EDGAR 10-K Filing

Company CIK: 1410384
Filing Year: 2022
Filename: 1410384_10-K_2022_0001410384-22-000013.json

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ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Item 1. Business.
Overview
Q2 is a leading provider of secure, cloud-based digital solutions that transform the ways in which financial institutions and other financial services providers engage with account holders and end users, or End Users. We offer our solutions to financial institutions, financial technology companies, or FinTechs, alternative finance companies, or Alt-FIs, and other innovative companies, or Brands, wishing to incorporate banking into their customer engagement and servicing strategies. Our solutions include a broad and deep portfolio of digital banking and lending solutions; an open technology platform, the Q2 Innovation Studio, that accelerates innovation by enabling a partnership ecosystem on the Q2 platform in which FinTechs and other digital solution providers can embed their offerings and customers can develop their own applications; and a comprehensive banking as a service, or BaaS, solution, which we re-branded as Helix in 2022, that enables innovative companies to incorporate banking directly into their products. We purpose-build our platforms and solutions to enable success for our customers and technology partners by allowing them to digitize their operations and offerings, differentiate their brands, and integrate traditional and emerging financial services, ultimately enhancing End-User acquisition, engagement and retention and improving operational efficiencies and profitability.
We have deep domain expertise in developing and delivering secure, advanced digital solutions designed to help our customers and technology partners compete in the complex and heavily regulated financial services industry. Over 17 years ago Q2 began by providing digital banking solutions to regional and community financial institutions. We have rapidly grown since then through a combination of broad market acceptance of our award-winning solutions and relentless innovation, investment and acquisitions. Our portfolio of solutions now spans digital banking, lending, profitability, onboarding, security, and we now serve account holders and borrowers across retail, small business and commercial segments, in addition to our open technology platform and BaaS offerings. As of December 31, 2021, we had more than 1,200 financial institution customers using one or more of our solutions, including 40% of the top 100 U.S. Banks, based on total assets. As of December 31, 2021, we had 448 installed digital banking platform customers, and those customers had approximately 19.2 million account holders registered on our digital banking platform. During 2021, End Users logged into our digital banking platform over 4 billion times and executed over $2.0 trillion in financial transactions. In addition, during 2021, our lending solutions were used to price approximately $4 trillion in commercial loans. While we remain focused on our founding mission of building stronger and more diverse communities by strengthening their financial institutions and continue to generate a substantial majority of our revenue from sales of our digital banking platform, we intend to draw on our broad solution portfolio, deep domain expertise and robust customer base to lead the transformation into a new frontier of financial services.
The financial services industry is undergoing tremendous change, influenced by three major factors. First, financial institutions demand now, more than ever, to digitize their operations and offerings, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this digital transformation. Second, the continued growth in the number of FinTechs and the innovation they bring to the market is increasing End-User demand and expectations for new, more engaging and meaningful digital financial experiences. And third, major innovative Brands recognize that incorporating banking into their strategy is an opportunity to leverage the trust that their End Users place in them, driving deeper engagement with those End Users. These three forces are converging to create what we believe is a new frontier in financial services in which financial institutions, FinTechs and Brands will have new roles and interdependencies, and which will require new technology, new partners, and new business models. We believe that lasting value creation in financial services will be achieved by those companies that can support and enhance the convergence of these forces. In addition, we have built a broad set of solutions that we believe equips us to accelerate and optimize this convergence - from digitizing the entire bank, to facilitating partnerships among financial institutions and FinTechs, to enabling Brands to incorporate banking into their products and customer relationships.
We believe this new frontier creates an expanded market opportunity for our business, which we have been thoughtfully building towards for several years. We have continuously invested in expanding and improving our digital banking platform since its introduction in 2005. Additionally, over the past several years we have acquired or developed new solutions and additional functionality that serve a broader range of needs of financial institutions as well as the needs of FinTechs, Alt-FIs and Brands. Our integrated, end-to-end collection of solutions includes retail, small business and commercial banking, regulatory and compliance, digital lending, relationship pricing, BaaS, digital account opening, account switching and data-driven sales enablement and portfolio management solutions among others. We have also introduced the Q2 Innovation Studio, an application-program-interface, or API, based and software-development-kit, or SDK, based open technology platform that allows our financial institution customers and other technology partners to develop unique extensions of and integrations to our digital banking platform, allowing financial institutions to quickly and easily deploy customized experiences and the latest financial services expected by End Users. We believe our expanded solution offerings and the continued growth of our customer base and market opportunity have increased the addressable market for our solutions to greater than $13.0 billion.
Our solutions utilize a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, delivery model, designed to scale with our customers as they grow their business, add End Users on our solutions and expand the breadth of digital services and solutions they offer. On average, Q2 digital banking platform customers have historically grown contracted revenue by approximately 48% within 36 months of implementation. Our SaaS delivery model is also designed to reduce the cost and complexity of implementing, maintaining and enhancing the digital services and solutions our customers provide to their End Users.
We design and develop our solutions with an open platform approach intended to provide comprehensive integration among our solution offerings and our customers' internal and third-party systems. This integrated approach allows our customers to deliver unified and robust financial experiences across digital channels. Our solutions provide our customers the flexibility to configure their digital services in a manner that is consistent with each customer's specific offerings, workflows, processes and controls. Our solutions also allow our customers to personalize the digital experiences they deliver to their End Users by extending their individual services and brand requirements across digital channels. Our solutions and our data center infrastructure and resources are designed to comply with the stringent security and technical regulations applicable to financial institutions and financial services providers and to safeguard our customers' and their End Users' data.
We believe that financial services providers are best served by a broad integrated portfolio of digital solutions that provide rapid, flexible and comprehensive integration with internal and third-party solutions allowing them to provide modern, intuitive digital financial services in a secure, regulatory-compliant manner. We also believe that the breadth and depth of our solution offerings and customer base, our open and flexible platform approach, our position as a leading provider of digital banking solutions to a large network of financial institutions, and our expertise in delivering new, innovative, secure and regulatory-compliant digital solutions uniquely position us to capitalize on the new frontier in financial services.
We primarily sell our solutions through our direct sales organization and recognize the related revenues over the terms of our customer agreements. The initial term of our digital banking platform agreements averages over five years. Our digital banking platform revenues generally increase as we add new customers, sell additional solutions to existing customers, grow the number of End Users on our solutions, and increase the number of transactions that End Users perform on our solutions. The structure and terms of our newer lending arrangements vary, but generally are also sold on a subscription basis through our direct sales organization, and the related revenues are recognized over the terms of the customer agreements. The structure and terms of our BaaS arrangements with FinTechs and Brands vary, but typically involve relatively lower contracted minimum revenues and instead emphasize usage-based revenue, with such revenue recognized as it is incurred.
We have achieved significant growth since our inception, including the past three years. We had total revenues of $498.7 million, $402.8 million and $315.5 million in 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. We have invested, and intend to continue to invest, to grow our business by expanding our sales and marketing activities, adding delivery and support resources aligned
with our growth, developing and acquiring new solutions and enhancing our existing solutions and technical infrastructure. We incurred net losses of $112.7 million, $137.6 million and $70.9 million in 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. At each of December 31, 2021 and 2020, we had total assets of $1.4 billion.
Refer to "COVID-19 Pandemic" included in Item 7, "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risks Related to Covid-19 Pandemic" included in Item 1A, "Risk Factors" for additional information on the impacts and risks of the COVID-19 Pandemic on us and the actions we have taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We were incorporated in March 2005 in the state of Delaware under the name CBG Holdings, Inc. We changed our name to Q2 Holdings, Inc. in March 2013. We are headquartered in Austin, Texas, and our principal executive offices are located at 10355 Pecan Park Boulevard, Austin, Texas 78729. Our telephone number is (833) 444-3469.
Industry Background
The financial services market is intensely competitive and rapidly changing. We believe a new frontier has emerged in which financial institutions and other financial services providers will have new roles and interdependencies and require new technology, partnerships, and business models to create differentiation and lasting value.
The ubiquity of mobile and tablet devices and the proliferation and adoption of new, innovative financial experiences offered by FinTechs and other financial services providers are dramatically changing the financial services market.
The ubiquity of mobile and tablet devices and End Users' increasing expectations for innovative digital services have driven increases in the number of financial services providers, greater fragmentation of the financial services market and a broadening set of new and innovative digital financial services. End Users, spanning retail, small business and commercial, expect to transact and engage digitally with financial services providers anytime, anywhere and on any device, and seamlessly across devices. Financial services providers similarly must be able to digitally manage End Users' financial experiences anytime, anywhere and on any device, with a focus towards improving operating efficiency and enhancing End-User acquisition, engagement and retention. FinTechs and major innovative Brands recognize that incorporating banking into their strategy is an opportunity to leverage the trust that their customers place in them, drive deeper engagement with those customers and generate additional revenue. These changes in the financial services market and in End-User and customer expectations create challenges and opportunities for financial institutions as well as other financial services providers. Financial institutions and other financial services providers are seeking to address these challenges and opportunities by providing a broadening set of new and innovative digital financial services, solutions and experiences which better align with the expectations of End Users' experience through digital channels.
Substantial investment over the past several years in FinTechs and the innovation they bring to the market are increasing End-User demand and expectations for new, more engaging and meaningful digital financial experiences. FinTechs and other financial services providers are nimble, focused on innovation and are less constrained than financial institutions by legacy technology solutions, physical branch locations and regulation. By unbundling traditional banking services and delivering them through new, innovative and compelling experiences, FinTechs are making finance more accessible, engaging and easier for End Users. The innovative offerings of FinTechs are having an outsized impact on the financial services industry, creating substantial competitive pressure on financial institutions to offer similarly compelling financial experiences. Accordingly, financial institutions are increasingly seeking to incorporate best-in-class FinTech solutions into their offerings and operations.
FinTechs and other financial services providers, including Brands, face substantial regulatory hurdles and technology dependencies in incorporating banking into their solutions. The financial services offered by FinTechs and other financial services providers often leverage core banking functions, creating an interdependency between financial institutions and FinTechs and other financial services providers. Financial institutions of all sizes provide two fundamental banking functions among others - they hold NCUA-insured or FDIC-insured deposits and they transfer money. Providing these critical banking functions generally requires a federal or state banking charter, as well as specialized expertise and infrastructure, and subjects the provider to complex regulatory oversight by various authorities. As an example, electronic payment transactions in the United States, other than wire transfers, are conducted as automated clearinghouse, or ACH, transactions, which settle through the Federal Reserve System in most cases, and generally, only financial institutions can obtain the necessary master account with a Federal Reserve Bank to settle transactions. These laws and regulations have existed for decades, are extremely complex, constantly evolving, and require financial institutions to implement and maintain complex and costly operating policies, procedures and technical infrastructure to protect End Users, their deposits and their personal information. These regulatory constraints provide an incentive for FinTechs and other financial services providers, including Brands, to partner with financial institutions rather than making the significant investments in expertise and infrastructure necessary to obtain a banking charter and otherwise become regulatory-compliant.
The confluence of these challenges and opportunities faced by financial institutions and other financial services providers, including Brands, has created an environment in which cooperation, rather than competition, can be the optimal solution. To more deeply engage with their End Users, financial institutions are increasingly seeking to incorporate best-in-class FinTech experiences into their digital offerings, and other financial services providers are increasingly incorporating banking functionality into their offerings. This convergence of factors and interdependency between financial institutions and other financial service providers is creating what we believe is a new frontier in financial services in which financial institutions, FinTechs, and Brands will have new roles and interdependencies, and will require new technology, new partnerships and new business models.
Security is paramount for digital financial services
The risks of theft and fraud have always existed in banking and financial services. However, as the adoption, use, and breadth of digital financial services offerings has increased, the incidence of fraud and theft in digital channels has grown substantially. The methods by which criminals seek to commit fraud are constantly changing, requiring financial services providers and their technology providers to continually modify their security protocols. In addition, safeguarding the funds and information of financial service providers and their End Users becomes increasingly complex as digital financial services grow and extend across new channels, devices, and services not previously contemplated. Successfully securing the digital financial services of financial institutions, FinTechs and other financial services providers requires experience, constant vigilance, and continuous investment to stay informed and guard against these ever-changing threats.
Digital financial services are highly regulated
Financial services providers and their solutions are subject to extensive and complex regulations and oversight by federal, state and other regulatory authorities. These laws and regulations are constantly evolving and affect the conduct of financial service providers operations and, as a result, the business of their technology providers. The compliance of digital financial solutions with these regulatory requirements depends on a variety of factors, including functionality and design, the classification of the financial service provider and its services, and the manner in which the financial service provider and its End Users utilize the solutions. In order to ensure compliance with these laws, technology providers and financial service providers may be required to implement operating policies and procedures to protect the privacy and security of their, the financial service providers' and their End Users' information, and to undergo periodic audits and examinations. Maintaining such regulatory compliance becomes increasingly complex as digital financial services grow and extend across new channels, devices, and services not previously contemplated.
Digital financial services are complex and often have limitations
The ubiquity of mobile and tablet devices and continued proliferation of digital solutions offered through open development platforms makes it increasingly difficult to provide a consistent, intuitive and personalized End-User experience and requires digital solutions to support new and rapidly changing mobile operating systems and device types. The technical and operational complexities of delivering integrated digital solutions across multiple operating systems, devices, channels, and complex functionality increase the difficulty of providing a consistent, intuitive and personalized End-User experience. Aging or increasingly complex solutions can create the following challenges for financial services providers:
•integrating applications and systems from multiple vendors may increase costs and time-to-market;
•managing relationships with multiple vendors can be time consuming and require a greater investment in business development and support resources;
•building, maintaining and upgrading regulatory-compliant and secure solutions and infrastructure can be expensive and time-consuming and require special expertise that can be hard to find and retain;
•operating, supporting and upgrading systems from multiple vendors can be difficult, costly and less secure and limit the ability to provide a unified End-User experience or comprehensive view of End-User behavior;
•partnering between financial institutions and other financial services providers and innovating and delivering new solutions can be difficult and cost-prohibitive when integration with dated legacy infrastructure is required; and
•training End Users and internal personnel on the use of different point systems can be challenging, time-consuming and costly.
The use of multiple point solutions for digital financial services can require End Users to maintain different login credentials across digital channels and manage different systems. Additionally, the disjointed nature of the underlying workflows, data and terminology caused by the implementation of multiple solutions can lead to decreased End-User adoption, retention and satisfaction. End Users' adoption, retention and satisfaction can also be adversely impacted by the dated End User interfaces of older legacy systems.
The market for digital financial services is significant
We have continuously invested in expanding and improving our digital banking platform since its introduction in 2005. In addition, over the past several years we have acquired or developed new solutions and additional functionality that serve a broader range of needs of financial institutions as well as the needs of FinTechs, Alt-FIs and Brands. Our integrated, end-to-end collection of solutions and services now includes commercial banking, regulatory and compliance, digital lending, BaaS, digital account opening, account switching and data-driven sales enablement and portfolio management solutions. We have also introduced the Q2 Innovation Studio, an API-based and SDK-based open technology platform that allows our financial institution customers and other technology partners to develop unique extensions of and integrations to our digital banking platform, allowing financial institutions to quickly and easily deploy customized experiences and the latest financial services expected by End Users.
As of December 31, 2021, we had more than 1,200 financial institution customers using one or more of our solutions, including 40% of the top 100 U.S. Banks, based on total assets. Our financial institution customers span from regional and community financial institutions, or RCFIs, to global enterprise banks, demonstrating that our portfolio of solutions gives us access to the full spectrum of financial institutions. We market our lending, fraud detection, risk assessment and compliance solutions to all federally-insured financial institutions on a standalone basis, or in combination with our digital banking platform. We market our digital banking platform primarily to RCFIs. To date, a substantial majority of our revenues continue to result from sales of our digital banking platform to U.S. based RCFIs. We define RCFIs as federally-insured banks and credit unions with less than $100 billion in assets, which according to data compiled by BauerFinancial as of September 30, 2021, consisted of approximately 9,947 financial institutions with combined assets of $8.8 trillion, representing approximately 35% of the aggregate assets held by the 9,977 total federally-insured financial institutions. RCFIs remain critical to our mission of building stronger and more diverse communities by strengthening their financial institutions. RCFIs have historically sought to differentiate themselves by providing local, personalized banking services that are responsive to the changing needs and circumstances of their communities. Many RCFIs are locally owned and obtain deposits and make lending decisions on a local basis. RCFIs account for a large portion of small business loans, helping local businesses create jobs and drive economic growth in the communities they serve. RCFIs seek to develop strong, lasting relationships with their End Users and can serve as centers of commerce and influence in their communities.
The FinTech, Alt-FI and Brand markets consist of thousands of financial services providers globally seeking to provide End Users with new and innovative financial services, experiences and solutions. FinTechs and Alt-FIs have received substantial investment, estimated to be greater than $415 billion globally from 2008 through September 30, 2021, with $100 billion invested in the first nine months of 2021 alone, according to Deloitte's web-based Interactive Fintech Funding Report citing Venture Scanner source data. Our Q2 Innovation Studio offerings, which we market to financial institutions and FinTechs, allows our financial institution customers and other technology partners to integrate financial services to our digital banking platform, allowing financial institutions to quickly and efficiently incorporate the integrated solutions into their offerings and operations. We market our BaaS solutions, which we re-branded as Helix in February 2022, primarily to FinTechs and Brands wishing to incorporate banking into their innovative digital services. We also market our digital lending platform and discrete elements of our digital banking platform to FinTechs and Alt-FIs globally.
Based on our estimates of the number of target financial institutions for our digital banking solutions and our internal assumptions as to the number and types of digital accounts they serve, the prices for our solutions and the number of transactions processed, we believe that the market for our digital banking platform, including retail, small business and commercial banking, as well as digital account opening, account switching, risk management and Q2 Innovation Studio is greater than $7.0 billion. Based on our estimate of the number of target providers of digital lending services and our internal assumptions as to the number of End Users they serve and the prices for our solutions, we believe that the market for our digital lending solutions, including the borrower portal, origination, underwriting, servicing, collections, actionable insights, coaching, negotiation, pricing and sales enablement modules, is greater than $4.0 billion. Based on our estimates of the number of target financial institutions and Brands for our Helix solutions and our internal assumptions as to the number of End Users they serve, the prices for our solutions and the number of transactions processed, we believe the market for our Helix solutions is greater than $2.0 billion. In the aggregate, we believe that the worldwide market for our solutions is greater than $13.0 billion.
Our Solutions
We are a leading provider of secure, cloud-based digital solutions that transform the ways in which financial institutions and other financial services providers engage with account holders and End Users. We offer our solutions to financial institutions, FinTechs, Alt-FIs, and Brands wishing to incorporate banking into their customer strategies. Our integrated, end-to-end portfolio of solutions and services are designed to enable End Users and customers to engage with and manage financial experiences anytime, anywhere, and from any device, across all devices. We purpose-build our solutions to drive success for our customers and technology partners by allowing them to digitize their operations and offerings, differentiate their digital brands, and integrate traditional and emerging financial services, ultimately enhancing End-User acquisition, engagement and retention and improving operational efficiencies.
Key Solution Offerings
Our portfolio of digital solutions includes the following key offerings:
•Digital Banking Platform: Our end-to-end digital banking platform supports our financial institution customers in their delivery of unified digital banking services across digital channels. Our open digital banking platform now spans onboarding, banking and a vast set of integrations to third-party financial services across the retail, small business and commercial segments, and provides our financial institution customers with the tools, knowledge, and access necessary to: monitor and optimize End-User acquisition, engagement and retention; customize and extend the platform; and, improve operational efficiencies. We offer some of the solutions included in our digital banking platform on a standalone basis to financial institutions as well as Alt-FIs and Fintechs.
•Q2 Innovation Studio: Our API-based and SDK-based open technology platform that allows our financial institution customers and other technology partners to develop unique extensions of and integrations to our digital banking platform, allowing financial institutions to quickly and easily deploy customized experiences and the latest financial services expected by End Users.
•Lending: Our end-to-end digital lending portfolio allows our financial institution, FinTech and Alt-FI customers to simplify the End-User experiences of borrowers, accelerate loan decisioning, and reduce operational inefficiencies through digitization and automation of the traditional loan application and underwriting process. Our lending portfolio also provides commercial relationship managers with actionable data-driven insights into an individual commercial End User's entire portfolio, assessing the overall portfolio and individual relationships, highlighting potential concerns and identifying opportunities, and ultimately helping the relationship manager to more effectively price, negotiate and close commercial loans.
•Helix: Our cloud-based, real-time core processing platform, which we formerly marketed as Q2 BaaS, combines the services and functionality necessary for FinTechs and innovative Brands to incorporate banking services into their digital offerings, allowing them to easily and efficiently incorporate highly personalized financial experiences within their digital offerings without having to independently meet the stringent regulatory and technical requirements applicable to financial institutions and their banking services.
Key Benefits
Our solutions provide the following key benefits to our customers and their End Users:
•Enhanced and more frequent engagement with End Users: Our solutions provide our customers with a comprehensive view of End-User engagement and activity across devices and channels. The insights made possible by a comprehensive view enable an enhanced, personalized End-User experience, real-time risk and fraud assessment and other analytic features that improve the function and security of our solutions. The breadth of our solutions and quality of the End-User experience they provide enable our customers to increase the frequency and effectiveness of their interactions with End Users. We believe the frequency and ease of these interactions can strengthen the relationships between End Users and our customers and help our customers better serve their End Users through a more comprehensive understanding of their behavior and activities. In particular, we believe that engaging with commercial End Users, involves unique challenges, and by enabling commercial relationship managers with actionable data-driven insights into commercial End-User relationships, they can better serve their commercial End Users, and increase overall performance.
•Drive End-User loyalty: We believe our customers are able to drive End-User loyalty by increasing their level and quality of End-User engagement. Our customers are able to tailor our solutions by offering individually relevant functionality as well as branded, localized End-User experiences. Our digital banking platform and lending solutions provide our financial institution customers with a comprehensive view of operational and End-User activity across channels and devices allowing them to look for opportunities to improve End-User engagement and grow their End-User relationships with targeted offerings based on specific behavior. We believe this further strengthens End-User loyalty by enabling our customers to engage End Users through customized and End-User-friendly digital experiences.
•Vast and flexible integrations: Our highly flexible set of integration tools enables the rapid integration of third-party applications and data sources with our digital banking platform. These integration tools connect with a wide variety of third-party applications, allowing us to seamlessly integrate with our customers' internal and third-party systems and services. We currently maintain over 1,000 integrations to a broad variety of financial services technology partners.
•More effective marketing of products and services: Our customers' marketing of their new and existing products and services through our solutions can be frequent, timely, targeted and data-driven. The ease and availability of communications within digital channels also make it easier for End Users to find information about products and services. Our solutions also enable a simplified End-User experience, which can help improve sales of products and services.
•SaaS delivery model: We developed our solutions to be cloud-based. Our customers generally subscribe and pay for their use of our solutions over time, and our solutions do not require our customers to install any significant technical infrastructure. While we host our digital banking platform for substantially all of our digital banking customers, our lending, Q2 Innovation Studio and Helix solutions are hosted with industry leading public cloud service providers. Our SaaS delivery model can reduce the total cost of ownership of our customers by providing the development, implementation, integration, maintenance, monitoring and support of our cloud-based solutions on a subscription basis. Our solutions are designed to support the rapid addition of new services as well as the introduction of new devices and digital channels. As a result, our customers can easily scale the use of our solutions with their needs as they add End Users and expand the digital services and solutions they offer.
•Regulatory compliance: Our solutions leverage our deep domain expertise and the significant investments we have made in the design and development of our data center architecture and other technical infrastructure, including public cloud services, to meet the stringent security and technical requirements on financial institutions and financial services providers. Customers who use our cloud-based solutions are able to satisfy security and technical compliance obligations by relying on the security programs and regulatory certification of our data centers and other technical infrastructure. By doing so, our customers avoid the significant cost and effort associated with building, maintaining and upgrading a regulatory-compliant and secure environment on their own.
•Real-time security: We employ multi-layered controls to help secure our customers' and End Users' information. Each layer addresses specific areas of possible fraud or data vulnerability. Our customers can use transactional-based controls to reduce fraudulent transactions by allowing them to adjust configurations such as transaction values, payment windows or account suspension. Our digital banking platform customers who leverage our Q2 Sentinel product are able to identify and block suspected fraudulent activity in real-time at the application layer, based on machine-learning and behavioral analytics, and notify operations staff and End Users of suspect transactions prior to consummation of a transaction. This approach mitigates and more effectively manages the security risks in financial services and helps protect our customers' reputations.
•Intuitive design: We design and test the features and End-User experience of our solutions to be optimized for touch-based devices and then extend that design to other digital channels. This design process and our broad feature offerings enable our solutions to deliver a modern, unified End-User experience across digital channels.
•Delivery of robust digital financial services across multiple channels: Our solutions enable our customers to deliver robust and integrated digital financial services to their End Users who increasingly expect and appreciate the ability to manage their financial experiences anytime, anywhere and on any device. Through a single log-in and consistent workflow, End Users are able to seamlessly conduct consumer and commercial transactions across digital channels and devices.
Our Business Strengths
Since our inception, our mission has been to help financial institutions strengthen the markets they serve. We are highly committed to this mission, and support it by focusing on designing, developing and acquiring new, innovative digital banking and other financial services solutions to meet changing End-User expectations. We believe we are well positioned to connect and serve financial institutions, FinTechs and other financial services providers, including Brands, as they transform the ways in which they engage, either independently or in partnership, with End Users globally:
•Our purpose-built digital banking platform leads the RCFI digital banking market: We built our digital banking platform to address unique challenges that financial institutions face in providing digital banking services. Our digital banking platform reduces the inefficiencies of traditional point-to-point integration strategies and replaces multiple management consoles with a single unified view of the rules, rights and security involved with operating seamlessly across digital channels. Our digital banking solutions enable our financial institution customers to provide a compelling, unified End-User experience to consumer and commercial End Users using a single login anywhere, anytime and on any device. We believe our deep domain experience as a leading provider of digital banking solutions positions us well to provide new, innovative digital banking and other financial services solutions to address the new frontier in financial services.
•We have acquired and developed solutions to better serve our financial institution customers and a broader set of global financial service providers including FinTechs, Alt-FIs and Brands: Over the past several years, we have expanded our portfolio to include offerings such as lending, Q2 Innovation Studio, Helix, digital account opening, account switching, risk management and data-driven sales enablement and portfolio management solutions. As the financial services landscape has evolved to become more digitized and open, we have strived to ensure our customers can offer a broader range of digital services to their End Users.
•Our open technology platform accelerates innovation and enables a new technology partnership ecosystem: We are leveraging the strength of our digital banking platform and broad customer base to open our platform and create opportunities for mutually beneficial partnerships among financial institutions and other financial services providers. To accomplish this, we have opened our digital banking platform via the Q2 Innovation Studio, which makes it easy for financial institutions and other financial services providers to integrate additional functionality into our platform. Financial institutions can deploy their own development resources to supplement or customize their digital offerings and FinTechs and other digital solution providers can integrate their services with the Q2 digital banking platform. Financial institutions can then choose to incorporate these integrated services into their offerings, creating a new technology partnership ecosystem where financial institutions, FinTechs and other digital solution providers can cooperate, generating new revenue opportunities and enhancing End User engagement.
•We believe Helix has an early mover advantage in serving the rapidly growing market of Brands incorporating banking into their digital offerings: We have been investing in our Helix offerings for several years, and today our Helix platform supports many FinTechs and innovative Brands, serving more than 11 million End Users. FinTechs and major innovative Brands recognize that incorporating banking into their strategy is an opportunity to leverage the trust that their customers place in them, driving deeper engagement with those customers all while generating additional revenue. We believe this opportunity to be in its early stages and given the maturity and adoption of our Helix solution to date and that our Helix solutions were one of the earliest of their type on the market, we believe we have a significant competitive advantage in capitalizing on this opportunity.
•We have a proven track record of providing digital solutions to financial services providers: Our founders and team have a track record of successfully delivering technology for financial services providers. We have deep domain expertise in financial services and community banking, which we utilize to develop and deliver our solutions and services to our customers. We have significant experience and the technical infrastructure to deliver solutions that are designed to comply with the stringent security and technical regulations applicable to financial institutions and financial services providers and to safeguard our customers' and their End Users' data.
•Our sales model is tailored to our different markets: The financial institution market is well defined and allows us to effectively focus our go-to-market strategy for our sales and marketing efforts. Utilizing the deep industry experience of our management and sales teams, we are able to leverage our relationships with leaders and influencers at many of our financial institution customers as valuable sources of reference and promotion. We have also developed actionable insights into our sales and marketing performance, enabling us to be efficient with our go-to-market investments. The markets for emerging financial services providers are relatively new, broad and continually evolving. As a result, we leverage our network of technology partners and insights from our experience with financial institution customers to effectively pursue these markets.
•We grow our customer relationships over time: Throughout customer relationships, we employ a structured strategy designed to inform, educate and enhance customer confidence and help our customers identify and implement additional solutions to acquire, engage and retain additional End Users.
•Our revenues are highly predictable: To date, a substantial majority of our revenues continue to result from sales of our digital banking platform to RCFIs. We generally recognize our revenues over the terms of our customer agreements. The initial term of our digital banking platform customer agreements averages over five years. Our long-term agreements and our high customer retention, as well as the growth over time in the number of End Users using our solutions, drive the recurring nature of our revenues and provide us with significant visibility into future revenues.
•Established financial stability: We generated cash flow from operations for our most recent full-year and expect to show continued improvement in cash flows from operations in the normal course of business over the long-term. Given that some vendors we may compete with have not generated cash flow from operations, we believe our relative financial maturity is viewed as a strength by potential customers as they make their vendor selections. In addition, we feel that our position to generate cash flow from operations affords us with opportunities to invest and pursue our growth strategy, which may not be as easy for companies who are not generating cash flows from operations.
•Our award-winning culture drives innovation and customer success: We believe our award-winning, innovation-focused culture and the location of our operations facilitate recruiting and retaining top development, integration and design talent. We are headquartered in Austin, Texas, which is a vibrant city that continues to attract an increasing number of young professionals and has close ties to leading research institutions. In each of the past eleven years, the Austin American Statesman recognized us as one of Austin's "Top Places to Work." We believe our mission, combined with our focus on delivering leading-edge digital solutions, enables us to attract and retain top talent.
Our Growth Strategy
We believe we are well positioned to connect and serve financial institutions, FinTechs and other financial services providers as they transform the ways in which they engage, either independently or in partnership, with End Users globally and to capitalize on the new frontier in financial services. To accomplish this goal, we are pursuing the following growth strategies:
•Further penetrate our large market opportunity: We believe financial institutions are increasingly adopting cloud-based digital banking solutions. With the ubiquity of mobile and tablet devices and resulting proliferation of mobile digital solutions provided through their open developer platforms, End Users are increasingly engaging with financial experiences across a variety of digital channels. Over the past several years, in response to the increasing demand for innovative digital banking and other financial services, we have taken steps to expand our addressable market by acquiring and developing solutions that serve the needs of a broader, global set of financial services providers and their End Users. We have also opened our digital banking platform via the Q2 Innovation Studio, which makes it easy for financial institutions and other digital solution providers to integrate additional functionality to our platform. We believe that our expanded portfolio of solutions addresses a broader set of customer needs, and over the past five years, we have seen the average number of products included in our new digital banking platform deals increase by over 40%. We intend to further penetrate our large market opportunity and increase our number of financial institution and other financial services provider customers using our broad range of digital solutions through acquiring and developing additional solutions, investments in our sales and marketing organization and related activities.
•Grow revenues by expanding our relationships with existing customers: We believe there is significant opportunity to expand our relationships with existing customers by selling them additional solutions. Our broad portfolio of solutions gives us access to decision makers across our customers' organizations. Specifically, we sell distinct solutions targeted for purchase by roles such as head of risk, lending, finance, operations, branding and technology. Additionally, the initial term of our digital banking platform customer agreements averages over five years. This breadth of our portfolio of solutions and the duration of our typical initial digital banking platform arrangement provides us with the ability to better understand our customers' businesses, build trust with them and offer them new ways to acquire, engage and retain End Users. In addition, our revenues from existing customers continue to grow as these customers increase the number of End Users on our solutions and as the number of transactions these End Users perform on our solutions increases. We believe our recent investments in digital lending, BaaS, digital account opening, account switching, the Q2 Innovation Studio and data-driven sales enablement and portfolio management, and other innovative solutions will help our customers expand their relationships with us by allowing them to more efficiently sell and market additional services and solutions to their End Users. Our financial institution customers grow their End User bases organically and through acquisitions of other financial institutions.
•Relentlessly innovate to expand our solutions offerings and enhance our platform: We believe our history of innovation distinguishes us in the market, and we intend to continue to invest in our software development efforts and introduce new solutions that are largely informed by and aligned with the business objectives of our existing and new customers. We have rapidly grown through a combination of broad market acceptance of our award-winning solutions and relentless innovation, investment and acquisitions. Our portfolio of solutions now spans onboarding, banking and lending across the retail, small business and commercial segments. Our integrated, end-to-end collection of services and experiences now includes commercial banking, regulatory and compliance, digital lending, BaaS, digital account opening, account switching and data-driven sales enablement and portfolio management solutions. We have also introduced the Q2 Innovation Studio, an API-based and SDK-based open technology platform that allows our financial institution customers and other technology partners to develop unique extensions of and integrations to our digital banking platform, allowing financial institutions to quickly and easily deploy customized experiences and the latest financial services expected by End Users.
•Selectively pursue acquisitions and strategic investments: In addition to continuing to develop our solutions organically, we regularly evaluate strategic opportunities, such as our acquisitions of Centrix, Social Money, Unbill, Cloud Lending, Gro, PrecisionLender and ClickSWITCH. We anticipate that we will continue to selectively pursue acquisitions of and strategic investments in technologies that will strengthen and expand the features and functionality of our solutions and provide access to new customers and new markets.
The Q2 Solutions
We design and develop our solutions with a platform approach intended to provide comprehensive integration between our solution offerings and our customers' internal and third-party systems. This integrated approach allows our customers to deliver a unified and robust financial experience across digital channels. We leverage the benefits of our open platform to provide our customers the following solutions:
Digital Banking Platform
Our digital banking platform allows financial institutions to offer a comprehensive and unified suite of digital banking services to their End Users. Our open platform architecture, deep integration with other systems and the multi-tenant aspects of our infrastructure, enable us to develop digital banking solutions that allow our customers to harness the power of the information within their other systems to gain greater insights and to improve the overall security of their End Users and themselves. To date, a substantial majority of our revenues continue to result from sales of our digital banking platform to RCFIs.
Our digital banking platform provides our customers with the following benefits:
•single-login and multi-layered security across channels and devices;
•deep integration with numerous other internal and third-party systems;
•single interface to an FI's core transaction processing and other systems of record;
•unified End-User experience and consistent workflows, languages and data;
•rapid configurability, development and deployment of new features and functionality;
•comprehensive view of End-User activity across channels and devices;
•platform wide operational, administrative and customer experience/success reporting; and
•flexible, predictive branding and personalization.
We provide the following digital banking platform solutions:
Solution Features
Q2 Consumer Banking • Browser-based digital banking solution
• Unified and robust financial experience across digital channels
• Comprehensive financial institution-branded digital banking capabilities such as account access, check balancing, funds transfers, bill pay, recurring payments processing, statement viewing and new products and service applications
• Management functionality such as End-User enrollment, password management, permissions, rights management, reports, integrated security as well as feature assignment for digital banking
Q2 Small Business and Commercial • Business account opening, onboarding workflow solution supporting small businesses through corporate customers with new and existing commercial customer sales
• Full suite of commercial digital banking services to support small business through corporate customers inclusive of reporting, payment and data security services
• Digital banking support for single and batch ACH processing, payroll, state and federal tax payments and domestic and international wires
• Advanced digital banking solutions to deliver a flexible, efficient, and positive experience for all types of business users, from sole proprietors to enterprise-level account holders
• Allows business End Users to more efficiently manage and execute higher volume and more complex transactions by restricting transactions based on accounts, subsidiaries, approval levels, End-User roles, date and time as well as geographic location
• Allows advanced reporting designed to help financial institutions deliver key business information to commercial End Users
Q2mobile Remote Deposit Capture • Partnered solution that allows remote check deposit capture utilizing End Users' camera-ready mobile and tablet devices
Q2 Sentinel • Real-time security analytics solution designed to help financial institutions detect and block suspect transactions
• Behavioral analytics and policy-based decision prompts for financial institution administrators
• Continuous learning of End-User behaviors while providing an analysis of transaction activity via easy-to-use case management tools supporting either the authorization or interruption of transactions
Q2 Patrol • Event-driven validation product designed to mitigate certain high-risk, non-transactional fraudulent activity
• Behavioral machine learning designed to identify fraudulent digital banking sessions
• Analyzes past login behavior and device details, including IP addresses, geolocation, device type, time stamps and more to create a digital footprint for each End User
• Enhances security by requiring End Users to further authenticate a digital banking session if that session is deemed suspect based on abnormal behavioral login and device detail
• Supplies session details in the End-User interface to better involve End Users in their own account safety
• Reporting for regulatory compliance and risk reduction
Q2 SMART • Targeting and messaging platform that allows financial institutions to analyze End-User data utilizing machine learning and statistical analysis designed to identify opportunities to grow their End-User relationships with targeted offerings based on specific End-User behavior
• Multi-channel approach to identify traits across a broad range of End-User behavioral patterns to help financial institutions create new End-User campaigns, conversations and offers based on specific End-User behaviors
• Recommendation engine to determine which products an End User is most likely to adopt
• Summarizes End User behavioral data using clear and easily understood metrics, graphs and charts that are updated daily and presented through an intuitive End-User interface
Q2 Contextual PFM • Allows End Users to easily add external accounts and view them together with internal accounts on their digital banking home page
• Allows financial institutions the ability to offer End Users simplified transaction descriptions and automatic categorization across their internally and externally held accounts
• Enables financial institutions to better understand End Users' consumer financial data, analytics, and behaviors
• Allow End Users to view their personal data in a variety of ways, such as budgets, spending, net worth, debt, and trends
Q2 Goals • Enables End Users to establish and save towards specific savings goals
• Allows End Users to easily track their progress and activity towards achieving their savings goals
• Provides financial institutions visibility into End Users' savings goals enabling them to assess additional opportunities to offer additional financial services to assist such End Users
Q2 CardSwap • Allows financial institutions who issue debit or credit cards to enable End Users receiving newly issued cards to automatically change their payment information with existing subscription and digital point-of-sale services, which have previously been set up for payment with a different card
• Assists End Users with compromised card replacement
Q2 Gro • Digital account opening and digital sales and marketing platform that drives customer acquisition growth across digital channels
• Enables financial institutions to make personalized recommendations and cross-sell banking products, such as deposit accounts and loans, to both retail and business End Users
• Combines advanced, multichannel account opening with targeted marketing capabilities as well as a shopping cart experience
Q2 Innovation Studio • Consists of a portfolio of technologies that financial institutions can use to design, develop and distribute innovative products, services and features through our digital banking platform, including the: Customer Program; Partner Developer Program; Partner Accelerator; and, Q2 Partner Marketplace
• Customer Program: Utilizing Q2 Caliper SDK, financial institutions are provided with the tools, knowledge and access necessary to extend our digital banking platform by developing custom features and integrations through open APIs
• Partner Developer Program: Allows the same custom development as the Customer Program, but allowing financial institutions to partner with Q2-certified development partners introduced by Q2
• Partner Accelerator: Leveraging a growing ecosystem of third-party integrations of Fintech and other digital solutions to the Q2 digital banking platform, financial institutions can choose to partner with such providers by purchasing access to and rapidly deploying their integrated solutions
• Q2 Partner Marketplace: Online marketplace of pre-integrated third-party applications financial institutions can offer to their End Users and for which they can receive a revenue share from the End-User fees
Q2 Biller Direct • Bill payment solution that aggregates End Users' bills and payments into a single view, enabling bill presentment, aggregation and bill pay functionality
ClickSWITCH • Allows financial institutions, upon the direction of an End User, to switch the End User's direct deposits to the End User's account with the financial institution
Centrix Dispute Tracking System • Electronic transaction dispute management solution
• Assists in the administration of disputed electronic transactions (debit card, ATM, ACH and remittance transfers) for the purpose of compliance with Regulation E of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act
• Includes an optional Fraud Alerts module which allows customers to quickly and accurately measure the financial impact of data breaches involving card payments
Centrix Payments I.Q. System • ACH file monitoring and risk reporting solution
• Simple and intuitive analytical reporting of both originated and inbound ACH activity, while also safeguarding against ACH fraud with calendaring and real-time validation of originated files
Centrix Exact/Transaction Management System • Fraud prevention tool focused on the transaction management needs of commercial End Users
• Encompasses check positive pay with payee match, ACH positive pay and full account reconciliation
Lending Solutions
PrecisionLender Solutions
Our PrecisionLender platform is a cloud-based, data-driven sales enablement, pricing and portfolio management solution that allows financial institutions globally to structure and negotiate commercial lending, deposits and fee-based business transactions more effectively. During the negotiation process, the PrecisionLender platform analyzes a financial institution's entire commercial portfolio, and individual relationships, in addition to other external market information, to assess the performance of the portfolio and relationships. Based on such analysis, PrecisionLender provides commercial bankers with actionable insights by highlighting potential concerns and identifying potential opportunities, ultimately allowing them to more efficiently and effectively price, negotiate and close commercial loans, secure deposits and process treasury services. The PrecisionLender platform user experience is enhanced by Andi®, a digital enterprise coach powered by machine learning and one of the industry's largest commercial banking data sets. The PrecisionLender platform includes the following distinct solutions:
Solution Features
PrecisionLender Platform • Cloud-based loan pricing and negotiation functionality that provides commercial and small business relationship managers with actionable insights based on analysis of their commercial and small business account holder portfolios to efficiently and effectively price and structure commercial loans, deposits and other fee-based banking services
Data Studio • Managed and configured data environment that provides in depth analysis and reporting of a financial institution's commercial and small business account portfolios, enabling commercial and small business managers to assess performance trends as well as identify cross-sales and other opportunities for improvement
Andi® • Configurable digital enterprise coach powered by machine learning which accompanies the relationship manager throughout the commercial and small business loan structuring, negotiating and pricing process, making recommendations along the way leveraging the real-time analysis being performed by the PrecisionLender Platform and one of the industry's largest commercial banking data sets
Cloud Lending Solutions
Our Q2 Cloud Lending, or CL, digital lending platform is a cloud-based, end-to-end lending solution that allows financial institutions, FinTechs and Alt-FIs to automate and digitize their lending activities, supporting digital lending applications, scoring, underwriting, servicing and collections for multiple assets classes. The CL digital lending platform allows financial institutions, FinTechs and Alt-FIs to originate and service a wide range of loan types including online, consumer, commercial, small business and marketplace, or peer-to-peer. The CL digital lending platform utilizes the Force.com platform and includes the following distinct solutions, which financial institutions, FinTechs and Alt-FIs can use as a complete package or individually to supplement existing operations:
Solution Features
Q2 CL Portal • Configurable front-end portal that provides a differentiated borrowing experience for consumer, commercial and small business loans for borrowers, investors and stakeholders
Q2 CL Originate • Customer-centric, agile loan origination and underwriting solution
• Designed to meet the needs of consumer, commercial, small business, marketplace, or peer-to-peer, and lending
• Manages the entire origination and underwriting process including loan file management, workflows, auto-decisioning, parties management, credit memo, credit analysis, approvals and covenants
Q2 CL Loan • Loan servicing application that automates loan billing, payments, collections, and accounting within one robust, flexible, and secure platform
• Manages portfolios, increases transaction volume, and rapidly brings new products to market
Q2 CL Marketplace • Cloud-based marketplace application designed to handle the complexities of managing the entire online marketplace, or peer-to-peer, loan cycle, including online origination, loan fractionalization, servicing and managing multiple investor portfolios
Q2 CL Collections • Customer-centric collections application that enables lenders to define and automate collection strategies, optimize customer interaction across channels, lower risk, and reduce technical and operational costs
• Allows lenders to track customer interactions, set priorities and optimize workloads
Q2 Innovation Studio
In 2021 we introduced the Q2 Innovation Studio, a portfolio of technologies and programs that financial institution customers, FinTechs and other digital solutions providers can leverage to design, develop, and distribute innovative products, services, features, and integrations through Q2's digital banking platform. Q2 Innovation Studio includes an API-based and SDK-based open technology platform that allows our financial institution customers, FinTechs and other digital solution providers to develop unique extensions of and integrations to our digital banking platform. Financial institution customers wishing to customize or supplement our digital banking platform solutions may subscribe to the Q2 Innovation Studio and deploy their own development resources, or utilize certified partners, to develop customized services or unique integrations, allowing them to innovate more quickly and to differentiate their brands leveraging our secure digital banking platform. Additionally, FinTechs and other digital solution providers can use the Q2 Innovation Studio to develop integrations of their financial services offerings to our digital banking platform, allowing our broad set of digital banking platform customers to select from a substantial and growing catalogue of pre-integrated technology partners to quickly and easily deploy the latest financial and other services solutions expected by End Users. Q2 Innovation Studio can significantly reduce the time and cost it takes to bring new offerings to market and create new opportunities for customer and End User engagement and retention. We believe Q2 Innovation Studio facilitates a mutually beneficial ecosystem of financial institutions, FinTechs and other digital solution providers, allowing them to partner, generate new revenue opportunities, and enhance End User engagement in the new frontier of financial services.
Helix
Helix, which we formerly marketed as Q2 BaaS, allows FinTechs and innovative Brands to incorporate banking services into their digital offerings, allowing them to easily and efficiently incorporate highly personalized financial experiences within their digital offerings and meet the stringent regulatory and technical requirements applicable to financial institutions and their banking services. Helix combines a cloud-based, real-time core processing platform with the services necessary to support it, including integrated issuer processing, identity verification technologies and the banking services of one of Q2's financial institution partners. These financial institution partners provide the highly-regulated banking services which FinTechs and Brands cannot provide on their own without a bank charter, including issuing accounts and cards, holding and insuring deposits and moving money on the FinTech's or Brand's behalf.
Implementation Services, Professional Services and Customer Support
We seek to deepen and grow our customer relationships by providing consistent, high-quality implementation services, professional services, advisory services and customer support, which we believe drive higher customer retention and incremental sales opportunities within our existing customer base. We structure our implementation teams to effectively collaborate with the management and technology teams of our customers ensuring the rapid deployment and effective utilization of our solutions. We offer customized professional services to assist our customers with their efforts to extend our offerings and differentiate their brands. In certain cases, we establish more tailored, premium professional services engagements, or Premier Services, with select customers resulting in a deeper and ongoing level of engagement with them. Under certain circumstances for our digital lending solutions, we also partner with third-party professional system integrators to support our customers in the installation and configuration process. These implementation teams develop and execute a coordinated implementation plan for our customers centered around five standard phases of IT transformation projects: initiation, configuration, application testing, limited production and production.
Our customer support personnel serve the comprehensive support-related needs of our customers. Due to the highly-regulated and complex nature of the financial services industry, our implementation and customer support teams, including any third-party professional system integrators with which we partner, must be knowledgeable about our solutions and the regulatory environment in which our customers are required to operate.
Partner Offerings
In addition to our Q2 Innovation Studio offerings, our customers are reliant on an ever-growing ecosystem of third-party digital solutions to complement their financial services offerings and we provide a broad range of tools to help our customers efficiently bring them to market. The flexible nature of our solutions, along with our proprietary, highly flexible set of integration tools, allows us to build rapid integrations with our customers' internal and third-party systems to support End-User activities and customer processes. These integration tools connect with a wide variety of third-party applications, allowing us to seamlessly integrate with our customers' internal and third-party systems such as account services, payments and imaging. Our ability to integrate with these systems enables our customers to offer a comprehensive set of consumer and commercial functionality to their End Users.
Sales and Marketing
Our sales and marketing organization is responsible for growing our customer base and maintaining and expanding relationships with our existing customers. We sell our solutions primarily through our direct sales organization but also through partnerships for select solutions and global regions. Our direct sales organization consists of experienced sales professionals who are organized by geography, account size, type of market and whether a prospect is a new or existing customer. Customers are assigned a dedicated representative to provide ongoing assistance in the execution of the customer's digital strategy to meet the needs of its End Users. Our sales representatives are supported by our solutions consulting and sales operations teams.
Our marketing team complements our sales organization through integrated programs for demand creation, pipeline acceleration, customer expansion and brand advocacy. While the financial institution market is well-defined due to the regulatory classification of financial institutions, the markets for FinTechs and other financial services providers are broader and more difficult to define due to the changing number of providers in each market. We focus our marketing efforts on sponsorships, highly-targeted tradeshows, publications, digital newsletters, digital advertising, account-based marketing, as well as referral agreements with strategic industry partners. Our marketing team also conducts primary research to support our industry thought leadership and to identify emerging trends in End-User behavior and digital activities. Our marketing programs primarily target digital transformation, technology, finance, operations and marketing executives as well as senior business leaders.
Research and Development
Our focus on innovation has fueled our growth and enables us to provide our customers secure, cloud-based digital solutions that transform the ways in which financial institutions, FinTechs and other financial service providers engage with End Users. We allocate significant resources to developing and improving our solutions to meet our customers' evolving needs. We monitor and test our solutions regularly, and we maintain a disciplined release process to enhance our existing solutions and introduce new capabilities without interrupting service delivery. We follow state-of-the-art practices in software development and design, including using modern programming languages, data storage systems and other tools. Our multi-tiered architecture enables us to scale, add and modify features quickly in response to changing market dynamics, customer needs and regulatory requirements. Our platform approach supports rapid development and deployment of new features to address evolving market needs. We also enable customers to address their market-specific needs via our extension and integration frameworks, which is a key aspect of our technology strategy.
Technology and Operations
Due to the highly regulated nature of the financial services industry, our digital banking platform combines both multi-tenant and single instance aspects. This structure is designed to maximize End-User data security and minimize compliance cost and risks. Our solutions utilize a multi-tiered architecture that allows for scalability, operational simplicity, security and disaster recovery. We have also developed an internal operations and analytics platform that aggregates and leverages customer instance and End-User experience captured within our solutions to drive future innovation and scale.
We serve our digital banking platform customers from a distributed cloud which combines multiple public cloud vendors and a private cloud consisting of active-active American National Standards Institute Tier 4 datacenters managed by a leading co-location partner. Our digital lending and Helix solutions are hosted by cloud-based hosting services. All of our hosting environments are under a single security posture and compliance stance, allowing us to integrate the various solutions together into a seamless End-User experience, minimizing the impact and relevance of any one component on our combined distributed cloud hosting environment. This configuration provides us with a flexible foundation to support our innovation, allowing us to position services on a piecemeal basis to maximize their performance, scale, cost, resiliency and security.
We utilize prevailing industry configurations to minimize service interruptions, and regularly consider and implement improvements to enhance the resiliency of our services, including our recent improvements to actively distribute services across both data centers. As a result of these improvements, our network infrastructure is fully redundant within each of our data centers, including network teaming to provide network redundancy that includes multiple upstream Internet connections. We have also purchased a private block of IP address space to simplify and expedite our disaster recovery management operations for our digital banking platform customers.
Our digital banking platform has had average uptime in excess of 99.9% since January 2013. We actively monitor our infrastructure 24x7 for any sign of vulnerability, and we seek to take preemptive action to minimize and prevent downtime. Our hosting environments employ advanced measures to ensure integrity and security, from layers of zero-trust network access, design-to-fail architecture, anomaly behavior detection of technical assets, to privileged credential access control. We also use strong endpoint hardening and monitoring to mitigate risk posed by the devices used by our globally distributed workforce.
All End Users of our solutions are authenticated, authorized and validated before they can access our solutions. End Users must have, at a minimum, a valid user ID and associated password. Many of our customers also employ other authentication methods such as out-of-band one-time password delivery to log on to our solutions and hardware cryptographic tokens to authorize transactions. Our layered security model allows different groups of End Users to have different levels of access to our solutions. Our code is security reviewed multiple times before being deployed into production, our solutions' vulnerability is tested using internal tools prior to release, and an independent third party performs penetration and vulnerability tests on our solutions periodically.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of patent, trademark, trade secrets and copyright laws, as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual restrictions, to establish, maintain and protect our proprietary rights. As of December 31, 2021, we had nine U.S. patent applications pending and eight issued U.S. patents, with expiration dates ranging from October 2027 to January 2038. Despite substantial investment in research and development activities, we have not focused on patents and patent applications historically. We license third-party technologies, such as bill pay technologies, that are incorporated into some of our solutions.
Our Competition
The market for digital solutions for financial services providers is highly competitive. We believe that the comprehensive integration among our solution offerings and our customers' internal and third-party systems, combined with our deep industry expertise, reputation for consistent, high-quality customer support, and our unified cloud-based digital banking, digital lending, Q2 Innovation Studio and Helix solutions distinguish us from the competition.
We currently compete with providers of technology and services in the financial services industry, including point system vendors, core processing vendors and systems internally developed by financial services providers. With respect to our digital banking platform, we have a number of point solution competitors, including NCR Corporation, or NCR, Alkami Technology, Inc. and Temenos AG in the online, consumer and small business banking space and Finastra, ACI Worldwide, Inc. and Bottomline Technologies (de), Inc. in the commercial banking space. We also compete with core processing vendors that provide systems and services such as Fiserv, Inc., Jack Henry and Associates, Inc. and Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., or FIS. With respect to our lending platform, we compete against a number of point system competitors, including Abrigo, Baker Hill Solutions, LLC, Fair Isaac Corporation, nCino, Inc., Finastra, Moody's Analytics, Inc., Brilliance Financial Technology, Oracle Corporation, Temenos AG, and core processing vendors, including FIS and Fiserv. With respect to our Helix solution, we primarily compete with Galileo Financial Technologies, LLC, Marqeta, Inc. and Green Dot Corporation. With respect to our Q2 Innovation Studio, due to the vast number of potential use cases and customer segments, the list of potential competitors is extremely broad and varied, but includes companies across the retail banking, financial services, transaction processing, consumer technology and financial technology services industries.
Some of our competitors have significantly more financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we have, may devote greater resources to the promotion, sale and support of their systems than we can, have more extensive customer bases and broader customer relationships than we have and have longer operating histories and greater name recognition than we have. In addition, many of our competitors expend more funds on research and development in terms of absolute dollars.
Although we compete with point system vendors and core processing vendors, we also partner with some of these vendors for certain data and services utilized in our solutions and receive referrals from them. In addition, certain of our customers have or can obtain the ability to create their own in-house systems, and while many of these systems have difficulties scaling and providing an integrated platform, we still face challenges displacing in-house systems and retaining customers that choose to develop an in-house system.
We believe the principal competitive factors for why customers choose our solutions in the financial services markets we serve include the following:
•alignment with the missions of our customers;
•ability to provide a single platform for consumer and commercial End Users;
•ability to provide a comprehensive portfolio of products of integrated end-to-end solutions for both account holders and borrowers;
•full-feature functionality across digital channels;
•ability to integrate targeted offers for End Users across digital channels;
•ability to support financial institutions in acquiring deposits with open API technologies;
•SaaS delivery and pricing model;
•ability to support both internal and external developers to quickly integrate with third-party applications and systems utilizing an SDK;
•design of the End-User experience, including modern, intuitive and touch-centric features;
•configurability and branding capabilities for customers;
•familiarity of workflows and terminology and feature-on-demand functionality;
•integrated multi-layered security and compliance of solutions with regulatory requirements;
•quality of implementation, integration and support services;
•domain expertise and innovation in financial services technology;
•ability to innovate and respond to customer needs rapidly;
•rate of development, deployment and enhancement of solutions; and
•ability to collect and utilize data generated by our solutions to deliver insights to our customers.
We believe that we compete favorably with respect to these factors within the financial institution and other financial services providers markets we serve, but we expect competition to continue and increase as existing competitors continue to evolve their offerings and as new companies enter our market. To remain competitive, we believe we must continue to invest in research and development, sales and marketing, customer support and our business operations generally.
People
As of December 31, 2021, we had 2,028 employees, of which 2,024 are full time employees, 1,691 of which were employed in the United States, and 337 were employed outside of the United States. We consider our current relationship with our employees to be good. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or are a party to a collective bargaining agreement.
At Q2, we view our people and culture as our greatest asset. For more than 17 years, Q2 has been recognized and defined by our mission-driven culture. Our mission is to build stronger and more diverse communities by strengthening their financial institutions. Our people are paramount to our success, and we have always operated with a set of principles to help guide us in how we treat one another, run our business and serve our customers, partners and communities. To ensure our continued success, we endeavor to nurture our mission-driven culture by how we grow our teams, define our goals and reward our employees. Our current programs focus on the following key human capital measures and objectives:
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
As a global company, we embrace the diversity of our employees, partners, customers, other stakeholders and the communities we collectively serve. We believe that consideration of differing points of view, including unique backgrounds, experiences and talents, is critical to our success. We are building diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, into our culture with a focus on creating environments and practices that mitigate bias and allow our employees to be their best. Based on information provided by our employees who opted to self-identify, representing the vast majority of our employees, our employee population as of December 31, 2021 reflected the following:
Women Non-White (1)
Overall 35% 27%
Director-level employees and above 25% 18%
___________________________________________________________________________
(1)Excludes the impact of our Bangalore, India operations.
Our DEI efforts highlight:
•promoting an equal opportunity work environment that enables employees to feel safe to express their ideas and perspectives and where they feel they belong;
•building communities within Q2 through employee resource groups, or ERGs, which serve as networks and provide professional development opportunities;
•educating employees and leaders to recognize where bias exists and building practices to combat its impact;
•recruiting, developing and retaining diverse top talent; and
•reinforcing our commitment by supporting external community-based DEI-focused causes and organizations.
In fiscal 2021, our DEI initiatives included:
•hiring our inaugural DEI senior strategist who has been tasked holistically with driving our DEI journey, including developing, delivering and operating frameworks, processes and procedures designed to benefit current and future Q2 team members;
•initiating equity audits, by department, to identify and address potential inequities that are inconsistent with our DEI philosophy and goals, including audits focused on our hiring practices, resource onboarding and vendor selection, among others;
•launching a new leadership training institute targeting our executive leadership team with enhanced DEI focus;
•achieving global pay equity for our female employees;
•publishing our first environmental, social and governance, or ESG, report, which included new disclosure on our DEI progress and initiatives;
•forming our first formal ERGs, focused on underrepresented groups: Black Q2, Women at Q2, and Q2 Pride (LGBTQIA+); and
•enhancing communications to internal and external stakeholders of our DEI commitment, efforts and progress.
We continue to evolve our practices and operating procedures, looking for new ways to identify and eliminate bias and inequities within our organization, including enhanced employee feedback and data collection to supplement our understanding and support of our teams. More than 25% of Q2's team members participated in our inaugural ERG sessions in 2021 and, based on this success, we plan to add additional ERG focus areas in 2022 to create additional connection points for the wide variety of communities within the global Q2 team.
We are also focusing our charitable efforts on new causes with DEI-focused philanthropies, providing opportunities for our team members to learn as well as give back. During 2021, we were fortunate to bring awareness to a variety of important community programs supporting a range of needs, including The Trevor Project which operates the world's largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, and Homes for our Troops, which builds homes for U.S. veterans in need. Our charitable efforts also focus on causes outside of the U.S., including India-based Srishti Special Academy, which provides special education and training to improve invaluable life skills for those challenged with developmental disabilities.
Employee Engagement and Culture
Since our inception, our culture has been rooted in our mission to build stronger and more diverse communities by strengthening the financial institutions that serve them. We believe our passion, dedication and commitment towards this mission is a significant differentiator for us with our customers and employees. Our culture is demonstrated and shared through our employee traditions and customs and daily engagements among our employees and with our customers. We continue to refine our employee engagement programs to meet the continued and changing needs of our Q2 team members, including to accommodate a far greater number of remote employees and new hybrid working styles. We offer a range of learning and social opportunities from hosted cooking lessons, exercise programs, book clubs, games and music concerts for frequent, varied ways to engage with our employees.
We live our essential mission of supporting communities through active community support with volunteerism and financial support. We partner with local non-profits that align to our employees' passions with hands-on and virtual volunteering, providing care and impact to communities across the globe. Additionally, we use technology and online tools, such as YourCause, to help promote volunteer opportunities for individual employees and teams. We reward our employees for their service with donation dollars to share back with non-profits of their choice. As an example, in 2021 we launched "Spark: Igniting a Community of Philanthropists" to focus our team members' passion to support non-profits, increase awareness of volunteerism and generate financial support for employee causes. In 2021, despite limitations on our ability to sponsor in-person involvement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our team members reported more than 4,000 hours of community service to nearly 150 different causes, and our team members gave more than $275,000 in donations to causes of their choice, which
Q2 was able to amplify by giving more than $965,000 in corporate donations and sponsorships, including in part through matching employee contributions.
Understanding how our team members are doing is more critical than ever. We are committed to our annual company-wide engagement surveys and thoroughly analyze the results from those, including through the use of third-party analytics, to ensure we hear our employees and understand their input and feedback. Additionally, we conduct pulse surveys at least quarterly to supplement our annual engagement surveys and obtain the latest information and feedback from employees, which helps us more promptly enhance employee programs and benefits. Our leadership team routinely considers the feedback from our employee engagement surveys, both positive and constructive, and focuses on making employee-suggested changes to become an even better place to work.
Q2 has been an honoree of Austin American-Statesman's "Top Places to Work" for 11 consecutive years and has also been similarly recognized with "Best Places to Work" accolades in our other locations, including Lincoln, Nebraska, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Charlotte, North Carolina, based upon our employees satisfaction ratings. In 2021, Q2 was also awarded a place on the "Top Places to Work USA," based on our employee survey responses across the country.
Our culture is visible across our organization and highlighted through a host of initiatives, programs and committees including the following:
•our portfolio of company-wide events and forums that foster connections to the organization and one another;
•our employee volunteer committees focused on culture, wellness, and charitable causes that help create opportunities for employees to support causes to make a difference in the workplace and local communities;
•our workspaces and virtual workspace resources that reinforce our mission and guiding principles and promote a collaborative, high-energy work environment that helps facilitate team-based problem solving and cross-departmental learning; and
•our evolving new-hire employee orientations that help new employees learn about our business, culture, mission and values and be positioned for successful performance in their new roles.
To create a culture of teamwork and rewards, we support a range of recognition programs. One of our most utilized programs is a points-based rewards system that allows our employees to highlight successes and give thanks to individuals and teams across the organization. We encourage the engagement of peer-to-peer recognition and showcase our wins, while we utilize Q2's guiding principles as a framework to recognize the behaviors we expect our employees to model. We provide other meaningful opportunities for recognition that emphasize our commitments to each other and our customers, including our Circle of Awesomeness recognition program which awards our outstanding sales and non-sales employees based on employee and customer nominations with sizable awards, which have included company-paid group vacations and team events among other items.
Through our sponsorship of Q2 Stadium and our partnership with Austin FC, Austin's major league soccer team, we are also able to extend Q2's philanthropic footprint, through volunteering and fundraising events, and offer meaningful team-building experiences, including:
•support of three central Texas nonprofits targeting underserved communities;
•entrepreneurial sponsorships providing funding to minority-owned startups;
•our 2021 Dodgeball tournament for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, held at Q2 Stadium, that raised $81,000;
•sponsoring and volunteering for Austin's largest blood drive on record, hosted at Q2 Stadium; and
•providing Austin FC game day experiences for over 400 of our employees and a variety of customers and non-profit partners.
Learning and Development
We recognize the importance of employees developing and progressing in their careers, starting on their first day with our robust new-hire employee orientation and thoughtful onboarding plans, which are designed to give employees a successful beginning of their Q2 careers. Once employees are onboarded, we then look at the ways in which their skills and careers can further develop at Q2. We provide a variety of resources to help our employees grow in their current roles and build new skills, including a wide variety of development resources and courses through on-demand as well as facilitated learning opportunities. We emphasize individual and team development planning as part of our annual goal-setting process. We believe leading our
employees is one of the greatest acts of trust we can show to our managers, and accordingly all managers go through training to enable them to effectively perform as leaders. We offer leadership development resources and programs for all leaders at all experience levels, have created leadership competencies based on our guiding principles to help frame our leadership development programs and continue to build tools to continually advance leaders' capabilities to develop and scale their teams. Globally, we are invested in higher education through internship programs that target colleges and universities. In 2021, our 10-week U.S. summer college intern program hosted its largest class yet with 39 students working both remotely and on Q2 campuses across nearly every function for on-the-job learning opportunities alongside targeted curriculum to create an immersive learning experience.
We offer learning experiences in a variety of formats. We offer role-specific training, ongoing professional skills development and we collaborate with other learning partners to create a wide portfolio of learning resources. Q2 continues to be a presenting sponsor of the annual Texas Conference for Women that allows more than 50 of our leadership nominated employees to participate in the virtual conference. We were also a founding sponsor of the Austin-based African American Leadership Institute and are proud to continue our sponsorship into 2022.
Talent Acquisition
We work diligently to attract the best talent from a diverse range of sources to meet the current and future demands of our business. We have established relationships with world-class universities, including historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, professional associations and industry groups to proactively attract talent. We have a strong employee value proposition that leverages our unique mission-driven culture, collaborative working environment, competitive pay structures and exciting growth opportunities to attract talent. We are proud that for fiscal 2021 over 20% of our requisitions were filled internally, utilizing our strong internal talent pipeline as well as building the external talent pipeline needed to support our growth. We leverage multiple resources specifically targeting diverse candidates in our recruiting pipeline, and we are making investments to help us reduce or mitigate any unconscious bias that exists in the recruiting process. We continue to focus on talent development to broaden and enable our recruiting and leadership teams to advise and deploy even more inclusive recruitment practices.
Compensation and Benefits
Our compensation programs are designed to provide a compensation package that will attract, retain, motivate and reward superior employees who must operate in a fast paced, highly-competitive, and technologically-challenging environment, commensurate with their roles and contributions. For our Director-level and above employees, as well as all of our sales and implementations personnel, we seek to do this by linking annual changes in compensation to overall Company performance, and where applicable, each individual's contribution to the results achieved. The emphasis on overall Company performance is intended to align such employees' financial interests with the interests of our stockholders, particularly as it relates to our long-term incentive plans. Commencing with our 2022 compensation year, for non-commission employees below the Director level whose roles and contributions are less able to influence the corporate performance measures we typically use to incentivize our more senior employees, we instead allocate what would be their at-market, target bonus percentage to guaranteed amounts, payable ratably over the year, while still factoring company and individual performance into their future advancement and other aspects of their compensation. We are committed to providing comprehensive benefit options, and it is our intention to offer benefits that will allow our employees and their families to live healthier and more secure lives. Some examples of our wide-ranging global benefits offered are: 401(k) retirement plan and pension plans, including employer contributions; medical insurance, prescription drug benefits, dental insurance, vision insurance, accident insurance, critical illness insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, health savings accounts, flexible spending accounts, legal insurance and pet insurance.
Employee Well-Being
We are committed to the health, safety and well-being of our employees. In addition to traditional employee benefits, we offer a number of innovative benefits to support the physical, mental and financial health of our employees. These include, among many other things: virtual wellness clinics and classes; online tools that assist employees with their physical and mental health; and special events with outside vendors and participants focusing on employee well-being. We also provide global access to an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) providing our employees and anyone living in their household with access to a variety of resources, including mental health and counseling, work life balance and online legal resources.
Refer to "Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic" included in Item 7, "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risks Related to Covid-19 Pandemic" included in Item 1A, "Risk Factors" for additional information on the impacts and risks of the COVID-19 Pandemic on us and the actions we have taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Government Regulation
As a technology service provider to financial institutions, FinTechs and Alt-FIs in the United States, we are not required to be chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration or other federal or state agencies that regulate or supervise our customers and other providers of financial services in the United States.
Our customers and prospects are subject to extensive and complex regulations and oversight by federal, state and other regulatory authorities. These laws and regulations are constantly evolving and affect the conduct of our customers' operations and, as a result, our business. Our solutions must enable our customers to comply with applicable requirements such as the following:
•the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or Dodd-Frank Act;
•the Electronic Funds Transfer Act;
•Mobile Banking Guidance;
•the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act;
•federal, state and other usury laws;
•the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or GLBA;
•the EU General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR;
•laws against unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices;
•the Privacy of Consumer Financial Information regulations;
•the Guidance on Supervision of Technology Services Providers promulgated by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, or FFIEC;
•third-party risk management regulations;
•the Guidance on Outsourcing Technology Services promulgated by the FFIEC; and
•other federal, state and international laws and regulations.
We are subject to periodic examination by regulators under the authority of the FFIEC under its Guidance on the Supervision of Technology Services Providers and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, and federal, state and other laws that apply to technology service providers as a result of the services we provide to the institutions and entities they regulate. As an independent technology service provider, we are examined by federal financial regulators on a rotating basis. These examinations are based on guidance from the FFIEC, which is a formal interagency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards and report forms for the examination of financial institutions and to make recommendations to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions. The examinations cover a wide variety of subjects, including our management, acquisition and development activities, support and delivery, IT audits, cybersecurity, as well as our disaster preparedness and business recovery planning. The regulators that make up the FFIEC have broad supervisory authority to remedy any shortcomings identified in an examination. Following an examination, our financial institutions customers may request an executive summary of the examination through their lead examination agency.
The Dodd-Frank Act granted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, authority to promulgate rules and interpret certain federal consumer financial protection laws, some of which apply to the solutions we offer. In certain circumstances, the CFPB also has examination and supervision powers with respect to service providers who provide a material service to a financial institution offering consumer financial products and services.
The compliance of our solutions with these requirements depends on a variety of factors, including the functionality and design of our solutions, the classification of our customers, and the manner in which our customers and their End Users utilize our solutions. In order to comply with our obligations under these laws, we are required to implement operating policies and procedures to protect the privacy and security of our customers' and their End Users' information and to undergo periodic audits and examinations.
Privacy and Information Safeguard Laws
In the ordinary course of our business, we and our customers using our solutions access and transmit certain types of data, which subjects us and our customers to certain privacy and information security laws in the United States and internationally, including, for example, GLBA, CCPA, CPRA and GDPR, and other laws or rules designed to regulate consumer information and mitigate identity theft. We are also subject to privacy laws of various states. These laws impose obligations with respect to the collection, processing, storage, disposal, use and disclosure of personal information, and require that financial services providers have in place policies regarding information privacy and security. In addition, under certain of these laws, we must provide notice to consumers of our policies and practices for sharing nonpublic information with third parties, provide advance notice of any changes to our policies and, with limited exceptions, give consumers the right to prevent use of their nonpublic personal information and disclosure of it to unaffiliated third parties. Certain of these laws may, in some circumstances, require us to notify affected individuals of security and privacy breaches of computer databases that contain their personal information. These laws may also require us to notify relevant law enforcement, regulators or consumer reporting agencies in the event of a data breach, as well as businesses and governmental agencies that own data. In order to comply with the privacy and information safeguard laws, we have confidentiality and information security standards and procedures in place for our business activities and our third-party vendors and service providers. Privacy and information security laws evolve regularly, requiring us to adjust our compliance program on an ongoing basis and presenting compliance challenges.
Available Information
Our website address is https://q2.com. Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 are available through the investor relations page of our Internet website free of charge as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to the SEC. Our website and the information contained therein or connected thereto are not intended to be incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In addition, the SEC maintains an Internet site (http://www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.

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ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Item 1A. Risk Factors.
Our business, prospects, financial condition, operating results and the trading price of our common stock could be materially adversely affected by a variety of risks and uncertainties, including those described below, as well as other risks not currently known to us or that are currently considered immaterial. In assessing these risks, you should also refer to the other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes. Our principal risks include risks associated with:
•the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects;
•our ability to manage our rapid growth;
•the development of and changes to the market for our solutions compared to our expectations;
•focusing on the financial services industry and any geographies where we have customer concentration;
•managing implementation of a higher volume of or more complex configurations of our solutions;
•customer acceptance of and satisfaction with our existing and new solutions;
•intense competition in the markets we serve;
•integration of our solutions with and reliance by our solutions on third-party systems or services;
•security and privacy breaches and defects or errors in our solutions;
•failures associated with payment transactions;
•customer training and customer support;
•evolving technological requirements and enhancements and additions to our solution offerings;
•our sales and marketing capabilities, including partner relationships and the length, cost and unpredictability of our sales cycle;
•dependency on our management team and other key employees and recruiting and retaining talent;
•labor shortages, turnover, and labor cost increases;
•international operations;
•mergers and acquisitions;
•our convertible debt obligations and our ability to secure sufficient additional financing;
•our revenue recognition method and the relative impacts of changes in subscription rates on implementation costs;
•quarterly fluctuations in our operating results relative to our expectations and guidance and the accuracy of our forecasts and the market data we use;
•our history of net operating losses and our ability to utilize our net operating loss carryforwards;
•the unpredictability of customer subscription renewals or adoption;
•our profit margins and the unpredictability of End-User adoption and usage, and customer implementation and support requirements;
•changes in financial accounting standards or practices;
•maintaining proper and effective internal controls and producing accurate and timely financial statements;
•sales taxes on our solutions;
•accounting for our convertible notes;
•regulations applicable to us, our customers and our solutions and the impacts of any violation of these regulations;
•litigation or threats of litigation;
• protecting our intellectual property;
•"open source" software in our solutions;
•expenses and administrative burdens as a public company;
•the dilutive effects of future sales, or anticipation of future sales, of our common stock;
•unfavorable or misleading research by industry analysts;
•our stock price volatility and historical policy of no dividends;
•anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and Delaware law;
•dilution to our stockholders resulting from raising capital or using equity for acquisitions; and
•our convertible notes and related hedge, warrant and capped call transactions.
Risks Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic
The global COVID-19 pandemic may adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant volatility, uncertainty and disruption in the global economy. Although we have implemented measures to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, these measures have not fully mitigated, and may not in the future fully mitigate, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, financial condition and results of operations. During 2020 and into 2021 we experienced delays in certain purchasing decisions and implementations by our customers and prospective customers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in negative impacts on our bookings, revenues, gross margins and cash flows from operations. However, during the second half of 2021, we observed an improved sales environment relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021, and we believe that for 2022 the sales environment and the timing of purchasing decisions and implementations by customers will similarly reflect an improvement relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021, though our revenues for 2022 will continue to reflect the negative impacts from these prior periods. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic may continue to impact our business, results of operations and financial condition is uncertain and will depend on numerous evolving factors outside of our control that we are not able to accurately predict, including:
•the duration and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the impacts and timing of future variants such as the Omicron variant;
•governmental actions taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that restrict or disrupt global economic activity, including restrictions imposed on the operation of our business in our U.S. and international locations;
•business failures, reductions in information technology spending, late or missed payments, or delays in purchasing decisions by our customers and our prospective customers and the resulting impact on demand for our solutions, or our ability to add new customers and retain existing customers;
•our ability to continue to effectively market, sell and support our solutions through disruptions to our operations, the operations of our customers and partners and the communities in which our and their employees are located, including disruptions resulting from the spread of the virus, quarantines, office closures, reallocation of internal resources and transitions to remote working arrangements; and
•our ability to develop new solutions, enhance our existing solutions and acquire new solutions in this uncertain business environment.
In addition to the adverse impact any of these factors could have on our business, results of operations and financial condition, these factors and the other impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic also could cause, contribute to, or increase the likelihood of the risks and uncertainties identified elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Risks Related to our Operations, Industry and the Markets We Serve
We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods and if we fail to manage our growth effectively or experience a decline in our growth rate, we may be unable to execute our business plan, maintain high levels of service and customer satisfaction or adequately address competitive challenges, and our financial performance may be adversely affected.
Since our inception, our business has rapidly grown, which has resulted in large increases in our number of employees, expansion of the types of solutions we sell and the customers we sell them to, expansion to international locations and international customers, expansion of our infrastructure, enhancement of our internal systems and other significant changes and additional complexities. Our revenues increased from $315.5 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2019 to $402.8 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2020 and $498.7 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021. While we intend to further expand our overall business, customer base, and number of employees, our recent growth rate is not necessarily indicative of the growth that we will achieve in the future. The growth in our business generally, our management of a growing workforce and international customer base and the stress of such growth on our internal controls and systems require substantial management effort, infrastructure and operational capabilities. To support our growth, we must continue to improve our management resources and our operational and financial controls and systems, and these improvements may increase our expenses more than anticipated and result in a more complex business, and our failure to timely and effectively implement these improvements could have an adverse effect on our operations and financial results. In addition, our increased focus on selling our solutions to larger customers and the increased breadth of our solution offerings and the types of customers we serve may result in greater uncertainty and variability in our business and sales results. We also will have to anticipate the necessary expansion of our relationship management, implementation, customer service and other personnel to support our growth and achieve high levels of customer service and satisfaction, particularly as we sell to larger customers that have heightened levels of complexity in their hardware, software and network infrastructure needs and as we sell a broader range of solutions to a broader set of customers. Our success will depend on our ability to plan for and manage this growth effectively and to address challenges to our growth model resulting from rapid changes in economic conditions. If we fail to anticipate and manage our growth or are unable to provide high levels of system performance and customer service, our reputation, as well as our business, results of operations and financial condition, could be harmed.
Our sales cycle can be unpredictable, time-consuming and costly, which could harm our business and operating results.
Our sales process involves educating prospective customers and existing customers about the use, technical capabilities and benefits of our solutions. Prospective customers, especially larger financial services providers, often undertake a prolonged evaluation process, which typically involves not only our solutions, but also those of our competitors and lasts from six to nine months or longer. We may spend substantial time, effort and money on our sales and marketing efforts without any assurance that our efforts will produce any sales. It is also difficult to predict the level and timing of sales opportunities that come from our referral partners.
Events, such as the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting our customers' businesses have and may continue to occur during the sales cycle that could affect the size or timing of a purchase, contributing to more unpredictability in our business and operating results. Such events have and may continue to cause our customers or partners to delay, reduce, or even cancel planned digital financial services spending and impact our business and operations. During 2020 and into 2021 we
experienced delays in certain purchasing decisions and implementations by our customers and prospective customers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in negative impacts on our bookings, revenues, gross margins and cash flows from operations. If customers or partners significantly reduce their spending with us or significantly delay or fail to make payments to us, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be materially adversely affected, and as a result of our sales cycle, subscription model and our revenue recognition policies, the effects of such reductions or delays on our results of operations may not be fully reflected for some time.
If the market for our solutions develops more slowly than we expect or changes in a way that we fail to anticipate, our sales would suffer and our operating results would be harmed.
The market for financial services has been dramatically changing, and we do not know whether financial institutions and other financial services providers will adopt or continue to adopt our existing and new solutions or whether the market will change in ways that we do not anticipate. Many financial service providers have invested substantial personnel and financial resources in legacy software, and these institutions may be reluctant or unwilling to convert from their existing systems to our solutions. For financial service providers, switching from one provider of solutions (or from an internally developed legacy system) to a new provider is a significant endeavor. Many potential customers believe switching providers involves too many potential disadvantages such as disruption of business operations, loss of accustomed functionality, and increased costs (including conversion and transition costs). Furthermore, some financial institutions may be reluctant or unwilling to use a cloud-based solution over concerns such as the security of their data and reliability of the delivery model. These concerns or other considerations may cause financial institutions to choose not to adopt cloud-based solutions such as ours or to adopt alternative solutions, either of which would harm our operating results. We attempt to overcome these concerns through value enhancing strategies such as a flexible integration process, continued investment in the enhanced functionality and features of our solutions, and investing in new innovative solutions. If financial service providers are unwilling to transition from their current systems, the demand for our solutions and related services could decline and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Our future success also depends on our ability to sell new solutions and enhanced solutions to our current and new customers. As we create new solutions and enhance our existing solutions to support new customer types, technologies and devices, these solutions and related services may not be attractive to customers. If the market for our solutions does not continue to evolve in the manner in which we believe it will or if our new solutions, in particular our Q2 Innovation Studio and Helix offerings, are not adopted by our current and prospective customers, our future business prospects may be negatively impacted. In addition, promoting and selling these new and enhanced solutions may require increasingly costly sales and marketing efforts, and if customers choose not to adopt these solutions, our business could suffer.
We derive substantially all of our revenues from customers in the financial services industry, and any downturn or consolidation in the financial services industry, or unfavorable economic conditions affecting regions in which a significant portion of our customers are concentrated or segments of potential customers on which we focus, could harm our business.
A significant portion of our revenues is derived from financial institutions. Financial institutions have experienced significant pressure in recent years due to economic uncertainty, liquidity concerns and increased regulation. In recent years, many financial institutions have merged or been acquired, and periodically during downturns many financial institutions fail. Failures and consolidations are likely to continue, and there are very few new financial institutions being created. Further, if our customers merge with or are acquired by other entities such as financial institutions that have in-house developed solutions or that are not our customers or use fewer of our solutions, our customers may discontinue, reduce or change the terms of their use of our solutions. It is also possible that the larger financial institutions that result from mergers or consolidations could have greater leverage in negotiating terms with us or could decide to replace some or all of our solutions. Financial institutions increasingly face competition from non-depository institutions or other innovative products or emerging technologies, such as cryptocurrencies, which may reduce the number of End Users or transactions using their more traditional financial services. Any of these developments could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. In addition, any downturn in the financial services industry or unfavorable economic conditions affecting the regions in which our customers are concentrated or particular segments of customers on which we focus may cause our customers to reduce their spending on solutions such as ours, seek to terminate or renegotiate their contracts with us or fail.
As the number, size, type and complexity of customers that we serve increase and change, we may encounter implementation challenges, and we may have to delay revenue recognition for some complex engagements, which would harm our business and operating results.
We may face unexpected implementation challenges related to the complexity of our customers' implementation and integration requirements, particularly implementations for larger customers that have heightened levels of complexity in their hardware, software and network infrastructure needs. Our implementation expenses increase when customers have unexpected data, hardware or software technology challenges, or complex or unanticipated business or regulatory requirements. In addition, our customers typically require complex acceptance testing related to the implementation of our solutions. Implementation
delays also may require us to delay revenue recognition under the related customer agreement longer than expected. Further, because we do not fully control our customers' implementation schedules, if our customers do not allocate the internal resources necessary to meet implementation timelines or if there are unanticipated implementation delays or difficulties, our revenue recognition may be delayed. Losses of End Users or any difficulties or delays in implementation processes could cause customers to delay or forgo future purchases of our solutions, which would adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Our business could be adversely affected if our customers are not satisfied with our solutions, particularly as we introduce new products and solutions, or our systems, infrastructure and resources fail to meet their needs.
Our business depends on our ability to satisfy our customers and meet their needs. Our customers use a variety of network infrastructure, hardware and software, which typically increases in complexity the larger the customer is, and our solutions must support the specific configuration of our customers' existing systems, including in many cases the solutions of third-party providers. If our solutions do not currently support a customer's required data format or appropriately integrate with a customer's applications and infrastructure, then we must configure our solutions to do so, which could negatively affect the performance of our systems and increase our expenses and the time it takes to implement our solutions. Any failure of or delays in our systems or resources could cause service interruptions or impaired system performance. Some of our customer agreements require us to issue credits for downtime in excess of certain thresholds, and in some instances give our customers the ability to terminate the agreements in the event of significant amounts of downtime, or if we experience other defects with our solutions. If sustained or repeated, these performance issues could reduce the attractiveness of our solutions to new and existing customers, cause us to lose customers, and lower renewal rates by existing customers, each of which could adversely affect our revenue and reputation. In addition, negative publicity resulting from issues related to our customer relationships, regardless of accuracy, may damage our business by adversely affecting our ability to attract new customers and maintain and expand our relationships with existing customers.
If the use of our solutions increases, or if our customers demand more advanced features from our solutions, we will need to devote additional resources to improving our solutions, and we also may need to expand our technical infrastructure and related resources at a more rapid pace than we have in the past. This would involve spending substantial amounts to purchase or lease data center capacity and equipment, subscribe to new or additional third-party hosting services, upgrade our technology and infrastructure or introduce new or enhanced solutions. It takes a significant amount of time to plan, develop and test changes to our solutions and related infrastructure and resources, and we may not be able to accurately forecast demand or predict the results we will realize from such improvements. There are inherent risks associated with changing, upgrading, improving and expanding our technical infrastructure and related resources. Any failure of our solutions to operate effectively with future infrastructure and technologies could reduce the demand for our solutions, resulting in customer dissatisfaction and harm to our business. Also, any expansion of our infrastructure and related resources would likely require that we appropriately scale our internal business systems and services organization, including implementation and customer support services, to serve our growing customer base. If we are unable to respond to these changes or fully and effectively implement them in a cost-effective and timely manner, our service may become ineffective, we may lose customers, and our operating results may be negatively impacted.
The markets in which we participate are intensely competitive, and pricing pressure, new technologies or other competitive dynamics could adversely affect our business and operating results.
We currently compete with providers of technology and services in the financial services industry, including point system vendors and core processing vendors, as well as systems internally developed by financial services providers. With respect to our digital banking platform, we have a number of point solution competitors, including NCR Corporation, or NCR, Alkami Technology, Inc. and Temenos AG in the online, consumer and small business banking space and Finastra, ACI Worldwide, Inc. and Bottomline Technologies (de), Inc. in the commercial banking space. We also compete with core processing vendors that provide systems and services such as Fiserv, Inc., Jack Henry and Associates, Inc. and Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., or FIS. With respect to our lending platform, we compete against a number of point system competitors, including Abrigo, Baker Hill Solutions, LLC, Fair Isaac Corporation, nCino, Inc., Finastra, Moody's Analytics, Inc., Brilliance Financial Technology, Oracle Corporation, Temenos AG, and core processing vendors, including FIS and Fiserv. With respect to our Helix solution, we primarily compete with Galileo Financial Technologies, LLC, Marqeta, Inc. and Green Dot Corporation. With respect to our Q2 Innovation Studio solutions, due to the vast number of potential use cases and customer segments, the list of potential competitors is extremely broad and varied, but includes companies across the retail banking, financial services, transaction processing, consumer technology and financial technology services industries. Many of our competitors have significantly more financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we have, may devote greater resources to the promotion, sale and support of their systems than we can, have more extensive customer bases and broader customer relationships than we have and have longer operating histories and greater name recognition than we have. In addition, many of our competitors expend more funds on research and development.
We also may face competition from new companies entering our markets, which may include large established businesses that decide to develop, market or resell competitive solutions, acquire one of our competitors or form a strategic alliance with one of our competitors. In addition, new companies entering our markets may choose to offer competitive solutions at little or no additional cost to the customer by bundling them with their existing applications, including adjacent financial services technologies and core processing software. New entrants to the markets we serve might also include financial services providers developing financial services solutions and other technologies, including solutions built using competing BaaS solutions or open API platforms. Competition from these new entrants may make our business more difficult and adversely affect our results.
If we are unable to compete in this environment, sales and renewals of our solutions could decline and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition. With the introduction of new technologies and potential new entrants into the markets for our solutions, we expect competition to intensify in the future, which could harm our ability to increase sales and achieve profitability. In addition, we may face increased competition in our existing markets as we enter new markets or sections of a market with larger or different customers and new solutions. Our industry has also experienced recent consolidation which we believe may continue. Any further consolidation our industry experiences could lead to increased competition and result in pricing pressure or loss of market share, either of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, limit our growth prospects or reduce our revenues.
If we are unable to effectively integrate our solutions with other systems or services used by our customers and prospective customers, including if we are forced to discontinue integration due to security or quality concerns with a third-party system or service, or if there are performance issues with such third-party systems or services, our solutions will not operate effectively and our operations will be adversely affected.
The functionality of our solutions depends on our ability to integrate with other third-party systems and services used by our customers, including core processing software and, in the case of our Helix solutions, banking services. Certain providers of these third-party systems or services also offer solutions that are competitive with our solutions and may have an advantage over us with customers using their software by having better ability to integrate with their software and by being able to bundle their competitive products with other applications used by our customers and prospective customers at favorable pricing. We do not have formal arrangements with many of these third-party providers regarding our access to their APIs to enable these customer integrations.
Our business may be harmed if any such third-party provider:
•changes the features or functionality of its services, applications and platforms in a manner adverse to us;
•discontinues or limits our solutions' access to its systems or services;
•suffers a security incident or other incident that requires us to discontinue integration with its systems or services or results in a compromise of our systems or services;
•ceases to operate;
•terminates or does not allow us to renew or replace our existing contractual relationships on the same or better terms;
•modifies its terms of service or other policies, including fees charged to, or other restrictions on, us or our customers; or
•establishes more favorable relationships with one or more of our competitors, or acquires one or more of our competitors and offers competing services.
Such changes could limit or prevent us from integrating our solutions with these third-party systems or services, which could impair the functionality of our solutions, prohibit the use of our solutions or limit our ability to sell our solutions to customers, each of which could harm our business. If we are unable to integrate with such third-party systems or services as a result of changes to or restricted access to the systems or services by such third parties during the terms of existing agreements with customers using such third-party systems or services, we may not be able to meet our contractual obligations to customers, which may result in disputes with customers and harm to our business. In addition, if any such third-party providers experience an outage, our solutions integrated with such systems or services will not function properly or at all, and our customers may be dissatisfied with our solutions. If the systems or services of such third-party providers have performance or other problems, such issues may reflect poorly on us and the adoption and renewal of our solutions and our business may be harmed. Although our customers may be able to switch to alternative technologies if a provider's systems or services were unreliable or if a provider was to limit such customer's access and utilization of its data or the provider's functionality, our business could nevertheless be harmed due to the risk that our customers could reduce their use of our solutions.
If our security measures or the security measures of our customers or third-party providers on whom we rely are compromised or unauthorized access to our systems or customer data is otherwise obtained, our solutions may not be secure or may be perceived as not being secure, and customers may curtail or cease their use of our solutions, our reputation may be harmed, and we may incur significant liabilities.
Certain elements of our solutions process and store personally identifiable information, or PII, such as banking and personal information of our customers and their End Users, and we also may have access to PII during various stages of the implementation process or during the course of providing customer support. Furthermore, as we develop additional functionality, we may gain greater access to PII. We maintain policies, procedures and technological safeguards designed to protect the confidentiality, integrity, availability and privacy of this information and our information technology systems. However, we cannot entirely eliminate the risk of improper or unauthorized access to or disclosure of PII or other security and privacy events that impact the integrity, availability or privacy of PII or our systems and operations, or the related costs we may incur to mitigate the consequences from such events. Further, given the flexibility and complexity of our solutions, there is a risk that configurations of, or defects in, the solutions or errors in implementation could create vulnerabilities to security and privacy breaches. There may be unlawful attempts to disrupt or gain access to our information technology systems or the PII or other data of our customers or their End Users that may disrupt our or our customers' operations. In addition, because we leverage third-party providers, including cloud, software, data center and other critical technology vendors to develop and deliver our solution to our customers and their End Users, we rely heavily on the data security technology practices and policies adopted by these third-party providers. A vulnerability in a third-party provider's software or systems, a failure of our third-party providers' safeguards, policies or procedures, or a breach of a third-party provider's software or systems could result in the compromise of the confidentiality, integrity or availability of our systems or the data housed in our solutions.
Our security measures and the security measures of our customers or third-party providers on whom we rely may not be sufficient to prevent our systems from being compromised as a result of third-party action, the error or intentional misconduct of employees, customers or their End Users, malfeasance or stolen or fraudulently obtained login credentials. Security incidents can result in unauthorized access to, loss of or unauthorized disclosure of this information, litigation, indemnity obligations and other possible liabilities, as well as negative publicity, which could damage our reputation, impair our sales, harm our business and result in increased volatility in our stock price. Cyber-attacks, ransomware attacks, account take-over attacks, fraudulent representations and other malicious Internet-based activity continue to increase and evolve and financial services providers, their End Users, and technology providers are often targets of such attacks. In addition to traditional computer "hackers," malicious code (such as viruses and worms), phishing, employee theft or misuse and denial-of-service attacks, sophisticated criminal networks as well as nation-state and nation-state supported actors now engage in attacks, including advanced persistent threat intrusions. Current or future criminal capabilities, discovery of existing or new vulnerabilities, and attempts to exploit those vulnerabilities or other developments, may compromise or breach our systems or solutions. In addition, third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce our employees or the employees of our customers or third-party providers into disclosing sensitive information such as usernames, passwords or other information to gain access to our confidential or proprietary information or the data of our customers and their End Users. A party who is able to compromise the security of our facilities could cause interruptions or malfunctions in our operations. We may be unable to anticipate or prevent techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems because they change frequently and generally are not detected until after an incident has occurred. As we increase our customer base and our brand becomes more widely known and recognized, we may become more of a target for third parties seeking to compromise our security systems or gain unauthorized access to the data of our customers and their End Users. In addition, there may be an increased risk of cyber-attacks or cyber fraud related to the COVID-19 pandemic, as cybercriminals attempt to profit from the disruption, given increased online banking, e-commerce and other online activity. Additionally, there is an increased risk that we may experience cybersecurity-related events such as COVID-19 themed phishing attacks and other security challenges as a result of most of our employees and our service providers working remotely from non-corporate managed networks during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and potentially continuing working remotely even after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. A failure or inability to meet our customers' expectations with respect to security and confidentiality could seriously damage our reputation and affect our ability to retain customers and attract new business.
Federal, state and other regulations may require us to notify customers and their End Users of data security incidents involving certain types of personal data. Security and privacy compromises experienced by our competitors, by our customers or by us may lead to public disclosures and widespread negative publicity. Any security and privacy compromise in our industry, whether actual or perceived, could erode customer confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, negatively impact our ability to attract new customers, cause existing customers to elect not to renew their subscriptions or subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results.
In addition, some of our customers contractually require notification of any data security and privacy compromise and include representations and warranties that our solutions comply with certain regulations related to data security and privacy. Although our customer agreements typically include limitations on our potential liability, there can be no assurance that such limitations of liability would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. We also cannot be sure that our existing general liability insurance coverage and coverage for errors or omissions will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more claims, or that our insurers will not deny or attempt to deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more claims against us, the inadequacy of or denial of coverage under our insurance policies, litigation to pursue claims under our policies or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Defects or errors in our solutions, including failures associated with payment transactions, could harm our reputation, result in significant costs to us, impair our ability to sell our solutions and subject us to substantial liability.
Our solutions are inherently complex and may contain defects or errors, particularly when first introduced or as new versions are released. The volume and dollar amount of payment transactions that we, our customers and our third-party partners process is significant and continues to grow. Transactions facilitated by us, our customers and our third-party partners include debit card, credit card, electronic bill payment transactions, Automated Clearing House, or ACH, payments, real-time payments through faster payment networks, transactions in cryptocurrencies and check clearing that support consumers, financial institutions and other businesses. Despite extensive testing, from time-to-time we have discovered defects or errors in our solutions or the solutions of our third-party partners. In addition, due to changes in regulatory requirements relating to our customers or to technology providers to financial services providers like us, we may discover deficiencies in our or our third party partners' software processes related to those requirements. Material performance problems or defects in our solutions might arise in the future.
Any such errors, defects, other performance problems or disruptions in service to provide bug fixes or upgrades, whether in connection with day-to-day operations or otherwise, could be costly for us to remedy, damage our customers' businesses and harm our reputation. If the continuity of operations, integrity of processing, or ability to detect or prevent fraudulent payments were compromised in connection with payments transactions, we could suffer financial as well as reputational loss. In addition, if we have any such errors, defects or other performance problems, our customers could seek to terminate their agreements, elect not to renew their subscriptions, delay or withhold payment or make claims against us. Any of these actions could result in lost business, increased insurance costs, difficulty in collecting our accounts receivable, costly litigation and adverse publicity. Such errors, defects or other problems could also result in reduced sales or a loss of, or delay in, the market acceptance of our solutions.
Moreover, software development is time-consuming, expensive, complex and requires regular maintenance. Unforeseen difficulties can arise. If we do not complete our periodic maintenance according to schedule or if customers are otherwise dissatisfied with the frequency or duration of our maintenance services, customers could elect not to renew, or delay or withhold payment to us or cause us to issue credits, make refunds or pay penalties. Because our solutions are often customized and deployed on a customer-by-customer basis, rather than through a multi-tenant SaaS method of distribution, applying bug fixes, upgrades or other maintenance services may require updating each instance of our software, which could be time consuming and cause us to incur significant expense. We might also encounter technical obstacles, and it is possible that we discover problems that prevent our solutions from operating properly. If our solutions do not function reliably or fail to achieve customer expectations in terms of performance, customers could seek to cancel their agreements with us and assert liability claims against us, which could damage our reputation, impair our ability to attract or maintain customers and harm our results of operations.
Failures or reduced accessibility of third-party hardware, software or other services on which we rely could impair the delivery of our solutions and adversely affect our business.
We rely on hardware and services that we purchase or lease and software, including open source software, that we develop or license from, or that is hosted by third parties, to offer our solutions. In addition, we obtain licenses from third parties to use intellectual property associated with the development of our solutions. These licenses might not continue to be available to us on acceptable terms, or at all. These third-party providers have chosen and may in the future choose not to continue to support certain of the hardware, software or services we license. We also have chosen and may in the future choose to discontinue the use of the hardware, services or software we acquire or license from such third-party providers, which may require that we pay termination fees or recognize related accounting charges or impairments. While we are not substantially dependent upon any third-party hardware, services or software other than our third-party data centers, the loss of the right or ability to use all or a significant portion of our third-party hardware, services or software required for the development, maintenance and delivery of our solutions could result in delays in the provision of our solutions until we develop or identify, obtain and integrate equivalent technology, which could harm our business.
Any errors or defects in the hardware, services or software we use could result in errors, interruptions or a failure of our solutions. Although we believe that there are alternatives, any significant interruption in the availability of all or a significant portion of such hardware, services or software could have an adverse impact on our business unless and until we can replace the functionality provided by these products at a similar cost. Furthermore, such hardware, services and software may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. The loss of the right to use all or a significant portion of such hardware, services or software could limit access to our solutions. Additionally, we rely upon third parties' abilities to enhance their current products, develop new products on a timely and cost-effective basis and respond to emerging industry standards and other technological changes. We may be unable to effect changes to such third-party technologies, which may prevent us from rapidly responding to evolving customer requirements. We also may be unable to replace the functionality provided by the third-party software currently offered in conjunction with our solutions in the event that such software becomes obsolete or incompatible with future versions of our solutions or is otherwise not adequately maintained or updated.
We depend on data centers operated by third parties and third-party Internet hosting providers, and any disruption in the operation of these facilities or access to the Internet could adversely affect our business.
We currently host our digital banking platform solutions primarily from two third-party data center hosting facilities located in Austin, Texas and Carrollton, Texas, which are both operated by the same third-party provider, and our lending solutions, Helix solutions and a certain portion of our digital banking platform solutions are hosted by cloud-based providers, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The owners and operators of these current and future facilities and cloud-based hosting services do not guarantee that our customers' access to our solutions will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure. We may experience website disruptions, outages and other performance problems. These problems may be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, viruses, security attacks, fraud, operational disruption, spikes in customer usage and denial of service issues. As a result of increased online banking activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including periodic significant increases in logins by End Users seeking to check their accounts for receipt of government stimulus funds, financial institutions and their online banking service providers have experienced periods of unprecedented user login activity, at times, resulting in delayed access to online banking for many financial institutions, including many of our customers. As a result of these delays, we have taken steps and made investments in additional data center capacity to increase the processing capacity of our online banking platform to minimize any future delays, and we expect to make additional incremental investments to further enhance our hosting infrastructure and support. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. We do not control the operation of these data center facilities and cloud-based services, and such facilities and services are vulnerable to damage or interruption from human error, intentional bad acts, power loss, hardware failures, telecommunications failures, fires, wars, terrorist attacks, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, pandemics or similar catastrophic events. They also could be subject to break-ins, computer viruses, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism and other misconduct. The occurrence of a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, a decision to close the facilities without adequate notice or terminate our hosting arrangement or other unanticipated problems could result in lengthy interruptions in the delivery of our solutions, cause system interruptions, prevent our customers' End Users from accessing their accounts or services online, reputational harm and loss of critical data, prevent us from supporting our solutions or cause us to incur additional expense in arranging for new facilities, services and support.
We also depend on third-party Internet-hosting providers and continuous and uninterrupted access to the Internet through third-party bandwidth providers to operate our business. If we lose the services of one or more of our Internet-hosting or bandwidth providers for any reason or if their services are disrupted, for example due to viruses or denial of service or other attacks on their systems, or due to human error, intentional bad acts, power loss, hardware failures, telecommunications failures, fires, wars, terrorist attacks, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, pandemics or similar catastrophic events, we could experience disruption in our ability to offer our solutions and adverse perception of our solutions' reliability, or we could be required to retain the services of replacement providers, which could increase our operating costs and harm our business and reputation.
We do not have any control over the availability or performance of salesforce.com's Force.com platform, and if we or our digital lending solution customers encounter problems with it, we may be required to replace Force.com with another platform, which would be difficult and costly.
Certain of our digital lending solutions run on salesforce.com's Force.com platform, and we do not have any control over the Force.com platform or the prices salesforce.com charges to our customers. Salesforce.com may discontinue or modify Force.com or increase its fees or modify its pricing incentives for our customers. If salesforce.com takes any of these actions, we may suffer lower sales, increased operating costs and loss of revenue from certain of our digital lending solutions until equivalent technology is either developed by us, or, if available from a third party, is identified, obtained and integrated. Additionally, we may not be able to honor commitments we have made to our customers and we may be subject to breach of contract or other claims from our customers.
In addition, we do not control the performance of Force.com. If Force.com experiences an outage, certain of our digital lending solutions will not function properly, and our customers may be dissatisfied. If salesforce.com has performance or other problems with its Force.com platform or its operations generally, they will reflect poorly on us and the adoption and renewal of certain of our digital lending solutions and our business may be harmed.
If we fail to provide effective customer training on our solutions and high-quality customer support, our business and reputation would suffer.
Effective customer training on our solutions and high-quality, ongoing customer support are important to the successful marketing and sale of our solutions and for the renewal of existing customer agreements. Providing this training and support requires that our customer training and support personnel have financial services knowledge and expertise, making it difficult for us to hire qualified personnel and scale our training and support operations. The demand on our customer support organization will increase as we expand our business and pursue new customers, and such increased support could require us to devote significant development services and support personnel, which could strain our team and infrastructure and reduce our profit margins. If we do not help our customers quickly resolve any post-implementation issues and provide effective ongoing customer support, our ability to sell additional solutions to existing and future customers could suffer and our reputation would be harmed.
If we fail to respond to evolving technological requirements or introduce adequate enhancements, new features or solutions, our solutions could become obsolete or less competitive.
The markets for our solutions are characterized by rapid technological advancements, changes in customer requirements and technologies, frequent new product introductions and enhancements and changing regulatory requirements. The life cycles of our solutions are difficult to estimate. Rapid technological changes and the introduction of new products and enhancements by new or existing competitors or large financial services providers could undermine our current market position. Other means of digital financial services solutions may be developed or adopted in the future, and our solutions may not be compatible with these new technologies. In addition, the technological needs of, and services provided by, customers may change if they or their competitors offer new services to End Users. Maintaining adequate research and development resources to meet the demands of the markets we serve is essential. The process of developing new technologies and solutions is complex and expensive. The introduction of new solutions by our competitors, the market acceptance of competitive solutions based on new or alternative technologies or the emergence of new technologies or solutions in the broader financial services industry could render our solutions obsolete or less effective.
The success of any enhanced or new solution depends on several factors, including timely completion, adequate testing and market release and acceptance of the solution. Any new solutions that we develop or acquire may not be introduced in a timely or cost-effective manner, may contain defects or may not achieve the broad market acceptance necessary to generate significant revenues. If we are unable to anticipate customer requirements or work with our customers successfully on implementing new solutions or features in a timely manner or enhance our existing solutions to meet our customers' requirements, our business and operating results may be adversely affected.
If we fail to effectively expand our sales and marketing capabilities and teams, including through partner relationships, we may not be able to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our solutions.
Increasing our customer base and achieving broader market acceptance of our solutions will depend on our ability to expand our sales and marketing organizations and their abilities to obtain new customers and sell additional solutions and services to new and existing customers. We believe there is significant competition for direct sales professionals with the skills and knowledge that we require, and we may be unable to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the future. Our ability to achieve significant future revenue growth will depend on our success in recruiting, training and retaining a sufficient number of direct sales professionals. New hires require significant training and time before they become fully productive and may not become as productive as quickly as we anticipate. As a result, the cost of hiring and carrying new representatives cannot be offset by the revenues they produce for a significant period of time. Our growth prospects will be harmed if our efforts to expand, train and retain our direct sales team do not generate a corresponding increase in revenues. Additionally, if we fail to sufficiently invest in our marketing programs or they are unsuccessful in creating market awareness of our company and solutions, our business may be harmed and our sales opportunities limited.
In addition to our direct sales team, we also extend our sales distribution through formal and informal relationships with referral partners. While we are not substantially dependent upon referrals from any partner, our ability to achieve significant revenue growth in the future will depend upon continued referrals from our partners and growth of the network of our referral partners. These partners are under no contractual obligation to continue to refer business to us, nor do these partners have exclusive relationships with us and may choose to instead refer potential customers to our competitors. We cannot be certain that these partners will prioritize or provide adequate resources for promoting our solutions or that we will be successful in maintaining, expanding or developing our relationships with referral partners. Our competitors may be effective in providing incentives to third parties, including our partners, to favor their solutions or prevent or reduce subscriptions to our solutions either by disrupting our relationships with existing customers or limiting our ability to win new customers. Establishing and retaining qualified partners and training them with respect to our solutions requires significant time and resources. If we are unable to devote sufficient time and resources to establish and train these partners or if we are unable to maintain successful relationships with them, we may lose sales opportunities and our revenues could suffer.
We rely on our management team and other key employees, and the loss of one or more key employees could harm our business.
Our success and future growth depend upon the continued services of our management team, in particular our Chief Executive Officer, and other key employees, including in the areas of research and development, marketing, sales, services and general and administrative functions. From time to time, there may be changes in our management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. We also are dependent on the continued service of our existing development professionals because of the complexity of our solutions, including complexity arising as a result of the regulatory requirements that are applicable to our customers and the pace of technology changes impacting our customers and their End Users. We may terminate any employee's employment at any time, with or without cause, and any employee may resign at any time, with or without cause; however, our employment agreements with our named executive officers provide for the payment of severance under certain circumstances. We also have entered into employment agreements with our other executive officers which provide for the payment of severance under similar circumstances as in our named executive officers' employment agreements. The loss of one or more of our key employees could harm our business.
Because competition for employees is intense, we may not be able to attract and retain the highly-skilled employees we need to support our operations and future growth.
Competition for executive officers, software developers and other employees in our industry is intense. In particular, we compete with many other companies for executive officers, for software developers with high levels of experience in designing, developing and managing software, as well as for skilled sales and operations professionals and knowledgeable customer support professionals, and we may not be successful in attracting the professionals we need. Competition for software development and engineering personnel is intense. The COVID-19 pandemic and related macroeconomic factors have resulted in inflation and have impacted many industries with increased employee resignations and turnover, labor shortages, aggressive competition for talent, wage inflation and pressure to improve employee benefits and compensation to remain competitive. Since mid-2021, we have experienced increased employee turnover, delays in hiring suitable replacement candidates and increased costs to hire new employees. A sustained labor shortage or additional increases in turnover rates within our employee base could lead to further increased costs, such as increased wages or other compensation to attract and retain employees and could negatively affect our ability to support our operations and our plans for future growth. In addition, job candidates and existing employees often consider the actual and potential value of the equity awards they receive as part of their overall compensation. Thus, if the perceived value or future value of our stock declines, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled employees may be adversely affected. In addition, many of our existing employees may exercise vested options or vest in outstanding restricted stock units and sell our stock, which may make it more difficult for us to retain key employees. If we fail to attract and retain new employees, our business and future growth prospects could be harmed.
Because our long-term success depends on our ability to operate our business internationally and increase sales of our solutions to customers located outside of the U.S., our business is susceptible to risks associated with international operations.
We have international operations in India, Australia, and the United Kingdom. We also may expand our international operations in the foreseeable future. The continued international expansion of our operations requires significant management attention and financial resources and results in increased administrative and compliance costs. Our limited experience in operating our business in certain regions outside the U.S. increases the risk that our expansion efforts into those regions may not be successful. In particular, our business model may not be successful in particular countries or regions outside the U.S. for reasons that we currently are unable to anticipate. In addition, conducting international operations subjects us to risks that we have not generally faced in the U.S. These include, but are not limited to:
•fluctuations in currency exchange rates;
•the complexity of, or changes in, foreign regulatory requirements;
•the cost and complexity of bringing our solutions into compliance with foreign regulatory requirements, and risks of our solutions not being compliant;
•difficulties in managing the staffing of international operations, including compliance with local labor and employment laws and regulations;
•complexities implementing and enforcing cross-border information technology and security controls;
•potentially adverse tax consequences, including the complexities of foreign value added tax systems, overlapping tax regimes, restrictions on the repatriation of earnings and changes in tax rates;
•dependence on resellers and distributors to increase customer acquisition or drive localization efforts;
•the burdens of complying with a wide variety of foreign laws and different legal standards, certain of which may be significantly more burdensome than those in place in the U.S.;
•increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities;
•longer payment cycles and difficulties in collecting accounts receivable;
•longer sales cycles;
•political, social and economic instability abroad;
•terrorist attacks and security concerns in general;
•integrating personnel with diverse business backgrounds and organizational cultures;
•difficulties entering new non-U.S. markets due to, among other things, consumer acceptance and business knowledge of these new markets;
•travel restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic;
•constraints of remote working by employees during the COVD-19 pandemic due to limitations of local infrastructure or other resources;
•reduced or varied protection for intellectual property rights in some countries; and
•the risk of U.S. regulation of foreign operations.
The occurrence of any one of these risks could negatively affect our international business and, consequently, our operating results. We cannot be certain that the investment and additional resources required to establish, acquire or integrate operations in other countries will produce desired levels of revenue or profitability. If we are unable to effectively manage our expansion into additional geographic markets, our financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.
In particular, we operate some of our research and development activities internationally and outsource a portion of the coding and testing of our products and product enhancements to contract development vendors. We believe that performing research and development in our international facilities and supplementing these activities with our contract development vendors enhances the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of our product development. If we experience problems with our workforce or facilities internationally, we may not be able to develop new products or enhance existing products in an alternate manner that may be equally or less efficient and cost-effective. In addition, if information technology and security controls we have implemented to address risks posed by research and development activities outside of the U.S. are breached or are otherwise ineffective, our intellectual property or technical infrastructure could be compromised or stolen and we could be subjected to cyberattacks or intrusions.
We may acquire or invest in companies, or pursue business partnerships, which may divert our management's attention and present additional risks, and we may be unable to integrate acquired businesses and technologies successfully or achieve the expected benefits of such acquisitions or investments, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.
We have completed, and may in the future evaluate and consider, potential strategic transactions, including acquisitions of, or investments in, businesses, technologies, services, products and other assets. We also may enter into relationships with other businesses to expand our solutions, which could involve preferred or exclusive licenses, additional channels of distribution, discount pricing or investments in other companies. Negotiating these transactions can be time-consuming, difficult and expensive, and our ability to close these transactions may be subject to approvals that are beyond our control. In addition, we have limited experience in acquiring other businesses. We may not be able to find and identify desirable additional acquisition targets, we may incorrectly estimate the value of an acquisition target, and we may not be successful in entering into an agreement with any particular target. Consequently, these transactions, even if undertaken and announced, may not close.
We may not achieve the anticipated benefits from our past acquisitions or any additional businesses we acquire due to a number of factors, including:
•our inability to integrate, manage or benefit from acquired operations, technologies or services;
•unanticipated costs or liabilities associated with the acquisition, including the assumption of liabilities or commitments of the acquired business that were not disclosed to us or that exceeded our estimates;
•difficulty integrating the accounting systems, operations and personnel of the acquired business;
•difficulties and additional expenses associated with supporting legacy solutions and hosting infrastructure of the acquired business;
•uncertainty of entry into markets in which we have limited or no prior experience or in which competitors have stronger market positions;
•difficulty converting the customers of the acquired business to our solutions and contract terms, including disparities in the revenues, licensing, support or professional services model of the acquired company;
•diversion of management's attention from other business concerns;
•adverse effects to our existing business relationships with business partners and customers as a result of the acquisition;
•use of resources that are needed in other parts of our business;
•the use of a substantial portion of our cash that we may need to operate our business and which may limit our operational flexibility and ability to pursue additional strategic transactions;
•the issuance of additional equity securities that would dilute the ownership interests of our stockholders;
•incurrence of debt on terms unfavorable to us or that we are unable to repay;
•incurrence of large charges or substantial liabilities;
•our inability to apply and maintain internal standards, controls, procedures and policies with respect to the acquired businesses;
•difficulties retaining key employees of the acquired company or integrating diverse software codes or business culture; and
•becoming subject to adverse tax consequences, substantial depreciation or deferred compensation charges.
In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to acquired goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. In the future, if our acquisitions do not yield expected returns, we may be required to take charges to our operating results based on this impairment assessment process, which could adversely affect our results of operations.
We may not be able to secure sufficient additional financing on favorable terms, or at all, to meet our future capital needs.
We may require additional capital in the future to pursue business opportunities or acquisitions, pay off our existing debt or respond to challenges and unforeseen circumstances. We also may decide to engage in equity or debt financings or enter into credit facilities for other reasons. We may not be able to secure additional debt or equity financing in a timely manner, on favorable terms, or at all. Any debt financing we obtain in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions.
Financial and Accounting-Related Risks
Because we recognize revenues from a significant portion of our solutions over the terms of our customer agreements, the impact of changes in the subscriptions for such solutions will not be immediately reflected in our operating results, and rapid growth in our customer base may adversely affect our operating results in the short term since we expense a substantial portion of implementation costs as incurred.
We generally recognize revenues monthly over the terms of our customer agreements. The initial term of our digital banking platform customer agreements averages over five years, although it varies by customer. As a result, the substantial majority of the revenues we report in each quarter are related to agreements entered into during previous quarters. Consequently, a change in the level of new customer agreements or implementations in any quarter may have a small impact on our revenues in that quarter but will affect our revenues in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our solutions, or changes in our rate of renewals may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. For example, the decreases in sales resulting from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic we experienced in 2021 will have a larger impact on our financial results for 2022 than in 2021. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenues through additional sales in any period.
Additionally, we recognize our expenses over varying periods based on the nature of the expense. In particular, we recognize a substantial portion of implementation expenses as incurred even though we recognize the related revenues over extended periods. As a result, we may report poor operating results in periods in which we are incurring higher implementation expenses related to revenues that we will recognize in future periods, including implementations for larger customers that have heightened levels of complexity in their hardware, software and network infrastructure needs. Alternatively, we may report better operating results in periods due to lower implementation expenses, but such lower expenses may be indicative of slower revenue growth in future periods. As a result, our expenses may fluctuate as a percentage of revenues and changes in our business generally may not be immediately reflected in our results of operations.
We may experience quarterly fluctuations in our operating results or key operating measures due to a number of factors, which makes our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results or key operating measures to fall below expectations or our guidance.
Our quarterly operating results and key operating measures have fluctuated in the past and are expected to fluctuate in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. As a result, comparing our operating results or key operating measures on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful. Our past results may not be indicative of our future performance. In addition to the other risks described in this report, factors that may affect our quarterly operating results or key operating measures include the following:
•the addition or loss of customers, including through acquisitions, consolidations or failures;
•the amount of use of our solutions in a period and the amount of any associated revenues and expenses;
•budgeting cycles of our customers and changes in spending on solutions by our current or prospective customers;
•seasonal variations in sales of our solutions, which may be lowest in the first quarter of the calendar year;
•changes in the competitive dynamics of our industry, including consolidation among competitors, changes to pricing or the introduction of new products and services that limit demand for our solutions or cause customers to delay purchasing decisions;
•the amount and timing of cash collections from our customers;
•long or delayed implementation times for new customers, including larger customers, or other changes in the levels of customer support we provide;
•the timing and predictability of sales of our solutions and the impact that the timing of bookings may have on our revenue and financial performance in a period;
•the timing of customer payments and payment defaults by customers, including any buyouts by customers of the remaining term of their contracts with us in a lump sum payment that we would have otherwise recognized over the term of those contracts, and any costs associated with impairments of related contract assets;
•the amount and timing of our operating costs and capital expenditures;
•changes in tax rules or the impact of new accounting pronouncements;
•general economic conditions that may adversely affect our customers' ability or willingness to purchase solutions, delay a prospective customer's purchasing decision, reduce our revenues from customers or affect renewal rates;
•public health emergencies and their effect on the operations of us, our customers, our third-party providers and on the overall economy;
•unexpected expenses such as those related to non-recurring corporate transactions, litigation or other disputes;
•the timing of stock awards to employees and related adverse financial statement impact of having to expense those stock awards over their vesting schedules; and
•the amount and timing of costs associated with recruiting, hiring, training and integrating new employees, many of whom we hire in advance of anticipated needs.
Moreover, the price of our convertible notes and our common stock might be based on expectations of investors or securities analysts of future performance that are inconsistent with our actual growth opportunities or that we might fail to meet and, if our revenues or operating results fall below expectations, the price of our convertible notes and common stock could decline substantially.
We have a history of losses, and we do not expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future.
We have incurred losses from operations in each period since our inception in 2005, except for 2010 when we recognized a gain on the sale of a subsidiary. We incurred net losses of $112.7 million, $137.6 million and $70.9 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $493.9 million. These losses and accumulated deficit reflect the substantial investments we have made to develop our solutions and acquire customers. As we seek to continue to grow our number of customers, including through acquisitions, we expect to incur significant sales, marketing, implementation and other related expenses, including amortization of acquired intangibles. Our ability to achieve or sustain profitability will depend on our obtaining sufficient scale and productivity so that the cost of adding and supporting new customers does not adversely impact our margins. We also expect to make other significant expenditures to develop and expand our solutions and our business, including continuing to increase our marketing, services and sales operations and continuing our significant investment in research and development and our technical infrastructure. We expect to incur losses for the foreseeable future as we continue to focus on adding new customers and solutions, and we cannot predict whether or when we will achieve or sustain profitability. Our efforts to grow our business may be more costly than we expect, and we may not be able to increase our revenues enough to offset our higher operating expenses. In addition, as a public company, we incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses. These increased expenditures will make it harder for us to achieve and maintain profitability. While our revenues have grown in recent periods, such growth may not be sustainable, and our revenues could decline or grow more slowly than we expect. We also may incur additional losses in the future for a number of reasons, including due to litigation and other unforeseen reasons and the risks described in this report. Accordingly, we cannot assure you that we will achieve profitability in the future, nor that, if we do become profitable, we will be able to sustain profitability. If we are unable to achieve and sustain profitability, our customers may lose confidence in us and slow or cease their purchases of our solutions and we may be unable to attract new customers, which would adversely impact our operating results.
The markets in which we compete and demands of our customers are constantly changing and it is difficult to accurately predict the long-term rate of customer subscription renewals or adoption, or the impact these renewals and adoption, or any customer terminations, will have on our revenues or operating results.
As the markets for our existing solutions develop and evolve, we may be unable to attract new customers at the same price or based on the same pricing model as we have used historically. Additionally, as a result of the operational and economic challenges being faced by our customers, we could be forced to modify contractual or payment terms with our customers. Moreover, large or influential financial services providers may demand more favorable pricing or other contract terms, including termination rights. As a result, in the future we may be required to reduce our prices or accept other unfavorable contract terms, each of which could adversely affect our revenues, gross margin, profitability, financial position and cash flow.
Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our solutions after the expiration of the initial subscription term, and if our customers renew at all, then our customers may renew for fewer solutions or on different pricing terms. Our renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including our customers' satisfaction with our pricing or our solutions or their ability to continue their operations and spending levels. Additionally, certain agreements may include termination rights allowing customers to terminate their customer agreements in the event of, among other things, defects with our solutions, changes in our solution, breach by us of our obligations, requirements from regulatory authorities or a change in control of our company. If our customers terminate or do not renew their subscriptions for our solutions on similar pricing terms, our revenues may decline and our business could suffer. As we create new solutions or enhance our existing solutions to support new technologies and devices, our pricing of these solutions and related services may be unattractive to customers or fail to cover our costs.
Shifts over time in the number of End Users of our solutions, their use of our solutions and our customers' implementation and customer support needs could negatively affect our profit margins.
Our profit margins can vary depending on numerous factors, including the scope and complexity of our implementation efforts, the number of End Users on our solutions, the frequency and volume of their use of our solutions and the level of customer support services required by our customers. For example, our services offerings typically have a much higher cost of revenues than subscriptions to our solutions, so any increase in sales of services as a proportion of our subscriptions would have an adverse effect on our overall gross margin and operating results. If we are unable to increase the number of End Users and the number of transactions they perform on our solutions, the number of End Users on our solutions or the number of transactions they perform decreases, the types of customers that purchase our solutions changes, or the mix of solutions purchased by our customers changes, our profit margins could decrease and our operating results could be adversely affected.
The market data and forecasts included in this report may prove to be inaccurate, and even if the markets in which we compete achieve the forecasted growth, we cannot assure you that our business will grow at similar rates, or at all.
The market data and forecasts included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021 and our other filings with the SEC, including the data and forecasts published by BauerFinancial, Deloitte and Venture Scanner among others, and our internal estimates and research are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may not prove to be accurate. If the forecasts of market size, growth or anticipated spending prove to be inaccurate, our business and growth prospects could be adversely affected. Even if the forecasted size or growth proves accurate, our business may not grow at a similar rate, or at all. Our future growth is subject to many factors, including our ability to successfully implement our business strategy, which itself is subject to many risks and uncertainties. Such reports speak as of their respective publication dates and the opinions expressed in such reports are subject to change. Accordingly, potential investors in our common stock are urged not to put undue reliance on such forecasts and market data.
We may not be able to utilize a significant portion of our net operating loss carryforwards, which could adversely affect our operating results and cash flows.
As of December 31, 2021, we had approximately $633.8 million of U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards. Utilization of these net operating loss carryforwards depends on many factors, including our future income, which cannot be assured. Our loss carryforwards begin to expire in 2026; loss carryforwards arising for 2018 and later do not expire. In addition, Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code, as amended, generally imposes an annual limitation on the amount of net operating loss carryforwards that may be used to offset taxable income when a corporation has undergone an ownership change. An ownership change is generally defined as a greater than 50% change in equity ownership by value over a 3-year period. We have undergone one or more ownership changes as a result of prior financings and may have undergone an ownership change as a result of our initial public offering in March 2014, or our registered common stock offerings in March 2015, September 2015, June 2019, May 2020, or in connection with shares of our common stock issued in connection with our November 2020 convertible debt exchange, and any such change in ownership and the corresponding annual limitation may prevent us from using our current net operating losses prior to their expiration. In addition, our acquisition of the various businesses acquired since 2015 may result in an ownership change, and any such change in ownership may result in a corresponding annual limitation which may prevent us from being able to fully utilize the net operating losses we acquired prior to their expiration. Future ownership changes or future regulatory changes could further limit our ability to utilize our net operating loss carryforwards. To the extent we are not able to offset our future income against our net operating loss carryforwards, this would adversely affect our operating results and cash flows if we attain profitability.
Our business may be subject to additional obligations to collect and remit sales tax and other taxes, and we may be subject to tax liability for past sales. Any successful action by state, local or other authorities to collect additional or past sales tax could adversely harm our business.
We file sales and other tax returns within the U.S. and foreign jurisdictions as required by law and certain customer contracts for a portion of the solutions that we provide. Our tax liabilities with respect to sales and other taxes in various jurisdictions was approximately $1.2 million as of December 31, 2021. From time to time, we face sales and other tax audits, and we will likely continue to do so in the future, and our liability for these taxes could exceed our estimates as tax authorities could still assert that we are obligated to collect additional amounts as taxes from our customers and remit those taxes to such authorities.
We do not collect sales or other similar taxes in other states or jurisdictions and some jurisdictions do not apply sales or similar taxes to certain solutions. State, local and foreign taxing jurisdictions have differing rules and regulations governing sales and other taxes, and these rules and regulations are subject to varying interpretations that may change over time. In particular, the applicability of sales taxes to our solutions in various jurisdictions is unclear. We review these rules and regulations periodically, and when we believe we are subject to sales and other taxes in a particular jurisdiction, we may voluntarily engage tax authorities to determine how to comply with their rules and regulations. A successful assertion by one or more jurisdictions, including those for which we have not accrued tax liability, requiring us to collect sales or other taxes with respect to sales of our solutions or customer support could result in substantial tax liabilities for past transactions, including interest and penalties, discourage customers from purchasing our solutions or otherwise harm our business and operating results.
Changes in financial accounting standards or practices may cause adverse, unexpected financial reporting fluctuations and affect our reported results of operations.
Financial accounting standards may change or their interpretation may change. A change in accounting standards or practices can have a significant effect on our reported results and may even affect our reporting of transactions completed before the change becomes effective. Changes to existing rules or the re-examining of current practices may adversely affect our reported financial results or the way we conduct our business. Accounting for revenues from sales of our solutions is particularly complex, is often the subject of intense scrutiny by the SEC and will evolve as the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, continues to consider applicable accounting standards in this area.
If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal controls, our ability to produce accurate and timely financial statements could be impaired, which could harm our operating results, our ability to operate our business and investors' views of us.
Ensuring that we have adequate internal financial and accounting controls and procedures in place so that we can produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis is a costly and time-consuming effort that needs to be re-evaluated frequently, including if we acquire additional businesses and integrate their operations. Our internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and preparation of financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. While we have documented and assessed our internal controls, we continue to evaluate opportunities to further strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of our internal controls and procedures for compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires annual management assessment and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. If we make additional acquisitions, we will need to similarly assess and ensure the adequacy of the internal financial and accounting controls and procedures of such acquisitions. If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal controls, including with respect to acquired businesses, our ability to produce accurate and timely financial statements could be impaired, which could harm our operating results, harm our ability to operate our business and reduce the trading price of our common stock.
Legal and Regulatory Risks
Our customers are highly regulated and subject to a number of challenges and risks. Our failure to comply with laws and regulations applicable to us as a technology provider to financial services providers and to enable our customers to comply with the laws and regulations applicable to them could adversely affect our business and results of operations, increase costs and impose constraints on the way we conduct our business.
Our customers and prospective customers are highly regulated and may be required to comply with stringent regulations in connection with subscribing to and implementing our solutions. As a provider of technology to financial institutions, we are examined on a periodic basis by various regulatory agencies and required to review certain of our suppliers and partners. The examination handbook and other guidance issued by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, or FFIEC, govern the examination of our operations and include a review of our systems and data center and technical infrastructure, management, financial condition, development activities and our support and delivery capabilities. If deficiencies are identified, customers may choose to terminate or reduce their relationships with us. In addition, while much of our operations are not directly subject to the same regulations applicable to financial institutions, we are generally obligated to our customers to provide software solutions and maintain internal systems and processes that comply with federal, state and other regulations applicable to them. In particular, as a result of obligations under our customer agreements, we are required to comply with certain provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act related to the privacy of consumer information and may be subject to other privacy and data security laws because of the solutions we provide. In addition, numerous regulations have been proposed and are still being written to implement the Dodd-Frank Act, including requirements for enhanced due diligence of the internal systems and processes of companies like ours by their financial institution customers. In general, larger financial institutions are subject to more stringent regulations and as a result, as we sell our solutions to larger financial institutions, we will become obligated to meet more stringent regulatory standards, including more in-depth audits. Laws and regulations put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic also may result in new regulatory obligations or frameworks. If we have to make changes to our internal processes and solutions as a result of these regulatory changes, we could be required to invest substantial additional time and funds and divert time and resources from other corporate purposes to remedy any identified deficiency.
This evolving, complex and often unpredictable regulatory environment could result in our failure to provide regulatory-compliant solutions, which could result in customers' not purchasing our solutions or terminating their agreements with us or the imposition of fines or other liabilities for which we may be responsible. In addition, federal, state or foreign agencies may attempt to further regulate our activities in the future. For example, Congress could enact legislation to regulate providers of electronic commerce services as consumer financial services providers or under another regulatory framework. If enacted or deemed applicable to us, such laws, rules or regulations could be imposed on our activities or our business thereby rendering our business or operations more costly, burdensome, less efficient or impossible, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.
We are subject to various global data privacy and security regulations, which could result in additional costs and liabilities to us.
Our business is subject to a wide variety of local, state, national and international laws, directives and regulations that apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer and other processing of personal data. These data protection and privacy-related laws and regulations continue to evolve and may result in ever-increasing regulatory and public scrutiny and escalating levels of enforcement and sanctions and increased costs of compliance. In the U.S., these include rules and regulations promulgated under the authority of the Federal Trade Commission, and state breach notification laws. If there is a breach of our systems and we know or suspect that unencrypted personal customer or End-User information has been stolen, we may be required to inform the representative state attorney general or federal or country regulator, media and credit reporting agencies, and any customers whose information was stolen, which could harm our reputation and business. Other states and countries have enacted different requirements for protecting personal information collected and maintained electronically. We expect that there will continue to be new proposed laws, regulations and industry standards concerning privacy, data protection and information security in the U.S., the European Union and other jurisdictions, and we cannot yet determine the impact such future laws, regulations and standards will have on our business or the businesses of our customers, including, but not limited to, the European Union's GDPR, which came into force in May 2018 and the California Consumer Privacy Act, which came into force in January 2020, each of which creates a range of new compliance obligations, which could require us to change our business practices, and significantly increases financial penalties for noncompliance.
Failure to comply with laws concerning privacy, data protection and information security could result in enforcement action against us, including fines, imprisonment of company officials and public censure, claims for damages by customers, End Users and other affected individuals, damage to our reputation and loss of goodwill (both in relation to existing customers and End Users and prospective customers and End Users), any of which could have a material adverse effect on our operations, financial performance and business. In addition, we could suffer adverse publicity and loss of customer confidence were it known that we did not take adequate measures to assure the confidentiality of the personally identifiable information that our customers had given to us. This could result in a loss of customers and revenue that could jeopardize our success. We may not be successful in avoiding potential liability or disruption of business resulting from the failure to comply with these laws and, even if we comply with laws, may be subject to liability because of a security incident. If we were required to pay any significant amount of money in satisfaction of claims under these laws, or any similar laws enacted by other jurisdictions, or if we were forced to cease our business operations for any length of time as a result of our inability to comply fully with any of these laws, our business, operating results and financial condition could be adversely affected. Further, complying with the applicable notice requirements in the event of a security and privacy breach could result in significant costs.
Additionally, our business efficiencies and economies of scale depend on generally uniform solutions offerings and uniform treatment of customers and their End Users across all jurisdictions in which we operate. Compliance requirements that vary significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction impose added costs on our business and can increase liability for compliance deficiencies.
Our failure to comply with laws and regulations related to the Internet and mobile usage could adversely affect our business and results of operations, increase costs and impose constraints on the way we conduct our business.
We and our customers are subject to laws and regulations applicable to doing business over the Internet and through the use of mobile devices. It is often not clear how existing laws governing issues such as property ownership, sales and other taxes apply to the Internet and mobile usage, as these laws have in some cases failed to keep pace with technological change. Laws governing the Internet could also impact our business or the business of our customers. For instance, existing and future regulations on taxing Internet use, pricing, characterizing the types and quality of services and products, or restricting the exchange of information over the Internet or mobile devices could result in reduced growth of our business, a general decline in the use of the Internet by financial services providers, or their End Users, or diminished viability of our solutions and could significantly restrict our customers' ability to use our solutions. Changing laws and regulations, industry standards and industry self-regulation regarding the collection, use and disclosure of certain data may have similar effects on our and our customers' businesses. Any such constraint on the growth in Internet and mobile usage could decrease its acceptance as a medium of communication and commerce or result in increased adoption of new modes of communication and commerce that may not be supported by our solutions. Any such adverse legal or regulatory developments could substantially harm our operating results and our business.
Legislation relating to consumer privacy may affect our ability to collect data that we use in providing our customers' End-User information, which, among other things, could negatively affect our ability to satisfy our customers' needs.
We collect and store personal and identifying information regarding our customers' End Users to enable certain functionality of our solutions and provide our customers with data about their End Users. The enactment of new or amended legislation or industry regulations pertaining to consumer or private sector privacy issues could have a material adverse impact on our collection, storage and sharing of such information. Legislation or industry regulations regarding consumer or private sector privacy issues could place restrictions upon the collection, sharing and use of information that is currently legally available, which could materially increase our cost of collecting some data. These types of legislation or industry regulations could also prohibit us from collecting or disseminating certain types of data, which could adversely affect our ability to meet our customers' requirements and our profitability and cash flow targets. These legislative measures impose strict requirements on reporting time frames for providing notice, as well as the contents of such notices. The costs of compliance with, the inability to determine whether a data breach has occurred within the time frame provided by, and other burdens imposed by, such laws and regulations may lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities for any noncompliance with such privacy laws. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our solutions.
In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy groups and the technology and other industries are considering various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. If the collecting, storing and processing of personal information were to be curtailed, our solutions would be less effective, which may reduce demand for our solutions and adversely affect our business.
Any use of our solutions by our customers in violation of regulatory requirements could damage our reputation and subject us to additional liability.
If our customers or their End Users use our solutions in violation of regulatory requirements and applicable laws, we could suffer damage to our reputation and could become subject to claims. We rely on contractual obligations made to us by our customers that their use and their End Users' use of our solutions will comply with applicable laws. However, we do not audit our customers or their End Users to confirm compliance. We may become subject to or involved with claims for violations by our customers or their End Users of applicable laws in connection with their use of our solutions. Even if claims asserted against us do not result in liability, we may incur costs in investigating and defending against such claims. If we are found liable in connection with our customers' or their End Users' activities, we could incur liabilities and be required to redesign our solutions or otherwise expend resources to remedy any damages caused by such actions and to avoid future liability.
Any future litigation against us could be costly and time-consuming to defend.
We may become subject, from time to time, to legal proceedings and claims that arise in the ordinary course of business such as claims brought by our customers in connection with commercial or intellectual property disputes or employment claims made by our current or former employees. Litigation might result in substantial costs and may divert management's attention and resources, which might seriously harm our business, our overall financial condition and our operating results. Insurance may not cover such claims, provide sufficient payments to cover all the costs to resolve one or more such claims or continue to be available on terms acceptable to us. A claim brought against us that is uninsured or underinsured could result in unanticipated costs and impact our liquidity, thereby reducing our operating results and impacting our financial condition, leading analysts and investors to reduce their confidence and expectations and reduce the trading price of our stock.
Lawsuits by third parties against us or our customers for alleged infringement of the third parties' proprietary rights or for other intellectual property related claims could result in significant expenses and harm our operating results and financial condition.
Our industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and other intellectual property and proprietary rights as well as a high number of allegations and disputes related to these rights. Our competitors and the competitors of our customers, as well as a number of other entities and individuals (both operating and non-operating), own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our industry. As a result, we regularly are subject to allegations and involved in disputes, either directly or on behalf of our customers, that our solutions and the underlying technology infringe the patent and other intellectual property rights of third parties. The frequency of these types of claims also may increase as we continue to add new customers and as a result of our being a public company. The defense against these allegations and disputes and, if unsuccessful, their resolution could result in our having to pay damages and negatively impact our ability to continue to sell and provide all or a portion of our solutions or certain third-party solutions, any of which could materially harm our reputation, business results and financial condition. Insurance may not cover such claims, provide sufficient payments to cover all the costs to resolve one or more such claims or continue to be available on terms acceptable to us. Successful outcomes in these disputes depend upon our ability to demonstrate that our solutions do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others. We have a very limited patent portfolio, which will likely prevent us from deterring patent infringement claims, and our competitors and others may now and in the future have significantly larger or more relevant patent portfolios than we have.
Our customer agreements typically require us to indemnify our customers in connection with claims alleging our solutions or the underlying technologies infringe the patent or other intellectual property rights of third parties. Our customers regularly receive allegations from third parties or are involved in these disputes with third parties, and we may be required to indemnify them in connection with these matters. We are currently involved in these types of disputes, and given the high level of this activity in our industry, we expect these types of disputes to continue to arise in the future. If we are unsuccessful in defending claims for which we are required to provide indemnity, our business and operating results could be adversely affected. Any significant disputes among us and our customers as to the applicability of our indemnity obligations could negatively impact our reputation and customer relations, affect our ability to sell our solutions and harm our operating results. Further, there can be no assurances that any provisions in our contracts that purport to limit our liability would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim.
In certain instances, we license technologies from third parties for use directly or indirectly in our solutions or for resale with our solutions. Our contracts with these third parties may include provisions that require the third party to indemnify us in the event of any claim or dispute that the third party's technologies infringe upon the patent or other intellectual property rights of others. If we are unable for any reason to seek indemnity or otherwise collect from those third parties our direct or indirect liabilities related to any claim, then we may have to bear the liabilities ourselves and our business performance and financial condition could be substantially harmed.
The risk of patent litigation exists with operating entities but also has been amplified by the increase in the number of non-practicing patent asserting entities, or "patent trolls." Any claims or litigation, whether by operating entities or "patent trolls," could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us or our customers whom we indemnify, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our solutions or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. Even if the claims do not result in litigation or are resolved in our favor, these claims and the time and resources necessary to resolve them, could divert the resources of our management and harm our business and operating results.
If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, our business could be adversely affected.
Our success depends upon our ability to protect our intellectual property, which may require us to incur significant costs. We have developed much of our intellectual property internally, and we rely on a combination of confidentiality obligations in contracts, patents, copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secret laws and other contractual restrictions to establish and protect our intellectual property and other proprietary rights. In particular, we enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with the parties with whom we have business relationships in which they will have access to our confidential information. We also rely upon licenses to intellectual property from third parties. No assurance can be given that these agreements or other steps we take to protect our intellectual property or the third-party intellectual property used in our solutions will be effective in controlling access to and distribution of our solutions and our confidential and proprietary information. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized uses of our intellectual property.
Despite our precautions, it may be possible for third parties to copy our solutions and use information that we regard as proprietary to create solutions and services that compete with ours. Third parties also may independently develop technologies that are substantially equivalent to our solutions. Some license provisions protecting against unauthorized use, copying, transfer and disclosure of our solutions may be unenforceable under the laws of certain jurisdictions.
In some cases, litigation may be necessary to enforce our intellectual property rights or to protect our trade secrets. Litigation could be costly, time consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights and exposing us to significant damages or injunctions. Our inability to protect our intellectual property against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation or diversion of our management's attention and resources, could delay sales or the implementation of our solutions, impair the functionality of our solutions, delay introductions of new solutions, result in our substituting less-advanced or more-costly technologies into our solutions or harm our reputation. In addition, we may be required to license additional intellectual property from third parties to develop and market new solutions, and we cannot assure you that we could license that intellectual property on commercially reasonable terms or at all.
As of December 31, 2021, we had nine U.S. patent applications pending and eight issued U.S. patents. We do not know whether our pending patent applications will result in the issuance of patents or whether the examination process will require us to narrow the scope of our claims. To the extent that our pending patent applications or any portion of such applications proceed to issuance as a patent, any such future patent may be opposed, contested, circumvented, designed around by a third party or found to be invalid or unenforceable. In addition, our existing and any future issued patents may be opposed, contested, circumvented, designed around by a third party or found to be invalid or unenforceable. The process of seeking patent protection can be lengthy and expensive. We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trade secret, trademark and other intellectual property laws to protect our intellectual property, and much of our technology is not covered by any patent or patent application.
We use "open source" software in our solutions, which may restrict how we use or distribute our solutions, require that we release the source code of certain software subject to open source licenses or subject us to litigation or other actions that could adversely affect our business.
We currently use in our solutions, and may use in the future, software that is licensed under "open source," "free" or other similar licenses where the licensed software is made available to the general public on an "as-is" basis under the terms of a specific non-negotiable license. Some open source software licenses require that software subject to the license be made available to the public and that any modifications or derivative works based on the open source code be licensed in source code form under the same open source licenses. Although we monitor our use of open source software, we cannot assure you that all open source software is reviewed prior to use in our solutions, that our programmers have not incorporated open source software into our solutions, or that they will not do so in the future. In addition, some of our products may incorporate third-party software under commercial licenses. We cannot be certain whether such third-party software incorporates open source software without our knowledge. In the past, companies that incorporate open source software into their products have faced claims alleging noncompliance with open source license terms or infringement or misappropriation of proprietary software. Therefore, we could be subject to suits by parties claiming noncompliance with open source licensing terms or infringement or misappropriation of proprietary software. Because few courts have interpreted open source licenses, the manner in which these licenses may be interpreted and enforced is subject to some uncertainty. There is a risk that open source software licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market or provide our solutions. As a result of using open source software subject to such licenses, we could be required to release our proprietary source code, pay damages, re-engineer our products, limit or discontinue sales or take other remedial action, any of which could adversely affect our business.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
We have incurred and will continue to incur significant increased expenses and administrative burdens as a public company, which could have a material adverse effect on our operations and financial results.
As a public company, we have incurred and will continue to incur significant legal, accounting, administrative and other costs and expenses. For example, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, and are required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as rules and regulations subsequently implemented by the SEC, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the New York Stock Exchange, including the establishment and maintenance of effective disclosure and financial controls and changes in corporate governance practices. Compliance with public company requirements has increased our costs and made some activities more time-consuming. In addition, our management and other personnel have been required to divert attention from operational and other business matters to devote substantial time to these public company requirements.
Furthermore, if we identify any issues in complying with public company reporting requirements (for example, if our financial systems prove inadequate or we or our auditors identify deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting), we could incur additional costs rectifying those issues, and the existence of those issues could adversely affect us, our reputation or investor perceptions of us. It is also more expensive to maintain director and officer liability insurance as a public company. Risks associated with our status as a public company may make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our board of directors or as executive officers. The additional reporting and other obligations imposed on us by these rules and regulations have and we expect will continue to increase our legal and financial compliance costs and the costs of our related legal, accounting and administrative activities. These costs require us to divert a significant amount of money that we could otherwise use to expand our business and achieve our strategic objectives. Proposals submitted by stockholders at our annual meeting or other advocacy efforts by stockholders and third parties also may prompt additional changes in governance and reporting requirements, which could further increase our costs.
In addition, changing laws, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure are creating uncertainty for public companies, increasing legal and financial compliance costs and making some activities more time consuming. These laws, regulations and standards are subject to varying interpretations, in many cases due to their lack of specificity, and, as a result, their application in practice may evolve over time as new guidance is provided by regulatory and governing bodies. This situation could result in continuing uncertainty regarding compliance matters and higher costs necessitated by ongoing revisions to disclosure and governance practices. We intend to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations and standards, and this investment may result in increased general and administrative expenses and a diversion of management's time and attention from revenue-generating activities to compliance activities. If our efforts to comply with new laws, regulations and standards differ from the activities intended by regulatory or governing bodies due to ambiguities related to their application and practice, regulatory authorities may initiate investigations, inquiries, administrative proceedings or legal proceedings against us and our business may be adversely affected.
Any future sales of our common stock in the public markets, or the perception that such sales might occur, could reduce the price that our common stock might otherwise attain and may dilute the voting power and ownership interest in us of our then-existing stockholders.
As of December 31, 2021, we had an aggregate of 56,928,431 outstanding shares of common stock. The shares sold in our public offerings can be freely sold in the public market without restriction unless they are held by "affiliates," as that term is defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act. The remaining shares can be freely sold in the public market, subject in some cases to volume and other restrictions under Rule 144 under the Securities Act and various agreements. We have registered 22,616,070 shares of common stock that we have issued and may issue under our stock plans. These shares can be freely sold in the public market upon issuance, subject in some cases to volume and other restrictions under Rules 144 under the Securities Act, and various vesting agreements. In addition, some of our employees, including some of our executive officers, have entered into 10b5-1 trading plans regarding sales of shares of our common stock. These plans provide for sales to occur from time to time. If any of these additional shares are sold, or if it is perceived that they will be sold, in the public market, the trading price of our common stock could decline.
Since our initial public offering, from time to time we have conducted registered offerings of our common stock. Additionally, in February 2018, we issued $230.0 million aggregate principal amount of 0.75% Convertible Senior Notes due 2023, or the 2023 Notes. In June 2019, we issued $316.3 million aggregate principal amount of 0.75% Convertible Senior Notes due 2026, or the 2026 Notes. In November 2020, we entered into a privately negotiated exchange and/or subscription agreements with certain new investors and certain holders of our existing 2023 Notes to exchange $181.9 million of our 2023 Notes for $210.7 million of our 0.125% Convertible Senior Notes due 2025, or the 2025 Notes, and to issue $139.3 million of incremental 2025 Notes to new investors, resulting in the issuance of an aggregate of $350.0 million principal amount of 2025 Notes. In the future, we may issue additional securities to raise capital or in connection with investments and acquisitions. In addition, a substantial number of shares of our common stock are reserved for issuance upon conversion of our convertible notes issued in connection with the offering of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes, 2026 Notes and exercise of our warrants issued in connection with the 2023 Notes. The amount of our common stock issued in connection with any such issuance could constitute a material portion of our then outstanding stock. Due to these factors, sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market could occur at any time. These sales, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell shares, could reduce the market price of our common stock.
If securities or industry analysts publish unfavorable or misleading research about our business, or cease coverage of our company, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common stock is influenced in part by the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. If one or more of the securities or industry analysts who covers us downgrades our stock or publishes unfavorable or misleading research about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts ceases coverage of our company or fails to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the market for our stock, and demand for our stock could decrease, which could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.
Our stock price has been and may continue to be highly volatile.
The trading price of our common stock has been and may continue to be highly volatile and could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, including the risk factors described in this report, and other factors beyond our control. Additional factors affecting the trading price of our common stock include:
•variations in our operating results or the operating results of similar companies;
•announcements of technological innovations, new solutions or enhancements or strategic partnerships or agreements by us or by our competitors;
•changes in the estimates of our operating results, our financial guidance or changes in recommendations by any securities analysts that follow our common stock;
•the gain or loss of customers, particularly our larger customers;
•adoption or modification of regulations, policies, procedures or programs applicable to our business and our customers' business;
•marketing and advertising initiatives by us or our competitors;
•threatened or actual litigation;
•changes in our senior management; and
•recruitment or departure of key personnel.
In addition, the stock market in general and the market for technology companies in particular, have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. Broad market and industry factors may harm the market price of our common stock regardless of our actual operating performance. Each of these factors, among others, could adversely affect your investment in our common stock. Some companies that have had volatile market prices for their securities have had securities class action lawsuits filed against them. If a suit were filed against us, regardless of its merits or outcome, it could result in substantial costs and divert management's attention.
We currently do not intend to pay dividends on our common stock, and, consequently, the only opportunity to achieve a return on investment is if the price of our common stock appreciates.
We have never declared nor paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently do not plan to declare dividends on shares of our common stock in the foreseeable future. We currently intend to retain any future earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business. Any payment of future dividends will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. Consequently, the only opportunity to achieve a return on investment in our company will be if the market price of our common stock appreciates and shares are sold at a profit. There is no guarantee that the price of our common stock that will prevail in the market will ever exceed the price that is paid for our common stock.
Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and Delaware law could discourage, delay or prevent a change in control of our company and may affect the trading price of our common stock.
We are a Delaware corporation and the anti-takeover provisions of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which apply to us, may discourage, delay or prevent a change in control by prohibiting us from engaging in a business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years after the stockholder becomes an interested stockholder, even if a change in control would be beneficial to our existing stockholders. In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may discourage, delay or prevent a change in our management or control over us that stockholders may consider favorable. Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws:
•authorize the issuance of "blank check" preferred stock that could be issued by our board of directors to help defend against a takeover attempt;
•require that directors only be removed from office for cause and only upon a supermajority stockholder vote;
•provide that vacancies on the board of directors, including newly created directorships, may be filled only by a majority vote of directors then in office rather than by stockholders;
•prevent stockholders from calling special meetings;
•include advance notice procedures for stockholders to nominate candidates for election as directors or bring matters before an annual meeting of stockholders;
•prohibit stockholder action by written consent, requiring all actions to be taken at a meeting of the stockholders; and
•provide that certain litigation against us can only be brought in Delaware.
We may not be able to obtain capital when desired on favorable terms, if at all, and we may not be able to obtain capital or complete acquisitions through the use of equity or without dilution to our stockholders.
We may need additional financing to execute on our current or future business strategies, including to develop new or enhance existing products and services, acquire businesses and technologies, or otherwise to respond to competitive pressures. If we raise additional funds through the issuance of equity or convertible debt securities, the percentage ownership of our stockholders could be significantly diluted, and newly-issued securities may have rights, preferences or privileges senior to those of existing stockholders. If we accumulate additional funds through debt financing, a substantial portion of our operating cash flow may be dedicated to the payment of principal and interest on such indebtedness, thus limiting funds available for our business activities. We cannot assure you that additional financing will be available on terms favorable to us, or at all. If adequate funds are not available or are not available on acceptable terms, when we desire them, our ability to fund our operations, take advantage of unanticipated opportunities, develop or enhance our products and services, or otherwise respond to competitive pressures would be significantly limited. Any of these factors could harm our results of operations and negatively impact the trading price of our common stock.
Risks Related to Our Convertible Notes
We incurred indebtedness by issuing our 2023 Notes in 2018, our 2026 Notes in 2019, and our 2025 Notes in 2020, and our debt repayment obligations may adversely affect our financial condition and cash flows from operations in the future.
Our indebtedness under our convertible notes may impair our ability to obtain additional financing in the future for general corporate purposes, including working capital, capital expenditures, potential acquisitions and strategic transactions, and a portion of our cash flows from operations may have to be dedicated to repaying the principal of the 2023 Notes in 2023, the principal of the 2026 Notes in 2026, and the principal of the 2025 Notes in 2025 or earlier if necessary. Our ability to meet our debt obligations will depend on our future performance, which will be affected by financial, business, economic, regulatory and other factors. We cannot control many of these factors. Our future operations may not generate sufficient cash to enable us to repay our debt, including the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes. If we fail to make a payment on our debt, we could be in default on such debt. If we are at any time unable to pay our indebtedness when due, we may be required to renegotiate the terms of the indebtedness, seek to refinance all or a portion of the indebtedness or obtain additional financing. There can be no assurance that, in the future, we will be able to successfully renegotiate such terms, that any such refinancing would be possible or that any additional financing could be obtained on terms that are favorable or acceptable to us.
In addition, holders of each series of our convertible notes will have the right to require us to repurchase all or a portion of their notes upon the occurrence of a fundamental change, as defined in the respective indentures, at a repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest. Upon conversion of each series of convertible notes, unless we elect to deliver solely shares of our common stock to settle such conversion (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we will be required to make cash payments in respect of the series of notes being converted. However, we may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing at the time we are required to make repurchases of the series of convertible notes surrendered therefor or at the time such series of convertible notes is being converted. In addition, our ability to repurchase each series of convertible notes or to pay cash upon conversions of each series of convertible notes may be limited by law, by regulatory authority or by agreements governing our future indebtedness. Our failure to repurchase a series of convertible notes at a time when the repurchase is required by the indenture or to pay any cash payable on future conversions of such series of convertible notes as required by the indenture governing such series of convertible notes would constitute a default under such indenture. A default under the indenture or the fundamental change itself could also lead to a default under agreements governing our future indebtedness. If the repayment of the related indebtedness were to be accelerated after any applicable notice or grace periods, we may not have sufficient funds to repay the indebtedness and repurchase the notes or make cash payments upon conversions thereof. An event of default under the indenture governing the notes may lead to an acceleration of the notes. Any such acceleration could result in our bankruptcy. In a bankruptcy, the holders of the notes would have a claim to our assets that is senior to the claims of our equity holders.
Conversion of the convertible notes will dilute the ownership interest of our existing stockholders or may otherwise depress the price of our common stock.
The conversion of some or all of our convertible notes will dilute the ownership interests of existing stockholders. Any sales in the public market of our common stock issuable upon such conversion of our convertible notes could adversely affect prevailing market prices of our common stock. In addition, the existence of the convertible notes may encourage short selling by market participants because the conversion of the notes could be used to satisfy short positions, or anticipated conversion of the convertible notes into shares of our common stock could depress the price of our common stock.
Our convertible notes bond hedge and warrant transactions entered into in connection with the offering of the 2023 Notes may affect the value of our common stock.
In connection with the offering of the 2023 Notes, we entered into convertible notes bond hedge, or Bond Hedge, transactions with one or more counterparties. We also entered into warrant transactions with the counterparties pursuant to which we sold warrants for the purchase of our common stock. The Bond Hedge transactions related to the 2023 Notes are expected generally to reduce the potential dilution upon any conversion of 2023 Notes or offset any cash payments we are required to make in excess of the principal amount upon conversion of any 2023 Notes. The warrant transactions could separately have a dilutive effect to the extent that the market price per share of our common stock exceeds the strike price of the warrants. In connection with establishing their initial hedges of the 2023 Note hedge and warrant transactions, the counterparties or their respective affiliates purchased shares of our common stock or entered into various derivative transactions with respect to our common stock concurrently with or shortly after the pricing of the 2023 Notes. The counterparties or their respective affiliates may modify their hedge positions by entering into or unwinding various derivatives with respect to our common stock or purchasing or selling our common stock in secondary market transactions prior to the maturity of the 2023 Notes, and are likely to do so during any observation period related to a conversion of 2023 Notes or following any repurchase of 2023 Notes by us. This activity could also cause or avoid an increase or a decrease in the market price of our common stock.
The capped call transactions entered into in connection with the offering of the 2025 Notes and 2026 Notes may affect the value of our common stock.
In connection with the offering of the 2025 Notes and 2026 Notes, we entered into capped call transactions with one or more counterparties, or the Capped Calls. The Capped Calls cover, subject to customary adjustments, the number of shares of our common stock initially underlying the 2025 Notes and 2026 Notes. The Capped Calls are expected to offset the potential dilution and/or offset any cash payments we are required to make in excess of the principal amount of converted 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes, as a result of conversion of the 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes, with such offset subject to a cap. In connection with establishing their initial hedges of the Capped Calls, the counterparties or their respective affiliates purchased shares of our common stock or entered into various derivative transactions with respect to our common stock concurrently with or shortly after the pricing of the 2025 Notes and 2026 Notes. The counterparties or their respective affiliates may modify their hedge positions by entering into or unwinding various derivatives with respect to our common stock and/or purchasing or selling our common stock or other securities of ours in secondary market transactions prior to the maturity of the 2025 Notes and 2026 Notes, and are likely to do so during any observation period related to a conversion of the 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes or following any repurchase of 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes by us. This activity could also cause or avoid an increase or a decrease in the market price of our common stock.
Certain provisions in the indentures governing our convertible notes may delay or prevent an otherwise beneficial takeover attempt of us and may affect the trading price of our common stock.
Certain provisions in the indentures governing our convertible notes may make it more difficult or expensive for a third party to acquire us. For example, the indentures governing our convertible notes will require us to repurchase the convertible notes for cash upon the occurrence of a fundamental change (as defined in the respective indentures) of us and, in certain circumstances, to increase the conversion rate for a holder that converts the convertible notes in connection with a make-whole fundamental change. A takeover of us may trigger the requirement that we repurchase our convertible notes, and/or increase the conversion rate, which could make it more costly for a potential acquirer to engage in such takeover. Such additional costs may have the effect of delaying or preventing a takeover of us that would otherwise be beneficial to investors in our common stock.
If the conditional conversion feature of any series of convertible notes is triggered, our financial condition and operating results may be adversely affected which could decrease the trading price of our common stock.
In the event the conditional conversion feature of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes is triggered, note holders will be entitled to convert their 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes, as applicable, at any time during specified periods at their option. If one or more holders elect to convert the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes, as applicable, we may elect to satisfy our conversion obligation by delivering solely shares of our common stock (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), which would result in dilution to the holders of our common stock. If we elect to or would be required to settle a portion or all of our conversion obligation in cash, it could adversely affect our liquidity, which may negatively impact the trading price of our common stock. In addition, even if holders of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes do not elect to convert their 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes, as applicable, we could be required under applicable accounting rules to reclassify all or a portion of the outstanding principal of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes as a current rather than long-term liability, which would result in a material reduction of our net working capital, which may negatively impact the trading price of our common stock.
The accounting method for convertible notes that may be settled in cash, such as our convertible notes, could have a material effect on our reported financial results.
Under ASC 470-20, "Debt with Conversion and Other Options," an entity must separately account for the liability and equity components of the convertible debt instruments, such as our convertible notes, that may be settled entirely or partially in cash upon conversion in a manner that reflects the issuer's economic interest cost. The effect of ASC 470-20 on the accounting for our convertible notes is that the equity component is required to be included in the additional paid-in capital section of stockholders' equity on our consolidated balance sheet at the issuance date and the value of the equity component would be treated as debt discount for purposes of accounting for the debt component of our convertible notes. As a result, we will be required to record a greater amount of non-cash interest expense as a result of the amortization of the discounted carrying value of our convertible notes to their face amount over the applicable term of the convertible notes. We will report larger net losses, or lower net income, in our financial results because ASC 470-20 will require interest to include both the amortization of the debt discount and the instrument's nonconvertible coupon interest rate, which could adversely affect our reported or future financial results and the trading price of our common stock.
Accounting standards in the future will result in changes to the current ASC 470-20 accounting model. The FASB issued an accounting standards update that eliminates the liability and equity component separation model for convertible debt instruments with a cash conversion feature. Among other potential impacts, this change is expected to reduce non-cash interest expense and result in a reclassification of certain balance sheet amounts from stockholders' equity to liabilities as it relates to the Notes.
In addition, under certain circumstances, convertible debt instruments, such as our convertible notes, that may be settled entirely or partly in cash may be accounted for utilizing the treasury stock method, the effect of which is that the shares issuable upon conversion of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes or 2026 Notes are not included in the calculation of diluted earnings per share except to the extent that the conversion value of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes and 2026 Notes exceeds their principal amount. Under the treasury stock method, for diluted earnings per share purposes, the transaction is accounted for as if the number of shares of common stock that would be necessary to settle such excess, if we elected to settle such excess in shares, are issued. We cannot be sure that the accounting standards in the future will continue to permit the use of the treasury stock method. If we are unable or otherwise elect not to use the treasury stock method in accounting for the shares issuable upon conversion of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes and 2026 Notes then our diluted earnings per share could be adversely affected.

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

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ITEM 2. PROPERTIES
Item 2. Properties.
Our principal executive offices are located in Austin, Texas in two adjacent buildings under separate lease agreements. Pursuant to the first of which the Company leases approximately 129,000 square feet of office space with an initial term that expires on April 30, 2028, with the option to extend the lease for an additional ten-year term, and pursuant to the second of which the Company leases approximately 129,000 square feet of office space with lease terms of approximately ten years, with the options to extend the leases on the second building. We also maintain office space in U.S. cities located in Nebraska, Iowa, North Carolina, California, Texas and Minnesota. Internationally we maintain offices in India, Australia, and the United Kingdom. We believe our current facilities will be adequate for our needs for the foreseeable future.

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ITEM 3. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
Item 3. Legal Proceedings.
From time to time, we may become involved in legal proceedings arising in the ordinary course of our business. Our management believes that there are no claims or actions pending against us, the ultimate disposition of which would have a material impact on our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.

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ITEM 4. MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURE
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.
Not applicable.
PART II

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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 and Holders
Our common stock has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "QTWO" since March 20, 2014. Prior to that date, there was no public trading market for our common stock. Our common stock was priced at $13.00 per share in our initial public offering on March 20, 2014.
As of December 31, 2021, we had 22 holders of record of our common stock. The actual number of holders of common stock is greater than this number of record holders and includes stockholders who are beneficial owners, but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and nominees. The number of holders of record also does not include stockholders whose shares may be held in trust by other entities.
Dividend Policy
We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our common stock. Any future determination to declare cash dividends on our common stock will be made at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. We do not anticipate paying cash dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future.
Use of Proceeds From Registered Securities
On May 15, 2020, we completed a registered public offering of 4,735,294 shares of our common stock at a price of $76.50 per share, before underwriting discounts and commissions. We sold 4,235,294 of such shares and existing stockholders sold 500,000 of such shares. We did not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders in the May 2020 common stock offering. The May 2020 common stock offering was made pursuant to an automatically effective shelf registration statement on Form S-3 that we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on June 4, 2019 (File No. 333-231947), as amended on May 11, 2020. There have been no material changes in the planned use of proceeds from our May 2020 common stock offering from that described in the final prospectus filed with the SEC pursuant to Rule 424(b) on May 13, 2020. With a portion of the proceeds from this offering, we used $51.2 million to repurchase a portion of our 2023 Notes and unwind associated bond hedge and warrant transactions, and we completed the acquisition of ClickSWITCH for $65.5 million in cash (which included a hold-back of $1.0 million).
Equity Compensation Plan Information
Information regarding the securities authorized for issuance under our equity compensation plans will be included in our Proxy Statement relating to our 2022 annual meeting of stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of our fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 and is incorporated herein by reference.
Performance Graph
The graph set forth below compares the cumulative total stockholder return on our common stock between December 31, 2016 and December 31, 2021, with the cumulative total return of (i) the Russell 2000 Index and (ii) the S&P 1500 Application Software Index. This graph assumes the investment of $100 on December 31, 2016 in our common stock, the S&P 1500 Application Software Index and the Russell 2000 Index, and assumes the reinvestment of dividends, if any. Note that historic stock price performance is not necessarily indicative of future stock price performance.
The information contained in the Stock Performance Graph shall not be deemed to be soliciting material or to be filed with the SEC nor shall such information be incorporated by reference into any future filing under the Securities Act or the Exchange Act, except to the extent we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing.
Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
None.

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

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ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In addition to historical consolidated financial information, the following discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates and beliefs. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, particularly in the section titled "Risk Factors."
Overview
We are a leading provider of secure, cloud-based digital solutions that transform the ways in which financial institutions and other financial services providers engage with account holders and end users, or End Users. We offer our solutions to financial institutions, financial technology companies, or FinTechs, alternative finance companies, or Alt-FIs, and other innovative companies, or Brands, wishing to incorporate banking into their customer engagement and servicing strategies. Our solutions include a broad and deep portfolio of digital banking, lending solutions; an open technology platform, the Q2 Innovation Studio, that accelerates innovation by enabling a partnership ecosystem on the Q2 platform in which FinTechs and other digital solution providers can embed their offerings and customers can develop their own applications; and a comprehensive banking as a service, or BaaS, solution, which we re-branded as Helix in 2022, that enables innovative companies to incorporate banking directly into their products. We purpose-build our platforms and solutions to enable success for our customers and technology partners by allowing them to digitize their operations and offerings, differentiate their brands, and integrate traditional and emerging financial services, ultimately enhancing End-User acquisition, engagement and retention and improving operational efficiencies and profitability.
The effective delivery and management of secure and advanced digital solutions in the complex and heavily regulated financial services industry requires significant resources, personnel and expertise. We provide digital solutions that are designed to be highly configurable, scalable and adaptable to the specific needs of our customers. We design and develop our solutions with an open platform approach intended to provide comprehensive integration among our solution offerings and our customers' internal and third-party systems. This integrated approach allows our customers to deliver unified and robust financial experiences across digital channels. Our solutions provide our customers the flexibility to configure their digital services in a manner that is consistent with each customer's specific workflows, processes and controls. Our solutions also allow our customers to personalize the digital experiences they deliver to their End Users by extending their individual services and brand requirements across digital channels. Our solutions and our data center infrastructure and resources are designed to comply with the stringent security and technical regulations applicable to financial institutions and financial services providers and to safeguard our customers' data and that of their End Users.
We have deep domain expertise in developing and delivering secure, advanced digital solutions designed to help our customers and technology partners compete in the complex and heavily regulated financial services industry. Over 17 years ago Q2 began by providing digital banking solutions to regional and community financial institutions. We have rapidly grown since then through a combination of broad market acceptance of our award-winning solutions and relentless innovation, investment and acquisitions. Our portfolio of solutions now spans digital banking, lending, profitability, onboarding, security, and we now serve account holders and borrowers across retail, small business and commercial segments, in addition to our open technology platform and BaaS offerings. While we remain focused on our founding mission of building stronger and more diverse communities by strengthening their financial institutions, we intend to draw on our broad solution portfolio, deep domain expertise and robust customer base to lead the transformation into a new frontier of financial services.
The financial services industry is undergoing tremendous change, influenced by three major factors. First, financial institutions demand now, more than ever, to digitize their operations and offerings, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this digital transformation. Second, the continued growth in the number of FinTechs and the innovation they bring to the market is increasing End-User demand and expectations for new, more engaging and meaningful digital financial experiences. And third, major innovative Brands recognize that incorporating banking into their strategy is an opportunity to leverage the trust that their End Users place in them, driving deeper engagement with those End Users. These three forces are converging to create what we believe is a new frontier in financial services in which financial institutions, FinTechs and Brands will have new roles and interdependencies, and which will require new technology, new partners, and new business models. We believe that lasting value creation in financial services will be achieved by those companies that can support and enhance the convergence of these forces. In addition, we have built a broad set of solutions that we believe equips us to accelerate and optimize this convergence - from digitizing the entire bank, to facilitating partnerships among financial institutions and FinTechs, to enabling Brands to incorporate banking into their products and customer relationships.
We deliver our solutions to most of our customers using a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, model under which our customers pay subscription fees for the use of our solutions. Our digital banking platform customers have numerous End Users, and those End Users can represent one or more account holders registered to use one or more of our solutions on our digital banking platform. We generally price our digital banking platform solutions based on the number of solutions purchased by our customers and the number of Registered Users or commercial account holders utilizing our solutions. We generally earn additional revenues from our digital banking platform customers based on the number of transactions that End Users perform on our solutions in excess of the levels included in our standard subscription fee. As a result, our revenues from digital banking platform customers grow as our customers buy more solutions from us and increase the number of End Users utilizing our solutions and as those users increase their number of transactions on our solutions. The structure and terms of our newer lending arrangements vary, but generally are also sold on a subscription basis through our direct sales organization, and the related revenues are recognized over the terms of the customer agreements. The structure and terms of our Helix arrangements with FinTechs and Brands vary, but typically involve relatively lower contracted minimum revenues and instead emphasize usage-based revenue, with such revenue recognized as it is incurred.
We have achieved significant growth since our inception. During each of the past nine years, our average number of Registered Users (as defined below) per installed customer on our digital banking platform, or Installed Customer, has grown, and in many instances we have been able to sell additional solutions to existing customers. Our revenues per Installed Customer and per Registered User vary period-to-period based on the length and timing of customer implementations, changes in the average number of Registered Users per customer, sales of additional solutions to existing customers, changes in the number of transactions on our solutions by Registered Users and variations among existing customers and new customers with respect to the mix of purchased solutions and related pricing. Please see "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations-Key Operating Measures" for additional detail on how we define "Installed Customers" and "Registered Users."
We believe we have a significant opportunity to continue to grow our business, and we continue to invest across our organization to increase our revenues and improve our operating efficiencies. These investments will increase our costs on an absolute dollar basis, but the timing and amount of these investments will vary based on the rate at which we expect to add new customers, the implementation and support needs of our customers, our software development plans, our technology and physical infrastructure requirements and the internal needs of our organization. Many of these investments will occur in advance of our realizing any resultant benefit which may make it difficult to determine if we are effectively allocating our resources. If we are successful in growing our revenues by increasing the number of customers and scope of our customer relationships, we anticipate that greater economies of scale and increased operating leverage will improve our margins over the long term.
We sell our solutions primarily through our professional sales organization. While the financial institutions market is well-defined due to the regulatory classifications of those financial institutions, markets for FinTech, Alt-FIs and brands are broader and more difficult to define due to the changing number of providers in each market. Over the long term, we intend to continue to invest in additional sales representatives to identify and address the financial institution, FinTech, Alt-FI and Brand markets across the U.S. and internationally and to increase our number of sales support and marketing personnel, as well as our investment in marketing initiatives designed to increase awareness of our solutions and generate new customer opportunities.
We have continuously invested in expanding and improving our digital banking platform since its introduction in 2005, and we intend to continue investing both organically and inorganically through acquisitions to expand our portfolio of solutions. Additionally, over the past several years we have acquired or developed new solutions and additional functionality that serve a broader range of needs of financial institutions as well as the needs of FinTechs, Alt-FIs and Brands. Our integrated, end-to-end collection of solutions includes retail, small business and commercial banking, regulatory and compliance, digital lending, relationship pricing, BaaS, digital account opening, account switching and data-driven sales enablement and portfolio management solutions among others. We have also introduced the Q2 Innovation Studio, an API-based and SDK-based open technology platform that allows our financial institution customers and other technology partners to develop unique extensions of and integrations to our digital banking platform, allowing financial institutions to quickly and easily deploy customized experiences and the latest financial services expected by End Users.
We believe that financial services providers are best served by a broad integrated portfolio of digital solutions that provide rapid, flexible and comprehensive integration with internal and third-party solutions allowing them to provide modern, intuitive digital financial services in a secure, regulatory-compliant manner. We also believe that the breadth and depth of our solution offerings and customer base, our open and flexible platform approach, our position as a leading provider of digital banking solutions to a large network of financial institutions, and our expertise in delivering new, innovative, secure and regulatory-compliant digital solutions uniquely position us to capitalize on the new frontier in financial services. We currently intend to increase investments in technology innovation and software development as we enhance our solutions and platforms and increase or expand the number of solutions that we offer.
We believe that delivery of consistent, high-quality customer support is a significant driver of purchasing and renewal decisions of our prospects and customers. To develop and maintain a reputation for high-quality service, we seek to build deep relationships with our customers through our customer service organization, which we staff with personnel who are motivated by our common mission of using technology to help our customers succeed and who are knowledgeable with respect to the regulated and complex nature of the financial services industry. As our business grows, we currently intend to continue to invest in and grow our services and delivery organization to support our customers' needs and maintain our reputation.
COVID-19 Pandemic
Global health concerns with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic and related government actions taken to reduce the spread of the virus have caused disruption to the macroeconomic environment, and the pandemic has significantly increased economic uncertainty and reduced economic activity, including consumer and business spending. While there has been significant economic recovery in certain markets due to broad vaccination availability, loosening of lock-down measures and business re-openings, the recovery is characterized by additional uncertainty as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic, including supply chain constraints in many industries, significant price increases for certain goods and services, rapid increases in demand as economies re-open, increased employee attrition, skilled labor shortages, wage inflation and businesses and labor markets navigating how they will operate post-pandemic. The extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operational and financial performance will depend on future developments unknown and unpredictable at this time, including the continued duration, severity and spread of the pandemic, including new variants, related restrictions on travel and transportation and other actions that may be taken by governmental authorities, the predictability and success of any re-opening efforts, the impacts of the pandemic on labor markets, the impact to our customers, their End Users, our suppliers and partners, and other items identified under "Risk Factors" above. Based on the information available to us to date, we believe we have taken an informed, proactive and effective approach to addressing the direct known effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on us, our customers and other third parties on which we rely and that we have been able to effectively deliver and support our solutions for our customers utilizing numerous remote capabilities and channels.
Beginning mid-March 2020, almost all of our employees transitioned to working remotely from home. Through mid-2021, we continued to operate with the vast majority of our employees working remotely. However, during the quarter ended June 30, 2021, we began allowing employees to return to onsite work on a limited, voluntary basis, subject to health and safety protocols. Effective November 1, 2021, we re-opened all of our U.S. facilities, and have provided each of our U.S. employees with the choice of either continuing to work remotely, working in a hybrid capacity (one or two days per week onsite) or fully returning to onsite attendance, with any onsite attendance subject to health and safety protocols. With the rapid spread of the Omicron variant in early 2022, we have instituted additional safety protocols for employees choosing to work onsite, and have strongly encouraged our employees to work remotely when possible until the Omicron surge has passed. As we navigate the reopening of our onsite facilities, we believe employee preferences between remote, hybrid and onsite attendance are likely to change over time, and we will continue to adapt our physical facilities and IT infrastructure to accommodate a safe and successful work experience for our onsite, hybrid and remote employees. Throughout the pandemic we believe our corporate culture, business model, customer relations, and technology and information technology infrastructure have effectively allowed our employees to substantially perform their roles whether remote, hybrid or onsite.
We also have performed additional due diligence with critical vendors and other third parties on which we rely to assess their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and impacts on their operations and services. To date, we have not experienced any material adverse impacts from any of our vendors or other third parties on which we rely. We intend to continue to conduct enhanced due diligence on such vendors and third parties for the foreseeable future as the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continues to persist.
We also are continuing to conduct outreach to our customers and many prospective customers to assess their needs in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and their own re-opening efforts and to seek to identify ways that we may assist them with our solutions and services. We believe the impacts of COVID-19 and related re-opening efforts on our existing and prospective customers present both challenges and opportunities. While we believe the pandemic and related re-opening efforts have increased the importance and prominence of digital financial solutions, the increased economic uncertainty, reduced economic activity, including consumer and business spending, and challenges associated with re-opening have resulted in delays in certain purchasing decisions and implementations during 2020 and 2021. During the second half of 2021, we observed an improved sales environment relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021, and we believe that for 2022 the sales environment and the timing of purchasing decisions and implementations by customers will similarly reflect an improvement relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021. However, the duration and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be highly unpredictable and may continue to disrupt any seasonality trends that may otherwise typically be inherent in our historical operating results.
Despite these challenges among customers, the usage by End Users of digital financial solutions has never been higher and we are making additional investments to enhance our technology infrastructure to support this heightened usage. We have seen increased online banking activity as a result of shelter-in-place and similar orders as well as spikes in logins as End Users check accounts for items such as government stimulus funds. We believe the challenges and opportunities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have and will continue to cause financial institutions to increase their focus on maintaining and improving their digital financial services offerings.
Key Operating Measures
In addition to the U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, measures described below in "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations-Components of Operating Results," we monitor the following operating measures to evaluate growth trends, plan investments and measure the effectiveness of our sales and marketing efforts.
While we believe the pandemic and related re-opening efforts have increased the importance and prominence of digital financial solutions, the increased economic uncertainty, reduced economic activity, including consumer and business spending, and challenges associated with re-opening resulted in delays in certain purchasing decisions and implementations and contract terminations during 2020 and 2021. During the second half of 2021, we observed an improved sales environment relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021, and we believe that for 2022 the sales environment and the predictability of purchasing decisions and implementations by customers will similarly reflect an improvement relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021, and thus we will see positive impacts on the rate at which we add new Installed Customers, and with them new Registered Users and annualized recurring revenue, in each case as compared to these prior periods.
Installed Customers
We define Installed Customers as the number of customers on live implementations (or installations) of our digital banking platforms. The average size of our Installed Customers, measured in both Registered Users per Installed Customer and revenues per Installed Customer, has increased over time as our existing Installed Customers continue to add Registered Users and commercial account holders, buy more solutions from us, and as we add larger financial institutions to our Installed Customer base. The net rate at which we add Installed Customers varies based on our implementation capacity, the size and unique needs of our customers, the readiness of our customers to implement our solutions and customer attrition, including as a result of merger and acquisition activity among financial institutions. We had 448, 450 and 414 Installed Customers on our digital banking platform as of December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
Registered Users
We define a Registered User as an individual related to an account holder of an Installed Customer on our consumer digital banking platform who has registered to use one or more of our solutions and has current access to use those solutions as of the last day of the reporting period presented. We generally price our consumer digital banking platform solutions based on the number of Registered Users, while our commercial digital banking platform solutions are based on the number of commercial account holders. As the number of Registered Users of our solutions increases, our revenues generally tend to grow. Our average number of Registered Users per Installed Customer grows as our existing digital banking platform customers add more Registered Users and as we add larger financial institutions to our Installed Customer base. We anticipate that the number of Registered Users will grow at a faster rate than our number of Installed Customers. The rate at which our customers add Registered Users vary significantly period-to-period based on the timing of our implementations of new customers, the timing of registration of new End Users and customers performing inactive account clean-up. We add new Registered Users through both organic growth from existing customers and from the addition of End Users from new Installed Customers. Our aggregate number of Registered Users is negatively impacted to the extent Installed Customers terminate all or a portion of their arrangements with us. Our Installed Customers had approximately 19.2 million, 17.8 million and 14.6 million Registered Users as of December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
Net Revenue Retention Rate
We believe that our ability to retain our customers and expand their use of our products and services over time is an indicator of the stability of our revenue base and the long-term value of our customer relationships. We assess our performance in this area using a metric we refer to as our net revenue retention rate, which we previously referred to as our revenue retention rate. We calculate our net revenue retention rate as the total revenues in a calendar year, excluding any revenues from acquired customers during such year, from customers who were implemented on any of our solutions as of December 31 of the prior year, expressed as a percentage of the total revenues during the prior year from the same group of customers. Our net revenue retention rate provides insight into the impact on current year revenues of: the number of new customers implemented on any of our solutions during the prior year; the timing of our implementation of those new customers in the prior year; growth in the number of End Users on such solutions and changes in their usage of such solutions; sales of new products and services to our existing customers during the current year, excluding any products or services resulting from businesses acquired during such year and customer attrition. The most significant drivers of changes in our net revenue retention rate each year have historically been the number of new customers in the prior year and the timing of our implementation of those new customers. The timing of our implementation of new customers in the prior year is significant because we do not start recognizing revenues from new customers until they are implemented. If implementations are weighted more heavily in the first or second half of the prior year, our net revenue retention rate will be lower or higher, respectively. In the first half of 2021, our implementations were weighted more heavily, and we expect to see a lower net revenue retention rate in 2022 as a result. Our use of net revenue retention rate has limitations as an analytical tool, and investors should not consider it in isolation. Other companies in our industry may calculate net revenue retention rate differently, which reduces its usefulness as a comparative measure. Our net revenue retention rate was 119%, 122%, and 120% for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
Annualized Recurring Revenue
We believe Annualized Recurring Revenue, or ARR, provides important information about our future revenue potential, our ability to acquire new clients, and our ability to maintain and expand our relationship with existing clients. We calculate ARR as the annualized value of all recurring revenue recognized in the last month of the reporting period, with the exception of variable revenue in excess of contracted amounts for which we instead take the average monthly run rate of the trailing three months within that reporting period. Our ARR also includes the contracted minimums associated with all contracts in place at the end of the quarter that have not yet commenced, and revenue generated from Premier Services. Premier Services revenue is generated from select established customer relationships where we have engaged with the customer for more tailored, premium professional services resulting in a deeper and ongoing level of engagement with them, which we deem to be recurring in nature. ARR does not include revenue from professional services or other sources of revenue that are not deemed to be recurring in nature. ARR is not a forecast of future revenue, which can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR should be viewed independently of revenue and deferred revenue as ARR is an operating metric and is not intended to be combined with or replace these items. Our use of ARR has limitations as an analytical tool, and investors should not consider it in isolation. Other companies in our industry may calculate ARR differently, which reduces its usefulness as a comparative measure. Our ARR was $574.2 million, $464.2 million and $400.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
Revenue Churn
We utilize revenue churn, which we previously have referred to simply as churn, to monitor the satisfaction of our customers and evaluate the effectiveness of our business strategies. We define revenue churn as the amount of any monthly recurring revenue losses due to customer cancellations and downgrades, net of upgrades and additions of new solutions, during a year, divided by our monthly recurring revenue at the beginning of the year. Cancellations refer to customers that have either stopped using our services completely or remained a customer but terminated a particular service. Downgrades are a result of customers taking less of a particular service or renewing their contract for identical services at a lower price. We had annual revenue churn of 5.4%, 5.9%, and 5.1% for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. Our use of revenue churn has limitations as an analytical tool, and investors should not consider it in isolation. Other companies in our industry may calculate revenue churn differently, which reduces its usefulness as a comparative measure.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
In addition to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP, we use certain non-GAAP financial measures to clarify and enhance our understanding, and aid in the period-to-period comparison, of our performance. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures provide supplemental information that is meaningful when assessing our operating performance because they exclude the impact of certain categories that our management and board of directors do not consider part of core operating results when assessing our operational performance, allocating resources, preparing annual budgets and determining compensation. Accordingly, these non-GAAP financial measures may provide insight to investors into the motivation and decision-making of management in operating the business. Set forth in the tables below are the corresponding GAAP financial measures for each non-GAAP financial measure. Investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation of each of these non-GAAP financial measures to its most comparable GAAP financial measure included below. While we believe that these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful supplemental information, non-GAAP financial measures have limitations and should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, their most comparable GAAP measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with GAAP, do not reflect a comprehensive system of accounting and may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies due to potential differences in their financing and accounting methods, the book value of their assets, their capital structures, the method by which their assets were acquired and the manner in which they define non-GAAP measures. Items such as the deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting, stock-based compensation, acquisition related costs, amortization of acquired technology, amortization of acquired intangible assets, partnership termination charges and unoccupied lease charges can have a material impact on our GAAP financial results.
Non-GAAP Revenue
We define non-GAAP revenue as total revenue excluding the impact of purchase accounting. We monitor these measures to assess our performance because we believe our revenue growth rates would be understated without these adjustments. We believe presenting non-GAAP revenue aids in the comparability between periods and in assessing our overall operating performance.
Year Ended December 31,
2021 2020 2019
Revenue:
GAAP revenue $ 498,720 $ 402,751 $ 315,484
Deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting 2,129 4,404 1,829
Total Non-GAAP revenue $ 500,849 $ 407,155 $ 317,313
Non-GAAP Operating Income
We provide non-GAAP operating income using non-GAAP revenue as discussed above and excluding such items as deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting, stock-based compensation, acquisition related costs, amortization of acquired technology, amortization of acquired intangible assets, partnership termination charges and unoccupied lease charges. We believe excluding these items is useful for the following reasons:
•Deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting. We provide non-GAAP information that excludes the deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting. We believe that the exclusion of deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting allows users of our financial statements to better review and understand the historical and current results of our continuing operations.
•Amortization of acquired technology and intangible assets. We provide non-GAAP information that excludes expenses related to purchased technology and intangible assets associated with our acquisitions. We believe that eliminating these expenses from our non-GAAP measures is useful to investors, because the amortization of acquired technology and intangible assets can be inconsistent in amount and frequency and significantly impacted by the timing and magnitude of our acquisition transactions, which also vary in frequency from period to period. Accordingly, we analyze the performance of our operations in each period without regard to such expenses.
•Stock-based compensation. We provide non-GAAP information that excludes expenses related to stock-based compensation. We believe that the exclusion of stock-based compensation expense provides for a better comparison of our operating results to prior periods and to our peer companies as the calculations of stock-based compensation vary from period to period and company to company due to different valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types. Because of these unique characteristics of stock-based compensation, we exclude these expenses when analyzing the organization's business performance.
•Acquisition related costs. We exclude certain expense items resulting from our acquisitions, such as legal, accounting and consulting fees, changes in fair value of contingent consideration and retention expense. We consider these adjustments, to some extent, to be unpredictable and dependent on a significant number of factors that are outside of our control. Furthermore, acquisitions result in operating expenses that would not otherwise have been incurred by us in the normal course of our organic business operations. We believe that providing these non-GAAP measures that exclude acquisition related costs, allows users of our financial statements to better review and understand the historical and current results of our continuing operations, and also facilitates comparisons to our historical results and results of less acquisitive peer companies, both with and without such adjustments.
•Partnership termination charges. In the quarter ended June 30, 2020, in connection with the termination of a strategic partnership, we agreed to pay a termination fee of $5.6 million in May 2020 and $7.6 million in the third quarter of 2021. We are excluding the charges associated with this partnership termination as they are non-recurring in nature and would not otherwise have been incurred by us in the normal course of our organic business operations. We believe that providing these non-GAAP measures that exclude partnership termination charges allows users of our financial statements to better review and understand the historical and current results of our continuing operations, and also facilitates comparisons to our historical results and results of peer companies, both with and without such adjustments.
•Unoccupied lease charges. We provide non-GAAP information that excludes restructuring charges related to the estimated costs of exiting and terminating facility lease commitments, as they relate to our corporate restructuring and exit activities. These charges are inconsistent in amount and are significantly impacted by the timing and nature of these events. Therefore, although we may incur these types of expenses in the future, we believe that eliminating these charges for purposes of calculating the non-GAAP financial measures facilitates a more meaningful evaluation of our operating performance and comparisons to our past operating performance.
Year Ended December 31,
2021 2020 2019
GAAP operating loss $ (77,995) $ (99,833) $ (66,746)
Deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting 2,129 4,404 1,829
Stock-based compensation 54,334 49,235 39,378
Acquisition related costs 3,099 1,408 16,316
Amortization of acquired technology 21,969 21,341 9,871
Amortization of acquired intangibles 17,901 17,888 6,339
Partnership termination charges - 13,244 -
Unoccupied lease charges 2,008 2,181 420
Non-GAAP operating income $ 23,445 $ 9,868 $ 7,407
Adjusted EBITDA
We define adjusted EBITDA as net loss before depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation, certain costs related to our recent acquisitions, (benefit from) provision for income taxes, interest and other (income) expense, net, deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting, partnership termination charges, loss on extinguishment of debt, and unoccupied lease charges. We believe that adjusted EBITDA provides useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating results for the following reasons:
•adjusted EBITDA is widely used by investors and securities analysts to measure a company's operating performance without regard to items that can vary substantially from company to company depending upon their financing, capital structures and the method by which assets were acquired;
•our management uses adjusted EBITDA in conjunction with GAAP financial measures for planning purposes, in the preparation of our annual operating budget, as a measure of our operating performance, to assess the effectiveness of our business strategies and to communicate with our board of directors concerning our financial performance;
•adjusted EBITDA provides more consistency and comparability with our past financial performance, facilitates period-to-period comparisons of our operations and also facilitates comparisons with other companies, many of which use similar non-GAAP financial measures to supplement their GAAP results; and
•our investor and analyst presentations include adjusted EBITDA as a supplemental measure of our overall operating performance.
Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as an alternative to net loss or any other measure of financial performance calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. The use of adjusted EBITDA as an analytical tool has limitations such as:
•depreciation and amortization are non-cash charges, and the assets being depreciated or amortized will often have to be replaced in the future and adjusted EBITDA does not reflect cash requirements for such replacements;
•adjusted EBITDA may not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, our working capital needs or contractual commitments;
•adjusted EBITDA does not reflect the potentially dilutive impact of stock-based compensation;
•adjusted EBITDA does not reflect interest or tax payments that could reduce cash available for use; and
•other companies, including companies in our industry, might calculate adjusted EBITDA or similarly titled measures differently, which reduces their usefulness as comparative measures.
Because of these and other limitations, you should consider adjusted EBITDA together with our GAAP financial measures including cash flow from operations and net loss. The following table presents a reconciliation of net loss to adjusted EBITDA for each of the periods indicated (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31,
2021 2020 2019
Reconciliation of net loss to adjusted EBITDA:
Net loss $ (112,746) $ (137,620) $ (70,877)
Depreciation and amortization 54,833 51,840 28,457
Stock-based compensation expense 54,334 49,235 39,378
Acquisition related costs 3,099 1,408 16,316
(Benefit from) provision for income taxes 1,643 1,416 (12,487)
Interest and other (income) expense, net 31,063 27,180 16,572
Deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting 2,129 4,404 1,829
Partnership termination charges - 13,244 -
Loss on extinguishment of debt 1,513 8,932 -
Unoccupied lease charges 2,008 2,181 420
Adjusted EBITDA $ 37,876 $ 22,220 $ 19,608
Components of Operating Results
Revenues
Revenue-generating activities directly relate to the sale, implementation and support of our solutions within a single operating segment. We derive the majority of our revenues from subscription fees for the use of our solutions hosted in either our data centers or with cloud-based services, transactional revenue from bill-pay solutions, and revenues for customer support and implementation services related to our solutions. We recognize the corresponding revenues over time on a ratable basis over the customer agreement term. A small portion of our revenues are derived from customers which host and manage our solutions on-premises or in third-party data centers under term license and maintenance agreements. We recognize the software license revenue once the customer obtains control of the license and the remaining arrangement consideration for maintenance revenue over time on a ratable basis over the term of the software license.
Subscription fees are based on the number of solutions purchased by our customers, the number of End Users using the solutions and the number of bill-pay and certain other transactions those users conduct using our solutions in excess of the levels included in our standard subscription fee. Subscription fees are billed monthly, quarterly or annually and are recognized monthly over the term of our customer agreements. The initial term of our digital banking platform agreements averages over five years, although it varies by customer. The structure and terms of our newer lending arrangements vary, but generally are also sold on a subscription basis through our direct sales organization, and the related revenues are recognized over the terms of the customer agreements. The structure and terms of our Helix arrangements with FinTechs and Brands vary, but typically involve relatively lower contracted minimum revenues and instead emphasize usage-based revenue, with such revenue recognized as it is incurred. We begin recognizing subscription fees when the control of the service transfers to the customer, generally when the solution is implemented and made available to the customer. We recognize revenue for bill-pay transaction services generated when End Users utilize debit cards integrated with its Q2 CorePro API or Q2 Biller Direct products in the month incurred based on actual or estimated transactions. The timing of our implementations varies period-to-period based on our implementation capacity, the number of solutions purchased by our customers, the size and unique needs of our customers
and the readiness of our customers to implement our solutions. We recognize any related implementation services revenues ratably over the initial customer agreement term beginning on the date we commence recognizing subscription fees. Contract asset balances arise primarily when we provide services in advance of billing for those services. Amounts that have been invoiced but not paid are recorded in accounts receivable or other long-term assets, depending on the timing of expected billing, and in revenues or deferred revenues, depending on when control of the service transfers to the customer.
As a result of the economic and operational impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our customers, in 2020 and 2021 our bookings, in particular with respect to new customer agreements, were adversely impacted relative to pre-pandemic levels. Specifically, we experienced delays and unpredictability in the purchasing decisions of our customers and prospective customers and a slowing of net new customer deals, relative to pre-pandemic levels, partially offset by an increase in cross sales of additional features and functionality to our existing customer base due to the increased utilization and demand for digital banking solutions caused by the decreased in-branch operations resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, during the second half of 2021, we observed an improved sales environment relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021. We believe that for 2022 the sales environment and the predictability of purchasing decisions and implementations by customers will similarly reflect an improvement relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021. However, our revenues for 2022 will continue to reflect the negative impacts from these prior periods and the duration and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be highly unpredictable and may continue to disrupt any seasonality trends that may otherwise typically be inherent in our historical operating results.
Cost of Revenues
Cost of revenues is comprised primarily of salaries and other personnel-related costs, including employee benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, for employees providing services to our customers. This includes the costs of our personnel performing implementation, certain software development, customer support, data center and customer training activities. Cost of revenues also includes the direct costs of bill-pay and other third-party intellectual property included in our solutions, the amortization of deferred solution and services costs, co-location facility costs and depreciation of our data center assets, debit card related pass-through fees, cloud-based hosting services, an allocation of general overhead costs, the amortization of acquired technology, and referral fees. We allocate general overhead expenses to all departments based on the number of employees in each department, which we consider to be a fair and representative means of allocation.
We capitalize certain personnel costs directly related to the implementation of our solutions to the extent those costs are recoverable from future revenues. We amortize the costs for an implementation once revenue recognition commences, and we amortize those implementation costs to cost of revenues over the expected period of customer benefit, which has been determined to be the estimated life of the technology. Other costs not directly recoverable from future revenues are expensed in the period incurred.
We capitalize certain software development costs related to programmers, software engineers, quality control teams and third-party development costs for those who are directly associated with and who devote time to our software solutions on an individual product basis. Software development costs are amortized to cost of revenues when products, upgrades and enhancements are released or made available over the products' estimated economic lives.
We intend to continue to increase our investments in our implementation and customer support teams and technology infrastructure to serve our customers and support our growth. Over the long-term, we expect cost of revenues to continue to grow in absolute dollars as we grow our business, but to fluctuate as a percentage of revenues based principally on the level and timing of implementation support activities, debit card related pass-through fees, and other related costs, including during periods where revenues are lower or implementations are delayed due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Operating Expenses
Operating expenses consist of sales and marketing, research and development and general and administrative expenses. They also include costs related to our acquisitions and the resulting amortization of acquired intangible assets from those acquisitions. Over the long term, we intend to continue to hire new employees and make other investments to support our anticipated growth. As a result, we expect our operating expenses to increase in absolute dollars but to decrease as a percentage of revenues over the long term as we grow our business.
The uncertainties and risks posed by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic were considered while preparing our 2022 budget and hiring plans. Beginning in 2021, our hiring began to return to more normal levels, and we anticipate this trend to continue in 2022, with our hiring plans more closely resembling pre-pandemic levels. However, during the second half of 2021, we experienced an exceptionally challenging hiring environment and we expect to see continued intense competition for technical talent in 2022, which has the potential to drive increased inflation in the wages we have to pay to hire and retain qualified employees. Additionally, while throughout 2021 most of our employees continued to work remotely from home and we suspended most non-essential business travel and conference participation, we expect that in 2022 some of these activities,
including costs associated with onsite attendance, will return. As a result, we anticipate that we will continue to see a gradual increase in certain costs associated with operating physical locations and facilitating employee travel during 2022. As we navigate the reopening of our onsite facilities, we believe employee preferences between remote, hybrid and onsite attendance are likely to change over time, and we will continue to adapt our physical facilities and IT infrastructure to accommodate a safe and successful work experience for our onsite, hybrid and remote employees.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of salaries and other personnel-related costs, including commissions, employee benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation. Sales and marketing expenses also include expenses related to advertising, lead generation, promotional event programs, corporate communications, travel and allocated overhead.
Sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues will change in any given period based on several factors including the addition of newly hired sales professionals, the number and timing of newly-installed customers and the amount of sales commissions expense amortized related to those customers, including during periods where revenues are lower or implementations are delayed due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Commissions are generally capitalized and then amortized over the expected period of customer benefit.
Research and Development
We believe that continuing to improve and enhance our solutions is essential to maintaining our reputation for innovation and growing our customer base and revenues. Research and development expenses include salaries and personnel-related costs, including employee benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, third-party contractor expenses, software development costs, allocated overhead and other related expenses incurred in developing new solutions and enhancing existing solutions.
Certain research and development costs that are related to our software development, which include salaries and other personnel-related costs, including employee benefits and bonuses attributed to programmers, software engineers and quality control teams working on our software solutions, are capitalized and are included in intangible assets, net on the consolidated balance sheets.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries and other personnel-related costs, including employee benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, of our administrative, finance and accounting, information systems, legal and human resources employees. General and administrative expenses also include consulting and professional fees, insurance and travel. We expect to continue to incur incremental expenses associated with the growth of our business and to meet increased compliance requirements associated with operating as a regulated, public company.
Acquisition Related Costs
Acquisition related costs include compensation expenses related to milestone provisions and retention agreements with certain former shareholders and employees of acquired businesses, which are recognized as earned, changes in fair value of the contingent consideration related to potential acquisition earnout payments and various legal and professional service expenses incurred in connection with the acquisitions, which are recognized when incurred.
Amortization of Acquired Intangibles
Amortization of acquired intangibles represents the amortization of intangibles recorded in connection with our business acquisitions which are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful lives of the related assets.
Partnership Termination Charges
Partnership termination charges represent the fees paid related to termination of a strategic partnership during the quarter ended June 30, 2020. These charges are non-recurring in nature and would not otherwise have been incurred by us in the normal course of our organic business operations.
Unoccupied Lease Charges
Unoccupied lease charges include costs related to the early vacating of certain facilities, partially offset by anticipated sublease income from the associated facilities.
Total Other Income (Expense), Net
Total other income (expense), net, consists primarily of interest income and expense, other non-operating income and expense, loss on disposal of long-lived assets, foreign currency translation adjustment and loss on extinguishment of debt. We earn interest income on our cash, cash equivalents and investments. Interest expense consists primarily of the interest from the amortization of debt discount, issuance costs, and coupon interest attributable to our convertible notes issued in February 2018, or 2023 Notes, our convertible notes issued in June 2019, or 2026 Notes, and our convertible notes issued in November 2020, or 2025 Notes, as well as fees and interest associated with the letter of credit issued to our landlord for the security deposit for our corporate headquarters.
Benefit from (Provision for) Income Taxes
As a result of our current net operating loss position, current income tax expenses and benefits consist primarily of state income tax expense, deferred income tax expense relating to the tax amortization of recently acquired goodwill, and income tax expense from foreign operations. We incurred state and foreign income taxes for each of the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019. Our net operating loss carryforwards for federal income tax purposes were $633.8 million and $536.5 million at December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively, which $201.2 million will expire at various dates beginning in 2026, if not utilized, and $432.6 million have an indefinite carryforward period. Federal net operating losses generated during and after the year ended December 31, 2018 will have an indefinite carryforward period. We also held state tax credit carry overs of $3.0 million and $2.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively, and federal R&D tax credit carry overs of $8.9 million and $8.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. The state tax credits will begin to expire 2033 if not utilized and the federal R&D tax credits will begin to expire in 2036, if not utilized.
Critical Accounting Policies and Significant Judgments and Estimates
Our management's discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations is based on our consolidated financial statements, which have been prepared in accordance with GAAP. The preparation of these consolidated financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the consolidated financial statements, and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses. In accordance with GAAP, we base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe are reasonable under the circumstances. Actual results might differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions.
Our significant accounting policies are described in Note 2 to our consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and we believe that the accounting policies discussed below involve the greatest degree of complexity and exercise of significant judgments and estimates by our management. The methods, estimates and judgments that we use in applying our accounting policies have a significant impact on our results of operations and, accordingly, we believe the policies described below are the most critical for understanding and evaluating our financial condition and results of operations.
Revenue Recognition
Revenues are recognized when control of the promised goods or services is transferred to our customers, in an amount that reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to in exchange for those goods or services over the term of the agreement, generally when our solutions are implemented and made available to our customers. The promised consideration may include fixed amounts, variable amounts or both. Revenues are recognized net of sales credits and allowances.
Revenue-generating activities are directly related to the sale, implementation and support of our solutions within a single operating segment. We derive the majority of our revenues from subscription fees for the use of our solutions hosted in either our data centers or cloud-based hosting services, transactional revenue from bill-pay solutions and revenues for customer support and implementation services related to our solutions.
Subscription Revenues
Our software solutions are available for use as hosted application arrangements under subscription fee agreements without licensing perpetual rights to the software. Subscription fees from these applications, including contractual periodic price increases, are recognized over time on a ratable basis over the customer agreement term beginning on the date our solution is made available to the customer. Amounts that have been invoiced are recorded in accounts receivable and deferred revenues or revenues, depending on whether the revenue recognition criteria have been met. Periodic price increases are estimated at contract inception and result in contract assets as revenue recognition may exceed the amount billed early in the contract. Additional fees for monthly usage above the levels included in the standard subscription fee are recognized as revenue in the month when the usage amounts are determined and reported.
A small portion of our customers host and manage our solutions on-premises or in third-party data centers under term license and maintenance agreements. Term licenses sold with maintenance entitle the customer to technical support, upgrades and updates to the software on a when-and-if-available basis. We recognize software license revenue once the customer obtains control of the license, which generally occurs at the start of each license term. We recognize the remaining arrangement consideration for maintenance revenue over time on a ratable basis over the term of the software license. If the expected length of time between when we transfer the software license to the customer and when the customer pays for it results in a significant financing component, we adjust the promised amount of consideration for the effects of the time value of money, which reflects the price the customer would have paid when the license was transferred. Revenues from term licenses and maintenance agreements and the related financing component were not significant in the periods presented.
Transactional Revenues
We generate the majority of our transactional revenues based on the number of bill-pay transactions that End Users initiate on our digital banking platform. We also generate a smaller portion of our transactional revenues from interchange fees generated when End Users utilize debit cards integrated with our Q2 CorePro API or Q2 Biller Direct products. We recognize revenue for bill-pay transaction services in the month incurred based on actual or estimated transactions.
Services and Other Revenues
Implementation services are required for each new digital banking and lending platform and Centrix standalone contract, and there is a significant level of integration and configuration for each customer. Our revenue for upfront implementation services is billed upfront and generally recognized over time on a ratable basis over the customer agreement term for our hosted application agreements. Upfront implementation services for on-premises agreements are recognized at commencement date. Under certain circumstances, we partner with third-party professional system integrators to support the installation and configuration process for certain products, and therefore, we have determined that these services qualify as a separate performance obligation in certain markets and geographies, and the implementation services for these agreements are recognized over time as services are performed.
Professional services revenues, which primarily consist of training, advisory services, core conversion services, web design, and other general professional services, are generally billed and recognized when delivered.
Certain out-of-pocket expenses billed to customers are recorded as revenues rather than an offset to the related expense.
Significant Judgments
Performance Obligations and Standalone Selling Price
A performance obligation is a promise in a contract to transfer a distinct good or service to the customer and is the unit of accounting. Determining whether products and services are considered distinct performance obligations that should be accounted for separately versus together may require significant judgment. We have contracts with customers that often include multiple performance obligations, usually including multiple subscription and implementation services. For these contracts, we account for individual performance obligations that are separately identifiable by allocating the contract's total transaction price to each performance obligation in an amount based on the relative standalone selling price, or SSP, of each distinct good or service in the contract. In determining whether implementation services are distinct from subscription services, we considered various factors including the significant level of integration, interdependency, and interrelation between the implementation and subscription service, as well as the inability of the customer's personnel or other service providers to perform significant portions of the services. We have concluded that the implementation services included in contracts with multiple performance obligations in the North American banking market are not distinct and, as a result, we defer any arrangement fees for implementation services and recognize such amounts over time on a ratable basis as one performance obligation with the underlying subscription revenue for the initial agreement term of the hosted application agreements. We have concluded that outside the North American banking market, the implementation services for our lending platform included in contracts with multiple performance obligations are distinct and, as a result, we recognize implementation fees on such arrangements over time as services are performed.
The majority of our revenue recognized at a particular point in time is for usage revenue and on-premise software licenses. These services are recognized at the point in time in which the customer obtains control of the asset, which is generally upon completion of the service or the point the customer obtained control of the software.
Judgment is required to determine the SSP for each distinct performance obligation. A contract's transaction price is allocated to each distinct performance obligation and recognized as revenue when, or as, the performance obligation is satisfied. The primary method used to estimate SSP is the adjusted market assessment approach, which considers its overall pricing objectives, market conditions and other factors, including the value of our contracts, our discounting practices, the size and volume of our transactions, customer characteristics, price lists, go-to-market strategy, historical standalone sales and agreement prices, and the number and types of users within our contracts.
Variable Consideration
We recognize usage revenue related to bill-pay transactions that End Users initiate on our digital banking platform and interchange fees that End Users generate using our solutions. Judgment is required to determine the accounting for these types of revenue. We consider various factors including the degree to which usage is interdependent or interrelated to past services, costs to us per user over the contract, and contractual price per user changes and their relationship to market terms, forecasted data, and our cost to fulfill the obligation. We have concluded that our usage revenue relates specifically to the transfer of the service to the customer and is consistent with the allocation objective of Topic 606 when considering all of the performance obligations and payment terms in the contract. Therefore, we recognize usage revenue on a monthly or quarterly basis in accordance with the agreement, as determined and reported. This allocation reflects the amount we expect to receive for the services for the given period.
We sometimes provide credits or incentives to our customers. Known and estimable credits and incentives represent a form of variable consideration, which are estimated at contract inception and generally result in reductions to revenues recognized for a particular contract. These estimates are updated at the end of each reporting period as additional information becomes available. We believe that there will not be significant changes to our estimates of variable consideration as of December 31, 2021.
Other Considerations
We evaluate whether we are the principal (i.e., report revenues on a gross basis) or agent (i.e., report revenues on a net basis) with respect to the vendor reseller agreements pursuant to which we resell certain third-party solutions along with our solutions. Generally, we report revenues from these types of contracts on a gross basis, meaning the amounts billed to customers are recorded as revenues, and expenses incurred are recorded as cost of revenues. Where we are the principal, we first obtain control of the inputs to the specific good or service and direct their use to create the combined output. Our control is evidenced by our involvement in the integration of the good or service on our platform before it is transferred to our customers and is further supported by us being primarily responsible to our customers and having a level of discretion in establishing pricing. Revenues provided from agreements in which we are an agent are insignificant.
Deferred Revenues
Deferred revenues primarily consist of amounts that have been billed to or received from customers in advance of revenue recognition and prepayments received from customers in advance for implementation, maintenance and other services, as well as initial subscription fees. We recognize deferred revenues as revenues when the services are performed and the corresponding revenue recognition criteria are met. Customer prepayments are generally applied against invoices issued to customers when services are performed and billed.
Our payment terms vary by the type and location of our customer and the products or services offered. The period of time between invoicing and when payment is due is not significant. For certain products or services and customer types, we require payment before the products or services are delivered to the customer.
Deferred Implementation Costs
We capitalize certain personnel and other costs, such as employee salaries, stock-based compensation, benefits and the associated payroll taxes that are direct and incremental to the implementation of our solutions. We analyze implementation costs that may be capitalized to assess their recoverability, and only capitalize costs that we anticipate to be recoverable through the terms of the associated contract. We begin amortizing the deferred implementation costs for an implementation to cost of revenues once the revenue recognition criteria have been met, and we amortize those deferred implementation costs ratably over the expected period of customer benefit, which has been determined to be the estimated life of the technology, which we estimate to be five to seven years. We determined the period of benefit by considering factors such as historically high renewal rates with similar customers and contracts, initial contract length, an expectation that there will still be a demand for the product at the end of its term, and the significant costs to switch to a competitor's product, all of which are governed by the estimated useful life of the technology. We monitor deferred implementation costs for impairment and record impairment when customers terminate or allow services to lapse, due to contract modifications, and/or from other assessments as needed. Any impairment losses identified are recognized in the form of an expense acceleration with the applicable amount recorded to deferred implementation costs, current portion and/or deferred implementation costs, net of current portion on the consolidated balance sheet and in cost of revenues in the consolidated statements of comprehensive loss.
The portion of deferred implementation costs expected to be amortized during the succeeding twelve-month period is recorded in current assets as deferred implementation costs, current portion, and the remainder is recorded in long-term assets as deferred implementation costs, net of current portion on the consolidated balance sheets.
Deferred Solution and Other Costs
We capitalize sales commissions and other third-party costs such as third-party licenses and maintenance related to our customer agreements. We capitalize sales commissions because the commission expenses are considered incremental and recoverable costs of obtaining a contract with a customer. We capitalize commissions and bonuses for those involved in the sale, including direct employees and indirect supervisors, as these are incremental to the sale. Historically, we typically paid commissions in two increments. The initial payment was made after the contract had been executed and the initial deposit had been received from the customer, and the final payment was made upon commencement date. We required that an individual remain employed to collect a commission when it was due. The service period between the first and second payment was considered to be a substantive service period and as a result, we expensed the final payment when made. Beginning in 2020, substantially all commissions were paid in a single payment once the contract had been executed and the initial deposit had been received from the customer. We begin amortizing deferred solution and other costs for a particular customer agreement once the revenue recognition criteria are met and amortize those deferred costs over the expected period of customer benefit, which has been determined to be the estimated life of the technology, which we estimate to be five to seven years. We determined the period of benefit by considering factors such as historically high renewal rates with similar customers and contracts, initial contract length, an expectation that there will still be a demand for the product at the end of its term, and the significant costs to switch to a competitor's product, all of which are governed by the estimated useful life of the technology.
We analyze capitalized solution and other costs to assess their recoverability. The portion of capitalized costs expected to be amortized during the succeeding twelve-month period is recorded in current assets as deferred solution and other costs, current portion, and the remainder is recorded in long-term assets as deferred solution and other costs, net of current portion.
Contract Balances
The timing of revenue recognition, billings and cash collections can result in billed accounts receivable, unbilled receivables or contract assets, and deferred revenues, or contract liabilities. Billings scheduled to occur after the performance obligation has been satisfied and revenue recognition has occurred result in contract assets. Contract assets that are expected to be billed during the succeeding twelve-month period are recorded in contract assets, current portion, and the remaining portion is recorded in contract assets, net of current portion on the accompanying consolidated balance sheets at the end of each reporting period. A contract liability results when we receive prepayments or deposits from customers in advance for implementation, maintenance and other services, as well as initial subscription fees. Customer prepayments are generally applied against invoices issued to customers when services are performed and billed. We recognize contract liabilities as revenues when the services are performed, and the corresponding revenue recognition criteria are met. Contract liabilities that are expected to be recognized as revenues during the succeeding twelve-month period are recorded in deferred revenues, current portion, and the remaining portion is recorded in deferred revenues, net of current portion, on the accompanying consolidated balance sheets at the end of each reporting period.
We are exposed to credit losses primarily through sales of products and services. We assess the collectability of outstanding contract assets on an ongoing basis and maintain a reserve which is included in the allowance for credit losses for contract assets deemed uncollectible. We analyze the contract asset portfolio for significant risks by considering historical collection experience and forecasting future collectability to determine the amount of revenues that will ultimately be collected from our customers. Customer type has been identified as the primary specific risk affecting the company's contract assets, and the estimate for losses is analyzed quarterly and adjusted as necessary. Future collectability is contingent upon current and anticipated macroeconomic conditions that could impact our customers such as unemployment, inflation and regulatory matters. Additionally, specific allowance amounts may be established to record the appropriate provision for customers that have a higher probability of default.
Accounts Receivable
Accounts receivable are stated at net realizable value, including both billed and unbilled receivables to customers. Unbilled receivable balances arise primarily when we provide services in advance of billing for those services. Generally, billing for revenues related to the number of End Users and the number of transactions processed by our End Users that are included in our minimum subscription fee occurs in the month the revenue is recognized, resulting in accounts receivable. Billing for revenues relating to the number of End Users and the number of transactions processed by our End Users that are in excess of our minimum subscription fees are, generally, billed in the month following the month the revenues were earned, resulting in an unbilled receivable.
We assess the collectability of outstanding accounts receivable on an ongoing basis and maintain an allowance for credit losses for accounts receivable deemed uncollectible. We analyze the accounts receivable portfolio for significant risks and consider prior periods and forecast future collectability to determine the amount of revenues that will ultimately be collected from our customers. This estimate is analyzed quarterly and adjusted as necessary. Identified risks pertaining to our accounts receivable include the delinquency level and customer type. Future collectability is contingent upon current and anticipated macroeconomic conditions that could impact our customers such as unemployment, inflation and regulation matters. Due to the short-term nature of such receivables, the estimate of the amount of accounts receivable that may not be collected is based on aging of the accounts receivable balances and the financial condition of customers. Historically, our collection experience has not varied significantly, and bad debt expenses have been insignificant.
We maintain a reserve for estimated sales credits issued to customers for billing disputes or other service-related reasons. This allowance is recorded as a reduction against current period revenues and accounts receivable. In estimating this allowance, we analyze prior periods to determine the amounts of sales credits issued to customers compared to the revenues in the period that related to the original customer invoice. This estimate is analyzed semi-annually and adjusted as necessary.
Stock-Based Compensation
Stock options, restricted stock units, and market stock units awarded to employees, directors, and consultants are measured at fair value at each grant date. We do not use a forfeiture rate to recognize compensation expense. Generally, options vest 25% on the one-year anniversary of the grant date with the balance vesting monthly over the following 36 months, and restricted stock unit awards vest in four annual installments of 25% each. Market stock units are performance-based awards that vest based on our stockholder return relative to the total stockholder return of the Russell 2000 Index, or Index. Market stock units granted prior to fiscal 2021 vest over a three-year period on the anniversary of the date of grant, generally with up to one-third of the target shares of our common stock subject to each market stock unit award eligible to be earned after the first and second years and up to 200% of the full target number of shares subject to each market stock unit award eligible to be earned after the completion of the three-year performance period (less any shares earned for years one and two) based on the average price of our common stock relative to the Index during the performance period. Beginning in March 2021, newly granted market stock units vest over a two-year and three-year period, each running from approximately the date of grant, with up to one-third of the target shares of our common stock subject to each market stock unit award eligible to be earned after completion of the two-year performance period and up to 200% of the full target number of shares subject to each market stock unit award eligible to be earned after the completion of the three-year performance period (less any shares earned for the two-year performance period) based on the average price of our common stock relative to the Index during the performance period. From time to time, we may make grants of restricted stock units or market stock units with vesting formulas that vary from those described above.
We value stock options using the Black-Scholes option-pricing model, which requires the input of subjective assumptions, including the risk-free interest rate, expected life, expected stock price volatility and dividend yield. The risk-free interest rate assumption is based upon observed interest rates for constant maturity U.S. Treasury securities consistent with the expected term of our employee stock options. The expected life represents the time the stock options are expected to be outstanding and is based on the simplified method. Under the simplified method, the expected life of an option is presumed to be the mid-point between the vesting date and end of the contractual term. We use the simplified method due to the lack of sufficient historical exercise data to provide a reasonable basis upon which to otherwise estimate the expected life of the stock options. Expected volatility is based on historical volatilities for publicly traded stock of comparable companies over the estimated expected life of the stock options. We assume no dividend yield because we do not expect to pay dividends in the near future, which is consistent with our history of not paying dividends. We recognize compensation expense ratably over the requisite service period of the stock option award.
We value restricted stock units at the closing market price on the date of grant and recognize compensation expense ratably over the requisite service period of the restricted stock unit award.
We estimate the fair value of market stock units on the date of grant using a Monte Carlo simulation model. The determination of fair value of the market stock units is affected by our stock price and a number of assumptions including the expected volatility and the risk-free interest rate. Our expected volatility at the date of grant was based on the historical volatilities of our stock and peer firms' stocks and the Index over the performance period. We assume no dividend yield and recognize compensation expense ratably over the performance period of the market stock unit award. We recognize compensation expense using the graded attribution method on a straight-line basis over the performance period for each market stock unit award.
Convertible Senior Notes
In February 2018, we issued $230.0 million principal amount of convertible senior notes due in February 2023, or the 2023 Notes. In June 2019, we issued $316.3 million principal amount of convertible senior notes due in June 2026, or the 2026 Notes. In November 2020, we issued $350.0 million principal amount of convertible senior notes due in November 2025, or the 2025 Notes. This was achieved by exchanging $181.9 million principal amount of the 2023 Notes for $210.7 million principal amount of the 2025 Notes and issuing an additional $139.3 million of new notes. In May 2021, the Company repurchased $37.1 million principal amount of the 2023 Notes. As of December 31, 2021, the aggregate principal amount outstanding related to the 2023 Notes was $10.9 million.
When accounting for the issuance of convertible notes, we separate each of the convertible notes into liability and equity components. The carrying amount of the liability component is calculated by measuring the fair value, as of the date of issuance, of a similar debt without the conversion feature. The carrying amount of the equity component representing the conversion feature is determined by deducting the fair value of the liability components from the total initial proceeds. The difference between the par amount of the convertible notes and the carrying amount of the liability component represents debt discounts that are amortized to interest expense over the respective terms of the convertible notes using the effective interest rate method. The equity components are not remeasured as long as they continue to meet the conditions for equity classification. In accounting for the issuance costs related to its convertible notes, we allocate the total amount of issuance costs incurred to liability and equity components based on their relative values. Issuance costs attributable to the liability components are amortized to interest expense over the respective terms of the convertible notes using the effective interest rate method. The issuance costs attributable to the equity components were netted against the respective equity components in additional paid-in capital.
When accounting for an exchange of convertible notes, we evaluate whether the transaction should be evaluated as a modification or extinguishment transaction. The partial exchange of the 2023 Notes and issuance of the 2025 Notes in November 2020 were deemed to have substantially different terms due to the significant difference between the value of the conversion option immediately prior to and after the exchange, and consequently, the 2023 Notes partial exchange was accounted for as a debt extinguishment. In an exchange or repurchase transaction, we will allocate a portion of the settlement consideration to the reacquisition of the liability component, which is equal to the fair value of that component immediately prior to the extinguishment, and allocate the remaining settlement consideration to the reacquisition of the equity component and recognize that amount as a reduction of additional paid in capital. The difference between the consideration attributed to the liability component and the sum of the net carrying amount of the liability component and any unamortized debt issuance costs is recognized as a gain or loss on debt extinguishment in our consolidated statements of comprehensive loss.
Purchase Price Allocation, Intangible Assets and Goodwill
The purchase price allocation for business combinations and asset acquisitions requires extensive use of accounting estimates and judgments to allocate the purchase price to the identifiable tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed based on their respective fair values. We determine whether substantially all the fair value of the gross assets acquired is concentrated in a single identifiable asset or a group of similar identifiable assets. If this threshold is met, the single asset or group of assets, as applicable, is not a business. If it is not met, we determine whether the single asset or group of assets, as applicable, meets the definition of a business.
In connection with our business combinations, we recorded certain intangible assets, including acquired technology, customer relationships, trademarks and non-compete agreements. Amounts allocated to the acquired intangible assets are being amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful lives. We periodically review the estimated useful lives and fair values of our identifiable intangible assets, taking into consideration any events or circumstances which might result in a diminished fair value or revised useful life.
The excess purchase price over the fair value of assets acquired is recorded as goodwill. We test goodwill for impairment annually in October, or whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate an impairment may have occurred. Because we operate as a single reporting unit, the impairment test is performed at the consolidated entity level by comparing the estimated fair value of the company to the carrying value of the company. We estimate the fair value of the reporting unit using a "step one" analysis using a fair-value-based approach based on the market capitalization or a discounted cash flow analysis of projected future results to determine if it is more likely than not that the fair value of a reporting unit is less than its carrying amount. Determining the fair value of goodwill is subjective in nature and often involves the use of estimates and assumptions including, without limitation, use of estimates of future prices and volumes for our products, capital needs, economic trends and other factors which are inherently difficult to forecast. If actual results, or the plans and estimates used in future impairment analyses are lower than the original estimates used to assess the recoverability of these assets, we could incur impairment charges in a future period. The annual impairment test was performed as of October 31, 2021. No impairment of goodwill was identified during 2021.
Software Development Costs
We capitalize certain software development costs under accounting frameworks that differ based on the nature of the software. Software development costs include salaries and other personnel-related costs, including employee benefits, stock-based compensation and bonuses attributed to programmers, software engineers, quality control teams and third-party development costs for those who are directly associated with and who devote time to our software solutions. Costs incurred in the preliminary stages of development and maintenance costs are expensed as incurred. Capitalized software development costs are computed on an individual product basis. We also capitalize certain costs related to specific upgrades and enhancements when it is probable the expenditures will result in significant additional functionality. Capitalization ceases for products, upgrades and enhancements when released or made available. Internal-use software is amortized to cost of revenues over the products' estimated economic lives, which are expected to be three to five years. The costs related to software development are included in intangible assets, net on the consolidated balance sheets.
We capitalize certain development costs associated with software that is to be sold, leased or otherwise marketed that are incurred between reaching technological feasibility of a solution and the point at which the solution is ready for general release.
We capitalize certain development costs associated with internal use software and our SaaS platform, incurred during the application development stage. We expense costs associated with preliminary project phase activities, training, maintenance and any post-implementation costs as incurred.
Income Taxes
Deferred income taxes are provided for the tax effects of temporary differences between the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities for financial reporting purposes and their respective tax bases and operating loss carryforwards and credits using enacted tax rates expected to be in effect in the years in which the differences are expected to reverse. We assess the likelihood that deferred tax assets will be realized and recognize a valuation allowance if it is more likely than not that some portion of the deferred tax assets will not be realized. This assessment requires judgment as to the likelihood and amounts of future taxable income by tax jurisdiction. To date, we have provided a valuation allowance against most of our deferred tax assets as we believe the objective and verifiable evidence of our historical pretax net losses outweighs any positive evidence of our forecasted future results. We will continue to monitor the positive and negative evidence, and we will adjust the valuation allowance as sufficient objective positive evidence becomes available.
We evaluate our uncertain tax positions based on a determination of whether and how much of a tax benefit taken by us in our tax filings or positions is more likely than not to be realized. We believe we have accrued adequate reserves related to our uncertain tax positions; however, ultimate determination of our liability is subject to audit by taxing authorities in the ordinary course of business. We record interest and penalties associated with any uncertain tax positions as a component of income tax expense.
Results of Operations
Consolidated Statements of Operations
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for each of the periods indicated (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31,
2021 2020 2019
Revenues(1)
$ 498,720 $ 402,751 $ 315,484
Cost of revenues(2)
273,685 228,152 162,485
Gross profit 225,035 174,599 152,999
Operating expenses:
Sales and marketing 85,564 72,323 63,947
Research and development 116,952 97,381 76,273
General and administrative 77,915 70,937 56,739
Acquisition related costs 2,690 478 16,027
Amortization of acquired intangibles 17,901 17,888 6,339
Partnership termination charges - 13,244 -
Unoccupied lease charges(3)
2,008 2,181 420
Total operating expenses 303,030 274,432 219,745
Loss from operations (77,995) (99,833) (66,746)
Total other income (expense), net(4)
(33,108) (36,371) (16,618)
Loss before income taxes (111,103) (136,204) (83,364)
Benefit from (provision for) income taxes (1,643) (1,416) 12,487
Net loss $ (112,746) $ (137,620) $ (70,877)
______________________________________________________________________________
(1) Includes deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting of $2.1 million, $4.4 million and $1.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
(2) Includes amortization of acquired technology of $22.0 million, $21.3 million and $9.9 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
(3) Unoccupied lease charges include costs related to the early vacating of various facilities, partially offset by anticipated sublease income from these facilities. In 2021, the charges related to an updated assessment and vacating of facilities in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Nebraska. In 2020, the charges related to the vacating of facilities in California, North Carolina and Texas. In 2019, the charges related to the vacating of facilities in Georgia.
(4) Includes a reduction of $1.5 million and $8.9 million related to the early extinguishment of a portion of our 2023 Notes for the years ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively.
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data as a percentage of revenues for each of the periods indicated:
Year Ended December 31,
2021 2020 2019
Revenues(1)
100.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 %
Cost of revenues(2)
54.9 % 56.6 % 51.5 %
Gross margin 45.1 % 43.4 % 48.5 %
Operating expenses:
Sales and marketing 17.2 % 18.0 % 20.3 %
Research and development 23.5 % 24.2 % 24.2 %
General and administrative 15.6 % 17.6 % 18.0 %
Acquisition related costs 0.5 % 0.1 % 5.1 %
Amortization of acquired intangibles 3.6 % 4.4 % 2.0 %
Partnership termination charges - % 3.3 % - %
Unoccupied lease charges(3)
0.4 % 0.5 % 0.1 %
Total operating expenses 60.8 % 68.1 % 69.7 %
Loss from operations (15.7) % (24.7) % (21.2) %
Total other income (expense), net(4)
(6.6) % (9.0) % (5.3) %
Loss before income taxes (22.3) % (33.8) % (26.5) %
Benefit from (provision for) income taxes (0.3) % (0.4) % 4.0 %
Net loss (22.6) % (34.2) % (22.5) %
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(1) Includes deferred revenue reduction from purchase accounting of 0.4%, 1.1% and 0.6% for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
(2) Includes amortization of acquired technology of 4.4%, 5.3% and 3.1% for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
(3) Unoccupied lease charges include costs related to the early vacating of various facilities, partially offset by anticipated sublease income from these facilities. In 2021, the charges related to an updated assessment and vacating of facilities in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Nebraska. In 2020, the charges related to the vacating of facilities in California, North Carolina and Texas. In 2019, the charges related to the vacating of facilities in Georgia.
(4) Includes a reduction of 0.3% and 2.2% related to the early extinguishment of a portion of our 2023 Notes for the years ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively.
Due to rounding, totals may not equal the sum of the line items in the tables above.
Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2021 and 2020
A discussion regarding year-to-year comparisons between the year ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020 is presented below. A discussion regarding year-to-year comparisons between the year ended December 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019 can be found under Item 7 in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020.
Revenues
The following table presents our revenues for each of the periods indicated (dollars in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Revenues $ 498,720 $ 402,751 $ 95,969 23.8 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Revenues increased by $96.0 million, or 23.8%, from $402.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $498.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily attributable to a $82.7 million increase from the sale of additional solutions to new and existing customers and growth in End Users from new and existing customers. In addition, $13.2 million of the increase was generated from an increase in the number of transactions processed using our solutions.
Cost of Revenues
The following table presents our cost of revenues for each of the periods indicated (dollars in thousands):
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Cost of revenues $ 273,685 $ 228,152 $ 45,533 20.0 %
Percentage of revenues 54.9 % 56.6 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Cost of revenues increased by $45.5 million, or 20.0%, from $228.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $273.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was attributable to a $19.8 million increase in personnel costs due to an increase in the number of personnel who provide implementation and customer support services and maintain our data centers and other technical infrastructure, a $15.6 million increase in co-location facility costs and depreciation for our data center assets resulting from the increased infrastructure necessary to support our growing customer base, a $10.9 million increase in third-party costs related to intellectual property included in our solutions, transaction processing costs incurred as a result of the increase in End Users from new and existing customers, a higher mix of debit card related pass-through fees, as well as implementation and support personnel expenses that are reimbursable from our customers, and a $0.6 million increase from amortization of acquired customer technology resulting from the business acquired in the second quarter of 2021. These increases were partially offset by a $1.8 million decrease from amortization of capitalized implementation services.
We defer certain personnel and other costs directly related to the implementation of our solutions to the extent those costs are recoverable from future revenues. However, a substantial portion of our implementation costs are not eligible for deferral and, as a result, are expensed in the period incurred. Costs related to implementations that have been deferred are amortized over the expected period of customer benefit. Additionally, we invest in personnel, business processes and systems infrastructure to standardize our business processes and drive future efficiency in our implementations, customer support and data center operations. We expect these investments will increase cost of revenues in absolute dollars as we continue to make investments in capacity, process improvement and systems infrastructure, and we expect such expenses to decline as a percentage of revenue as our operations continue to scale and revenues grow.
Operating Expenses
The following tables present our operating expenses for each of the periods indicated (dollars in thousands):
Sales and Marketing
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Sales and marketing $ 85,564 $ 72,323 $ 13,241 18.3 %
Percentage of revenues 17.2 % 18.0 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Sales and marketing expenses increased by $13.2 million, or 18.3%, from $72.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $85.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily attributable to a $10.7 million increase in personnel costs due to the growth of our sales and marketing organizations to support bookings and revenue growth and a $2.0 million increase in other discretionary expenses, including stadium sponsorship expenses.
We anticipate that sales and marketing expenses will continue to increase in absolute dollars in the future as we add personnel to support our revenue growth and as we increase marketing spend to attract new customers, retain and grow existing customers and build brand awareness. While we anticipate sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue may fluctuate on a quarter-over-quarter basis, we expect such expenses to decline as a percentage of our revenues over the longer-term as our revenues grow.
Research and Development
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Research and development $ 116,952 $ 97,381 $ 19,571 20.1 %
Percentage of revenues 23.5 % 24.2 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Research and development expenses increased by $19.6 million, or 20.1%, from $97.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $117.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily attributable to a $17.2 million increase in personnel costs as a result of the growth in our research and development organization to support continued enhancements to our solutions, a $4.1 million increase overhead costs, and a $0.4 million increase in other discretionary expenses. These increases were partially offset by a $2.4 million decrease in expenses as a result of increased capitalized software development costs.
We anticipate that research and development expenses will increase in absolute dollars in the future as we continue to support and expand our platform and enhance our existing solutions, as we believe existing customers will have an increased focus on maintaining and improving their digital banking offerings, including functionality such as digital account opening and online lending.
General and Administrative
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
General and administrative $ 77,915 $ 70,937 $ 6,978 9.8 %
Percentage of revenues 15.6 % 17.6 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. General and administrative expenses increased by $7.0 million, or 9.8%, from $70.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $77.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. The increase in general and administrative expenses was primarily attributable to an $8.2 million increase in personnel costs to support the growth of our business and a $0.7 million increase in professional services for legal and compliance fees. These increases were partially offset by a $1.0 million decrease in bad debt expense due to additional credit losses from the adoption of ASU 2016-13 in 2020 and a $0.5 million decrease for price concessions given to customers in 2020.
General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salaries and other personnel-related costs of our administrative, finance and accounting, information systems, legal and human resources employees. General and administrative expenses also include costs to comply with regulations governing public companies and financial institutions, costs of directors' and officers' liability insurance, investor relations activities and costs to comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX. Over the long term, we anticipate that general and administrative expenses will continue to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to incur both increased external audit fees as well as additional spending to ensure continued regulatory and SOX compliance. We expect such expenses to decline as a percentage of our revenues over the longer term as our revenues grow.
Acquisition Related Costs
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Acquisition related costs $ 2,690 $ 478 $ 2,212 462.8 %
Percentage of revenues 0.5 % 0.1 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Acquisition related costs increased by $2.2 million, or 462.8%, from $0.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $2.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. The expense for the year ended December 31, 2021 included $1.5 million of compensation expense related to the retention bonuses for employees of previous acquisitions and $1.1 million of legal, professional services and other costs related to our acquisition of ClickSWITCH on April 1, 2021.
Amortization of Acquired Intangibles
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Amortization of acquired intangibles $ 17,901 $ 17,888 $ 13 0.1 %
Percentage of revenues 3.6 % 4.4 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Amortization of acquired intangibles remained relatively unchanged from the year ended December 31, 2020 to the year ended December 31, 2021. Increases due to amortization of intangible assets acquired during the acquisition of ClickSWITCH on April 1, 2021 were mostly offset by decreases in amortization of intangible assets that became fully amortized. These amounts are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful lives of the related assets.
Unoccupied Lease Charges
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Unoccupied lease charges $ 2,008 $ 2,181 $ (173) (7.9) %
Percentage of revenues 0.4 % 0.5 %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Unoccupied lease charges decreased by $0.2 million, or (7.9)%, from $2.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $2.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. During the year ended December 31, 2021, the charges included costs related to an updated assessment and vacating of facilities in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Nebraska, partially offset by anticipated sublease income from these facilities.
Total Other Income (Expense), Net
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Total other income (expense), net $ (33,108) $ (36,371) $ 3,263 (9.0) %
Percentage of revenues (6.6) % (9.0) %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Total other income (expense), net represented a net expense of $33.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to a net expense of $36.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2020. The change was primarily attributable to a $7.4 million decrease in expense for additional loss from the early extinguishment of a portion of our 2023 Notes in 2020 compared to 2021 and a $0.8 million increase in other income related to a gain resulting from a favorable settlement of an ordinary course dispute, partially offset by a $4.6 million increase in interest expense from the amortization of debt discount and issuance costs attributable to our convertible notes and a $0.4 million loss on disposal of long-lived assets.
Provision for income taxes
Year Ended December 31, Change
2021 2020 $ (%)
Provision for income taxes $ (1,643) $ (1,416) $ (227) 16.0 %
Percentage of revenues (0.3) % (0.4) %
Year Ended December 31, 2021 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2020. Total provision for income taxes increased by $0.2 million from an expense of $1.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to an expense of $1.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. The increase in the tax expense for the year ended December 31, 2021 related to the operations of the business.
Seasonality and Quarterly Results
Our overall operating results fluctuate from quarter to quarter as a result of a variety of factors, including the timing of investments to grow our business. The timing of our implementation activities and corresponding revenues from new customers are subject to fluctuations based on the timing of our sales. Historically, sales have tended to be lower in the first quarter of each year than in subsequent quarters of the same year, but any resulting impact on our results of operation has been difficult to measure due to the timing of our implementations and overall growth in our business. The timing of our implementations also varies period-to-period based on our implementation capacity, the number of solutions purchased by our customers, the size and unique needs of our customers and the readiness of our customers to implement our solutions.
While we believe the pandemic and related re-opening efforts have increased the importance and prominence of digital financial solutions, the increased economic uncertainty, reduced economic activity, including consumer and business spending, and challenges associated with re-opening resulted in delays in certain purchasing decisions and implementations during 2020 and 2021. During the second half of 2021, we observed an improved sales environment relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021, and we believe that for 2022 the sales environment and the timing of purchasing decisions and implementations by customers will similarly reflect an improvement relative to 2020 and the first half of 2021. However, the duration and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be highly unpredictable and may continue to disrupt any seasonality trends that may otherwise typically be inherent in our historical operating results.
Our solutions are often the most frequent point of engagement between our customers and their End Users. As a result, we and our customers are very deliberate and measured in our implementation activities to help ensure a successful roll-out of the solutions to End Users and increase the registration of new End Users. Unusually long or short implementations, for even a small number of customers, may result in short-term quarterly variability in our financial results.
Our quarterly results of operations may vary significantly in the future and period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful and should not be relied upon as an indication of future results.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Sources of Liquidity
We have financed our operations primarily through the proceeds from the issuance of common stock in our initial public offering in March 2014, additional registered common stock offerings, including our June 2019 and May 2020 common stock offerings, our February 2018 convertible note offering, our June 2019 convertible note offering, our November 2020 convertible note offering, and cash flows from operations. As of December 31, 2021, our principal sources of liquidity were cash, cash equivalents and investments of $427.7 million. Based upon our current levels of operations, we believe that our cash flow from operations along with our other sources of liquidity are adequate to meet our cash requirements for the next twelve months. However, if we determine the need for additional short-term liquidity, there is no assurance that such financing, if pursued, would be adequate or available on terms acceptable to us.
Cash Flows
The following table summarizes our cash flows for the periods indicated (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31,
2021 2020 2019
Net cash provided by (used in):
Operating activities $ 30,925 $ (2,890) $ 567
Investing activities (65,129) (124,163) (483,252)
Financing activities (51,160) 434,676 476,091
Net increase (decrease) in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash $ (85,364) $ 307,623 $ (6,594)
Cash Flows from Operating Activities
Cash provided by (used in) operating activities is primarily influenced by net loss less non-cash items, the amount and timing of customer receipts and vendor payments, fair value re-measurement related to contingent earnout payment liabilities and by the amount of cash we invest in personnel and infrastructure to support the anticipated growth of our business and increase in the number of installed customers.
For the year ended December 31, 2021, our net cash and cash equivalents provided by operating activities was $30.9 million, which consisted of non-cash adjustments of $168.3 million, partially offset by a net loss of $112.7 million and cash outflows from changes in operating assets and liabilities of $24.6 million. Non-cash adjustments primarily consisted of depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation, amortization of debt discount and issuance costs, amortization of deferred implementation and deferred solution and other costs, loss on the early extinguishment of a portion of our convertible notes, and unoccupied lease charges. The primary driver of the changes in operating assets and liabilities related to a $25.6 million increase in deferred solution and implementation costs due to our increased customer growth and new and existing customers undergoing implementations during the period.
For the year ended December 31, 2020, our net cash and cash equivalents used in operating activities was $2.9 million, which consisted of a net loss of $137.6 million and cash outflows from changes in operating assets and liabilities of $26.9 million, partially offset by non-cash adjustments of $161.6 million. The primary drivers of the changes in operating assets and liabilities related to a $32.2 million increase in deferred solution and implementation costs due to our increased customer growth and new and existing customers undergoing implementations during the period and a $14.6 million increase in accounts receivable due to the timing of payments received, partially offset by a $20.4 million increase in deferred revenue due to increased payments and deposits received from customers prior to the recognition of revenue from those related payments. Non-cash adjustments primarily consisted of depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation, amortization of debt discount and issuance costs, amortization of deferred implementation and deferred solution and other costs, loss on the early extinguishment of a portion of our convertible notes, and unoccupied lease charges.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, our net cash and cash equivalents provided by operating activities was $0.6 million, which consisted of a net loss of $70.9 million and cash outflows from changes in operating assets and liabilities of $16.1 million, offset by non-cash adjustments of $87.6 million. The primary drivers of the changes in operating assets and liabilities related to a $37.8 million increase in deferred solution and implementation costs due to our increased customer growth and new and existing customers undergoing implementations during the period and an $8.0 million decrease in deferred rents and other long-term liabilities, partially offset by a $15.8 million net increase in accounts payable and accrued liabilities due to timing of payments in support of our expanding customer base and related growth in our technical infrastructure and expanded facilities and a $13.4 million increase in deferred revenue due to increased payments and deposits received from customers prior to the recognition of revenue from those related payments. Non-cash adjustments primarily consisted of depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation, amortization of debt discount and issuance costs, amortization of deferred implementation and deferred solution and other costs, loss on the early extinguishment of a portion of our convertible notes, unoccupied lease charges, and deferred income taxes from the acquisition of PrecisionLender.
Cash Flows from Investing Activities
Our investing activities have consisted primarily of purchases and maturities of investments, our recent acquisitions, purchases of property and equipment to support our growth and costs incurred for the development of capitalized software. Purchases of property and equipment may vary period-to-period due to the timing of the expansion of our operations, data center and other technical infrastructure.
For the year ended December 31, 2021, net cash used in investing activities was $65.1 million, consisting of $124.0 million for the purchase of investments, $64.7 million for the acquisition of ClickSWITCH, net of cash acquired, $19.8 million for the purchase of property and equipment, and $5.9 million in capitalized software development costs. These outflows were partially offset by $149.2 million received from the maturities of investments.
For the year ended December 31, 2020, net cash used in investing activities was $124.2 million, consisting of $131.3 million for the purchase of investments, $23.7 million for the purchase of property and equipment, and $1.0 million in capitalized software development costs. These outflows were partially offset by $31.8 million received from the maturities of investments.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, net cash used in investing activities was $483.3 million, consisting of $505.6 million for the acquisition of PrecisionLender, $27.3 million for the purchase of investments, and $13.9 million for the purchase of property and equipment. These outflows were partially offset by $64.0 million received from the maturities of investments.
Cash Flows from Financing Activities
Our recent financing activities have consisted primarily of our June 2019 and May 2020 common stock offerings, our June 2019 offering of the 2026 Notes, our November 2020 offering of the 2025 Notes, our partial repurchase of the 2023 Notes, the payment of contingent consideration related to the acquisition of Cloud Lending, as well as net proceeds from exercises of options to purchase our common stock.
For the year ended December 31, 2021, net cash used in financing activities was $51.2 million, consisting of $63.7 million for the partial repurchase of 2023 Notes, partially offset by $6.6 million of net proceeds received in connection with the early termination of bond hedges and warrants related to the 2023 Notes, and $5.9 million of cash received from the exercise of stock options.
For the year ended December 31, 2020, net cash provided by financing activities was $434.7 million, consisting of proceeds from the issuance of common stock of $311.3 million, net of issuance costs, from the May 2020 common stock offering, issuance of $132.6 million principal amount of the 2025 Notes, net of issuance costs, from the November 2020 offering of the 2025 Notes, $34.1 million in net proceeds received in connection with the early termination of bond hedges and warrants related to the 2023 Notes, and $13.3 million of cash received from the exercise of stock options, partially offset by the Capped Call transactions of $39.8 million and payment of contingent consideration related to the acquisition of Cloud Lending, of which $16.9 million of the payment was estimated at acquisition date fair value and included in financing activities.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, net cash provided by financing activities was $476.1 million, consisting of the issuance of $307.0 million principal amount of the 2026 Notes, net of issuance costs, proceeds from the issuance of common stock of $195.3 million, net of issuance costs, from the June 2019 common stock offering, and $14.6 million of cash received from the exercise of stock options partially offset by the Capped Call transactions of $40.8 million.
Contractual Obligations and Commitments
Our principal commitments consist of the 2023 Notes, 2025 Notes, 2026 Notes, non-cancelable operating leases related to our facilities, minimum purchase commitments for sponsorship obligations, third-party products, co-location fees and other product costs. Our obligations under our convertible senior notes are described in Note 11 to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Information regarding our non-cancellable lease and other purchase commitments as of December 31, 2021 can be found in Note 10 to our consolidated financial statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements
In August 2020, the FASB issued ASU No. 2020-06, "Debt - Debt with Conversion and Other Options (Subtopic 470-20) and Derivatives and Hedging - Contracts in Entity's Own Equity (Subtopic 815-40)" which simplifies the accounting for convertible debt instruments by eliminating the requirement to separate embedded conversion features from the host contract when the conversion features are not required to be accounted for as derivatives under Topic 815, Derivatives and Hedging, or that do not result in substantial premiums accounted for as paid-in capital. In addition, the guidance eliminates the treasury stock method to calculate diluted earnings per share for convertible instruments and requires the use of the if-converted method. The standard is effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2021, including interim periods within those fiscal years. Early adoption is permitted, but no earlier than fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2020, including interim periods within those fiscal years. Adoption of the standard can either be on a modified retrospective or full retrospective basis.
We will adopt the new guidance for the fiscal year beginning January 1, 2022, using the modified retrospective approach. The impact to the consolidated balance sheets is expected to result in an increase to our convertible notes balance of approximately $113.0 million to $116.0 million to reflect the full principal amount of the convertible notes outstanding net of issuance costs, a reduction to our additional paid in capital balance of approximately $155.0 million to $158.0 million to remove the equity component separately recorded for the conversion features associated with the convertible notes, and an increase to the beginning balance of accumulated deficit of approximately $41.0 million to $44.0 million. We also expect the adoption of this standard to result in a reduction of non-cash interest expense for the year ended December 31, 2022 until the affected notes have been settled.
In May 2021, the FASB issued ASU No. 2021-04, "Earnings Per Share (Topic 260), Debt - Modifications and Extinguishments (Subtopic 470-50), Compensation - Stock Compensation (Topic 718), and Derivatives and Hedging - Contracts in Entity's Own Equity (Subtopic 815-40)" which clarifies and reduces diversity in the accounting for modifications or exchanges of freestanding equity classified written call options that remain equity classified after modification or exchange. The ASU provides a principles-based framework to determine whether an issuer should recognize the modification or exchange as an adjustment to equity or an expense. The standard is effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2021, including interim periods within those fiscal years. Early adoption is permitted, including adoption in an interim period. Issuers should apply the new standard prospectively to modifications or exchanges occurring after the effective date of the new standard. We have not adopted the provisions of the new standard and will assess its impact on our consolidated financial statements upon adoption.
In October 2021, the FASB issued ASU No. 2021-08, "Business Combinations (Topic 805): Accounting for Contract Assets and Contract Liabilities from Contracts with Customers" which clarifies and reduces diversity in the accounting related to recognition of an acquired contract liability and payment terms and their effect on subsequent revenue recognized by the acquirer. This standard is effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2022, including interim periods within those fiscal years. Early adoption is permitted, including adoption in an interim period. Issuers should apply the new standard prospectively to business combinations occurring on or after the effective date of the new standard. We have not adopted the provisions of the new standard and will assess its impact on our consolidated financial statements upon adoption.

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ITEM 7A. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK
Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk.
Market risk is the risk of loss to future earnings, values or future cash flows that may result from changes in the price of a financial instrument. The value of a financial instrument might change as a result of changes in interest rates, exchange rates, commodity prices, equity prices and other market changes. We do not use derivative financial instruments for speculative, hedging or trading purposes, although in the future we might enter into exchange rate hedging arrangements to manage the risks described below.
Interest Rate Risk
We have cash and cash equivalents held primarily in cash and money market funds. In addition, we have marketable securities which typically include U.S. government securities, corporate bonds and commercial paper and certificates of deposit. Cash and cash equivalents are held for working capital purposes. Marketable securities are held and invested with capital preservation as the primary objective. Due to the short-term nature of these investments, we believe that we do not have any material exposure to changes in the fair value of our investment portfolio as a result of changes in interest rates. Any declines in interest rates will reduce future interest income. As of December 31, 2021, we had an outstanding principal amount of $327.2 million of 2023 Notes and 2026 Notes, which each have a fixed annual interest rate of 0.75% and an outstanding principal amount of $350.0 million of 2025 Notes with a fixed annual interest rate of 0.125%. If overall interest rates fell by 10% in 2021 or 2020, our interest income would not have been materially affected.
Foreign Currency Risk
During 2018, we commenced international operations. As a result, our results of operations and cash flows are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. As of December 31, 2021, our most significant currency exposures were the Indian rupee, British pound, and Australian dollar. As of December 31, 2021, we had operating subsidiaries in India, the United Kingdom and Australia. Due to the relatively low volume of payments made by us through these foreign subsidiaries, we do not believe we have significant exposure to foreign currency exchange risks. However, fluctuations in currency exchange rates could harm our results of operations in the future.
We currently do not use derivative financial instruments to mitigate foreign currency exchange risks. We will continue to review this matter and may consider hedging certain foreign exchange risks in future years.
Inflation Risk
We do not believe that inflation has had a material effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. We continue to monitor the impact of inflation in order to reduce its effects through pricing strategies, productivity improvements and cost reductions. If our costs were to become subject to significant inflationary pressures, we may not be able to fully offset such higher costs through price increases. Our inability or failure to do so could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

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ITEM 8. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DATA
Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data.
The information required by this item is incorporated by reference to the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes set forth on pages through of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

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ITEM 9. CHANGES IN AND DISAGREEMENTS WITH ACCOUNTANTS
Item 9. Change in and Disagreements With Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure.
None.

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ITEM 9A. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES
Item 9A. Controls and Procedures.
Disclosure Controls and Procedures
The term "disclosure controls and procedures," as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act refers to controls and procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported, within the time periods specified in the SEC's rules and forms. Disclosure controls and procedures include, without limitation, controls and procedures designed to ensure that such information is accumulated and communicated to a company's management, including its principal executive and principal financial officers, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.
Our management, with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, has evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as of December 31, 2021, the end of the period covered by this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Based upon such evaluation, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were effective as of such date.
Management's Annual Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting
Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) of the Exchange Act). Under the supervision and with the participation of our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, we conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021 based on the guidelines established in Internal Control - Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO). Our 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 our assets; (ii) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements for external reporting purposes in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, and that our receipts and expenditures are being made only in accordance with authorizations of our management and directors; and (iii) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of our assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.
Based on that evaluation, management concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was effective as of December 31, 2021.
Our independent registered public accounting firm, Ernst & Young, LLP, issued an attestation report on our internal control over financial reporting. This report appears on page.
Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting
There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting identified in connection with management's evaluation required by Rules 13a-15(d) and 15d-15(d) under the Exchange Act that occurred during the quarter ended December 31, 2021, that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.
Limitations on Controls
Our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting are designed to provide reasonable assurance of achieving their objectives as specified above. Management does not expect, however, that our disclosure controls and procedures or our internal control over financial reporting will prevent or detect all error and fraud. Any control system, no matter how well designed and operated, is based upon certain assumptions and can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that its objectives will be met. Further, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within our business have been detected.

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ITEM 9B. OTHER INFORMATION
Item 9B. Other Information.
Not applicable.

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ITEM 10. DIRECTORS, EXECUTIVE OFFICERS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance.
Information required by Part III, Item 10, will be included in our Proxy Statement relating to our 2022 annual meeting of stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of our fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and is incorporated herein by reference.

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ITEM 11. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION
Item 11. Executive Compensation.
Information required by Part III, Item 11, will be included in our Proxy Statement relating to our 2022 annual meeting of stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of our fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and is incorporated herein by reference.

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ITEM 12. SECURITY OWNERSHIP OF CERTAIN BENEFICIAL OWNERS
Item 12. Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters.
Information required by Part III, Item 12, will be included in our Proxy Statement relating to our 2022 annual meeting of stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of our fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and is incorporated herein by reference.

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ITEM 13. CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED TRANSACTIONS
Item 13. Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence.
Information required by Part III, Item 13, will be included in our Proxy Statement relating to our 2022 annual meeting of stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of our fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and is incorporated herein by reference.

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ITEM 14. PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTING FEES AND SERVICES
Item 14. Principal Accounting Fees and Services.
Information required by Part III, Item 14, will be included in our Proxy Statement relating to our 2022 annual meeting of stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of our fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and is incorporated herein by reference.
PART IV

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ITEM 15. EXHIBITS, FINANCIAL STATEMENT SCHEDULES
Item 15. Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules.
(a) Documents Filed with Report
(1) Financial Statements.
Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm on Internal Control over Financial Reporting
Consolidated Balance Sheets
Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Loss
Consolidated Statements of Changes in Stockholders' Equity
Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows
Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
(2) Financial Statement Schedules.
Schedules required by this item have been omitted since they are either not required or not applicable or because the information required is included in the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere herein or the notes thereto.
(3) Exhibits.
The information required by this Item is set forth on the exhibit index that precedes the signature page of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Exhibit Index
Incorporated by Reference
Exhibit
Number Description Form Filing No. Filing Date Exhibit No. Filed / Furnished Herewith
2.1
Stock Purchase Agreement, dated July 31, 2015, by and among Q2 Software, Inc., Centrix Solutions, Inc., all shareholders of Centrix Solutions, Inc. and Timothy Schnell, as Agent
8-K 001-36350 7/31/2015 2.1
2.2
Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated August 6, 2018, by and among Q2 Software, Inc., Montana Merger Subsidiary, Inc., Cloud Lending, Inc. and Fortis Advisors, LLC, as equity holder representative 8-K 001-36350 8/8/2018 2.1
2.3
Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated September 30, 2019, by and among the Q2 Software, Inc., Merger Sub, Lender Performance Group, LLC, the Blockers, Blocker Merger Subs and Insight Venture Partners, LLC, as equity holder representative 8-K 001-36350 10/1/2019 2.1
2.4
First Amendment to Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated October 31, 2019, by and among the Q2 Software, Inc., Merger Sub, Lender Performance Group, LLC, the Blockers, Blocker Merger Subs and Insight Venture Partners, LLC, as equity holder representative 10-K 001-36350 2/21/2020 2.4
2.5
Second Amendment to Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated December 27, 2019, by and among the Q2 Software, Inc., Merger Sub, Lender Performance Group, LLC, the Blockers, Blocker Merger Subs and Insight Venture Partners, LLC, as equity holder representative 10-K 001-36350 2/21/2020 2.5
3.1
Fifth Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation of the Registrant 8-K 001-36350 6/12/2019 3.1
3.2
Amended and Restated Bylaws of the Registrant 8-K 001-36350 6/12/2019 3.2
4.1
Indenture, dated February 26, 2018, between the Registrant and Wilmington Trust, National Association, as trustee 8-K 001-36350 2/26/2018 4.1
4.2
Form of Global Note, dated February 26, 2018, between the Registrant and Wilmington Trust, National Association, as trustee 8-K 001-36350 2/26/2018 4.2
4.3
Indenture, dated June 10, 2019 between the Registrant and Wilmington Trust, National Association, as trustee 8-K 001-36350 6/11/2019 4.1
4.4
Form of Global Note, dated June 10, 2019 between the Registrant and Wilmington Trust, National Association, as trustee 8-K 001-36350 6/11/2019 4.2
4.5
Description of Registrant Securities Registered under Section 12 of the Exchange Act *
4.6
Indenture, dated November 18, 2020, between Registrant and Wilmington Trust National Association, as trustee
8-K 001-36350 11/20/2020 4.1
4.7
Form of Global Note, dated November 18, 2020, between Registrant and Wilmington Trust National Association, as trustee
8-K 001-36350 11/20/2020 4.2
10.1
Form of Indemnification Agreement for directors and officers S-1/A 333- 193911 2/25/2014 10.1
10.2.1
† 2007 Stock Plan, as amended S-1/A 333- 193911 2/25/2014 10.2.1
10.2.2
† Form of Stock Option Agreement under the 2007 Stock Plan S-1 333- 193911 2/12/2014 10.2.2
10.2.3
† Form of Stock Option Agreement for Executive Officers under the 2007 Stock Plan S-1 333- 193911 2/12/2014 10.2.3
10.2.4
† Form of Stock Option Agreement for Directors under the 2007 Stock Plan S-1 333- 193911 2/12/2014 10.2.4
10.3.1
Lease Agreement, dated November 20, 2012, by and among the Q2 Software, Inc. and 13785 Research Blvd, LLC S-1 333- 193911 2/12/2014 10.4
10.3.2
First Amendment to Lease Agreement and Tri-Party Agreement, dated February 27, 2015, by and among Q2 Software, Inc., FPG Aspen Lake Owner, L.P. and FPG TOH Owner, L.P., amending the Lease Agreement, dated November 20, 2012, by and among the Q2 Software, Inc. and 13785 Research Blvd, LLC 10-Q 001-36350 5/8/2015 10.1
Incorporated by Reference
Exhibit
Number Description Form Filing No. Filing Date Exhibit No. Filed / Furnished Herewith
10.3.3
Second Amendment to Lease Agreement and Tri-Party Agreement, dated April 1, 2015, by and among Q2 Software, Inc., FPG Aspen Lake Owner, L.P. and FPG TOH Owner, L.P., amending the Lease Agreement, dated November 20, 2012, by and among the Q2 Software, Inc. and 13785 Research Blvd, LLC 10-Q 001-36350 5/8/2015 10.2
10.3.4
Third Amendment to Lease Agreement, dated October 8, 2015, by and among Q2 Software, Inc. and FPG Aspen Lake Owner, L.P., amending the Lease Agreement, dated November 20, 2012, by and among the Q2 Software, Inc. and 13785 Research Blvd, LLC 10-Q 001-36350 11/6/2015 10.2
10.3.5
Lease Agreement, dated July 18, 2014, by and among Q2 Software, Inc. and CREF Aspen Lake Building II, LLC 8-K 001-36350 7/23/2014 10.1
10.3.6
First Amendment to Lease Agreement, dated May 1, 2015, by and among Q2 Software, Inc. and CREF Aspen Lake Building II, LLC 8-K 001-36350 5/4/2015 10.1
10.3.7
Second Amendment to Lease Agreement, dated February 3, 2016, by and among Q2 Software, Inc. and CREF Aspen Lake Building II, LLC 10-Q 001-36350 5/10/2016 10.1
10.4
Lease Agreement, dated December 18, 2019, by and among Q2 Software, Inc. and Aspen Lake Building Three, LLC 8-K 001-36350 12/20/2019 10.1
10.5
† Amended and Restated Employment Agreement, dated September 23, 2021, by and among the Registrant and Matthew P. Flake 8-K 001-36350 9/24/2021 10.1
10.7
† Amended and Restated Employment Agreement, dated September 24, 2021, by and among the Registrant and Michael A. Volanoski *
10.8
† Amended and Restated Employment Agreement, dated September 23, 2021, by and among the Registrant and Adam D. Blue 8-K 001-36350 9/24/2021 10.3
10.9.1
† 2014 Equity Incentive Plan and forms of agreements thereunder S-1/A 333- 193911 3/6/2014 10.9
10.9.2
† Forms of Restricted Stock Units Agreements under the Registrant's 2014 Equity Incentive Plan. 10-Q 001-36350 11/10/2014 10.2
10.9.3
† Form of Stock Option Agreement and Restricted Stock Unit Agreement for Remote Executive Officers under Registrant's 2014 Equity Incentive Plan 10-Q 001-36350 11/6/2015 10.3
10.9.4
† Form of Market Stock Units Agreement under the Registrant's 2014 Equity Incentive Plan
10-Q 001-36350 5/3/2018 10.4
10.9.5
† Form of Market Stock Units Agreement under the Registrant's 2014 Equity Incentive Plan 10-Q 001-36350 5/6/2021 10.1
10.10
† 2014 Employee Stock Purchase Plan S-1/A 333- 193911 3/6/2014 10.1
10.11.1
Master Service Agreement dated January 11, 2010, by and among the Registrant and Cyrus Networks, LLC S-1 333- 193911 2/12/2014 10.12
10.11.2
Service Level Agreement dated January 11, 2010, by and among the Registrant and Cyrus Networks, LLC S-1 333- 193911 2/12/2014 10.12.1
10.12
† Amended and Restated Employment Agreement, dated September 23, 2021, by and among the Registrant and John E. Breeden 8-K 001-36350 9/24/2021 10.5
10.13
† Amended and Restated Employment Agreement, dated September 24, 2021, by and among the Registrant and David J. Mehok 8-K 0001-36350 9/24/2021 10.2
10.14
† Amended and Restated Employment Agreement, dated September 23, 2021, by and among the Registrant and William M. Furrer 8-K 333- 193911 9/24/2021 10.4
10.17
Purchase Agreement, dated February 21, 2018, by and among the Registrant, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, as representatives of the several initial purchasers named therein 8-K 001-36350 2/26/2018 10.1
Incorporated by Reference
Exhibit
Number Description Form Filing No. Filing Date Exhibit No. Filed / Furnished Herewith
10.18
Form of Bond Hedge Confirmation
8-K 001-36350 2/26/2018 10.2
10.19
Form of Warrant Confirmation 8-K 001-36350 2/26/2018 10.3
10.20
Purchase Agreement, dated June 5, 2019 by and among the Registrant, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated and BMO Capital Markets Corp., as representatives of the several initial purchasers named therein 8-K 001-36350 6/6/2019 10.1
10.21
Form of Capped Call Confirmation 8-K 001-36350 6/6/2019 10.2
10.22
Executive Incentive Compensation Plan
8-K 001-36350 6/15/2020 10.1
10.23
Form of Exchange and Subscription Agreement
8-K 001-36350 11/12/2020 10.1
10.24
Form of Capped Call
8-K 001-36350 11/12/2020 10.2
21.1
List of Subsidiaries of the Registrant *
23.1
Consent of Ernst & Young LLP, Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm *
24.1
Power of Attorney (see the signature pages to this Annual Report on Form 10-K).
*
31.1
Certification of Principal Executive Officer Required Under Rule 13a-14(a) and 15d-14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, as adopted pursuant to Section 302 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. *
31.2
Certification of Principal Financial Officer Required Under Rule 13a-14(a) and 15d-14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, as adopted pursuant to Section 302 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. *
32.1
Certification of Principal Executive Officer Required Under Rule 13a-14(a) and 15d-14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and 18 U.S.C. §1350 as adopted pursuant to Section 906 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. #
32.2
Certification of Principal Financial Officer Required under Rule 13a-14(a) and 15d-14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and 18 U.S.C. §1350 as adopted pursuant to Section 906 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. #
101.INS XBRL Instance Document. *
101.SCH XBRL Taxonomy Extension Schema. *
101.CAL XBRL Taxonomy Extension Calculation Linkbase. *
101.LAB XBRL Taxonomy Extension Calculation Label Linkbase. *
101.PRE XBRL Taxonomy Extension Presentation Linkbase. *
101.DEF XBRL Taxonomy Extension Definition Linkbase. *
104 Cover Page Interactive Data File (formatted as inline XBRL and contained in Exhibit 101) *
* Filed herewith
# Furnished herewith
† Management contract, compensatory plan or arrangement
Q2 HOLDINGS, INC.
NOTES TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
(in thousands, except per share amounts and unless otherwise indicated)