Company: BL
Filing Date: 2025-11-07
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001628280-25-050628
Chunk: 124

Company: BLACKLINE, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-11-07
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part II, Item 1A
Chunk 124
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 relied upon as an indication of future performance.

We experience a higher volume of sales at the end of each quarter and year, which is often the result of buying decisions by our customers. Seasonality may be reflected to a much lesser extent, and sometimes may not be immediately apparent, in our revenue, due to the fact that we recognize subscription revenue over the term of our agreements. We may also increase expenses in a period in anticipation of future revenues. Changes in the number of customers and users in different periods will cause fluctuations in our financial metrics and, to a lesser extent, revenues. Those changes and fluctuations in our expenses will affect our results on a quarterly basis, and will make forecasting our operating results and financial metrics difficult.

Our financial results may fluctuate due to our long and increasingly variable sales cycle.

Our sales cycle generally varies in duration between four to nine months and, in some cases, even longer depending on the size of the potential customer, the size of the potential contract and the type of solution or product being purchased. The sales cycle for our global enterprise customers is generally longer than that of our mid-size customers. In addition, the length of the sales cycle tends to increase for larger contracts and for more complex, strategic products like Intercompany Financial Management. As we continue to focus on increasing our average contract size and selling more strategic products, we expect our sales cycle to lengthen and become less predictable. This could cause variability in our operating results for any particular period.

A number of other factors that may influence the length and variability of our sales cycle include:

•the need to educate potential customers about the uses and benefits of our software solutions;

•the need to educate potential customers on the differences between traditional, on-premise software and SaaS solutions;

•the relatively long duration of the commitment customers make in their agreements with us;

•the discretionary nature and timing of potential customers’ purchasing and budget cycles and decisions;

•the competitive nature of potential customers’ evaluation and purchasing processes;

•announcements or planned introductions of new products by us or our competitors; and

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•lengthy purchasing approval processes of potential customers, including due to increased scrutiny of spending.

We may incur higher costs and longer sales cycles as a result of large enterprises representing an increased portion of our revenue. In this market, the decision to subscribe to our solutions may require the approval of more technical and information security personnel and management levels within a potential customer’s organization, and if so, these types of sales require us to invest more time educating these potential customers. In