Company: NET
Filing Date: 2025-05-08
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001477333-25-000082
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Company: Cloudflare, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-05-08
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part I, Item 8
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 to continue to invest additional resources in our global network and products and our customer support organizations as we grow our business. The level and timing of investment in these areas could affect our cost of revenue in the future.

Gross Profit and Gross Margin

Gross profit is revenue less cost of revenue and gross margin is gross profit as a percentage of revenue. Our gross profit and gross margin have and are expected to continue to fluctuate from period to period due to the timing of acquisition of new customers, our renewals with existing customers and expenses that are directly related to providing our service to our paying customers. We expect our gross profit to increase in absolute dollars and our gross margin to remain consistent over the long term, although our gross margin could fluctuate from period to period depending on the interplay of all of these factors.

Operating Expenses

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of employee-related costs, including salaries, a one-time cash compensation charge incurred during the three months ended March 31, 2024, benefits and stock-based compensation expense, sales commissions that are recognized as expenses over the period of benefit, marketing programs, certificate authority services costs for free customers, travel-related expenses, bandwidth and co-location costs for free customers, and allocated overhead costs. Sales commissions earned by our sales force and the associated payroll taxes that are direct and incremental to the acquisition of channel partner and direct customer contracts are deferred and amortized over an estimated period of benefit of three years for the initial acquisition of a contract and over the contractual term of the renewals for renewal contracts. We plan to continue to invest in sales and marketing to grow our customer base and increase our brand awareness, including marketing efforts to continue to drive our pay-as-you-go business model. As a result, we expect our sales and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars for the foreseeable future. However, we expect our sales and marketing expenses to decrease as a percentage of our revenue over the long term, although our sales and marketing expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of our revenue from period to period due to the timing and extent of these expenses.

Research and Development

Research and development costs consist primarily of employee-related costs, including salaries, benefits, and stock-based compensation expense, consulting costs, depreciation of equipment used in research and 

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development, and allocated overhead costs. Research and development costs support our efforts to add new features to our existing offerings and to ensure the security, performance, and reliability of our global network. We expect our research and development expenses to increase in absolute dollars for