You should carefully consider the risks described below together with all of the other information included in this annual report before making an investment decision with regard to our securities.
Risks Related to Our Business
We have a limited operational history.
We have a limited history upon which an evaluation of our prospects and future performance can be made. Our proposed operations are subject to all business risks associated with new enterprises. The likelihood of our success must be considered in light of the problems, expenses, difficulties, complications, and delays frequently encountered in connection with the expansion of a business operation in an emerging industry, and the continued development of advertising, promotions, and a corresponding customer base. There is a possibility that we could sustain losses in the future, and there are no assurances that we will ever operate profitably.
Ongoing uncertainty regarding the duration and extent of the recovery from the recent economic downturn and in global economic conditions generally may reduce information technology spending below current expectations and therefore adversely impact our revenues, impede end user adoption of new products and product upgrades and adversely impact our competitive position.
Our business depends on the overall demand for information technology and on the economic health of our current and prospective customers. The purchase of our products is often discretionary and may involve a significant commitment of capital and other resources. Weak economic conditions or significant uncertainty regarding the recovery from the recent economic downturn could adversely impact our business, financial condition and results of operations in a number of ways, including by lengthening sales cycles (for example, ELAs), lowering prices for our products and services, reducing unit sales, decreasing or reversing quarterly growth in our revenues, reducing the rate of adoption of our products by new customers and the willingness of current customers to purchase upgrades to our existing products.
The recent global economic disruption also resulted in general and ongoing tightening in the credit markets, lower levels of liquidity and increases in the rates of default and bankruptcy, while the potential for extreme volatility in credit, equity and fixed income markets continues. As a result, current or potential customers may be unable to fund software purchases, which could cause them to delay, decrease or cancel purchases of our products and services. Even if customers are willing to purchase our products and services, if they do not meet our credit requirements, we may not be able to record accounts receivable or deferred revenue or recognize revenues from these customers until we receive payment, which could adversely affect the amount of revenues we are able to recognize in a particular period.
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Our business could be adversely impacted by conditions affecting the information technology market.
The demand for our products and services depends substantially upon the general demand for business-related computer appliances and software, which fluctuates based on numerous factors, including capital spending levels, the spending levels and growth of our current and prospective customers, and general economic conditions. Fluctuations in the demand for our products and services could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. Moreover, the purchase of our products is often discretionary and may involve a significant commitment of capital and other resources. Future economic projections for the information technology sector are uncertain as companies continue to reassess their spending for technology projects. If an uncertain environment for information technology spending continues, it could negatively impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We face intense competition, which could result in fewer customer orders and reduced revenues and margins.
We sell our products in intensely competitive markets. Some of our competitors and potential competitors have significantly greater financial, technical, sales and marketing and other resources than we do. As the markets for our products and services continue to develop, additional companies, including those with significant market presence in the computer appliances, software and networking industries, could enter the markets in which we compete and further intensify competition. In addition, we believe price competition could become a more significant competitive factor in the future. As a result, we may not be able to maintain our historic prices and margins, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
If we lose key personnel or cannot hire enough qualified officers and/ or employees in certain areas of our business, our ability to manage our business could be adversely affected.
Our success depends and will depend on the efforts and abilities of our key personnel, such as highly qualified software developers, service consultants and management. We are highly dependent on our senior management, Joerg Ott and other key officers. The loss of such key officers and/ or the loss of their specific knowledge would have a material adverse effect to us. Our success also depends, in large part, upon the services of a number of key employees in certain areas of our business. We do not have long-term employment agreements with all of our key personnel. Any officer or employee can terminate his or her relationship with us at any time. The effective management of our growth, if any, could depend upon our ability to retain our highly skilled managerial, technical, sales and services, finance and marketing personnel in certain areas of our business. If any of those employees leave, we will need to attract and retain replacements for them. We also may need to add key personnel in the future, including in certain key areas of our business. The market for these qualified employees is competitive. We could find it difficult to successfully attract, assimilate or retain sufficiently qualified personnel in sufficient numbers. Furthermore, we may hire key personnel in connection with our future acquisitions; however, any of these employees will be able to terminate his or her relationship with us at any time. If we cannot retain and add the necessary staff and resources for these acquired businesses, our ability to develop acquired products, markets and customers could be adversely affected. Also, we may need to hire additional personnel to develop new products, product enhancements and technologies. If we cannot add the necessary staff and resources, our ability to develop future enhancements and features to our existing or future products could be delayed. Any delays could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Our current operational strategy is dependent on IBM.
We, through our 50.1% ownership of GROUP Business Software AG, are the world’s largest supplier of applications for IBM’s Lotus Notes and Domino markets. GROUP also markets its Cloud Automation Platform (CAP) and Domino Application Transfer (DAT) software, which automatically transforms applications to the Cloud. We expect much of our growth in the near term to come from our CAP and DAT solutions Should IBM choose to longer promote its Lotus Notes products, our anticipated growth avenues may be adversely affected. We would likely seek to shift our operations to concentrate more heavily on migration and modernization solutions such as Group Live and Transformer.
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We may not be able to manage our growth effectively.
We must continually implement and improve our products and/or services, operations, operating procedures and quality controls on a timely basis, as well as expand, train, motivate and manage our work force in order to accommodate anticipated growth and compete effectively in our market segment. Successful implementation of our strategy also requires that we establish and manage a competent, dedicated work force and employ additional key employees in corporate management, product design, client service and sales. We can give no assurance that our personnel, systems, procedures and controls will be adequate to support our future operations. If we fail to continuously improve our operations, there could be a material, adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition.
If we do not develop new products and services or enhancements to our existing products and services, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.
The markets for our products and services are characterized by rapid technological changes, evolving industry standards, fluctuations in customer demand, changes in customer requirements and frequent new product and service introductions and enhancements.
Our future success depends on our ability to continually enhance our current products and services and develop and introduce new products and services that our customers choose to buy. If we are unable to keep pace with technological developments and customer demands by introducing new products and services and enhancements, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We may be unable to effectively control our operating expenses, which could negatively impact our profitability.
Although we endeavor to effectively control our operating expenses, these expenses, which are based on estimated revenue levels, are relatively fixed in the short term. We cannot ensure that our operating expenses will be lower than our estimated or actual revenues in any given quarter or that we will not incur unanticipated expenses. If we experience a shortfall in revenue in any given quarter or if we incur material unanticipated expenses, we likely will not be able to further reduce operating expenses quickly in response. Any significant shortfall in revenue or the incurrence of material unanticipated expenses could immediately and adversely affect our results of operations for that quarter. Also, due to the fixed nature of many of our expenses and the challenges for revenue growth in the current environment, our income from operations and cash flows from operating and investing activities could be lower than in recent years.
In addition, to the extent our revenue grows, if at all, we believe that our cost of revenues and certain operating expenses could increase. We believe that we could incur additional costs as we develop, license or buy new technologies or enhancements to our existing products and services. These added costs and royalties could increase our cost of revenues and operating expenses and lower our gross margins. However, we cannot currently quantify the costs for such transactions that have not yet occurred or of these developing trends in our business. In addition, we may need to use a substantial portion of our cash and investments or issue additional shares of our common stock to fund these additional costs.
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Acquisitions present many risks, and we may not realize the financial and strategic goals we anticipate at the time of an acquisition.
Our growth is dependent upon market growth, our ability to enhance existing products and services, and our ability to introduce new products and services on a timely basis. We intend to continue to address the need to develop new products and services and enhance existing products and services through acquisitions of other companies, product lines and/or technologies. However, acquisitions, including those of high-technology companies, are inherently risky. We cannot provide any assurance that any of our previous acquisitions, including our acquisition of the assets of Lotus Holdings and 50.1% of GROUP, or future acquisitions will be successful in helping us reach our financial and strategic goals either for that acquisition or for us generally or that the combined company resulting from any acquisition will continue to support the growth achieved by the companies separately.
The risks we may encounter in managing and integrating acquisitions are:
•difficulties and delays integrating the operations, technologies, and products of the acquired companies;
•undetected errors or unauthorized use of a third-party’s code in products of the acquired companies;
•the diversion of management’s attention from normal daily operations of the business;
•potential difficulties in completing projects associated with purchased in-process research and development;
•entry into markets in which we have no or limited direct prior experience and where competitors have stronger market positions and which are highly competitive;
•the potential loss of key employees of the acquired company; and
•an uncertain revenue and earnings stream from the acquired company, which could unexpectedly dilute our earnings.
Our failure to manage growth effectively and successfully integrate acquired companies due to these or other factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Attractive acquisition opportunities may not be available to us, which could negatively affect the growth of our business.
Our business strategy includes the selective acquisition of businesses and technologies, such as our acquisition of GROUP in December 2010 and January 2011. We plan to continue to seek opportunities to expand our product portfolio, customer base, technology, and technical talent through acquisitions. However, we may not have the opportunity to make suitable acquisitions on favorable terms in the future, which could negatively impact the growth of our business. We expect that other companies in our industry will compete with us to acquire compatible businesses. This competition could increase prices for businesses and technologies that we would likely pursue, and our competitors may have greater resources than we do to complete these acquisitions.
We could change our licensing programs or subscription renewal programs, which could negatively impact the timing of our recognition of revenue.
We continually re-evaluate our licensing programs and subscription renewal programs, including specific license models, delivery methods, and terms and conditions, to market our current and future products and services. We could implement new licensing programs and subscription renewal programs, including promotional trade-up programs or offering specified enhancements to our current and future product and service lines. Such changes could result in deferring revenue recognition until the specified enhancement is delivered or at the end of the contract term as opposed to upon the initial shipment or licensing of our software product. We could implement different licensing models in certain circumstances, for which we would recognize licensing fees over a longer period, including offering additional products in a software-as-a-service model. Changes to our licensing programs and subscription renewal programs, including the timing of the release of enhancements, upgrades, maintenance releases, the term of the contract, discounts, promotions and other factors, could impact the timing of the recognition of revenue for our products, related enhancements and services and could adversely affect our operating results and financial condition.
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Security vulnerabilities in our products could have a material adverse impact on our results of operations.
Maintaining the security of computing devices and networks is a critical issue for us and our customers. We devote significant resources to address security vulnerabilities in our products and services through engineering more secure products and services, enhancing security and reliability features in our products and services, deploying security updates to address security vulnerabilities and seeking to respond to known security incidents in sufficient time to minimize any potential adverse impact. The cost of these measures could reduce our operating margins. Despite these efforts, actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in our products and systems may lead to claims against us and harm our reputation, and could lead some customers to seek to return products, to stop using certain products or services, to reduce or delay future purchases of our products or services, or to use competing products or services. Customers may also increase their expenditures on protecting their existing computer systems from attack, which could delay adoption of new technologies. Further, if our customers suffer any losses or are otherwise harmed in connection with a security incident related to our products or services, we could be subject to liability claims from our customers. Any of these actions by customers could adversely impact our results of operations.
Our efforts to protect our intellectual property may not be successful, which could materially and adversely affect our business.
We rely primarily on a combination of copyright, trademark, patent and trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our source code and other intellectual property. The loss of any material trade secret, trademark, trade name, patent or copyright could have a material adverse effect on our business. Despite our precautions, it could be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy, disclose or reverse engineer certain portions of our products or to otherwise obtain and use our proprietary source code, in which case we could potentially lose future trade secret protection for that source code. If we cannot protect our proprietary source code against unauthorized copying, disclosure or use, unauthorized third parties could develop products similar to or better than ours.
Any patents applied for by us could eventually not be granted or any patent owned by us could be invalidated, circumvented or challenged. Any of our pending or future patent applications, whether or not being currently challenged, may not be issued with the scope we seek, if at all; and if issued, may not provide any meaningful protection or competitive advantage.
In addition, our ability to protect our proprietary rights could be affected by differences in international law and the enforceability of licenses. The laws of some foreign countries do not protect our intellectual property to the same extent as do the laws of the United States and Canada. For example, we derive a significant portion of our sales from licensing our products under “click-to-accept” license agreements that are not signed by licensees and electronic enterprise customer licensing arrangements that are delivered electronically, all of which could be unenforceable under the laws of many foreign jurisdictions in which we license our products.
Our products, including products obtained through acquisitions, could infringe third-party intellectual property rights, which could result in material litigation costs.
We are increasingly subject to infringement claims and may in the future be subject to claims alleging the unauthorized use of a third-party’s code in our products. This may occur for a variety of reasons, including the expansion of our product lines through product development and acquisitions; an increase in patent infringement litigation commenced by non-practicing entities; the increase in the number of competitors in our industry segments and the resulting increase in the number of related products and the overlap in the functionality of those products; and the unauthorized use of a third-party’s code in our product development process. Companies and inventors are more frequently seeking to patent software despite recent developments in the law that may discourage or invalidate such patents. As a result, we could receive more patent infringement claims. Responding to any infringement claim, regardless of its validity, could result in costly litigation costs, monetary damages or injunctive relief or require us to obtain a license to intellectual property rights of those third parties. Licenses may not be available on reasonable terms, on terms compatible with the protection of our proprietary rights, or at all. In addition, attention to these claims could divert our management’s time and attention from developing our business. If a successful claim is made against us and we fail to develop or license a substitute technology or negotiate a suitable settlement arrangement, our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows could be materially and adversely affected. In particular, a material adverse impact on our financial statements could occur in the period in which the effect of an unfavorable final outcome becomes probable and reasonably estimable.
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Perceived risks in Cloud Computing could negatively influence buyers.
As the Cloud market develops, adoption could be adversely affected due to concerns with data security and the reliability of third party IT infrastructures and software. Although security and reliability risks can be minimized or mitigated, the mere perception of these risks could hinder our ability to grow our business.
Risks related to the disclosure of confidential information of core technology.
The independently developed technologies by us, contracts with partners and agreements with cooperated system integrators are all confidential information. We have established strict access limitation level for the personnel in the Company to review and use such information by signing Non-disclosure Agreements with relevant people. The usage and disclosure of such information have been managed stringently by the Company. We also sign a long-term engagement contract with the core technical people who may hold major technologies of the Company. Despite the foregoing measurements adopted by the Company, we cannot assure the confidential information will not be disclosed definitely.
Systems failures could harm our business.
Temporary or permanent outages of our computers or software equipment could have an adverse effect on our business. Although we have not experienced any catastrophic outages to date, we currently do not have fully redundant systems for our web sites and other services at an alternate site. Therefore, our systems are vulnerable to damage from break-ins, unauthorized access, vandalism, fire, earthquakes, power loss, telecommunications failures and similar events. Although we maintain insurance against fires, earthquakes and general business interruptions, the amount of coverage we have might be insufficient.
Experienced computer programmers seeking to intrude or cause harm, or hackers, may attempt to penetrate our network security from time to time.
We have not experienced any security breaches to date. However, if a hacker were to penetrate our network security, they could misappropriate proprietary information, cause interruptions in our services, dilute the value of our offerings to customers and damage customer relationships. We might be required to expend significant capital and resources to protect against, or to alleviate, problems caused by hackers. We also may not have a timely remedy against a hacker who is able to penetrate our network security. In addition to purposeful security breaches, the inadvertent transmission of computer viruses could expose us to system damage, operational disruption, loss of data, litigation and other risks of loss or harm.
We depend on continued performance of and improvements to our computer network.
Any failure of our computer systems that causes interruption of our services could result in a loss of business. If sustained or repeated, these performance issues could reduce the attractiveness of our services to consumers and our subscription products and services. Increases in the volume of our web site traffic could also strain the capacity of our existing computer systems, which could lead to slower response times or system failures. We may not be able to project accurately the rate, timing or cost of any increases in our business, or to expand and upgrade our systems and infrastructure to accommodate any increases in a timely manner.
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Internet commerce security threats could pose a risk to our online sales and overall financial performance.
A significant barrier to online commerce is the secure transmission of confidential information over public networks. We rely on encryption and authentication technology to provide the security and authentication necessary to effect secure transmission of confidential information. There can be no assurance that advances in computer capabilities; new discoveries in the field of cryptography or other developments will not result in a compromise or breach of the algorithms used by us and our partners to protect consumer’s transaction data. If any such compromise of security were to occur, it could have a materially adverse effect on our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations. A party who is able to circumvent our security measures could misappropriate proprietary information or cause interruptions in our operations. We may be required to expend significant capital and other resources to protect against such security breaches or to alleviate problems caused by such breaches. Concerns over the security of transactions conducted on the Internet and the privacy of users may also hinder the growth of online services generally, especially as a means of conducting commercial transactions. To the extent that our activities, our partners or third-party contractors involve the storage and transmission of proprietary information, such as credit card numbers, security breaches could damage our reputation and expose us to a risk of loss or litigation and possible liability. There can be no assurance that our security measures will not prevent security breaches or that failure to prevent such security breaches will not have a materially adverse effect on our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations.