UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

 

 

FORM 10-K

 

 

 

 

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2017

 

OR

 

 

For the Transition Period from                to               

 

Commission File Number 001- 36348

 

 

PAYLOCITY HOLDING CORPORATION

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

 

3850 N. Wilke Road

Arlington Heights, Illinois 60004

(Address of principal executive offices and zip code)

 

(847) 463-3200

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

 

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

 

 

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 and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted 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 and post such files).    Yes   ☒    No   ☐

 

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§ 229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K.  ☒

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting 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.

 

 

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 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 as of December 31, 2016, the last day of registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was $774.8 million (based on the closing price for shares of the registrant’s common stock as reported by the NASDAQ Global Select Market for the last business day prior to that date).

As of August 4, 2017, there were 51,750,086 shares of the registrant’s common stock issued and outstanding.

 

 

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE:

 

The information required by Part III of this Report, to the extent not set forth herein, is incorporated herein by reference from the Proxy Statement relating to the registrant’s 2018 annual meeting of stockholders, which shall be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year to which this Report relates.

 

 

 

PAYLOCITY HOLDING CORPORATION

Form 10-K

For the Year Ended June 30, 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART 1

 

Forward Looking Statements

 

Except for the historical financial information contained herein, the matters discussed in this report on Form 10-K (as well as documents incorporated herein by reference) may be considered “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding our future financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations. When used in this Annual Report, the words “believe,” “may,” “could,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “intend,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “project” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

 

We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives, and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in this report, and in particular, the risks discussed under Part 1, Item 1A:”Risk Factors” and those discussed in other documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we do not intend to update these forward-looking statements publicly or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

 

In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this report and in the documents incorporated in this report may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.

 

Item 1. Business.

 

Overview

 

We are a cloud-based provider of payroll and human capital management, or HCM, software solutions for medium-sized organizations, which we define as those having between 20 and 1,000 employees. Our comprehensive and easy-to-use solutions enable our clients to manage their workforces more effectively. As of June 30, 2017, we served approximately 14,550 clients across the U.S., which on average had over 100 employees. Our solutions help drive strategic human capital decision-making and improve employee engagement by enhancing the human resource, payroll and finance capabilities of our clients.

 

Our multi-tenant software platform is highly configurable and includes a unified suite of payroll and HCM applications, such as time and labor tracking, benefits and talent management. Our solutions have been organically developed from our core payroll solution, which we believe is the most critical system of record for medium-sized organizations and an essential gateway to other HCM functionality. Our payroll and HCM applications use a unified database and provide robust on-demand reporting and analytics. Our platform provides intuitive self-service functionality for employees and managers combined with seamless integration across all our solutions. We supplement our comprehensive software platform with an integrated implementation and client service organization, all of which are designed to meet the needs of medium-sized organizations.

 

Effective management of human capital is a core function in all organizations and requires a significant commitment of resources.  Organizations are faced with complex and ever-changing requirements, including diverse federal, state and local regulations across multiple jurisdictions.  In addition, the workplace operating environment is rapidly changing as employees increasingly become mobile, work remotely and expect an end user experience similar to that of consumer-oriented Internet applications.  Medium-sized organizations operating without the infrastructure,

expertise or personnel of larger enterprises are uniquely pressured in this complex and dynamic environment.  Existing solutions offered by third-party payroll service providers can have limited capabilities and configurability while enterprise-focused software vendors can be expensive and time-consuming to implement and manage.  We believe that medium-sized organizations are better served by solutions designed to meet their unique needs.

 

Our solutions provide the following key benefits to our clients:

 

 

 

 

 

 

We market and sell our products primarily through our direct sales force. We generate sales leads through a variety of focused marketing initiatives and from our extensive referral network of 401(k) advisors, benefits administrators, insurance brokers, third-party administrators and HR consultants. We derive revenue from a client based on the solutions purchased by the client, the number of client employees and the amount, type and timing of services provided with respect to those client employees. Our annual revenue retention rate was greater than 92% in each of the fiscal years 2015,  2016 and 2017. Our total revenues increased from $152.7 million in fiscal 2015 to $230.7 million in fiscal 2016, representing a 51% year-over-year increase and to $300.0 million in fiscal 2017, representing a 30% year-over-year increase.  Our recurring revenues increased from $144.1 million in fiscal 2015 to $220.1 million in fiscal 2016, representing a 53% year-over-year increase, and to $288.4 million in fiscal 2017, representing a 31% year-over-year increase. Although we do not have long-term contracts with our clients and our agreements with clients are generally terminable on 60 days’ or less notice, our recurring revenue model provides significant visibility into our future operating results.

 

Industry Background

 

Effective management of human capital is a core function for all organizations and requires a significant commitment of resources. Identifying, acquiring and retaining talent is a priority at all levels of an organization. In today’s increasingly complex business and regulatory environment, organizations are being pressured to manage critical payroll and HCM functions more effectively, automate manual processes and decrease their operating costs.

 

Complex and Dynamic Tax and Regulatory Environment

 

The tax and regulatory environment in the United States is complex and dynamic. Organizations are subject to a myriad of tax, benefit, workers compensation, healthcare and other rules, regulations and reporting obligations. In addition to U.S. federal taxing and regulatory authorities, there are more than 10,000 state and local tax codes in the United States. Further, federal, state and local government agencies continually enact and amend the rules, regulations and reporting requirements with which organizations must comply.

 

Growing Demand for Mobility and Enhanced User Experience

 

Connectivity and mobility are enabling employees to spend less time in traditional office environments and more time working remotely. This trend increases the demand for advanced and intuitive solutions that improve collaboration and foster employee engagement, such as remote self-service access to payroll and timesheet reporting, HR

and benefits portals and other talent management applications. Given the prominence of consumer-oriented Internet applications, employees expect the user experience and accessibility of internal systems to be similar to those of the latest Internet applications, such as LinkedIn, Amazon and Facebook.

 

Medium-Sized Organizations Face Unique Challenges

 

Medium-sized organizations functioning without the infrastructure, expertise or personnel of larger enterprises are uniquely pressured in the current complex and dynamic environment. Employees in these medium-sized organizations often perform multiple job functions, and many medium-sized organizations have limited financial, technical and other resources needed to effectively manage their critical business requirements and to build and maintain the systems required to do so.

 

Large Market Opportunity for Payroll and HCM Solutions

 

According to market analyses published by International Data Corporation, or IDC, titled Worldwide and U.S. Human Capital Management Applications 2015-2019 Forecast (June 2015) and U.S. Payroll Outsourcing Services Forecast, 2015-2019 (November 2015), the U.S. market for HCM applications and payroll outsourcing services is estimated to be $26 billion in 2017. The market opportunity is driven by the importance of payroll and HCM solutions to the successful management of organizations.

 

To estimate our addressable market, we focus our analysis on the number of U.S. medium-sized organizations and the number of their employees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were over 610,000 firms with 20 to 999 employees in the U.S. in 2014, employing over 43 million persons. We estimate that if clients were to buy our entire suite of existing solutions at list prices, they would spend approximately $285 per employee annually. Based on this analysis, we believe our current target addressable market is approximately $12 billion. Our existing clients do not typically buy our entire suite of solutions, and as we continue to expand our product offerings, we believe that we have an opportunity to increase the amount clients spend on payroll and HCM solutions per employee and to expand our addressable market.

 

Organizations Are Increasingly Transitioning to SaaS Solutions

 

SaaS solutions are easier and more affordable to implement and operate than those offered by traditional software providers. SaaS solutions also enable software updates with greater frequency and without new hardware investments, enabling organizations to better react to changes in their environments. Many organizations are transitioning to SaaS solutions for front-office business applications such as salesforce management. Similarly, we believe organizations are adopting back-office SaaS applications, such as payroll and HCM, with increasing frequency. According to a market analysis published by IDC, titled Worldwide SaaS and Cloud Software 2015-2019 Forecast and 2014 Vendor Shares (August 2015), the U.S. SaaS market is estimated to be $54 billion in 2017 and is projected to grow at a 17% compound annual growth rate from 2014 to 2019.

 

Limitations of Existing Solutions

 

We believe that existing payroll and HCM solutions have limitations that cause them to underserve the unique needs of medium-sized organizations. Existing payroll and HCM solutions include:

 

 

 

 

 

Given the challenges medium-sized organizations face operating in complex and dynamic environments and the limited ability of traditional offerings to address these challenges, we believe there is a significant market opportunity for a comprehensive, unified SaaS solution designed to serve the payroll and HCM needs of medium-sized organizations.

 

Segment Information

 

Our chief operating decision maker reviews our financial results in total when evaluating financial performance and for purposes of allocating resources. We have thus determined that we operate in a single cloud-based software solution reporting segment.

 

Our Solution

 

We are a cloud-based provider of payroll and HCM software solutions for medium-sized organizations.  Our solutions enable medium-sized organizations to more efficiently manage payroll and human capital in their complex and dynamic operating environments.  As of June 30, 2017, we served approximately 14,550 clients across the U.S., which on average had over 100 employees.

 

The key benefits of our solution include the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Strategy

 

We intend to strengthen and extend our position as a provider of cloud-based payroll and HCM software solutions to medium-sized organizations. Key elements of our strategy include:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Products

 

Our cloud-based platform features a suite of unified payroll and HCM applications. Our solutions are highly configurable and easy to use, implement, update and maintain.

 

Payroll (Web Pay)

 

Paylocity Web Pay is designed to provide enterprise-grade payroll processing and administration from a convenient cloud-based platform. Key features of Web Pay include:

 

 

 

Core HR (Web HR)

 

Paylocity Web HR provides a set of core HR capabilities designed to improve HR compliance, enhance reporting capabilities and reduce the amount of time necessary to manage employee information. Key features of Web HR include:

 

 

 

 

Talent Management

 

Paylocity’s Talent suite is designed to bring ease and convenience to the employee performance appraisal process and to give employees the opportunity to participate in their performance review and be more engaged in their professional development. Employee reviews and appraisals throughout the organization are stored and analyzed in a single system. Key features of Talent include:

 

 

Time & Labor (Web Time and Web Expense)

 

Paylocity Web Time is a time and attendance solution designed to automate manual processes, improve productivity and help organizations control labor costs. Key features of Web Time include:

 

Paylocity Web Expense is an expense management tool designed to streamline and automate the expense management process by eliminating manual steps involved in filing, approving, and reimbursing expenses. Key features of Web Expense include:

Benefits (Web Benefits)

 

Paylocity Web Benefits and Paylocity Enterprise Benefits, Powered by bswift are benefit management solutions that integrate with insurance carrier systems to provide automated administrative processes and allow users to choose benefit elections and make life event changes online, summarize benefit elections and perform other similar benefit-related tasks. These solutions also enable premium reconciliation, management of voluntary benefits and advanced reporting.  Both Web Benefits and Paylocity Enterprise Benefits integrate seamlessly with Paylocity’s Web Pay. Key features of Web Benefits include:

 

 

Implementation and Client Services

 

Delivering our clients a positive experience is an essential element of our ability to sell our solutions and retain our clients. We provide our clients with a single point of contact supplemented by teams with deep technical and subject

matter expertise. The single point of contact allows our account managers to better understand our clients’ needs, which we believe strengthens our client relationships.

 

Implementation and Training Services

 

Our clients are medium-sized organizations that are typically migrating to our platform from a competitive solution or are adopting an online payroll and HCM solution for the first time. These organizations often have limited internal resources and generally rely on us to implement our solutions.

 

We typically implement our Paylocity Web Pay product within only three to four weeks and any additional products thereafter, as requested by the client. Each client is guided through the implementation process by knowledgeable consultants for all implementation matters. We believe our ability to rapidly implement our solutions is principally due to the combination of our emphasis on engagement with the client, our standardized methodology, our cloud-based architecture and our highly-configurable, easy-to-use products.

 

We offer our clients the opportunity to participate in formal training designed to increase their ability to further utilize the functionality of our products within their organizations. Our training courses are designed to enable selected employees of our clients to develop expertise in our solutions and act as a first-level support resource for their colleagues.

 

In order to ensure client satisfaction, a team of client service representatives conducts a comprehensive audit of a client’s account after the client has completed the implementation process. Thereafter, the client is transitioned to our client service team.

 

Client Service

 

Our client service model is designed to serve the needs of medium-sized organizations and to build loyalty by developing strong relationships with our clients. We strive to achieve high revenue retention, in part, by delivering high-quality service. Our revenue retention was greater than 92% in each of fiscal 2015,  2016 and 2017.

 

Each client is assigned an account management team that serves as the central point of contact for any questions or support needs. We believe this approach enhances our client service by providing each client with a single person who understands the client’s business, responds quickly and is accountable for the client experience. Our account managers are supplemented by teams with deep technical and subject matter expertise who help to expediently and effectively address client needs. We also proactively solicit client feedback through ongoing surveys from which we receive actionable feedback that we use to enhance our client service processes.

 

Tax and Regulatory Services

 

Our software contains a rules engine designed to make accurate tax calculations that is continually updated to support all pertinent legislative changes across all U.S. jurisdictions. Our tax filing service provides a variety of solutions to our clients including processing payroll tax deposits, preparing and filing quarterly and annual tax returns and amendments and resolving client tax notices.

 

Clients

 

As of June 30, 2017, we provided our solutions to approximately 14,550 clients in all U.S states. The rate at which we add clients is highly variable period-to-period and highly seasonal as many clients switch solutions during the first calendar quarter of each year. Although many clients have multiple divisions, segments or locations, we only count such clients once for these purposes.

 

Our clients include for-profit and non-profit organizations across industries including business services, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, technology and others. For each of the three years ended June 30, 2015,  2016 and 2017, no client accounted for more than 1% of our revenues.

 

Sales and Marketing

 

We market and sell our products and services primarily through our direct sales force. Our direct sales force includes sales representatives who have defined geographic territories throughout the U.S. We seek to hire experienced sales representatives wherever they are located, and believe we have room to grow the number of sales representatives in each of our territories.

 

The sales cycle begins with a sales lead generated by the sales representative through our third-party referral network, a client referral, our telemarketing team, our external website, e-mail marketing or territory- based activities. Through one or more on-site visits, phone-based sales calls, or web demonstrations, sales representatives perform in-depth analysis of prospective clients’ needs and demonstrate our solutions. We employ sophisticated software to track, classify and manage our sales representatives’ pipeline of potential clients. We support our sales force with a marketing program that includes seminars and webinars, email marketing, social media marketing, broker events and web marketing.

 

Referral Network

 

As a core element of our business strategy, we have developed a referral network of third-party service providers, including 401(k) advisors, benefits administrators, insurance brokers, third-party administrators and HR consultants, that recommend our solutions and provide referrals. Our referral network has become an increasingly important component of our sales process, and in fiscal 2017, approximately 30% of our new client revenue originated by referrals from participants in our referral network.

 

We believe participants in our referral network refer potential clients to us because we do not provide services that compete with their own and because we offer third parties the ability to integrate their systems with our platform. Unlike other payroll and HCM solution providers who also provide retirement plans, health insurance and other products and services competitive with the offerings of the participants in our referral network, we focus only on our core business of providing cloud-based payroll and HCM solutions. In some cases, we have formalized relationships in which we are a recommended vendor of these participants. In other cases, our relationships are informal. We typically do not compensate these participants for referrals.

 

Partner Ecosystem

 

We have developed a partner ecosystem of third-party systems, such as 401(k), benefits and insurance provider systems, with whom we provide automated data integration for our clients. These third-party providers require certain financial information from their clients in order to efficiently provide their respective services. After securing authorization from the client, we exchange payroll data with these providers. In turn, these third-party providers supply data to us, which allows us to deliver comprehensive benefit management services to our clients. We believe our ability to integrate our systems with those of these partners adds value to our mutual clients and to our partners.

 

We have also developed our solutions to integrate with a variety of other systems used by our clients, such as accounting, point of sale, banking, expense management, recruiting, background screening and skills assessment solutions. We believe our clients benefit from an integrated and seamless solution.

 

Technology

 

We offer our solutions on a cloud-based platform that leverages a unified database architecture and a common code base that we organically developed. Clients do not need to install our software in their data centers and can access our solutions through any mobile device or web browser with Internet access.

 

 

 

 

We host our solutions at a third-party facility in Franklin Park, Illinois and utilize another third-party facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin for backup and disaster recovery. We supply the hardware infrastructure and are responsible for the ongoing maintenance of our equipment at all data center locations.

 

Competition

 

The market for payroll and HCM solutions is fragmented, highly competitive and rapidly changing. Our competitors vary for each of our solutions and include enterprise-focused software providers, such as Ultimate Software Group, Inc., Workday, Inc., SAP AG, Oracle Corporation and Ceridian Corporation; payroll service providers, such as Automatic Data Processing, Inc., Paychex, Inc., Paycom Software, Inc., Paycor, Inc. and other regional providers; and HCM point solutions providers, such as Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc.

 

We believe the principal competitive factors on which we compete in our market include the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We believe that we compete favorably on these factors within the medium-sized organization market. We believe our ability to remain competitive will largely depend on the success of our continued investment in sales and marketing, research and development and implementation and client services.

 

Research and Development

 

We invest heavily in research and development to continuously introduce new applications, technologies, features and functionality. We are organized in small product-centric teams that utilize an agile development methodology. We focus our efforts on developing new applications and core technologies and on further enhancing the usability, functionality, reliability, performance and flexibility of existing applications.

 

Research and development costs, including research and development costs that were capitalized, were $24.7 million, $36.3 million and $44.5 million for the years ended June 30, 2015,  2016 and 2017, respectively. Our research and development personnel are principally located at our headquarters, although we seek to hire highly experienced personnel wherever they are located.

 

Intellectual Property

 

Our success is dependent, in part, on our ability to protect our proprietary technology and other intellectual property rights. We rely on a combination of trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks, as well as contractual protections to establish and protect our intellectual property rights. We require our employees, consultants and other third parties to enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements and control access to software, documentation and other proprietary information. Although we rely on laws respecting intellectual property rights, including trade secret, copyright and trademark laws, as well as contractual protections to establish and protect our intellectual property rights, we believe that factors such as the technological and creative skills of our personnel, creation of new modules, features and functionality and frequent enhancements to our applications are more essential to establishing and maintaining our technology leadership position.

 

Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary technology and our intellectual property rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to misappropriate our rights or to copy or obtain and use our proprietary technology to develop applications with the same functionality as our applications. Policing unauthorized use of our technology and intellectual property rights is very difficult.

 

We expect that providers of payroll and HCM solutions such as ours may be subject to third-party infringement claims as the market and the number of competitors grows, and the functionality of applications in different industry segments overlaps. Any of these or other third parties might make a claim of infringement against us at any time.

 

Employees

 

As of June 30, 2017, we had approximately 2,115 full-time employees, of which 725 were in client services and operations, 480 were in client implementation, 450 were in sales and marketing, 300 were in research and development and 160 were in general and administrative. None of our employees is represented by a union or is party to a collective bargaining agreement, and we have not experienced any work stoppages. We believe we have good relations with our employees and that our employee-focused culture benefits our clients and supports our growth. Our management team is committed to maintaining and improving our culture even as we grow rapidly.

 

Available Information

 

Our Internet address is www.paylocity.com and our investor relations website is located at http://investors.paylocity.com. We make available free of charge on our investor relations website under the heading “Financials” our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports as soon as reasonably practicable after such materials are electronically filed with (or furnished to) the SEC. Information contained on our websites is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In addition, the public may read and copy materials we file with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference

Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549. The public may obtain information on the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. In addition, the SEC maintains an Internet site, www.sec.gov, that includes filings of and information about issuers that file electronically with the SEC.

 

Item 1A. Risk Factors.

 

Our business, prospects, financial condition or operating results could be materially adversely affected by any of these risks, as well as other risks not currently known to us or that are currently considered immaterial. The trading price of our common stock could decline due to any of the risks and uncertainties described below, and you may lose all or part of your investment. In assessing these risks, you should also refer to the other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes.

 

We have incurred losses in the past, and we may not be able to sustain profitability for the foreseeable future.

 

We have incurred net losses from time to time. We incurred net losses of $7,110,000, $13,972,000 and $3,851,000 in fiscal 2014, fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2016, respectively. While we have generated net income in fiscal 2017, it does not ensure that we will earn continued net income in future periods. We have been growing our number of clients rapidly, and as we do so, we incur significant sales and marketing, services and other related expenses. Our profitability will be significantly influenced by our ability to attain sufficient scale and productivity to achieve recurring revenues that are sufficient to support the incremental costs to obtain and support new clients. We intend for the foreseeable future to continue to focus predominately on adding new clients, and we cannot predict when we will achieve sustained profitability, if at all. We also expect to make other significant expenditures and investments in research and development to expand and improve our product offerings and technical infrastructure. In addition, as a public company, we have incurred significant legal, accounting and other expenses. These increased expenditures have made it harder for us to achieve and maintain profitability. We also may incur losses in the future for a number of other unforeseen reasons. Accordingly, we may incur losses in the foreseeable future.

 

Our quarterly operating results have fluctuated in the past and may continue to fluctuate, causing the value of our common stock to decline substantially.

 

Our quarterly operating results may fluctuate due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful. Moreover, our stock price might be based on expectations of future performance that are unrealistic or that we might not meet and, if our revenue or operating results fall below such expectations, the price of our common stock could decline substantially.

 

Our number of new clients typically increases more during our third fiscal quarter ending March 31 than during the rest of our fiscal year, primarily because many new clients prefer to start using our payroll and human capital management, or HCM, solutions at the beginning of a calendar year. In addition, client funds and year-end activities are traditionally higher during our third fiscal quarter. As a result of these factors, our total revenue and expenses have historically grown disproportionately during our third fiscal quarter as compared to other quarters.

 

In addition to other risk factors listed in this section, some of the important factors that may cause fluctuations in our quarterly operating results include:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We do not have long-term agreements with clients, and our standard agreements with clients are generally terminable by our clients upon 60 or fewer days’ notice. If a significant number of clients elected to terminate their agreements with us, our operating results and our business would be adversely affected.

 

In addition, a significant portion of our operating expenses are related to compensation and other items which are relatively fixed in the short-term, and we plan expenditures based in part on our expectations regarding future needs and opportunities. Accordingly, changes in our business or revenue shortfalls could decrease our gross and operating margins and could cause significant changes in our operating results from period to period. If this occurs, the trading price of our common stock could fall substantially, either suddenly or over time.

 

Our operating results for previous fiscal quarters are not necessarily indicative of our operating results for the full fiscal years or for any future periods. We believe that, due to the underlying factors for quarterly fluctuations, quarter-to-quarter comparisons of our operations are not necessarily meaningful and that such comparisons should not be relied upon as indications of future performance.

 

Failure to manage our growth effectively could increase our expenses, decrease our revenue, and prevent us from implementing our business strategy.

 

We have been rapidly growing our revenue and number of clients, and we will seek to do the same for the foreseeable future. However, the growth in our number of clients puts significant strain on our business, requires significant capital expenditures and increases our operating expenses. To manage this growth effectively, we must attract, train, and retain a significant number of qualified sales, implementation, client service, software development, information technology and management personnel. We also must maintain and enhance our technology infrastructure and our financial and accounting systems and controls. If we fail to effectively manage our growth or we over-invest or under-invest in our business, our business and results of operations could suffer from the resultant weaknesses in our infrastructure, systems or controls. We could also suffer operational mistakes, a loss of business opportunities and employee losses. If our management is unable to effectively manage our growth, our expenses might increase more than expected, our revenue could decline or might grow more slowly than expected, and we might be unable to implement our business strategy.

 

The markets in which we participate are highly competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our operating results could be adversely affected.

 

The market for payroll and HCM solutions is fragmented, highly competitive and rapidly changing. Our competitors vary for each of our solutions, and include enterprise-focused software providers, such as Ultimate Software Group, Inc., Workday, Inc., SAP AG, Oracle Corporation and Ceridian Corporation, payroll service providers, such as Automatic Data Processing, Inc., Paychex, Inc., Paycom Software, Inc., Paycor, Inc. and other regional providers, and HCM point solutions, such as Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc.

 

Several of our competitors are larger, have greater name recognition, longer operating histories and significantly greater resources than we do. Many of these competitors are able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products and services. Furthermore, our current or potential competitors may be acquired by third parties with greater available resources and the ability to initiate or withstand substantial price competition. As a result, our competitors may be able to develop products and services better received by our markets or may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, regulations or client requirements.

 

In addition, current and potential competitors have established, and might in the future establish, partner or form other cooperative relationships with vendors of complementary products, technologies or services to enable them to offer new products and services, to compete more effectively or to increase the availability of their products in the marketplace. New competitors or relationships might emerge that have greater market share, a larger client base, more widely adopted proprietary technologies, greater marketing expertise, greater financial resources, and larger sales forces than we have, which could put us at a competitive disadvantage. In light of these advantages, current or potential clients might accept competitive offerings in lieu of purchasing our offerings. We expect intense competition to continue for these reasons, and such competition could negatively impact our sales, profitability or market share.

 

If we do not continue to innovate and deliver high-quality, technologically advanced products and services, we will not remain competitive and our revenue and operating results could suffer.

 

The market for our solutions is characterized by rapid technological advancements, changes in client requirements, frequent new product introductions and enhancements and changing industry standards. The life cycles of our products are difficult to estimate. Rapid technological changes and the introduction of new products and enhancements by new or existing competitors could undermine our current market position.

 

Our success depends in substantial part on our continuing ability to provide products and services that medium-sized organizations will find superior to our competitors’ offerings and will continue to use. We intend to continue to invest significant resources in research and development in order to enhance our existing products and services and introduce new high-quality products that clients will want. If we are unable to predict user preferences or industry changes, or if we are unable to modify our products and services on a timely basis or to effectively bring new products to market, our sales may suffer.

 

In addition, we may experience difficulties with software development, industry standards, design, or marketing that could delay or prevent our development, introduction or implementation of new solutions and enhancements. The introduction of new solutions by competitors, the emergence of new industry standards or the development of entirely new technologies to replace existing offerings could render our existing or future solutions obsolete.

 

We may not have sufficient resources to make the necessary investments in software development and we may experience difficulties that could delay or prevent the successful development, introduction or marketing of new products or enhancements. In addition, our products or enhancements may not meet the increasingly complex client requirements of the marketplace or achieve market acceptance at the rate we expect, or at all. Any failure by us to anticipate or respond adequately to technological advancements, client requirements and changing industry standards, or any significant delays in the development, introduction or availability of new products or enhancements, could undermine our current market position.

 

If we are unable to release periodic updates on a timely basis to reflect changes in tax, benefit and other laws and regulations that our products help our clients address, the market acceptance of our products may be adversely affected and our revenues could decline.

 

Our solutions are affected by changes in tax, benefit and other laws and regulations and generally must be updated regularly to maintain their accuracy and competitiveness. Although we believe our SaaS platform provides us with flexibility to release updates in response to these changes, we cannot be certain that we will be able to make the necessary changes to our solutions and release updates on a timely basis, or at all. Failure to do so could have an adverse effect on the functionality and market acceptance of our solutions. Changes in tax, benefit and other laws and regulations could require us to make significant modifications to our products or delay or cease sales of certain products, which could result in reduced revenues or revenue growth and our incurring substantial expenses and write-offs.

 

Our business may be adversely impacted if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”) is repealed in its entirety or certain aspects of the ACA are repealed or changed.

 

The ACA remains subject to legislative efforts to repeal, modify or delay the implementation of all or certain aspects of the law. Generally, if the ACA is repealed or modified in whole or in part, or if implementation of certain aspects of the ACA is delayed, such repeal, modification or delay could adversely impact our existing and future business and operating results. For example, any such repeal, modification or delay could negatively impact the revenue we currently generate from our ACA Compliance solution, overall gross margins, and require us to write-down capitalized internal-use software development costs related to ACA products. While we expect continued challenges to the ACA, at this time we are unable to more precisely predict the full impact of any repeal, modification or delay in the implementation of the ACA.

 

Because of the way we recognize our revenue and our expenses over varying periods, changes in our business may not be immediately reflected in our financial statements.

 

We recognize our revenue as services are performed. The amount of revenue we recognize in any particular period is derived in significant part based on the number of employees of our clients served by our solutions. As a result, our revenue is dependent in part on the success of our clients. The effect on our revenue of significant changes in sales of our solutions or in our clients’ businesses may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods.

 

We recognize our expenses over varying periods based on the nature of the expense. In particular, we recognize implementation costs and sales commissions as they are incurred even though we recognize revenue as we perform services over extended periods. When a client terminates its relationship with us, we may not have derived enough revenue from that client to cover associated implementation costs. As a result, we may report poor operating results due to higher implementation costs and sales commissions in a period in which we experience strong sales of our solutions. Alternatively, we may report better operating results due to lower implementation costs and sales commissions in a period in which we experience a slowdown in sales. As a result, our expenses fluctuate as a percentage of revenue, and changes in our business generally may not be immediately reflected in our results of operations.

 

If our security measures are breached or unauthorized access to client data or funds is otherwise obtained, our solutions may be perceived as not being secure, clients may reduce the use of or stop using our solutions and we may incur significant liabilities.

 

Our solutions involve the storage and transmission of our clients’ and their employees’ proprietary and confidential information. This information includes bank account numbers, tax return information, social security numbers, benefit information, retirement account information, payroll information and system passwords. In addition, we collect and maintain personal information on our own employees in the ordinary course of our business. Finally, our business involves the storage and transmission of funds from the accounts of our clients to their employees, taxing and regulatory authorities and others. As a result, unauthorized access or security breaches of our systems or the systems of our clients could result in the unauthorized disclosure of confidential information, theft, litigation, indemnity obligations and other significant liabilities. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not identified until they are employed, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to

implement adequate preventative measures in advance. While we have security measures and controls in place to protect confidential information, prevent data loss, theft and other security breaches, including penetration tests of our systems by independent third parties, if our security measures are breached, our business could be substantially harmed and we could incur significant liabilities. Any such breach or unauthorized access could negatively affect our ability to attract new clients, cause existing clients to terminate their agreements with us, result in reputational damage and subject us to lawsuits, regulatory fines or other actions or liabilities which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results.

 

There can be no assurance that the limitations of liability in our contracts would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim related to a breach or unauthorized access. We also cannot be sure that our existing general liability insurance coverage and coverage for errors or omissions will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more large claims, or that the 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, financial condition and results of operations.

 

If we fail to adequately expand our direct sales force with qualified and productive persons, we may not be able to grow our business effectively.

 

We primarily sell our products and implementation services through our direct sales force. To grow our business, we intend to focus on growing our client base for the foreseeable future. Our ability to add clients and to achieve revenue growth in the future will depend upon our ability to grow and develop our direct sales force and on their ability to productively sell our solutions. Identifying and recruiting qualified personnel and training them in the use of our software require significant time, expense and attention. The amount of time it takes for our sales representatives to be fully-trained and to become productive varies widely. In addition, if we hire sales representatives from competitors or other companies, their former employers may attempt to assert that these employees have breached their legal obligations, resulting in a diversion of our time and resources.

 

If our sales organization does not perform as expected, our revenues and revenue growth could suffer. In addition, if we are unable to hire, develop and retain talented sales personnel, if our sales force becomes less efficient as it grows or if new sales representatives are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time, we may not be able to grow our client base and revenues and our sales and marketing expenses may increase.

 

If our referral network participants reduce their referrals to us, we may not be able to grow our client base or revenues in the future.

 

Referrals from third-party service providers, including 401(k) advisors, benefits administrators, insurance brokers, third-party administrators and HR consultants, represent a significant source of potential clients for our products and implementation services. For example, we estimate that approximately 30% of our new sales in fiscal 2017 were referred to us from our referral network participants. In most cases, our relationships with referral network participants are informal, although in some cases, we have formalized relationships where we are a recommended vendor for their client.

 

Participants in our referral network are generally under no contractual obligation to continue to refer business to us, and we do not intend to seek contractual relationships with these participants. In addition, these participants are generally not compensated for referring potential clients to us, and may choose to instead refer potential clients to our competitors. Our ability to achieve revenue growth in the future will depend, in part, upon continued referrals from our network.

 

There can be no assurance that we will be successful in maintaining, expanding or developing our referral network. If our relationships with participants in our referral network were to deteriorate or if any of our competitors enter into strategic relationships with our referral network participants, sales leads from these participants could be

reduced or cease entirely. If we are not successful, we may lose sales opportunities and our revenues and profitability could suffer.

 

If the market for cloud-based payroll and HCM solutions among medium-sized organizations develops more slowly than we expect or declines, our business could be adversely affected.

 

We believe that the market for cloud-based payroll and HCM solutions is not as mature among medium-sized organizations as the market for outsourced services or on-premise software and services. It is not certain that cloud-based solutions will achieve and sustain high levels of client demand and market acceptance. Our success will depend to a substantial extent on the widespread adoption by medium-sized organizations of cloud-based computing in general, and of payroll and other HCM applications in particular. It is difficult to predict client adoption rates and demand for our solutions, the future growth rate and size of the cloud-based market or the entry of competitive solutions. The expansion of the cloud-based market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with cloud-based computing, as well as the ability of cloud-based solutions to address security and privacy concerns. If other cloud-based providers experience security incidents, loss of client data, disruptions in delivery or other problems, the market for cloud-based applications as a whole, including our solutions, may be negatively affected. If cloud-based payroll and HCM solutions do not achieve widespread adoption among medium-sized organizations, or there is a reduction in demand for cloud-based computing caused by a lack of client acceptance, technological challenges, weakening economic conditions, security or privacy concerns, competing technologies and products, decreases in corporate spending or otherwise, it could result in a loss of clients, decreased revenues and an adverse impact on our business.

 

We typically pay employees and may pay taxing authorities amounts due for a payroll period before a client’s electronic funds transfers are finally settled to our account. If client payments are rejected by banking institutions or otherwise fail to clear into our accounts, we may require additional sources of short-term liquidity and our operating results could be adversely affected.

 

Our payroll processing business involves the movement of significant funds from the account of a client to employees and relevant taxing authorities. For example, in fiscal 2017 we processed over $92 billion in payroll transactions. Though we debit a client’s account prior to any disbursement on its behalf, due to Automated Clearing House, or ACH, banking regulations, funds previously credited could be reversed under certain circumstances and timeframes after our payment of amounts due to employees and taxing and other regulatory authorities. There is therefore a risk that the employer’s funds will be insufficient to cover the amounts we have already paid on its behalf. While such shortage and accompanying financial exposure has only occurred in very limited instances in the past, should clients default on their payment obligations in the future, we might be required to advance substantial amounts of funds to cover such obligations. In such an event, we may be required to seek additional sources of short-term liquidity, which may not be available on reasonable terms, if at all, and our operating results and our liquidity could be adversely affected and our banking relationships could be harmed.

 

Adverse changes in economic or political conditions could adversely affect our operating results and our business.

 

Our recurring revenues are based in part on the number of our clients’ employees. As a result, we are subject to risks arising from adverse changes in economic and political conditions. The state of the economy and the rate of employment, which deteriorated in the recent broad recession, may deteriorate further in the future. If weakness in the economy continues or worsens, many clients may reduce their number of employees and delay or reduce technology purchases. This could also result in reductions in our revenues and sales of our products, longer sales cycles, increased price competition and clients’ purchasing fewer solutions than they have in the past. Any of these events would likely harm our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows from operations.

 

Trade, monetary and fiscal policies, and political and economic conditions may substantially change, and credit markets may experience periods of constriction and volatility. For example, United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union has created global economic uncertainty, which, in turn, could depress the demand for our services. When there is a slowdown in the economy, employment levels and interest rates may decrease with a corresponding impact on our businesses. Clients may react to worsening conditions by reducing their spending on payroll and other

HCM solutions or renegotiating their contracts with us. We have agreements with various large banks to execute ACH and wire transfers as part of our client payroll and tax services. While we have contingency plans in place for bank failures, a failure of one of our banking partners or a systemic shutdown of the banking industry could result in the loss of client funds or impede us from accessing and processing funds on our clients’ behalf, and could have an adverse impact on our business and liquidity.

 

If the banks that currently provide ACH and wire transfers fail to properly transmit ACH or terminate their relationship with us or limit our ability to process funds or we are not able to increase our ACH capacity with our existing and new banks, our ability to process funds on behalf of our clients and our financial results and liquidity could be adversely affected.

 

We currently have agreements with nine banks to execute ACH and wire transfers to support our client payroll and tax services. If one or more of the banks fails to process ACH transfers on a timely basis, or at all, then our relationship with our clients could be harmed and we could be subject to claims by a client with respect to the failed transfers. In addition, these banks have no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. If these banks terminate their relationships with us or restrict the dollar amounts of funds that they will process on behalf of our clients, their doing so may impede our ability to process funds and could have an adverse impact on our financial results and liquidity.

 

We depend on our senior management team and other key employees, and the loss of these persons or an inability to attract and retain highly skilled employees could adversely affect our business.

 

Our success depends largely upon the continued services of our key executive officers, including Steven R. Beauchamp, our President and Chief Executive Officer and acting Chief Financial Officer. We also rely on our leadership team in the areas of research and development, sales, services and general and administrative functions. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. While we have employment agreements with certain of our executive officers, including Mr. Beauchamp, these employment agreements do not require them to continue to work for us for any specified period and, therefore, they could terminate their employment with us at any time. The loss of one or more of our executive officers or key employees could have an adverse effect on our business.

 

If we are unable to recruit and retain highly-skilled product development and other technical persons, our ability to develop and support widely-accepted products could be impaired and our business could be harmed.

 

We believe that to grow our business and be successful, we must continue to develop products that are technologically-advanced, are highly integrable with third-party services, provide significant mobility capabilities and have pleasing and intuitive user experiences. To do so, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel, particularly employees with high levels of experience in designing and developing software and Internet-related products and services. Competition for these personnel in the greater Chicago area and elsewhere is intense. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects could be severely harmed. We follow a practice of hiring the best available candidates wherever located, but as we grow our business, the productivity of our product development and other research and development may be adversely affected. In addition, if we hire employees from competitors or other companies, their former employers may attempt to assert that these employees have breached their legal obligations, resulting in a diversion of our time and resources.

 

The sale and support of products and the performance of related services by us entail the risk of product or service liability claims, which could significantly affect our financial results.

 

Clients use our products in connection with the preparation and filing of tax returns and other regulatory reports. If any of our products contain errors that produce inaccurate results upon which users rely, or cause users to misfile or fail to file required information, we could be subject to liability claims from users. Our agreements with our clients typically contain provisions intended to limit our exposure to such claims, but such provisions may not be effective in limiting our exposure. Contractual limitations we use may not be enforceable and may not provide us with

adequate protection against product liability claims in certain jurisdictions. A successful claim for product or service liability brought against us could result in substantial cost to us and divert management’s attention from our operations.

 

Privacy concerns and laws or other domestic regulations may reduce the effectiveness of our applications and adversely affect our business.

 

Our clients collect, use and store personal or identifying information regarding their employees and their family members in our solutions. Federal and state government bodies and agencies have adopted, are considering adopting, or may adopt laws and regulations regarding the collection, use, storage and disclosure of such personal information. The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, such laws and regulations that are applicable to our clients’ businesses may limit the use and adoption of our applications and reduce overall demand, or lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities for any noncompliance with such privacy laws. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our solutions.

 

All of these legislative and regulatory initiatives may adversely affect our clients’ ability to process, handle, store, use and transmit demographic and personal information regarding their employees and family members, which could reduce demand for our solutions.

 

In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy groups and the technology and other industries are considering various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. If the processing of personal information were to be curtailed in this manner, our products would be less effective, which may reduce demand for our applications and adversely affect our business.

 

Our business could be adversely affected if we do not effectively implement our solutions or our clients are not satisfied with our implementation services.

 

Our ability to deliver our payroll and HCM solutions depends on our ability to effectively implement and to transition to, and train our clients on, our solutions. We do not recognize revenue from new clients until they process their first payroll. Further, our agreements with our clients are generally terminable by the clients on 60 days’ or less notice. If a client is not satisfied with our implementation services, the client could terminate its agreement with us before we have recovered our costs of implementation services, which would adversely affect our results of operations and cash flows. In addition, negative publicity related to our client relationships, regardless of its accuracy, may further damage our business by affecting our ability to compete for new business with current and prospective clients.

 

Our business could be affected if we are unable to accommodate increased demand for our implementation services resulting from growth in our business.

 

We may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate increased client demand for implementation services driven by our growth. The implementation process is the first substantive interaction with a new client. As a predicate to providing knowledgeable implementation services, we must have a sufficient number of personnel dedicated to that process. In order to ensure that we have sufficient employees to implement our solutions, we must closely coordinate hiring of personnel with our projected sales for a particular period. Because our sales cycle is typically only three to six weeks long, we may not be successful in coordinating hiring of implementation personnel to meet increased demand for our implementation services. Increased demand for implementation services without a corresponding staffing increase of qualified personnel could adversely affect the quality of services provided to new clients, and our business and our reputation could be harmed.

 

Any failure to offer high-quality client services may adversely affect our relationships with our clients and our financial results.

 

Once our applications are deployed, our clients depend on our client service organization to resolve issues relating to our solutions. Our clients are medium-sized organizations with limited personnel and resources to address payroll and other HCM related issues. These clients rely on us more so than larger companies with greater internal resources and expertise. High-quality client services are important for the successful marketing and sale of our products

and for the retention of existing clients. If we do not help our clients quickly resolve issues and provide effective ongoing support, our ability to sell additional products to existing clients would suffer and our reputation with existing or potential clients would be harmed.

 

In addition, our sales process is highly dependent on our applications and business reputation and on positive recommendations from our existing clients. Any failure to maintain high-quality client services, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality client services, could adversely affect our reputation, our ability to sell our solutions to existing and prospective clients, and our business, operating results and financial position.

 

If we fail to manage our technical operations infrastructure, our existing clients may experience service outages and our new clients may experience delays in the deployment of our applications.

 

We have experienced significant growth in the number of users, transactions and data that our operations infrastructure supports. We seek to maintain sufficient excess capacity in our data center and other operations infrastructure to meet the needs of all of our clients. We also seek to maintain excess capacity to facilitate the rapid provision of new client deployments and the expansion of existing client deployments. In addition, we need to properly manage our technological operations infrastructure in order to support version control, changes in hardware and software parameters and the evolution of our applications. However, the provision of new hosting infrastructure requires significant lead time. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, website disruptions, outages and other performance problems. These problems may be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, viruses, security attacks, fraud, spikes in client usage and denial of service issues. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. If we do not accurately predict our infrastructure requirements, our existing clients may experience service outages that may subject us to financial penalties, financial liabilities and client losses. If our operations infrastructure fails to keep pace with increased sales, clients may experience delays as we seek to obtain additional capacity, which could adversely affect our reputation and our revenues.

 

In addition, our ability to deliver our cloud-based applications depends on the development and maintenance of Internet infrastructure by third parties. This includes maintenance of a reliable network backbone with the necessary speed, data capacity, bandwidth capacity, and security. Our services are designed to operate without interruption. However, we have experienced and expect that we will experience future interruptions and delays in services and availability from time to time. In the event of a catastrophic event with respect to one or more of our systems, we may experience an extended period of system unavailability, which could negatively impact our relationship with clients. To operate without interruption, both we and our clients must guard against:

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also rely on computer hardware purchased or leased and software licensed from third parties in order to offer our services. These licenses and hardware are generally commercially available on varying terms. However, it is possible that this hardware and software might not continue to be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Any loss of the right to use any of this hardware or software could result in delays in the provisioning of our services until equivalent technology is either developed by us, or, if available, is identified, obtained and integrated.

 

Furthermore, our payroll application is essential to our clients’ timely payment of wages to their employees. Any interruption in our service may affect the availability, accuracy or timeliness of these programs and could damage

our reputation, cause our clients to terminate their use of our application, require us to indemnify our clients against certain losses due to our own errors and prevent us from gaining additional business from current or future clients.

 

Any disruption in the operation of our data centers could adversely affect our business.

 

We host our solutions at a third-party facility in Franklin Park, Illinois and utilize another third-party facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin for backup and disaster recovery. We also may decide to employ additional offsite data centers in the future to accommodate growth.

 

Problems faced by our data center locations, with the telecommunications network providers with whom we or they contract, or with the systems by which our telecommunications providers allocate capacity among their clients, including us, could adversely affect the availability and processing of our solutions and related services and the experience of our clients. If our data centers are unable to keep up with our growing needs for capacity, this could have an adverse effect on our business and cause us to incur additional expense. In addition, any financial difficulties faced by our third-party data center’s operator or any of the service providers with whom we or they contract may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. Any changes in service levels at our third-party data center or any errors, defects, disruptions or other performance problems with our applications could adversely affect our reputation and may damage our clients’ stored files or result in lengthy interruptions in our services. Interruptions in our services might reduce our revenues, subject us to potential liability or other expenses or adversely affect our renewal rates.

 

In addition, while we own, control and have access to our servers and all of the components of our network that are located in our backup data centers, we do not control the operation of these facilities. The operators of our third party data center facilities have no obligations to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. If we are unable to renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms, or if the data center operators are acquired, we may be required to transfer our servers and other infrastructure to new data center facilities, and we may incur costs and experience service interruption in doing so.

 

Our software might not operate properly, which could damage our reputation, give rise to claims against us, or divert application of our resources from other purposes, any of which could harm our business and operating results.

 

Our payroll and HCM software is complex and may contain or develop undetected defects or errors, particularly when first introduced or as new versions are released. Despite extensive testing, from time to time we have discovered defects or errors in our products. In addition, because changes in employer and legal requirements and practices relating to benefits are frequent, we discover defects and errors in our software and service processes in the normal course of business compared against these requirements and practices. Material performance problems or defects in our products and services might arise in the future, which could have an adverse impact on our business and client relationship and subject us to claims.

 

Moreover, software development is time-consuming, expensive and complex. Unforeseen difficulties can arise. We might encounter technical obstacles, and it is possible that we discover problems that prevent our products from operating properly. If they do not function reliably or fail to achieve client expectations in terms of performance, clients could cancel their agreements with us and/or assert liability claims against us. This could damage our reputation, impair our ability to attract or maintain clients and harm our results of operations.

 

Defects and errors and any failure by us to identify and address them could result in delays in product introductions and updates, loss of revenue or market share, liability to clients or others, failure to achieve market acceptance or expansion, diversion of development and other resources, injury to our reputation, and increased service and maintenance costs. Defects or errors in our product or service processes might discourage existing or potential clients from purchasing from us. Correction of defects or errors could prove to be impossible or impracticable. The costs incurred in correcting any defects or errors or in responding to resulting claims or liability might be substantial and could adversely affect our operating results.

 

Because of the large amount of data that we collect and manage, it is possible that hardware failures or errors in our systems could result in data loss or corruption, or cause the information that we collect to be incomplete or contain inaccuracies that our clients, their employees and taxing and other regulatory authorities regard as significant. The costs incurred in correcting any errors or in responding to regulatory authorities or to resulting claims or liability might be substantial and could adversely affect our operating results.

 

We maintain insurance, but our insurance may be inadequate or may not be available in the future on acceptable terms, or at all. In addition, our policy may not cover all claims made against us and defending a suit, regardless of its merit, could be costly and divert management’s attention.

 

Our clients might assert claims against us in the future alleging that they suffered damages due to a defect, error, or other failure of our product or service processes. A product liability claim and errors or omissions claim could subject us to significant legal defense costs and adverse publicity regardless of the merits or eventual outcome of such a claim.

 

Client funds that we hold are subject to market, interest rate, credit and liquidity risks. The loss of these funds could have an adverse impact on our business.

 

We invest funds held for our clients in liquid, investment-grade marketable securities, money market securities, and other cash equivalents. Nevertheless, our client fund assets are subject to general market, interest rate, credit, and liquidity risks. These risks may be exacerbated, individually or in unison, during periods of unusual financial market volatility. Any loss of or inability to access client funds could have an adverse impact on our cash position and results of operations and could require us to obtain additional sources of liquidity.

 

In addition, these funds are held in consolidated trust accounts, and as a result the aggregate amounts in the accounts exceed the applicable federal deposit insurance limits. We believe that since such funds are deposited in trust on behalf of our clients, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or the FDIC, would treat those funds as if they had been deposited by each of the clients themselves and insure each client’s funds up to the applicable deposit insurance limits. If the FDIC were to take the position that it is not obligated to provide deposit insurance for our clients’ funds or if the reimbursement of these funds were delayed, our business and our clients could be materially harmed.

 

If we are required to collect sales and use taxes in additional jurisdictions, we might be subject to liability for past sales and our future sales may decrease. Adverse tax laws or regulations could be enacted or existing laws could be applied to us or our clients, which could increase the costs of our services and adversely impact our business.

 

The application of federal, state, and local tax laws to services provided electronically is evolving. New income, sales, use or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be enacted at any time (possibly with retroactive effect), and could be applied solely or disproportionately to services provided over the Internet. These enactments could adversely affect our sales activity due to the inherent cost increase the taxes would represent and ultimately result in a negative impact on our operating results and cash flows.

 

In addition, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be interpreted, changed, modified or applied adversely to us (possibly with retroactive effect), which could require us or our clients to pay additional tax amounts, as well as require us or our clients to pay fines or penalties and interest for past amounts.

 

For example, we might lose sales or incur significant expenses if states successfully impose broader guidelines on state sales and use taxes. A successful assertion by one or more states requiring us to collect sales or other taxes on our software or provision of our services could result in substantial tax liabilities for past transactions and otherwise harm our business. Each state has different rules and regulations governing sales and use taxes, and these rules and regulations are subject to varying interpretations that change over time. We review these rules and regulations periodically and, when we believe we are subject to sales and use taxes in a particular state, we may voluntarily engage state tax authorities in order to determine how to comply with that state’s rules and regulations. We cannot assure you that we will not be subject to sales and use taxes or related penalties for past sales in states where we currently believe no such taxes are required.

 

Vendors of services, like us, are typically held responsible by taxing authorities for the collection and payment of any applicable sales and similar taxes. If one or more taxing authorities determines that taxes should have, but have not, been paid with respect to our services, we might be liable for past taxes in addition to taxes going forward. Liability for past taxes might also include substantial interest and penalty charges. Our clients typically pay us for applicable sales and similar taxes. Nevertheless, our clients might be reluctant to pay back taxes and might refuse responsibility for interest or penalties associated with those taxes. If we are required to collect and pay back taxes and the associated interest and penalties, and if our clients fail or refuse to reimburse us for all or a portion of these amounts, we will incur unplanned expenses that may be substantial. Moreover, imposition of such taxes on us going forward will effectively increase the cost of our services to our clients and might adversely affect our ability to retain existing clients or to gain new clients in the areas in which such taxes are imposed.

 

Any future litigation against us could be costly and time-consuming to defend.

 

We may become subject, from time to time, to legal proceedings and claims that arise in the ordinary course of business such as claims brought by our clients in connection with commercial disputes or employment claims made by our current or former employees. Litigation might result in substantial costs and may divert management’s attention and resources, which might seriously harm our business, overall financial condition, and operating results. Insurance might not cover such claims, might not provide sufficient payments to cover all the costs to resolve one or more such claims and might not continue to be available on terms acceptable to us. A claim brought against us that is uninsured or underinsured could result in unanticipated costs, thereby harming our operating results and leading analysts or potential investors to lower their expectations of our performance, which could reduce the trading price of our stock.

 

Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.

 

Our success is dependent, in part, upon protecting our proprietary technology. We rely on a combination of copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secret laws and contractual restrictions to establish and protect our proprietary rights in our products and services. Our proprietary technologies are not covered by any patent or patent application. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property may be inadequate. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy our products and use information that we regard as proprietary to create products and services that compete with ours. Some license provisions protecting against unauthorized use, copying, transfer and disclosure of our products may be unenforceable under the laws of certain jurisdictions and foreign countries.

 

We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with the parties with whom we have strategic relationships and business alliances. No assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to and distribution of our products and proprietary information. The confidentiality agreements on which we rely to protect certain technologies may be breached and may not be adequate to protect our proprietary technologies. Further, these agreements do not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our solutions. In addition, we depend, in part, on technology of third parties licensed to us for our solutions, and the loss or inability to maintain these licenses or errors in the software we license could result in increased costs, reduced service levels or delayed sales of our solutions.

 

In order to protect our intellectual property rights, we may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect these rights. Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights and to protect our trade secrets. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Our inability to protect our proprietary technology against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation or diversion of our management’s attention and resources, could delay further sales or the implementation of our solutions, impair the

functionality of our solutions, delay introductions of new solutions, result in our substituting inferior or more costly technologies into our solutions, or injure our reputation. In addition, we may be required to license additional technology from third parties to develop and market new solutions, and we cannot assure you that we could license that technology on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Although we do not expect that our inability to license this technology in the future would have a material adverse effect on our business or operating results, our inability to license this technology could adversely affect our ability to compete.

 

We may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights.

 

There is considerable patent and other intellectual property development activity in our industry. Our success depends, in part, upon our not infringing upon the intellectual property rights of others. Our competitors, as well as a number of other entities and individuals, may own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our industry. From time to time, third parties may claim that we are infringing upon their intellectual property rights, and we may be found to be infringing upon such rights. In the future, others may claim that our applications and underlying technology infringe or violate their intellectual property rights. However, we may be unaware of the intellectual property rights that others may claim cover some or all of our technology or services. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our services, or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. We may also be obligated to indemnify our clients or business partners or pay substantial settlement costs, including royalty payments, in connection with any such claim or litigation and to obtain licenses, modify applications, or refund fees, which could be costly. Even if we were to prevail in such a dispute, any litigation regarding our intellectual property could be costly and time-consuming and divert the attention of our management and key personnel from our business operations.

 

The use of open source software in our products and solutions may expose us to additional risks and harm our intellectual property rights.

 

Some of our products and solutions use or incorporate software that is subject to one or more open source licenses. Open source software is typically freely accessible, usable and modifiable. Certain open source software licenses require a user who intends to distribute the open source software as a component of the user’s software to disclose publicly part or all of the source code to the user’s software. In addition, certain open source software licenses require the user of such software to make any derivative works of the open source code available to others on potentially unfavorable terms or at no cost.

 

The terms of many open source licenses to which we are subject have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts. Accordingly, there is a risk that those licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to commercialize our solutions. In that event, we could be required to seek licenses from third parties in order to continue offering our products or solutions, to re-develop our products or solutions, to discontinue sales of our products or solutions, or to release our proprietary software code under the terms of an open source license, any of which could harm our business. Further, given the nature of open source software, it may be more likely that third parties might assert copyright and other intellectual property infringement claims against us based on our use of these open source software programs.

 

While we monitor the use of all open source software in our products, solutions, processes and technology and try to ensure that no open source software is used in such a way as to require us to disclose the source code to the related product or solution when we do not wish to do so, it is possible that such use may have inadvertently occurred in deploying our proprietary solutions. In addition, if a third-party software provider has incorporated certain types of open source software into software we license from such third party for our products and solutions without our knowledge, we could, under certain circumstances, be required to disclose the source code to our products and solutions. This could harm our intellectual property position and our business, results of operations and financial condition.

 

If third-party software used in our products is not adequately maintained or updated, our business could be materially adversely affected.

 

Our products utilize certain software of third-party software developers. For example, we license technology from bswift as part of our Paylocity Web Benefits solution. Although we believe that there are alternatives for these products, any significant interruption in the availability of such third-party software could have an adverse impact on our business unless and until we can replace the functionality provided by these products at a similar cost. Additionally, we rely, to a certain extent, upon such third parties’ abilities to enhance their current products, to develop new products on a timely and cost-effective basis and to respond to emerging industry standards and other technological changes. We may be unable to replace the functionality provided by the third-party software currently offered in conjunction with our products in the event that such software becomes obsolete or incompatible with future versions of our products or is otherwise not adequately maintained or updated.

 

Changes in laws and regulations related to the Internet or changes in the Internet infrastructure itself may diminish the demand for our applications, and could have a negative impact on our business.

 

The future success of our business depends upon the continued use of the Internet as a primary medium for commerce, communication and business applications. Federal, state or foreign government bodies or agencies have in the past adopted, and may in the future adopt, laws or regulations affecting the use of the Internet as a commercial medium. Changes in these laws or regulations could require us to modify our applications in order to comply with these changes. In addition, government agencies or private organizations may begin to impose taxes, fees or other charges for accessing the Internet or commerce conducted via the Internet. These laws or charges could limit the growth of Internet-related commerce or communications generally, resulting in reductions in the demand for Internet-based applications such as ours.

 

In addition, the use of the Internet as a business tool could be adversely affected due to delays in the development or adoption of new standards and protocols to handle increased demands of Internet activity, security, reliability, cost, ease of use, accessibility, and quality of service. The performance of the Internet and its acceptance as a business tool has been adversely affected by “viruses,” “worms” and similar malicious programs, and the Internet has experienced a variety of outages and other delays as a result of damage to portions of its infrastructure. If the use of the Internet is adversely affected by these issues, demand for our applications could suffer.

 

Furthermore, the availability or performance of our applications could be adversely affected by a number of factors, including clients’ inability to access the Internet, the failure of our network or software systems, security breaches or variability in user traffic for our services. For example, our clients access our solutions through their Internet service providers. If a service provider fails to provide sufficient capacity to support our applications or otherwise experiences service outages, such failure could interrupt our clients’ access to our solutions, adversely affect their perception of our applications’ reliability and reduce our revenues. In addition to potential liability, if we experience interruptions in the availability of our applications, our reputation could be adversely affected and we could lose clients.

 

Regulatory requirements placed on our software and services could impose increased costs on us, delay or prevent our introduction of new products and services, and impair the function or value of our existing products and services.

 

Our products and services may become subject to increasing regulatory requirements, and as these requirements proliferate, we may be required to change or adapt our products and services to comply. Changing regulatory requirements might render our products and services obsolete or might block us from developing new products and services. This might in turn impose additional costs upon us to comply or to further develop our products and services. It might also make introduction of new products and services more costly or more time-consuming than we currently anticipate. It might even prevent introduction by us of new products or services or cause the continuation of our existing products or services to become more costly.

 

We might require additional capital to support business growth, and this capital might not be available.

 

We intend to continue to make investments to support our business growth and might require additional funds to respond to business challenges or opportunities, including the need to develop new products and services or enhance our existing services, enhance our operating infrastructure, and acquire complementary businesses and technologies. Accordingly, we might need to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. In addition, we will need to expand our ACH capacity as we grow our business.

 

If we raise additional funds through further issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges superior to those of holders of our common stock. Any debt financing or ACH facility secured by us in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital-raising activities and other financial and operational matters, which might make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities and to grow our business. In addition, we might not be able to obtain additional financing on terms favorable to us, if at all. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support our business growth and to respond to business challenges could be significantly limited.

 

Our services present the potential for embezzlement, identity theft, or other similar illegal behavior by our associates with respect to third parties.

 

Certain services offered by us involve collecting payroll information from individuals, and this frequently includes information about their checking accounts. Our services also involve the use and disclosure of personal and business information that could be used to impersonate third parties, commit identity theft, or otherwise gain access to their data or funds. If any of our associates take, convert, or misuse such funds, documents or data, we could be liable for damages, and our business reputation could be damaged or destroyed. Moreover, if we fail to adequately prevent third parties from accessing personal and/or business information and using that information to commit identity theft, we might face legal liabilities and other losses than can have a negative impact on our business.

 

We rely on a third-party shipping provider to deliver printed checks to our clients, and therefore our business could be negatively impacted by disruptions in the operations of this third-party provider.

 

We rely on third-party couriers such as the United Parcel Service, or UPS, to ship printed checks to our clients. Relying on UPS and other third-party couriers puts us at risk from disruptions in their operations, such as employee strikes, inclement weather and their ability to perform tasks on our behalf. If UPS or other third-party couriers fail to perform their tasks, we could incur liability or suffer damages to our reputation, or both. If we are forced to use other third-party couriers, our costs could increase and we may not be able to meet shipment deadlines. Moreover, we may not be able to obtain terms as favorable as those we currently use, which could further increase our costs. These circumstances may negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

Our reported financial results may be adversely affected by changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States.

 

Generally accepted accounting principles in the United States are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported financial results including increased volatility, and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement of a change. Our accounting policies that have been or may be affected by changes in accounting principles include, but are not limited to, revenue recognition and accounting for leases.

 

We may acquire other companies or technologies, which could divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders and otherwise disrupt our operations and adversely affect our operating results.

 

We may in the future seek to acquire or invest in other businesses or technologies. The pursuit of potential acquisitions or investments may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various expenses in identifying, investigating and pursuing suitable acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated.

 

In addition, we have limited experience in acquiring other businesses. If we acquire additional businesses, we may not be able to integrate the acquired personnel, operations and technologies successfully, or effectively manage the combined business following the acquisition. We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits from the acquired business due to a number of factors, including:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to acquired goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. In the future, if our acquisitions do not yield expected returns, we may be required to take charges to our operating results based on this impairment assessment process, which could adversely affect our results of operations.

 

Acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities or the incurrence of debt, which could adversely affect our operating results. In addition, if an acquired business fails to meet our expectations, our operating results, business and financial position may suffer.

 

Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock

 

Insiders have substantial control over us, which may limit our stockholders’ ability to influence corporate matters and delay or prevent a third party from acquiring control over us.

 

As of August 4, 2017, our directors, executive officers and holders of more than 5% of our common stock, together with their respective affiliates, beneficially owned, in the aggregate, approximately 48.6% of our outstanding common stock. This significant concentration of ownership may adversely affect the trading price for our common stock because investors often perceive disadvantages in owning stock in companies with controlling stockholders. In addition, these stockholders will be able to exercise influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets. This concentration of ownership could limit the ability of our other stockholders to influence corporate matters and may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change in control, including a merger, consolidation, or other business combination involving us, or discouraging a potential acquirer from making a tender offer or otherwise attempting to obtain control, even if that change in control would benefit our other stockholders.

 

Our stock price may be subject to wide fluctuations.

 

The trading price of our common stock could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control. These factors include those discussed in this “Risk Factors” section of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and others such as:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, the stock market in general and the market for Internet-related companies in particular, have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. Securities class action litigation has often been instituted against companies following periods of volatility in the overall market and in the market price of a company’s securities. This litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs, divert our management’s attention and resources, and harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

 

We do not currently intend to pay dividends on our common stock and, consequently, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our common stock.

 

We have not declared or paid dividends on our common stock in the past three fiscal years and do not currently intend to do so for the foreseeable future. We currently intend to invest our future earnings, if any, to fund our growth. Therefore, you are not likely to receive any dividends on your common stock for the foreseeable future, and the success of an investment in shares of our common stock will depend upon future appreciation in its value, if any. There is no guarantee that shares of our common stock will appreciate in value or even maintain the price at which our stockholders purchased their shares.

 

Future sales of shares of our common stock by existing stockholders could depress the market price of our common stock.

 

As of August 4, 2017, we had an aggregate of 51,750,086 outstanding shares of common stock. The 17,362,750 shares sold in our initial public offering, follow-on offering and secondary offering can be freely sold in the public market without restriction. The remaining shares can be freely sold in the public market, subject in some cases to volume and other restrictions under Rule 144 and 701 under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and various agreements.

 

In addition, we have registered 15,092,927 shares of common stock that we have issued and may issue under our equity plans. These shares can be freely sold in the public market upon issuance, subject in some cases to volume and other restrictions under Rules 144 and 701 under the Securities Act, and various vesting agreements. In addition, some of our employees, including some of our executive officers, have entered into 10b5-1 trading plans regarding sales of shares of our common stock. These plans provide for sales to occur from time to time.  If any of these additional shares are sold, or if it is perceived that they will be sold, in the public market, the trading price of our common stock could decline.

 

Also, in the future, we may issue additional securities in connection with investments and acquisitions. The amount of our common stock issued in connection with an investment or acquisition could constitute a material portion of our then outstanding stock. Due to these factors, sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market could occur at any time. These sales, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell shares, could reduce the market price of our common stock.

 

If we are unable to maintain effective internal controls over financial reporting, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock may be negatively affected.

 

As a public company, we are required to maintain internal controls over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal controls. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, requires that we evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting and provide a management report on the internal controls over financial reporting. In addition, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that our management report on the internal controls over financial reporting be attested to by our independent registered public accounting firm. If we have a material weakness in our internal controls over financial reporting, we may not detect errors on a timely basis and our financial statements may be materially misstated. Compliance with these public company requirements has made some activities more time-consuming, costly and complicated. If we identify material weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting, if we are unable to assert that our internal controls over financial reporting are effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock could be negatively affected, and we could become subject to investigations by the stock exchange on which our securities are listed, the SEC or other regulatory authorities, which could require additional financial and management resources.

 

We have incurred and will continue to incur significantly increased costs and devote substantial management time as a result of operating as a public company.

 

As a public company, we have incurred and will continue to incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses. For example, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, and are required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as rules and regulations subsequently implemented by the SEC and the NASDAQ Global Select Market including the establishment and maintenance of effective disclosure and financial controls and changes in corporate governance practices. Compliance with these requirements has increased our legal and financial compliance costs and has made some activities more time consuming and costly. In addition, our management and other personnel have been required to divert attention from operational and other business matters to devote substantial time to these public company requirements. In particular, we have incurred and will continue to incur significant expenses as well as devote substantial management effort toward ensuring ongoing compliance with the requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Although we have hired additional employees to comply with these requirements, we may need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge to comply with any regulatory changes.

 

If securities or industry analysts do not continue to publish research or publish unfavorable or misleading research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

 

The trading market for our common stock depends in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. If one or more of the analysts who covers us downgrades our stock or publishes unfavorable or misleading research about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts ceases coverage of our company or fails to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the market for our stock and demand for our stock could decrease, which could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.

 

Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and Delaware law could discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control of our company and may affect the trading price of our common stock.

 

We are a Delaware corporation and the anti-takeover provisions of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which apply to us, may discourage, delay or prevent a change in control by prohibiting us from engaging in a business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years after the stockholder becomes an interested stockholder, even if a change in control would be beneficial to our existing stockholders. In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may discourage, delay or prevent a change in our management or control over us that stockholders may consider favorable. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and bylaws:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our bylaws provide that the state and federal courts located within the state of Delaware are the sole and exclusive forums for certain legal actions involving the company or our directors, officers and employees.

On February 2, 2016, we amended our bylaws to designate the state and federal courts located within the state of Delaware as the sole and exclusive forums for claims arising derivatively, pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law or governed by the internal affairs doctrine. The choice of forum provision is expressly authorized by the Delaware General Corporation Law, which was amended so that companies would not have to litigate internal claims in more than one jurisdiction. If a court were to find the exclusive forum provision contained in our bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such extra-forum claims, which could adversely affect our business and financial condition. This bylaw provision, therefore, may dissuade or discourage claimants from initiating lawsuits or claims against us or our directors and officers in forums other than Delaware.

 

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments.

 

None.

 

Item 2. Properties.

 

As of June 30, 2017, our corporate headquarters occupied approximately 135,000 square feet in Arlington Heights, Illinois under leases with final expiration in July 2022. As of June 30, 2017, we also leased facilities in Schaumburg, Illinois, New York, New York, Rochester, New York, Lake Mary, Florida, Nashua, New Hampshire, Springfield, New Jersey, Boise, Idaho and Oakland, California.

 

In June 2016, we entered into a lease for approximately 309,559 rentable square feet of office space located in Schaumburg, Illinois. We intend to use the leased premises as our headquarters upon the expiration of the lease of our current headquarters. The lease provides for phased delivery and commencement dates, with commencement expected to occur on the following approximate dates:  Phase I (June 1, 2017), Phase II (November 1, 2017), Phase III (July 1, 2018), and Phase IV (July 1, 2019). The actual commencement dates are subject to timely delivery of the premises by the landlord. The lease provides for a term beginning on the Phase I commencement date and ending 180 full calendar months after the landlord delivers the Phase II premises, which is expected to be on or about November 1, 2017, with two subsequent five-year renewal options.

 

In February 2017, we entered into a lease for approximately 62,000 rentable square feet of office space located in Meridian, Idaho. We intend to use the leased premises to accommodate the continued expansion of our employee base in the western region of the United States. The lease provides for phased delivery and commencement dates with commencement expected to occur on the following approximate dates: Phase I (July 1, 2018) and Phase II (February 1, 2020). The actual commencement dates are subject to timely delivery of the premises by the landlord. The lease provides for a term beginning on the Phase I commencement date and ending after 120 full calendar months with four subsequent five-year renewal options.

 

For additional information regarding obligations under operating leases, see Note 10 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8: “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

 

Item 3. Legal Proceedings.

 

From time to time, we may become involved in litigation related to claims arising from the ordinary course of our business. We believe that there are no claims or actions pending or threatened against us, the ultimate disposition of which would have a material adverse effect on us.

 

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.

 

Not applicable.

PART II

 

Item 5.  Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

 

Market Information

 

Our common stock is listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “PCTY”. The following table sets forth for the periods indicated the high and low intra-day sale prices per share of our common stock as reported on the NASDAQ Global Select Market:

 

 

On August 4, 2017, the last reported sale price of our common stock on the NASDAQ Global Select Market was $43.98 per share, and there were 17 holders of record of our common stock. The actual number of holders of common stock is greater than these numbers of record holders and includes stockholders who are beneficial owners, but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and nominees. The number of holders of record also does not include stockholders whose shares may be held in trust by other entities.

 

Use of Proceeds from Initial Public Offering of Common Stock

 

On March 24, 2014, we completed our initial public offering, or IPO, of 8,101,750 shares of common stock, at a price of $17.00 per share, before underwriting discounts and commissions. We sold 5,366,667 of such shares and existing shareholders sold an aggregate of 2,735,083 of such shares.  The offer and sale of all of the shares in the IPO were registered under the Securities Act pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-193661), which was declared effective by the SEC on March 18, 2014.

 

With the proceeds of the IPO, we repaid amounts outstanding under a note issued by us to Commerce Bank & Trust Company on March 9, 2011, which totaled $1.1 million, paid $9.4 million for the purchase of substantially all of the assets of BFKMS Inc., and paid $9.5 million for the purchase of substantially all of the assets of Synergy Payroll LLC.

 

Use of Proceeds from Follow-On Offering of Common Stock

 

On December 17, 2014, we completed a follow-on offering of 4,960,000 shares of common stock at a price of $26.25 per share, before underwriting discounts and commissions. We sold 750,000 of such shares and existing shareholders sold an aggregate of 4,210,000 of such shares.  The offer and sale of all of the shares in the follow-on offering were registered under the Securities Act pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-200448) which was declared effective by the SEC on December 11, 2014. There have been no material changes in the planned use of proceeds from the follow-on offering as described in the final prospectus filed with the SEC pursuant to Rule 424(b) on December 12, 2014.

 

Use of Proceeds from Secondary Offering of Common Stock

 

On September 30, 2015, we completed a secondary offering of 4,301,000 shares of common stock at a price of $29.75 per share, before underwriting discounts and commissions. The offer and sale of all of the shares in the secondary offering were registered under the Securities Act pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-3 (File No. 333-206941) which was declared effective by the SEC on September 25, 2015. The Company did not receive any proceeds from the sale of common stock, as all the shares were sold by shareholders of the Company.

 

Dividend Policy

 

We have not declared or paid dividends on our common stock since our IPO. Neither Delaware law nor our amended and restated certificate of incorporation requires our board of directors to declare dividends on our common stock. Any future determination to declare cash dividends on our common stock will be made at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. We do not anticipate paying cash dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future.

 

Equity Compensation Plan Information

 

Information regarding the securities authorized for issuance under our equity compensation plans will be included in our Proxy Statement relating to our 2018 annual meeting of stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of our fiscal year ended June 30, 2017, and is incorporated herein by reference.

 

Performance Graph

 

Notwithstanding any statement to the contrary in any of our filings with the SEC, the following information shall not be deemed “filed” with the SEC or “soliciting material” under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and shall not be incorporated by reference into any such filings irrespective of any general incorporation language contained in such filing.

 

The following graph compares the total cumulative stockholder return on our common stock with the total cumulative return of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 1500 Application Software Index during the period commencing on March 19, 2014, the initial trading day of our common stock, and ending on June 30, 2017. The graph assumes that $100 was invested at the beginning of the period in our common stock and in each of the comparative indices, and the

reinvestment of any dividends. Historical stock price performance should not be relied upon as an indication of future stock price performance.

 

 

 

Item 6. Selected Financial Data.

 

Consolidated Selected Financial Data

 

You should read the following selected consolidated financial data together with our consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and the information under the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”  Our fiscal year ends on June 30. The statements of operations data presented below have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements. Historical results are not necessarily indicative of future results.

 

 

 

We define Adjusted Gross Profit as gross profit before amortization of capitalized internal-use software costs, stock-based compensation expense and employer payroll taxes related to stock releases and option exercises and one-time founder funded bonus pay-outs, if any. We define Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit as total recurring revenues after cost of recurring revenues and before amortization of capitalized internal-use software costs, stock-based compensation expense and employer payroll taxes related to stock releases and option exercises and one-time founder funded bonus pay-outs, if any. We define Adjusted EBITDA as net income (loss) before interest expense, income tax expense (benefit), depreciation and amortization expense, stock-based compensation expense and employer payroll taxes related to stock releases and option exercises and one-time founder funded bonus pay-outs, if any.

 

We disclose Adjusted Gross Profit, Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit and Adjusted EBITDA, which are non-GAAP measures, because we believe these metrics assist investors and analysts in comparing our performance across reporting periods on a consistent basis by excluding items that we do not believe are indicative of our core operating performance. We believe these metrics are commonly used in the financial community to aid in comparisons of similar companies, and we present them to enhance investors’ understanding of our operating performance and cash flows.

 

Adjusted Gross Profit, Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit and Adjusted EBITDA have limitations as analytical tools. Some of these limitations are:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally, stock-based compensation will continue to be an element of our overall compensation strategy, although we exclude it from Adjusted Gross Profit, Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit and Adjusted EBITDA as an expense when evaluating our ongoing operating performance for a particular period.

 

Because of these limitations, you should not consider Adjusted Gross Profit as an alternative to gross profit, Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit as an alternative to total recurring revenues, or Adjusted EBITDA as an alternative to net income (loss) or net cash provided by operating activities, in each case as determined in accordance with GAAP. We compensate for these limitations by relying primarily on our GAAP results, and we use Adjusted Gross Profit, Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit and Adjusted EBITDA only as supplemental information.

 

Directly comparable GAAP measures to Adjusted Gross Profit, Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit and Adjusted EBITDA are gross profit, total recurring revenues and net income (loss), respectively. We reconcile Adjusted Gross Profit, Adjusted Recurring Gross Profit and Adjusted EBITDA as follows: