Item 1A. Risk Factors
Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk, including the risks described below, each of which may be relevant to decisions regarding an investment in or ownership of our stock. The occurrence of any of these risks could have a significant adverse effect on our reputation, business, financial condition, revenue, results of operations, growth, or ability to accomplish our strategic objectives, and could cause the trading price of our common stock to decline. You should carefully consider the risks set forth below and the other information contained in this report, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, before making investment decisions related to our common stock. However, this report cannot anticipate and fully address all possible risks of investing in our common stock, the risks of investing in our common stock may change over time, and additional risks and uncertainties that we are not aware of, or that we do not consider to be material, may emerge. Accordingly, you are advised to consider additional sources of information and exercise your own judgment in addition to the information we provide.
Risks Related to the Proposed Acquisition of SpotX
We may not complete the acquisition of SpotX or complete the acquisition within the time frame we anticipate. Failure to complete the acquisition could have material adverse effects on us.
The completion of the acquisition is subject to a number of customary closing conditions, including, among other things, the absence of certain legal impediments and the expiration or termination of the required waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended, which make the completion and timing of the acquisition uncertain. The failure to satisfy all of the required conditions could delay the completion of the acquisition for a significant period of time or prevent it from occurring at all. There can be no assurance that the conditions to the completion of the acquisition will be satisfied or waived or that the acquisition will be completed.
If the acquisition is not completed, we may be materially adversely affected and, without realizing any of the benefits of having completed the acquisition, will be subject to a number of risks, including the following:
•the market price of our common stock could decline;
•we could be liable for damages incurred or suffered by the seller of SpotX in specified circumstances;
•if the SpotX Purchase Agreement is terminated and our board seeks another acquisition, our stockholders cannot be certain that we will be able to find a party willing to enter into a transaction on terms equivalent to or more attractive than the terms of the SpotX Purchase Agreement;
•time and resources, financial and other, committed by our management to matters relating to the acquisition could otherwise have been devoted to pursuing other beneficial opportunities;
•we may experience negative reactions from the financial markets or from our customers, suppliers or employees; and
•we will be required to pay certain costs relating to the acquisition, such as legal, accounting, financial advisory and printing fees, whether or not the acquisition is completed.
In addition, if the acquisition is not completed, we could be subject to litigation related to any failure to complete the acquisition or related to any enforcement proceeding commenced against us to perform our obligations under the SpotX Purchase Agreement. Because our obligations under the SpotX Purchase Agreement are not conditioned on our receipt of or ability to obtain financing, there is a risk we could be liable for damages to the seller of SpotX or subject to litigation or enforcement proceedings even in circumstances where our inability to close the transaction is due to a failure to timely obtain financing on the terms contemplated by the Commitment Letter (discussed below) or at all. Any of these risks could materially and adversely impact our ongoing business, financial condition, financial results and stock price.
Similarly, delays in the completion of the acquisition could, among other things, result in additional transaction costs, loss of revenue or other negative effects associated with delay and uncertainty about completion of the acquisition and could materially and adversely impact our ongoing business, financial condition, financial results and stock price following the completion of the acquisition.
We may not be able to achieve anticipated cost savings or other anticipated benefits of our acquisition of SpotX.
The success of the acquisition will depend, in part, on our ability to successfully integrate SpotX with our business and realize the anticipated benefits, including synergies, cost savings, innovation and technological opportunities and operational efficiencies from the acquisition in a manner that does not materially disrupt existing customer, supplier and employee relations and does not result in decreased revenues due to losses of, or decreases in use of our solutions by, buyers and sellers of
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advertising inventory. If we are unable to achieve these objectives within the anticipated time frame, or at all, the anticipated benefits may not be realized fully or at all, or may take longer to realize than expected, and the value of our common stock may decline. We may fail to realize some or all of the anticipated benefits of the acquisition if the integration process takes longer than expected or is more costly than expected. The integration of SpotX with our business may result in material challenges, including, without limitation:
•managing a larger, more complex business;
•maintaining employee morale and retaining key management and other employees;
•retaining existing business and operational relationships, including customers, suppliers and employees and other counterparties, as may be impacted by contracts containing consent and/or other provisions that may be triggered by the acquisition, and attracting new business and operational relationships;
•consolidating corporate and administrative infrastructures and eliminating duplicative operations, including unanticipated issues in integrating information technology, communications and other systems;
•coordinating geographically separate organizations; and
•unforeseen expenses or delays associated with the acquisition.
Many of these factors will be outside of our control, and any one of them could result in delays, increased costs, decreases in the amount of expected revenues or cost synergies, and other adverse impacts, which could materially affect our financial position, results of operations and cash flows.
Due to legal restrictions, we are currently permitted to conduct only limited planning for the integration of SpotX following the acquisition. The actual integration may result in additional and unforeseen expenses, and the anticipated benefits of the integration plan may not be realized on a timely basis, if at all.
Our proposed financing of the acquisition of SpotX will significantly increase our leverage, which may put us at greater risk of defaulting on our debt obligations and limit our ability to conduct necessary operating activities, make strategic investments, respond to changing market conditions, or obtain future financing on favorable terms.
We intend to finance the cash portion of the SpotX acquisition consideration in part through borrowings under certain proposed new credit facilities. In connection with the SpotX Purchase Agreement, we entered into a commitment letter (the "Commitment Letter" pursuant to which, subject to the terms and conditions set forth therein, Goldman Sachs Bank USA has committed to provide a senior secured term loan facility in an aggregate principal amount of up to $560 million (the "Term Loan Facility"). The funding of the Term Loan Facility provided for in the Commitment Letter is contingent on the satisfaction of customary conditions, including the execution and delivery of definitive documentation with respect to credit facilities in accordance with the terms set forth in the Commitment Letter and the consummation of the SpotX acquisition in accordance with the SpotX Purchase Agreement.
The completion of the Term Loan Facility, if at all, would significantly increase our indebtedness and require us to comply with certain financial metrics and restrictive covenants. The increased leverage could adversely affect our business and operating results by:
•making it more difficult for us to make payments on our indebtedness and comply with applicable financial metrics and covenants;
•requiring us to use a substantial portion of our cash flow to pay interest and principal, which reduces the amount available for operations, distributions, acquisitions and capital expenditures;
•making us more vulnerable to economic and industry downturns and reducing our flexibility to respond to changing business and economic conditions;
•requiring us to agree to less favorable terms, including higher interest rates, in order to incur additional debt, and otherwise limiting our ability to borrow for operations, working capital or to finance acquisitions in the future; or
•limiting our flexibility in conducting our business, which may place us at a disadvantage compared to competitors with less debt or debt with less restrictive terms.
We may be able to incur substantial additional indebtedness in the future, subject to the restrictions governing our existing indebtedness, which would further exacerbate the leverage risks described above.
If the acquisition of SpotX is completed, our current stockholders will generally have a reduced ownership and voting interest after the acquisition.
Our stockholders currently have the right to vote to elect our directors and on other matters affecting the company. Immediately after the completion of the acquisition, each of our stockholders will remain a stockholder, but with a percentage ownership that will be smaller than such stockholder’s percentage ownership as of immediately prior to the acquisition. As a result of this reduced ownership percentage, our stockholders will generally have less voting power after the acquisition than they did prior to the acquisition.
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If the acquisition of SpotX is completed, the seller of SpotX will own a substantial portion of our outstanding common stock, and their interests may not always coincide with the interests of the other holders.
If the acquisition of SpotX is completed, the seller of SpotX, RTL or an affiliate of RTL designated pursuant to the SpotX Purchase Agreement, will receive 14 million shares of our common stock, subject to certain adjustments. As a result, RTL may have significant influence over all matters presented to our stockholders for approval, including election and removal of our directors and change in control transactions. The interests of RTL may not always coincide with the interests of the other holders of our common stock. As part of the SpotX Purchase Agreement, RTL has agreed to abide by certain standstill covenants with respect to us and our securities for a period of three years following the closing of the transaction.
Completion of the acquisition of SpotX may trigger change in control or other provisions in agreements to which SpotX is a party, which may have an adverse impact on our business and results of operations following completion of the acquisition.
The completion of the acquisition may trigger change in control and other provisions in certain agreements to which SpotX is a party. If SpotX and we are unable to negotiate waivers of those provisions, counterparties may exercise their rights and remedies under the agreements, including terminating the agreements or seeking monetary damages or equitable remedies. Even if we are able to negotiate consents or waivers, the counterparties may require a fee for such waivers or seek to renegotiate the agreements on terms less favorable to us. Any of the foregoing or similar developments may have an adverse impact on our business and results of operations following completion of the acquisition, including by diminishing or making it more difficult for us to realize some or all of the anticipated benefits of the acquisition, or by increasing the costs to us of completing the acquisition.
Any acquisitions we undertake may disrupt our business, adversely affect operations, dilute stockholders, and expose us to costs and liabilities.
Acquisitions have been an important element of our business strategy, and we may pursue future acquisitions in an effort to increase revenue, expand our market position, add to our service offering and technological capabilities, respond to dynamic market conditions, or for other strategic or financial purposes. However, there is no assurance that we will identify suitable acquisition candidates or complete any acquisitions on favorable terms, or at all. Further, any acquisitions we do complete, including, if completed, our acquisition of SpotX, would involve a number of risks, which may include the following:
•the identification, acquisition, and integration of acquired businesses require substantial attention from management. The diversion of management's attention and any difficulties encountered in the transition process could hurt our business;
•the identification, acquisition, and integration of acquired businesses requires significant investment, including to determine which new service offerings we might wish to acquire, harmonize service offerings, expand management capabilities and market presence, and improve or increase development efforts and technology features and functions;
•the anticipated benefits from the acquisition may not be achieved, including as a result of loss of clients or personnel of the target, other difficulties in supporting and transitioning the target's clients, the inability to realize expected synergies from an acquisition, or negative organizational cultural effects arising from the integration of new personnel;
•we may face difficulties in integrating the personnel, technologies, solutions, operations, and existing contracts of the acquired business;
•we may fail to identify all of the problems, liabilities or other shortcomings or challenges of an acquired company, technology, or solution, including issues related to intellectual property, solution quality or architecture, income tax and other regulatory compliance practices, revenue recognition or other accounting practices, or employee or client issues;
•to pay for future acquisitions, we could issue additional shares of our common stock or pay cash. Issuance of shares would dilute stockholders. Use of cash reserves could diminish our ability to respond to other opportunities or challenges. Borrowing to fund any cash purchase price would result in increased fixed obligations and could also include covenants or other restrictions that would impair our ability to manage our operations;
•acquisitions expose us to the risk of assumed known and unknown liabilities including contract, tax, regulatory or other legal, and other obligations incurred by the acquired business or fines or penalties, for which indemnity obligations, escrow arrangements or insurance may not be available or may not be sufficient to provide coverage;
•new business acquisitions can generate significant intangible assets that result in substantial related amortization charges and possible impairments;
•the operations of acquired businesses, or our adaptation of those operations, may require that we apply revenue recognition or other accounting methodologies, assumptions, and estimates that are different from those we use in our current business, which could complicate our financial statements, expose us to additional accounting and audit costs, and increase the risk of accounting errors;
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•acquired businesses may have insufficient internal controls that we must remediate, and the integration of acquired businesses may require us to modify or enhance our own internal controls, in each case resulting in increased administrative expense and risk that we fail to comply with the requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the "Sarbanes-Oxley Act");
•acquisition of businesses based outside the United States would require us to operate in foreign languages and manage non-U.S. currency, billing, and contracting needs, comply with laws and regulations, including labor laws and privacy laws that in some cases may be more restrictive on our operations than laws applicable to our business in the United States; and
•acquisitions can sometimes lead to disputes with the former owners of the acquired company, which can result in increased legal expenses, management distraction and the risk that we may suffer an adverse judgment if we are not the prevailing party in the dispute.
Risks Related to COVID-19
The recent COVID-19 pandemic and spread of COVID-19 has impacted and may have material adverse effects on our business, financial position, results of operations and/or cash flows.
Our business has been impacted and may be materially adversely impacted by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the United States, we have personnel and operations in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and Brazil, and each of these countries has been affected by the pandemic and taken measures to try to contain it. These measures have impacted and may further impact our workforce and operations, and the operations of our sellers and buyers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has in the short-run and may over the longer term adversely affect the economies and financial markets of many countries. Adverse economic conditions and general uncertainty about economic recovery or growth, particularly in North America and Europe, where we conduct most of our business, has caused advertisers to significantly reduce their advertising budgets. Our business depends on the overall demand for advertising and on the economic health of our current and prospective sellers and buyers. As a result of advertisers significantly reducing their overall advertising spending, our revenue and results of operations have been directly affected. Though our revenue trends improved and stabilized in the second half of 2020, there can be no assurance that these trends will continue.
In addition, the economic health of our current and prospective buyers impacts the collectability of our accounts receivable. Although our liquidity has not been significantly affected by the effects of COVID-19 to date, any prolonged downturn in economic conditions in the future may severely impact our liquidity as we may need additional time to collect from buyers, which may impact our ability to pay sellers.
The degree to which the COVID-19 pandemic and responses thereto impacts our results will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, including, but not limited to, the duration and spread of the pandemic, its severity, including any resurgence, the actions to contain the virus or treat its impact, and how quickly and to what extent normal economic and operating conditions can resume. Although the full magnitude of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and operations remains uncertain, the spread of COVID-19 and the imposition of related public health measures and travel and business restrictions has and is expected to continue to adversely impact our forecasted business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows.
Additional or unforeseen effects from the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic distress could implicate or amplify many of the other risks discussed below.
Risks Related to Our Business, Growth Prospects and Operating Results
If CTV advertising spend grows more slowly than we expect our operating results and growth prospects could be harmed.
The growth of our platform is dependent, in part, on the continued growth in CTV advertising spend. Growth in the CTV advertising market is dependent on a number of factors, including the pace of cord-cutting (the replacement of tradition linear TV for CTV streaming), the continued proliferation of digital content and CTV providers, the adoption of ad-supported models by CTV sellers in lieu of, or in addition to, subscription models, and an acceleration in the shift of ad dollars from traditional linear TV to CTV to keep pace with changing viewership habits. If the market for ad-supported CTV develops more slowly than we expect or fails to develop as a result of these or other factors, our operating results and growth prospects could be harmed.
If CTV sellers fail to adopt programmatic advertising solutions, or adopt such solutions more slowly that we expect, our operating and growth prospects could be harmed.
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As digital advertising has continued to scale and evolve, the amount of advertising being bought and sold programmatically has increased dramatically. Despite the opportunities created by programmatic advertising, CTV sellers have been slower to adopt programmatic solutions compared to desktop and mobile video sellers. Many CTV sellers have backgrounds in cable or broadcast television and have limited experience with digital advertising, and in particular programmatic advertising. For these sellers, it is extremely important to protect the quality of the viewer experience to maintain brand goodwill and ensure that online advertising efforts do not create sales channel conflicts or otherwise detract from their direct sales force. In this regard, programmatic advertising presents a number of potential challenges, including the ability to ensure that ads are brand safe, comply with business rules around competitive separation, are not overly repetitive, are played at the appropriate volume and do not cause delays in load-time of content. Our platform was designed to address these challenges and we have invested significant time and resources cultivating relationships with CTV sellers to establish best practices and evangelize the benefits of programmatic CTV.
While we believe that programmatic advertising will continue to grow as a percentage of overall CTV advertising, there can be no assurances that CTV sellers will adopt programmatic solutions or the speed at which they may adopt such solutions. Any such failure or delay in adoption could negatively impact our finance results and growth prospects.
We may not be able to maintain or increase access to the CTV advertising inventory monetized through our platform on terms acceptable to us.
Our success requires us to maintain and expand our access to premium and unique advertising inventory. We do not own or control the ad inventory upon which our business depends and do not own or create content. Sellers are generally not required to offer a specified level of inventory on our platform, and we cannot be assured that any publisher will continue to make their ad inventory available on our platform. Sellers may seek to change the terms on which they offer inventory on our platform, including with respect to pricing, or may elect to make advertising inventory available to our competitors who offer more favorable economic terms. Furthermore, sellers may enter into exclusive relationships with our competitors, which preclude us from offering their inventory.
These risks are particularly pronounced with CTV sellers. CTV inventory is highly sought after, and unlike desktop or mobile advertising, which may come from disparate sources, CTV inventory tends to be concentrated on a smaller number of larger sellers that enjoy significant negotiating leverage. This dynamic has been exacerbated by consolidation in the industry, as a number of digital-first CTV sellers have been acquired by larger established television and media brands. In some instances, consolidation may result in the loss of business with an existing client (for example, if an acquiror has a preferred relationship with one of our competitors or has a proprietary solution). As a result of this concentration, the loss of a CTV client may result in a significant decrease in the amount of CTV inventory available through our platform. Any decrease in our ability to access CTV inventory could negatively impact our results, as we view CTV revenue as a key differentiator and driver for our growth.
We may not be able to achieve anticipated benefits of the merger with Telaria.
The success of the Merger will depend, in part, on our ability to successfully combine and integrate our business with Telaria, and realize the anticipated benefits, including synergies, cost savings, innovation and technological opportunities and operational efficiencies from the Merger in a manner that does not materially disrupt existing customer, supplier and employee relations and does not result in decreased revenues due to losses of, or decreases in use of our solutions by, buyers and sellers of advertising inventory. If the combined company is unable to achieve these objectives within the anticipated time frame, or at all, the anticipated benefits may not be realized fully or at all, or may take longer to realize than expected, and the value of the combined company common stock may decline. The combined company may fail to realize some or all of the anticipated benefits of the Merger if the integration process takes longer than expected or is more costly than expected. The integration of the two companies may result in material challenges, including, without limitation:
•managing a larger, more complex combined business;
•maintaining employee morale and retaining key management and other employees;
•retaining existing business and operational relationships, including customers, suppliers and employees and other counterparties, as may be impacted by contracts containing consent and/or other provisions that may be triggered by the Merger, and attracting new business and operational relationships;
•consolidating corporate and administrative infrastructures and eliminating duplicative operations, including unanticipated issues in integrating information technology, communications and other systems;
•coordinating geographically separate organizations; and
•unforeseen expenses or delays associated with the Merger.
Many of these factors will be outside of our control, and any one of them could result in delays, increased costs, decreases in the amount of expected revenues or cost synergies, and other adverse impacts, which could materially affect the combined company’s financial position, results of operations and cash flows.
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We may be unsuccessful in our Supply Path Optimization efforts.
SPO refers to efforts by buyers to consolidate the number of vendors with which they work to find the most effective and cost-efficient paths to procure media. There are a number of criteria that buyers use to evaluate supply partners. While we believe we are well positioned to benefit from supply path optimization in the long run as a result of our transparency, our pricing tools, which reduce the overall cost of working with us, our broad and unique inventory supply across all channels and formats, buyer tools such as traffic shaping that reduce the cost of working with us, and our brand safety measures, we compete for demand with a number of well-established companies, and buyers have not always embraced our offering due to various factors, including the perception that competitors have superior technology or produce better results.
We must continue to adapt and improve our offerings to win buyers’ business. In order to achieve increased advertising spend, we may negotiate discounts to our seller fees with agencies and advertisers, and we have increasingly been receiving requests from buyers for discounts, rebates, or similar incentives to move more advertising spending to our platform. We believe that because our business has many fixed costs, increases in advertising spend volume create opportunity to disproportionately improve net income, even with increased seller fee discounts. However, our results could be negatively impacted if our advertising spend increases and cost leverage is not adequate to compensate for discounted fees.
Our Demand Manager service requires significant upfront investments, has a long on-boarding and ramp-up period, and may not be successful.
In 2019 we announced a new offering called Demand Manager. Demand Manager helps sellers effectively monetize their advertising inventory through configuration tools and analytics to make it easier to deploy, configure, and optimize Prebid-based header bidding solutions. Before clients are able to begin using Demand Manager, we expend a significant amount of time and costs in the initial setup and implementation, and we do not recognize revenue from Demand Manager clients until we commence services, often after an additional initial trial period. The pace of adoption of Demand Manager depends on the features and capabilities provided by our solution, as well as acceptance and expansion of the underlying Prebid-based header bidding solutions, which we do not control. While we anticipate long-term revenue growth from Demand Manager, there can be no assurance that we will be able to add additional clients to our service or expand the inventory managed by current clients and thus grow revenue.
We made a strategic decision to eliminate our buyer fees in 2017, which at the time accounted for a significant percentage of our revenue.
In response to increasing market pressure and in an effort to be more competitive, on November 1, 2017 we eliminated buyer transaction fees. Buyer transaction fees represented approximately 49% of our revenue for the first ten months of 2017, which is the period during which we charged buyer fees in 2017. Consequently, the elimination of our buyer transaction fees has had a severe adverse effect on our revenue and margins. In order to adjust for the elimination of these fees, we refocused our business on growing advertising spend through increased volume of transactions and operating with increased efficiencies. These initiatives included investments in bid shaping and bid filtering technology that has allowed us to improve our fill rate, or the percentage of ad requests on our platform that are monetized.
Though we’ve taken steps to significantly increase advertising spend on our platform, we may not succeed in continuing to increase transaction volume or improve fill rates. To the extent we are unable to compensate for our price reductions by continuing to increase advertising spend on our platform, our revenue will decline, we will not be able to grow our business, our cash resources may be depleted, and we may be forced to seek additional capital to support our business and operations. If we are required to cut costs further in order to remain competitive, we may have difficulty identifying and implementing significant additional cost reduction measures without adversely impacting our operations and our ability to provide competitive services to our clients.
Our technology development efforts may be inefficient or ineffective, which may impair our ability to attract buyers and sellers.
We face intense competition in the marketplace and are confronted by rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards and consumer needs, regulatory changes, and the frequent introduction of new solutions by our competitors to which we must adapt and respond. Our future success will depend in part upon our ability to enhance our existing solution and to develop and introduce competing new solutions in a timely manner with features and pricing that meet changing client and market requirements. Our solutions are complex and can require a significant investment of time and resources to develop, test, introduce, and enhance. These activities can take longer than we expect. We schedule and prioritize our development efforts according to a variety of factors, including our perceptions of market trends, client requirements, and resource availability; however, we may encounter unanticipated difficulties that require us to re-direct, scale back, or modify our efforts. If development of our solution becomes significantly more expensive due to changes in regulatory requirements or industry practices, or other factors, we may find ourselves at a disadvantage to larger competitors with more resources to devote to development. These factors place significant demands upon our engineering organization, require complex planning, and can result in acceleration of some initiatives and delay of others. We have expanded our use of outsourced software development,
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which may put the company at greater risk with respect to our technology development because we may have less control over the performance of outside programmers and we may be at greater risk of losing their services. To the extent we do not manage our development efforts efficiently and effectively, we may fail to produce solutions that respond appropriately to the needs of buyers and sellers, and competitors may more successfully develop responsive offerings. If our solution is not competitive, buyers and sellers can be expected to shift their business to competing solutions. Buyers and sellers may also resist adopting our new solutions for various reasons, including reluctance to disrupt existing relationships and business practices or to invest in necessary technological integration.
The emergence of header bidding has increased competition from other demand sources and may cause infrastructure strain and added cost.
In the mobile and desktop channels, sellers have embraced header bidding, a technology solution by which impressions that would have previously been exposed to different potential sources of demand in a sequence dictated by ad server priorities are instead available for concurrent competitive bidding by demand sources. This can help sellers increase revenue by exposing their inventory to more bidders, thereby allocating more inventory to demand sources that value it most highly. While header bidding has the potential to increase our access to inventory that otherwise would have been allocated first to other exchanges, thus increasing our revenue opportunity, it has also resulted in a number of challenges for our business. First, some sellers with which we have had direct relationships may choose not to integrate with us as a header-bidding demand source, in which case we will have less opportunity to access their advertising inventory through our platform. Second, certain sources of demand, including owners of the header bidding solutions, may be prioritized by sellers in their header bidding implementation, leaving us at a competitive disadvantage in the auction. Third, just as header bidding allows us to compete with demand sources that would previously have been above us in sellers' ad server sequences, it exposes us to additional competition by demand sources that, prior to the emergence of header bidding, might have been below us in the sellers' ad server sequences or otherwise unable to compete effectively for inventory. Lastly, header-bidding has vastly increased the volume of ad requests that need to be processed and analyzed through our system, resulting in increased infrastructure costs.
If we are unable improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our current header bidding solution and installations we may not fully offset these increased infrastructure costs, and we will not be able to take full advantage of the opportunities made available through current header bidding technology to access a larger addressable market and increase our revenue by capturing a greater share of inventory. In addition, our success in monetizing impressions through header-bidding solutions is dependent on the interoperability of our platform with proprietary header-bidding solutions, some of which are owned by our competitors. As a result, we may be susceptible to evolution in technology and changes in business practices by the owners of such header-bidding solutions that we cannot predict.
While header-bidding technologies have not been largely adopted by CTV sellers, such solutions or similar solutions geared towards unifying demand may become more prevalent in the future. If we are not able to effectively adapt our technology to such solutions or if their adoption results in increased competition for CTV inventory, we may have reduced opportunities or it may be more costly to monetize this inventory, which would negatively affect our results.
We must increase the scale and efficiency of our technology infrastructure to support our growth and transaction volumes.
Our technology must scale to process the increased ad requests on our platform. Additionally, for each individual advertising impression created when a user visits a website or uses an application where our auctions technology is integrated, our technology must send bid requests to appropriate buyers, receive and process their responses, select a winner, and, increasingly, integrate with downstream decisioning systems. It must perform these transactions end-to-end within milliseconds. We must continue to increase the capacity of our platform to support our high-volume strategy, to cope with increased data volumes and parties resulting from header bidding and an increasing variety of advertising formats and platforms, and to maintain a stable service infrastructure and reliable service delivery. To the extent we are unable, for cost or other reasons, to effectively increase the capacity of our platform, continue to process transactions at fast enough speeds, and support emerging advertising formats or services preferred by buyers, our revenue will suffer. We expect to continue to invest in our platform to meet increasing demand. Such investment may negatively affect our profitability and results of operations.
Our belief that there is significant and growing demand for private marketplace solutions may be inaccurate, and we may not realize a return from our investments in that area.
We believe there is significant and growing demand for PMPs, and we have made significant investments to meet that demand and grow our market share of PMPs. Currently, the majority of CTV transactions are executed through PMPs and we expect PMPs to grow as a percentage of revenue in mobile and desktop as well. PMPs may involve lower fees than we can charge for OMP, which may not be fully offset by anticipated higher CPMs. In some cases, we have experienced fee pressure as we have built out our PMP offering, and we expect this fee pressure to increase as more competitors, including new entrants as well as sellers themselves, build their own technology and infrastructure to enable PMPs. Even if the market for these solutions develops as we anticipate, and our buyers and sellers embrace our offerings, the positive effect of our PMP offerings on our results of operations may be offset or negated if PMPs cannibalize our open marketplace transaction volumes, by similar offerings from our competitors, or through other adverse developments.
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We have invested heavily in our mobile technology, which poses additional risks that did not affect our legacy desktop display business. To the extent our access to mobile inventory is limited by third-party technology or lack of direct relationships with mobile sellers, our ability to grow our business will be impaired.
Due to increased usage of mobile devices and resulting migration of advertising spending to mobile platforms, we have invested heavily in our mobile technology and are relying on our mobile offerings to fuel our continued growth. Our success in the mobile channel depends upon the ability of our technology solution to provide advertising for most mobile-connected devices, as well as the major operating systems or Internet browsers that run on them and the thousands of applications that are downloaded onto them. The design of mobile devices and operating systems, applications, or Internet browsers is controlled by third parties. These parties frequently introduce new devices and applications, and from time to time they may introduce new operating systems or Internet browsers or modify existing ones in ways that may significantly affect our business, such as by providing ad-blocking capabilities or by limiting access to Internet user data. Network carriers may also affect the ability to access specified content on mobile devices. To the extent our solution is unable to work on these devices, operating systems, applications, or Internet browsers for any reason, our ability to generate revenue through mobile advertising is significantly impaired, and that impairment may be material.
We expect mobile applications to be the largest driver of our mobile business. Many mobile apps utilize software development kits, or SDKs, and other proprietary technology of third parties, such as aggregators, and it is those third parties, not the application providers themselves, that contract with us to provide exchange services to help monetize the inventory. Due to this consolidation, if our relationships with these third parties decline or are terminated, it may result in a larger than usual loss of access to mobile inventory. Any rapid and/or significant decline in the availability of mobile inventory can adversely affect our mobile advertising spend and growth prospects.
Fee issues have in the past and could in the future have a material adverse effect on our business.
A majority of our revenue comes from DSP buyers purchasing advertising inventory made available by sellers on our platform. We experience requests from buyers for discounts, fee concessions or revisions, rebates or other forms of consideration, refunds, and greater levels of pricing transparency and specificity, in some cases as a condition to maintain the relationship or to increase the amount of advertising spend that the buyer sends to our platform. In addition, we charge fees to sellers for use of our technology, typically as a percentage of the cost of media, and we may decide to offer discounts or other pricing concessions in order to attract more inventory or demand, or to compete effectively with other providers that have different or lower pricing structures and may be able to undercut our pricing due to greater scale or other factors. Our revenue, take rate (our fee as a percentage of advertising spend), the value of our business, and the price of our stock could be adversely affected if we cannot maintain and grow our revenue and profitability through volume increases that compensate for price reductions, or if we are forced to make significant fee concessions, rebates, or refunds, or if buyers reduce spending with us or sellers reduce inventory available through our exchange due to fee disputes or pricing issues.
Our take rates may be difficult to forecast and may decrease in future periods; any decrease in our take rates may result in a decrease in our revenue notwithstanding an increase in the amount of spend transacted through our platform.
We generate revenue through our platform on a transactional basis where we are paid by a publisher each time an impression is monetized on our platform. Typically, this fee is structured as a percentage of advertising spend that the publisher receives for its inventory. Our take rate varies by publisher and transaction type. For instance, our take rate tends to be lower for PMP transactions compared to open auction, and tends to be lower on CTV transactions compared to other channels. We may also negotiate lower take rates with large sellers to win additional business or share of inventory, in particular in CTV.
Even if we are able to accurately forecast the anticipated total advertising spend transacted by buyers across our platform, we may have limited visibility regarding the revenue we will generate because we do not control what publisher inventory is purchased by a buyer. For substantially all transactions executed through our platform, our revenue is recognized net of any inventory costs that we remit to sellers. As a result, a decrease in our take rate could cause our revenue to decrease notwithstanding an increase in the total spend transacted through our seller platform.
We have a history of losses and we face many risks that may prevent us from achieving or sustaining profitability in the future.
We reported net losses of $53.4 million and $25.5 million during the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. As of December 31, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $394.5 million. We have implemented strategic plans designed to improve our financial performance and continue to increase revenue, and have taken steps to reduce unnecessary expenses and redirect spending to areas we expect to produce higher growth; however, these plans and steps may ultimately prove to be unsuccessful.
Notwithstanding these measures, and in light of the overall decline in advertising spend experienced in 2020, revenue may continue to decrease due to competitive pressures, maturation of our business, or other factors, and additional cost-reduction measures may be required even as we must continue to increase investment in technology in response to industry
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developments and to retain competitiveness. We may not be able to sustain growth or to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.
As a result of various factors, our operating results have in the past and may in the future fluctuate significantly, be difficult to predict, and fall below analysts' and investors' expectations.
Our operating results are difficult to predict, particularly because we generally do not have long-term contracts with buyers or sellers. We have experienced significant variations in revenue and operating results from period to period, and operating results may continue to fluctuate and be difficult to predict due to a number of factors, including:
•seasonality in demand for digital advertising, as many advertisers devote a disproportionate amount of their advertising budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year to coincide with increased holiday purchasing, and advertising inventory in the fourth quarter may be more expensive due to increased demand for advertising inventory;
•changes in pricing of advertising inventory or pricing for our solution and our competitors' offerings, including potential further reductions in our pricing and overall take rate as a result of competitive pressure, changes in supply, improvements in technology and extension of automation to higher-value inventory, uncertainty regarding rate of adoption, changes in the allocation of demand spend by buyers, changes in revenue mix, auction dynamics, pricing discussions or negotiations with clients and potential clients, header bidding and other factors;
•diversification of our revenue mix to include new services, some of which may have lower pricing than our historic lower-value inventory business or may cannibalize existing business;
•the addition or loss of buyers or sellers;
•general economic conditions and the economic health of our current and prospective sellers and buyers;
•changes in the advertising strategies or budgets or financial condition of advertisers;
•the performance of our technology and the cost, timeliness, and results of our technology innovation efforts;
•advertising technology and digital media industry conditions and the overall demand for advertising, or changes and uncertainty in the regulatory environment for us or buyers or sellers, including with respect to privacy regulation;
•the introduction of new technologies or service offerings by our competitors and market acceptance of such technologies or services;
•the phasing out of third-party cookies throughout the industry;
•our level of expenses, including investment required to support our technology development, scale our technology infrastructure and business expansion efforts, including acquisitions, hiring and capital expenditures, or expenses related to litigation;
•the impact of changes in our stock price on valuation of stock-based compensation or other instruments that are marked to market;
•the effectiveness of our financial and information technology infrastructure and controls;
•geopolitical and social factors, such as concerns regarding negative, unstable or changing economic conditions in the countries and regions where we operate, global and regional recessions, political instability, and trade disputes;
•foreign exchange rate fluctuations; and
•changes in accounting policies and principles and the significant judgments and estimates made by management in the application of these policies and principles.
Because significant portions of our expenses are relatively fixed, variation in our quarterly revenue can cause significant variations in operating results and resulting stock price volatility from period to period. Period-to-period comparisons of our historical results of operations are not necessarily meaningful, and historical operating results may not be indicative of future performance. If our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, or below any guidance we may provide to the market, the price of our common stock could decline substantially.
Risks Related to the Advertising Technology Industry, Market, and Competition
Our revenue and operating results are highly dependent on the overall demand for advertising. Factors that affect the amount of advertising spending, such as economic downturns, can make it difficult to predict our revenue and could adversely affect our business.
Our business depends on the overall demand for advertising and on the economic health of our current and prospective sellers and buyers. If advertisers reduce their overall advertising spending, our revenue and results of operations are directly affected. Various macro factors could cause advertisers to reduce their advertising budgets, including adverse economic conditions and general uncertainty about economic recovery or growth, particularly in North America and Europe, where we do most of our business, the occurrence of a pandemic or other health crisis, instability in political or market conditions generally,
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imposition of digital service taxes, and any changes in favorable tax treatment of advertising expenses and the deductibility thereof. Reductions in inventory due to loss of sellers make our solution less robust and attractive to buyers.
The digital advertising market is relatively new. If this market develops more slowly or differently than we expect, our business, growth prospects and financial condition would be adversely affected.
Our future growth will be constrained if we are not able to adapt successfully to market evolution. In addition, the success of our efforts to advance new solutions for increased advertising automation will depend upon adoption of our solution by personnel at buyers and sellers in lieu of their traditional methods of order placement. It is difficult to predict adoption rates, demand for our solution, the future growth rate and size of the digital advertising solutions market or the entry of competitive solutions. Any expansion of the market for digital advertising solutions depends on a number of factors, including social and regulatory acceptance, the growth of the overall digital advertising market and the growth of specific sectors including social, mobile, video, and out-of-home as well as the actual or perceived technological viability, quality, cost, performance and value associated with emerging digital advertising solutions. If digital marketing does not develop in the manner we expect, our business and financial condition would be adversely affected.
We operate in an intensely competitive market that includes companies that have greater financial, technical and marketing resources than we do.
We face intense competition in the marketplace. We compete for advertising spending against competitors that, in some cases, are also buyers and/or sellers on our platform. We also compete for supply of advertising inventory against a variety of competitors. Some of our existing and potential competitors are better established, benefit from greater name recognition, may have offerings and technology that we do not have or have significantly more financial, technical, sales, and marketing resources than we do. In addition, some competitors, particularly those with greater scale or a more diversified revenue base and a broader offering, have greater flexibility than we do to compete aggressively on the basis of price and other contract terms, or to compete with us by including in their product offerings services that we may not provide. Some existing and potential buyers have their own relationships with sellers or are seeking to establish such relationships, and many sellers are investing in capabilities that enable them to connect more effectively directly with buyers. Our business suffers to the extent that buyers and sellers purchase and sell advertising inventory directly from one another or through intermediaries other than us, reducing the amount of advertising spend on our platform. New or stronger competitors may emerge through acquisitions and industry consolidation or through development of disruptive technologies. If our offerings are not perceived as competitively differentiated, we could lose clients, market share or be compelled to reduce our prices, making it more difficult to grow our business profitably.
There has been rapid evolution and consolidation in the advertising technology industry, and we expect these trends to continue, thereby increasing the capabilities and competitive posture of larger companies, particularly those that are already dominant in various ways, and enabling new or stronger competitors to emerge. There is a finite number of large buyers and sellers in our target markets, and any consolidation of buyers or sellers may give the resulting enterprises greater bargaining power or result in the loss of buyers and sellers that use our platform, and thus reduce our potential base of buyers and sellers, each of which would lead to erosion of our revenue.
As technology continues to improve and market factors continue to attract investment, competition and pricing pressure may increase and market saturation may change the competitive landscape in favor of larger competitors with greater scale and broader offerings, including those that can afford to spend more than we can to grow more quickly and strengthen their competitive position. In addition, our competitors or potential competitors may adopt certain aspects of our business model, which could reduce our ability to differentiate our solutions.
For all of these reasons, we may not be able to compete successfully against our current and future competitors.
Risks Related to Our Collection, Use and Disclosure of Data
Our business depends on our ability to collect and use data to deliver advertisements, and to disclose data relating to the performance of advertisements. Any limitation imposed on our collection, use or disclosure of this data could significantly diminish the value of our solution and cause us to lose sellers, buyers, and revenue. Consumer tools, regulatory restrictions and technological limitations all threaten our ability to use and disclose data.
The more informed advertising is about its audience, the more valuable it is. Programmatic advertising enables more precise audience targeting based on the identity and actions of the user. Targeted advertising is generally more effective and valuable for buyers than other types of advertising, resulting in more revenue for sellers. In order to target advertising, we and our clients must be permitted to use data in a variety of ways. Our ability to collect, use, and share data about advertising purchase and sale transactions and user behavior and interaction with content is critical to the value of our services, and any limitation on our data practices could impair our ability to deliver effective solutions to our clients. Any restriction on the types
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of data we collect could make placement of advertising through our solution less valuable, with commensurate reductions in revenue.
Internet users can, with increasing ease, implement practices or technologies that may limit our ability, or that of our sellers, buyers and business partners, to collect data. For example, users may delete or block the use of the cookies used to collect data, including through their browser or mobile device settings. Internet users may also download "ad blocking" software that prevents certain cookies from being stored on a user’s computer or mobile device, including to prevent the display of targeted advertisements. In addition, most widely used web browsers allow users to send "Do Not Track" signals to indicate that they do not wish to have their web usage tracked, while many device manufacturers and operating systems are increasingly promoting features that allow users to disable the collection of data. Even if ad blockers do not ultimately have a material impact on our business, investor concerns about ad blockers could cause our stock price to decline.
In addition, new laws and regulations, such as the GDPR and CCPA, restrict the ability to collect and process certain types of user data, including, in the case of GDPR, requiring user consent or another legal basis in order to collect or process personal data and, in the case of CCPA, giving the user a right to opt out of the collection or processing of personal data. To the extent sellers are unable to obtain valid consent or otherwise provide a legal basis for collecting and processing personal data, it would impair the ability to deliver targeted advertisements on their inventory.
Further, much of the data we collect and use belongs to our buyers or sellers, and we receive their permission to use it. Although our sellers and buyers generally permit us to aggregate and use data from advertising placements, subject to certain restrictions, sellers or buyers might decide to restrict our collection or use of their data. There could be various reasons for this, including perceptions by buyers that their data can be used by sellers to extract higher prices for impressions, or perceptions by sellers that their data can be used by buyers to bid tactically to reduce pricing for impressions. As consumers continue to increase their use of digital technology and to incorporate multiple devices into their lives, linking and using data across such devices will become increasingly important. Various challenges affect our ability to link data relating to discrete devices or browsers, including different technologies, increased user awareness and sensitivity regarding use of data about their device usage, and evolving regulatory and self-regulatory standards. These challenges may slow growth, and if we are not able to cope with these challenges as effectively as other companies, we will be competitively disadvantaged. Any limitation on our ability to collect data about user behavior and interaction with content could make it more difficult for us to deliver effective solutions that meet the needs of sellers and buyers.
If cookies are replaced by alternative tracking mechanisms, our performance may decline and we may lose buyers and revenue.
Industry participants in the advertising technology ecosystem have taken or may take action to eliminate or restrict the use of cookies and other identifiers, and we expect the use of third-party cookies to be largely phased out by 2022. For instance, Google has announced plans to fully eliminate the use of third-party cookies, while Apple has further restricted the use of mobile identifiers on its devices. In the absence of third-party cookies, it is possible that these or other companies in our ecosystem may rely on proprietary algorithms or statistical methods to track web users without cookies, or may utilize log-in credentials entered by users, to track web usage, including usage across multiple devices, without cookies. Alternatively, such companies may build different and potentially proprietary user tracking methods into their widely-used web browsers. While these new identification solutions will likely provide some level of consistency and compatibility with our platform, they are unreleased and unproven, and will require substantial development and commercial changes for us to support. There is also further risk that the changes will disproportionately benefit the owners of these platforms or the large walled gardens that have access to large amounts of first party data. Even if cookies are effectively replaced by open industry-wide tracking standards rather than proprietary standards, we may still incur substantial re-engineering costs to replace cookies with these new technologies. This may also diminish the quality or value of our services to buyers if such new technologies do not provide us with the quality or timeliness of the data that we currently generate from cookies.
Our belief that the elimination of third-party cookies will lead to an increased use of first-party publisher segments may be incorrect.
We believe that the elimination of third party cookies has the potential to shift the programmatic ecosystem from an identity model powered by buyers that are able to aggregate and target audiences through cookies to one enabled by sellers that have direct relationships with consumers and are therefore better positioned to obtain user data and consent for implementing first party identifiers. While we believe that our platform and scale position us well to provide the infrastructure and tools needed for a publisher-centric identity model to succeed, there is no guarantee that our efforts will lead to an increase of the use of first-party publisher segments in the ecosystem. It is also possible that the increased use of first-party publisher segments will disproportionately benefit sellers or the large walled gardens that have access to large amounts of first party data. Additionally, these changes could create some variability in our revenue across certain buyers or sellers, depending on the timing of changes and developed solutions, and even if there is an increase in the proliferation of first-party publisher segments, we may still incur substantial re-engineering costs to optimize our solution for use with such segments.
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Risks Related to Regulation
Legislation and regulation of digital businesses, including privacy and data protection regimes, could create unexpected additional costs, subject us to enforcement actions for compliance failures, or cause us to change our technology solution or business model, which may have an adverse effect on the demand for our solution.
Many local, state, federal, and international laws and regulations apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer, and other processing of data collected from and about consumers and devices, and the regulatory framework for privacy issues is evolving worldwide. Various U.S. and foreign governments, consumer agencies, self-regulatory bodies, and public advocacy groups have called for or implemented new regulation directed at the digital advertising industry in particular, and we expect to see an increase in legislation and regulation related to the collection and use of data to target advertisements and communicate with consumers. Such legislation or regulation could affect the costs of doing business online and may adversely affect the demand for or the effectiveness and value of our solution. Some of our competitors may have more access to lobbyists or governmental officials and may use such access to effect statutory or regulatory changes in a manner that commercially harms us while favoring their solutions.
Various federal privacy bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress recently and a number of states, including California, have passed or are considering privacy bills. These regulations may place significant restrictions on the collection and use of certain types of data used for behavioral advertising. The FTC has issued guidance on how companies should apply privacy principles to tracking and delivering targeted advertisements to consumers across multiple devices. The FTC has also adopted revisions to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that expand liability for the collection of information (including certain device information such as persistent identifiers) by operators of websites and other online services that are directed to children or that otherwise use (for certain purposes) information collected from or about children.
Recently, California passed two privacy laws broadly regulating business’ processing of personal information, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 ("CCPA") and the California Privacy Rights Act ("CPRA"). The CCPA, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, is the most comprehensive data privacy regulation to date in the United States, and could be the precursor to other similar legislation in other states or at the federal level. The CCPA defines personal information in a way that captures the types of data that we collect, such as device identifiers and IP addresses. Under the CCPA, California residents have new privacy rights (including rights of access and deletion), which bear similarity to some of the data subject rights granted to EU residents under the GDPR. In addition, the CCPA gives California residents the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information or to opt in to such sales, in the case of data relating to minors). The CCPA defines "sale" broadly, which could be interpreted to include typical advertising technology activities; this opt-out right may impact the ability of ad tech companies to provide services to their customers. The law establishes a new privacy framework for covered businesses, imposing additional compliance obligations on sellers and ad tech companies. Interpretation of the requirements remains unclear due to ambiguities in the regulations and a lack of enforcement actions to date. The California Attorney General issued final regulations implementing the CCPA that became enforceable in 2020. Additional modifications were subsequently proposed, though those modifications have yet to be finalized.
The recently-passed CPRA will take effect in January 2023 and will impose additional notice and opt out obligations on the digital advertising space, including an obligation to provide an opt-out for behavioral advertising. It will also give the Attorney General broad rule making authority to issue regulations that could have additional impacts on our business. The CPRA, like the CCPA, will cause us to incur additional compliance costs and may impose additional restrictions on us and on our industry partners.
The CCPA and CPRA may precipitate additional privacy regulation by federal, state and local governments, which may increase our compliance costs and strain our technical capabilities, and which may conflict with each other. If we are unable to comply with the CCPA, CPRA, or other related legislation in the future, we may be subject to regulatory or private investigations, and if we are unable to use information for behavioral advertising as we have in the past, our business could be materially affected.
In the European Economic Area ("EEA") and the United Kingdom ("UK"), the General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2016/679 ("GDPR"), has now been in effect for more than two years. A key feature of the GDPR is that it treats much of the end-user information that is critical to programmatic digital advertising as "personal data" and therefore subject to significant conditions and restrictions on its collection and use. Without this end-user information, the value of programmatic advertising inventory diminishes, resulting in lower demand and prices, and potentially less advertising spend and revenue for us and other industry participants. If European sellers react by choosing to monetize their content through non-advertising-based methods (such as paid subscriptions), or reduce use of personal data subject to the GDPR in order to reduce compliance cost and risk, the volume and value of impressions available through our exchange would decrease, with potentially significant adverse consequences for our business.
The GDPR also sets out higher potential liabilities for certain data protection violations and creates a greater compliance burden for us in the course of delivering our solution in Europe. Compliance stakes are high because penalties for violation of the law can reach up to the greater of 20 million Euros or 4% of total worldwide annual turnover (revenue).
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Moreover, the regulatory climate in Europe, in particular, has grown increasingly unfavorable and we anticipate increased regulatory scrutiny on the digital advertising industry as a whole.
Further, many governments are restricting the transmission or storage of information about individuals beyond their national borders. Such restrictions could, depending upon their scope, limit our ability to utilize technology infrastructure consolidation, redundancy, and load-balancing techniques, resulting in increased infrastructure costs, decreased operational efficiencies and performance, and increased risk of system failure.
These laws and regulations are continually evolving, not always clear, and not always consistent across the jurisdictions in which we do business. Any failure to protect, and comply with applicable laws and regulations or industry standards applicable to, personal data or other data relating to consumers could result in enforcement action against us, including fines, imprisonment of our officers, and public censure, claims for damages by consumers and other affected individuals, damage to our reputation, and loss of goodwill.
Recent rulings from the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield as a lawful means for transferring personal data from the European Union to the United States; this introduces increased uncertainty and may require us to change our EEA and UK data practices and/or rely on an alternative legally sufficient compliance measure.
The GDPR generally prohibits the transfer of personal data of EEA and UK subjects outside of the European Union and the UK to countries whose laws do not ensure an adequate level of protection, unless a lawful data transfer solution has been implemented. On July 16, 2020, in a case known as "Schrems II," the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") ruled on the validity of two of the primary data transfer solutions. The first method, EU-U.S. Privacy Shield operated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, was declared invalid as a legal mechanism to transfer data from the EEA and UK to the U.S. As a result, despite the fact that we have certified our compliance to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, this mechanism can no longer be used as a lawful means to transfer EEA and UK data to us in the U.S. For the time being, the Department of Commerce continues to operate the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, however, and if we fail to comply with the Privacy Shield requirements, we risk investigation and sanction by U.S. regulatory authorities, including the Federal Trade Commission. Such investigation could cost us significant time and resources, and could potentially result in fines, criminal prosecution, or other penalties.
The second mechanism, Standard Contractual Clauses ("SCCs"), an alternative transfer measure that we also offer to our EEA and UK customers for extra-EEA and UK data transfers, was upheld as a valid legal mechanism for transnational data transfer. However, the ruling requires that EEA and UK organizations seeking to rely on the SCCs to export data out of the EEA and UK to ensure the data is protected to a standard that is "essentially equivalent" to that under the GDPR including, where necessary, by taking "supplementary measures" to protect the data. It remains unclear what "supplementary measures" must be taken to allow the lawful transfer of personal data to the United States, and it is possible that EEA and UK data protection authorities may determine that there are no supplementary measures that can legitimize data transfers from the EEA and the UK to the U.S. For the time being, we will rely on SCCs for transfers of EEA and UK personal data to the U.S. and explore what "supplementary measures" can be implemented to protect such personal data that is transferred to us in the United States. We may also need to restructure our data export practices as a result of Brexit. At the end of 2020, European Union law ceased to apply to the UK, and the UK and EU are currently working under a temporary cooperation agreement to establish rules governing the data flow between the UK and EEA.
The GDPR and changes in U.S. laws impose new requirements for end user consent or opt-out that are not yet well understood.
End-user consent to data collection through device access (including the placement of cookies) has been required for some time under the European Union Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC), commonly referred to as the "ePrivacy Directive," but the GDPR has added complexity and risk regarding the obligations to obtain valid consent.
End-user consent is difficult for ad tech intermediaries like us to obtain because we do not have direct relationships with such end users, so we have historically relied upon sellers to obtain consent for use of our technology. To the extent any seller does not adequately satisfy its consent obligations for our technology, we may face regulatory risk. Further, emerging regulatory guidance in the EU has challenged this method of obtaining consent. To the extent we (and/or our buyers) are required to obtain or confirm consent directly from end users, our ability to use cookies or access devices within applicable jurisdictions may become significantly restricted.
In 2018, IAB Europe released a tool, the Transparency and Consent Framework (the "TCF"), in order to assist sellers, advertisers and advertising technology providers, with the process of obtaining consent from end users in accordance with the GDPR (and also to provide end users with greater transparency in the advertising chain). There is limited guidance regarding proper implementation of the tool and some sellers and ad tech providers may not be using the tool or interpreting consent signals correctly. The TCF continues to evolve and we will need to devote internal resources to support any additional requirements imposed by the TCF (and possibly other consent tools). It is not yet clear whether the TCF (or any other) consent tool will be accepted by regulators as appropriate consent mechanisms.
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In the US, some government regulators and privacy advocates have suggested creating a "Do Not Track" standard that would allow Internet users to express a preference, independent of cookie settings in their browser, not to have their online browsing activities tracked. "Do Not Track" has garnered renewed interest in light of the CCPA. The CCPA regulations contemplate browser-based or similar "do not sell" signals. Further, the CPRA contemplates the use of technical opt-outs for the sale and sharing of personal information for advertising purposes as well as to opt out of the use of sensitive information for advertising purposes.
Legal standards and regulatory guidance will continue to evolve. National regulators in the UK and EU are evolving their guidance on the use of advertising technologies and compliance with the GDPR and ePrivacy Directive. This guidance may be burdensome or inconsistent across countries, and present challenges to the way we operate. Some regulators are undertaking enforcement investigations into advertising technology companies, and the outcome of these investigations may present risks to our business.
As a result of all of the factors set forth above, our or our clients’ ability to serve target advertisements may become significantly impaired or complicated in certain jurisdictions.
In Europe, it remains unclear whether certain legal bases for data processing are permitted for behavioral advertising.
The GDPR sets forth six alternative legal bases for processing personal data, but only two are relevant to ad tech: consent by the data subject and "legitimate interests," which means that "processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject." We generally rely upon legitimate interests. There is minimal guidance on the factors that would override any legitimate interest for processing. Some EU regulators or courts may conclude that the processing of personal data for the purposes of behavioral advertising does not satisfy the legitimate interests of the controller, or that such interests do not outweigh the privacy rights of end users, even with respect to ad tech parties that only collect pseudonymous personal data. Unavailability of this basis for processing end users’ personal data would require us to obtain end-user consent for processing under the GDPR, which may not be possible for us, or other ad tech intermediaries, without changes to the ad tech business that would be difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and perhaps unattainable. These complexities are compounded by the ability of different national and state governmental authorities within the EU to adopt differing interpretative and enforcement approaches to the law.
Legal uncertainty and industry unpreparedness may mean substantial disruption and inefficiency, demand constraints, and reduced inventory supply and value.
Some sellers may be unprepared to comply with evolving regulatory guidance under US and foreign privacy laws, and therefore may remove personal data from their inventory before passing it into the bid stream, which would reduce the value of the inventory to buyers. Even well-prepared sellers and buyers will be confronted with difficult choices and administrative and technical hurdles to implement their privacy compliance programs and integrate with multiple other parties in the ecosystem. Further, compliance program design and implementation will be an ongoing process as understanding of the new law increases and industry compliance standards evolve. The resulting process friction could result in substantial inefficiency and loss of inventory and demand, as well as increased burdens upon our organization as we seek to assist clients and adapt our own technology and processes as necessary to comply with the law and adapt to industry practice. The uncertain regulatory environment caused by changes to privacy laws discussed in the sections above may benefit large, integrated competitors like Google, Facebook, Comcast Verizon, AT&T and Amazon, which have greater compliance resources and can take advantage of their direct relationships with end users to secure consents from, and offer necessary choices to, end users that we and other intermediaries without direct user relationships are less able to obtain under current industry conditions.
We are subject to regulation with respect to political advertising, which lacks clarity and uniformity.
We are subject to regulation with respect to political advertising activities, which are governed by various federal and state laws in the U.S., and national and provincial laws worldwide. Online political advertising laws are rapidly evolving and in certain jurisdictions we have compliance requirements with respect to political ads delivered on our platform. In some jurisdictions we may determine not to serve political advertisements due to uncertainty around these requirements and potential burdens of compliance. In addition, our sellers may impose restrictions on receiving political advertising. The lack of uniformity and increasing compliance requirements around political advertising may adversely impact the amount of political advertising spent through our platform, increase our operating and compliance costs, and subject us to potential liability from regulatory agencies.
Failure to comply with industry self-regulation could harm our brand, reputation, and our business.
In addition to compliance with government regulations, we voluntarily participate in trade associations and industry self-regulatory groups that promulgate best practices or codes of conduct addressing privacy and the provision of digital advertising. If we encounter difficulties abiding by these principles, we may be subject to negative publicity, as well as investigation and litigation by governmental authorities, self-regulatory bodies or other accountability groups, buyers, sellers, or other private parties. Any such action against us could be costly and time consuming, require us to change our business
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practices, divert management's attention and our resources, and be damaging to our reputation and our business. In addition, we could be adversely affected by new or altered self-regulatory guidelines that are inconsistent with our practices.
Risks Related to Our Relationships with Buyers and Sellers and Other Strategic Relationships
We rely on buyers and sellers to abide by contractual requirements and relevant laws, rules, and regulations when using our solution. The acts or omissions of buyers or sellers, or our own failure to meet advertising and inventory content standards and provide services that our buyers and sellers trust, could harm our brand and reputation and those of our partners, and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.
The buyers and sellers engaging in transactions through our platform impose various requirements upon each other, and they and the underlying advertisers are subject to regulatory requirements by governments and standards bodies applicable to their activities. Though we contractually require buyers and sellers to abide by relevant laws, rules and regulations, as well as restrictions by their counterparties, when transacting on our platform, we do not provide or control the content of the advertisements that we serve or the content of the websites providing the inventory, and there are many circumstances in which it is difficult or impossible for us to monitor or evaluate the compliance of our buyers and sellers. If buyers or sellers fail to abide by relevant laws, rules and regulations, or contract requirements, we could potentially face liability for such misuse.
In addition, both advertisers and inventory suppliers are concerned about being associated with content they consider inappropriate, competitive or inconsistent with their brands, or illegal, and they are hesitant to spend money or make inventory available, respectively, without some guarantee of brand security. Buyers increasingly require us to accept liability for inventory quality and sellers increasingly require us to accept liability for ad content. Consequently, our reputation depends in part on providing services that our buyers and sellers trust, and we have contractual obligations to meet content and inventory standards. We contractually prohibit the misuse of our platform by our buyers and sellers and actively monitor inventory against our quality guidelines. Despite such efforts, we may provide access to inventory that is objectionable to our buyers or serve advertising that contains objectionable content, which could harm our or our clients’ brand and reputation, decrease their trust in our platform, and negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. Furthermore, we may receive public pressure to discontinue working with certain sellers or buyers on our platform.
Our contracts with buyers and sellers are generally not exclusive, may be terminated upon relatively short notice, and generally do not require minimum volumes or long-term commitments. If buyers or sellers representing a significant portion of the demand or inventory in our marketplace decide to materially reduce the use of our solution, we could experience an immediate and significant decline in our revenue and profitability and harm to our business.
Generally, our buyers and sellers are not obligated to provide us with any minimum volumes of business, may do business with our competitors as well as with us, may reduce or cancel their business with us or terminate our contracts without penalty, and may bypass us and transact directly with each other or through other intermediaries that compete with us. Accordingly, our business is highly vulnerable to changes in the macro environment, price competition, and development of new or more compelling offerings by our competitors, which could reduce business generally or motivate buyers or sellers to migrate to competitors’ offerings.
Sellers and buyers may seek to change the terms on which they do business with us, or allocate their advertising inventory or demand to our competitors who provide advertising demand and supply to them on more favorable terms or whose offerings are considered more beneficial. Supply of advertising inventory is also limited for some sellers, such as special sites or new technologies, and sellers may request higher prices, fixed price arrangements or guarantees that we cannot provide as effectively as our competitors, or that would reduce the profitability of that business. In addition, sellers sometimes place significant restrictions on the sale of their advertising inventory, such as strict security requirements, limitations on data sharing, prohibitions on advertisements from specific advertisers or specific industries, and restrictions on the use of specified creative content or format. Finally, with the proliferation of header bidding, sellers' inventory is available for purchase through multiple exchanges simultaneously. Buyers, in turn, are free to direct their spend to us or one or more of our competitors, and increasingly are seeking price concessions, rebates, or other consideration to direct more spend towards us.
We serve many buyers and sellers, but certain large buyers and sellers have accounted for and will continue to account for a disproportionate share of business transacted through our solution. In 2020 there were two buyers of advertising inventory that indirectly contributed to approximately 40% of revenue through their buying activity from sellers on our platform. If a buyer or group of buyers representing a significant portion of the demand in our marketplace, or a seller or group of sellers representing a significant portion of the inventory in our marketplace decides to materially reduce use of our solutions, it could cause an immediate and significant decline in our revenue and profitability and harm to our business. In addition, loss of substantial inventory or demand could degrade our marketplace. Loss of major DSP sources of demand could adversely affect bid density or pricing in our auctions, and reduction in fees if we are not able to redirect inventory to other demand sources. Loss of important unique inventory could reduce fees from demand that cannot be shifted to other sellers and make it harder to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. The number of large media buyers and sellers in the market is finite, and it could
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be difficult for us to replace the losses from any buyers or sellers whose relationships with us diminish or terminate. Additionally, if we overestimate future usage, we may incur additional expenses in adding infrastructure without a commensurate increase in revenue, which would harm our profitability and other operating results.
Because of these factors, we seek to expand and diversify our client relationships. In particular, as part of our strategy to increase the volume of advertising inventory on our exchange, we are continuing relationships with aggregators of inventory and with large sources of supply that have their own monetization capabilities but also allow third parties to connect to their exchanges and bid on their inventory. These relationships represent additional risks in terms of inventory quality, transaction discrepancies, and collections, and may be less profitable because we may be required to compensate these partners or share the fees available for intermediaries in these transactions, and may incur higher serving costs relative to revenue.
We must provide value to both buyers and sellers of advertising without being perceived as favoring one over the other or being perceived as competing with them through our service offerings.
We are interposed between buyers and sellers, and to be successful, we must continue to find ways of providing value to both without being perceived as favoring one at the expense of the other. For example, our proprietary auction algorithms, which are designed to improve auction outcomes, influence the allocation and pricing of impressions and must do so in ways that add value to both buyers and sellers. Continued technological evolution in the availability and use of more data to inform buying and selling decisions necessitates that we, as an intermediary, use data in a manner that complies with the expectations of both our seller and buyer clients. Furthermore, because new business models continue to emerge, we must constantly adapt our relationship with buyers and sellers and how we market ourselves to each. Consistent with our goal of connecting buyers and sellers, we seek to grow our connections to each, and we must take care that our deeper connections with buyers, on the one hand, or sellers, on the other hand, do not come at the expense of the other's interests. In addition, as our own capabilities evolve, we may be perceived by clients, particularly buyers, as competing with them. If we fail to balance our clients' interests appropriately, our ability to provide a full suite of services and our growth prospects may be compromised.
We rely on technological intermediaries such as DSPs to purchase advertising on behalf of advertisers. Such buyers may have or develop high-risk credit profiles or pay slowly, which may result in credit risk to us or require additional working capital to fund our accounts payable. In addition, direct billing arrangements between buyers and sellers may result in unfavorable fee dynamics and increased working capital demands.
Generally, we invoice and collect from buyers the full purchase price for impressions they have purchased, retain our fees, and remit the balance to sellers. However, in some cases, we may be required or choose to pay sellers for impressions delivered before we have collected, or even if we are unable to collect, from the buyer of those impressions. There can be no assurances that we will not experience bad debt in the future, and write-offs for bad debt could have a materially negative effect on our results of operations for the periods in which the write-offs occur. In addition, we attempt to coordinate collections from our buyers so as to fund our payment obligations to our sellers. However, some buyers and sellers may require direct billing and collection arrangements between themselves, and some providers of header bidding wrappers or other downstream decisioning mechanisms in which we participate (such as Google EB) may control billing and collection for transactions we win through their platforms. Further, growth and increased competitive pressure in the digital advertising industry is causing advertisers and buyers to become more demanding, resulting in overall increased focus by all industry participants on pricing, transparency, and cash and collection cycles. Some buyers have experienced financial pressures that have motivated them to slow the timing of their payments to us. If buyers slow their payments to us or our cash collections are significantly diminished as a result of these dynamics, our revenue and/or cash flow could be adversely affected and we may need to use working capital to fund our accounts payable pending collection from the buyers. This may result in additional costs and cause us to forgo or defer other more productive uses of that working capital.
Our sales efforts with buyers and sellers may require significant time and expense and may not yield the results we seek.
Attracting new buyers and sellers and increasing our business with existing buyers and sellers involves substantial time and expense, and we may not be successful in our efforts. We may spend substantial time and effort educating buyers and sellers about our offerings, including providing demonstrations and comparisons against other available solutions. This process can be costly and time-consuming, and is complicated by us having to spend time integrating our solution with software of buyers and sellers. Because our solution may be less familiar in some markets outside the United States, the time and expense involved with attracting, educating and integrating buyers and sellers in international markets may be even greater than in the United States. If we are not successful in targeting, supporting and streamlining our sales processes, our ability to grow our business may be adversely affected. In addition, because of competitive market conditions and negotiating leverage enjoyed by large buyers and sellers, we are sometimes forced to choose between loss of business or contracting on terms that allocate more risk to us than we would prefer to accept.
Our business relationships expose us to risk of substantial liability for contract breach, violation of laws and regulations, intellectual property infringement and other losses, and our contractual indemnities and limitations of liability may not protect us adequately.
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Our agreements with sellers, buyers and other third parties typically obligate us to provide indemnity and defense for losses resulting from claims of intellectual property infringement, damages to property or persons, business losses or other liabilities. Generally, these indemnity and defense obligations relate to our own business operations, obligations and acts or omissions. However, under some circumstances, we agree to indemnify and defend contract counterparties against losses resulting from their own business operations, obligations and acts or omissions, or the business operations, obligations and acts or omissions of third parties. For example, because our business interposes us between buyers and sellers in various ways, buyers often require us to indemnify them against acts and omissions of sellers, and sellers often require us to indemnify them against acts and omissions of buyers. Large indemnity obligations, or obligations to third parties not adequately covered by the indemnity obligations of our contract counterparties, could expose us to significant costs.
Our solution relies on third-party open source software components. Failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open source software licenses could expose us to liabilities, and the combination of certain open source software with code that we develop could compromise the proprietary nature of our solution.
Our solution utilizes software licensed to us by third-party authors under "open source" licenses. The use of open source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. If we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software to the public. This would allow our competitors to create similar solutions with lower development effort and time and ultimately put us at a competitive disadvantage.
The terms of many open source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. courts, and there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in a way that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on us. Moreover, we cannot guarantee that our processes for controlling our use of open source software will be effective. If we are held to have breached the terms of an open source software license, we could be required to seek licenses from third parties to continue operating using our solution on terms that are not economically feasible, to re-engineer our solution or the supporting computational infrastructure to discontinue use of certain code, or to make generally available, in source code form, portions of our proprietary code.
Risks Related to Our Operations
Real or perceived errors or failures in the operation of our solution could damage our reputation and impair our sales.
We must operate our technology infrastructure without interruption to support the needs of sellers and buyers. Because our software is complex, undetected errors and failures may occur, especially when new versions or updates are made to our software or network infrastructure, changes are made to sellers' or buyers' software interfacing with our solution, or as we further integrate Telaria's technologies with our own. Errors or bugs in our software, faulty algorithms, technical or infrastructure problems, or updates to our systems could lead to an inability to effect transactions or process data to place advertisements or price inventory effectively, cause the inadvertent disclosure of proprietary data, or cause advertisements to display improperly or be placed in proximity to inappropriate content. Such errors or failures could also result in negative publicity, disclosure of confidential information, damage to our reputation, loss of or delay in market acceptance of our solution, increased costs or loss of revenue, loss of competitive position, or claims by advertisers for losses sustained by them. We may make errors in the measurement of transactions conducted through our solution, causing discrepancies with the measurements of buyers and sellers, which can lead to a lack of confidence in us and require us to reduce our fees or provide refunds to buyers and sellers. Alleviating problems resulting from errors in our software could require significant expenditures of capital and other resources and could cause interruptions, delays, or the cessation of our business.
Various risks could interrupt access to our network infrastructure or data, exposing us to significant costs and other liabilities.
Our revenue depends on the technological ability of our solution to deliver and measure advertising impressions, and the operation of our exchange and our ability to place impressions depend on the continuing and uninterrupted performance of our IT systems. Our platform operates on our data processing equipment that is housed in third-party commercial data centers that we do not control or on servers owned and operated by cloud-based service providers. We rely on multiple bandwidth providers, multiple internet service providers, as well as content delivery network, or CDN providers, and domain name systems, or DNS providers, and mobile networks to deliver video ads. In addition, our systems interact with systems of buyers and sellers and their contractors. Any damage to, or failure of, these systems could result in interruptions to the availability or functionality of our service. Moreover, the failure of our data center hosting facilities or any other third-party providers to meet our capacity requirements could result in interruptions in the availability or functionality of our solutions or impede our ability to scale our operations. All of these facilities and systems are vulnerable to interruption and/or damage from a number of sources, many of which are beyond our control, including, without limitation: (i) loss of adequate power or cooling and telecommunications failures; (ii) fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane, and other natural disasters; (iii) software and hardware errors, failures, or crashes; (iv) financial insolvency; and (v) computer viruses, malware, hacking, terrorism, and similar
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disruptive problems. In particular, intentional cyber-attacks present a serious issue because they are difficult to prevent and remediate and can be used to defraud our buyers and sellers and their clients and to steal confidential or proprietary data from us, our clients, or their users. Further, because our Los Angeles headquarters and San Francisco offices and our California data center sites are in seismically active areas, earthquakes present a particularly serious risk of business disruption. These vulnerabilities may increase with the complexity and scope of our systems and their interactions with buyer and seller systems. Malfunction or failure of our systems, or other systems that interact with our systems, or inaccessibility or corruption of data, could disrupt our operations and negatively affect our business and results of operations to a level in excess of any applicable business interruption insurance, result in potential liability to buyers and sellers, and negatively affect our reputation and ability to sell our solution.
Any breach of our computer systems or confidential data in our possession could expose us to significant expense and liabilities and harm our reputation.
We maintain our own confidential and proprietary information in our IT systems, and we control or have access to confidential, proprietary, and personal data belonging or related to buyers, sellers, and their clients and users, as well as vendors and business partners. Our clients and various third parties have access to our confidential and proprietary information. There is no guarantee that inadvertent or unauthorized use or disclosure will not occur or that third parties will not gain unauthorized access to this data despite our efforts to protect this data. Though we undertake robust security measures, any security incident could disrupt computer systems or networks, interfere with services to our sellers, buyers, or their clients, and result in unauthorized access to personally identifiable information, intellectual property, and other confidential business information owned by us or our buyers, sellers, or vendors. As a result, we could be exposed to legal claims and litigation, indemnity obligations, regulatory fines and penalties, contractual obligations, other liabilities, significant costs for remediation and re-engineering to prevent future occurrences, significant distraction to our business, and damage to our reputation, our relationships with buyers and sellers, and our ability to retain and attract new buyers and sellers. If personally identifiable information is compromised, we may be required to undertake notification and remediation procedures, provide indemnity, and undergo regulatory investigations and penalties, all of which can be extremely costly and result in adverse publicity.
Failure to detect or prevent fraud, intrusion of malware through our platform into the systems or devices of our clients and their customers, or other actions that impact the integrity of our solution or advertisement performance, could cause sellers and buyers to lose confidence in our solution and expose us to legal claims, which would cause our business to suffer. If we terminate relationships with sellers as a result of our screening efforts, our volume of paid impressions may decline.
We have in the past, and may in the future, be subject to fraudulent and malicious activities undertaken by persons seeking to use our platform for improper purposes, including to divert or artificially inflate purchases by buyers through our platform, or to disrupt or divert the operation of the systems and devices of our clients and their customers to misappropriate information, generate fraudulent billings, stage hostile attacks, or for other illicit purposes. Examples of such activities include the use of bots or other automated or manual mechanisms to generate fraudulent impressions that are delivered through our platform, which could overstate the performance of advertising impressions. Such activities could also include the introduction of malware through our platform by persons seeking to commandeer, or gain access to information on, consumers' devices. We use proprietary and third party technology to identify non-human inventory and traffic, as well as malware, and we generally terminate relationships with parties that appear to be engaging in such activities, which may result in fewer paid impressions in the year the relationships are terminated than would have otherwise occurred. Despite our efforts, it can be difficult to detect fraudulent or malicious activity for various reasons. If we fail to detect or prevent fraudulent or other malicious activity, we could face legal claims from clients and/or consumers and the affected advertisers may experience or perceive a reduced return on their investment or heightened risk associated with use of our solution, resulting in dissatisfaction with our solution, refusals to pay, refund demands, loss of confidence of buyers or sellers, or withdrawal of future business. We also face claims from sellers that we terminate because of known or perceived fraudulent activity, and any such claim could be material.
Failure to maintain the brand security features of our solution could harm our reputation and expose us to liabilities.
It is important to sellers that the advertising placed on their media not conflict with existing seller arrangements and be of high quality, consistent with applicable seller standards and compliant with applicable legal and regulatory requirements. It is important to buyers that their advertisements are placed on appropriate media, in proximity with appropriate content, that the impressions for which they are charged are legitimate, and that their advertising campaigns yield their desired results. We use various measures, including proprietary technology, in an effort to store, manage and process rules set by buyers and sellers and to ensure the quality and integrity of the results delivered to sellers and buyers through our solution. If we fail to properly implement or honor rules established by buyers and sellers, or if our measures are not adequate, advertisements may be improperly placed through our platform, which can result in harm to our reputation as well as the need to pay refunds and other potential legal liabilities.
The evolving concept of viewability involves competitive uncertainty and may cause us to incur additional costs and liability risk.
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Viewability of digital advertising inventory is relevant to marketers because it represents a way of assessing the value of particular inventory as a means to reach a target audience. However, there is no consensus definition of viewability. Some approaches focus on whether an advertisement can be seen at all, and others focus on whether an advertisement that can be seen is actually seen, in whole or part, or for how long. Low viewability can be caused by various factors, including technical issues (e.g. device screen size, browser functionality and settings, web site load times), media design (e.g. below-the-fold or sub-page placements), and user behavior (e.g. the decision whether to scroll down a website or click on an advertisement or how long to watch a video). Non-viewability is a separate issue and may result, for example, from stacking ads so the one in the back is obscured, or serving ads into a single pixel space too small to be seen.
If we do not handle viewability well, we could be competitively disadvantaged. In addition, inventory that is well differentiated on the basis of viewability will be differentiated on the basis of value, with less viewable inventory valued lower. In this context, if we are not positioned to transact the higher viewability inventory competitively, our revenue and profitability could be adversely affected.
As we have experienced in the past, buyers could attempt to hold us responsible, and not to pay us, for impressions that do not satisfy their viewability requirements or expectations, and depending upon how viewability evolves, market practice or emerging regulation may require us to incur compliance costs and assume some responsibility for viewability of advertisements transacted through our solution. Divergent views of how to measure viewability and imperfect measurement technology could lead to disagreement, increasing risk of disputes, demands for refunds, and reputational harm.
If we fail to attract, motivate, train, and retain highly qualified engineering, marketing, sales and management personnel, our ability to execute our business strategy could be impaired.
We are a technology-driven company and it is imperative that we have highly skilled computer scientists, data scientists, engineers and engineering management to innovate and deliver our complex solutions. Increasing our base of buyers and sellers depends to a significant extent on our ability to expand our sales and marketing operations and activities, and our solution requires a sophisticated sales force with specific sales skills and specialized technical knowledge that takes time to develop. Appropriately qualified personnel can be difficult to recruit and retain. In particular, it may be difficult to find qualified sales personnel in international markets, or sales personnel with experience in emerging segments of the market. Skilled and experienced management is critical to our ability to achieve revenue growth, execute against our strategic vision and maintain our performance through the growth and change we anticipate.
Our success depends significantly upon our ability to recruit, train, motivate, and retain key technology, engineering, sales, and management personnel, and competition for employees with experience in our industry can be intense, particularly in California, New York, London and Sydney, where our operations and the operations of other digital media companies are concentrated and where other technology companies compete for management and engineering talent. Other employers may be able to provide better compensation, more diverse opportunities and better chances for career advancement. None of our officers or other key employees have an employment agreement for a specific term, and any of such individuals may terminate his or her employment with us at any time.
In addition, in connection with the merger with Telaria the Company entered into certain retention compensation packages. As such agreements expire, it may be more difficult to retain such individuals or we may need to enter into new retention arrangements.
It can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to recruit personnel with the combination of skills and attributes required to execute our business strategy, and we may be unable to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the markets where we do business or plan to do business. New hires require significant training and it may take significant time (often six months or more) before they achieve full productivity. As a result, we may incur significant costs to attract and retain employees, including significant expenditures related to salaries and benefits and compensation expenses related to equity awards before new hires contribute to sales or productivity, and we may lose new employees to our competitors or other companies before we realize the benefit of our investment in recruiting and training. Moreover, new employees may not be or become as productive as we expect, and we may face challenges in adequately or appropriately integrating them into our workforce and culture. At times we have experienced elevated levels of unwanted attrition, and as our organization grows and changes and competition for talent increases, this type of attrition may increase.
Our proprietary rights may be difficult to enforce, which could enable others to copy or use aspects of our solution without compensating us, thereby eroding our competitive advantages and harming our business.
Our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect proprietary methods and technologies that we develop or otherwise acquire, so that we can prevent others from using our inventions and proprietary information. Establishing trade secret, copyright, trademark, domain name, and patent protection is difficult and expensive. We rely on trademark, copyright, trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary methods and technologies. It may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy or reverse engineer aspects of our technology or otherwise obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary, or to develop technologies similar or superior to our technology or design around our
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proprietary rights, despite the steps we have taken to protect our proprietary rights. From time to time, we may take legal action to enforce our intellectual property rights, protect our trade secrets, determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, or defend against claims of infringement. Such litigation could result in substantial costs and the diversion of limited resources, and might not be successful. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights (including aspects of our technology solution) we may find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage.
We may be subject to intellectual property rights claims by third parties, which are costly to defend, could require us to pay significant damages and could limit our ability to use certain technologies and intellectual property.
Third parties may assert claims of infringement or misappropriation of intellectual property rights against us or buyers, sellers, or third parties with which we work; we cannot be certain that we are not infringing any third-party intellectual property rights, and we may have liability or indemnification obligations as a result of such claims. Regardless of whether claims that we are infringing patents or infringing or misappropriating other intellectual property rights have any merit, these claims are time-consuming and costly to evaluate and defend, and can impose a significant burden on management and employees. The outcome of any claim is inherently uncertain, and we may receive unfavorable interim or preliminary rulings in the course of litigation, or we may decide to settle lawsuits and disputes on terms that are unfavorable to us. We may also have no way of remediating intellectual property violations, and failure to do so could cause our business, results of operations or financial condition to be materially and adversely affected.
Risks Related to Our International Business Strategy.
Our international operations require increased expenditures and impose additional risks and compliance imperatives, and failure to successfully execute our international plans will adversely affect our growth and operating results.
We have operations outside of North America, in the UK, EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and Brazil, and achievement of our international objectives will require a significant amount of attention from our management, finance, legal, analytics, operations, sales, and engineering teams, as well as significant investment in developing the technology infrastructure necessary to deliver our solution and maintain sales, delivery, support, and administrative capabilities in the countries where we operate. Attracting new buyers and sellers outside the United States may require more time and expense than in the United States, in part due to language barriers and the need to educate such buyers and sellers about our solution, and we may not be successful in establishing and maintaining these relationships. The data center and telecommunications infrastructure in some overseas markets may not be as reliable as in North America and Europe, which could disrupt our operations. In addition, our international operations will require us to develop and administer our internal controls and legal and compliance practices in countries with different cultural norms, languages, currencies, legal requirements, and business practices than the United States.
International operations also impose risks and challenges in addition to those faced in the United States, including management of a distributed workforce; the need to adapt our offering to satisfy local requirements and standards (including differing privacy policies and labor laws that are sometimes more stringent); laws and business practices that may favor local competitors; legal requirements or business expectations that agreements be drafted and negotiated in the local language and disputes be resolved in local courts according to local laws; the need to enable transactions in local currencies; longer accounts receivable payment cycles and other collection difficulties; the effect of global and regional recessions and economic and political instability; potentially adverse tax consequences in the United States and abroad; staffing challenges, including difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified personnel as well as managing such a diversity in personnel; reduced or ineffective protection of our intellectual property rights in some countries; and costs and restrictions affecting the repatriation of funds to the United States.
One or more of these requirements and risks may make our international operations more difficult and expensive or less successful than we expect, and may preclude us from operating in some markets. There is no assurance that our international expansion efforts will be successful, and we may not generate sufficient revenue or margins from our international business to cover our expenses or contribute to our growth.
Operating in multiple countries requires us to comply with different legal and regulatory requirements.
Our international operations subject us to laws and regulations of multiple jurisdictions, as well as U.S. laws governing international operations, which are often evolving and sometimes conflict. For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA"), and comparable foreign laws and regulations (including the U.K. Bribery Act) prohibit improper payments or offers of payments to foreign governments and their officials and political parties by U.S. and other business entities for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. Other laws and regulations prohibit bribery of private parties and other forms of corruption. As we expand our international operations, there is some risk of unauthorized payment or offers of payment or other inappropriate conduct by one of our employees, consultants, agents, or other contractors, including by persons engaged or employed by a business we acquire, which could result in violation by us of various laws, including the FCPA. Safeguards we implement to discourage these practices may prove to be ineffective and violations of the FCPA and other laws may result in
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severe criminal or civil sanctions, or other liabilities or proceedings against us, including class action lawsuits and enforcement actions from the SEC, Department of Justice, and foreign regulators. Other laws applicable to our international business include local employment, tax, privacy, data security, and intellectual property protection laws and regulations, including restrictions on movement of information about individuals beyond national borders. In particular, as explained in more detail elsewhere in this report, the GDPR imposes substantial compliance obligations and increases the risks associated with collection and processing of personal data. In some cases, buyers and sellers operating in non-U.S. markets may impose additional requirements on our non-U.S. business in efforts to comply with their interpretation of their own or our legal obligations. These requirements may differ significantly from the requirements applicable to our business in the United States and may require engineering, infrastructure and other costly resources to accommodate, and may result in decreased operational efficiencies and performance. As these laws continue to evolve and we expand to more jurisdictions or acquire new businesses, compliance will become more complex and expensive, and the risk of non-compliance will increase.
Compliance with complex foreign and U.S. laws and regulations that apply to our international operations increases our cost of doing business abroad, and violation of these laws or regulations may interfere with our ability to offer our solution competitively in one or more countries, expose us or our employees to fines and penalties, and result in the limitation or prohibition of our conduct of business. In addition, we have recently received numerous inquiries from foreign regulators asking for information about the advertising technology generally and our business specifically. These investigations are costly and time consuming to respond to and divert management attention.
Risks Related to Our Internal Controls and Finances
If we fail to maintain an effective system of internal control over financial reporting in the future, we may not be able to accurately or timely report our financial condition or results of operations. If our internal control over financial reporting is not effective, it may adversely affect investor confidence in us and the price of our common stock.
As a public company, we are required to maintain internal control over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal control. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that we evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and provide a management report on our internal control over financial reporting.
Our platform system applications are complex, multi-faceted and include applications that are highly customized in order to serve and support our clients, advertising inventory and data suppliers, as well as support our financial reporting obligations. We regularly make improvements to our platform to maintain and enhance our competitive position. In the future, we may implement new offerings and engage in business transactions, such as acquisitions, reorganizations or implementation of new information systems. These factors require us to develop and maintain our internal controls, processes and reporting systems, and we expect to incur ongoing costs in this effort. We may not be successful in developing and maintaining effective internal controls, and any failure to develop or maintain effective controls, or any difficulties encountered in their implementation or improvement, could harm our operating results or cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations and may result in a restatement of our financial statements for prior periods.
If we identify material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, we will be unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective. If we are unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, or if we are unable to comply with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in a timely manner, then, we may be late with the filing of our periodic reports, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock could be negatively affected. Such failures could also subject us to investigations by Nasdaq, the stock exchange on which our securities are listed, the SEC or other regulatory authorities, and to litigation from stockholders, which could harm our reputation, financial condition or divert financial and management resources from our core business.
Our ability to use our net operating losses and tax credit carryforwards to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations, which could result in higher tax liabilities.
Our ability to fully utilize our net operating loss and tax credit carryforwards to offset future taxable income may be limited.
At December 31, 2020, we had U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards, or NOLs, of approximately $453.2 million, state NOLs of approximately $280.0 million, foreign NOLs of approximately $25.0 million, and state research and development tax credit carryforwards of approximately $8.0 million. A lack of future taxable income would adversely affect our ability to utilize these NOLs and credit carryforwards. In addition, under Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, and comparable state income tax laws, a corporation that undergoes an "ownership change" is subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its NOLs and credit carryforwards to offset future taxable income following the ownership change. As a result, future changes in our stock ownership, including because of issuance of shares of
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common stock in connection with acquisitions or other direct or indirect changes in our ownership that may be outside of our control, could result in limitations on our ability to fully utilize our NOLs and credit carryforwards. The Company had an ownership change on December 31, 2016 subjecting the federal and state NOLs to annual limitations that have expired. Additionally, the Company had an ownership change in January 2008 resulting in not material limitation of federal and state NOLs under Section 382 of the Code and comparable state income tax laws. Moreover, not material federal and state NOLs were generated during the pre-acquisition period by corporations that we acquired, and thus those NOLs already are subject to limitation under Section 382 of the Code and comparable state income tax laws. Also, prior to the merger, Telaria acquired corporations with pre-acquisition NOLs that are subject to limitation under Section 382 of the Code and comparable state income tax laws.
In addition, the Company and Telaria both underwent ownership changes for tax purposes (i.e. a more than 50% change in stock ownership in aggregated 5% shareholders) on April 1, 2020 due to the Merger. As a result, the use of the Company’s total domestic NOL carryforwards and tax credits generated prior to the ownership change will be subject to annual use limitations under Section 382 and Section 383 of the Code and comparable state income tax laws. The Company believes that the ownership changes will not impact the ability to utilize substantially all of our NOLs and state research and development tax credits to the extent we generate taxable income that can be offset by such losses. The Company reasonably expects its federal research and development tax credits will not be recovered prior to expiration.
Also, depending on the timing and level of our taxable income, a portion of our NOLs may expire unutilized, which could prevent us from offsetting future taxable income we may generate by the amount of our NOLs and credit carryforwards generated in tax years beginning before December 31, 2018. U.S. federal NOLs generated for tax years beginning before December 31, 2018 can offset 100% of taxable income, however, these NOLs can only be carried forward for 20 years. U.S. federal NOLs generated for tax years beginning after December 31, 2018 can offset 80% of taxable income, however, these NOLs can be carried forward indefinitely. We have recorded a full valuation allowance related to our NOLs, credit carryforwards, and other net deferred tax assets due to the uncertainty of the ultimate realization of the future benefits of those assets. To the extent we determine that all, or a portion of, our valuation allowance is no longer necessary, we will reverse the valuation allowance and recognize an income tax benefit in the reported financial statement earnings in that period. Once the valuation allowance is eliminated or reduced, its reversal will no longer be available to offset our current financial statement tax provision in future periods. Release of the valuation allowance would result in the recognition of certain net deferred tax assets and a decrease to income tax expense for the period the release is recorded. However, the exact timing and amount of the valuation allowance release are subject to change on the basis of the level of profitability that we are able to actually achieve and the impact of Section 382.
The purchase price allocation for any acquisition we complete, including our merger with Telaria, is generally not finalized until one year after the closing of the acquisition, and any final adjustment to the valuation could have a material change on what is reported as the fair value assigned to the assets and liabilities.
The final purchase price allocation for any acquisition we complete, including our merger with Telaria that was completed on April 1, 2020, depends upon the finalization of asset and liability valuations, among other things. The valuation studies necessary to estimate the fair values of acquired assets and assumed liabilities and the related allocation of purchase price generally are not finalized until one year after the closing of the acquisition. Initially, we allocate the total estimated purchase price to the acquired assets and assumed liabilities based on preliminary estimates of their fair values. The final determination of these fair values is subsequently determined based upon the actual net tangible and intangible assets that existed on the closing date of the acquisition. Any final adjustment could change the fair values assigned to the assets and liabilities, resulting in a change to our consolidated financial statements, including a change to goodwill. Such change could be material.
We may require additional capital to support our business, and such capital might not be available on terms acceptable to us, if at all. Inability to obtain financing could limit our ability to conduct necessary operating activities and make strategic investments.
Various business challenges and opportunities may require additional funds, including the need to respond to competitive threats or market evolution by developing new solutions and improving our operating infrastructure through additional hiring or acquisition of complementary businesses or technologies, or both. In addition, we could incur significant expenses or shortfalls in anticipated cash generated as a result of unanticipated events in our business or competitive, regulatory, or other changes in our market, or longer payment cycles required or imposed by our buyers.
Our available cash and cash equivalents, any cash we may generate from operations, and our available line of credit under our credit facility may not be adequate to meet our capital needs, and therefore we may need to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. We may not be able to obtain additional financing on terms favorable to us, if at all. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it or are unable to renew our credit facility when it matures or enter into a new one, our ability to continue to support our business growth and respond to business challenges could be significantly impaired, and our business may be adversely affected.
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If we do raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges superior to those of holders of our common stock. Any debt financing that we secure in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, including the ability to pay dividends. This may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. In addition, if we issue debt, the holders of that debt would have prior claims on the Company's assets, and in case of insolvency, the claims of creditors would be satisfied before distribution of value to equity holders, which would result in significant reduction or total loss of the value of our equity.
We intend to finance the cash portion of the SpotX acquisition consideration in part through the Term Loan Facility contemplated by the Commitment Letter. If we fail to satisfy the closing conditions set forth in the Commitment Letter or Goldman Sachs Bank USA is unable to perform its obligations under the Commitment Letter for any reason, we will be required to find other sources of capital to fund the acquisition of SpotX, which would exacerbate the risks described above.
Our credit facility subjects us to operating restrictions and financial covenants that impose risk of default and may restrict our business and financing activities.
We have a $60.0 million credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank. Borrowings are secured by substantially all of our tangible personal property assets and all of our intangible assets are subject to a negative pledge in favor of Silicon Valley Bank. This credit facility is subject to certain covenants and borrowing conditions, including those related to financial ratios and liquidity. If we fail to perform in accordance with covenants or to satisfy conditions, we may not be able to make borrowings under the facility. The credit facility is, and any replacement credit facility that we may secure will be, also subject to restrictions that limit our ability, among other things, to:
•dispose of or sell our assets;
•make material changes in our business or management;
•acquire, consolidate or merge with other entities;
•incur additional indebtedness;
•create liens on our assets;
•pay dividends;
•make investments;
•enter into transactions with affiliates; and
•pay off or redeem subordinated indebtedness.
These covenants may restrict our ability to finance our operations and to pursue our business activities and strategies. Our ability to comply with these covenants may be affected by events beyond our control. If a default were to occur and not be waived, such default could cause, among other remedies, all of the outstanding indebtedness under our loan and security agreement to become immediately due and payable. In such an event, our liquid assets might not be sufficient to meet our repayment obligations, and we might be forced to liquidate collateral assets at unfavorable prices or our assets may be foreclosed upon and sold at unfavorable valuations.
Our ability to renew our existing credit facility, which matures in September 2022, or to enter into a new credit facility to replace or supplement the existing facility may be limited due to various factors, including the status of our business, global credit market conditions, and perceptions of our business or industry by sources of financing. In particular, it may be difficult to renew or replace our existing credit facility if we are not able to produce, or demonstrate a path to produce, positive cash flow. In addition, if credit is available, lenders may seek more restrictive covenants and higher interest rates that may reduce our borrowing capacity, increase our costs, and reduce our operating flexibility.
If we make borrowings under the facility and do not have or are unable to generate sufficient cash available to repay our debt obligations when they become due and payable, either upon maturity or in the event of a default, we may not be able to obtain additional debt or equity financing on favorable terms, if at all. Our inability to obtain financing may negatively impact our ability to operate and continue our business as a going concern.
Risks Related to the Securities Markets and Ownership of our Common Stock
The price of our common stock has been and may continue to be volatile and the value of an investment in our common stock could decline.
The trading price of our common stock has fluctuated substantially and may continue to do so. These fluctuations could result in significant decreases in the value of an investment in our common stock. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the trading price of our common stock include the following:
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•announcements of new offerings, products, services or technologies, commercial relationships, acquisitions, or other events by us or our competitors;
•price and volume fluctuations in the overall stock market from time to time;
•significant volatility in the market price and trading volume of technology companies in general and of companies in the digital advertising industry in particular;
•fluctuations in the trading volume of our shares or the size of our public float;
•actual or anticipated changes or fluctuations in our results of operations;
•actual or anticipated changes in the expectations of investors or securities analysts, and whether our results of operations meet these expectations;
•issuance of research reports by analysts or investors;
•litigation involving us, our industry, or both;
•regulatory developments in the United States, foreign countries, or both;
•general economic conditions and trends;
•major catastrophic events;
•political uncertainty;
•breaches or system outages;
•departures of officers or other key employees; or
•an adverse impact on the company resulting from other causes, including any of the other risks described in this report.
In addition, if the market for advertising technology stocks or the stock market, in general, experiences a loss of investor confidence, the trading price of our common stock could decline for reasons unrelated to our business. The trading price of our common stock might also decline in reaction to events that affect other companies in our industry even if these events do not directly affect us. Declines in the price of our common stock, even following increases, may result in securities litigation against us, which would result in substantial costs and divert our management's attention and resources from our business.
Competition for investors could adversely affect the price of our stock.
There are many companies in the advertising technology or "ad tech" space, but we are one of a relatively small portion of those companies that is publicly traded. Some of the other publicly traded ad tech companies are substantially larger than we are and have more diversified offerings, or may be perceived by investors as having greater stability or growth potential. Others may be focused on parts of the business that investors may view as more appealing. Ad tech or related advertising companies that are not yet public may become public, and publicly traded companies may enter the ad tech business through acquisitions. Increase in the number of publicly traded companies available to investors wishing to invest in ad tech may result in a decrease in demand for our shares, either because overall demand for ad tech investment does not increase commensurately with the increase in public companies in the ad tech space, or because we are not perceived as competitively differentiated or offering superior value compared to other such companies. Decrease in demand for our shares would result in suppressed growth, or decrease, in the value of our stock.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish, or cease publishing, research or reports about us, our business or our market, if they publish negative evaluations of our stock, or if we fail to meet the expectations of analysts, the price of our stock and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common stock will be influenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts may publish about us, our business, our market or our competitors. We do not have any control over these analysts, and their reports or analysts' consensus may not reflect our guidance, plans or expectations. If one or more of the analysts covering our business issues an adverse opinion of our company because we fail to meet their expectations or otherwise, the price of our stock could decline. If one or more of these analysts cease to cover our stock, we could lose visibility in the market for our stock, which in turn could cause our stock price to decline.
Provisions of our charter documents and Delaware law may inhibit a potential acquisition of the company and limit the ability of stockholders to cause changes in company management.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws include provisions, as described below, that could delay or prevent a change in control of the company, and make it difficult for stockholders to elect directors who are not nominated by the current members of our board of directors or take other actions to change company management.
•Our certificate of incorporation gives our board of directors the authority to issue shares of preferred stock in one or more series, and to establish the number of shares in each series and to fix the price, designations, powers, preferences and relative, participating, optional or other rights, if any, and the qualifications, limitations, or restrictions of each
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series of the preferred stock without any further vote or action by stockholders. The issuance of shares of preferred stock may discourage, delay or prevent a merger or acquisition of the company by significantly diluting the ownership of a hostile acquirer, resulting in the loss of voting power and reduced ability to cause a takeover or effect other changes.
•Our certificate of incorporation provides that our board of directors is classified, with only one of its three classes elected each year, and directors may be removed only for cause and only with the vote of 66 2/3% of the voting power of stock outstanding and entitled to vote thereon. Further, the number of directors is determined solely by our board of directors, and because we do not allow for cumulative voting rights, holders of a majority of shares of common stock entitled to vote may elect all of the directors standing for election. These provisions could delay the ability of stockholders to change the membership of a majority of our board of directors.
•Our bylaws provide that until April 1, 2022, our board of directors shall be composed of four legacy Rubicon Project directors, four Telaria directors, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Company.
•Under our bylaws, only the board of directors or a majority of remaining directors, even if less than a quorum, may fill vacancies resulting from an increase in the authorized number of directors or the resignation, death or removal of a director.
•Our certificate of incorporation prohibits stockholder action by written consent, so any action by stockholders may only be taken at an annual or special meeting.
•Our certificate of incorporation provides that a special meeting of stockholders may be called only by the board of directors. This could delay any effort by stockholders to force consideration of a proposal or to take action, including the removal of directors.
•Under our bylaws, advance notice must be given to nominate directors or submit proposals for consideration at stockholders' meetings. This gives our board of directors time to defend against takeover attempts and could discourage or deter a potential acquirer from soliciting proxies or making proposals related to an unsolicited takeover attempt.
•The provisions of our certificate of incorporation noted above may be amended only with the affirmative vote of holders of at least 66 2/3% of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the company's voting stock, voting together as a single class. The same two-thirds vote is required to amend the provision of our certificate of incorporation imposing these supermajority voting requirements. Further, our bylaws may be amended only by our board of directors or by the same percentage vote of stockholders noted above as required to amend our certificate of incorporation. These supermajority voting requirements may inhibit the ability of a potential acquirer to effect such amendments to facilitate an unsolicited takeover attempt.
•Our board of directors may amend our bylaws by majority vote. This could allow the board to use bylaw amendments to delay or prevent an unsolicited takeover, and limits the ability of an acquirer to amend the bylaws to facilitate an unsolicited takeover attempt.
We are also subject to Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which prohibits us from engaging in any business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years from the date the person became an interested stockholder, unless certain conditions are met. These provisions make it more difficult for stockholders or potential acquirers to acquire the company without negotiation and may apply even if some of our stockholders consider the proposed transaction beneficial to them. For example, these provisions might discourage a potential acquisition proposal or tender offer, even if the acquisition proposal or tender offer were to be at a premium over the then-current market price for our common stock. These provisions could also limit the price that investors are willing to pay in the future for shares of our common stock.
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
None.
Item 2. Properties
Our corporate headquarters are located in Los Angeles, California, where we occupy office space totaling approximately 47,000 square feet under a lease that expires on April 30, 2021. We use these facilities for our principal administration, sales and marketing, technology and development, and engineering activities.
On November 20, 2020, we signed a new lease for our corporate headquarters in Los Angeles, California, where we will occupy office space totaling 38,754 square feet. Our lease begins in May 2021 and expires in April 2031.
We have two offices in New York under leases that expire in 2029 and 2030 that are approximately 26,664 square feet and 15,000 square feet, respectively, and lease additional offices and maintain data centers in other locations in North America,
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South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. We believe that our current facilities are adequate to meet our current needs, and that, if we require additional space, we will be able to obtain additional facilities on commercially reasonable terms.
Item 3. Legal Proceedings
We and our subsidiaries may from time to time be parties to legal or regulatory proceedings, lawsuits and other claims incident to our business activities and to our status as a public company. Such routine matters may include, among other things, assertions of contract breach or intellectual property infringement, claims for indemnity arising in the course of our business, regulatory investigations or enforcement proceedings, and claims by persons whose employment has been terminated. Such matters are subject to many uncertainties, and outcomes are not predictable with assurance. Consequently, we are unable to ascertain the ultimate aggregate amount of monetary liability, amounts which may be covered by insurance or recoverable from third parties, or the financial impact with respect to such matters as of December 31, 2020. However, based on our knowledge as of December 31, 2020, we believe that the final resolution of such matters pending at the time of this report, individually and in the aggregate, will not have a material adverse effect upon our consolidated financial position, results of operations or cash flows.
Refer to Note 17—"Commitments and Contingencies" for additional information related to legal proceedings.
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures
Not applicable.
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PART II
Item 5. Market for Registrant's Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
Our common stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, or the NYSE, from April 1, 2014 through June 8, 2020, under the symbol "RUBI."
On June 8, 2020, the Company voluntarily delisted its common stock from the NYSE and commenced listing on The Nasdaq Global Select Market of The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC ("Nasdaq"). On June 30, 2020, the Company changed its name from "The Rubicon Project, Inc." to "Magnite, Inc." In connection with the name change, the Company changed its ticker symbol from "RUBI" to "MGNI."
Holders of Record