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RNG US Equity

RingCentral, Inc.Information Technology · Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation · CIK 1384905 · FY ends Dec 31
$67.01
+1.43 (+2.18%)
USD · as of 2026-08-21 · marketstack

RNG · 10-K · period ended 2021-12-31

← all RNG documents
filed 2022-03-01 · EDGAR original ↗

Our rendering of the filing — original pagination and typography are not reproduced, and tables are reduced to their short label cells (the figures live on FA). Nothing is summarized: every line below is the filing's own text.

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rng-20211231

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

______________________________________________________________________

FORM 10-K

______________________________________________________________________

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021

OR

For transition period from to

Commission File Number:001-36089

______________________________________________________________________

RingCentral, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)

______________________________________________________________________

20 Davis Drive

Belmont, California94002

(Address of principal executive offices)

(650) 472-4100

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

______________________________________________________________________

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Title of each class Trading Symbol(s) Name of each exchange on which registered

Class A Common Stock RNG New York Stock Exchange

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the Act:

None

______________________________________________________________________

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes☒ No ̈

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes ̈No☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes☒ No ̈

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes☒ No ̈

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

Large accelerated filer ☒ Accelerated filer ̈

Non-accelerated filer ̈ Smaller reporting company ☐

Emerging growth company ☐

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ̈

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

The aggregate market value of voting stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant on June 30, 2021, based on the closing price of $290.58 for shares of the Registrant’s common stock as reported by the New York Stock Exchange, was approximately $23.9 billion. Shares of common stock held by each executive officer, director, and their affiliated holders have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes.

As of February 18, 2022, there were 84,466,941 shares of Class A Common Stock and 9,975,224 shares of Class B Common Stock outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Information required in response to Part III of Form 10-K (Items 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14) is hereby incorporated by reference to portions of the Registrant’s Proxy Statement for the Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held in 2022. Such Proxy Statement will be filed by the Registrant with the Securities and Exchange Commission no later than 120 days after the end of the Registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2021.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

Item 1. Business 4

Item 1A. Risk Factors 14

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 46

Item 2. Properties 47

Item 3. Legal Proceedings 47

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 47

PART II

Item 6. [Reserved] 50

Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 64

Item 8. Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data 65

Item 9A. Controls and Procedures 98

Item 9B. Other Information 99

Item 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions That Prevent Inspections 99

PART III

Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers, and Corporate Governance 100

Item 11. Executive Compensation 100

Item 14. Principal Accountant Fees and Services 101

PART IV

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PART I.

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements that are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. The forward-looking statements are contained principally in, but not limited to, the sections entitled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts and can be identified by terms such as “anticipates”, “believes”, “could”, “seeks”, “estimates”, “expects”, “intends”, “may”, “plans”, “potential”, “predicts”, “projects”, “should”, “will”, “would” or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about:

•our progress against short-term and long-term goals;

•our future financial performance;

•our anticipated growth, growth strategies and our ability to effectively manage that growth and effect these strategies;

•the impact of the coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic, any associated economic downturn, and related actions by individuals, governments and private industry on our business, future operating and financial performance, and markets;

•our success in the enterprise market;

•anticipated trends, developments and challenges in our business and in the markets in which we operate, as well as general macroeconomic conditions;

•our ability to scale to our desired goals, particularly the implementation of new processes and systems and the addition to our workforce;

•the impact of competition in our industry and innovation by our competitors;

•our ability to anticipate and adapt to future changes in our industry;

•our ability to predict subscriptions revenues, formulate accurate financial projections, and make strategic business decisions based on our analysis of market trends;

•our ability to anticipate market needs and develop new and enhanced solutions and subscriptions to meet those needs, and our ability to successfully monetize them;

•maintaining and expanding our customer base;

•maintaining, expanding and responding to changes in our relationships with other companies;

•maintaining and expanding our distribution channels, including our network of sales agents and resellers, and our strategic partnerships;

•our success with our carriers;

•our ability to sell, market, and support our solutions and services;

•our ability to expand our business to larger customers as well as expanding domestically and internationally;

•our ability to realize increased purchasing leverage and economies of scale as we expand;

•the impact of seasonality on our business;

•the impact of any failure of our solutions or solution innovations;

•our reliance on our third-party product and service providers;

•the potential effect on our business of litigation to which we may become a party;

•our liquidity and working capital requirements;

•the impact of changes in the regulatory environment;

•our ability to protect our intellectual property and rely on open source licenses;

•our expectations regarding the growth and reliability of the internet infrastructure;

•the timing of acquisitions of, or making and exiting investments in, other entities, businesses or technologies;

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•our ability to successfully and timely execute on, integrate, and realize the benefits of any acquisition, investment, strategic partnership, or other strategic transaction we may make or undertake;

•our capital expenditure projections;

•our capital allocation plans, including expected allocations of cash and timing for any share repurchases and other investments

•the estimates and estimate methodologies used in preparing our consolidated financial statements;

•the political environment and stability in the regions in which we or our subcontractors operate;

•the impact of economic downturns on us and our customers;

•our ability to defend our systems and our customer information from fraud and cyber-attack;

•our ability to prevent the use of fraudulent payment methods for our solutions;

•our ability to retain key employees and to attract qualified personnel; and

•the impact of foreign currencies on our non-U.S. business as we expand our business internationally.

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be significantly different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. We discuss these risks in greater detail in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent our management’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be significantly different from what we expect.

Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ significantly from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

ITEM 1. BUSINESS

Overview

We are a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) solutions. We believe that our innovative, cloud-based communication and contact center solutions disrupt the large market for business communications and collaboration by providing flexible and cost-effective solutions that support mobile and distributed workforces. We enable convenient and effective communications for organizations across all their locations and employees, enabling them to be more productive and responsive.

Our cloud-based solutions are designed to be easy to use, providing a global user identity across devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones. Our solutions can be deployed rapidly and configured and managed easily. Our cloud-based solutions are location and device independent and better suited to address the needs of modern mobile and global enterprise workforces than are legacy on-premise systems. Through our open Application Programming Interface (API) platform, we enable third-party developers and customers to integrate our solution with leading business applications to customize their own business workflows.

The rapid growth of mobile communications has changed the way businesses interact. Employees connect from anywhere with any device, using multiple modes of communications including messaging, video, phone, text, and social media. These forms of flexible communications enable employees to be productive in ways that traditional on-premise systems do not support.

We believe RingCentral benefits from both the shift to mobile and distributed workforces and the migration of hardware on-premise based communication systems to cloud-based software solutions. Our cloud communications and contact center solutions are based on our Message Video Phone (MVP) platform, which has been designed from the ground up, specifically for today’s mobile and distributed workforce. In addition, our differentiated open API platform enables seamless integration with third-party and custom software applications. These integrations improve business workflows resulting in higher employee productivity and better customer service. Our global delivery capabilities support the needs of multi-national enterprises in multiple countries.

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We offer three key products in our portfolio, including:

•RingCentral MVP (formerly RingCentral Office), a Unified Communications as a Service (“UCaaS”) platform, including team messaging, video meetings, and a cloud phone system;

•RingCentral customer engagement solutions, including RingCentral cloud Contact Center as a Service (“CCaaS”), RingCentral Engage Digital and Voice; and

•RingCentral Video (formerly Glip), launched in 2020, our branded video meeting solution with team messaging that enables smart video meetings.

We generate revenues primarily from the sale of subscriptions for our cloud-based services. We focus on acquiring and retaining our customers, adding value to their experience, and increasing their use of our solutions. As their needs change, customers add users to services, upgrade to premium subscription editions which provide additional features and functionality and expand their use of other solutions.

We continue to invest in our direct inside sales force while also developing indirect sales channels to market our brand and our subscription offerings. Our indirect sales channels who sell our solutions consist of:

•Regional and global network of resellers and distributors;

•Strategic partners who market and sell our solutions, including co-branded solutions. Such partnerships include Avaya Holding Corp. (“Avaya”), Atos SE (“Atos”), Unify Software and Solutions GmbH & CO. KG (“Unify”), and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (“ALE”). In November 2021, we entered into a strategic partnership with Mitel US Holdings, Inc. and certain of its affiliates (collectively, "Mitel"). As part of this agreement, we became Mitel's exclusive UCaaS partner.

•Carriers including AT&T (“AT&T”), TELUS Communications Company (“TELUS”), BT Group plc (“BT”), Vodafone Group Services Limited (“Vodafone”), Verizon Business (“Verizon”), Deutsche Telekom (“DT”) and other regional carriers. In May 2021, we entered into a partnership with Verizon and launched a co-branded service, RingCentral with Verizon, an integrated unified UCaaS solution for enterprise businesses. In June 2021, we entered into a strategic partnership with DT to offer a co-branded version of RingCentral Video (“RCV”) as a stand-alone video solution and recently, we expanded our partnership with DT, to offer customers RingCentral X powered by Telekom, an end-to-end communications and collaboration solution.

Our principal executive offices are located in Belmont, California. Our principal address is 20 Davis Drive, Belmont, California 94002, and our primary website address is www.ringcentral.com. Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website, does not constitute part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and inclusion of our website address in this Annual Report on Form 10-K is an inactive textual reference only.

“RingCentral” and other of our trademarks appearing in this report are our property. This report also contains trade names and trademarks of other companies. We do not intend our use or display of other companies’ trade names or trademarks to imply an endorsement or sponsorship of us by such companies, or any relationship with any of these companies.

Our Solutions

Our cloud-based business communications, collaboration, and customer engagement solutions function across multiple locations and devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones, allow for communication across multiple modes, including high-definition (“HD”) voice, video, SMS, messaging and collaboration, conferencing, online meetings, and fax. Our proprietary solutions enable a more productive and dynamic workforce and are architected using industry standards to meet modern business communications and collaboration requirements, including workforce mobility, “bring-your-own” communications device environments and multiple communications methods.

Our solutions are delivered using a highly available, and rapidly and easily scalable infrastructure, allowing our customers to add new users regardless of where they are located within our service footprint and promote business continuity. Our solutions are generally affordable, requiring little to no upfront infrastructure hardware costs or ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs commonly associated with on-premise systems and can be integrated with other existing communication systems.

We believe that our solutions go beyond the core functionality of existing on-premise communications solutions by providing additional key benefits that address the changing requirements of business to allow business communications using voice, HD video web conferencing, SMS, team messaging, collaboration, fax, and social media. The key benefits of our solutions include:

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•Location Independence. Our cloud-based solutions are designed to be location independent. We seamlessly connect distributed and mobile users, enabling employees to communicate with a single identity whether working from a central location, a branch office, on the road, or at home.

•Global. Our RingCentral Global MVP capabilities support multinational enterprise workforces. RingCentral Global MVP connects multinational workforces globally, while reducing the complexity and high costs of maintaining multiple legacy private branch exchanges (“PBX systems”) with a single global cloud solution.

•Device Independence. Our solutions are designed to work with a broad range of devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, and desk phones, enabling businesses to successfully implement a “bring-your-own” communications device strategy.

•Instant Activation and Easy Account Management. Our solutions are designed for rapid deployment and ease of management. Our intuitive graphical user interfaces allow administrators and users to set up and manage their business communications system with little or no IT expertise, training, or dedicated staffing.

•Analytics. Our solutions enable superior user experience and drive business decisions through a single, real-time intuitive interface with configurable, out-of-the-box KPIs and metrics for monitoring all users, calls, meetings, devices, numbers, and queues, along with call quality scores and parameters.

•Scalability. Our cloud-based solutions scale easily and efficiently with the growth of our customers. Customers can add users, regardless of their location, without having to purchase additional infrastructure hardware or software upgrades.

•Lower Cost of Ownership. We believe that our customers experience significantly lower cost of ownership compared to legacy on-premise systems. Using our cloud-based solutions, our customers can avoid the significant upfront costs of infrastructure hardware, software, ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs, and the need for dedicated and trained IT personnel to support these systems.

•Seamless and Intuitive Integration with Other Applications.Applications are proliferating within businesses of all sizes. Integration of these business applications with legacy on-premise systems is typically complex and expensive, which limits the ability of businesses to leverage cloud-based applications. Our platform provides seamless and intuitive integration with multiple popular cloud-based business applications such as Microsoft productivity and CRM tools, Google G-Suite, Salesforce CRM, Oracle, Okta, Zendesk, Box, and Workday, as well as customer lines-of business applications.

We have a portfolio of cloud-based offerings that are subscription-based and made available at different monthly rates, varying by the specific functionalities, services, and number of users. We primarily generate revenues from the sale of subscriptions of our offerings, which include the following:

RingCentral MVP.RingCentral MVP (formerly RingCentral Office), our flagship solution, provides a unified experience for communication and collaboration across multiple modes, including HD voice, video, SMS, messaging and collaboration, conferencing, online meetings, and fax. RingCentral MVP offers a unified Message, Video, and Phone experience on our global platform. Customers can extend RingCentral MVP to support their multinational workforce in many countries around the world. This subscription is designed primarily for businesses that require a communications solution, regardless of location, type of device, expertise, size, or budget. Businesses are able to seamlessly connect users working in multiple office locations on smartphones, tablets, PCs and desk phones. We sell RingCentral MVP in four editions: Essentials, Standard, Premium, and Ultimate. The features, capabilities and price per user increase from Essentials to Ultimate. The solution capabilities include high-definition voice, call management, mobile applications, business SMS and MMS, fax, team messaging and collaboration, audio/video/web conferencing capabilities, out-of-the-box integrations with other cloud-based business applications, and business analytics and reporting. Our platform also enables customers to create, develop, and deploy custom integrations using our APIs.

Key features of RingCentral MVP include:

•Cloud-Based Business Communications Solutions. We offer multi-user, multi-extension, cloud-based business communications solutions that do not require installation, configuration, management, or maintenance of on-premise hardware and software. Our solutions are instantly activated and deliver a rich set of functionalities across multiple locations and devices.

•Collaboration. We offer team messaging and collaboration solutions which allow diverse teams to stay connected through multiple modes of communication. In addition to team messaging and communications, teams can share tasks, notes, group calendars, and files.

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•RingCentral Video (“RCV”) and RingCentral Rooms. RingCentral Video leverages RingCentral's open platform to address the demand in work from anywhere by leveraging technologies to enable a fast, unified, open, and trusted video meetings experience. It includes a robust analytics platform that gives IT system administrators access to key performance indicators such as adoption, usage, and quality of service metrics. RCV is also integrated with business productivity applications such as Google G-Suite and Gmail, HubSpot, Microsoft (Teams and Office365), Slack, Theta Lake, and Zoho, among others. RingCentral Rooms and Rooms Connector bring a cloud web conferencing solution to meeting rooms and meeting spaces that have dedicated video conferencing equipment such as monitors, speakers, microphones, and cameras, and support for large meetings and webinars for a monthly per license add-on fee.

•Mobile-Centric Approach.Our solution includes smartphone and tablet mobile applications that customers can use to set up and manage company, department, and user settings from anywhere. Our applications turn iOS and Android smartphones and tablets into business communication devices. Users can change their personal settings instantly and communicate via voice, text, team messaging and collaboration, HD video and web conferencing, and fax. RingCentral MVP installed on personal mobile devices are fully integrated into the customer’s cloud-based communication solution, using the company’s numbers, and displaying one of the company’s caller ID for calls made through our mobile applications.

•Easy Set-Up and Control. Our user interfaces provide a consistent user experience across smartphones, tablets, PCs, and desk phones, making it intuitive and easy for our customers to quickly discover and use our solution across devices. Among other capabilities, administrators can specify and modify company, department, user settings, auto-receptionist settings, call-handling, and routing rules, and add, change, and customize users and departments.

•Flexible Call Routing. Our solution includes an auto-attendant to easily customize call routing for the entire company, departments, groups, or individual employees. It includes a robust suite of communication management options, including time of day, caller ID, call queuing, and sophisticated routing rules for complex call handling for the company, departments, groups, and individual employees.

•Cloud-based Business Application Integrations. Our solution seamlessly integrates with other cloud-based business applications such as Salesforce CRM, Google Cloud, Box, Dropbox, Office365, Outlook, Oracle, Okta, Zendesk, Jira, Asana, and others. For example, our integration with Salesforce CRM brings up customer records immediately based on inbound caller IDs, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency. Our open platform is supported by APIs and software developers’ kits (“SDKs”) that allows developers to integrate our solution with leading business applications or with other custom applications to customize their own business workflows.

•RingCentral Global MVP. Our solution includes RingCentral Global MVP, a single global UCaaS solution designed for multinational enterprises that allows these companies to support distributed offices and employees globally with a single cloud solution. With RingCentral Global MVP, multinational enterprises can operate in other countries while also acting as one integrated business, with capabilities including local phone numbers, local caller ID, worldwide extension-to-extension dialing, and included minute bundles for international calling.

•RingCentral CloudConnect.RingCentral CloudConnect is a service that allows enterprises to leverage their dedicated and secure connections to exchange data directly with the RingCentral cloud. Customers use their preferred network service provider to connect to the RingCentral cloud through a secure data exchange enabling lower latency, greater network reliability and availability, and added security.

•High-Volume SMS. High-Volume SMS is a service that enables businesses to send high-volume and commercial SMS messages and updates to their customers eliminating the need to purchase and program a separate number. Our service also provides access to message status, logs, store, and analytics for advanced insights and regulatory compliance.

•RingCentral Live Reports. RingCentral Live Reports is an add-on for RingCentral MVP customers to gather real-time information needed to maximize the performance with dashboards that contain information on agent utilization and overall customer experience.

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RingCentral Contact Center.RingCentral Contact Center is a collaborative contact center solution that delivers AI powered omni-channel and workforce engagement solution with integrated RingCentral MVP. RingCentral Contact Center brings together the powerful integration of CCaaS which leverages technology from NICE inContract, Inc., along with RingCentral MVP, enabling an easy collaboration while delivering seamless omnichannel experiences across 30+ digital and voice channels. We offer RingCentral Contact Center in four editions: Essentials, Standard, Premium and Ultimate. The features, capabilities, and price per user increase from Essentials to Ultimate.

RingCentral Engage Digital.RingCentral Engage is a cloud digital customer engagement platform that allows enterprises to interact with their customers through a single platform across all digital channels. The platform uses AI-based smart routing engine that enables agents to efficiently manage customer interactions across digital channels including mobile and in-app messaging, several social channels, live chats, and email.

RingCentral Engage Voice.Engage Voice is a cloud-based outbound/blended customer engagement platform for midsize and enterprise companies. The platform provides automated dialing capabilities to help accelerate the sales process and reduce time it takes sales teams to reach prospects.

RingCentral Video. RingCentral Video (formerly Glip) is a smart video meeting service, which includes our RCV video and team messaging capabilities. It is an easy-to-use solution that offers high quality and high availability video and audio conferencing, seamlessly integrated with team messaging, file sharing, contact, task, and calendar management. It includes pre-meeting, in-meeting, and post-meeting capabilities, and provides a completely integrated team collaboration capability. RingCentral Video is provided in two editions: Pro, which is a free service, and a paid Pro Plus subscription service which offers a higher number of meeting participants and additional video meeting and administrative management capabilities.

RingCentral Professional. RingCentral Professional is a cloud based virtual telephone service offering designed for professionals who are on the go. It provides inbound call answering and management services, and includes inbound local, long-distance, and toll-free minutes.

RingCentral Fax. RingCentral Fax provides online fax capabilities that allow businesses to send and receive fax documents without the need for a fax machine. RingCentral Fax capability is made available to all RingCentral MVP customers or as a stand-alone offering at monthly subscription rates that vary based on the desired number of pages and phone numbers allotted to the plan.

Segment Reporting

Our organizational structure is a single reportable segment. A discussion of the results of our operations is included in Part II, Item 7, “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”, and in Part II, Item 8, “Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, under Consolidated Financial Statements, which are incorporated herein by reference.

Our Customers

We have a diverse and growing customer base across a wide range of industries, including financial services, education, healthcare, legal services, real estate, retail, technology, insurance, construction, hospitality, and state and local government, among others. We seek to establish and maintain long-term relationships with our customers. We do not have significant customer concentration and none of our customers accounted for more than 10% of total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019. We believe that we will not have significant customer concentration in the future.

We sell our solutions to enterprise customers, and small and medium-sized businesses. We define a “customer” as a party that purchases or subscribes to our products and services directly or through our indirect sales channel, which includes resellers and distributors, strategic partners and carriers. We continuously expand our solution offering globally and believe that there are additional growth opportunities in international markets.

Marketing, Sales and Support

We use a variety of marketing, sales, and support activities to generate and cultivate ongoing customer demand for our subscriptions, acquire new customers, and engage with our existing customers. We sell globally through both direct and indirect channels, which includes resellers and distributors, strategic partners and carriers. We provide onboarding implementation services to help our customers set up and configure their newly purchased communications system, as well as ongoing self-

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service, phone support, online chat support, and training. We also closely track and monitor customer acquisition costs to assess how we are deploying our marketing, sales, and customer support spending.

•Marketing. Our marketing efforts include search engine marketing, search engine optimization, affiliates, list buys, shared leads, content leads, appointment setting, radio advertising, online display advertising, sports sponsorships, billboard advertising, tradeshows and events, and other forms of demand generation. We track and measure our marketing costs closely across all channels so that we can acquire customers in a cost-efficient manner.

•Direct Sales. We primarily sell our solutions and subscriptions through direct inbound and outbound sales efforts. We have direct sales representatives located in the U.S. and internationally.

•Indirect Sales. Our indirect sales channel consists of global and regional networks of resellers and distributors, strategic partners and global and regional carriers. Our indirect sales channels help broaden the adoption of our solutions and enables us to leverage their sales force to sell our services as well as access their customer bases.

•Customer Support and Services. While our intuitive and easy-to-use user interface serves to reduce our customers’ need for support and services, we provide online chat and phone customer support, as well as post-sale implementation support, as an option to help customers configure and use our solution. We track and measure our customer satisfaction and our support costs closely across all channels to provide a high level of customer service in a cost-efficient manner.

Research and Development

We believe that continued investment in research and development is critical to expanding our leadership position within the cloud-based business communications and collaboration solutions market and is a key element of our culture. We devote the majority of our research and development resources to software development. Our engineering team has significant experience in various disciplines related to our platform, such as voice, video, text, team messaging and collaboration, mobile application development, IP networking and infrastructure, contact center, digital customer engagement, user experience, security, and robust multi-tenant cloud-based system architecture.

Our development methodology, in combination with our SaaS delivery model, allows us to provide new and enhanced capabilities on a regular basis. Based on feedback from our customers and prospects and our review of the broader business communications and SaaS markets, we continuously develop new functionality while maintaining and enhancing our existing solutions. We typically have multiple releases per year, where we constantly improve our solutions and introduce new capabilities and features to make our customers’ workforce more productive and to build out the feature set required by larger and global enterprises.

As part of our strategy to expand our technological capabilities, we engage in strategic transactions from time to time. Such strategic acquisitions enable us to complement our technology and skill sets and expand our solution reach.

Technology and Operations

Our platforms are hosted both in private and public clouds. Our private clouds are built on a highly scalable and flexible infrastructure comprised of commercially available hardware and software components. We believe that both hardware and software components of our platform can be replaced, upgraded or added with minimal or no interruption in service. The system is designed to have no single point-of-failure.

Our private cloud is served from multiple data centers and third-party co-location facilities located in several cities in the United States and throughout the world. Our data centers are designed to host mission-critical computer and communications systems with redundant, fault-tolerant subsystems, and compartmentalized security zones. We maintain a security program designed to ensure the security and integrity of customer data, protect against security threats or data breaches, and prevent unauthorized access to our customers’ data. We limit access to on-demand servers and networks at our production and remote backup facilities.

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Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, and trade secret laws in the U.S. and other jurisdictions, as well as license agreements and other contractual protections, to protect our proprietary technology. We also rely on a number of registered and unregistered trademarks to protect our brand. In addition, we seek to protect our intellectual property rights by implementing a policy that requires our employees and independent contractors involved in the development of intellectual property on our behalf to enter into agreements acknowledging that all works or other intellectual property generated or conceived by them on our behalf are our property, and assigning to us any rights, including intellectual property rights, that they may claim or otherwise have in those works or property, to the extent allowable under applicable law.

Our worldwide intellectual property portfolio includes over 774 issued patents, which expire between 2022 and 2041, and over 135 patent applications, pending examination in the U.S. and in foreign jurisdictions, all of which are related to U.S. applications. In general, our patents and patent applications apply to certain aspects of our SaaS and mobile applications and underlying communications infrastructure. We are also a party to various license agreements with third parties that typically grant us the right to use certain third-party technology in conjunction with our solutions and subscriptions.

Competition

The market for business communications and collaboration solutions is very large, rapidly evolving, complex, fragmented and defined by changing technology, and customer needs. We expect competition to continue to increase in the future. We believe that the principal competitive factors in our market include:

•product features and capabilities;

•system reliability, availability, and performance;

•speed and ease of activation, setup, and configuration;

•ownership and control of the underlying technology;

•open platform;

•integration with mobile devices;

•brand awareness and recognition;

•simplicity of the pricing model; and

•total cost of ownership.

We believe that we generally compete favorably on the basis of the factors listed above.

We face competition from a broad range of providers of business communications and collaboration solutions. Some of these competitors include:

•traditional on-premise, hardware business communications providers such as Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Mitel Networks Corporation, NEC Corporation, and Siemens Enterprise Networks, LLC, any of which may now or in the future also host their solutions through the cloud;

•software providers such as Microsoft Corporation and Cisco Systems, Inc. that generally license and/or host their software solutions, and their resellers including major carriers and cable companies;

•established business communications providers that resell on-premise hardware, software, and hosted solutions, such as AT&T, BT, Comcast, Charter, COX, TMU, TELUS, Verizon Communications Inc., Vodafone Group Plc, DT, Orange, Telefonica, and others, all of whom currently have significantly greater resources than us and now or in the future also may develop and/or host their own or other solutions through the cloud;

•other cloud companies such as 8x8, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., DialPad, Inc., StarBlue, Inc., Intermedia.net, Inc., LogMeIn, Inc, Microsoft Corporation, Nextiva, Inc., Twilio Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. (recently acquired by Ericsson), West Corporation, and Zoom Video Communications, Inc.;

•video meeting and collaboration service providers such as Amazon.com, Inc., Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. (Google G-Suite and Meet), Facebook, Inc., Microsoft Teams, Slack Technologies, Inc. (acquired by salesforce.com, inc), and Zoom Video Communications, Inc.;

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•other large internet companies such as Alphabet Inc. (Google Voice), Facebook, Inc., Oracle Corporation, and salesforce.com, inc., any of which might launch its own cloud-based business communication services or acquire other cloud-based business communications companies in the future;

•providers of communications platform as a service solutions and messaging software platforms with APIs such as Twilio Inc., Vonage Holding Corp. (recently acquired by Ericsson), and Slack Technologies, Inc. (acquired by salesforce.com, inc), on which customers can build diverse solutions by integrating cloud communications into business applications;

•contact center and customer relationship management providers such as Amazon.com, Inc., Aspect Software, Inc., Avaya Inc., Five9, Inc., NICE InContact, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., Serenova, LLC (acquired by Lifesize, Inc.), Talkdesk, Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. (recently acquired by Ericsson), salesforce.com, inc., Twilio Inc., and Zoom Video Communications, Inc.; and

•digital engagement vendors such as eGain Corporation, Lithium Technologies, LLC, LivePerson, Inc., SparkCentral Inc. (acquired by Hootsuite Inc.), among others named above that may offer similar features.

Employees and Human Capital

We believe that our culture and our workforce are critically important to our success. Our human capital resources objectives include identifying, recruiting, retaining, incentivizing and integrating our existing and new employees, advisors and consultants. We continuously invest in our global workforce by seeking to create a diverse, inclusive, and safe work environment where our employees can learn, innovate, and deliver their best. We are committed to being inclusive to enable our workforce and customers to succeed.

We invest in developing our talent and creating a superior employee experience. We believe that a highly engaged workforce will continue to drive RingCentral’s competitive advantage as an innovative company and will also keep RingCentral as an employer of choice. We believe that our approach to talent development and innovation enables our team members to grow in their current positions and build new skills. We provide virtual and in-person interactive learning courses across a broad range of categories such as leadership, inclusion and diversity, technical and compliance, among others. We have periodic employee surveys that allow employees to voice their perceptions of the Company and their work experience.

Our diversity and inclusion initiatives honor the unique background, identity and perspectives of each individual in our organization and we are committed to the success of our workforce and customers. We continue to drive key initiatives in talent acquisition and talent management to focus on increasing the representation of women and underrepresented groups in our global workforce. We received recognition for our initiatives in the area of diversity, equity and inclusiveness, wherein our CEO was recognized as the “Best CEO for Women” and “Diversity” by Comparably in 2021. We encourage and support employee resource groups like our LGBTQ+ group, Black employees group and Pan-Asian group, among others. We continue to look for ways to further expand our efforts in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion.

We face competition for highly skilled and technical workforce with experience in our industry and locations where we maintain offices. We strive to provide competitive pay, benefits, and services to attract and retain our employees. Our equity and cash incentive plans are designed to attract, retain and reward employees, in order to increase stockholder value and to enable the success of our Company by motivating such individuals to perform to the best of their abilities and share in the value creation process. We also provide access to a variety of flexible health and wellness programs to our employees, which became increasingly critical in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of December 31, 2021, we had 3,919 full-time employees located in 12 countries. As of December 31, 2021, approximately 35% of our full-time employees were located outside of the United States. Our geographic diversification enhances our ability to retain and attract highly skilled talent, have an employee base across the globe to be closer to our customers, as well as manage our headcount costs.

In certain countries in which we operate, we are subject to, and comply with, local labor law requirements, which may automatically make our employees subject to industry-wide collective bargaining agreements. For instance, our employees in France are covered by the Syntec Collective Bargaining Agreement. We are not subject to any other collective bargaining agreements. We believe that our employee relations are good, and we have never experienced any work stoppages.

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Regulatory

As a provider of communication services over the Internet, we are subject to regulation in the U.S. by the FCC. Some of these regulatory obligations include contributing to the Federal Universal Service Fund, Telecommunications Relay Service Fund, and federal programs related to phone number administration; providing access to E-911 services; protecting customer information; and porting phone numbers upon a valid customer request. We are also required to pay state and local 911 fees and contribute to state universal service funds in those states that assess interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) services. In addition, we have certified a wholly owned subsidiary as a competitive local exchange carrier in thirty-one states, and registered as an IP-enabled Service Provider in an additional eleven states. This subsidiary, RCLEC, is subject to the same FCC regulations applicable to telecommunications companies, as well as regulation by the public utility commissions in states where the subsidiary provides services. Specific regulations vary on a state-by-state basis, but generally include the requirement for our subsidiary to register or seek certification to provide its services, to file and update tariffs setting forth the terms, conditions and prices for our intrastate services and to comply with various reporting, record-keeping, surcharge collection, and consumer protection requirements.

As we expand internationally, we will be subject to laws and regulations in the countries in which we offer our subscriptions. Regulatory treatment of communications services over the Internet outside the U.S. varies from country to country, and may be more onerous than imposed on our subscriptions in the U.S. In the United Kingdom, for example, our subscriptions are regulated by Ofcom, which, among other things, requires electronic communications services providers such as our company to provide all users access to both 112 (EU-mandated) and 999 (U.K.-mandated) emergency service numbers at no charge. Similarly, in Canada, our subscriptions are regulated by the CRTC, which, among other things, imposes requirements like those in the U.S. related to the provision of E-911 services, in all areas of Canada where the wireline incumbent carrier offers such 911 services. Our regulatory obligations in foreign jurisdictions could have a material adverse effect on the use of our subscriptions in international locations.

In the course of providing our services, we collect, store, and process many types of data, including personal data. Moreover, our customers can use our subscriptions to store contact and other personal or identifying information, and to process, transmit, receive, store, and retrieve a variety of communications and messages, including information about their own customers and other contacts. Customers are able, and may be authorized under certain circumstances, to use our subscriptions to transmit, receive, and/or store personal information.

There are a number of federal, state, local, and foreign laws and regulations, such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the recently enacted California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), and the California Privacy Rights Act, which extended the CCPA, as well as contractual obligations and industry standards, that provide for certain obligations and restrictions with respect to data privacy and security, and the collection, storage, retention, protection, use, processing, transmission, sharing, disclosure, and protection of personal information and other customer data. We expect that with the expansion of our Global MVP solution and sales of our services into new countries, we will become subject to additional data privacy regulations in other countries throughout the world. The scope of these obligations and restrictions is changing, subject to differing interpretations, and may be inconsistent among countries or conflict with other rules, and their status remains uncertain.

As Internet commerce and communication technologies continue to evolve, thereby increasing online service providers’ and network users’ capacity to collect, store, retain, protect, use, process, and transmit large volumes of personal information, increasingly restrictive regulation by federal, state, or foreign agencies becomes more likely.

Regulations that do not directly apply to our business, but which do apply to our customers and partners, can also impact our business. As we expand our business, addressing customer and partner requirements in new jurisdictions and new verticals often requires investment on our part to address regulations that apply to our customers. Globally, these regulations continue to be introduced and to change over time. Such regulations can impact our ability to offer services to various customer segments, and our cost to deliver our services.

See the section entitled “Risk Factors” for more information.

Available Information

We make available our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or Section 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, free of charge on our website (ir.ringcentral.com), as soon as reasonably practicable after they are electronically filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the “SEC”. In addition, the SEC maintains

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an internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov.

We announce material information to the public about our company, our solutions and services and other matters through a variety of means, including our website (www.ringcentral.com), the investor relations section of our website (ir.ringcentral.com), press releases, filings with the SEC, and public conference calls, in order to achieve broad, non-exclusionary distribution of information to the public. We encourage investors and others to review the information we make public in these locations, as such information could be deemed to be material information. Please note that this list may be updated from time to time.

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ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS

This Report contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth below. The risks and uncertainties described in this Report are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also affect our business. See the section entitled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of the forward-looking statements that are qualified by these risk factors. If any of these known or unknown risks or uncertainties actually occurs and have a material adverse effect on us, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be seriously harmed. In addition, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic environment may exacerbate the risks described below, any of which could have a material impact on us. This situation is changing rapidly and additional impacts may arise that we are not currently aware of.

Summary Risk Factors

An investment in our Class A Common Stock involves a high degree of risk, and the following is a summary of key risk factors when considering an investment. You should read this summary together with the more detailed description of each risk factor contained in the subheadings further below.

•We have incurred significant losses and negative cash flows in the past and anticipate continuing to incur losses for at least the foreseeable future, and we may therefore not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.

•Our quarterly and annual results of operations have fluctuated in the past and may continue to do so in the future. As a result, we may fail to meet or to exceed the expectations of research analysts or investors, which could cause our stock price to fluctuate.

•Our rapid growth and the quickly changing markets in which we operate make it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, which may increase the risk of investing in our stock.

•Our future operating results will rely in part upon the successful execution of our strategic partnerships with Avaya, Atos/Unify, ALE, Mitel, Vodafone, DT, Verizon and others, which may not be successful.

•We face intense competition in our markets and may lack sufficient financial or other resources to compete successfully.

•We rely and may in the future rely significantly on our strategic partners, resellers, and carriers to sell our subscriptions; our failure to effectively develop, manage, and maintain our indirect sales channels could materially and adversely affect our revenues.

•To deliver our subscriptions, we rely on third parties for our network connectivity and for certain of the features in our subscriptions.

•Interruptions or delays in service from our third-party data center hosting facilities and co-location facilities could impair the delivery of our subscriptions, require us to issue credits or pay penalties and harm our business.

•Failures in Internet infrastructure or interference with broadband access could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems are unreliable, possibly leading our customers to switch to our competitors or to avoid using our subscriptions.

•A cyber-attack, information security breach or incident or denial of service event could delay or interrupt service to our customers, harm our reputation, or subject us to significant liability.

•Increased customer turnover, or costs we incur to retain and upsell our customers, could materially and adversely affect our financial performance.

•If we are unable to attract new customers to our subscriptions or upsell to those customers on a cost-effective basis, our business will be materially and adversely affected.

•The dual class structure of our common stock as contained in our charter documents has the effect of concentrating voting control with a limited number of stockholders that held our stock prior to our initial public offering, including our founders and our executive officers, employees and directors and their affiliates, and limiting other stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters.

•Our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock has rights, preferences and privileges that are not held by, and are preferential to the rights of, our Class A Common stockholders, which could adversely affect our liquidity and financial condition.

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Risks Related to Our Business and Our Industry

We have incurred significant losses and negative cash flows in the past and anticipate continuing to incur losses for at least the foreseeable future, and we may therefore not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.

We have incurred substantial net losses since our inception. Over the past few years, we have spent considerable amounts of time and money to develop new business communications solutions and enhanced versions of our existing business communications solutions to position us for future growth. Additionally, we have incurred substantial losses and expended significant resources upfront to market, promote and sell our solutions and expect to continue to do so in the future. We also expect to continue to invest for future growth, including for advertising, customer acquisition, technology infrastructure, storage capacity, services development and international expansion. In addition, as a public company, we incur significant accounting, legal, and other expenses.

We expect to continue to incur losses for at least the foreseeable future and will have to generate and sustain increased revenues to achieve future profitability. Achieving profitability will require us to increase revenues, manage our cost structure, and avoid significant liabilities. Revenue growth may slow, revenues may decline, or we may incur significant losses in the future for a number of possible reasons, including general macroeconomic conditions, increasing competition (including competitive pricing pressures), a decrease in the growth of the markets in which we compete, in particular the SaaS market, or if we fail for any reason to continue to capitalize on growth opportunities. Additionally, we may encounter unforeseen operating expenses, difficulties, complications, delays, service delivery, and quality problems and other unknown factors that may result in losses in future periods. If these losses exceed our expectations or our revenue growth expectations are not met in future periods, our financial performance will be harmed and our stock price could be volatile or decline.

Our quarterly and annual results of operations have fluctuated in the past and may continue to do so in the future. As a result, we may fail to meet or to exceed the expectations of research analysts or investors, which could cause our stock price to fluctuate.

Our quarterly and annual results of operations have varied historically from period to period, and we expect that they will continue to fluctuate due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control, including:

•our ability to retain existing customers, resellers, partners, and carriers, and expand our existing customers’ user base, and attract new customers;

•our ability to introduce new solutions;

•the actions of our competitors, including pricing changes or the introduction of new solutions;

•our ability to effectively manage our growth;

•our ability to successfully penetrate the market for larger businesses;

•the mix of annual and multi-year subscriptions at any given time;

•the timing, cost, and effectiveness of our advertising and marketing efforts;

•the timing, operating cost, and capital expenditures related to the operation, maintenance and expansion of our business;

•our ability to successfully and timely execute on, integrate, and realize the benefits of any acquisition, investment, strategic partnership, or other strategic transaction or partnership we may make or undertake;

•service outages or actual or perceived information security breaches or incidents and any related impact on our reputation;

•our ability to accurately forecast revenues and appropriately plan our expenses;

•our ability to realize our deferred tax assets;

•costs associated with defending and resolving intellectual property infringement and other claims;

•changes in tax laws, regulations, or accounting rules;

•the timing and cost of developing or acquiring technologies, services or businesses, and our ability to successfully manage any such acquisitions;

•the impact of foreign currencies on our business as we continue to expand our business internationally; and

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•the impact of worldwide economic, political, industry, and market conditions, including the continued effects of the global outbreak of COVID-19.

The extent to which the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact our results will depend on future developments, which are uncertain and cannot be fully predicted, including the duration of the pandemic, travel restrictions and social distancing in the U.S. and other countries, business closures or business disruptions, the effectiveness of actions taken by governments and private businesses to attempt to contain and treat the disease, the availability and widespread acceptance of effective vaccines and the speed at which they are administered to the public, and the severity of breakthrough cases and COVID-19 variants. Any prolonged shutdown of a significant portion of global economic activity or downturn in the global economy, along with any adverse effects on industries in which our customers operate, could materially and adversely impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Any one of the factors above, or the cumulative effect of some or all of the factors referred to above, may result in significant fluctuations in our quarterly and annual results of operations. This variability and unpredictability could result in our failure to meet our publicly announced guidance or the expectations of securities analysts or investors for any period, which could cause our stock price to decline. In addition, a significant percentage of our operating expenses is fixed in nature and is based on forecasted revenues trends. Accordingly, in the event of revenue shortfalls, we may not be able to mitigate the negative impact on net income (loss) and margins in the short term. If we fail to meet or exceed the expectations of research analysts or investors, the market price of our shares could fall substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class-action suits.

We rely on third parties, including third parties outside the U.S., for some of our software development, quality assurance, operations, and customer support.

We currently depend on various third parties for some of our software development efforts, quality assurance, operations, and customer support services. Specifically, we outsource some of our software development and design, quality assurance, and operations activities to third-party contractors that have employees and consultants located in St. Petersburg, Russia, Odessa, Ukraine, and Manila, the Philippines. In addition, we outsource a portion of our customer support, inside sales and network operation control functions to third-party contractors located in Manila, the Philippines. Our dependence on third-party contractors creates a number of risks, in particular, the risk that we may not maintain service quality, control, or effective management with respect to these business operations. These third parties have been and will continue to be adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of widespread illness and disruptions or restrictions on employees’ ability to work, which may continue to affect their ability to perform satisfactorily or at all.

In addition, the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia has escalated tensions among the U.S., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Russia. The U.S., other North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states, as well as non-member states, have announced new sanctions against Russia and certain Russian banks, enterprises and individuals. These and any future additional sanctions and any resulting conflict between Russia, the U.S. and other countries could have an adverse impact on our operations in Ukraine and Russia, create global security concerns, increase the risk of cyber-attacks and have a lasting impact on regional and global economies. Furthermore, such invasion, ongoing military conflict, resulting sanctions and related counter-measures by NATO states, the U.S. and other countries may disrupt, or in the future could disrupt, our third-party software development, quality assurance and service monitoring operations in Ukraine and Russia. We do not store any customer data in Russia or Ukraine and currently are not dependent on our operations in these locations to continue to provide our services. However, if our third-party developers are forced to evacuate or emigrate, it may increase our costs, disrupt or delay current or future planned development activities in Ukraine and Russia, impact our ability to respond quickly to cyber-attacks, or force us to shift development efforts to resources in other geographies that may not possess the same level of cost efficiencies. Our third-party contractors are currently exploring relocating personnel to other countries to minimize long-term risks. In light of these events, we have developed and are continuing to refine a business continuity plan designed to mitigate the impact of this conflict on our business, but it is unclear if it will successfully mitigate all disruptions, which could have an adverse impact on our operations and financial performance.

We also rely on purchased or leased hardware and software licensed from third parties in order to offer our subscriptions, and in some cases, we integrate third-party licensed software components into our platform. Any errors or defects in third-party hardware or software could result in errors or a failure of our subscriptions which could harm our business.

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We anticipate that we will continue to depend on our third-party relationships in order to grow our business for the foreseeable future. If we are unsuccessful in maintaining existing and, if needed, establishing new relationships with third parties, our ability to efficiently operate existing services or develop new services and provide adequate customer support could be impaired, and, as a result, our competitive position or our results of operations could suffer.

The global COVID-19 pandemic could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has continued to spread across the globe and impact worldwide economic activity and financial markets. In light of the uncertain and rapidly evolving situation relating to the spread of COVID-19, we have taken precautionary measures intended to minimize the risk of the virus to our employees, our customers, and the communities in which we operate, which could negatively impact our business. We have until recently required most of our employees around the globe to work remotely, and although our offices in the United States are currently open, we do not require our employees to come into the office. We have also suspended all non-essential travel worldwide for our employees. While we have a distributed workforce and our employees are accustomed to working remotely and working with other remote employees, our workforce is not fully remote. Our employees travel frequently to establish and maintain relationships with one another, our customers and prospective customers, resellers and other channel partners, and investors. Although we continue to monitor the situation and may adjust our current policies as more information and public health guidance becomes available, temporarily suspending travel and restricting the ability to do business in person could negatively affect our customer success efforts, sales and marketing efforts, challenge our ability to enter into customer and other commercial contracts in a timely manner and our ability to source, assess, negotiate, and successfully implement and execute on, and realize the benefits of, acquisitions, investments, strategic partnerships and other strategic transactions, slow down our recruiting efforts, or create operational or other challenges, any of which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. Furthermore, if a natural disaster, power outage, connectivity issue, or other event occurred that impacted our employees’ ability to work remotely, it may be difficult or, in certain cases, impossible, for us to continue our business for a substantial period of time. The increase in remote working may also result in privacy, security and fraud concerns as well as increase our exposure to potential wage and hour issues. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to disrupt the operations of our customers, resellers and other channel partners, strategic partners, suppliers and other third-party providers for an indefinite period of time, including as a result of travel restrictions and/or business shutdowns, all of which could continue to negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. For example, to address customer hardships, we may work with customers to provide greater flexibility to manage challenges they are facing, but we cannot be assured that they will not reduce their number of users or terminate their subscriptions altogether. We may also incur further costs and face increased risks of non-payment by our customers by opting not to discontinue services to non-paying customers for reasons such as maintaining goodwill or if required by local regulations. More generally, although the U.S. economy has recovered since the early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid spread of variants of the virus and the ongoing pandemic and preventative measures taken worldwide could adversely affect economies and financial markets globally in the future, which could decrease technology spending and continue to adversely affect demand for our solutions and harm our business. The full extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic may impact our financial condition or results of operations remains uncertain.

Our rapid growth and the quickly changing markets in which we operate make it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, which may increase the risk of investing in our stock.

We have grown rapidly since 2009, when we introduced RingCentral MVP, our flagship product. We have encountered and expect to continue to encounter risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing markets. If our assumptions regarding these uncertainties are incorrect or change in reaction to changes in our markets, or if we do not manage or address these risks successfully, our results of operations could differ materially from our expectations, and our business could suffer.

Growth may place significant demands on our management and our infrastructure.

We continue to experience substantial growth in our business. This growth has placed and may continue to place significant demands on our management, organizational structure, and our operational and financial infrastructure. As our operations grow in size, scope, and complexity, we will need to increase our sales and marketing efforts and add additional sales and marketing personnel in various regions worldwide and improve and upgrade our systems and infrastructure to attract, service, and retain an increasing number of customers. For example, we expect the volume of simultaneous calls to increase significantly as our customer base grows. Our network hardware and software may not be able to accommodate this additional simultaneous call volume. The expansion of our systems and infrastructure will require us to commit substantial financial,

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operational, and technical resources in advance of an increase in the volume of business, with no assurance that the volume of business will increase. Any such additional capital investments will increase our cost base.

Continued growth could also strain our ability to maintain reliable service levels for our customers, resellers, and carriers develop and improve our operational, financial and management controls, enhance our billing and reporting systems and procedures and recruit, train and retain highly skilled personnel. In addition, our existing systems, processes, and controls may not prevent or detect all errors, omissions, or fraud. We may also experience difficulties in managing improvements to our systems, processes, and controls or in connection with third-party software licensed to help us with such improvements. Any future growth, particularly as we continue to expand internationally, would add complexity to our organization and require effective communication and coordination throughout our organization. To manage any future growth effectively, we must continue to improve and expand our information technology and financial, operating, security and administrative systems and controls, and our business continuity and disaster recovery plans and processes. Additionally, our productivity and the quality of our solutions and services may be adversely affected if we do not integrate and train our new employees quickly and effectively, particularly doing so remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. If we fail to achieve the necessary level of efficiency in our organization as we grow, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected.

Our future operating results will rely in part upon the successful execution of our strategic partnerships with Avaya, Atos/Unify, ALE, Mitel, Vodafone, Deutsche, Verizon and others, which may not be successful.

A strategic partnership between two independent businesses is a complex, costly, and time-consuming process that will require significant management attention and resources. Realizing the benefits of our strategic partnerships, particularly our relationships with Avaya and its subsidiaries, Atos and its subsidiaries, including Unify Software and Solutions GmbH & CO. KG (“Unify”), ALE Holding (“ALE Holding”) and its subsidiaries, including ALE International (“ALE International” and together “ALE”), Mitel, Vodafone and its subsidiaries, Deutsche, and its subsidiaries, and Verizon and its subsidiaries will depend on a variety of factors, including our ability to work with our strategic partners to develop, market and sell co-branded solutions, such as Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral (“ACO”), Unify Office by RingCentral (“UO”), and Rainbow Office powered by RingCentral (“Rainbow Office”), and our other offerings, such as RingCentral MVP. Setting up and maintaining the operations and processes of these strategic partnerships may cause us to incur significant costs, disrupt our business and, if implemented ineffectively, would limit the expected benefits to us. In addition, the process of bringing ACO, UO, Rainbow Office and other co-branded solutions to market may take longer than anticipated or fail to materialize, which could negate or reduce our anticipated benefits and revenue opportunities. In addition, we must be successful in marketing and selling ACO to realize the benefits of our prepayment to Avaya of $345 million in our Class A Common Stock. The failure to successfully and timely implement and operate our strategic partnerships could harm our ability to realize the anticipated benefits of these partnerships and could adversely affect our results of operations.

We face intense competition in our markets and may lack sufficient financial or other resources to compete successfully.

The cloud-based business communications and collaboration solutions industry is competitive, and we expect competition to increase in the future. We face intense competition from other providers of business communications and collaboration systems and solutions.

Our competitors include traditional on-premise, hardware business communications providers such as ALE, Avaya, Cisco Systems, Inc., Mitel, NEC Corporation, Siemens Enterprise Networks, LLC, their resellers, and others, as well as companies such as Microsoft Corporation and Cisco Systems, Inc., and their resellers that license their software. In addition, certain of our carriers and strategic partners, such as AT&T, BT, TELUS, Vodafone, DT, Verizon, Avaya, Atos, ALE, and Mitel sell or are expected to sell our solutions, but they are also competitors for business communications. These companies have or may have significantly greater resources than us and currently, or may in the future, develop and/or host their own or other solutions through the cloud. Such competitors may not be successful in or cease marketing and selling our solutions to their customers and ultimately be able to transition some or all of those customers onto their competing solutions, which could materially and adversely affect our revenues and growth. We also face competition from other cloud companies and established communications providers that resell on-premise hardware, software, and hosted solutions, such as 8x8, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Dialpad, Inc., Fuze, Inc., StarBlue, Inc., Intermedia.net, Inc., J2 Global, Inc., LogMeIn, Inc, Microsoft Corporation, Nextiva, Inc., Twilio Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp., West Corporation, and Zoom Video Communications, Inc., which has introduced a voice solution. Established communications providers, such as AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc., Sprint Corporation and Comcast Corporation in the U.S., TELUS and others in Canada, and BT, Vodafone Group plc, and others in the U.K., that resell on-premise hardware, software, and hosted solutions, compete with us in business communications and currently, or may in the future, develop and/or host their own cloud solutions. We may also face competition from other large

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Internet companies, such as Alphabet Inc. (Google Voice), Facebook, Inc., Oracle Corporation, and salesforce.com, inc., any of which might launch its own cloud-based business communications services or acquire other cloud-based business communications companies in the future. We also compete against providers of communications platform as a service solutions and messaging software platforms with APIs such as Twilio Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp., and Slack Technologies, Inc. (acquired by salesforce.com, inc.), on which customers can build diverse solutions by integrating cloud communications into business applications. We face competition with respect to this solution from contact center and customer relationship management providers such as Amazon.com, Inc., Aspect Software, Inc., Avaya, Five9, Inc., NICE InContact, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., Serenova, LLC (acquired by Lifesize, Inc.), Talkdesk, Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp., salesforce.com, inc., and Twilio Inc. We also face competition from digital engagement vendors such as eGain Corporation, Lithium Technologies, LLC, LivePerson, Inc., SparkCentral Inc. (acquired by Hootsuite Inc.), among others named above that may offer similar features.

Many of our current and potential competitors have longer operating histories, significantly greater resources and name recognition, more diversified offerings, and larger customer bases than we have. As a result, these competitors may have greater credibility with our existing and potential customers and may be better able to withstand an extended period of downward pricing pressure. In addition, certain of our competitors have partnered with, or been acquired by, and may in the future partner with or acquire, other competitors to offer services, leveraging their collective competitive positions, which makes it more difficult to compete with them and could significantly and adversely affect our results of operations. Demand for our platform is also sensitive to price. Many factors, including our marketing, user acquisition and technology costs, and our current and future competitors’ pricing and marketing strategies, can significantly affect our pricing strategies. Our competitors may be able to adopt more aggressive pricing policies and devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their services than we can to ours. Some of these service providers have in the past and may choose in the future to sacrifice revenues in order to gain market share by offering their services at lower prices or for free, or offering alternative pricing models, such as “freemium” pricing, in which a basic offering is provided for free with advanced features provided for a fee, on the services they offer. Our competitors may also offer bundled service arrangements offering a more complete service offering, despite the technical merits or advantages of our subscriptions. In addition, some of the commercially available solutions in the markets in which we compete, such as video and web conferencing solutions of our competitors, including Zoom Video Communications, Inc. and Microsoft Corporation, have seen dramatically increased adoption, usage and publicity in connection with the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Competition could result in a decrease to our prices, slow our growth, increase our customer turnover, reduce our sales, or decrease our market share.

We rely and may in the future rely significantly on our strategic partners, resellers, and carriers to sell our subscriptions; our failure to effectively develop, manage, and maintain our indirect sales channels could materially and adversely affect our revenues.

Our future success depends on our continued ability to establish and maintain a network of channel relationships, and we expect that we will need to expand our network in order to support and expand our historical base of smaller enterprises as well as attract and support larger customers and expand into international markets. An increasing portion of our revenues are derived from our network of sales agents and resellers, which we refer to collectively as resellers, many of which sell or may in the future decide to sell their own services or services from other business communications providers. We generally do not have long-term contracts with these resellers, and the loss of or reduction in sales through these third parties could materially reduce our revenues. Our competitors may in some cases be effective in causing our current or potential resellers to favor their services or prevent or reduce sales of our subscriptions. Furthermore, while AT&T, BT, TELUS, Vodafone, DT, Verizon, Avaya, Atos (through its subsidiary Unify), ALE, and Mitel also sell our solutions, they are also competitors for business communications. These companies have significantly greater resources than us and currently, or may in the future, develop and/or host their own or other solutions through the cloud. Such competitors may cease marketing or selling our solutions to their customers and ultimately be able to transition some or all of those customers onto their competing solutions, which could materially and adversely affect our revenues and growth. In this regard, AT&T launched a competing hosted business communications solution in 2016, and new subscriptions for our solution sold by AT&T declined to an immaterial level in 2017 and into 2018. In August 2018, we entered into a revised agreement with AT&T, under which AT&T resumed reselling our solutions, and sales of our solutions by AT&T have increased as a result, but there can be no guarantee that AT&T will not cease reselling our solutions in the future. We have also entered into certain agreements for strategic partnerships with Avaya, Atos, ALE, Mitel, Vodafone, DT and Verizon to sell certain of our solutions. Avaya introduced the ACO solution at the end of the first quarter of 2020, Atos and Unify introduced the UO solution during the third quarter of 2020, and ALE introduced the Rainbow Office solution in 2021; however, there can be no guarantee that Avaya, Atos, Unify, ALE, Mitel, Vodafone, DT, Verizon and/or any of their respective channel partners will be successful in marketing or selling our solutions or that they will not cease marketing or selling our solutions in the future. If our strategic partners and carriers and/or any of their respective channel partners are not successful in marketing and selling our solutions or cease to market and sell our solutions, our revenues and growth could be

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significantly and adversely affected. If we fail to maintain relationships with our resellers and other channel partners, carriers and strategic partners or fail to develop new and expanded relationships in existing or new markets, or if our networks of indirect channel relationships are not successful in their sales efforts, sales of our subscriptions may decrease and our operating results would suffer. Further, the ability of our resellers, carriers and strategic partners to market and sell our solutions could be adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we may not be successful in managing, training, and providing appropriate incentives to our existing resellers and other channel partners, carriers and strategic partners, and they may not be able to commit adequate resources in order to successfully sell our solutions.

Recruiting and retaining qualified resellers and other channel partners and carriers in our network and training them in our technology and subscription offerings requires significant time and resources. To develop and expand our indirect sales channels, we must continue to scale and improve our processes and procedures to support these channels, including investment in systems and training. Many resellers and other channel partners and carriers may not be willing to invest the time and resources required to train their staff to effectively market our subscriptions.

To deliver our subscriptions, we rely on third parties for our network connectivity and for certain of the features in our subscriptions.

We currently use the infrastructure of third-party network service providers, including CenturyLink, Inc. and Bandwidth.com, Inc. in North America and several others internationally, to deliver our subscriptions over their networks. Our third-party network service providers provide access to their Internet protocol (“IP”) networks and public switched telephone networks, and provide call termination and origination services, including 911 emergency calling in the U.S. and equivalent services internationally, and local number portability for our customers. We expect that we will continue to rely heavily on third-party network service providers to provide these subscriptions for the foreseeable future.

Through our wholly-owned local exchange carrier subsidiary, RCLEC, Inc. (“RCLEC”), we also obtain certain connectivity and network services directly from incumbent local exchange carriers (“ILECS”) and from other competitive local exchange carriers (“CLECs”) in certain geographic markets at lower prices than we pay for such services through third-party network service providers. However, RCLEC also uses the infrastructure of third-party network service providers to deliver its services and the ILECs may favor themselves and their affiliates may not provide network services to us at lower prices than we could obtain through third-party CLECs, or at all. If we are unable to continue to reduce our pricing as a result of obtaining network services through our subsidiary, we may be forced to rely on other third-party network service providers and be unable to effectively lower our cost of service. Historically, our reliance on third-party networks has reduced our operating flexibility and ability to make timely service changes and control quality of service, and we expect that this will continue for the foreseeable future. If any of these network service providers stop providing us with access to their infrastructure, fail to provide these services to us on a cost-effective basis or at reasonable levels of quality and security, cease operations, or otherwise terminate these services, the delay caused by qualifying and switching to another third-party network service provider, if one is available, could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

In addition, we currently use and may in the future use third-party service providers to deliver certain features of our subscriptions. For example, although we introduced our own video and web conferencing solution in April 2020 and have migrated many of our customers to RingCentral Video, there are still several existing customers who continue to use Zoom Video Communications, Inc. for HD video and web conferencing and screen sharing features, Bandwidth.com for texting capabilities, and NICE inContact, Inc. for contact center capabilities. In the future, we may not continue to have long-term contracts with any or all of these third-party providers. Any of these service providers could elect or attempt to stop providing us with access to their services or our contracts with these third-party providers may terminate, expire, or be breached. If any of these service providers ceases to provide us with their services, fails to provide these services to us on a cost-effective basis or at reasonable levels of quality and security, ceases operations, or otherwise terminates or discontinues these services, the delay caused by qualifying and switching to another third-party service provider, if one is available, or building a proprietary replacement solution could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations. Furthermore, we are no longer offering or selling RingCentral Meetings to new customers and are instead offering our own RingCentral Video solution, and, in light of our recent settlement of the Zoom litigation, we believe that we will be able to migrate all or substantially all of our customers to RingCentral Video. Nevertheless, it is possible that not all existing customers will migrate to RingCentral Video. Therefore, our inability to offer and sell RingCentral Meetings, or to successfully transfer existing customers to our own solution, may cause some prospective customers not to purchase our services and/or existing customers not to renew their contracts for our services or to renew for a fewer number of seats.

Finally, if problems occur with any of these third-party network or service providers, it may cause errors or poor call quality in our subscriptions, and we could encounter difficulty identifying the source of the problem. The occurrence of errors

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or poor call quality in our subscriptions, whether caused by our systems or a third-party network or service provider, may result in the loss of our existing customers, delay or loss of market acceptance of our subscriptions, termination of our relationships and agreements with our resellers or carriers, or liability for failure to meet service level agreements, and may seriously harm our business and results of operations.

We rely on third-party software that may be difficult to replace or which could cause errors or failures of our subscriptions.

We rely on software licensed from certain third parties in order to offer our solutions. In some cases, we integrate third-party licensed software components into our platform. This software may not continue to be available at reasonable prices or on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Any loss of the right to use any of this software could significantly increase our expenses and otherwise result in delays in the provisioning of our solutions until equivalent technology is either developed by us, or, if available, is identified, obtained, and integrated. Any errors or defects in third-party software could result in errors or a failure of our solutions, which could harm our business.

Interruptions or delays in service from our third-party data center hosting facilities and co-location facilities could impair the delivery of our subscriptions, require us to issue credits or pay penalties and harm our business.

We currently serve our North American customers from geographically disparate data center hosting facilities in North America, where we lease space from Equinix, Inc., and other providers, and we serve our European customers from third-party data center hosting facilities in Europe. We also use third-party co-location facilities located in various international regions to serve our customers in these regions. Certain of our solutions are hosted by third party data center facilities including Amazon Web Services, Inc. (“AWS”), NICE inContact, Inc., and Google Cloud Platform. In addition, RCLEC uses third-party co-location facilities to provide us with network services at several locations. Damage to, or failure of, these facilities, the communications network providers with whom we or they contract, or with the systems by which our communications providers allocate capacity among their customers, including us, or software errors, have in the past and could in the future result in interruptions in our services. Additionally, in connection with the addition of new data centers or expansion or consolidation of our existing data center facilities, we may move or transfer our data and our customers’ data to other data centers. Despite precautions that we take during this process, any unsuccessful data transfers may impair or cause disruptions in the delivery of our subscriptions. Interruptions in our subscriptions may reduce our revenues, may require us to issue credits or pay penalties, subject us to claims and litigation, cause customers to terminate their subscriptions and adversely affect our renewal rates and our ability to attract new customers. Our ability to attract and retain customers depends on our ability to provide customers with a highly reliable subscription and even minor interruptions in our subscriptions could harm our brand and reputation and have a material adverse effect on our business.

As part of our current disaster recovery arrangements, our North American and European infrastructure and our North American and European customers’ data is currently replicated in near real-time at data center facilities in the U.S. and Europe, respectively. We do not control the operation of these facilities or of our other data center facilities or RCLEC’s co-location facilities, and they are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, and similar events. They may also be subject to human error or to break-ins, sabotage, acts of vandalism, and similar misconduct.

Despite precautions taken at these facilities, the occurrence of a natural disaster, public health crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, human error, cybersecurity incident, including ransomware or denial-of-service attack, an act of terrorism or other unanticipated problems at these facilities could result in lengthy interruptions in our subscriptions. Even with the disaster recovery arrangements in place, our subscriptions could be interrupted.

We may also be required to transfer our servers to new data center facilities in the event that we are unable to renew our leases on acceptable terms, if at all, or the owners of the facilities decide to close their facilities, and we may incur significant costs and possible subscription interruption in connection with doing so. In addition, any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy or foreclosure, faced by our third-party data center operators, or any of the service providers with which we or they contract may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. Additionally, if our data centers are unable to keep up with our increasing needs for capacity, our ability to grow our business could be materially and adversely impacted.

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Failures in Internet infrastructure or interference with broadband access could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems are unreliable, possibly leading our customers to switch to our competitors or to avoid using our subscriptions.

Unlike traditional communications services, our subscriptions depend on our customers’ high-speed broadband access to the Internet. Increasing numbers of users and increasing bandwidth requirements may degrade the performance of our services and applications due to capacity constraints and other Internet infrastructure limitations. As our customer base grows and their usage of our services increases, we will be required to make additional investments in network capacity to maintain adequate data transmission speeds, the availability of which may be limited, or the cost of which may be on terms unacceptable to us. If adequate capacity is not available to us as our customers’ usage increases, our network may be unable to achieve or maintain sufficiently high reliability or performance. In addition, if Internet access service providers have outages or deteriorations in their quality of service, our customers will not have access to our subscriptions or may experience a decrease in the quality of our services. Frequent or persistent interruptions could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems or services are unreliable, leading them to switch to our competitors or to avoid our subscriptions, and could permanently harm our reputation and brands.

In addition, users who access our subscriptions and applications through mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, must have a high-speed connection, such as Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, 5G, or LTE, to use our services and applications. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have significant and increasing market power in the broadband and Internet access marketplace, including incumbent phone companies, cable companies, and wireless companies. Some of these providers offer solutions and subscriptions that directly compete with our own offerings, which can potentially give them a competitive advantage. Also, these providers could take measures that degrade, disrupt or increase the cost of user access to third-party services, including our subscriptions, by restricting or prohibiting the use of their infrastructure to support or facilitate third-party services or by charging increased fees to third parties or the users of third-party services, any of which would make our subscriptions less attractive to users, and reduce our revenues.

Interruptions in our services caused by undetected errors, failures, or bugs in our subscriptions could harm our reputation, result in significant costs to us, and impair our ability to sell our subscriptions.

Our subscriptions may have errors or defects that customers identify after they begin using them that could result in unanticipated interruptions of service. Internet-based services frequently contain undetected errors and bugs when first introduced or when new versions or enhancements are released. While the substantial majority of our customers are small and medium-sized businesses, the use of our subscriptions in complicated, large-scale network environments may increase our exposure to undetected errors, failures, or bugs in our subscriptions. Although we test our subscriptions to detect and correct errors and defects before their general release, we have, from time to time, experienced significant interruptions in our subscriptions as a result of such errors or defects and may experience future interruptions of service if we fail to detect and correct these errors and defects. The costs incurred in correcting such defects or errors may be substantial and could harm our results of operations. In addition, we rely on hardware purchased or leased and software licensed from third parties to offer our subscriptions.

Any defects in, or unavailability of, our or third-party software or hardware that cause interruptions of our subscriptions could, among other things:

•cause a reduction in revenues or delay in market acceptance of our subscriptions;

•require us to pay penalties or issue credits or refunds to our customers, resellers, or carriers, or expose us to claims for damages;

•cause us to lose existing customers and make it more difficult to attract new customers;

•divert our development resources or require us to make extensive changes to our software, which would increase our expenses and slow innovation;

•increase our technical support costs; and

•harm our reputation and brand.

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A security incident, such as a cyber-attack, information security breach or denial of service event could delay or interrupt service to our customers, harm our reputation or business, impact our subscriptions, and subject us to significant liability.

Our operations depend on our ability to protect our production and corporate information technology services from interruption or damage from cyber-attacks, denial-of-service events, unauthorized entry, computer malware or other security incidents, including events beyond our control. We have, from time to time, been subject to communications fraud and cyber-attacks by malicious actors, and denial of service events, and we may be subject to similar attacks in the future. We cannot assure you that our backup systems, regular data backups, security controls and other procedures currently in place, or that may be in place in the future, will be adequate to prevent significant damage, system failure, service outages, data breach, data loss, unauthorized access, loss of use, interruption, or increased charges from our technology vendors.

Also, our subscriptions are web-based. The amount of data we store for our customers and users increases as our business grows. We host services, which includes hosting customer data, both in co-located data centers and in multiple public cloud services. Our solutions allow users to store files, tasks, calendar events, messages and other data indefinitely on our services or as may be directed by our customers, although we have begun instituting in our customer agreements a provision that customer content and certain other customer data will be deleted upon termination of the agreements. We also maintain sensitive data related to our technology and business, and that of our employees, strategic partners, and customers, including intellectual property, proprietary business information and personally identifiable information (also called personal data) on our own systems and in multiple vendors’ cloud services. As a result of maintaining larger volumes of data and user files and/or as a result of our continued movement up market, or movement into new customer segments and acquisition of larger and more recognized customers, we may become more of a target for hackers, nation states and other malicious actors.

In addition, we use third-party vendors which, in some cases, have access to our data and our employees’, partners’, and customers’ data. We employ layered security measures and have a means of working with third parties who report vulnerabilities to us. Despite the implementation of security measures by us or our vendors, our computing devices, infrastructure, or networks, or our vendors’ computing devices, infrastructure, or networks, may be vulnerable to hackers, computer viruses, worms, ransomware, other malicious software programs, employee theft or misuse, phishing, denial-of-service attacks, or similar disruptive problems that are caused by or through a security weakness or vulnerability in our or our vendors’ infrastructure, network, or business practices or our or our vendors’ customers, employees, business partners, consultants, or other Internet users who attempt to invade our or our vendors’ corporate and personal computers, tablets, mobile devices, software, data networks, or voice networks. If there is a security weakness or vulnerability in our, our vendors’, or our customers’ infrastructure, networks, or business practices that is successfully targeted, we could face increased costs, liability claims, including contractual liability claims relating to security obligations in agreements with our partners and our customers, fines, claims, investigations and other proceedings, reduced revenue, or harm to our reputation or competitive position. In addition, even if not targeted, in strengthening our security controls or in remediating security vulnerabilities, we could incur increased costs and capital expenditures.

We have implemented remote working protocols and offer work-issued devices to certain employees, but the actions of employees while working remotely may have a greater effect on the security of our infrastructure, networks, and the information, including personally identifiable information, we process, including for example by increasing the risk of compromise to systems or data arising from employees’ combined personal and private use of devices, accessing our networks or information using wireless networks that we do not control, or the ability to transmit or store company-controlled information outside of our secured network. Although many of these risks are not unique to the remote working environment, they have been heightened by the dramatic increase in the numbers of our employees who have been and are continuing to work from home as a result of government requirements or guidelines and internal policies that have been put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our employees’ or third parties’ intentional, unintentional, or inadvertent actions may increase our vulnerability or expose us to security threats, such as ransomware, other malware and phishing attacks, and we may remain responsible for unauthorized access to, loss, alteration, destruction, acquisition, disclosure or other processing of information we or our vendors, business partners, or consultants process or otherwise maintain, even if the security measures used to protect such information comply with applicable laws, regulations and other actual or asserted obligations. Also, cyber-attacks, including on the supply chain, continue to increase in frequency and magnitude, and we cannot provide assurances that our preventative efforts will be successful.

We rely on encryption and authentication technology to ensure secure transmission of and access to confidential information, including customer credit card numbers, debit card numbers, direct debit information, customer communications, and files uploaded by our customers. Advances in computer capabilities, new discoveries in the field of cryptography, discovery of software bugs or vulnerabilities, discovery of hardware bugs or vulnerabilities, social engineering activities, or other developments may result in a compromise or breach of the technology we use to protect our data and our customer data, or of the data itself.

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Additionally, third parties have attempted in the past, and may attempt in the future, to induce domestic and international employees, consultants, or customers into disclosing sensitive information, such as user names, provisioning data, customer proprietary network information (“CPNI”) or other information in order to gain access to our customers’ user accounts or data, or to our data. CPNI includes information such as the phone numbers called by a customer, the frequency, duration, and timing of such calls, and any services purchased by the consumer, such as call waiting, call forwarding, and caller ID, in addition to other information that may appear on a customer’s bill. Third parties may also attempt to induce employees, consultants, or customers into disclosing information regarding our and our customers’ intellectual property, personal data and other confidential business information. In addition, the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, to perform hacking, phishing and social engineering, or to sabotage systems change and evolve frequently and may not be recognized until launched against a target, may be new and previously unknown or little-known, or may not be detected or understood until well after such actions are conducted. We may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures, and any security breach or other incident may take longer than expected to remediate or otherwise address. Any system failure or security breach or incident that causes interruptions or data loss in our operations or in the computer systems of our customers or leads to the misappropriation of our or our customers’ confidential or personal information could result in significant liability to us, loss of our intellectual property, cause our subscriptions to be perceived as not being secure, cause considerable harm to us and our reputation (including requiring notification to customers, regulators, or the media), and deter current and potential customers from using our subscriptions. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

It is critical to our business that our information and our employees’, strategic partners’, and customers’ sensitive information remains secure and that our customers perceive that this information is secure. An information security incident could result in unauthorized access to, loss of, or unauthorized disclosure of such information. A cybersecurity breach or incident could expose us to litigation, indemnity obligations, government investigations, contractual liability, and other possible liabilities. Additionally, a cyber-attack or other information security incident, whether actual or perceived, could result in negative publicity, which could harm our reputation and reduce our customers’ confidence in the effectiveness of our solutions, which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results. A breach of our security systems could also expose us to increased costs, including remediation costs, disruption of operations, or increased cybersecurity protection costs, that may have a material adverse effect on our business. In addition, a cybersecurity breach or incident of our customers’ systems can also result in exposure of their authentication credentials, unauthorized access to their accounts, exposure of their account information and data (including CPNI), and fraudulent calls on their accounts, which can subsequently have similar actual or perceived impacts to us as described above. A cybersecurity breach or incident of our partners’ or vendors’ systems can result in similar actual or perceived impacts.

While we maintain cybersecurity insurance, our insurance may be insufficient to cover all liabilities incurred by privacy or security incidents. We also cannot be certain that our insurance coverage will be adequate for data handling or data security liabilities actually incurred, that insurance will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms, or at all, or that an insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, including our financial condition, operating results, and reputation.

Laws, regulations, and enforcement actions relating to security and privacy of information continue to evolve. We have incurred and expect to continue to incur significant expenses to prevent security incidents. It is possible that, in order to support changes to applicable laws and to support our expansion of sales into new geographic areas or into new industry segments, we will need to increase or change our cybersecurity systems and expenditures. Further, it is possible that changes to laws and regulations relating to security and privacy may make it more expensive to operate in certain jurisdictions and may increase the risk of our non-compliance with such changing laws and regulations.

Potential problems with our information systems could interfere with our business and operations.

We rely on our information systems and those of third parties for processing customer orders, distribution of our subscriptions, billing our customers, processing credit card transactions, customer relationship management, supporting financial planning and analysis, accounting functions and financial statement preparation, and otherwise running our business. Information systems may experience interruptions, including interruptions of related services from third-party providers, which may be beyond our control. Such business interruptions could cause us to fail to meet customer requirements. All information systems, both internal and external, are potentially vulnerable to damage or interruption from a variety of sources, including without limitation, computer viruses, security breaches and incidents, energy blackouts, natural disasters, terrorism, war, telecommunication failures, employee or other theft, and third-party provider failures. In addition, since telecommunications

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billing is inherently complex and requires highly sophisticated information systems to administer, our internally developed billing system, which is currently being implemented, may experience errors or we may improperly operate the system, which could result in the system incorrectly calculating the fees owed by our customers for our subscriptions or related taxes and administrative fees. Any such errors in our customer billing could harm our reputation and cause us to violate truth in billing laws and regulations. Our current internally developed billing system requires us to process an increasing number of invoices manually, which could result in billing errors. Any errors or disruption in our information systems and those of the third parties upon which we rely could have a significant impact on our business. In addition, we may implement further and enhanced information systems in the future to meet the demands resulting from our growth and to provide additional capabilities and functionality. The implementation of new systems and enhancements is frequently disruptive to the underlying business of an enterprise, and can be time-consuming and expensive, increase management responsibilities, and divert management attention.

We depend largely on the continued services of our senior management and other highly-skilled employees, and if we are unable to hire, retain, manage and motivate our employees, we may not be able to grow effectively and our business, results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.

Our future performance depends on the continued services and contributions of our senior management and other key employees to execute on our business plan, and to identify and pursue opportunities and services innovations. The loss of services of senior management or other key employees, whether in the past or in the future, could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our business, financial condition, development and strategic objectives. In particular, we depend to a considerable degree on the vision, skills, experience, and effort of our co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Vladimir Shmunis. None of our executive officers or other senior management personnel is bound by a written employment agreement and any of them may therefore terminate employment with us at any time with no advance notice. The replacement of any of these senior management personnel, whether past or future, could involve significant time and costs, and such loss could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our business objectives.

Our future success also depends on our ability to continue to attract and retain highly skilled personnel. We believe that there is, and will continue to be, intense competition for highly skilled technical and other personnel with experience in our industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located, in Denver, Colorado, where our U.S. sales and customer support office and our network operations center is located, and in other locations where we maintain offices. In addition, changes to U.S. immigration policies, particularly to H-1B and other visa programs, and restrictions on travel (including but not limited to travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic) could restrain the flow of technical and professional talent into the U.S. and may inhibit our ability to hire qualified personnel. We must provide competitive compensation packages and a high-quality work environment to hire, retain, and motivate employees. If we are unable to retain and motivate our existing employees and attract qualified personnel to fill key positions, we may be unable to manage our business effectively, including the development, marketing, and sale of existing and new subscriptions, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. To the extent we hire personnel from competitors, we may be subject to allegations that they have been improperly solicited or divulged proprietary or other confidential information. Volatility in, or lack of performance of, our stock price may also affect our ability to attract and retain key personnel.

Increased customer turnover, or costs we incur to retain and upsell our customers, could materially and adversely affect our financial performance.

Although we have entered into long-term contracts with larger customers, those customers who do not have long-term contracts with us may terminate their subscriptions at any time without penalty or early termination charges. We cannot accurately predict the rate of customer terminations or average monthly subscription cancellations or failures to renew, which we refer to as turnover. Our customers with subscription agreements have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our service after the expiration of their initial subscription period, which is typically between one and three years. In the event that these customers do renew their subscriptions, they may choose to renew for fewer users, shorter contract lengths, or for a less expensive subscription plan or edition. We cannot predict the renewal rates for customers that have entered into subscription contracts with us.

Customer turnover, as well as reductions in the number of users for which a customer subscribes, each could have a significant impact on our results of operations, as does the cost we incur in our efforts to retain our customers and encourage them to upgrade their subscriptions and increase their number of users. Our turnover rate could increase in the future if customers are not satisfied with our subscriptions, the value proposition of our subscriptions or our ability to otherwise meet their needs and expectations. Turnover and reductions in the number of users for whom a customer subscribes may also increase due to factors beyond our control, including the failure or unwillingness of customers to pay their monthly subscription

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fees due to financial constraints and the impact of a slowing economy. In addition, any economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic could cause financial hardship for our customers, decrease technology spending and materially and negatively impact our customers’ willingness to enter into or renew subscriptions with us, or cause our customers to seek a decrease in the number of users or solutions for which they subscribe. For example, to address customer hardships, we may work with customers to provide greater flexibility to manage challenges they are facing, but we cannot be assured that they will not reduce their number of users or terminate their subscriptions altogether. Due to turnover and reductions in the number of users for whom a customer subscribes, we must acquire new customers, or acquire new users within our existing customer base, on an ongoing basis simply to maintain our existing level of customers and revenues. If a significant number of customers terminate, reduce, or fail to renew their subscriptions, we may be required to incur significantly higher marketing expenditures than we currently anticipate in order to increase the number of new customers or to upsell existing customers, and such additional marketing expenditures could harm our business and results of operations.

Our future success also depends in part on our ability to sell additional subscriptions and additional functionalities to our current customers. This may require increasingly sophisticated and more costly sales efforts and a longer sales cycle. Any increase in the costs necessary to upgrade, expand and retain existing customers could materially and adversely affect our financial performance. If our efforts to convince customers to add users and, in the future, to purchase additional functionalities are not successful, our business may suffer. In addition, such increased costs could cause us to increase our subscription rates, which could increase our turnover rate.

If we are unable to attract new customers to our subscriptions or upsell to those customers on a cost-effective basis, our business will be materially and adversely affected.

In order to grow our business, we must continue to attract new customers and expand the number of users in, and services provided to, our existing customer base on a cost-effective basis. We use and periodically adjust the mix of advertising and marketing programs to promote our subscriptions. Significant increases in the pricing of one or more of our advertising channels would increase our advertising costs or may cause us to choose less expensive and perhaps less effective channels to promote our subscriptions. As we add to or change the mix of our advertising and marketing strategies, we may need to expand into channels with significantly higher costs than our current programs, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic and global slowdown of economic activity has and will continue to disrupt our sales channels and our ability to attract new customers, which may require us to adjust our advertising and marketing programs or make further investments in these programs. We will incur advertising and marketing expenses in advance of when we anticipate recognizing any revenues generated by such expenses, and we may fail to otherwise experience an increase in revenues or brand awareness as a result of such expenditures. We have made in the past, and may make in the future, significant expenditures and investments in new advertising campaigns, and we cannot assure you that any such investments will lead to the cost-effective acquisition of additional customers. If we are unable to maintain effective advertising programs, our ability to attract new customers could be materially and adversely affected, our advertising and marketing expenses could increase substantially, and our results of operations may suffer.

Some of our potential customers learn about us through leading search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Bing. While we employ search engine optimization and search engine marketing strategies, our ability to maintain and increase the number of visitors directed to our website is not entirely within our control. If search engine companies modify their search algorithms in a manner that reduces the prominence of our listing, or if our competitors’ search engine optimization efforts are more successful than ours, or if search engine companies restrict or prohibit us from using their services, fewer potential customers may click through to our website. In addition, the cost of purchased listings has increased in the past and may increase in the future. A decrease in website traffic or an increase in search costs could materially and adversely affect our customer acquisition efforts and our results of operations.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in the rate of adoption of video and web conferencing solutions; however, we cannot predict whether or for how long these patterns will continue.

A significant portion of our revenues today come from small and medium-sized businesses, which may have fewer financial resources to weather an economic downturn.

A significant portion of our revenues today come from small and medium-sized businesses. These customers may be materially and adversely affected by economic downturns to a greater extent than larger, more established businesses. These businesses typically have more limited financial resources, including capital-borrowing capacity, than larger entities. The COVID-19 pandemic has had adverse effects on economies and financial markets globally, which have particularly impacted many small and medium sized businesses. Any economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and preventative

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measures taken by governments and private business worldwide could decrease technology spending in ways that adversely affect demand for our offerings and harm our business and results of operations. Although the U.S. government and others throughout the world have taken steps to provide monetary and fiscal assistance to individuals and businesses affected by the pandemic, it is unclear whether government actions will successfully avert or mitigate any economic downturn. As the majority of our customers pay for our subscriptions through credit and debit cards, weakness in certain segments of the credit markets and in the U.S. and global economies has resulted in and may in the future result in increased numbers of rejected credit and debit card payments, which could materially affect our business by increasing customer cancellations and impacting our ability to engage new small and medium-sized customers. If small and medium-sized businesses experience financial hardship as a result of a weak economy, industry consolidation or for any other reason, the overall demand for our subscriptions could be materially and adversely affected.

We face significant risks in our strategy to target medium-sized and larger businesses for sales of our subscriptions and, if we do not manage these efforts effectively, our business and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

Sales to medium-sized and larger businesses continue to grow in both absolute dollars and as a percentage of our total sales. As we continue to target more of our sales efforts to medium-sized and larger businesses, we expect to incur higher costs and longer sales cycles and we may be less effective at predicting when we will complete these sales. In these market segments, the decision to purchase our subscriptions generally requires the approval of more technical personnel and management levels within a potential customer’s organization, and therefore, these types of sales require us to invest more time educating these potential customers about the benefits of our subscriptions. In addition, larger customers may demand more features, integration services, and customization, and may require highly skilled sales and support personnel. Our investment in marketing our subscriptions to these potential customers may not be successful, which could significantly and adversely affect our results of operations and our overall ability to grow our customer base. Furthermore, many medium-sized and larger businesses that we target for sales may already purchase business communications solutions from our larger competitors. As a result of these factors, these sales opportunities may require us to devote greater research and development resources and sales support to individual customers, and invest in hiring and retaining highly skilled personnel, resulting in increased costs and could likely lengthen our typical sales cycle, which could strain our sales and support resources. Moreover, these larger transactions may require us to delay recognizing the associated revenues we derive from these customers until any technical or implementation requirements have been met.

Support for smartphones and tablets are an integral part of our solutions. If we are unable to develop robust mobile applications that operate on mobile platforms that our customers use, our business and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

Our solutions allow our customers to use and manage our cloud-based business communications solution on smart devices. As new smart devices and operating systems are released, we may encounter difficulties supporting these devices and services, and we may need to devote significant resources to the creation, support, and maintenance of our mobile applications. In addition, if we experience difficulties in the future integrating our mobile applications into smart devices or if problems arise with our relationships with providers of mobile operating systems, such as those of Apple Inc. or Alphabet Inc., our future growth and our results of operations could suffer.

If we are unable to develop, license, or acquire new services or applications on a timely and cost-effective basis, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.

The cloud-based business communications industry is an emerging market that is characterized by rapid development of and changes in customer requirements, frequent introductions of new and enhanced services, and continuing and rapid technological advancement. We cannot predict the effect of technological changes or the introduction of new, disruptive technologies on our business, and the market for cloud-based business communications may develop more slowly than we anticipate, or develop in a manner different than we expect, and our solutions could fail to achieve market acceptance. Our continued growth depends on continued use of voice and video communications by businesses, as compared to email and other data-based methods, and future demand for and adoption of Internet voice and video communications systems and services. In addition, to compete successfully in this emerging market, we must anticipate and adapt to technological changes and evolving industry standards, and continue to design, develop, manufacture, and sell new and enhanced services that provide increasingly higher levels of performance and reliability at lower cost. Currently, we derive a majority of our revenues from subscriptions to RingCentral MVP, and we expect this will continue for the foreseeable future. However, our future success will also depend on our ability to introduce and sell new services, features, and functionality that enhance or are beyond the subscriptions we currently offer, as well as to improve usability and support and increase customer satisfaction. Our failure to develop solutions

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that satisfy customer preferences in a timely and cost-effective manner may harm our ability to renew our subscriptions with existing customers and create or increase demand for our subscriptions and may materially and adversely impact our results of operations.

The introduction of new services by competitors or the development of entirely new technologies to replace existing offerings could make our solutions obsolete or adversely affect our business and results of operations. Announcements of future releases and new services and technologies by our competitors or us could cause customers to defer purchases of our existing subscriptions, which also could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. We may experience difficulties with software development, operations, design, or marketing that could delay or prevent our development, introduction, or implementation of new or enhanced services and applications. We have in the past experienced delays in the planned release dates of new features and upgrades and have discovered defects in new services and applications after their introduction. We cannot assure you that new features or upgrades will be released according to schedule, or that, when released, they will not contain defects. Either of these situations could result in adverse publicity, loss of revenues, delay in market acceptance, or claims by customers brought against us, all of which could harm our reputation, business, results of operations, and financial condition. Moreover, the development of new or enhanced services or applications may require substantial investment, and we must continue to invest a significant amount of resources in our research and development efforts to develop these services and applications to remain competitive. We do not know whether these investments will be successful. If customers do not widely adopt any new or enhanced services and applications, we may not be able to realize a return on our investment. If we are unable to develop, license, or acquire new or enhanced services and applications on a timely and cost-effective basis, or if such new or enhanced services and applications do not achieve market acceptance, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.

If we fail to continue to develop our brand or our reputation is harmed, our business may suffer.

We believe that continuing to strengthen our current brand will be critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our subscriptions and will require continued focus on active marketing efforts. The demand for and cost of online and traditional advertising have been increasing and may continue to increase. Accordingly, we may need to increase our investment in, and devote greater resources to, advertising, marketing, and other efforts to create and maintain brand loyalty among users. Brand promotion activities may not yield increased revenues, and even if they do, any increased revenues may not offset the expenses incurred in building our brand. In addition, if we do not handle customer complaints effectively, our brand and reputation may suffer, we may lose our customers’ confidence, and they may choose to terminate, reduce or not to renew their subscriptions. Many of our customers also participate in social media and online blogs about Internet-based software solutions, including our subscriptions, and our success depends in part on our ability to minimize negative and generate positive customer feedback through such online channels where existing and potential customers seek and share information. If we fail to sufficiently invest in, promote and maintain our brand, our business could be materially and adversely affected.

If we experience excessive fraudulent activity or cannot meet evolving credit card association merchant standards, we could incur substantial costs and lose the right to accept credit cards for payment, which could cause our customer base to decline significantly.

Most of our customers authorize us to bill their credit card accounts directly for service fees that we charge. If customers pay for our subscriptions with stolen credit cards, we could incur substantial third-party vendor costs for which we may not be reimbursed. Further, our customers provide us with credit card billing information online or over the phone, and we do not review the physical credit cards used in these transactions, which increases our risk of exposure to fraudulent activity. We also incur charges, which are referred to in the industry as chargebacks, from the credit card companies from claims that a customer did not authorize the specific credit card transaction to purchase our subscription. If the number of chargebacks becomes excessive, we could be assessed substantial fines or be charged higher transaction fees, and we could lose the right to accept credit cards for payment. In addition, credit card issuers may change merchant and/or service provider standards, including data protection standards, required to utilize their services from time to time. We have established and implemented measures intended to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”) in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. If we fail to maintain compliance with such standards or fail to meet new standards, the credit card associations could fine us or terminate their agreements with us, and we would be unable to accept credit cards as payment for our subscriptions. If we fail to maintain compliance with current service provider standards, such as PCI DSS, or fail to meet new standards, customers may choose not to use our services for certain types of communication they have with their customers. If such a failure to comply with relevant standards occurs, we may also face legal liability if we are found to not comply with applicable laws that incorporate, by reference or by adoption of substantially similar provisions, merchant or service provider standards, including PCI DSS. Our subscriptions may also be subject to fraudulent usage, including but not limited to revenue share fraud, domestic traffic pumping, subscription fraud, premium text message scams, and other fraudulent schemes. This usage can result in,

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among other things, substantial bills from our vendors, for which we would be responsible, for terminating fraudulent call traffic. In addition, third parties may have attempted in the past, and may attempt in the future, to induce employees, sub-contractors, or consultants into disclosing customer credentials and other account information, which can result in unauthorized access to customer accounts and customer data, unauthorized use of customers’ services, charges to customers for fraudulent usage and costs that we must pay to carriers. Although we implement multiple fraud prevention and detection controls, we cannot assure you that these controls will be adequate to protect against fraud. Substantial losses due to fraud or our inability to accept credit card payments could cause our paid customer base to significantly decrease, which would have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition, and ability to grow our business.

We are in the process of expanding our international operations, which exposes us to significant risks.

We have significant operations in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Russia, China, Ukraine, the Philippines and France. We also sell our solutions to customers in other countries in the EU, Australia and in Singapore, and we expect to grow our international presence in the future. The future success of our business will depend, in part, on our ability to expand our operations and customer base worldwide. Operating in international markets requires significant resources and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, economic, and political risks that are different from those in the U.S. Due to our limited experience with international operations and developing and managing sales and distribution channels in international markets, our international expansion efforts may not be successful. In addition, we will face risks in doing business internationally that could materially and adversely affect our business, including:

•our ability to comply with differing and evolving technical and environmental standards, telecommunications regulations, and certification requirements outside the U.S.;

•difficulties and costs associated with staffing and managing foreign operations;

•our ability to effectively price our subscriptions in competitive international markets;

•potentially greater difficulty collecting accounts receivable and longer payment cycles;

•the need to adapt and localize our subscriptions for specific countries;

•the need to offer customer care in various native languages;

•reliance on third parties over which we have limited control, including those that market and resell our subscriptions;

•availability of reliable broadband connectivity and wide area networks in targeted areas for expansion;

•lower levels of adoption of credit or debit card usage for Internet related purchases by foreign customers and compliance with various foreign regulations related to credit or debit card processing and data protection requirements;

•difficulties in understanding and complying with local laws, regulations, and customs in foreign jurisdictions;

•restrictions on travel to or from countries in which we operate or inability to access certain areas;

•export controls and economic sanctions;

•changes in diplomatic and trade relationships, including tariffs and other non-tariff barriers, such as quotas and local content rules;

•U.S. government trade restrictions, including those which may impose restrictions, including prohibitions, on the exportation, re-exportation, sale, shipment or other transfer of programming, technology, components, and/or services to foreign persons;

•our ability to comply with different and evolving laws, rules, and regulations, including the European General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) and other data privacy and data protection laws, rules and regulations;

•compliance with various anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and U.K. Bribery Act of 2010;

•more limited protection for intellectual property rights in some countries;

•adverse tax consequences;

•fluctuations in currency exchange rates;

•exchange control regulations, which might restrict or prohibit our conversion of other currencies into U.S. dollars;

•restrictions on the transfer of funds;

•new and different sources of competition;

•natural disasters or global health crises, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic;

•political and economic instability created by the U.K.'s departure from the EU (“Brexit”);

•deterioration of political relations between the U.S. and other countries in which we operate, particularly Russia, Ukraine, China, and the Philippines; and

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•political or social unrest, economic instability, conflict or war in such countries, or sanctions implemented by the U.S. against these countries, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our operations.

Our failure to manage any of these risks successfully could harm our future international operations and our overall business.

We may expand through acquisitions of, investments in, or strategic partnerships or other strategic transactions with other companies, each of which may divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders, increase expenses, disrupt our operations, and harm our results of operations.

Our business strategy may, from time to time, include acquiring or investing in complementary services, technologies or businesses, strategic investments and partnerships, or other strategic transactions, such as our investment in and strategic partnerships with Avaya, Atos, ALE, Mitel, Vodafone, DT, and Verizon. We cannot assure you that we will successfully identify suitable acquisition candidates or transaction counterparties, securely or effectively integrate or manage disparate technologies, lines of business, personnel and corporate cultures, realize our business strategy or the expected return on our investment, or manage a geographically dispersed company. Any such acquisition, investment, strategic partnership, or other strategic transaction could materially and adversely affect our results of operations. The process of negotiating, effecting, and realizing the benefits from acquisitions, investments, strategic partnerships, and strategic transactions is complex, expensive and time-consuming, and may cause an interruption of, or loss of momentum in, development and sales activities and operations of both companies, and we may incur substantial cost and expense, as well as divert the attention of management. We may issue equity securities which could dilute current stockholders’ ownership, incur debt, assume contingent or other liabilities and expend cash in acquisitions, investments, strategic partnerships, and other strategic transactions which could negatively impact our financial position, stockholder equity, and stock price.

Acquisitions, investments, strategic partnerships, and other strategic transactions involve significant risks and uncertainties, including:

•the potential failure to achieve the expected benefits of the acquisition, investment, strategic partnership, or other strategic transaction;

•unanticipated costs and liabilities;

•difficulties in integrating new solutions and subscriptions, software, businesses, operations, and technology infrastructure in an efficient and effective manner;

•difficulties in maintaining customer relations;

•the potential loss of key employees of any acquired businesses;

•the diversion of the attention of our senior management from the operation of our daily business;

•the potential adverse effect on our cash position to the extent that we use cash for the transaction consideration;

•the potential significant increase of our interest expense, leverage, and debt service requirements if we incur additional debt to pay for an acquisition, investment, strategic partnership, or other strategic transaction;

•the potential issuance of securities that would dilute our stockholders’ percentage ownership;

•the potential to incur large and immediate write-offs and restructuring and other related expenses;

•the potential liability or expenses associated with new types of data stored, existing security obligations or liabilities, unknown weaknesses in our solutions, insufficient security measures in place, and compromise of our networks via access to our systems from assets not previously under our control; and

•the inability to maintain uniform standards, controls, policies, and procedures.

Any acquisition, investment, strategic partnership, or other strategic transaction could expose us to unknown liabilities. Moreover, we cannot assure you that we will realize the anticipated benefits of any acquisition, investment, strategic partnership, or other strategic transaction. In addition, our inability to successfully operate and integrate newly acquired businesses or newly formed strategic partnerships appropriately, effectively, and in a timely manner could impair our ability to take advantage of future growth opportunities and other advances in technology, as well as on our revenues, gross margins, and expenses.

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For example, in connection with our strategic partnership with Avaya, we purchased $125.0 million of Avaya Series A Preferred Stock and made an advance of $375.0 million, predominantly for future fees, as well as for certain licensing rights (paid primarily in our Class A Common Stock). These are significant investments on which we may not realize the anticipated benefits for various reasons, including a lack of success in the marketing and sale of ACO, potential or actual financial distress, insolvency, or bankruptcy of Avaya or any of its subsidiaries, or other facts or circumstances that may limit our ability to recover, or realize benefits from, these investments.

In addition, our ability to offer, sell or transfer certain investments may be limited by applicable securities laws and regulations, and our ability to liquidate and realize value from such investments may be negatively and materially impacted by any delays or limitations on our ability to offer, sell, or transfer certain investments. In addition, certain investments are speculative in nature and may be volatile or decline in value or be entirely lost, which could have a negative impact on our future financial position, results of operations, and cash flows.

We may be subject to liabilities on past sales for taxes, surcharges, and fees and our operating results may be harmed if we are required to collect such amounts in jurisdictions where we have not historically done so.

We believe we collect state and local sales tax and use, excise, utility user, and ad valorem taxes, fees, or surcharges in all relevant jurisdictions in which we generate sales, based on our understanding of the applicable laws in those jurisdictions. Such tax, fees and surcharge laws and rates vary greatly by jurisdiction, and the application of such taxes to e-commerce businesses, such as ours, is a complex and evolving area. There is uncertainty as to what constitutes sufficient “in state presence” for a state to levy taxes, fees, and surcharges for sales made over the Internet, and after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair, U.S. states may require an online retailer with no in-state property or personnel to collect and remit sales tax on sales to the state’s residents, which may permit wider enforcement of sales tax collection requirements. Therefore, the application of existing or future laws relating to indirect taxes to our business, or the audit of our business and operations with respect to such taxes or challenges of our positions by taxing authorities, all could result in increased tax liabilities for us or our customers that could materially and adversely affect our results of operations and our relationships with our customers.

We may be unable to use some or all of our net operating loss carryforwards, which could materially and adversely affect our reported financial condition and results of operations.

Source: SEC EDGAR (public domain) · 10-K for the period ended 2021-12-31, filed 2022-03-01 · accession 0001384905-22-000011

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