency through automation. Our high-performance network and service offerings include routing, switching, Wi-Fi, network security, artificial intelligence ("AI") or AI-enabled enterprise networking operations ("AIOps"), and software-defined networking ("SDN") technologies. In addition to our products, we offer our customers a variety of services, including maintenance and support, professional services, Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS"), and education and training programs. We sell our solutions in more than 150 countries in three geographic regions: Americas; Europe, Middle East, and Africa, which we refer to as EMEA; and Asia Pacific, which we refer to as APAC.
Our products and services address high-performance network requirements for our customers within our verticals: Cloud, Service Provider, and Enterprise who view the network as critical to their success. We believe our silicon, systems, and software represent innovations that transform the economics and experience of networking, helping our customers achieve superior performance, greater choice, and flexibility, while reducing overall total cost of ownership.
Further, we have been expanding our software business by introducing new software solutions to our product and service portfolios that simplify the operation of networks, and allow our customers across our key verticals flexibility in consumption and deployment. Our acquisition of Mist Systems, Inc. ("Mist") in 2019 accelerated our ability to execute this belief in cloud-managed AI or AIOps through a combination of cloud-based intelligence, enterprise-grade access points, and EX series switches. Machine learning technology simplifies wireless and wired operations and delivers a more agile cloud services platform. In 2020, we acquired 128 Technology, Inc. ("128 Technology") and Netrounds. Our Session Smart Router ("SSR") portfolio acquired from 128 Technology extended the value of Mist’s secure AI-engine and cloud management capabilities from client to cloud. Also, our acquisition of Netrounds enables service and cloud providers to rapidly deliver software-defined network services with end-to-end service quality. In 2021, we acquired Apstra, Inc. ("Apstra"), an intent-based networking solution that leverages closed-loop automation and assurance along with multivendor support to provide a complete fabric management solution. Additionally, in 2021, we announced an IP licensing arrangement with Netsia, Inc. ("Netsia"), giving us exclusive rights to their RAN Intelligent Controller ("RIC") source code and patents, and expanded our existing team of Open RAN ("O-RAN") and 5G with key subject matter experts from Netsia.
Our corporate headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California. Our website address is www.juniper.net.
Strategy
We deliver highly scalable, reliable, secure, and cost-effective networks, while transforming the network's agility, efficiency, and value through automation. Our research and development efforts are focused on the following strategic priorities:
•Seize the cloud transition to gain share across our three customer verticals: Cloud, Service Provider, and Enterprise
•Differentiate with innovation in networking, security and software orchestration
•Leverage automation and AI to deliver simplicity of operations for our customers
We believe the networking needs for our customers in our Cloud, Service Provider, and Enterprise verticals are converging as these customers recognize the need for high-performance networks and are adopting cloud architectures for their infrastructure and service delivery, such as large public and private data centers and service provider edge data centers, for improved agility and greater levels of operating efficiency. We believe this industry trend presents an opportunity for us, and we have focused our strategy on maximizing user and IT experiences with secure client-to-cloud automation, insight, and AI-driven actions that we call Experience-First Networking. We have focused our strategy on providing customer solutions for the following use cases and verticals.
Cloud-Ready Data Center
We are focused on continuing to power public and private cloud data centers with high-performance infrastructure. These data centers are the core of cloud transformation by enabling service delivery in a hybrid cloud environment, which is a combination of public cloud, private cloud, and SaaS delivery. We are a recognized leader in data center networking innovation in both software and hardware solutions. Our Junos Operating System, or Junos OS, application-specific integrated circuits, or ASIC, technology, and management and automation software investments across routing, switching, and network security technologies will continue to be key elements to maintaining our technology leadership and transforming the economics and experience of our public and private cloud customers. In 2019, we introduced our next-generation operating system, Junos Evolved, which enables higher availability, accelerated deployment, greater innovation, and improved operational efficiencies. In 2020, we accelerated our investments in operations experience focused automation, to stay ahead of an industry-wide trend to address size and complexity of data centers driven by a rapidly increasing number of cloud-ready workloads. Our Apstra intent-based networking technology enables users to minimize the time and costs associated with deploying and managing complex data center networks.
Our Service Provider customers are investing in the build-out of high-performance networks and distributed cloud environments to enable high-speed and low-latency applications. We are committed to support them to rearchitect their infrastructure to enable next-generation mobile network build-outs, or 5G, Internet of Things, or IoT, and service delivery close to their end users.
Automated Wide Area Networking Solutions
In developing our solutions, we strive to design and build best-in-class products and solutions for core, edge, and metro networking infrastructure for connecting users and devices securely to the cloud and to each other. Cloud providers, service providers and enterprises have deployed our product offerings in their wide area networks, or WAN, such as our highly efficient Internet Protocol, or IP, transport PTX product which can cost effectively manage incredible capacity from their end users to the data centers from which they deliver value to those users. We also offer a robust portfolio of SDN-enabled MX series routing platforms that provide system capacity, density, security, and performance with investment protection. MX series routers play at the heart of the digital transformation that service providers, cloud providers, and Enterprises are undergoing. Our SDN Controller for the WAN, Paragon Pathfinder (formerly NorthStar), enables granular visibility and control of IP/Multiprotocol Label Switching, or IP/MPLS, flows for large networks. Our acquisition of Netrounds enhanced our automated WAN solutions with innovative testing and service assurance capabilities for fixed and mobile networks. Netrounds’ solutions (named Paragon Active Assurance) strengthened and complemented our existing capabilities, such as Paragon Insights (formerly Healthbot), Paragon Pathfinder, Paragon Planner, and our partnership with Anuta Networks International LLC to simplify network operations. Leveraging the Netrounds acquisition, we developed the Juniper Paragon Automation, which is a modular portfolio of cloud-native software applications that deliver closed-loop automation in the most demanding 5G and multicloud environments. We are committed to continued investment in cost effective and high-performance IP transport platforms and automation software, which form the basis of these high-performance networks.
AI-Driven Enterprise
Enterprises are consuming more value-as-a-service, where value is delivered in the form of cloud-based software and services driven by AI. We have introduced cloud management and security products, which enable enterprises to consume cloud infrastructure and services securely. We believe the transition to AIOps and SaaS presents an opportunity for us to come to market with innovative network and security solutions for our Enterprise customers, which facilitate their transition to cloud architecture and operational experience. Our Mist AI uses a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science techniques to optimize user experiences and simplify operations across the wireless access, wired access, and SD-WAN domains. Machine learning technology simplifies wireless and wired operations and delivers a more agile cloud services platform. Also, our SSR portfolio acquired from 128 Technology extended the value of Mist’s secure AI-engine and cloud management capabilities from client to cloud. Session Smart is the third generation of Software Defined-Wide Area Network (“SD-WAN”), which delivers unique technology that materially reduces WAN overhead, minimizes network latency, and replaces outdated and cumbersome network policies with flexible and real-time actions that are tied to real business and user needs. In recognition of our ability to execute and the completeness of our vision, Juniper was recognized as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure in 2021, for the second year in a row.
We believe our understanding of high-performance networking technology, cloud architecture, and our strategy, positions us to capitalize on the industry transition to more automated, cost-efficient, scalable networks.
Customer Verticals
We sell our high-performance network products and service offerings through direct sales; distributors; value-added resellers, or VARs; and original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, to end-users in the following verticals: Cloud, Service Provider, and Enterprise.
Further, we believe our solutions benefit our customers by:
•Reducing capital and operational costs by running multiple services over the same network using our secure, high density, highly automated, and highly reliable platforms;
•Creating new or additional revenue opportunities by enabling new services to be offered to new market segments, which includes existing customers and new customers, based on our product capabilities;
•Increasing customer satisfaction, while lowering costs, by optimizing the experience of network operators and their users via automation, AI-enabled troubleshooting and support, and cloud-management;
•Providing increased asset longevity and higher return on investment as our customers' networks can scale to higher throughput based on the capabilities of our platforms;
•Offering network security across every environment-from the data center to campus and branch environments to assist in the protection and recovery of services and applications; and
•Offering operational improvements that enable cost reductions, including lower administrative, training, customer care, and labor costs.
The following is an overview of the trends affecting the market in which we operate by each of our customer verticals. We believe the networking needs for each of our customers will eventually result in cloud-based network architectures for improved agility and greater levels of operating efficiency.
Cloud
Our Cloud vertical includes companies that are heavily reliant on the cloud for their business model’s success. Customers in the Cloud vertical can include cloud service providers, such as the largest public cloud providers, which we refer to as hyperscalers, and Tier-2 cloud providers, as well as enterprises that provide SaaS; infrastructure-as-a-service; or platform-as-a-service.
Cloud providers continue to grow as more organizations take advantage of public infrastructure to run their business. As their businesses grow, we expect they will continue to invest in their networks, which dictates the quality and experience of the products and the services they deliver to their end-customers. Further, as cloud providers adopt new technologies, including the 400-gigabit Ethernet, or 400GbE, and in anticipation of the future adoption of 800-gigabit Ethernet, or 800GbE, and beyond, we believe this should present further opportunities for us across our portfolio as our cloud customers value high-performance, highly compact, power efficient infrastructures, which we support and continue to develop.
In addition, SaaS continues to be an important factor for cloud providers as their customers, such as enterprises, prefer to procure and consume product and service offerings via SaaS models. As a result, we believe that SaaS providers will invest in high performance infrastructure because the quality of experience has proven just as important competitively as software features and functions. Lastly, as a result of regulations and the need for lower latency and high-performance networking, cloud providers have been transitioning to regional network build-outs or distributed cloud environments to address the increasing demand for services, data privacy, data protection, and consumer rights.
As Cloud customers are pushing the envelope in networking, our focus on collaboration combined with networking innovation around automation has made us a strategic partner with these customers, helping them develop high-performance and lower total cost of ownership networking solutions to support their business.
Service Provider
Our Service Provider vertical includes wireline and wireless carriers and cable operators, and we support most of the major carrier and operator networks in the world with our high-performance network infrastructure offerings. In recent years, we have seen increased convergence of these different types of customers through acquisitions, mergers, and partnerships.
Service Provider customers recognize the need for high-performance networks and leveraging the cloud to reduce costs from their network operations. This is dictating a change in business models and their underlying infrastructure, which we believe requires investment in the build-out of high-performance networks and the transformation of existing legacy infrastructure to distributed cloud environments in order to satisfy the growth in mobile traffic and video as a result of the increase in mobile device usage including smartphones, tablets, and connected devices of various kinds.
We expect that Network Function Virtualization and SDN will be critical elements to enable our Service Provider customers the flexibility to support enhanced mobile video and dynamic new service deployments. We are engaging with these customers to transition their operations to next-generation cloud operations as the need for a highly efficient infrastructure to handle large amounts of data along with low latency, or minimal delay, plays into the need to have a high performance, scalable infrastructure in combination with the automation and flexibility required to drive down operational costs and rapid provision applications. We consistently deliver leading technologies that transform the economics and experience of networking while significantly improving customer economics by lowering the capital expenditures required to build networks and the operating expenses required to manage and maintain them.
In addition to reducing operating costs, service providers are seeking to create new or additional revenue opportunities to support their evolving business models. These customers are beginning to deploy 5G, which we expect will continue to roll out over the next few years, and IoT, which we believe will give rise to new services like connected cars, smart cities, robotic manufacturing, and agricultural transformation. 5G and IoT require a highly distributed cloud data center architecture from which services are delivered to the end users and will involve a great degree of analytics and embedded security. We expect this trend will present further opportunities for Juniper with our focus on delivering a strong portfolio of network virtualization and software-based orchestration solutions, which position us to deliver on the automation and agility requirements of service providers.
Enterprise
Our high-performance network infrastructure offerings are designed to meet the performance, reliability, and security requirements of the world's most demanding enterprises. We offer enterprise solutions and services for data centers as well as branch and campus applications. Our Enterprise vertical includes enterprises not included in the Cloud vertical. They are industries with high performance, high agility requirements, including retail companies, healthcare institutions, financial services; national, federal, state, and local governments; as well as research and educational institutions. We believe that our Enterprise customers are able to deploy our solutions as a powerful component in delivering the advanced network capabilities needed for their leading-edge applications.
We believe that as our Enterprise customers continue to transition their workloads to the cloud, they continue to seek greater flexibility in how they consume networking and security services, such as pay-per-use models. Additionally, Enterprises are deploying AI-driven architectures, which require end-to-end solutions for managing, orchestrating, and securing distributed cloud resources as a single pool of resources. Also, we are increasingly seeing a convergence of networking and security, such as Secure Access Service Edge ("SASE"), resulting in security becoming an embedded capability in every solution that we offer to our customers.
High-performance enterprises require IP networks that are global, distributed, and always available. We are innovating in key technology areas to meet the needs of our Enterprise customers whether they plan to move to a public cloud architecture or hybrid cloud architecture (which is a mix of public and private cloud, as well as a growing number of SaaS applications).
In 2021, 2020, and 2019, no single customer accounted for 10% or more of our net revenues.
Products, Services, and Technology
Early in our history, we developed, marketed, and sold the first commercially available purpose-built IP backbone router optimized for the specific high-performance requirements of telecom and cable operators. As the need for core bandwidth continued to increase, the need for service-rich platforms at the edge of the network was created.
We have expanded our portfolio to address multiple domains in the network: core; edge; access and aggregation; data centers; and campus and branch. We have systematically focused on how we innovate in silicon, systems, and software (including our Junos OS and virtual network functions, or VNF) such as firewall, network orchestration, and automation to provide a range of hardware and software solutions in high-performance, secure networking.
Further, our intent is to expand our software business by introducing new software solutions to our product and services portfolios that simplify the operation of networks, and provide flexibility in consumption and deployment to our customers across our key verticals. Our software offerings include subscriptions, SaaS, and term or time-based perpetual licenses. We believe our software and related services revenues as a percentage of total revenues will increase over time as we introduce new software solutions designed to better monetize the value of software functionality in our offerings.
Significant Product Development Projects and Solutions
In 2021, we continued to execute on our product and service solution strategy and announced several new innovations.
We announced our continuing investment in the SASE market with the introduction of Juniper Security Director Cloud, a cloud-based portal that distributes connectivity and security services to sites, users, and applications, as well as manages customers’ SASE transformations. We also announced version 4.0 of Apstra software, Apstra 4.0, which builds on the unique multivendor capabilities of the Apstra solution to support VMware NSXC-T 3.0 and Enterprise SONiC, in addition to continuing to support data center switching from Juniper, Nvidia (Nvidia Cumulus), Arista Networks, and Cisco Systems. Further, we announced new features within the AI-driven enterprise portfolio that enable customers to scale and simplify the rollout of their campus wired and wireless networks while bringing greater insight and automation to network operators. The enhancements to the Juniper Mist cloud and AI engine, which include EVPN-VXLAN campus fabric management and Marvis Actions for proactive problem remediation, expand on Juniper’s unique automation, AIOps, and cloud capabilities to streamline IT operations, lower costs and deliver agility and scale.
Moreover, we announced our collaboration with Intel to accelerate advancement in the O-RAN ecosystem. This joint initiative represents another milestone for us in our continuing efforts to bring openness and innovation to a traditionally closed-off part of the network, providing a faster route-to-market for service providers and enterprises to deliver 5G, edge computing and AI.
The following is an overview of our principal product families and service offerings in 2021:
Routing Products
•ACX Series: Our ACX Series Universal Access Routers cost-effectively address current operator challenges to rapidly deploy new high-bandwidth services. We believe that the ACX Series is well positioned to address the growing metro Ethernet and mobile backhaul needs of our customers, as we expect 5G mobile network build-outs to roll out over the next few years. The platforms deliver the necessary scale and performance needed to support multi-generation wireless technologies.
•MX Series: Our MX Series is a family of high-performance, SDN-ready, Ethernet routers that function as a Universal Edge platform with high system capacity, density, and performance. The MX Series platforms utilize our custom silicon and provide carrier-class performance, scale, and reliability to support large-scale Ethernet deployments. We also offer the vMX, a virtual version of the MX router, which is a fully featured MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router optimized to run as software on x86 servers.
•PTX Series: Our PTX Series Packet Transport Routers deliver high throughput at a low cost per bit, optimized for the service provider core as well as the scale-out architectures of cloud providers. The PTX Series is built on our custom silicon and utilizes a forwarding architecture that is focused on optimizing IP/MPLS, and Ethernet. This ensures high density and scalability, high availability, and network simplification.
•Paragon Pathfinder: Our wide-area network SDN controller automates the creation of traffic-engineering paths across the network, increasing network utilization and enabling a customized programmable networking experience.
•Session Smart Routers: Our SSR enables agile, secure, and resilient WAN connectivity with breakthrough economics and simplicity. SSR routers transcend inherent inefficiencies and cost constraints of conventional networking products and legacy SD-WAN solutions, delivering a flexible, application-aware network fabric that meets stringent enterprise performance, security, and availability requirements.
Switching Products
•EX Series: Our EX Series Ethernet switches address the access, aggregation, and core layer switching requirements of micro branch, branch office, and campus environments, providing a foundation for the fast, secure, and reliable delivery of applications able to support strategic business processes.
•QFX Series: Our QFX Series of core, spine, and top-of-rack data center switches offer a revolutionary approach to switching that are designed to deliver dramatic improvements in data center performance, operating costs, and business agility for enterprises, high-performance computing networks, and cloud providers.
•Juniper Access Points: Our access points provide Wi-Fi access and performance, which is automatically optimized through reinforcement learning algorithms. Our access points also have a dynamic virtual Bluetooth low energy element antenna array for accurate and scalable location services.
Security Products
•SRX Series Services Gateways for the Data Center and Network Backbone: Our mid-range, high-end and virtual SRX Series platforms provide high-performance, scalability, and service integration, which are ideally suited for medium to large enterprise, data centers and large campus environments, where scalability, high performance, and concurrent services, are essential. Our high-end SRX5800 platform is suited for service provider, large enterprise, and public sector networks. The upgrade to our high-end SRX firewall offering with our Services Process Card 3, or SPC3, with our Advanced Security Acceleration line card enhances the SRX5800 to deliver power for demanding use cases, including high-end data centers, IoT, and 5G.
•Branch SRX, Security Policy and Management: The Branch SRX family provides an integrated firewall and next-generation firewall, or NGFW, capabilities. Security Director is a network security management product that offers efficient, highly scalable, and comprehensive network security policy management. These solutions are designed to enable organizations to securely, reliably, and economically deliver powerful new services and applications to all locations and users with superior service quality.
•Virtual Firewall: Our vSRX Firewall delivers all of the features of our physical firewalls, including NGFW functionality, advanced security, and automated lifecycle management capabilities. The vSRX provides scalable, secure protection across private, public, and hybrid clouds. We also offer the cSRX, which has been designed and optimized for container and cloud environments.
•Advanced Malware Protection: Our Advanced Threat Prevention portfolio consists of Sky ATP, a cloud-based service and Juniper ATP, or JATP, a premises-based solution. These products are designed to use both static and dynamic analysis with machine learning to find unknown threat signatures (zero-day attacks).
Services
In addition to our products, we offer maintenance and support, professional, SaaS, and educational services, making it easier for service providers, enterprises, cloud providers, and partners to optimize the operation of their networks. We utilize a multi-tiered support model to deliver services that leverage the capabilities of our own direct resources, channel partners, and other third-party organizations with a focus on personalized, proactive, and predictive experience.
In 2021, we introduced the next phase of our service offerings called Juniper Support Insights. It is a new AI-Driven support offering that transforms the customer experience from reactive to proactive support.
We also train our channel partners in the delivery of support, professional, and educational services to ensure these services can be locally delivered.
As of December 31, 2021, we employed 2,004 people in our worldwide customer service and support organization. We believe that a broad range of services is essential to the successful customer deployment and ongoing support of our products, and we employ remote technical support engineers, on-site resident engineers, spare parts planning and logistics staff, professional services consultants, and educators with proven network experience to provide those services.
Platform Software
In addition to our major product families and services, our software portfolio has been a key technology element in our goal to be a leader in high-performance networking.
Our Junos Platform enables our customers to expand network software into the application space, deploy software clients to control delivery, and accelerate the pace of innovation with an ecosystem of developers. At the heart of the Junos Platform is Junos Evolved. We believe Junos Evolved is fundamentally differentiated from other network operating systems not only in its design, but also in its development capabilities. The advantages of Junos Evolved include:
•A modular operating system with common base of code and a single, consistent implementation for each control plane feature;
•A highly disciplined and firmly scheduled development process;
•A common modular software architecture that scales across all Junos-based platforms;
•A central database, which is used by not only Junos native applications but also external applications using application programming interfaces, or API's; and
•A fully distributed general-purpose software infrastructure that leverages all the compute resources on the network element.
Junos Evolved is designed to improve the availability, performance, and security of business applications running across the network. Junos Evolved helps to automate network operations by providing a single consistent implementation of features across the network in a single release train that seeks to minimize the complexity, cost, and risk associated with implementing network features and upgrades.
Orchestration and Monitoring Software
As many of our customers continue moving to programmable and automated network operations, managing, orchestrating, and securing that complex journey can be a challenge. Network automation is the process of automating the configuration, management, testing, deployment, and operations of physical and virtual devices within a network. We believe the keys to achieving success with network and security automation include:
•Architecting networking systems with strong APIs, analytics, and autonomous control; and
•Automating operations to become more reliable in the context of IT systems, teams, processes, and network operation and security operation workflows.
We are committed to providing solutions to help our customers to optimize their programmable and automated networking operations with the following offerings:
•Contrail Networking: Our Contrail Networking offers an open-source, standards-based platform for SDN. This platform enables our customers to securely deploy workloads in any environment. It offers continuous overlay connectivity to any workload, and can run on any compute technologies from traditional bare-metal servers, virtual machines, to containers.
•Wired, Wireless, and WAN Assurance driven by Mist AI: We provide visibility all the way down to the individual client, application and session to optimize individual user experiences from client-to-cloud. With customizable service levels that span the LAN, WLAN, and WAN, our solutions enable our customers to set and measure key metrics and proactively assure optimal user experiences on an ongoing basis. In addition, automated workflows are combined with event correlation, predictive analytics, and proactive self-driving operations to simplify IT operations and minimize end-to-end network troubleshooting costs.
•Marvis Virtual Network Assistant driven by Mist AI: Our Marvis Virtual Network Assistant identifies the root cause of issues across the information technology, or IT, domains and automatically resolves many issues proactively. It recommends actions for those connected systems outside of the Mist domain, while offering a real-time network health dashboard that reports issues from configuration to troubleshooting. Marvis has unique Natural Language Processing ("NLP") capabilities with a conversational interface so that IT staff can get accurate answers to normal English language queries.
•Juniper Paragon Automation: Juniper Paragon Automation is a modular portfolio of cloud-native software applications that deliver closed-loop automation in the most demanding 5G and multicloud environments. These solutions translate business intent into real-world performance across the lifecycle of a network and services. They eliminate manual tasks and processes, empowering operations teams to work more quickly, efficiently, and accurately. Also, they protect customers and business by measuring real service quality on the data plane, assuring that users have a consistent, high-quality experience throughout the life of their service.
•Juniper Apstra: Juniper Apstra enables our customers to automate the entire network lifecycle in a single system, easing the adoption of network automation. Juniper Apstra ties the architect’s design to everyday operations with a single source of truth, continuous validation, and powerful analytics and root cause identification. It raises efficiency and results by providing visibility and insights, incident management, change management, compliance and audit, and maintenance and updates.
Research and Development
We have assembled a team of skilled engineers with extensive experience in the fields of high-end computing, network system design, ASIC design, security, routing protocols, software applications and platforms, and embedded operating systems. As of December 31, 2021, we employed 4,019 people in our worldwide research and development, or R&D, organization.
We believe that strong product development capabilities are essential to our strategy of enhancing our core technology, developing additional applications, integrating that technology, and maintaining the competitiveness and innovation of our product and service offerings. In our products, we are leveraging our software, ASIC and systems technology, developing additional network interfaces targeted to our customers' applications, and continuing to develop technology to support the build-out of secure high-performance networks and cloud environments. We continue to expand the functionality of our products to improve performance, reliability and scalability, and provide an enhanced user interface.
Our R&D process is driven by our corporate strategy and the availability of new technology, market demand, and customer feedback. We have invested significant time and resources in creating a structured process for all product development projects. Following an assessment of market demand, our R&D team develops a full set of comprehensive functional product specifications based on inputs from the product management and sales organizations. This process is designed to provide a framework for defining and addressing the steps, tasks, and activities required to bring product concepts and development projects to market.
Sales and Marketing
As of December 31, 2021, we employed 3,025 people in our worldwide sales and marketing organization. These sales and marketing employees operate in different locations around the world in support of our customers.
Our sales organization, with its structure of sales professionals, business development teams, systems engineers, marketing teams, channel teams, and an operational infrastructure team, is based on both vertical markets and geographic regions.
Our sales teams operate in their respective regions and generally either engage customers directly or manage customer opportunities through our distribution and reseller relationships as described below.
We sell to a number of cloud and service provider customers directly. Otherwise, we sell to all of our key customer verticals primarily through distributors and resellers.
Direct Sales Structure
The terms and conditions of direct sales arrangements are governed either by customer purchase orders along with acknowledgment of our standard order terms, or by direct master purchase agreements. The direct master purchase agreements
with these customers set forth only general terms of sale and generally do not require customers to purchase specified quantities of our products. We directly receive and process customer purchase orders.
Channel Sales Structure
A critical part of our sales and marketing efforts are our channel partners through which we conduct the majority of our sales. We utilize various channel partners, including, but not limited to the following:
•A global network of strategic distributor relationships, as well as region-specific or country-specific distributors who in turn sell to local VARs who sell to end-user customers. Our distribution channel partners resell routing, switching, and security products, software and services, which are purchased by all of our key customer verticals. These distributors tend to focus on particular regions or countries. For example, we have substantial distribution relationships with Ingram Micro in the Americas and Hitachi in Japan. Our agreements with these distributors are generally non-exclusive, limited by region, and provide product and service discounts and other ordinary terms of sale. These agreements do not require our distributors to purchase specified quantities of our products or services. Further, most of our distributors sell our competitors' products and services, and some sell their own competing products and services.
•VARs and direct value-added resellers, including our strategic worldwide alliance partners referenced below, resell our products to end-users around the world. These channel partners either buy our products and services through distributors, or directly from us, and have expertise in designing, selling, implementing, and supporting complex networking solutions in their respective markets. Our agreements with these channel partners are generally non-exclusive, limited by region, and provide product and service discounts and other ordinary terms of sale. These agreements do not require these channel partners to purchase specified quantities of our products or services. Increasingly, our cloud and service provider customers also resell our products or services to their customers or purchase our products or services for the purpose of providing managed or cloud-based services to their customers.
•Strategic worldwide reseller relationships with established Juniper alliances, comprised of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation; Ericsson Telecom A.B.; International Business Machines, or IBM; NEC Corporation; Fujitsu Limited; and Atos SE. These companies each offer services and products that complement our own product and service offerings and act as a reseller, and in some instances as an integration partner for our products. Our arrangements with these partners allow them to resell our products and services on a non-exclusive and generally global basis, provide for product and service discounts, and specify other general terms of sale. These agreements do not require these partners to purchase specified quantities of our products or services.
Manufacturing and Operations
As of December 31, 2021, we employed 343 people in worldwide manufacturing and operations who manage our supply chain including relationships with our contract manufacturers, original design manufacturers, component suppliers, warehousing and logistics service providers.
Our manufacturing is primarily conducted through contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers in China, Malaysia, Mexico, and Taiwan. As of December 31, 2021, we utilized Celestica Incorporated, Flextronics International Ltd., Accton Technology Corporation, Foxconn Technology Group and Alpha Networks Inc. for the majority of our manufacturing activity. Our contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers are responsible for all phases of manufacturing from prototypes to full production including activities such as material procurement, surface mount assembly, final assembly, test, control, shipment to our customers, and repairs. Together with our contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers, we design, specify, and monitor the tests that are required to ensure that our products meet internal and external quality standards. We believe that these arrangements provide us with the following benefits:
•We can quickly ramp up and deliver products to customers with turnkey manufacturing;
•We operate with a minimum amount of dedicated space and employees for manufacturing operations; and
•We can reduce our costs by reducing what would normally be fixed overhead expenses.
Our contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers build our products based on our rolling product demand forecasts. Our contract manufacturing partners procure the majority of the components used in our products. To address supply-chain challenges, including increases in component and logistics costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic and global
component shortages, we take specific procurement action, including the exercise of strategic purchases of raw material in addition to our partners' normal procurement. Once the components necessary to assemble the products in our forecast are procured, our manufacturing partners assemble and test the products according to agreed-upon specifications. Products are then shipped to our distributors, resellers, or end-customers. However, we also purchase and hold inventory, consisting primarily of components for the production of finished goods, for strategic reasons and to mitigate the risk of shortages of certain critical components. As a result, we may incur additional holding costs and obsolescence charges, particularly resulting from uncertainties in future product demand. Title to the finished goods is generally transferred from the contract manufacturers to us when the products leave the contract manufacturer's or original design manufacturer's location. Customers take title to the products upon delivery at a specified destination. If the product or components remain unused or the products remain unsold for a specified period, we may incur carrying charges or charges for excess or obsolete materials.
Our contracts with our contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers set forth a framework within which the contract manufacturer and original design manufacturer, as applicable, may accept purchase orders from us. These contracts do not represent long-term commitments.
Some of our custom components, such as ASICs and communication integrated circuits, are manufactured primarily by sole or limited sources, each of which is responsible for all aspects of production using our proprietary designs. To ensure the security and integrity of Juniper products during manufacture, assembly and distribution, we have implemented a supply chain risk management framework as part of our overall Brand Integrity Management System. This framework encompasses all aspects of the supply chain as well as enhanced elements specific to security issues applicable to Juniper products and our customers.
By working collaboratively with our suppliers and as members of coalitions such as the Responsible Business Alliance, Responsible Minerals Initiative, and the CDP Supply Chain program, we endeavor to promote socially and environmentally responsible business practices beyond our company and throughout our worldwide supply chain. To this end, we have adopted a business partner code of conduct and promote compliance with such code of conduct to our suppliers. Our business partner code of conduct expresses support for and is aligned with the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact and the Responsible Business Alliance Code of Conduct. The Responsible Business Alliance, a coalition of electronics, retail, auto and toy companies, provides guidelines and resources to drive performance and compliance with critical corporate social responsibility policies. Its goals are to promote ethical business practices, to ensure that working conditions in the electronic industry supply chain are safe, that workers are treated with respect and dignity, and that manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible. By using standard audit and assessment protocols and tools, we measure and monitor manufacturing partners’ and select direct material suppliers’ compliance to the codes of conduct and applicable environmental, health and safety, labor and ethics legal requirements, including but not limited to: onsite audits; risk assessments; CDP climate change and water requests; and conflict minerals surveys. Our Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which details our supply chain efforts, and Business Partner Code of Conduct are available on our website.
Backlog
Our sales are made primarily pursuant to purchase orders under master sales agreements either with our distributors, resellers, or end-customers. At any given time, we have a backlog of orders for products that have not shipped. Because certain orders are cancellable or delivery schedules may be changed, we believe that our backlog at any given date may not be a reliable indicator of future operating results. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in unprecedented industry-wide supply constraints, and the pandemic continues to play a role with ongoing delays to the global logistics environment. As a result, we experienced a shortage of component parts and logistics timing issues in 2021, which resulted in significantly higher levels of our product backlog. We expect these challenging supply chain conditions to persist in the near term.
As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, our total product backlog was approximately $1,833.0 million and $419.6 million, respectively. Our product backlog consists of confirmed orders for products scheduled to be shipped to our distributors, resellers, or end-customers, generally within six months for 2020 and within twelve months for 2021, extended primarily for the ongoing impact of supply chain constraints. Backlog excludes certain future revenue adjustments for items such as product revenue deferrals, sales return reserves, service revenue allocations, and early payment discounts.
For further discussion on the risks, uncertainties and actions taken in response to the pandemic, see the section entitled “Risk Factors” in

ITEM 1A - RISK FACTORS
ITEM 1A. Risk Factors
Factors That May Affect Future Results
We operate in rapidly changing economic and technological environments that present numerous risks, many of which are driven by factors that we cannot control or predict. Some of these risks are highlighted in the following discussion, and in Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk. Investors should carefully consider all relevant risks before investing in our securities. The occurrence of any of these risks or additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, operating results, and stock price.
RISKS RELATED TO OUR BUSINESS STRATEGY AND INDUSTRY
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected how we and our customers are operating our businesses, and the duration and extent to which this will impact our future results of operations and financial performance remains uncertain. The COVID-19 pandemic has, and may continue to, negatively affect our operations, including as a result of external factors beyond our control such as restrictions on the physical movement of our employees, contract manufacturers, component suppliers, partners, and customers. The majority of our global workforce has been working remotely since March 2020, and we continue to follow the guidance of local and national governments for employees who have returned or will be returning to our offices. If the COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding governmental regulations and reopening process have a substantial impact on the health, attendance or productivity of our employees, partners, or customers, our results of operations and overall financial performance may be adversely impacted. Numerous ongoing and emerging regulations in the U.S. and other countries, including those regarding COVID-19 vaccination mandates and ongoing testing requirements, may also negatively impact our operations and increase the complexity of managing the pandemic.
Moreover, the conditions caused by the pandemic may affect the overall demand environment for our products and services and could adversely affect our customers’ ability or willingness to purchase our products or services or to make payments on existing contracts with us, either delay or accelerate customers’ purchasing decisions, delay the provisioning of our offerings, lengthen payment terms, lengthen delivery times, or affect attrition rates, all of which could adversely affect our future sales, operating results and overall financial performance. Further, the pandemic has and could continue to adversely affect our ability to provide or deliver products and on-site services to our customers. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to experience supply constraints due to both constrained manufacturing capacity as well as shortages of component parts as our component vendors also faced manufacturing challenges. This has resulted in extended lead-times to our customers and increased logistics costs, which has negatively impacted our ability to recognize revenue and decreased our gross margins for these periods, and may impact our ability to convert backlog into revenue. Our backlog may not be a reliable indicator of future operating results because a customer may place orders early in an effort to secure supply when needed and then cancel an order without significant penalty. Challenges to our supply chain due to the impact of the pandemic remain dynamic, including ongoing shortages of component parts, and we continue to experience increased logistics costs due to air travel and transport restrictions that limit the availability of flights on which we are able to ship products. Additionally, cost increases and extended shipping times for ocean transit have increased our dependence on higher-cost air freight.
The impact from the COVID-19 pandemic on our business depends on future developments that cannot be accurately forecasted at this time, such as the transmission rate and geographic spread of the disease and its variants, the worldwide distribution and acceptance of vaccines, and the impact of these and other factors on our employees, customers, partners, and vendors. If we are not able to respond to and manage the impact of such events effectively and if the macroeconomic conditions of the general economy or the industries in which we operate do not improve, or worsen from present levels, our business, operating results, financial condition and cash flows could continue to be adversely affected.
Our quarterly results are unpredictable and subject to substantial fluctuations; as a result, we may fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts and investors. Our revenues and operating results may vary significantly from quarter-to-quarter due to a number of factors, many of which are outside of our control. If our quarterly financial results or our predictions of future financial results fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts and investors, the trading price of our securities could be negatively affected. Our operating results for prior periods may not be effective predictors of our future performance.
Factors associated with our industry, the operation of our business, and the markets for our products and services that may cause our quarterly results to fluctuate, include but are not limited to:
•unpredictable ordering patterns and limited visibility into our customers’ spending plans and associated revenue;
•changes in our customer mix, the mix of products and services sold, and the geographies in which our products and services are sold;
•changes in the demand for our products and services, including seasonal fluctuations in customer spending;
•changing market and economic conditions, including rising interest rates and inflationary pressures, such as those pressures the market is currently experiencing, that could make our solutions more expensive or could increase our costs for materials, supplies, and services;
•ability to fulfill orders received in a timely manner due to disruptions and shortages in our global supply chain;
•increased advance ordering by customers of our products due to industry-wide supply chain concerns and our increased lead times;
•price and product competition;
•ineffective legal protection of our intellectual property rights in certain countries;
•how well we execute on our strategy and business model;
•financial stability of our customers, including the solvency of private sector customers, which may be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic;
•statutory authority for government customers to purchase goods and services;
•executive orders, tariffs, changes in laws or regulations and accounting rules, or interpretations thereof;
•regional economic and political conditions which may be aggravated by unanticipated global events; and
•disruptions in our business operations or target markets caused by, among other things, terrorism or other intentional acts, outbreaks of disease, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or earthquakes, floods, fires, or other natural disasters and other unanticipated extraordinary externalities, including extreme weather conditions due to climate change that increase both the frequency and severity of natural disasters.
We believe that quarter-to-quarter comparisons of operating results are not necessarily a good indication of what our future performance will be. In some prior periods, our operating results have been below our guidance, our long-term financial model or the expectations of securities analysts or investors. This may happen again, and the price of our common stock may decline. In addition, our failure to pay quarterly dividends to our stockholders or the failure to meet our commitments to return capital to our stockholders could have a material adverse effect on our stock price.
We expect our gross margins and operating margins to vary over time. Our product and service gross margins are expected to vary, and may be adversely affected in the future by numerous factors, including, but not limited to, customer, vertical, product and geographic mix shifts, an increase or decrease in our software sales or services we provide, increased price competition in one or more of the markets in which we compete, modifications to our pricing strategy to gain footprint in markets or with customers, currency fluctuations that impact our costs or the cost of our products and services to our customers, inflation, increases in material, labor, logistics, warranty costs, or inventory carrying costs, excess product component or obsolescence charges from our contract manufacturers, issues with manufacturing or component availability, issues relating to the distribution of our products and provision of our services, quality or efficiencies, increased costs due to changes in component pricing or charges incurred due to inaccurately forecasting product demand, warranty related issues, the impact of tariffs, or our introduction of new products and enhancements, or entry into new markets with different pricing and cost structures. Failure to sustain or improve our gross margins reduces our profitability and may have a material adverse effect on our business and stock price.
We derive a material portion of our revenues from a limited number of our customers, and our customers compete in industries that continue to experience consolidation. A material portion of our net revenues, across each customer vertical, depends on sales to a limited number of customers. If such customers change their business requirements or focus, vendor selection, project prioritization, or purchasing behavior, or are parties to consolidation transactions, they may delay, suspend, reduce or cancel their purchases of our products or services and our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be adversely affected.
If we are unable to compete effectively, our business and financial results could be harmed. The markets that we serve are rapidly evolving and highly competitive and include a number of well-established companies. We also compete with other public and private companies that are developing competing technologies to our products. In addition, actual or speculated consolidation among competitors, or the acquisition by, or of, our partners and/or resellers by competitors can increase the competitive pressures faced by us as customers may delay spending decisions or not purchase our products at all. Our partners and resellers generally sell or resell competing products on a non-exclusive basis and consolidation could delay spending or require us to increase discounts to compete, which could also adversely affect our business. Several of our competitors have substantially greater resources and can offer a wider range of products and services for the overall network equipment market than we do. Other competitors have become more integrated, including through consolidation and vertical integration, and offer a broader range of products and services, which could make their solutions more attractive to our customers. Many of our competitors also sell networking products as bundled solutions with other IT products. If we are unable to compete effectively against existing or future competitors, we could experience a loss in market share and a reduction in revenues and/or be required to reduce prices, which could reduce our gross margins and materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Fluctuating economic conditions make it difficult to predict revenues and gross margin for a particular period and a shortfall in revenues or increase in costs of production may harm our operating results. Our revenues and gross margin depend significantly on general economic conditions and the demand for products in the markets in which we compete. Economic weakness or uncertainty, customer financial difficulties, and constrained spending on network expansion and enterprise infrastructure have in the past resulted in, and may in the future result in, decreased revenues and earnings. Such factors could make it difficult to accurately forecast revenues and operating results and could negatively affect our ability to provide accurate forecasts to our contract manufacturers, manage our contract manufacturer relationships and other expenses and to make decisions about future investments. In addition, economic instability or uncertainty, continued turmoil in the geopolitical environment in many parts of the world and other events beyond our control, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have, and may continue to, put pressure on economic conditions, which has led and could lead, to reduced demand for our products, delays or reductions in network expansions or infrastructure projects, and/or higher costs of production. Future or continued economic weakness, failure of our customers and markets to recover from such weakness, customer financial difficulties, increases in costs of production, and reductions in spending on network maintenance and expansion could result in price concessions in certain markets or have a material adverse effect on demand for our products and consequently on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our success depends upon our ability to effectively plan and manage our resources and restructure our business. Our ability to successfully offer our products and services in a rapidly evolving market requires an effective planning, forecasting, and management process to enable us to effectively scale and adjust our business and business models in response to fluctuating market opportunities and conditions. From time to time, we have increased investment in our business by increasing headcount, acquiring companies, and increasing our investment in research and development, sales and marketing, and other parts of our business. Conversely, in the last few years and in 2021, we have initiated restructuring plans to realign our workforce as a result of organizational and leadership changes, which resulted in restructuring charges. Our ability to achieve the anticipated cost savings and other benefits from these initiatives is subject to many estimates and assumptions, which are subject to uncertainties. If our estimates and assumptions are incorrect, if we are unsuccessful at implementing changes, or if other unforeseen events occur, our business and results of operations could be adversely affected.
Our acquisitions or divestitures of businesses could disrupt our business and harm our financial condition and stock price, and equity issued as consideration for acquisitions may dilute the ownership of our stockholders. We have made, and may continue to make, acquisitions in order to enhance our business and invest significant resources to integrate the businesses we acquire. The success of each acquisition depends in part on our ability to realize the business opportunities and manage numerous risks, including, but not limited to: problems combining the purchased operations, technologies or products, unanticipated costs, higher operating expenses, liabilities, litigation, diversion of management's time and attention, adverse effects on existing business relationships with suppliers and customers, risks associated with entering markets in which we have no or limited prior experience, and where competitors in such markets have stronger market positions, initial dependence on unfamiliar supply chains, failure of our due diligence processes to identify significant problems, liabilities or other challenges of an acquired company or technology, and the potential loss of key employees, customers, distributors, vendors, and other business partners of the companies we acquire.
Acquisitions of high-technology companies are inherently risky and subject to many factors outside of our control. There can be no assurance that our previous or future acquisitions will be successful or that we will be able to successfully integrate any businesses, products, technologies, or personnel that we might acquire or that the transaction will advance our business strategy. Further, we may not realize anticipated revenues or other benefits associated with our acquisitions. In addition, we have divested, and may in the future divest, businesses, product lines, or assets. These initiatives may also require significant separation activities that could result in the diversion of management’s time and attention, loss of employees, substantial separation costs, and accounting charges for asset impairments. No assurance can be given that any acquisitions or divestitures will not materially adversely affect our business, operating results or financial condition.
In connection with certain acquisitions, we may agree to issue common stock, or assume equity awards, that dilute the ownership of our current stockholders, use a substantial portion of our cash resources, assume liabilities (both known and unknown), incur tax expenses, record goodwill and amortizable intangible assets as well as restructuring and other related expenses. We may incur additional acquisition-related debt, which could increase our leverage and potentially negatively affect our credit ratings resulting in more restrictive borrowing terms or increased borrowing costs, thereby limiting our ability to borrow. Any of the foregoing, and other factors, could harm our ability to achieve anticipated levels of profitability or other financial benefits from our acquired or divested businesses, product lines or assets or to realize other anticipated benefits of divestitures or acquisitions.
Long sales and implementation cycles for our products and customer urgency related to ship dates to fill large orders may cause our revenues and operating results to vary significantly from quarter-to-quarter. We experience lengthy sales cycles because our customers' decisions to purchase certain of our products, particularly new products, involve a significant commitment of their resources and a lengthy evaluation and product qualification process. Customers design and implement
large network deployments following lengthy procurement processes, which may impact expected future orders. Following a purchase, customers may also deploy our products slowly and deliberately. Customers with large networks often expand their networks in large increments on a periodic basis and place large orders on an irregular basis. These sales and implementation cycles, as well as our expectation that customers will place large orders with urgent ship dates, may cause our revenues and operating results to vary significantly from quarter-to-quarter.
Our ability to recognize revenue in a particular period is contingent on the timing of product orders and deliveries and/or our sales of certain software, subscriptions, and professional support and maintenance services. In some of our businesses, our quarterly sales have periodically reflected a pattern in which a disproportionate percentage of each quarter's total sales occurs towards the end of the quarter. Further, we build certain products only when orders are received. Since the volume of orders received late in any given fiscal quarter remains unpredictable, if orders for custom products are received late in any quarter, we may not be able to recognize revenue for these orders in the same period or meet our expected quarterly revenues. Similarly, if we were to take actions or events occur, which encourage customers to place orders or accept deliveries earlier than anticipated or our customers were to continue to accelerate ordering of our products in response to global supply constraints, extended lead times or other market pressures, our ability to meet our expected revenues in future quarters could be adversely affected. We also determine our operating expenses based on our anticipated revenues and technology roadmap and a high percentage of our expenses are fixed in the short and medium term. Any failure or delay in generating or recognizing revenue could cause significant variations in our operating results and operating margin from quarter-to-quarter.
In addition, services revenue accounts for a significant portion of our revenue, comprising 35%, 36%, and 35% of total revenue in 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. We expect our sales of new or renewal professional services, support, and maintenance contracts to fluctuate due to end-customers’ level of satisfaction with our products and services, the prices of our products and services or those offered by our competitors, and reductions in our end-customers’ spending levels. We recognize professional services when delivered, and we recognize support and maintenance and SaaS revenue periodically over the term of the relevant service period.
Further, we recognize certain software revenues periodically over the term of the relevant use or subscription periods and as a result, the related software and support and maintenance revenue we report each fiscal quarter is derived from the recognition of deferred revenue from contracts entered into during previous fiscal quarters. Any fluctuation in such new or renewed contracts in any one fiscal quarter may not be fully or immediately reflected in revenue and could negatively affect our revenue in future fiscal quarters.
RISKS RELATED TO OUR TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS OPERATIONS
If the demand for network and IP systems does not continue to grow, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected. A substantial portion of our business and revenues depends on the growth of secure IP infrastructure as well as customers that depend on the continued growth of IP services to deploy our products in their networks and IP infrastructures. As a result of changes in the economy, capital spending, or the building of network capacity in excess of demand (all of which have, in the past, particularly affected telecommunications service providers), spending on IP infrastructure can vary, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, a number of our existing customers are evaluating the build-out of their next generation networks. During the decision-making period when our customers are determining the design of those networks and the selection of the software and equipment they will use in those networks, such customers may greatly reduce or suspend their spending on secure IP infrastructure. Any reduction or suspension of spending on IP infrastructure is difficult to predict, and may be due to events beyond our control, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This, in turn, can make it more difficult to accurately predict revenues from customers, can cause fluctuations in the level of spending by customers and, even where our products are ultimately selected, can have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
If we do not successfully anticipate technological shifts, market needs and opportunities, we may not be able to compete effectively and our ability to generate revenues will suffer. If we are unable to anticipate future technological shifts, market needs, requirements or opportunities, or fail to develop and introduce new products, product enhancements or business strategies to meet those requirements or opportunities in a timely manner or at all, it could cause us to lose customers, substantially decrease or delay market acceptance and sales of our present and future products and services, and significantly harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, if we invest in developing products for a market that does not develop, it could significantly harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Even if we are able to anticipate, develop, and commercially introduce new products, enhancements or business strategies, there can be no assurance that any new products, enhancements or business strategies will achieve widespread market acceptance.
Our strategy to expand our software business could adversely affect our competitive position. The success of our strategy to expand our software business is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to:
•the additional development efforts and costs required to create new software products and to make our products compatible with multiple technologies;
•the possibility that our current or new software products may not achieve widespread customer adoption;
•the possibility that our strategy could erode our revenue and gross margins;
•the impact on our financial results of longer periods of revenue recognition for certain types of software products and changes in tax treatment associated with software sales;
•the additional costs associated with both domestic and international regulatory compliance, data protection, privacy and security laws, industry data security standards, and changes we need to make to our distribution chain in connection with increased software sales;
•the ability of our disaggregated hardware and software products to operate independently and/or to integrate with current and future third-party products; and
•issues with third-party technologies used with our software products, which may be attributed to us.
If any of our current or new software products or business strategies do not gain market acceptance or meet our expectations for growth, our ability to meet future financial targets may be adversely affected and our competitive position and our business and financial results could be harmed.
If our products do not interoperate with our customers’ networks, installations will be delayed or cancelled and could harm our business. Our products are designed to interface with our customers’ existing networks, each of which have different specifications and utilize multiple protocol standards and products from other vendors. Many of our customers’ networks contain multiple generations of products that have been added over time as these networks have grown and evolved. Our products must interoperate with many or all of the products within these networks as well as future products to meet our customers’ requirements. If we find errors in the existing software or defects in the hardware used in our customers’ networks, we may need to modify our software or hardware to fix or overcome these errors so that our products will interoperate and scale with the existing software and hardware, which could be costly and could negatively affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, if our products do not interoperate with those of our customers’ networks, demand for our products could be adversely affected or orders for our products could be cancelled. This could hurt our operating results, damage our reputation, and seriously harm our business and prospects.
Our products incorporate and rely upon licensed third-party technology. We integrate licensed third-party technology into certain of our products. From time to time, we may be required to renegotiate our current third-party licenses or license additional technology from third parties to develop new products or product enhancements or to facilitate new business models. Third-party licenses may not be available or continue to be available to us on commercially reasonable terms and some of our agreements with our licensors may be terminated for convenience by them. In addition, we cannot be certain that our licensors are not infringing on the intellectual property rights of third parties or that our licensors have sufficient rights to the licensed intellectual property in all jurisdictions in which we may sell our products. Third-party technology we incorporate into our products that is deemed to infringe on the intellectual property of others may result, and in some cases has resulted, in limitations on our ability to source technology from those third parties, restrictions on our ability to sell products that incorporate the infringing technology, increased exposure to liability that we will be held responsible for incorporating the infringing technology in our products, and increased costs involved in removing that technology from our products or developing substitute technology. Our inability to comply with, maintain or re-license any third-party licenses required in our products or our inability to obtain third-party licenses necessary to develop new products and product enhancements, could require us to develop substitute technology or obtain substitute technology of lower quality or performance standards or at a greater cost, any of which could delay or prevent product shipment and harm our business and results of operations.
We may face difficulties enforcing our proprietary rights, which could adversely affect our ability to compete. We rely on a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secret laws and contractual restrictions on disclosure of confidential and proprietary information, to protect our proprietary rights. There can be no assurance that any of our patent applications will result in issued patents with the scope of the claims we seek or that any of our patents or other proprietary rights will not be challenged, invalidated, infringed or circumvented or that our rights will, in fact, provide competitive advantages to us or protect our technology. If we cannot protect our intellectual property rights, we could incur costly product redesign efforts, discontinue certain product offerings and experience other competitive harm.
Unauthorized parties may also attempt to copy aspects of our products or obtain and use our proprietary information. We generally enter into confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, consultants, vendors, and customers, and generally limit access to and distribution of our proprietary information. However, we cannot assure you that we have entered into such agreements with all parties who may have or have had access to our confidential information or that these agreements will not be breached. We cannot guarantee that any of the measures we have taken will prevent misappropriation of our technology. We are also vulnerable to third parties who illegally distribute or sell counterfeit, stolen or unfit versions of our
products, which has happened in the past and could happen in the future. Such sales could have a negative impact on our reputation and business.
In addition, the laws of some foreign countries may not protect our proprietary rights to the same extent as do the laws of the U.S. The outcome of any actions taken in these foreign countries may be different than if such actions were determined under the laws of the U.S. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights, we may be at a competitive disadvantage to others who need not incur the substantial expense, time, and effort required to create innovative products that have enabled our success.
We depend on contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers as well as single-source and limited source suppliers, including for key components such as semiconductors. Our operations depend on our ability to anticipate our needs for components, products and services, as well as the ability of our manufacturers, original design manufacturers, and suppliers to deliver sufficient quantities of quality components, products and services at reasonable prices and in time for us to meet critical schedules for the delivery of our own products and services. Given the wide variety of solutions that we offer, the large and diverse distribution of our manufactures and suppliers, and the long lead times required to manufacture, assemble and deliver certain products, problems could arise in production, planning and inventory management that could seriously harm our business. For example, there is currently a worldwide shortage of key components, such as semiconductor products, that has caused us to experience increased prices and extended lead times for certain key components. The shortage of semiconductors has caused a significant disruption to our production schedule and may give rise to a substantial adverse effect on our financial condition or results of operations. Any delay in our ability to produce and deliver our products could cause our customers to purchase alternative products from our competitors. In addition, our ongoing efforts to optimize the efficiency of our supply chain could cause supply disruptions and be more expensive, time-consuming and resource-intensive than expected. Other manufacturing and supply problems that we could face are described below.
•Manufacturing Issues. We may experience supply shortfalls or delays in shipping products to our customers if our manufacturers experience delays, disruptions, or quality control problems in their manufacturing operations, or if we have to change or add manufacturers or contract manufacturing locations. Although we have contracts with our manufacturers that include terms to protect us in the event of an early termination, we may not have adequate time to transition all of our manufacturing needs to an alternative manufacturer under comparable commercial terms. We have experienced in the past and may experience in the future an increase in the expected time required to manufacture our products or ship products, including delays due to the manufacturing restrictions, travel restrictions and other restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19. Moreover, a significant portion of our manufacturing is performed in foreign countries and is therefore subject to risks associated with doing business outside of the U.S., including import restrictions, export restrictions, disruptions to our supply chain, cyberattacks, pandemics, regional climate-related events, or regional conflicts.
•Single-Source Suppliers. We rely on single or limited sources for many of our components due to technology, availability, price, quality, scale or customization needs. In addition, there has been consolidation among certain suppliers of our components. Consolidation among suppliers can result in the reduction of the number of independent suppliers of components available to us, which could negatively impact our ability to access certain component parts or the prices we have to pay for such parts and may impact our gross margins. Additionally, if certain components that we receive from our suppliers have defects or other quality issues, we may have to replace or repair such components, and we could be subject to claims based on warranty, product liability, epidemic or delivery failures that could lead to significant expenses.
•Supply-chain Disruption. Any disruptions to our supply chain, significant increase in component costs, or shortages of critical components, could decrease our sales, earnings, and liquidity or otherwise adversely affect our business and result in increased costs. Such a disruption could occur as a result of any number of events, including, but not limited to: an extended closure of or any slowdown at our suppliers' plants or shipping delays due to efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19, market shortages due to the surge in demand from other purchasers for critical components, increases in prices, the imposition of regulations, quotas or embargoes or tariffs on components or our products themselves, labor stoppages, transportation delays or failures affecting the supply chain and shipment of materials and finished goods, third-party interference in the integrity of the products sourced through the supply chain, cyberattacks, the unavailability of raw materials, severe weather conditions, adverse effects of climate change, natural disasters, geopolitical developments, war or terrorism and disruptions in utilities and other services. In addition, the development, licensing, or acquisition of new products in the future may increase the complexity of supply chain management. Failure to effectively manage the supply of components and products would adversely affect our business.
•Component Supply Forecast. We provide demand forecasts for our products to our manufacturers, who order components and plan capacity based on these forecasts. If we overestimate our requirements, our manufacturers may assess charges, or we may have liabilities for excess inventory or raw materials, each of which could negatively affect our gross margins. If we underestimate our requirements, our contract manufacturers may have inadequate time, materials, and/or components
required to produce our products. This could increase costs or delay or interrupt manufacturing of our products, resulting in delays in shipments and deferral or loss of revenues and could negatively impact customer satisfaction. Any future spike in growth in our business, in the use of certain components we share in common with other companies, in IT spending, or in the economy in general, is likely to create greater short-term pressure on us and our suppliers to accurately forecast overall component demand and to establish optimal component inventories. If shortages or delays persist, we may not be able to secure enough components at reasonable prices or of acceptable quality to build and deliver products in a timely manner, and our revenues, gross margins and customer relationships could suffer.
•Alternative Sources of Supply. The development of alternate sources for components is time-consuming, difficult, and costly. In addition, the lead times associated with certain components are lengthy. For example, there is currently a worldwide shortage of semiconductor products that has caused us to experience increased prices and extended lead times on some semiconductor products, and we expect these increased prices and extended lead times for semiconductor products to continue for the foreseeable future, which may impact our production and delivery schedules or affect the price of semiconductor products. Also, long-term supply and maintenance obligations to customers increase the duration for which specific components are required, which may further increase the risk of component shortages or increase the cost of carrying inventory. In the event of a component shortage, supply interruption or significant price increase from these suppliers, we may not be able to locate alternative sources in a timely manner. If we are unable to buy these components in quantities sufficient to meet our requirements on a timely basis, we will not be able to deliver products and services to our customers, which would seriously affect present and future sales, and would, in turn, adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
•COVID-19 Impact. Delays in production or in product deliveries due to the COVID-19 pandemic have adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. For example, we have experienced supply constraints due to both constrained manufacturing capacity, as well as component parts shortages as our component vendors were also facing supply constraints, and increased logistics costs due to air travel and transport restrictions that limited the availability of flights on which we ship our products. Additionally, cost increases and extended shipping times for ocean transit have increased our dependence on higher-cost air freight. These challenges have resulted in extended lead-times to our customers and have had a negative impact on our ability to recognize associated revenue and has resulted in and may continue to result in an increase in accelerated ordering for certain of our products. We continue to work with government authorities and implement safety measures to ensure that we are able to continue manufacturing and distributing our products during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, we could still experience an unforeseen disruption to our supply chain that could impact our operations.
System security risks, data protection breaches, and cyberattacks could compromise our and our customers’ proprietary information, disrupt our internal operations and harm public perception of our products. In the ordinary course of business, we store sensitive data, including intellectual property, personal data, our proprietary business information and that of our employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, vendors, and other business partners on our networks. In addition, we store sensitive data through cloud-based services that may be hosted by third parties and in data center infrastructure maintained by third parties. Secure maintenance of this information is critical to our operations and business strategy. On an ongoing and regular basis, we have been, and expect to be, subject to cyberattacks, and may be subject to ransomware and distributed denial-of-service attacks, spearfishing attacks and other attempted intrusions on our networks and systems by a wide range of actors, including, but not limited to, nation states, criminal enterprises, terrorist organizations, and other organizations or individuals, as well as errors, wrongful conduct or malfeasance by employees and third-party service providers (collectively, “malicious parties”). We expect our third-party vendors to be subject to similar cyberattacks, ransomware and distributed denial-of-service attacks, spearfishing attacks and other attempted intrusions. The increasing occurrence of high-profile data breaches and ransomware attacks provides evidence of an environment increasingly hostile to information security.
Despite our security measures, and those of our third-party vendors, our information systems, infrastructure, and data have experienced security incidents and breaches and may be subject to or vulnerable to breaches or attacks, including ransomware and distributed denial-of-service attacks, in the future. If any breach or attack compromises our networks or those of our vendors, creates system disruptions or slowdowns, or exploits security vulnerabilities or critical security defects of our products and services, the information stored on our networks or the networks of our customers, suppliers or business partners could be accessed and modified, publicly disclosed, lost, destroyed or stolen, and we may be subject to claims for contractual, tort or equitable liability and suffer reputational and financial harm. In addition, malicious parties may compromise our software, including the open-source software used in our products, or our manufacturing supply chain to embed malicious hardware, components, and software that are designed to defeat or circumvent encryption and other cybersecurity measures to interfere with the operation of our networks, expose us or our products to cyberattacks, or gain unauthorized access to our or our customers’ systems and information. If such actions are successful, they could diminish customer trust in our products, harm our business reputation, and adversely affect our business and financial condition.
Because techniques used by malicious parties to access or sabotage networks are sophisticated, change frequently, and generally are not recognized until after they are used, we may be unable to anticipate or immediately detect these techniques or the vulnerabilities they have caused or other potential vulnerabilities or security defects. Further, when vulnerabilities are discovered, we evaluate the risk, prioritize our responses, apply patches or take other remediation actions and notify customers, business partners, and suppliers as appropriate. Exploitation of vulnerabilities and critical security defects, prioritization errors in remedying vulnerabilities or security defects, failure of third-party providers to remedy vulnerabilities or security defects, or customers not deploying security releases or deciding not to upgrade products, services or solutions, could, in each case, result in claims of liability against us, damage our reputation or otherwise harm our business.
All of this requires significant resources and attention from management and our employees, and the economic costs to us to eliminate or alleviate these issues could be significant and may be difficult to anticipate or measure. The market perception of the effectiveness of our products and our overall reputation could also be harmed as a result of any actual or perceived breach of security that occurs in our network or in the network of a customer of our products, regardless of whether the breach is attributable to our products, the systems of other vendors and/or to actions of malicious parties. This could impede our sales, manufacturing, distribution or other critical functions, which could have an adverse impact on our financial results.
Additionally, we could be subject to measures that regulate the security of the types of products we sell. Such regulations may result in increased costs and delays in product releases and changes in features to achieve compliance, which may impact customer demand for our products, and result in regulatory investigations, potential fines, and litigation in connection with a compliance concern, security breach or related issue, and potential liability to third parties arising from such breaches. Further, in response to actual or anticipated cybersecurity regulations or contractual security requirements negotiated with our customers, we may need to make changes to existing policies, processes and supplier relationships that could impact product offerings, release schedules and service response times, which could adversely affect the demand for and sales of our products and services. We maintain product liability insurance, but there is no guarantee that such insurance will be available or adequate to protect against all such claims. If our business liability insurance coverage is inadequate, or future coverage is unavailable on acceptable terms or at all, our financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.
Disruption in our distribution channels could seriously harm our future revenue and financial condition and increase our costs and expenses. The majority of our revenues are derived through value-added resellers and distributors, most of which also sell our competitors’ products, and some of which sell their own competing products. The loss of or reduction in sales to our resellers or distributors could materially reduce our revenues. Our competitors may in some cases be effective in leveraging their market share positions or in providing incentives to current or potential resellers and distributors to favor their products or to prevent or reduce sales of our products. If we are unable to develop and maintain relationships with our partners, develop new relationships with value-added resellers and distributors in new markets, expand the number of distributors and resellers in existing markets, manage, train or motivate existing value-added resellers and distributors effectively, or if these partners are not successful in their sales efforts, sales of our products may decrease, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations would suffer. We recognize a portion of our revenues at the time we sell products to our distributors. If these sales are made based on inaccurate or untimely information, the amount or timing of our revenues could be adversely impacted. Further, our distributors may increase orders during periods of product shortages, cancel orders if their inventory is too high, or delay orders in anticipation of new products. They also may adjust their orders in response to the supply of our products and the products of our competitors that are available to them, and in response to seasonal fluctuations in end-user demand.
To develop and expand our distribution channel, we continue to offer attractive channel programs to potential partners and have previously entered into OEM agreements with partners to rebrand and resell our products as part of their product portfolios. These relationships require processes and procedures that may be costly or challenging to implement, maintain, and manage. Our failure to successfully manage and develop our distribution channel could adversely affect our ability to generate revenues from the sale of our products. We also depend on our global channel partners to comply with applicable legal and regulatory requirements. Any failure by our partners to comply with these requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We rely on the performance of our business systems and third-party systems and processes. Some of our business processes depend upon our IT systems, the IT systems and processes of third parties, and the interfaces between the two. For example, IBM currently provides us with a broad range of information technology services, such as applications, including support, development and maintenance; infrastructure management and support, including for server storage and network devices; and end user support including service desk. IBM provides services to us through cloud providers, third party providers, and off-site facilities that may be vulnerable to damage or interruption, including performance problems from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, equipment failure, adverse events caused by operator error, cybersecurity attacks, pandemics, and similar events. In addition, because we lease off-site data center facilities, we cannot be assured that we will be able to expand our data center infrastructure to meet user demand in a timely manner, or on favorable financial terms. If we have issues receiving and processing data, this may delay our ability to provide products and services to our customers and business partners and damage our business. We also rely upon the performance of the systems and processes of our contract
manufacturers to build and ship our products. If those systems and processes experience interruption or delay, the manufacture and shipment of our products in a timely manner may be impaired. Since IT is critical to our operations, in addition to the risks outlined above, problems with any of the third parties we rely on for our IT systems and services, could result in liabilities to our customers and business partners, lower revenue and unexecuted efficiencies, and impact our results of operations and our stock price. We could also face significant additional costs or business disruption if our arrangements with these third parties are terminated or impaired and we cannot find alternative services or support on commercially reasonable terms or on a timely basis or if we are unable to hire new employees in order to provide these services in-house.
Our ability to develop, market, and sell products could be harmed if we are unable to retain or hire key personnel or if our existing personnel were harmed by COVID-19. Our future success and ability to maintain a technology leadership position depends upon our ability to recruit and retain key management, engineering, technical, sales, marketing, and support personnel, which may be impacted by various COVID-19 vaccine and testing mandates, as well as our ability to maintain the health of our personnel, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. The supply of highly qualified individuals with technological and creative skills, in particular engineers, in specialized areas with the expertise to develop new products and enhancements for our current products, and provide reliable product maintenance, as well as the number of salespeople with industry expertise, is limited. Competition for people with the specialized technical skills we require is significant. None of our officers or key employees is bound by an employment agreement for any specific term. If we fail to attract new personnel or retain and motivate our current personnel, the development and introduction of new products could be delayed, our ability to market, sell, or support our products could be impaired, and our business, results of operations and future growth prospects could suffer. There can be no assurance that others will not develop technologies that are similar or superior to our technology.
A number of our team members are foreign nationals who rely on visas and entry permits in order to legally work in the U.S. and other countries. In recent years, the U.S. has increased the level of scrutiny in granting H-1B, L-1 and other business visas. Compliance with new and unexpected U.S. immigration and labor laws could also require us to incur additional unexpected labor costs and expenses or could restrain our ability to retain and attract skilled professionals. Additionally, pandemics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may interfere with our ability to hire or retain personnel. Any of these restrictions could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial conditions.
Our business could be negatively impacted by corporate citizenship and ESG matters and/or our reporting of such matters.
There is an increasing focus from certain investors, customers, consumers, employees, and other stakeholders concerning corporate citizenship and environmental, social, governance (“ESG”) matters. From time to time, we may communicate certain initiatives, including goals, regarding environmental matters, diversity, responsible sourcing and social investments and other corporate citizenship and ESG matters, in our Corporate Social Responsibility Report, on our website, in our SEC filings, and elsewhere. These initiatives and goals could be difficult and expensive to implement. We could fail, or be perceived to fail, in our achievement of such initiatives or goals. In addition, we could be criticized for the scope or nature of such initiatives or goals. As our required and voluntary disclosures about corporate citizenship and other ESG matters increase, we could be criticized for the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of such disclosures. Our reputation or other aspects of our business could be negatively impacted by all such matters, with potential material adverse effects.
LEGAL, REGULATORY, AND COMPLIANCE RISKS
We are a party to lawsuits, investigations, and other disputes. We have been named a party to litigation involving a broad range of matters, including employment matters, commercial transactions, patent infringement, copyrights, trademarks, and other rights to technologies and related standards that are relevant to our products, as well as governmental claims, and securities laws, and we may be named in additional litigation and/or governmental claims. For example, certain U.S. governmental agencies previously conducted investigations into possible violations by us of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or the FCPA, which ultimately resulted in the Company entering into a settlement with the SEC that involved, among other things, the Company making a payment of $11.8 million in August 2019. Future claims or initiated litigation may include claims against us or our manufacturers, suppliers, partners, or customers. Future claims asserted and/or litigation may be initiated by third parties, including whistleblowers, and may relate to infringement of proprietary rights, issues arising under the False Claims Act, compliance with securities laws, or other matters. The expense of initiating and defending, and in some cases settling, such litigation and investigations may be costly, and may cause us to suffer reputational harm, divert management’s attention from day-to-day operations of our business, and may require us to implement certain remedial measures that could disrupt our business, operations, results of operations, financial condition or cash flows. In addition, if we fail to comply with the terms of any settlement agreement, we could face more substantial penalties. An unfavorable resolution of one or more of these matters could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition or cash flows.
Further, increased patent litigation brought by non-practicing entities may result, and in some cases has resulted, in our customers requesting or requiring us to absorb a portion of the costs of such litigation or providing broader indemnification for litigation, each of which could increase our expenses and negatively affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Regardless of the merit of these claims, they may require us to develop alternative technologies, enter into license
agreements, or cease engaging in certain activities or offering certain products or services. Furthermore, even arguably unmeritorious claims may be settled at significant costs to us because of the potential for high awards of damages or injunctive relief.
If any infringement or other intellectual property claim made against us or anyone we are required to indemnify is successful and we are required to pay significant monetary awards or damages to settle litigation, enter into royalty or licensing arrangements, or satisfy indemnification obligations that we have with some of our customers, or we fail to develop non-infringing technology and we incorporate infringing technology in our products, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.
Non-standard contract terms with telecommunications, cable and cloud service provider companies, and other large customers, including large enterprise customers, could have an adverse effect on our business or impact the amount of revenues to be recognized. Telecommunications, cable and cloud service provider companies, and other large companies, including large enterprise customers, generally have greater purchasing power than smaller entities and often request and receive more favorable terms from suppliers. We may be required to agree to such terms and conditions, which may include terms that affect the amount or timing of or our ability to recognize revenue, increase our costs, and have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Consolidation among such large customers can further increase their buying power and ability to require onerous terms from us.
In addition, other vendors may have promised but failed to deliver certain functionality to these types of customers and/or had products that caused problems or outages in their networks. For these or other reasons, these customers may request additional features from us and require substantial penalties for failure to deliver such features or for any network outages that may or may not have been caused by our products. If we are required to agree to these requests or incur penalties, the amount of revenue recognized from such sales may be negatively impacted and as a result, may negatively affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Regulations of our industry or of our customers could harm our operating results and future prospects. We are subject to laws, regulations, and policies affecting the sale of our products in a number of areas. For example, some governments have regulations prohibiting government entities from purchasing security products that do not meet country-specific safety, conformance or security certification criteria or in-country test requirements. Other regulations that may negatively impact our business include local content or local manufacturing requirements most commonly applicable for government, state-owned enterprise or regulated industry procurements. These types of regulations are in effect or under consideration in several jurisdictions where we do business.
The SEC requires us, as a public company who uses certain raw materials that are considered to be “conflict minerals” in our products, to report publicly on the extent to which “conflict minerals” are in our supply chain. As a provider of hardware end-products, we are several steps removed from the mining, smelting or refining of any conflict minerals. Accordingly, our ability to determine with certainty the origin and chain of custody of these raw materials is limited. Our relationships with customers and suppliers could suffer if we are unable to describe our products as “conflict-free.” We may also face increased costs in complying with conflict minerals disclosure requirements.
Environmental laws and regulations relevant to electronic equipment manufacturing or operations, including laws and regulations governing the hazardous material content of our products and the collection of and recycling of electrical and electronic equipment, may adversely impact our business and financial condition. In particular, we face increasing complexity in our product design and procurement operations as we adjust to new and future requirements relating to the chemical and material composition of our products, their safe use, the energy consumption associated with those products, climate change laws, and regulations and product take-back legislation, which could require us to cease selling non-compliant products and to reengineer our products to use compliant components, which could result in additional costs to us, disrupt our operations, and result in an adverse impact on our operating results. If we were to violate or become liable under environmental laws or if our products become non-compliant with environmental laws, our customers may refuse to purchase our products and we could incur substantial costs or face other sanctions, which may include restrictions on our products entering certain jurisdictions. The amount and timing of costs to comply with environmental laws are difficult to predict.
In addition, as a contractor and subcontractor to the U.S. government, we are subject to federal regulations pertaining to our IT systems that require compliance with certain security and privacy controls. Failure to comply with these requirements could result in a loss of federal government business, subject us to claims or other remedies for non-compliance, or negatively impact our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Further, some governments and government agencies have implemented and could continue to implement procurement policies that impact our profitability. Procurement policies favoring more non-commercial purchases, different pricing, or evaluation criteria or government contract negotiation offers based upon the customer’s view of what our pricing should be, could affect
the margins on such contracts or make it more difficult to compete on certain types of programs. Moreover, the failure to comply with government contracting provisions could result in penalties or the ineligibility to compete for future contracts. Governments and government agencies are continually evaluating their contract pricing and financing practices, and we have no assurance regarding what changes will be proposed, if any, and their impact on our financial position, cash flows, or results of operations.
Moreover, our customers in the telecommunications industry may be subject to regulations and our business and financial condition could be adversely affected by changes in such regulations affecting our customers. Further, we could be affected by new laws or regulations on access to or commerce on IP networks in jurisdictions where we market our solutions. Regulations governing the range of services and business models that can be offered by service providers or cloud provider companies could adversely affect those customers' needs for products. Also, many jurisdictions have or are evaluating and implementing regulations relating to cybersecurity, supply chain integrity, privacy and data protection, any of which can affect the market and requirements for networking and security equipment. Additionally, certain countries where our customers operate may require that our products sold in that country be made locally or made in particular geographies, or satisfy local regulations for critical infrastructure projects, either of which could impact our ability to compete in those markets and may also negatively impact our margins due to the costs incurred to comply with these requirements.
The adoption and implementation of additional regulations could reduce demand for our products, increase the cost of building and selling our products, result in product inventory write-offs, impact our ability to ship products into affected areas and recognize revenue in a timely manner, require us to spend significant time and expense to comply with, and subject us to fines and civil or criminal sanctions or claims if we were to violate or become liable under such regulations. Any of these impacts could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Governmental regulations, economic sanctions and other legal restrictions that affect international trade or affect movement and disposition of our products and component parts could negatively affect our revenues and operating results. The U.S. and other governments have imposed restrictions on the import and export of, among other things, certain telecommunications products and components, particularly those that contain or use encryption technology. Most of our products are telecommunications products that contain or use encryption technology and, consequently, are subject to restrictions. The scope, nature, and severity of such controls vary widely across different countries and may change frequently over time. In many cases, these government restrictions require a license prior to importing or exporting a good. Such licensing requirements can introduce delays into our operations as we or our channel partners must apply for the license and wait for government officials to process it or perform pre-shipment inspections; it is possible that lengthy delays will lead to the cancellation of orders by customers. Moreover, if we, our suppliers, or our channel partners fail to obtain necessary licenses prior to importing or exporting covered goods, we can be subject to government sanctions, including monetary penalties, conditions and restrictions. Such license requirements, and any fines or other sanctions imposed for their violation could negatively affect our revenues and operating results.
In addition, the U.S. and other governments have especially broad sanctions and embargoes prohibiting provision of goods or services to certain countries, territories, sanctioned governments, businesses, and individuals. We have implemented systems to detect and prevent sales into restricted countries or to prohibited entities or individuals, but there can be no assurance that our third party, downstream resellers and distributors will abide by these restrictions or have processes in place to ensure compliance.
Certain governments also impose special local content, certification, testing, source code review, escrow and governmental recovery of private encryption keys, or other cybersecurity feature requirements to protect network equipment and software procured by or for the government. Similar requirements also may be imposed in procurements by state owned entities or even private companies forming part of “critical network infrastructure” or supporting sensitive industries.
In recent years, U.S. government officials have had concerns with the security of products and services from certain telecommunications and video providers based in China, Russia, and other regions. As a result, Congress has enacted bans on the use of certain Chinese-origin components or systems either in items sold to the U.S. government or in the internal networks of government contractors and subcontractors (even if those networks are not used for government-related projects). U.S. regulations also permit the U.S. government to investigate and possibly mandate the unwinding of commercial transactions between U.S. companies and foreign suppliers. This introduces uncertainty into our supply chain, our imports of end products and our overall operational planning.
In May 2021, the U.S. President issued an executive order on cybersecurity that signals the U.S. government’s interest in developing standards and guidelines pertaining to Information and Communication Technology supply chains, government network capabilities and requirements, and cyber threat and vulnerability remediation. Any or all of these standards and guidelines could impact how we develop hardware and software, what features our products have, and our role in helping the U.S. government respond to cyber threats and vulnerabilities.
Our actual or perceived failure to adequately protect personal data could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. A wide variety of provincial, state, national, foreign, and international laws and regulations apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer, and other processing of personal data. These privacy and data protection-related laws and regulations are evolving, extensive, and complex. Compliance with these laws and regulations can be costly and can delay or impede the development and offering of new products and services. In addition, the interpretation and application of privacy and data protection-related laws in some cases is uncertain, and our legal and regulatory obligations are subject to frequent changes, including the potential for various regulator or other governmental bodies to enact new or additional laws or regulations, to issue rulings that invalidate prior laws or regulations, or to increase penalties. Moreover, there are a number of other legislative proposals worldwide, including in the U.S. at both the federal and state level, that could impose additional and potentially conflicting obligations in areas affecting our business. Examples of recent and anticipated developments that have or could impact our business include the following:
•The General Data Protection Regulation imposes stringent data protection requirements and provides significant penalties for noncompliance. We have relied on the use of standard contractual clauses approved by the European Union (“EU”) Commission to legitimize the transfer of personal data outside of the EU to certain jurisdictions, including the U.S. The standard contractual clauses have been subject to legal challenge. In relation to the “Schrems II” decision by the Court of Justice of the EU on July 16, 2020, and its impact on our data transfer mechanism, we may experience additional costs associated with increased compliance burdens and new contract negotiations with third parties that aid in processing of data on our behalf. Further, in June 2021, the EU issued new standard contractual clauses that we will need to enter into with our customers, which will cause us to incur costs and allocate resources in order to manage the contract updating process. We may face reluctance or resistance by our current and prospective customers to use our products and services. We may also find it necessary to make further changes to our handling of personal data of residents of the European Economic Area (“EEA”). The regulatory environment applicable to the handling of EEA residents’ personal data, and our actions in addressing such environment, may cause us to assume additional liabilities or incur additional costs and could result in our business, operating results and financial condition being harmed. In addition, we and our customers may face a risk of enforcement actions by data protection authorities in the EEA relating to personal data transfers to us and by us from the EEA. Any such enforcement actions could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources, distract management and technical personnel, and negatively affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
•Data protection legislation is also becoming increasingly common in the U.S. at both the federal and state level. The effects of the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), which became effective and enforceable in 2020, and other similar laws may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies, adapt our goods and services, and incur substantial costs and expenses to comply. The CCPA also provides for civil penalties for violations and a private right of action for data breaches that may increase the frequency and cost associated with data breach litigation. Further, the new California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) which was passed in November 2020 and will come into effect on January 1, 2023, with a “lookback” period to January 1, 2022, significantly modifies the CCPA. Likewise, both Virginia and Colorado provide similar rights in the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, which will take effect on January 1, 2023, and the Colorado Privacy Act which will take effect on July 1, 2023. These modifications and any new legislation may result in additional uncertainty and require us to incur additional costs and expenses in our effort to comply.
•The Federal Trade Commission and many state attorneys general are interpreting federal and state consumer protection laws to impose standards for the online collection, use, dissemination, and security of data. In addition, we may be or become subject to data localization laws mandating that data collected in a foreign country be processed and stored within that country.
•Both U.S. and non-U.S. governments are considering regulating artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning, which may impact our products and services and cause us to incur costs and expenses in order to comply. Specifically, the EU recently published a draft AI regulation; if passed, the new law would cause us to incur costs and expenses in order to comply.
Our actual or perceived failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations or other obligations to which we may be subject relating to personal data, or to protect personal data from unauthorized access, use, or other processing, could result in enforcement actions and regulatory investigations against us, claims for damages by customers and other affected individuals, fines, damage to our reputation, and loss of goodwill, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our operations, financial performance, and business. Further, evolving and changing definitions of personal data and personal information, within the EU, the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere, including the classification of IP addresses, machine identification information, location data, and other information, may limit or inhibit our ability to operate or expand our business, including limiting business relationships and partnerships that may involve the sharing or uses of data, and may require significant costs, resources, and efforts in order to comply.
FINANCIAL RISKS
Our financial condition and results of operations could suffer if there is an impairment of goodwill or purchased intangible assets. As of December 31, 2021, our goodwill was $3,762.1 million, and our purchased intangible assets were $284.3 million. We are required to test intangible assets with indefinite lives, including goodwill, annually or, in certain instances, more frequently, and may be required to record impairment charges, which would reduce any earnings or increase any loss for the period in which the impairment was determined to have occurred. Our goodwill impairment analysis is sensitive to changes in key assumptions used in our analysis. If the assumptions used in our analysis are not realized, it is possible that an impairment charge may need to be recorded in the future. We cannot accurately predict the amount and timing of any impairment of goodwill or other intangible assets. However, any such impairment would have an adverse effect on our results of operations.
Changes in effective tax rates, the adoption of new U.S. or international tax legislation, or adverse outcomes resulting from examination of our income or other tax returns could adversely affect our results. Our future effective tax rates and the amount of our taxable income could be subject to volatility or adversely affected by the following: earnings being lower than anticipated in countries where we have lower statutory rates and higher than anticipated earnings in countries where we have higher statutory rates; changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities; expiration of, or lapses in, the research and development (“R&D”) tax credit laws applicable to us; transfer pricing adjustments related to certain acquisitions, including the license of acquired intangibles under our intercompany R&D cost sharing arrangement; costs related to intercompany restructuring; tax effects of share-based compensation; challenges to our methodologies for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements; limitations on the deductibility of net interest expense; or changes in tax laws, regulations, accounting principles, or interpretations thereof. Our future effective tax rate may be impacted by judicial decisions, changes in interpretation of regulations, as well as additional legislation and guidance.
Proposals to reform U.S. and foreign tax laws could significantly impact how U.S. multinational corporations are taxed on foreign earnings and could increase the U.S. corporate tax rate. Although we cannot predict whether or in what form these proposals may become law, several of the proposals considered, if enacted into law, could have an adverse impact on our effective tax rate, income tax expense, and cash flows. Further, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the “OECD”), an international association of 38 countries, including the U.S., has issued guidelines that change long-standing tax principles. The OECD guidelines may introduce tax uncertainty as countries amend their tax laws to adopt certain parts of the guidelines. Some countries have enacted, and others have proposed, taxes based on gross receipts applicable to digital services, regardless of profitability. Recently, substantially all member countries of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework agreed to certain tax principles, including a global minimum tax of 15%. Additional changes to global tax laws are likely to occur, and such changes may adversely affect our tax liability.
In addition, we are generally subject to the continuous examination of our income tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service, and other tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes, but the determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment by management, and there are transactions where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. Although we believe that our estimates are reasonable, the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our consolidated financial statements and may materially affect our financial results in the period or periods for which such determination is made.
We are subject to risks arising from our international operations, which may adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. We derive a substantial portion of our revenues from our international operations, and we plan to continue expanding our business in international markets. We conduct significant sales and customer support operations directly and indirectly through our distributors and value-added resellers in countries throughout the world and depend on the operations of our contract manufacturers and suppliers that are located outside of the U.S. In addition, a portion of our R&D and our general and administrative operations are conducted outside the U.S. As a result of our international operations, we are affected by economic, business, regulatory, social, and political conditions in foreign countries, including the following:
•changes in general IT spending;
•the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and any other adverse public health developments, epidemic disease or other pandemic in the countries in which we operate or where our customers are located;
•the imposition of government controls, inclusive of critical infrastructure protection;
•changes in trade controls, economic sanctions, or other international trade regulations, which may affect our ability to import or export our products to or from various countries;
•laws that restrict sales of products that are developed, manufactured, or incorporate components or assemblies sourced from certain countries or suppliers to specific customers (e.g., U.S. federal government departments and agencies) and industry segments, or for particular uses;
•varying and potentially conflicting laws and regulations, changes in laws and interpretation of laws, misappropriation of intellectual property and reduced intellectual property protection;
•political uncertainty, including demonstrations, that could have an impact on product delivery;
•fluctuations in local economies, including inflationary conditions that could make our solutions more expensive or could increase our costs of doing business in certain countries;
•fluctuations in currency exchange rates (see Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk for more information);
•tax policies, treaties or laws that could have an unfavorable business impact;
•the negotiation and implementation of free trade agreements between the U.S. and other nations;
•data privacy rules and other regulations that affect cross border data flow; and
•theft or unauthorized use or publication of our intellectual property and other confidential business information.
Any or all of these factors has or could have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Moreover, local laws and customs in many countries differ significantly from or conflict with those in the U.S. or in other countries in which we operate. In many foreign countries, it is common for others to engage in business practices that are prohibited by our internal policies and procedures or U.S. regulations. Certain countries (such as Russia, China and EU member nations with regard to Iran trade) prohibit individuals and companies resident in or operating within their borders to comply with foreign sanctions imposed on such countries themselves or on third countries. There can be no assurance that our employees, contractors, channel partners, and agents will not take actions in violation of our policies and procedures, which are designed to ensure compliance with U.S. and foreign laws and policies. Violations of laws or key control policies by our employees, contractors, channel partners, or agents could result in termination of our relationship, financial reporting problems, fines, and/or penalties for us, or prohibition on the importation or exportation of our products and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
There are risks associated with our outstanding and future indebtedness. As of December 31, 2021, we had $1,700.0 million in aggregate principal amount of outstanding senior notes, which we refer to collectively as (the “Notes”). In April 2019, we entered into a credit agreement (the “Credit Agreement”) with certain institutional lenders that provides for a five-year $500.0 million unsecured revolving credit facility.
We may not be able to generate sufficient cash flow to enable us to satisfy our expenses, make anticipated capital expenditures or service our indebtedness, including the Notes. Our ability to pay our expenses, satisfy our debt obligations, refinance our debt obligations and fund planned capital expenditures is dependent upon our future performance and other factors discussed in this section. However, there can be no assurance that we will be able to manage any of these risks successfully.
The indenture that governs the Notes contains various covenants that limit our ability and the ability of our subsidiaries to, among other things: incur liens, incur sale and leaseback transactions, and consolidate or merge with or into, or sell substantially all of our assets to another person. Further, the Credit Agreement contains two financial covenants along with customary affirmative and negative covenants that include the following:
•maintenance of a leverage ratio no greater than 3.0x (provided that if a material acquisition has been consummated, we are permitted to maintain a leverage ratio no greater than 3.5x for up to four quarters) and an interest coverage ratio no less than 3.0x; and
•covenants that limit or restrict the ability of the Company and its subsidiaries to, among other things, grant liens, merge or consolidate, dispose of all or substantially all of its assets, change their accounting or reporting policies, change their business and incur subsidiary indebtedness, in each case subject to customary exceptions for a credit facility of this size and type.
As a result of these covenants, we are limited in the manner in which we can conduct our business, and we may be unable to engage in favorable business activities or finance future operations or capital needs. Accordingly, these restrictions may limit our ability to successfully operate our business. In addition, under applicable U.S. tax laws and regulations, there are limitations on the deductibility of net business interest expenses. As a result, if our taxable income were to decline, we may not be able to fully deduct our net interest expense, which could have a material impact on our business.
Further, we receive debt ratings from the major credit rating agencies in the U.S. Factors that influence our credit ratings include financial strength as well as transparency with rating agencies and timeliness of financial reporting. There can be no assurance that we will be able to maintain our credit ratings and failure to do so could adversely affect our cost of funds and related margins, liquidity, competitive position and access to capital markets.
Our investments are subject to risks, which may cause losses and affect the liquidity of these investments. We have substantial investments in asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities, certificates of deposit, commercial paper, corporate debt securities, foreign government debt securities, money market funds, mutual funds, time deposits, U.S. government agency securities, and U.S. government securities. We also have investments in privately-held companies. Certain of our investments are subject to general credit, liquidity, market, sovereign debt, and interest rate risks. Our future investment income may fall short of expectations due to changes in interest rates or if the decline in fair value related to creditworthiness of our publicly traded debt investments is judged to be material. In addition, should financial market conditions worsen in the future, investments in some financial instruments may be subject to risks arising from market liquidity and credit concerns, which could have a material adverse effect on our liquidity, financial condition, and results of operations.
The elimination of LIBOR after June 2023 may affect our financial results. All LIBOR tenors, which are relevant to the Company will cease to be published or will no longer be representative after June 30, 2023, and therefore, any of our LIBOR-based borrowings and interest rate derivatives that extend beyond June 30, 2023 will need to be converted to a replacement rate.
GENERAL RISK FACTORS
Failing to adequately evolve our financial and managerial control and reporting systems and processes, or any weaknesses in our internal controls may adversely affect investor perception, and our stock price. We will need to continue to improve our financial and managerial control and our reporting systems and procedures to manage and grow our business effectively in the future. We are required to assess the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting annually and to disclose in our filing if such controls were unable to provide assurance that a material error would be prevented or detected in a timely manner. If in the future, our internal controls over financial reporting are determined to not be effective, resulting in a material weakness, investor perceptions regarding the reliability of our financial statements may be adversely affected, which could cause a decline in the market price of our stock and otherwise negatively affect our liquidity and financial condition.
Our amended and restated bylaws provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will be the sole and exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum. The exclusive forum provisions in our bylaws may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our current or former directors, officers, or other employees, which may discourage such lawsuits against us and our current or former directors, officers, and other employees. Alternatively, if a court were to find the exclusive forum provisions contained in our bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could have a material and adverse impact on our business.

ITEM 1B - UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
ITEM 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
Not applicable.

ITEM 2 - PROPERTIES
ITEM 2. Properties
Our corporate headquarters is located at an owned site in Sunnyvale, California. As of December 31, 2021, we leased space (including offices and other facilities) in locations throughout the United States and in various places outside the United States. We believe that our current offices and other facilities are in good condition and appropriately support our current business needs.

ITEM 3 - LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
ITEM 3. Legal Proceedings
The information set forth under the heading “Legal Proceedings” in Note 15, Commitments and Contingencies, in Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report, is incorporated herein by reference.

ITEM 4 - RESERVED
ITEM 4. Mine Safety Disclosures
Not applicable.
PART II

ITEM 5 - MARKET FOR REGISTRANT'S COMMON EQUITY
ITEM 5. Market for Registrant's Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
Market Information
Our common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE, under the symbol JNPR.
Stockholders
As of February 9, 2022, there were 563 stockholders of record of our common stock, and we believe a substantially greater number of beneficial owners who hold shares through brokers, banks or other nominees.
Dividends
The declaration and amount of any future cash dividends are at the discretion of the Board of Directors and will depend on our financial performance, economic outlook, and any other relevant considerations.
Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer and Affiliated Purchasers
The following table provides stock repurchase activity during the three months ended December 31, 2021 (in millions, except per share amounts):
________________________________
(*) Shares were repurchased during the periods set forth in the table above under our stock repurchase program, which had been approved by the Board and authorized us to purchase an aggregate of up to $3.0 billion of our common stock. Future share repurchases under our capital return plan will be subject to a review of the circumstances in place at that time and will be made from time to time in private transactions or open market purchases as permitted by securities laws and other legal requirements. This program may be discontinued at any time. See Note 10, Equity, in Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report for further discussion of our share repurchase program.
Company Stock Performance
The information contained in this Company Stock Performance section shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into other U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, filings; nor deemed to be soliciting material or filed with the Commission or subject to Regulation 14A or 14C or subject to Section 18 of the Exchange Act. The comparisons in the performance graph below are based upon historical data and are not indicative of, or intended to forecast, future performance of our common stock.
The performance graph below shows the cumulative total stockholder return over a five-year period assuming the investment of $100 on December 31, 2016, in each of Juniper Networks' common stock, the Standard & Poor's 500 Stock Index (“S&P 500”), and the NASDAQ Telecommunications Index. Total stockholder return assumes reinvestment of all dividends.

ITEM 6 - SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA
ITEM 6. [Reserved]

ITEM 7 - MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
ITEM 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
The following discussion should be read with the Business section in Item 1 of Part I and the Consolidated Financial Statements and the related notes in Item 8 of Part II of this Report. We intend the discussion of our financial condition and results of operations to provide information that will assist the reader in understanding our Consolidated Financial Statements, the changes in certain key items in those financial statements from year to year, and the primary factors that accounted for those changes, as well as how certain accounting estimates affect our Consolidated Financial Statements. To aid in understanding our operating results for the periods covered by this Report, we have provided an executive overview, which includes a financial results and key performance metrics overview and a discussion of material events and uncertainties known to management such as the COVID-19 pandemic and global component shortage. These sections should be read in conjunction with the more detailed discussion and analysis of our consolidated financial condition and results of operations in this Item 7, our “Risk Factors” section included in Item 1A of Part I, and our Consolidated Financial Statements and notes thereto included in Item 8 of Part II of this Report.
Executive Overview
Financial Results and Key Performance Metrics Overview
The following table provides an overview of our financial results and key financial metrics (in millions, except per share amounts, percentages, and days sales outstanding, or DSO):
________________________________
(1) DSO is for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2021, and 2020.
(2) Includes deferred revenue from hardware solutions, software licenses, software support and maintenance and SaaS offerings sold in our Automated WAN Solutions, Cloud-Ready Data Center, and AI-Driven Enterprise customer solution categories.
•Net Revenues: Net revenues increased during 2021 compared to 2020 across all of our verticals, customer solutions, and geographies. Service net revenues increased primarily due to strong sales of hardware maintenance and software subscriptions.
•Gross Margin: Gross margin as a percentage of net revenues was flat during 2021 compared to 2020. Product gross margin decreased primarily due to higher intangible amortization associated with the acquisitions of Apstra, 128 Technology and Netrounds, and to a lesser extent, logistics and other supply chain costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic, partially offset by favorable product and software mix and higher volume. The decrease in product gross margin was offset by the increase in service gross margin, which was primarily due to higher revenue and lower service delivery costs.
•Operating Margin: Operating income as a percentage of net revenues increased primarily from the drivers described in the gross margin discussion above and lower restructuring charges. The increase in operating margin was partially offset by higher personnel-related costs.
•Operating Cash Flows: Net cash provided by operations increased primarily due to higher invoicing activity, partially offset by higher supplier payments and higher payments for employee compensation.
•Capital Return: We continue to return capital to our stockholders. During 2021, we repurchased a total of 15.7 million shares of our common stock in the open market at an average price of $27.56 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $433.3 million. During 2021, we paid quarterly dividends of $0.20 per share, for an aggregate amount of $259.1 million.
•DSO: DSO is calculated as the ratio of ending accounts receivable, net of allowances, divided by average daily net revenues for the preceding 90 days. DSO decreased, primarily driven by higher revenue.
•Deferred Revenue: Total deferred revenue increased, primarily driven by an increase in deferrals of SaaS and software license subscriptions.
COVID-19 Pandemic Update
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the containment measures taken by governments and businesses are expected to continue to have a substantial negative impact on businesses around the world and on global, regional, and national economies. As a result, the pandemic has, and may continue to, negatively affect our operations, including as a result of external factors beyond our control, such as restrictions on the physical movement of our employees, contract manufacturers, component suppliers, partners, and customers. The majority of our global workforce has been working remotely since March 2020, and we continue to implement our four-phased approach to office reopening. In order to maximize the protection of the health and safety of our employees working in our offices in the U.S. and India during the current voluntary return to office period, subject to certain exceptions, we require all personnel working onsite in these offices, or traveling for business on behalf of Juniper, to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. We also require proof of vaccination for employees and guests returning to our sites, where permitted by local laws and regulations. We will continue to follow the guidance of local and national governments, including monitoring the health of our employees who have returned or will be returning to our offices. Numerous ongoing emerging governmental regulations in the U.S. and other countries, including those regarding vaccination mandates and ongoing testing requirements, may negatively impact our operations and increase the complexity of managing the pandemic.
We continue to support healthy customer demand for our products by working with our suppliers and distributors to address supply chain disruptions as well as travel restrictions that have impacted our operations. We have a global supply chain, which consists of primary manufacturing partners and component suppliers. During 2021, the supply constraints we continued to experience were due to both constrained manufacturing capacity as well as component parts shortages as our component vendors were also facing manufacturing challenges. These challenges resulted in extended lead-times to our customers, increased logistics costs, and impacted the volume of products we were able to deliver, which negatively impacted our ability to recognize revenue.
Challenges to our supply chain due to the impact of the pandemic remain dynamic, and we continue to experience higher costs, including logistics costs due to air travel and transport restrictions that limited the availability of flights on which we were able to ship products as well as cost increases and extended shipping times for ocean transit that have increased our dependence on higher-cost air freight. Our supply chain team has been working to meet our customer needs by executing on a strong risk mitigation plan, including multi-sourcing, pre-ordering components, transforming our logistics network, prioritizing critical customers, working with local government agencies to understand challenges, and partnering on solutions that limit disruptions to our operations while ensuring the safety of our employees, partners and suppliers.
The pandemic did not have a substantial net impact to our consolidated operating results or our liquidity position in 2021. We continue to generate operating cash flows to meet our short-term liquidity needs, and we expect to continue to maintain access to the capital markets enabled by our strong credit ratings. In 2021, we did not observe any material impairments of our assets or a significant change in the fair value of assets due to the pandemic.
We enter fiscal year 2022 with strong momentum and record backlog across all verticals, customers, and geographies. We continue to work with government authorities and implement safety measures to ensure that we are able to continue manufacturing and distributing our products during the pandemic. We continue to experience constrained supply, increased logistics costs, and accelerated customer demand, any of which could adversely impact our business, results of operations, and
overall financial performance in future periods. For more information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain constraints on our business, see the “Risk Factors” section of Item 1A of Part I of this Report.
Global Component Shortage
There is a worldwide shortage of various components, including semiconductors, impacting many industries, caused in-part by the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar to others, we are experiencing ongoing component shortages, which have resulted in extended lead times of certain products and significant disruption to our production schedule. We also experienced and may continue to experience increased component costs, which have had a negative impact on our gross margin. During the past year, we experienced strong product orders across all verticals and customer solutions; we believe some of the strength was attributable to industry supply chain challenges that were causing certain customers to place orders early in an effort to secure supply when needed. We continue to work to resolve our supply chain challenges and have increased inventory levels and purchase commitments. We are working closely with our suppliers to further enhance our resiliency and mitigate the effects of recent disruptions outside of our control. We believe the extended lead times and increased component and logistic costs will likely persist for at least the next few quarters. We have taken pricing actions to mitigate the effects of rising component costs and do not expect these actions to have an impact until later in fiscal year 2022. While the situation is dynamic, at this point in time we believe we will have access to sufficient supplies of semiconductors and other components and will be able to meet our full-year financial forecast. See the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Item 1A of Part I of this Report for further discussion of this risk.
Critical Accounting Estimates
The preparation of the financial statements and related disclosures in conformity with U.S. GAAP requires us to make judgments, assumptions, and estimates that affect the amounts reported in the Consolidated Financial Statements and the accompanying notes. We base our estimates and assumptions on current facts, historical experience, and various other factors that we believe are reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities. Note 1, Description of Business, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies, in Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report, describes the significant accounting policies and methods used in the preparation of the Consolidated Financial Statements.
The below accounting policies require significant judgments, assumptions, and estimates used in the preparation of the Consolidated Financial Statements and actual results could differ materially from the amounts reported based on these policies.
•Revenue Recognition: We enter into contracts to sell our products and services, and while most of our sales agreements contain standard terms and conditions, there are agreements that contain non-standard terms and conditions and include promises to transfer multiple goods or services. As a result, significant interpretation and judgment are sometimes required to determine the appropriate accounting for these transactions, including: (1) whether performance obligations are considered distinct that should be accounted for separately versus together, how the price should be allocated among the performance obligations, and when to recognize revenue for each performance obligation; (2) developing an estimate of the stand-alone selling price, or SSP, of each distinct performance obligation; (3) combining contracts that may impact the allocation of the transaction price between product and services; and (4) estimating and accounting for variable consideration, including rights of return, rebates, price protection, expected penalties or other price concessions as a reduction of the transaction price.
Our estimates of SSP for each performance obligation require judgment that considers multiple factors, including, but not limited to, historical discounting trends for products and services, pricing practices in different geographies and through different sales channels, gross margin objectives, internal costs, competitor pricing strategies, and industry technology lifecycles. Our estimates for rights of return, rebates, and price protection are based on historical sales returns and price protection credits, specific criteria outlined in customer contracts or rebate agreements, and other factors known at the time. Our estimates for expected penalties and other price concessions are based on historical trends and expectations regarding future incurrence.
Changes in judgments with respect to these assumptions and estimates could impact the timing or amount of revenue recognition.
•Income Taxes: We are subject to income taxes in the United States and numerous foreign jurisdictions. We apply the authoritative accounting guidance for uncertainty in income taxes to all income tax positions, including the potential recovery of previously paid taxes, which if settled unfavorably could adversely affect our provision for income taxes. Significant judgment is required in evaluating our uncertain tax positions and determining our taxes including the interpretation and application of GAAP and complex domestic and international tax laws and matters related to the allocation of international taxation rights between countries. In addition, we are subject to the continuous examination of our income tax returns by the IRS and other tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes. Although we believe our reserves are reasonable, no assurance can be given that the final tax outcome of these matters will not be different from that which is reflected in our historical income tax provisions and accruals. We adjust these reserves in light of changing facts and circumstances, such as the closing of a tax audit or the refinement of an estimate. To the extent that the final tax outcome of these matters is different than the amounts recorded, such differences will affect the provision for income taxes in the period in which such determination is made.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements
See Note 1, Description of Business, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies, in Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report for a full description of recent accounting pronouncements, including the expected dates of adoption and estimated effects on financial condition and results of operations, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Results of Operations
A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 compared to 2020 is presented below. A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 compared to 2019 can be found under Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, filed with the SEC on February 12, 2021, which is available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and our Investor Relations website at http://investor.juniper.net.
Revenues
The following table presents net revenues by customer solution (in millions, except percentages):
The following table presents net revenues by customer vertical and geographic region (in millions, except percentages):
Total net revenues increased primarily due to increases across all customer solutions mainly driven by higher sales volume.
The AI-Driven Enterprise revenue increase was primarily driven by Enterprise and Cloud, and to a lesser extent, Service Provider.
The Cloud-Ready Data Center revenue increase was primarily driven by Cloud, partially offset by a decline in Service Provider.
The Automated WAN Solutions revenue increase was primarily driven by Service Provider and Cloud, partially offset by a decline in Enterprise.
Effective in the first quarter of 2021, we began presenting revenues from software and related services as well as total security, as these offerings represent key areas of strategic focus that are critical components to our business success. Software and related services offerings include revenue from software license, software support and maintenance and SaaS contracts. Total security offerings include revenue from our complete portfolio of hardware and software security products, including SD-WAN solutions, as well as services related to our security solutions.
The following table presents net revenues from software and security products and services (in millions, except percentages):
Gross Margins
The following table presents gross margins (in millions, except percentages):
Our gross margins as a percentage of net revenues have been and will continue to be affected by general inflationary pressure and a variety of other factors, including the mix and average selling prices of our products and services, new product introductions and enhancements, manufacturing, component and logistics costs, expenses for inventory obsolescence and warranty obligations, cost of support and service personnel, customer mix as we continue to expand our footprint with certain strategic customers, the mix of distribution channels through which our products and services are sold, and import tariffs. For example, our logistics and other supply chain-related costs have increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic and global component shortage. For more information on the impact of COVID-19 and supply chain constraints on our business, see the “Risk Factors” section of Item 1A of Part I of this Report.
Product gross margin
Product gross margin as a percentage of product revenues decreased primarily due to higher intangible amortization associated with the acquisitions of Apstra, 128 Technology and Netrounds, and to a lesser extent, logistics and other supply chain costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic, partially offset by favorable product and software mix and higher volume. We continue to undertake specific efforts to address certain factors impacting our product gross margin. These efforts include performance and
quality improvements through engineering to increase value across our products; optimizing our supply chain and service business; pricing management; and increasing software and solution sales.
Service gross margin
Service gross margin as a percentage of service net revenues increased primarily due to higher revenue and lower service delivery costs.
Operating Expenses
The following table presents operating expenses (in millions, except percentages):
Our operating expenses have historically been driven in large part by personnel-related costs, including salaries and wages; commissions and bonuses, which we refer to collectively as variable compensation; benefits; share-based compensation; and travel. Facility and information technology, or IT, departmental costs are allocated to each department based on usage and headcount. We had a total of 10,191 and 9,950 employees as of December 31, 2021, and 2020, respectively. Our headcount increased by 241 employees, or 2%, primarily from hiring for the sales and marketing organization. We expect inflationary pressures to impact operating expense, at least for the next twelve months.
Research and development
Research and development expense, or R&D, increased primarily due to higher personnel-related costs driven by higher variable compensation and share-based compensation expenses.
Sales and marketing
Sales and marketing expense, or S&M, increased primarily due to higher personnel-related costs driven by headcount growth, higher variable compensation and share-based compensation expenses, as well as higher costs associated with marketing initiatives. The increase was partially offset by lower professional services costs and decreased travel expenses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Restructuring charges
Restructuring charges decreased primarily due to higher severance costs related to voluntary and involuntary workforce reductions recorded under the 2020 Restructuring Plan, partially offset by higher facility consolidation, contract termination and other exit costs recorded under the 2021 Restructuring Plan.
Loss on Extinguishment of Debt
The following table presents the loss on extinguishment of debt (in millions, except percentages):
In 2021 and 2020, we incurred a loss on extinguishment of debt related to the redemption of our Senior Notes maturing in March 2024 and June 2025. The loss primarily consists of a premium on the early redemption and acceleration of unamortized debt discount and fees on the redeemed debt.
Other Expense, Net
The following table presents other expense, net (in millions, except percentages):
_______________________________
N/M - percentage is not meaningful.
Interest income primarily includes interest earned on our cash, cash equivalents and investments. Interest expense primarily includes interest, net of capitalized interest expense, from long-term debt and customer financing arrangements. Gain on investments, net, primarily includes gains from the sale of investments in public and privately-held companies, and any observable changes in fair value and impairment charges recorded on these investments. Other typically consists of foreign exchange gains and losses and other non-operational income and expense items.
Total other expense, net, decreased primarily due to lower interest expense related to our debt portfolio, partially offset by lower interest income related to our fixed income investment portfolio, as a result of lower yields from a lower average portfolio balance.
Income Tax Provision
The following table presents the income tax provision (benefit) (in millions, except percentages):
The effective tax rate for fiscal year 2021 was higher than fiscal year 2020, primarily due to the net difference in discrete items in fiscal year 2021 compared to fiscal year 2020 and a change in the geographic mix of earnings. For a complete reconciliation of our effective tax rate to the U.S. federal statutory rate of 21% and further explanation of our income tax provision, see Note 13, Income Taxes, in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report.
As a result of the Tax Act, beginning January 1, 2022, all U.S. and non-U.S. based R&D expenditures must be capitalized and amortized over five and fifteen years, respectively. Absent a change in legislation, cash taxes are expected to increase significantly for several years and the Company’s effective tax rate may be adversely impacted.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Liquidity and capital resources may be impacted by our operating activities as well as acquisitions, investments in strategic relationships, repurchases of shares of our common stock, and payment of cash dividends on our common stock. Since the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ("Tax Act"), we have repatriated a significant amount of cash from outside of the U.S., and plan to continue to repatriate on an ongoing basis. We intend to use the repatriated cash to invest in the business, support value-enhancing merger and acquisitions, or M&A, and fund our return of capital to stockholders.
Based on past performance and current expectations, we believe that our existing cash and cash equivalents, short-term, and long-term investments, cash generated from operations together with the revolving credit facility and our ability to access to capital markets will be sufficient to fund our operations; planned stock repurchases and dividends; capital expenditures; purchase commitments and other liquidity requirements; and anticipated growth for at least the next twelve months. However, our future liquidity and capital requirements may vary materially from those now planned depending on many factors, including, but not limited to, our growth rate; the timing and amount we spend to support development efforts; the expansion of sales and marketing activities; the introduction of new and enhanced products and services; the costs to acquire or invest in businesses and technologies; an increase in manufacturing or component costs; and the risks and uncertainties detailed in the “Risk Factors” section of Item 1A of Part I of this Report.
The Company's material cash requirements include the following contractual and other obligations.
Debt
As of December 31, 2021, we had outstanding fixed-rate senior notes with varying maturities for an aggregate principal amount of $1,700.0 million (collectively the "Notes"), none of which is payable within 12 months. Future interest payments associated with the Notes total $705.3 million, with $55.4 million payable within 12 months.
Purchase Commitments with Contract Manufacturers and Suppliers
In order to reduce manufacturing lead times and in the interest of having access to adequate component supply, we enter into agreements with contract manufacturers and certain suppliers to procure inventory based on the Company's requirements. A significant portion of the Company's purchase commitments arising from these agreements consists of firm and non-cancelable commitments. As of December 31, 2021, we had purchase commitments of $2,632.2 million, with $2,094.3 million payable within 12 months.
Tax
Our transition tax liability represents future cash payments on accumulated foreign earnings of subsidiaries as a result of the Tax Act. The Company has elected to pay its transition tax, net of applicable tax refunds, over the eight-year period provided in the Tax Act. As of December 31, 2021, the balance of our transition tax obligation was $250.6 million, with none payable within 12 months.
As of December 31, 2021, the Company had $79.9 million included in long-term income taxes payable on the Consolidated Balance Sheets for unrecognized tax positions. At this time, the Company is unable to make a reasonably reliable estimate of the timing of payments related to this amount due to uncertainties in the timing of tax audit outcomes.
As a result of the Tax Act, beginning January 1, 2022, all U.S. and non-U.S. based R&D expenditures must be capitalized and amortized over five and fifteen years, respectively. Absent a change in legislation, cash taxes are expected to increase significantly for the next several years.
Leases
The Company leases its facilities and certain equipment under non-cancelable operating leases that have remaining lease terms of 1 to 10 years and 1 to 4 years, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, we had fixed lease payment obligations of $203.6 million, with $48.7 million payable within 12 months.
Unconditional Purchase Obligations
Unconditional purchase obligations consist of agreements that include firm and non-cancelable terms to transfer funds in the future for fixed or minimum amounts or quantities to be purchased at fixed or minimum prices. As of December 31, 2021, we had unconditional purchase obligations of $129.3 million, with $61.0 million payable within 12 months. See Note 15, Commitments and Contingencies, in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report for further discussion of our unconditional purchase obligations.
Guarantees
We have financial guarantees consisting of guarantees of product and service performance and standby letters of credit for certain lease facilities, insurance programs, and customs of $2.4 million as of December 31, 2021.
In addition to our cash requirements, we have a capital return program authorized by the Board of Directors (the "Board"). In January 2018, the Board, approved a $2.0 billion share repurchase program, which we refer to as the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program. In October 2019, the Board authorized a $1.0 billion increase to the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program for a total of $3.0 billion.
During the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, we repurchased 15.7 million shares of our common stock in the open market at an average price of $27.56 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $433.3 million, under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program. As of December 31, 2021, there was $0.9 billion of authorized funds remaining under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program.
Future share repurchases under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program will be subject to a review of the circumstances at that time and will be made from time to time in private transactions or open market purchases as permitted by securities laws and other legal requirements. Our 2018 Stock Repurchase Program may be discontinued at any time. See Note 10, Equity, in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report for further discussion of our share purchase program.
In addition, any future dividends, and the establishment of record and payment dates, are subject to approval by the Board or an authorized committee thereof. See Note 16, Subsequent Events, in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Report for discussion of our dividend declaration subsequent to December 31, 2021.

ITEM 7A - QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK
ITEM 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk
Interest Rate Risk
Interest Income Risk - Available-for-Sale Fixed Income Securities
The primary objectives of our investment activities are, in order of priority, to preserve principal, maintain liquidity, and maximize yield. The value of our investments is subject to market price volatility. To minimize this risk, we maintain an investment portfolio of various holdings, types, and maturities, which includes asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities, certificates of deposit, commercial paper, corporate debt securities, foreign government debt securities, time deposits, U.S. government agency securities, and U.S. government securities. At any time, a rise in interest rates could have a material adverse impact on the fair value of our investment portfolio. Conversely, a decline in interest rates could have a material impact on interest income from our investment portfolio. We do not currently hedge these interest rate exposures.
The following tables present hypothetical changes in fair value of our available-for-sale fixed income securities held as of December 31, 2021 and 2020 that are sensitive to changes in interest rates assuming immediate parallel shifts in the yield curve of 50 basis points, or BPS, 100 BPS and 150 BPS, which are representative of the historical movements in the Federal Funds Rate (in millions):
Interest rate swaps
The Company uses interest rate swaps to convert certain of our fixed interest rate notes to floating interest rates based on the London InterBank Offered Rate (LIBOR), resulting in a net increase or decrease in interest expense. These swaps hedge against the interest rate risk exposures of the designated debt issuances. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, the aggregate notional amount of the interest rate swaps was $600.0 million and $300.0 million, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, the fair value of the interest rate swaps resulted in an asset of $2.1 million and a liability of $2.5 million. As of December 31, 2020, the aggregate fair value of the interest rate swaps resulted in an asset of $20.3 million. A hypothetical 10% change in the interest rates as of December 31, 2021 would not have had a material impact to our operating results or the fair value of the interest rate swaps.
Interest Rate Locks
The Company uses interest rate locks, which hedge the impact of changes in the benchmark interest rate to future interest payments and will be terminated upon closing of our future debt issuance. We record changes in the fair value of these cash flow hedges of interest rate risk in accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) until the anticipated refinancing. Upon refinancing of our debt and termination of the derivative instruments, the fair value of these interest rate locks will be amortized over the term of our new debt to interest expense. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, the aggregate notional amount of the interest rate locks was $650.0 million. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, the fair value of these contracts resulted in an asset of $45.0 million and $30.7 million, respectively. A hypothetical 10% change in the interest rates as of December 31, 2021 would not have had a material impact to the fair value of the interest rate locks.
Foreign Currency Risk and Foreign Exchange Forward Contracts
Periodically, we use derivatives to hedge against fluctuations in foreign exchange rates. We do not enter into derivatives for speculative or trading purposes.
We use foreign currency forward contracts to mitigate variability in gains and losses generated from the re-measurement of certain monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies. These foreign exchange forward contracts typically have maturities of approximately one to four months.
Our sales and costs of product revenues are primarily denominated in U.S. Dollars. Our cost of service revenue and operating expenses are denominated in U.S. Dollars as well as other foreign currencies, including the British Pound, Chinese Yuan, Euro, and the Indian Rupee. Approximately 81% of such costs and operating expenses are denominated in U.S. Dollars. Periodically, we use foreign currency forward and/or option contracts to hedge certain forecasted foreign currency transactions to reduce variability in cost of service revenue and operating expenses caused by non-U.S. Dollar denominated operating expense and costs. In designing a specific hedging approach, we consider several factors, including offsetting exposures, significance of exposures, costs associated with entering into a particular hedge instrument, and potential effectiveness of the hedge. These derivatives are designated as cash flow hedges and have maturities of thirty-six months or less. The change in operating expenses including cost of service revenue, research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses, due to foreign currency fluctuations was a reduction to operating expenses of $10.7 million, or 0.2% and of $11.6 million, or 0.3% for years ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively. See Note 5, Derivative Instruments, in Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in

ITEM 8 - FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DATA
ITEM 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data
Juniper Network, Inc.
Index to Consolidated Financial Statements
Page
Reports of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm (PCAOB ID: 42)
Management's Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
Consolidated Statements of Operations
Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income
Consolidated Balance Sheets
Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows
Consolidated Statements of Changes in Stockholders' Equity
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
Note 1. Description of Business, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies
Note 2. Business Combinations
Note 3. Cash Equivalents and Investments
Note 4. Fair Value Measurements
Note 5. Derivative Instruments
Note 6. Goodwill and Purchased Intangible Assets
Note 7. Other Financial Information
Note 8. Restructuring Charges
Note 9. Debt and Financing
Note 10. Equity
Note 11. Employee Benefit Plans
Note 12. Segments
Note 13. Income Taxes
Note 14. Net Income per Share
Note 15. Commitments and Contingencies
Note 16. Subsequent Events
Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
To the Stockholders and the Board of Directors of Juniper Networks, Inc.
Opinion on the Financial Statements
We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Juniper Networks, Inc. (the Company) as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, the related consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive income, changes in stockholders' equity and cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2021, and the related notes and the financial statement schedule listed in the Index at Item 15(a)2 (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company at December 31, 2021 and 2020, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2021, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB), the Company’s internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021, based on criteria established in Internal Control-Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (2013 framework) and our report dated February 11, 2022 expressed an unqualified opinion thereon.
Basis for Opinion
These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.
We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.
Critical Audit Matter
The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective or complex judgments. The communication of this critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.
Identification of distinct performance obligations in revenue contracts
Description of the matter As described in Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company’s contracts with customers sometimes contain multiple performance obligations, which are accounted for separately if they are distinct. In such cases, the transaction price is then allocated to the distinct performance obligations on a relative standalone selling price basis and revenue is recognized when control of the distinct performance obligation is transferred. For example, product revenue is recognized at the time of hardware shipment or delivery of software license, and support revenue is recognized over time as the services are performed.
Auditing the Company’s revenue recognition was challenging, specifically related to the effort required to identify and determine the distinct performance obligations and the associated timing of revenue recognition. For example, there were nonstandard terms and conditions that required judgment to determine the distinct performance obligations and the impact on the timing of revenue recognition.
How we addressed the matter in our audit We obtained an understanding, evaluated the design and tested the operating effectiveness of controls over the Company’s revenue recognition process, including controls to identify and determine the distinct performance obligations and the timing of revenue recognition.
Among the procedures we performed to test the identification and determination of the distinct performance obligations and the timing of revenue recognition, we read the executed contract and purchase order to understand the contract, identified the performance obligation(s), determined the distinct performance obligations, and evaluated the timing and amount of revenue recognized for a sample of individual sales transactions. We evaluated the accuracy of the Company’s contract summary documentation, specifically related to the identification and determination of distinct performance obligations and the timing of revenue recognition.
/s/ Ernst & Young LLP
We have served as the Company’s auditor since 1996.
San Jose, California
February 11, 2022
Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
To the Stockholders and the Board of Directors of Juniper Networks, Inc.
Opinion on Internal Control over Financial Reporting
We have audited Juniper Networks, Inc.'s internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021, based on criteria established in Internal Control-Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (2013 framework) (the COSO criteria). In our opinion, Juniper Networks, Inc. (the Company) maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021, based on the COSO criteria.
As indicated in the accompanying Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting, management’s assessment of and conclusion on the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting did not include the internal controls of Apstra, Inc. and WiteSand Systems Inc., which are included in the 2021 consolidated financial statements of the Company and constituted less than 2.0% of total assets and less than 4.0% of net assets, respectively as of December 31, 2021 and less than 1.0% of net revenues and less than 1.0% of net income for the year then ended. Our audit of internal control over financial reporting of the Company also did not include an evaluation of the internal control over financial reporting of Apstra, Inc. and WiteSand Systems Inc.
We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB), the consolidated balance sheets of the Company as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, and the related consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive income, changes in stockholders' equity and cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2021, and the related notes and the financial statement schedule listed in the Index at Item 15(a)2 and our report dated February 11, 2022, expressed an unqualified opinion thereon.
Basis for Opinion
The Company’s management is responsible for maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting and for its assessment of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting included in the accompanying Management's Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company's internal control over financial reporting based on our audit. We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.
We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether effective internal control over financial reporting was maintained in all material respects.
Our audit included obtaining an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, assessing the risk that a material weakness exists, testing and evaluating the design and operating effectiveness of internal control based on the assessed risk, and performing such other procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.
Definition and Limitations of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
A company's internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A company's internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the company; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the company; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of the company's assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.
Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.
/s/ Ernst & Young LLP
San Jose, California
February 11, 2022
Management's Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
The management of Juniper Networks, Inc. (the “Company”) is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting for the Company. The Company's internal control over financial reporting is a process designed under the supervision of the Company's principal executive and principal financial officers to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of the Company's financial statements for external purposes in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
The Company's internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that: (i) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the Company; (ii) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the Company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the Company; and (iii) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of the Company's assets that could have a material effect on the Consolidated Financial Statements.
Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.
Management assessed the effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021, based on the framework set forth by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission in Internal Control - Integrated Framework as published in 2013. Management has excluded from its assessment, the internal control over financial reporting of Apstra, Inc. and WiteSand Systems Inc., which are included in the December 31, 2021 Consolidated Financial Statements, and constituted less than 2.0% of total assets and less than 4.0% of net assets, respectively as of December 31, 2021, and less than 1.0% of net revenues and less than 1.0% of net income for the year then ended. Based on that assessment, management concluded that, as of December 31, 2021, the Company's internal control over financial reporting was effective.
The effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021 has been audited by Ernst & Young LLP, the independent registered public accounting firm that audits the Company's Consolidated Financial Statements, as stated in their report preceding this report, which expresses an unqualified opinion on the effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Consolidated Statements of Operations
(In millions, except per share amounts)
See accompanying Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income
(In millions)
See accompanying Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Consolidated Balance Sheets
(In millions, except par values)
_______________________
(*): The prior period amount has been reclassified to conform to the current period presentation. Previously, Inventory was reported as Prepaid expenses and other current assets.
See accompanying Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows
(In millions)
See accompanying Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Consolidated Statements of Changes in Stockholders' Equity
(In millions, except per share amounts)
See accompanying Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
Note 1. Description of Business, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies
Description of Business
Juniper Networks, Inc. (the “Company” or “Juniper”) designs, develops, and sells products and services for high-performance networks, to enable customers to build scalable, reliable, secure and cost-effective networks for their businesses, while achieving agility and improved operating efficiency through automation. Juniper challenges the inherent complexity that comes with networking in the multicloud era. Juniper does this with products, solutions and services that transform the way people connect, work and live. Juniper simplifies the process of transitioning to a secure and automated multicloud environment to enable secure, AI-driven networks that connect the world.
Basis of Presentation
The Consolidated Financial Statements, which include the Company and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, are prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (“U.S. GAAP”). All intercompany balances and transactions have been eliminated. Certain reclassifications have been made to the amounts for the prior year in order to conform to the current year's presentation.
Use of Estimates
The preparation of the financial statements and related disclosures in accordance with U.S. GAAP requires the Company to make judgments, assumptions, and estimates that affect the amounts reported in the Consolidated Financial Statements and the accompanying notes. The Company bases its estimates and assumptions on current facts, historical experience, and various other factors that it believes are reasonable under the circumstances, to determine the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. Actual results could differ from these estimates.
Cash, Cash Equivalents, and Investments
Cash and Cash Equivalents
Cash and cash equivalents consist of cash on hand, demand deposits with banks, highly liquid investments in money market funds, commercial paper, government securities, certificates of deposits, time deposits, and corporate debt securities, which are readily convertible into cash. All highly liquid investments with original maturities of three months or less from Juniper's purchase date are classified as cash equivalents.
Investments in Available-for-Sale Debt Securities
The Company's investments in debt securities are classified as available-for-sale and include the Company's fixed income securities and investments in privately-held companies, consisting of debt and redeemable preferred stock securities.
Fixed income securities primarily consist of corporate debt securities, U.S. treasury securities, time deposits, asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities, certificate of deposits, commercial paper, U.S. government agency securities, and foreign government debt securities. Fixed income securities are initially recorded at cost and periodically adjusted to fair value in the Consolidated Balance Sheets. The Company periodically evaluates these investments to determine if impairment charges are required. The Company determines whether a credit loss exists for available-for-sale debt securities in an unrealized loss position. When the fair value of a security is below its amortized cost, the amortized cost will be reduced to its fair value and the resulting loss will be recorded in Consolidated Statements of Operations, if it is more likely than not that we are required to sell the impaired security before recovery of its amortized cost basis, or we have the intention to sell the security. If neither of these conditions are met, the Company considers the extent to which the fair value is less than the amortized cost, any changes to the rating of the security by a rating agency, and review of the issuer's financial statements. If factors indicate a credit loss exists, an allowance for credit loss is recorded through other expense, net, limited by the amount that the fair value is less than the amortized cost basis.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
The Company's privately-held debt and redeemable preferred stock securities are included in other long-term assets in the Consolidated Balance Sheets and are recorded at fair value. Fair value is reassessed when the Company is made aware of information indicating a change in the enterprise value of the investee, including known acquisition offers, subsequent funding rounds, and investee's plans for liquidation. The Company periodically evaluates these securities for indicators of impairment, including the inability to recover a portion of or the entire carrying amount of the investment, the inability of the investee to sustain earnings, the reduction in or termination of financial commitment to the investee from other investors, the intention to sell the investment, and whether it is more likely than not that the Company will be required to sell the investment before recovery of the entire amortized cost basis. If the Company determines that the decline in an investment's value indicates credit losses, the difference is recognized as an impairment loss in its Consolidated Statements of Operations.
For all available-for-sale debt securities, unrealized gains and the amount of unrealized loss relating to factors other than credit loss are reported as a separate component of accumulated other comprehensive loss in the Consolidated Balance Sheets. Realized gains and losses are determined based on the specific identification method and are reported in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Investments in Equity Securities
The Company's investments in equity securities with readily determinable fair values consist of money market funds, amounts under the non-qualified compensation plan ("NQDC") that are invested in mutual funds, and investments in public companies. These investments are measured at fair value with changes in fair value recognized in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Equity securities without readily determinable fair values include the Company's investments in privately-held companies consisting of non-redeemable preferred stock and common stock securities. The Company accounts for these securities at cost, adjusted for changes from observable transactions for identical or similar investments of the same issuer, less impairments. Fair value of these equity securities is reassessed when the Company identifies observable price changes indicating that an adjustment upward or downward to the carrying value is necessary. Any observable changes in fair value are recognized in earnings as of the date that the observable transaction took place, rather than the current reporting date. In addition, the Company periodically evaluates equity securities without readily determinable fair values to determine if impairment charges are required by evaluating whether an event or change in circumstance has occurred that may have a significant adverse effect on the fair value of the investment. A qualitative assessment is performed each reporting period to assess whether there are any impairment indicators, including, but not limited to, significant deterioration in the investee's earnings performance; credit rating; asset quality or business prospects; adverse change in the regulatory, economic, or technological environment; change in the general market condition of the geographic area or industry; acquisition offers; and the ability to continue as a going concern. If such indicators are present, the Company estimates the fair value of impaired investments and recognizes an impairment loss in the Consolidated Statement of Operations equal to the difference between the carrying value and fair value.
Fair Value
Fair value is defined as the price that would be received upon sale of an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date. When determining fair value, the Company considers the principal or most advantageous market in which it transacts, and considers assumptions that market participants would use when pricing the asset or liability. The Company applies the following fair value hierarchy, which prioritizes the inputs used to measure fair value into three levels and bases the categorization within the hierarchy upon the lowest level of input that is available and significant to the fair value measurement:
Level 1 - Quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities.
Level 2 - Quoted prices for similar assets and liabilities in active markets or inputs that are observable for the asset or liability, either directly or indirectly through market corroboration, for substantially the full term of the financial instrument. These inputs are valued using market-based approaches.
Level 3 - Inputs are unobservable inputs based on the Company’s assumptions. These inputs, if any, are valued using internal financial models.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Derivative Instruments
The Company uses derivative instruments, primarily foreign currency forward and interest rate contracts, to hedge certain foreign currency and interest rate exposures. The Company does not enter into derivatives for speculative or trading purposes.
The Company uses foreign currency forward contracts to hedge certain forecasted foreign currency transactions relating to operating expenses. These derivatives are designated as cash flow hedges, which are carried at fair value with the derivative's gain or loss initially reported as a component of accumulated other comprehensive loss, and upon occurrence of the forecasted transaction, is subsequently reclassified into the costs of services or operating expense line item to which the hedged transaction relates. Cash flows from such hedges are classified as operating activities.
The Company also uses foreign currency forward contracts to mitigate variability in gains and losses generated from the re-measurement of certain monetary assets and liabilities denominated in non-functional currencies. These derivatives are carried at fair value with changes recorded in other expense, net in the Consolidated Statements of Operations in the same period as the changes in the fair value from the re-measurement of the underlying assets and liabilities. Cash flows from such derivatives are classified as operating activities.
The Company uses interest rate swaps to convert certain of our fixed interest rate notes to floating interest rates based on the London InterBank Offered Rate (LIBOR). All interest rate swaps will expire within nine years. The change in fair value of the derivative instrument substantially offsets the change in the fair value of the hedged item. These derivatives are classified in the Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows in the same section as the underlying item.
The Company uses interest rate locks, which fix the benchmark interest rates of future debt issuance. The Company records changes in fair value of interest rate locks in accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) in the consolidated balance sheets, in the period of change. When the forecasted transaction occurs, the Company will start to amortize the accumulated gains or losses included as a component of other comprehensive income (loss) related to the interest rate lock cash flow hedges to interest expense. In the event the underlying forecasted transaction does not occur, or it becomes probable that it will not occur, the gains or losses on the related cash flow hedge from accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) will be reclassified to other income and expense within the income statement.
The Company presents its derivative assets and derivative liabilities on a gross basis in the Consolidated Balance Sheets. However, under agreements containing provisions on set-off with certain counterparties, subject to applicable requirements, the Company is allowed to net-settle transactions, with a single net amount payable by one party to the other. The Company is neither required to pledge nor entitled to receive cash collateral related to these derivative transactions.
Inventory
Inventory consists primarily of component parts to be used in the manufacturing process and finished goods, and is stated at the lower of cost or net realizable value. In addition, the Company purchases and holds inventory to provide adequate component supplies over the life of the underlying products. Cost is computed using standard cost, which approximates actual cost, on a first-in, first-out basis. A charge is recorded to cost of product when inventory is determined to be in excess of anticipated demand or considered obsolete. At the point of loss recognition, a new, lower-cost basis for that inventory is established, and subsequent changes in facts and circumstances do not result in the restoration or increase in the newly established cost basis.
Leases
The Company determines if an arrangement is a lease at inception. The Company evaluates classification of leases as either operating or finance at commencement and, as necessary, at modification. As of December 31, 2021, the Company did not have any finance leases. Operating leases are included in operating lease right-of-use ("ROU") assets, other accrued liabilities, and operating lease liabilities on the Company's Consolidated Balance Sheets. ROU assets represent the Company's right to use an underlying asset for the lease term and lease liabilities represent its obligation to make lease payments arising from the lease.
Operating lease ROU assets and liabilities are recognized on the commencement date based on the present value of lease payments over the lease term. As most of our leases do not provide an implicit rate, we use our incremental borrowing rate based on the information available at commencement date in determining the present value of lease payments. The operating lease ROU asset also includes any lease payments made prior to lease commencement and excludes lease incentives. Variable lease payments not dependent on an index or a rate, are expensed as incurred and are not included within the ROU asset and
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
lease liability calculation. Variable lease payments primarily include reimbursements of costs incurred by lessors for common area maintenance and utilities. The Company's lease terms are the noncancelable period, including any rent-free periods provided by the lessor, and include options to extend or terminate the lease when it is reasonably certain that it will exercise that option. At lease inception, and in subsequent periods as necessary, the Company estimates the lease term based on its assessment of extension and termination options that are reasonably certain to be exercised. Lease costs are recognized on a straight-line basis over the lease term.
The Company does not separate non-lease components from lease components for all underlying classes of assets. In addition, the Company does not recognize ROU assets and lease liabilities for short-term leases, which have a lease term of twelve months or less and do not include an option to purchase the underlying asset that the Company is reasonably certain to exercise. Lease cost for short-term leases is recognized on a straight-line basis over the lease term.
Property and Equipment
Property and equipment are recorded at cost less accumulated depreciation. Depreciation is calculated using the straight-line method, over the estimated useful lives of the following assets:
Land is not depreciated. Construction-in-process is related to the construction or development of property and equipment that have not yet been placed in service for their intended use.
Business Combinations
The purchase price of an acquired entity is allocated to tangible assets, liabilities, and intangible assets, including in-process research and development (IPR&D) based on their estimated fair values with the residual of the purchase price recorded as goodwill. The determination of the value of the intangible assets acquired involves certain estimates, such as expected future cash flows, which include consideration of future growth rates and margins, attrition rates, future changes in technology, discount rates, and the expected use of the acquired assets. These factors are also considered in determining the useful life of the acquired intangible assets. IPR&D is initially capitalized at fair value as an intangible asset with an indefinite life and assessed for impairment thereafter. When an IPR&D project is completed, the IPR&D is reclassed as an amortizable purchased intangible asset and amortized over the asset’s estimated useful life. Acquisition related expenses are recognized separately from business combination and are expensed as incurred. The Company's Consolidated Financial Statements include the operating results of acquired businesses from the date of each acquisition.
Goodwill and Intangible Assets
Goodwill is tested for impairment annually on November 1 or more frequently if certain circumstances indicate the carrying value of goodwill is impaired. Goodwill is tested for impairment at the reporting unit level. A qualitative assessment is first performed to determine whether it is necessary to quantitatively test goodwill for impairment. This initial assessment includes, among others, consideration of macroeconomic conditions and financial performance. If the qualitative assessment indicates that it is more likely than not that an impairment exists, a quantitative analysis is performed by determining the fair value of the reporting unit using a combination of the discounted cash flow and the market approaches. Goodwill is considered impaired if the carrying value of the reporting unit exceeds its fair value. A goodwill impairment loss is recognized for the amount that the carrying amount of the reporting unit, including goodwill, exceeds its fair value, limited to the total amount of goodwill allocated to that reporting unit.
Intangible assets consist of existing technology, customer relationships, and trade name, which are amortized over the period of estimated benefit using the straight-line method and estimated useful lives of 4 or 5 years. Other intangible assets acquired in a business combination related to IPR&D projects are considered to be indefinite-lived until the completion or abandonment of the associated research and development efforts. Indefinite-lived intangibles are not amortized into the results of operations but instead are evaluated for impairment. If and when development is complete, the associated assets would be deemed finite-lived
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
and would be amortized as cost of revenues over their respective estimated useful lives at that point in time. If the research and development project is abandoned, the acquired IPR&D assets are written off and charged to expense in the period of abandonment.
Impairment of Long-lived Assets
Long-lived assets, such as property, plant, and equipment, ROU assets, and purchased intangible assets subject to amortization, are reviewed for impairment whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying amount of an asset may not be recoverable. Recoverability of assets to be held and used is measured by a comparison of the carrying amount of an asset, or asset group, to estimated undiscounted future cash flows expected to be generated by the asset, or asset group. An impairment charge is recognized by the amount by which the carrying amount of the asset, or asset group, exceeds its fair value.
Warranty Reserves
The Company generally offers a one-year warranty or limited life-time warranty on most of its hardware products, and a 90-day warranty on the media that contains the software embedded in the products. Warranty costs are recognized as part of the Company's cost of sales based on associated material costs, logistics costs, labor costs, and overhead at the time revenue is recognized. Material costs are estimated primarily based upon the historical costs to repair or replace product returns within the warranty period. Labor, logistics and overhead costs are estimated primarily based upon historical trends in the cost to support customer cases within the warranty period. Warranty reserve is reported within other accrued liabilities in the Consolidated Balance Sheets.
Contract Manufacturer Liabilities
The Company establishes a liability for non-cancelable, non-returnable purchase commitments with its contract manufacturers for carrying charges, quantities in excess of its demand forecasts, or obsolete material charges for components purchased by the contract manufacturers to meet the Company’s demand forecast or customer orders. The demand forecasts are based upon historical trends and analysis from the Company's sales and marketing organizations, adjusted for overall market conditions.
Loss Contingencies
The Company is subject to the possibility of various loss contingencies arising in the ordinary course of business. Management considers the likelihood of loss related to the incurrence of a liability as well as its ability to reasonably estimate the amount of loss, in determining loss contingencies. An estimated loss contingency is accrued when it is probable that a liability has been incurred and the amount of loss can be reasonably estimated. The Company regularly evaluates current information available to determine whether such accruals should be adjusted and whether new accruals are required.
Foreign Currency
Assets and liabilities of foreign operations with non-U.S. Dollar functional currency are translated to U.S. Dollars using exchange rates in effect at the end of the period. Revenue and expenses are translated to U.S. Dollars using rates that approximate those in effect during the period. The resulting translation adjustments are included in the Company’s Consolidated Balance Sheets in the stockholders’ equity section as a component of accumulated other comprehensive loss. The Company remeasures monetary assets and monetary liabilities in non-functional currencies and records the resulting foreign exchange transaction gains and losses in other expense, net in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Revenue Recognition
Revenue is recognized when promised goods or services are transferred to customers in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the Company expects to be entitled in exchange for those goods or services by following a five-step process, (1) identify the contract with a customer, (2) identify the performance obligations in the contract, (3) determine the transaction price, (4) allocate the transaction price, and (5) recognize revenue when or as the Company satisfies a performance obligation, as further described below.
Identify the contract with a customer. The Company generally considers a sales contract and/or agreement with an approved purchase order as a customer contract provided that collection is considered probable, which is assessed based on the creditworthiness of the customer as determined by credit checks, payment histories, and/or other circumstances. The Company combines contracts with a customer if contracts are negotiated with a single commercial substance or contain price dependencies.
Identify the performance obligations in the contract. Product performance obligations include hardware, software licenses, and service performance obligations including hardware maintenance, software post-contract support and maintenance, Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS"), education and training, and professional services. Certain software licenses and related post-contract support are combined into a single performance obligation when the maintenance updates are critical to the continued delivery of the software functionality.
Determine the transaction price. The transaction price for the Company’s contracts with its customers consists of both fixed and variable consideration provided it is probable that a significant reversal of revenue will not occur when the uncertainty related to variable consideration is resolved. Fixed consideration includes amounts to be contractually billed to the customer while variable consideration includes estimates for rights of return, rebates, and price protection, which are based on historical sales returns and price protection credits, specific criteria outlined in rebate agreements, and other factors known at the time. The Company generally invoices customers for hardware, software licenses and related maintenance arrangements at time of delivery, and professional services either upfront or upon meeting certain milestones. Customer invoices are generally due within 30 to 90 days after issuance. The Company’s contracts with customers typically do not include significant financing components as the period between the transfer of performance obligations and timing of payment are generally within one year.
Allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract. For contracts that contain multiple performance obligations, the Company allocates the transaction price to the performance obligations on a relative stand-alone selling price ("SSP") basis. SSP is based on multiple factors including, but not limited to historical discounting trends for products and services, pricing practices in different geographies and through different sales channels, gross margin objectives, internal costs, competitor pricing strategies, and industry technology lifecycles.
Recognize revenue when or as the Company satisfies a performance obligation. Revenue for hardware and certain software licenses, are recognized at a point in time, which is generally upon shipment or delivery. Certain software licenses combined with post-contract support and maintenance are recognized over time on a ratable basis over the term of the license. Revenue for maintenance, software post-contract support and maintenance, and SaaS is recognized over time on a ratable basis over the contract term. Revenue from education, training, and professional services is recognized over time as services are completed or ratably over the contractual period of generally one year or less.
Deferred product revenue represents unrecognized revenue related to undelivered product commitments and other shipments that have not met revenue recognition criteria. Deferred service revenue represents billed amounts for service contracts, which include technical support, hardware and software maintenance, professional services, SaaS, and education and training, for which services have not been rendered.
Revenue is recognized net of any taxes collected, which are subsequently remitted to governmental authorities.
Deferred Commissions
Sales commissions earned by the Company’s sales force are considered incremental and recoverable costs of obtaining a contract with a customer. These costs are recorded as prepaid expenses or other long-term assets and are deferred and then amortized over a period of benefit which is typically over the term of the customer contracts. Amortization expense is included in sales and marketing expenses in the accompanying Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Research and Development
Costs to research, design, and develop the Company's products are expensed as incurred.
Software Development Costs
Capitalization of software development costs for software to be sold, leased, or otherwise marketed begins when a product's technological feasibility has been established and ends when a product is available for general release to customers. Generally, the Company's products are released soon after technological feasibility has been established. As a result, costs incurred between achieving technological feasibility and product general availability have not been significant.
The Company capitalizes costs associated with internal-use software systems during the application development stage. Such capitalized costs include external direct costs incurred in developing or obtaining the applications and payroll and payroll-related costs for employees, who are directly associated with the development of the applications.
Advertising
Advertising costs are charged to sales and marketing expense as incurred. Advertising expense was $26.6 million, $21.7 million, and $14.6 million, for 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively.
Share-Based Compensation
The Company measures and recognizes compensation cost for all share-based awards made to employees and directors, including employee stock options, restricted stock awards ("RSAs"), restricted stock units ("RSUs"), performance share awards ("PSAs") and employee stock purchases related to the Employee Stock Purchase Plan ("ESPP"). For service condition only awards, share-based compensation expense is based on the fair value of the underlying awards and amortized on a straight-line basis. For PSAs, share-based compensation expense is amortized on a straight-line basis for each separate vesting portion of the awards. The Company accounts for forfeitures as they occur.
The Company utilizes the Black-Scholes-Merton (“BSM”) option-pricing model to estimate the fair value of its ESPP purchase rights. The BSM model requires various highly subjective assumptions that represent management's best estimates of volatility, risk-free interest rate, expected life, and dividend yield. The Company estimates expected volatility based on the implied volatility of market-traded options, on the Company's common stock, adjusted for other relevant factors including historical volatility of the Company’s common stock over the most recent period commensurate with the estimated expected life of the Company’s ESPP. The expected life of ESPP purchase rights approximates the offering period.
The Company determines the grant date fair value of its RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs based on the closing market price of the Company’s common stock on the date of grant, adjusted by the present value of the dividends expected to be paid on the underlying shares of common stock during the requisite and derived service period as these awards are not entitled to receive dividends until vested.
For market-based RSUs, the Company estimates the fair value and derived service period using the Monte Carlo simulation option pricing model ("Monte Carlo model"). The determination of the grant date fair value and derived service periods using the Monte Carlo model is affected by the Company's stock price, comparative market-based returns, as well as various highly subjective assumptions that represent management's best estimates of volatility, risk-free interest rate, and dividend yield. The Company estimates expected volatility based on the implied volatility of market-traded options, on the Company's common stock, adjusted for other relevant factors, including historical volatility of the Company’s common stock over the contractual life of the Company's market-based RSUs.
Provision for Income Taxes
Deferred tax assets and liabilities are recognized for the expected tax consequences of temporary differences between the tax basis of assets and liabilities and their reported amounts. Valuation allowances are recorded to reduce deferred tax assets to the amount that will more likely than not be realized.
The Company accounts for uncertainty in income taxes using a two-step approach to recognize and measure uncertain tax positions. The first step is to evaluate the tax position for recognition by determining if the weight of available evidence
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
indicates that it is more likely than not that the position will be sustained on audit, including resolution of related appeals or litigation processes, if any. The second step is to measure the tax benefit as the largest amount that is more than 50% likely of being realized upon settlement. The Company classifies the liability for unrecognized tax benefits as current to the extent that the Company anticipates payment (or receipt) of cash within one year. Interest and penalties related to uncertain tax positions are recognized in the provision for income taxes. The Company accounts for the current impacts of U.S. tax on certain foreign subsidiaries income, which is referred to as Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income in the year earned.
Concentrations of Risk
Financial instruments that subject the Company to concentrations of credit risk consist primarily of cash and cash equivalents, investments, derivatives, and accounts receivable. The Company invests only in high-quality credit instruments and maintains its cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale investments in fixed income securities with several high-quality institutions. Deposits held with banks, including those held in foreign branches of global banks, may exceed the amount of insurance provided on such deposits. We mitigate the concentration of credit risk in our investment portfolio through diversification of the investments in various industries and asset classes, and limits to the amount of credit exposure to any single issuer and credit rating.
The Company’s derivatives expose it to credit risk to the extent that counterparties may be unable to meet the terms of the agreement. The Company has a risk assessment and mitigation framework to evaluate the potential risk of loss with any one counterparty resulting from this type of credit risk. As part of this risk mitigation framework, the Company transacts with major financial institutions with high credit ratings and also enters into master netting agreements, which permit net settlement of the transactions with the same counterparty. The Company performs periodic evaluations of the relative credit standing of these financial institutions. Therefore, the Company does not expect material losses as a result of defaults by counterparties.
Generally, credit risk with respect to accounts receivable is diversified due to the number of entities comprising the Company's customer base and their dispersion across different geographic locations throughout the world. The Company performs ongoing credit evaluations of its customers and generally does not require collateral on accounts receivable. During the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, no single customer accounted for 10% or more of net revenues.
The Company relies on sole suppliers for certain critical components such as application-specific integrated circuits. Additionally, the Company relies primarily on a limited number of significant independent contract manufacturers and original design manufacturers for the production of its products. The inability of any supplier or manufacturer to fulfill supply requirements of the Company could negatively impact future operating results.
Recently Adopted Accounting Standards
Simplifying the Accounting for Income Taxes: On January 1, 2021, the Company adopted ASU No. 2019-12 (Topic 740) Income Taxes - Simplifying the Accounting for Income Taxes, which enhances and simplifies various aspects related to accounting for income taxes. Upon adoption, the standard did not have a material impact on the Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements.
Recent Accounting Standards Not Yet Adopted
Reference Rate Reform: In March 2020, the FASB issued ASU No. 2020-04 (Topic 848), Reference Rate Reform, which provides temporary optional expedients and exceptions to the existing guidance on contract modifications and hedge accounting to ease the financial reporting burdens related to the expected market transition from the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and other interbank offered rates to alternative reference rates. The amendments were effective upon issuance and may be applied through December 31, 2022, to any new or amended contracts, hedging relationships, and other transactions that reference LIBOR. The Company does not expect adoption and transition to alternative reference rates to have a material impact on its Consolidated Financial Statements.
Accounting for Contract Assets and Contract Liabilities from Contracts with Customers: In October, 2021, the FASB issued ASU No. 2021-08 (Topic 805), Accounting for Contract Assets and Contract Liabilities from Contracts with Customers, which requires contract assets and contract liabilities acquired in a business combination to be recognized and measured by the acquirer on the acquisition date in accordance with ASC 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, as if it had originated the contracts. The standard is effective for the Company’s fiscal year beginning January 1, 2023, with early adoption permitted. The Company is currently evaluating the effect of this pronouncement on its Consolidated Financial Statements.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 2. Business Combinations
2021 Acquisitions
Pro forma results of operations for the acquisitions have not been presented, as the financial impact to the Company's consolidated results of operations is not material. The goodwill recognized for these acquisitions is primarily attributable to expected synergies and is not deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes.
Apstra
On January 27, 2021, the Company acquired 100% ownership of Apstra, Inc. ("Apstra"), a company that provides intent-based networking, open programmability, and automated closed loop assurance for the management of data center networks. The purchase consideration was $179.4 million, consisting of $176.7 million in cash and $2.7 million in share-based awards attributable to services prior to the acquisition. The acquisition is expected to expand upon the Company's data center networking portfolio to advance its vision to transform data center operations.
WiteSand
During the fourth quarter of 2021, Juniper acquired 100% ownership of WiteSand Systems Inc. ("WiteSand"), a company that provides cloud-based network infrastructure solutions, for a purchase consideration of $21.8 million in cash. The preliminary purchase price allocation is subject to potential measurement period adjustments relating to certain tax and legal matters. The acquisition is expected to expand upon the Company's AI-driven enterprise network solution.
2020 Acquisitions
128 Technology
On November 30, 2020, the Company acquired 100% ownership of 128 Technology for $448.2 million. The purchase consideration consisted of cash of $446.8 million and approximately $1.4 million in share-based awards attributable to employee services prior to the acquisition. The acquisition is expected to enhance Juniper's AI-driven enterprise network portfolio by uniting 128 Technology’s session-smart networking with Juniper's campus and branch solutions driven by Mist AI.
Under the terms of the acquisition agreement with 128 Technology, the Company assumed certain share-based awards for continuing employees, which were granted in contemplation of future services. The fair value of these share-based awards was $29.3 million, which will be expensed as share-based compensation over the remaining service period.
Netrounds
On October 26, 2020, the Company acquired 100% ownership of Netrounds for $33.6 million of cash. The acquisition of Netrounds, a company that provides a programmable, software-based active test and service assurance platform suitable for fixed and mobile networks, is expected to enhance Juniper’s automated WAN solutions by further simplifying operations for service providers and ensuring positive end-user experiences.
Acquisition Costs
The Company recognized $8.9 million and $24.6 million of acquisition-related costs during the years ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively. These acquisition-related costs were expensed in the period incurred within general and administrative expense in the Company's Consolidated Statements of Operations.
The following table summarizes the fair values of the assets acquired and liabilities assumed at the acquisition dates (in millions):
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Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
The following table summarizes the fair value of the separately identifiable intangible assets at the time of acquisition and the period over which each intangible asset will be amortized (in millions, except years):
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 3. Cash Equivalents and Investments
Investments in Available-for-Sale Debt Securities
The following table summarizes the Company's unrealized gains and losses and fair value of investments designated as available-for-sale debt securities as of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020 (in millions):
The following table presents the contractual maturities of the Company's total fixed income securities as of December 31, 2021 (in millions):
As of December 31, 2021, the Company's unrealized loss of $2.2 million resulted from 393 investments that were primarily in an unrealized loss position for less than 12 months. The gross unrealized losses related to these investments were primarily due to changes in market interest rates. The Company anticipates that it will recover the entire amortized cost basis of such available-for-sale debt securities and has determined that no allowance for credit losses was required to be recognized during the years ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
During the year ended December 31, 2021, the Company had gross realized gains of $15.3 million and no material gross realized losses from available-for-sale debt securities. During the years ended December 31, 2020, and 2019, there were no material gross realized gains or losses from available-for-sale debt securities.
Investments in Equity Securities
The following table presents the Company's investments in equity securities as of December 31, 2021 and 2020 (in millions):
During the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, there were no material unrealized gains or losses recognized for equity investments.
Restricted Cash and Investments
The Company has restricted cash and investments for: (i) amounts held in escrow accounts, as required in connection with certain acquisitions completed primarily in 2020 and 2021; (ii) amounts held under the Company's short-term disability plan in California; and (iii) amounts under the Company's non-qualified deferred compensation plan for senior-level employees. Restricted investments consist of equity investments. As of December 31, 2021, the carrying value of restricted cash and investments was $64.1 million, of which $32.2 million was included in prepaid expenses and other current assets and $31.9 million was included in other long-term assets on the Consolidated Balance Sheets.
The following table provides a reconciliation of cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash included in the Consolidated Balance Sheets as of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020 (in millions):
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 4. Fair Value Measurements
Assets and Liabilities Measured at Fair Value on a Recurring Basis
The following table provides a summary of assets and liabilities measured at fair value on a recurring basis and as reported in the Consolidated Balance Sheets (in millions):
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
The Company's Level 2 available-for-sale debt securities are priced using quoted market prices for similar instruments or non-binding market prices that are corroborated by observable market data. The Company uses inputs such as actual trade data, benchmark yields, broker/dealer quotes, or alternative pricing sources with reasonable levels of price transparency which are obtained from quoted market prices, independent pricing vendors, or other sources, to determine the ultimate fair value of these assets. The Company's derivative instruments are classified as Level 2, as they are not actively traded and are valued using pricing models that use observable market inputs. During the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, the Company had no transfers into or out of Level 3 of the fair value hierarchy of its assets or liabilities measured at fair value.
The Company's privately-held debt and redeemable preferred stock securities are classified as Level 3 assets due to the lack of observable inputs to determine fair value. The Company estimates the fair value of its privately-held debt and redeemable preferred stock securities on a recurring basis using an analysis of the financial condition and near-term prospects of the investee, including recent financing activities and the investee's capital structure. During the year ended December 31, 2021, the Company realized a gain of $13.4 million from disposal of securities with an aggregate cost of $9.6 million related to privately-held debt and redeemable preferred stock.
Assets and Liabilities Measured at Fair Value on a Nonrecurring Basis
The Company's investments in equity securities without readily determinable fair value are classified as Level 3 assets due to the lack of observable inputs to determine fair value. The Company estimates the fair value on a nonrecurring basis (i.e. when an observable transaction occurs) using an analysis of the financial condition and near-term prospects of the investee, including recent financing activities and the investee's capital structure. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, there have been no material adjustments for price changes to the equity securities without readily determinable fair value.
Certain of the Company's assets, including intangible assets and goodwill, are measured at fair value on a nonrecurring basis. There were no significant impairment charges recognized during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019.
As of December 31, 2021 and 2020, the Company had no liabilities measured at fair value on a nonrecurring basis.
Assets and Liabilities Not Measured at Fair Value
The carrying amounts of the Company's accounts receivable, accounts payable, and other accrued liabilities approximate fair value due to their short maturities. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, the estimated fair value of the Company's total outstanding debt in the Consolidated Balance Sheets was $1,845.6 million and $2,386.6 million, respectively, based on observable market inputs (Level 2).
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 5. Derivative Instruments
The notional amount of the Company's derivative instruments is summarized as follows (in millions):
The fair value of derivative instruments on the Consolidated Balance Sheets was as follows:
Offsetting of Derivative Instruments
The Company presents its derivative instruments at gross fair values in the Consolidated Balance Sheets. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020 the potential effects of set-off associated with the derivative contracts would be a reduction to both derivative assets and derivative liabilities by $17.5 million and $0.5 million, respectively.
Designated Derivatives
The Company uses foreign currency forward contracts to hedge the Company's planned cost of revenues and operating expenses denominated in foreign currencies. These derivatives are designated as cash flow hedges and typically have maturities of thirty-six months or less.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
The Company enters into interest rate swaps, designated as fair value hedges, to convert the fixed interest rates of certain Senior Notes to floating interest rates. In April 2021, the Company entered into swaps for an aggregate notional amount of $300.0 million for its fixed-rate 2030 Notes in addition to the swaps entered in 2019 for an aggregate notional amount of $300.0 million for its fixed-rate 2041 Notes. The interest rate swaps will expire within nine years.
In 2020, the Company entered into interest rate locks with large financial institutions, which fix the benchmark interest rates of future debt issuance for an aggregate notional amount of $650.0 million. These contracts are designated as cash flow hedges and are expected to terminate within four years.
Effect of Derivative Instruments on the Consolidated Statements of Operations
For cash flow hedges, the Company recognized an unrealized loss of $9.1 million, unrealized gain of $63.5 million and unrealized loss of $6.3 million in accumulated other comprehensive loss for the effective portion of its derivative instruments during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively.
For foreign currency forward contracts, the Company reclassified a gain of $28.9 million, and losses of $9.0 million and $3.8 million out of accumulated other comprehensive loss to cost of revenues and operating expenses in the Consolidated Statement of Operations during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, an estimated $6.1 million of unrealized net loss within accumulated other comprehensive loss is expected to be reclassified into earnings within the next twelve months.
Non-Designated Derivatives
The Company also uses foreign currency forward contracts to mitigate variability in gains and losses generated from the remeasurement of certain monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies. These foreign exchange forward contracts typically have maturities of approximately one to four months. The outstanding non-designated derivative instruments are carried at fair value. Changes in the fair value of these derivatives recorded in other expense, net within the Consolidated Statements of Operations were not material during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively.
See Note 1, Description of Business, Basis of Presentation and Significant Accounting Policies, for the Company’s policy regarding the offsetting of derivative assets and derivative liabilities.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 6. Goodwill and Purchased Intangible Assets
Goodwill
The Company's goodwill activity was as follows (in millions):
We conducted our annual impairment test of goodwill during the fourth quarter of 2021; the estimated fair value of our reporting unit was substantially in excess of the carrying value. There was no goodwill impairment during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019.
Purchased Intangible Assets
The Company’s purchased intangible assets, net, were as follows (in millions):
Amortization expense related to purchased intangible assets with finite lives was $79.5 million, $40.6 million, and $34.7 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. There were no significant impairment charges related to purchased intangible assets during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019.
As of December 31, 2021, the estimated future amortization expense of purchased intangible assets with finite lives was as follows (in millions):
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 7. Other Financial Information
Total Inventory
Total inventory consisted of the following (in millions):
Property and Equipment, Net
Property and equipment, net, consisted of the following (in millions):
Depreciation expense was $151.0 million, $166.2 million, and $184.0 million in 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively.
Warranties
Changes in the Company’s warranty reserve were as follows (in millions):
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Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Revenue
See Note 12, Segments, for disaggregated revenue by customer solution, customer vertical, and geographic region.
Product revenue of $74.0 million included in deferred revenue at January 1, 2021 was recognized during the year ended December 31, 2021. Service revenue of $770.4 million included in deferred revenue at January 1, 2021 was recognized during the year ended December 31, 2021.
Remaining Performance Obligations
Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) are comprised mainly of deferred product and service revenue, and to a lesser extent, unbilled service revenue from non-cancellable contracts for which the Company has not invoiced and has an obligation to perform, and for which revenue has not yet been recognized in the financial statements.
The following table summarizes the breakdown of RPO as of December 31, 2021 and when the Company expects to recognize the amounts as revenue (in millions):
Deferred Commissions
Deferred commissions were $34.9 million and $27.4 million as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. During the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, amortization expense for the deferred commissions were $189.8 million and $145.9 million, respectively, and there were no impairment charges recognized.
Other Expense, Net
Other expense, net consisted of the following (in millions):
Interest income primarily includes interest earned on the Company’s cash, cash equivalents and investments. Interest expense primarily includes interest, net of capitalized interest expense, from long-term debt and customer financing arrangements. Gain (loss) on investments, net, primarily includes gains (losses) from the sale of investments in public and privately-held companies, and any observable changes in fair value and impairment charges recorded on these investments. Other typically consists of foreign exchange gains and losses and other non-operational income and expense items.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 8. Restructuring Charges
The following table presents restructuring charges included in the Consolidated Statements of Operations (in millions):
2021 Restructuring Plan
During the first quarter of 2021, the Company initiated a restructuring plan (the "2021 Restructuring Plan") driven by recent acquisitions and strategic changes and designed to enable reinvestment in certain key priority areas, which resulted in severance, facility consolidations, contract terminations, and other exit related costs. The 2021 Restructuring Plan activities are expected to be substantially completed during the first half of 2022.
In connection with the 2021 Restructuring Plan, we incurred cumulative charges of $42.9 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021. These costs were reported as restructuring charges in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Prior Restructuring Activities
In 2020, the Company initiated a restructuring plan (the "2020 Restructuring Plan") designed to realign its workforce with the Company's sales strategy, enhance productivity and cost efficiencies, and enable reinvestment in certain key priority areas, which resulted in severance costs and other exit related costs, including impairment charges. In connection with the 2020 Restructuring Plan, during the fourth quarter of 2020, the Company implemented a voluntary early retirement program for employees who met certain eligibility requirements, which resulted in additional severance costs that were recorded to restructuring charges in the Consolidated Statement of Operations.
In 2019, the Company initiated a restructuring plan (the "2019 Restructuring Plan") to realign its workforce with the Company's sales strategy, improve productivity, and enhance cost efficiencies, which resulted in severance, facility consolidation, and contract termination costs that were recorded to restructuring charges in the Consolidated Statement of Operations.
Restructuring Liabilities
Restructuring liabilities are reported within other accrued liabilities in the Consolidated Balance Sheets. The following table provides a summary of changes in the restructuring liabilities associated with the 2021 Restructuring Plan and 2020 Restructuring Plan (in millions):
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 9. Debt and Financing
Debt
The following table summarizes the Company's total debt (in millions, except percentages):
________________________________
(*) Represents the fair value adjustments for interest rate swaps with an aggregate notional amount of $600.0 million. These interest rate swaps convert the fixed interest rates of certain Senior Notes to floating interest rates and are designated as fair value hedges. See Note 5, Derivative Instruments, for a discussion of the Company's interest rate swaps.
In December 2020, the Company issued $400.0 million aggregate principal amount of 1.20% senior notes due 2025 ("2025-II Notes") and $400.0 million aggregate principal amount of 2.00% senior notes due 2030 ("2030 Notes"). The net proceeds from the issuances of the 2025-II Notes and the 2030 Notes, together with cash on hand, were used for the repayment of $500.0 million aggregate principal amount of the Company's 4.50% senior notes due 2024 and $300.0 million aggregate principal amount of the Company's 4.35% senior notes due 2025.
In December 2020, the Company, through a cash tender offer, partly repurchased $234.2 million in aggregate principal amount of 2024 Notes and $142.0 million in aggregate principal amount of 2025-I Notes. The repayments resulted in a loss on extinguishment of debt of $55.0 million, consisting primarily of a premium on the tender offer and acceleration of unamortized debt discount and fees on the redeemed debt, which was recorded within the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
In January 2021, the Company redeemed the remaining $265.8 million of its outstanding 2024 Notes and the remaining $158.0 million of its outstanding 2025-I Notes, for a principal redemption amount in the aggregate of $482.1 million, plus accrued interest. The repayments resulted in a loss on extinguishment of debt of $60.6 million, consisting primarily of a premium on the early redemption and acceleration of unamortized debt discount and fees on the redeemed debt.
The Notes above are the Company’s senior unsecured and unsubordinated obligations, ranking equally in right of payment to all of the Company’s existing and future senior unsecured and unsubordinated indebtedness, and senior in right of payment to any of the Company’s future indebtedness that is expressly subordinated to the Notes.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
As of December 31, 2021, the Company's aggregate debt maturities based on outstanding principal were as follows (in millions):
The Company may redeem the Notes, either in whole or in part, at any time at a redemption price equal to the greater of (i) 100% of the aggregate principal amount of the Notes to be redeemed or (ii) the sum of the present values of the remaining scheduled payments discounted to the redemption date, plus, in either case, accrued and unpaid interest, if any.
In the event of a change of control repurchase event, the holders of the Notes may require the Company to repurchase for cash all or part of the Notes at a purchase price equal to 101% of the aggregate principal amount, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if any.
Interest on the Notes is payable in cash semiannually. The effective interest rates for the Notes include the interest on the Notes, accretion of the discount, and amortization of issuance costs. The indenture that governs the Notes also contain various covenants, including limitations on the Company's ability to incur liens or enter into sale-leaseback transactions over certain dollar thresholds.
As of December 31, 2021, the Company was in compliance with all covenants in the indenture governing the Notes.
Revolving Credit Facility
In April 2019, the Company entered into a credit agreement (the "Credit Agreement") with certain institutional lenders that provides for a five-year $500.0 million unsecured revolving credit facility (the "Revolving Credit Facility"), with an option to increase the Revolving Credit Facility by up to an additional $200.0 million, subject to the lenders' approval. Proceeds of loans made under the Revolving Credit Facility may be used by the Company for working capital and general corporate purposes. The Revolving Credit Facility will terminate in April 2024.
Borrowings under the Revolving Credit Facility will bear interest, at either (i) a floating rate per annum equal to the base rate plus a margin of between 0.00% and 0.375%, depending on the Company's public debt rating or (ii) a per annum rate equal to the reserve adjusted Eurocurrency rate, plus a margin of between 0.910% and 1.375%, depending on the Company's public debt rating. Base rate is defined as the greatest of (A) Citibank's base rate, (B) the federal funds rate plus 0.500% or (C) the ICE Benchmark Administration Settlement Rate applicable to dollars for a period of one month plus 1.00%. The Eurocurrency rate is determined for U.S. dollars and Pounds Sterling as the rate at which deposits in such currency are offered in the London interbank market for the applicable interest period and for Euro as the rate specified for deposits in Euro with a maturity comparable to the applicable interest period.
On December 17, 2021, an amendment to the Credit Agreement was executed that defines the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) as the benchmark rate for U.S. dollar borrowings in the absence of LIBOR, and the Sterling Overnight Index Average (SONIA) as the benchmark rate for Pounds Sterling borrowings following the cessation of GBP LIBOR on December 31, 2021.
The Revolving Credit Facility requires the Company to maintain a leverage ratio no greater than 3.0x (provided that if a material acquisition has been consummated, the Company is permitted to maintain a leverage ratio no greater than 3.5x for up to four quarters) and an interest coverage ratio no less than 3.0x during the term of the credit facility.
As of December 31, 2021, the Company had not borrowed any funds under the Credit Agreement and was in compliance with all covenants in the Credit Agreement.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Financing Arrangements
The Company provides certain customers with access to extended financing arrangements that allow for longer payment terms than those typically provided by the Company by factoring accounts receivable to third-party financing providers ("financing providers"). The program does not and is not intended to affect the timing of the Company's revenue recognition. Under the financing arrangements, proceeds from the financing providers are due to the Company within 1 to 90 days from the sale of the receivable. In these transactions with the financing providers, the Company surrenders control over the transferred assets.
Pursuant to the financing arrangements for the sale of receivables, the Company sold receivables of $31.9 million, $57.5 million and $64.0 million during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. The Company received cash proceeds from financing providers of $32.5 million, $57.4 million, and $69.7 million during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, the amounts owed by the financing providers were $3.2 million and $3.9 million, respectively, which were recorded in accounts receivable on the Company’s Consolidated Balance Sheets.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 10. Equity
The following table summarizes dividends paid, stock repurchases and retirements under the Company's stock repurchase programs, and stock repurchases for tax withholdings (in millions, except per share amounts):
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(*) $23.47 average price per share for 2020 includes $375.0 million in open market purchases, and settlement of the forward contract of $40.0 million under the ASR, which was initiated during the fourth quarter of 2019.
Cash Dividends on Shares of Common Stock
During 2021, 2020, and 2019, the Company declared and paid quarterly cash dividends of $0.20, $0.20 and $0.19 per common share, totaling $259.1 million, $264.1 million, and $260.1 million, respectively, on its outstanding common stock. Any future dividends, and the establishment of record and payment dates, are subject to approval by the Board of Directors (the "Board") of Juniper or an authorized committee thereof. See Note 16, Subsequent Events, for discussion of the Company's dividend declaration subsequent to December 31, 2021.
Stock Repurchase Activities
In January 2018, the Board approved a $2.0 billion share repurchase program ("2018 Stock Repurchase Program"). In October 2019, the Board authorized a $1.0 billion increase to the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program for a total of $3.0 billion.
As part of the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program, in April 2019, the Company entered into an accelerated share repurchase program ("ASR") and repurchased $300.0 million of the Company's common stock. The aggregate number of shares ultimately repurchased of 11.6 million shares of the Company's common stock was determined based on a volume weighted average repurchase price, less an agreed upon discount, of $25.79 per share. The shares received by the Company were retired, accounted for as a reduction to stockholder’s equity in the Consolidated Balance Sheets, and treated as a repurchase of common stock for purposes of calculating earnings per share.
As part of the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program, in October 2019, the Company entered into an ASR with a financial institution to repurchase an aggregate of $200.0 million of the Company's outstanding common stock. The Company made an up-front payment of $200.0 million pursuant to the ASR and received and retired an initial 6.4 million shares of the Company's common stock for an aggregate price of $160.0 million based on the market price of $25.15 per share of the Company’s common stock on the date of the transaction. In January 2020, the ASR was completed, and an additional 1.8 million shares were received for a total repurchase of 8.2 million shares of the Company's common stock at a volume weighted average repurchase price, less an agreed upon discount, of $24.44 per share. The shares received by the Company were retired, accounted for as a reduction to stockholder’s equity in the Consolidated Balance Sheets, and treated as a repurchase of common stock for purposes of calculating earnings per share.
During the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, the Company repurchased 15.7 million shares of its common stock in the open market at an average price of $27.56 per share for an aggregate purchase price of $433.3 million under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program.
As of December 31, 2021, there were $0.9 billion of authorized funds remaining under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program. See Note 16, Subsequent Events, for a discussion of the Company's stock repurchase activity subsequent to December 31, 2021.
Future share repurchases under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program will be subject to a review of the circumstances at that time and will be made from time to time in private transactions or open market purchases as permitted by securities laws and other legal requirements.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
In addition to repurchases under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program, the Company withholds shares of common stock from certain employees in connection with the vesting of stock awards issued to such employees to satisfy applicable tax withholding requirements. Such withheld shares are treated as common stock repurchases in our financial statements as they reduce the number of shares that would have been issued upon vesting.
Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income (Loss), Net of Tax
The components of accumulated other comprehensive income (loss), net of related taxes, for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019 were as follows (in millions):
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(1) The reclassifications out of accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019 for realized gains on available-for-sale debt securities were not material, and were included in other expense, net, in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
(2) The reclassifications out of accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) for realized gains and losses on cash flow hedges was $28.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2021 and not material for the years ended 2020 and 2019. The reclassified amounts were included within cost of revenues, research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 11. Employee Benefit Plans
Equity Incentive Plans
The Company’s equity incentive plans include the 2015 Equity Incentive Plan (the “2015 Plan”) and the 2008 Employee Stock Purchase Plan (the “ESPP”). The Company has granted RSUs and PSAs under the 2015 Plan and purchase rights under the ESPP. In addition, in connection with certain past acquisitions, the Company has assumed or substituted stock options, RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs granted under the stock plans of the acquired companies. Such awards were converted into or replaced with the Company's stock options, RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs, respectively.
The 2015 Plan was adopted and approved by the Company's stockholders in May 2015 and had an initial authorized share reserve of 38.0 million shares of common stock, plus the addition of any shares subject to outstanding awards under the 2006 Equity Incentive Plan and the Amended and Restated 1996 Stock Plan that were outstanding as of May 19, 2015, and that subsequently expire or otherwise terminate, up to a maximum of an additional 29.0 million shares. In May 2017, the Company's stockholders approved an additional 23.0 million shares of common stock for issuance under the 2015 Plan, and in May 2019, the Company's stockholders approved an additional 3.7 million shares of common stock for issuance under the 2015 Plan. As of December 31, 2021, an aggregate of 16.5 million shares were subject to outstanding equity awards and 5.1 million shares were available for future issuance under the 2015 Plan.
The ESPP was adopted and approved by the Company's stockholders in May 2008. In May 2020, the Company's stockholders approved an additional 8.0 million shares of common stock for issuance under the ESPP. To date, the Company's stockholders have approved a share reserve of 43.0 million shares of the Company's common stock for issuance under the ESPP. The ESPP permits eligible employees to acquire shares of the Company’s common stock at a 15% discount (as determined in the ESPP) through periodic payroll deductions of up to 10% of base compensation, subject to individual purchase limits of 6,000 shares in any twelve-month period or $25,000 worth of stock, determined at the fair market value of the shares at the time the stock purchase option is granted, in one calendar year. The ESPP provides 24 month offering periods with four 6-month purchase periods. A new 24-month offering period will commence every six months thereafter. The purchase price for the Company’s common stock under the ESPP is 85% of the lower of the fair market value of the shares at (1) the beginning of the applicable offering period or (2) the end of each 6-month purchase period during such offering period. The ESPP will continue in effect until February 25, 2028, unless terminated earlier under the provisions of the ESPP. As of December 31, 2021, approximately 34.2 million shares have been issued and 8.8 million shares remain available for future issuance under the ESPP.
In 2021, in connection with the acquisitions of Apstra and WiteSand, the Company assumed an aggregate of 2.5 million shares of stock options, RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs. In 2020, in connection with the acquisition of 128 Technology, the Company assumed an aggregate of 3.9 million shares of stock options, RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs. No additional awards can be granted under the stock plans of the acquired companies. As of December 31, 2021, approximately 5.8 million shares of common stock were outstanding under all awards assumed or substituted through the Company's acquisitions.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
RSU, RSA, and PSA Activities
RSUs generally vest over three years from the date of grant, and RSAs and PSAs generally vest over a period of two to three years provided that certain annual performance targets and other vesting criteria are met. Until vested, RSUs and PSAs do not have the voting and dividend participation rights of common stock and the shares underlying the awards are not considered issued and outstanding.
The following table summarizes the Company’s RSU, RSA, and PSA activity and related information as of and for the year ended December 31, 2021 (in millions, except per share amounts and years):
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(1)Includes 8.2 million service-based, 1.5 million performance-based, and 0.5 million market-based RSUs and PSAs, as applicable. The number of shares subject to performance-based and market-based conditions represents the aggregate maximum number of shares that may be issued pursuant to the award over its full term. The grant date fair value of RSUs and PSAs was reduced by the present value of dividends expected to be paid on the underlying shares of common stock during the requisite and derived service period as these awards are not entitled to receive dividends until vested.
(2)The weighted-average grant-date fair value of RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs granted and assumed or substituted during 2021, 2020, and 2019 was $26.21, $21.59, and $25.26, respectively. The grant date fair value of RSUs and PSAs was reduced by the present value of dividends expected to be paid on the underlying shares of common stock during the requisite and derived service period as these awards are not entitled to receive dividends until vested. During 2021, the Company declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.20 per share of common stock on January 28, 2021, April 27, 2021, July 27, 2021 and October 26, 2021.
(3)Total fair value of RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs vested during 2021, 2020, and 2019 was $184.2 million, $174.7 million, and $170.0 million, respectively.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Shares Available for Grant
The following table presents the stock activity and the total number of shares available for grant under the 2015 Plan (in millions):
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(*) In May 2019, the 2015 Plan was amended, and the amendment removed the fungible share adjustment used to determine shares available for issuance. Under the original terms of the 2015 Plan, RSUs and PSAs with a per share or unit purchase price lower than 100% of the fair market value of the Company's common stock on the day of the grant were counted against shares authorized under the plan as two and one-tenth shares of common stock ("the prior fungible rate") for each share subject to such award. Pursuant to the amendment, beginning on May 14, 2019, each share award granted under the 2015 Plan reduces the share reserve by one share and all share awards granted on May 14, 2019 and thereafter that are later forfeited, canceled or terminated are returned to the share reserve in the same manner. During 2021, among the total 3.5 million of canceled shares, 2.2 million shares represent the shares returned to the share reserve at the prior fungible rate. The number of shares subject to PSAs granted represents the maximum number of shares that may be issued pursuant to the award over its full term.
Employee Stock Purchase Plan
During 2021, 2020, and 2019, employees purchased 2.8 million, 2.7 million and 2.4 million shares of common stock through the ESPP at an average exercise price of $19.81, $19.59, and $22.04 per share, respectively.
Valuation Assumptions
The weighted-average assumptions used and the resulting estimates of fair value for ESPP purchase rights and market-based RSUs were as follows:
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Share-Based Compensation Expense
Share-based compensation expense associated with stock options, RSUs, RSAs, PSAs, and ESPP purchase rights was recorded in the following cost and expense categories in the Company's Consolidated Statements of Operations (in millions):
The following table summarizes share-based compensation expense by award type (in millions):
For the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, the Company recognized tax benefits on total stock-based compensation expense, which are reflected in the income tax provision in the Consolidated Statements of Operations, of $28.2 million, $23.5 million, and $29.6 million, respectively.
For the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, the realized tax benefit related to awards vested or exercised during the period was $31.7 million, $21.7 million and $30.6 million, respectively. These amounts do not include the indirect effects of stock-based awards, which primarily relate to the research and development tax credit.
As of December 31, 2021, the total unrecognized compensation cost related to unvested share-based awards was $357.4 million to be recognized over a weighted-average period of 1.8 years.
401(k) Plan
The Company maintains a savings and retirement plan qualified under Section 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the "IRC"). Employees meeting the eligibility requirements, as defined under the IRC, may contribute up to the statutory limits each year. The Company currently matches 30% of all eligible employee contributions which vest immediately. The Company’s matching contributions to the plan totaled $22.3 million, $22.0 million, and $20.2 million during 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively.
Deferred Compensation Plan
The Company’s NQDC plan is an unfunded and unsecured deferred compensation arrangement. Under the NQDC plan, officers and other senior employees may elect to defer a portion of their compensation and contribute such amounts to one or more investment funds. As of December 31, 2021, the liability of the Company to the plan participants was $33.3 million, of which $4.4 million was included within other accrued liabilities and $28.9 million was included in other long-term liabilities on the Consolidated Balance Sheets. The Company had investments of $33.3 million correlating to the deferred compensation obligations, of which $4.4 million was included within prepaid expenses and other current assets and $28.9 million was included within other long-term assets on the Consolidated Balance Sheets. As of December 31, 2020, the liability of the Company was $29.3 million, of which $3.1 million was included within other accrued liabilities and $26.2 million was included in other long-term liabilities on the Consolidated Balance Sheets. The Company had investments of $29.3 million correlating to
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
the deferred compensation obligations, of which $3.1 million was included within prepaid expenses and other current assets and $26.2 million was included within other long-term assets on the Consolidated Balance Sheets.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 12. Segments
The Company operates in one reportable segment. The Company's chief executive officer, who is the chief operating decision maker, reviews financial information presented on a consolidated basis for purposes of allocating resources and evaluating financial performance, accompanied by disaggregated information about net revenues by customer solution, customer vertical, and geographic region as presented below.
Effective in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, the Company began reporting its revenue by customer solution in the following three categories: Automated WAN Solutions, Cloud-Ready Data Center, AI-Driven Enterprise. In addition, the Company began reporting Hardware Maintenance and Professional Services in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. The change provides for alignment on key growth drivers that is aligned with the Company's strategy.
The following table presents net revenues by customer solution (in millions):
The following table presents net revenues by customer vertical (in millions):
The Company attributes revenues to geographic region based on the customer’s shipping address. The following table presents net revenues by geographic region (in millions):
During the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, no customer accounted for greater than 10% of the Company's net revenues.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
The following table presents geographic information for property and equipment, net (in millions).
The Company tracks assets by physical location. The majority of the Company’s assets, excluding cash and cash equivalents and investments, as of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, were attributable to U.S. operations.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 13. Income Taxes
The components of pretax income are summarized as follows (in millions):
The provision (benefit) for income taxes is summarized as follows (in millions):
The provision (benefit) for income taxes differs from the amount computed by applying the federal statutory tax rate of 21% to pretax income for each of the years presented as follows (in millions):
In 2020, the Company recorded a $63.7 million benefit, including interest and penalties, related to a multi-year recognition of previously unrecognized tax benefits and a $20.1 million charge, including interest, for a cumulative impact of cost sharing for share-based compensation described below.
On June 7, 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Altera Corp. v. Commissioner requiring related parties in an intercompany cost-sharing arrangement to share expenses related to share-based compensation. On February 10, 2020, Altera appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on June 22, 2020, declined to review the decision. Based
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
on the Supreme Court's decision, the Company's share-based compensation is subject to cost sharing, and the Company recorded a $20.1 million charge referenced above during the year ended December 31, 2020.
Deferred income taxes reflect the net tax effects of tax carry-forward items and temporary differences between the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities for financial reporting purposes and the amounts used for income tax purposes. Significant components of the Company's long-term deferred tax assets and deferred tax liabilities are as follows (in millions):
As of December 31, 2021 and 2020, the Company had a valuation allowance on its U.S. and foreign deferred tax assets of $300.9 million and $261.5 million, respectively. The balance at December 31, 2021 consisted of $2.0 million , $288.7 million and $10.2 million against the Company's U.S. federal, state, and foreign deferred tax assets, respectively, which the Company believes are not more likely than not to be utilized in future years. The valuation allowance increased in 2021 and 2020 by $39.4 million and $12.1 million, respectively, primarily related to the changes in state R&D tax credits.
As of December 31, 2021, the Company had federal, California and other states net operating loss carry-forwards of approximately $205.5 million, $197.9 million and $144.6 million, respectively. The California net operating loss carry-forwards of $197.9 million are expected to expire unused. The Company also had federal and California tax credit carry-forwards of approximately $6.6 million and $292.4 million, respectively. Unused net operating loss carry-forwards will expire at various dates beginning in the year 2022. The California tax credit carry-forwards will carry forward indefinitely.
The Company provides deferred tax liabilities for all tax consequences associated with the undistributed earnings that are expected to be repatriated to subsidiaries' parent unless the subsidiaries' earnings are considered indefinitely reinvested. The Company has made no provision for deferred taxes on approximately $83.1 million of cumulative undistributed earnings of certain foreign subsidiaries through December 31, 2021. These earnings are considered indefinitely invested in operations of the subsidiaries, as the Company intends to utilize these amounts to fund future expansion of its operations. If these earnings were distributed to the parent, the Company would be subject to additional taxes of approximately $16.9 million.
As of December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, the total amount of gross unrecognized tax benefits was $113.4 million, $116.0 million, and $151.3 million, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, approximately $110.5 million of the $113.4 million gross unrecognized tax benefits, if recognized, would affect the effective tax rate before considering valuation allowance.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
A reconciliation of the beginning and ending amount of the Company's total gross unrecognized tax benefits was as follows (in millions):
As of December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, the Company had accrued interest and penalties related to unrecognized tax benefits of $8.1 million, $5.3 million, and $29.9 million, respectively, as other long-term liabilities in the Consolidated Balance Sheets. Due to the changes in the level of gross unrecognized tax benefits, the Company recognized a benefit for net interest and penalties of $2.7 million, $20.7 million and $2.8 million in its Consolidated Statements of Operations during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. The Company recognizes interest and penalties related to unrecognized tax benefits as a component of income tax expense.
The Company engages in continuous discussions and negotiations with tax authorities regarding tax matters in various jurisdictions. There is a greater than remote likelihood that the balance of the gross unrecognized tax benefits will decrease by up to $7.3 million within the next twelve months due to the completion of tax review cycles in various tax jurisdictions and lapses of applicable statutes of limitation.
The Company conducts business globally and, as a result, Juniper Networks or one or more of its subsidiaries files income tax returns in the U.S. federal jurisdiction and various state and foreign jurisdictions. In the normal course of business, the Company is subject to examination by taxing authorities throughout the world, including such major jurisdictions as the Netherlands, U.K., France, Germany, Japan, China, Australia, India, and the U.S. With few exceptions, the Company is no longer subject to U.S. federal, state and local, and non-U.S. income tax examinations for years before 2012.
The Company is currently under examination by the Internal Revenue Service and the India tax authorities for the 2017 through 2018 tax years and the 2012 through 2017 tax years, respectively. The Company regularly assesses the likelihood of an adverse outcome resulting from such examinations. As of December 31, 2021, the Company believes the resolution of the audits is unlikely to have a material effect on its consolidated financial condition or results of operations.
The Company is pursuing all available administrative remedies relative to these ongoing matters. The Company believes that it has adequately provided for any reasonably foreseeable outcomes related to these proposed adjustments and the ultimate resolution of these matters is unlikely to have a material effect on its consolidated financial condition or results of operations; however, there is still a possibility that an adverse outcome of these matters could have a material effect on its consolidated financial condition and results of operations.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 14. Net Income per Share
The Company computed basic and diluted net income per share as follows (in millions, except per share amounts):
Basic net income per share is computed using net income available to common stockholders and the weighted-average number of common shares outstanding for the period. Diluted net income per share is computed using net income available to common stockholders and the weighted-average number of common shares outstanding plus potentially dilutive common shares outstanding during the period. Dilutive potential common shares consist of common shares issuable upon exercise of stock options and purchase rights, and vesting of RSUs, RSAs, and PSAs. The Company includes the common shares underlying PSAs in the calculation of diluted net income per share only when they become contingently issuable. Anti-dilutive shares are excluded from the computation of diluted net income per share.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
Note 15. Commitments and Contingencies
Commitments
Unconditional Purchase Obligations
Unconditional purchase obligations consist of agreements that include firm and non-cancelable terms to transfer funds in the future for fixed or minimum amounts or quantities to be purchased at fixed or minimum prices. For obligations with cancellation provisions, the amounts included in the following table were limited to the non-cancelable portion of the agreement terms or the minimum cancellation fee.
The following table summarizes the Company’s unconditional purchase obligations as of December 31, 2021 (in millions):
In December 2018, the Company entered into a Master Services Agreement and certain Statements of Work, as subsequently amended (collectively, the “Agreement”) with International Business Machines Corporation ("IBM"). As of December 31, 2021, the Company expects to pay IBM $145.3 million over the remaining initial term of the Agreement. The table above does not include fees payable to IBM under the contract as the Company is unable to make a reasonably reliable estimate of the amount of the payments related to each of the years under this contract due to uncertainties in the usage of the services.
Leases
The Company leases its facilities and certain equipment under non-cancelable operating leases that have remaining lease terms of 1 to 10 years and 1 to 4 years, respectively. Each leased facility is subject to an individual lease or sublease, which could provide various options to extend or terminate the lease agreement. Facilities are primarily comprised of corporate offices, data centers, and R&D facilities. Equipment includes vehicles and various office equipment. The Company also has variable lease payments that are primarily comprised of common area maintenance and utility charges. The Company's lease agreements do not contain any residual value guarantees or restrictive covenants.
The components of lease costs and other information related to leases were as follows (in millions, except years and percentages):
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
As of December 31, 2021, future operating lease payments for each of the next five years and thereafter are as follows (in millions):
Purchase Commitments with Contract Manufacturers and Suppliers
In order to reduce manufacturing lead times and in the interest of having access to adequate component supply, the Company enters into agreements with contract manufacturers and certain suppliers to procure inventory based on the Company's requirements. A significant portion of the Company's purchase commitments arising from these agreements consists of firm and non-cancelable commitments. The following table summarizes the Company’s purchase commitments as of December 31, 2021 (in millions):
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements (Continued)
The Company establishes a liability in connection with purchase commitments related to quantities in excess of its demand forecasts or obsolete materials charges for components purchased by the contract manufacturers based on the Company’s demand forecast or customer orders. As of December 31, 2021, the Company had accrued $19.8 million based on its estimate of such charges.
Debt and Interest Payment on Debt
As of December 31, 2021, the Company held total outstanding debt consisting of the Notes with a carrying value of $1,686.8 million. See Note 9, Debt and Financing, for further discussion of the Company's long-term debt and expected future principal maturities.
Tax Liability
Our transition tax liability represents future cash payments on accumulated foreign earnings of subsidiaries as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ("Tax Act"). The Company has elected to pay its transition tax, net of applicable tax refunds, over the eight-year period provided in the Tax Act. The long-term income taxes payable of $250.6 million represents the remaining balance of the Company's transition tax obligation.
As of December 31, 2021, the Company had $79.9 million included in long-term income taxes payable on the Consolidated Balance Sheets for unrecognized tax positions. At this time, the Company is unable to make a reasonably reliable estimate of the timing of payments related to this amount due to uncertainties in the timing of tax audit outcomes.
Guarantees
The Company enters into agreements with customers that contain indemnification provisions relating to potential situations where claims could be alleged that the Company’s products solely, or in combination with other third-party products, infringe the intellectual property rights of a third-party. As of December 31, 2021 and 2020, the Company recorded $1.9 million and $6.7 million, respectively, for such indemnification obligations in other accrued liabilities and other long-term liabilities on the Consolidated Balance Sheets. The Company also has financial guarantees consisting of standby letters of credit for certain lease facilities, insurance programs and customs of $2.4 million and $29.0 million, as of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively.
Legal Proceedings
The Company is involved in investigations, disputes, litigation, and legal proceedings. The Company records an accrual for loss contingencies for legal proceedings when it believes that an unfavorable outcome is both (a) probable and (b) the amount or range of any possible loss is reasonably estimable. The Company intends to aggressively defend itself in these matters, and while there can be no assurances and the outcome of these matters is currently not determinable, the Company currently believes that these existing claims or proceedings are not likely, individually and in the aggregate, to have a material adverse effect on its financial position. Notwithstanding the foregoing, there are many uncertainties associated with any litigation and these matters or other third-party claims against the Company may cause the Company to incur costly litigation and/or substantial settlement charges. In addition, the resolution of any intellectual property litigation may require the Company to make royalty payments, which could adversely affect gross margins in future periods. If any of those events were to occur, the Company's business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows could be adversely affected. The actual liability in any such matters may be materially different from the Company's estimates, if any, which could result in the need to adjust the liability and record additional expenses.
Note 16. Subsequent Events
Dividend Declaration
On January 27, 2022, the Company announced a cash dividend of $0.21 per share of common stock to be paid on March 22, 2022 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 1, 2022.
Stock Repurchase Activities
Subsequent to December 31, 2021, through the date of filing of this Report (the "filing date"), the Company repurchased 2.6 million shares of its common stock in the open market, for an aggregate purchase price of $91.1 million at an average price of $34.75 per share, under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program. Repurchases of approximately 2.0 million shares were settled prior to the filing of this Report and the remaining shares will be settled after the filing date. The Company has an aggregate of $0.8 billion of authorized funds remaining under the 2018 Stock Repurchase Program as of the filing date.

ITEM 9 - CHANGES IN AND DISAGREEMENTS WITH ACCOUNTANTS
ITEM 9. Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure
Not applicable.

ITEM 9A - CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES
ITEM 9A. Controls and Procedures
(a) Management's Annual Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting: See "Management's Annual Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting" under Item 8 of Part II of this Report, which is incorporated herein by reference.
(b) For the “Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm,” see the report under Item 8 of Part II of this Report, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures
Attached as exhibits to this Report are certifications of our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, which are required in accordance with Rule 13a-14 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). This “Controls and Procedures” section includes information concerning the controls and related evaluations referred to in the certifications and it should be read in conjunction with the certifications for a more complete understanding of the topics presented.
We carried out an evaluation, under the supervision and with the participation of our management, including our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, of the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures, as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act. Based upon that evaluation, our principal executive officer and principal financial officer concluded that, as of the end of the period covered in this Report, our disclosure controls and procedures were effective to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in Securities and Exchange Commission rules and forms and is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.
Changes in Internal Controls Over Financial Reporting
There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting during the fourth quarter of 2021 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting. We have not experienced any significant impact to our internal controls over financial reporting despite the fact that most of our employees are working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The design of our processes and controls allow for remote execution with accessibility to secure data. We are continually monitoring and assessing the COVID-19 situation to minimize the impact, if any, on the design and operating effectiveness on our internal controls.

ITEM 9B - OTHER INFORMATION
ITEM 9B. Other Information
Disclosure pursuant to Section 13(r) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
Section 219 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012 and Section 13(r) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, require an issuer to disclose certain information in its annual and quarterly reports, as applicable, if it or any of its affiliates knowingly engaged in certain activities, transactions or dealings related to Iran or with certain individuals or entities that are subject to specific U.S. economic sanctions during the relevant reporting period. In certain instances, such disclosure is required even where the activities, transactions or dealings are conducted in compliance with applicable law, and whether or not the activities are sanctionable under U.S. law.
On March 2, 2021, the U.S. government designated the Russian Federal Security Service (the “FSB”) as a blocked party under Executive Order 13382; however, on the same day, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License No. 1B (the “OFAC General License”), which generally authorizes U.S. companies to engage in certain transactions and dealings with the FSB necessary and ordinarily incident to requesting or obtaining licenses, permits, certifications or notifications issued or registered by the FSB for the importation, distribution or use of information technology products in the Russian Federation.
In the normal course of business, the Company or its subsidiaries file notifications with, or apply for import licenses and permits from, the FSB as required pursuant to Russian encryption product import controls for the purpose of enabling the Company or its subsidiaries or their channel partners to import and distribute certain products in the Russian Federation. In the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, as permitted and authorized by the OFAC General License, the Company filed notifications with and/or applied for import licenses and permits from the FSB. There are no gross revenues or net profits directly associated with these activities, and the Company and its subsidiaries do not distribute or sell products or provide services to the FSB. The Company expects that we or our subsidiaries will continue to file notifications with and apply for import licenses and permits from the FSB to qualify our products for importation and distribution in the Russian Federation if and as permitted by applicable U.S. law, including the OFAC General License.
ITEM 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections
Not applicable.
PART III

ITEM 10 - DIRECTORS AND EXECUTIVE OFFICERS
ITEM 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance
For information with respect to our executive officers, see Part I, Item 1 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, under “Information about our Executive Officers.”
Information concerning our directors, including director nominations, and our audit committee and audit committee financial expert, is included in our definitive Proxy Statement to be filed with the SEC in connection with our 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “Proxy Statement”) under “Corporate Governance Principles and Board Matters” and “Election of Directors” and is incorporated herein by reference.
With regard to the information required by this Item regarding compliance with Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act, we will provide disclosure of delinquent Section 16(a) reports, if any, in our Proxy Statement under “Delinquent Section 16(a) Reports” and such disclosure, if any, is incorporated herein by reference.
Information concerning our worldwide code of business conduct that applies to our principal executive officer and all other employees is included in the Proxy Statement under “Corporate Governance Principles and Board Matters” and is incorporated herein by reference.

ITEM 11 - EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION
ITEM 11. Executive Compensation
Information required by Item 402 of Regulation S-K is included in the Proxy Statement under “Director Compensation,” and “Executive Compensation,” and is incorporated herein by reference.
Information concerning compensation committee interlocks and insider participation appearing in the Proxy Statement under “Compensation Committee Interlocks and Insider Participation” is incorporated herein by reference.
Information concerning the compensation committee report appearing in the Proxy Statement under “Compensation Committee Report” is incorporated herein by reference.

ITEM 12 - SECURITY OWNERSHIP
ITEM 12. Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters
Information concerning the security ownership of certain beneficial owners and management is included in the Proxy Statement under “Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters” and is incorporated herein by reference.
Information concerning our equity compensation plan information is included in the Proxy Statement under “Equity Compensation Plan Information” and is incorporated herein by reference.

ITEM 13 - CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED TRANSACTIONS
ITEM 13. Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence
Information concerning certain relationships and related transactions is included in the Proxy Statement under the heading “Certain Relationships and Related Transactions” and is incorporated herein by reference.
Information concerning director independence is included in the Proxy Statement under the heading “Board Independence” and is incorporated herein by reference.

ITEM 14 - PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTANT FEES AND SERVICES
ITEM 14. Principal Accountant Fees and Services
Information concerning principal accountant fees and services and the audit committee's pre-approval policies and procedures is included in the Proxy Statement under the heading “Principal Accountant Fees and Services” and is incorporated herein by reference.
PART IV

ITEM 15 - EXHIBITS AND FINANCIAL STATEMENT SCHEDULES
ITEM 15. Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules
(a) The following documents are filed as part of this Report:
1. Consolidated Financial Statements
See Index to Consolidated Financial Statements at Item 8 herein.
2. Financial Statement Schedules
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Schedule II - Valuation and Qualifying Accounts
Years Ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019
(In millions)
All other schedules have been omitted as the required information is not applicable or the information is presented in the Consolidated Financial Statements or notes thereto under Item 8 herein.
3. Exhibits
* Filed herewith
** Furnished herewith
+ Indicates management contract or compensatory plan, contract or arrangement.
† Portions of this exhibit (indicated by asterisks) have been omitted pursuant to a request for confidential treatment that has been separately filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
†† Portion of this exhibit (indicated by asterisks) have been omitted pursuant to Item 601(b)(10)(iv) of Regulation S-K, which portions will be furnished to the SEC upon request.
(b) Exhibits
See Exhibits in Item 15(a)(3) above in this Report.
(c) None
ITEM 16. Form 10-K Summary
Not applicable.
SIGNATURES
Pursuant to the requirements of Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized.
Juniper Networks, Inc.
February 11, 2022 By: /s/ Kenneth B. Miller
Kenneth B. Miller
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
(Duly Authorized Officer and Principal Financial Officer)
February 11, 2022 By: /s/ Thomas A. Austin
Thomas A. Austin
Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer
(Duly Authorized Officer and Principal Accounting Officer)
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, this Report has been signed below by the following persons on behalf of the registrant and in the capacities and on the dates indicated.
Signature Title Date
/s/ Rami Rahim Chief Executive Officer and Director
(Principal Executive Officer) February 11, 2022
Rami Rahim
/s/ Kenneth B. Miller Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
(Principal Financial Officer) February 11, 2022
Kenneth B. Miller
/s/ Thomas A. Austin Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer
(Principal Accounting Officer) February 11, 2022
Thomas A. Austin
/s/ Scott Kriens Chairman of the Board February 11, 2022
Scott Kriens
/s/ Gary Daichendt Director February 11, 2022
Gary Daichendt
/s/ Anne T. DelSanto Director February 11, 2022
Anne T. DelSanto
/s/ Kevin DeNuccio Director February 11, 2022
Kevin DeNuccio
/s/ James Dolce Director February 11, 2022
James Dolce
/s/ Christine M. Gorjanc Director February 11, 2022
Christine M. Gorjanc
/s/ Janet B. Haugen Director February 11, 2022
Janet B. Haugen
/s/ Rahul Merchant Director February 11, 2022
Rahul Merchant
/s/ William R. Stensrud Director February 11, 2022
William R. Stensrud

Market Capitalization: 11052902.735805511
1-Year Return: -0.01649304665625095
252-Day Return: $252_day_return