Safe Harbor Cautionary Statement
This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements may be signified by terms such as “aim,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “expect,” “feel,” “intend,” “estimate,” “seek,” “plan,” “may,” “can,” “could,” “should,” “will,” “would” or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. In this report, forward-looking statements include statements regarding our financial projections, future financial performance and plans and objectives for future operations including, without limitation, the following:
•expectations regarding our financial condition and results of operations, including revenue, revenue growth, revenue mix, cost of revenue, operating expenses, operating income, non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP operating margin, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, cash flows and effective income tax rate;
•expectations regarding investment in product development and our expectations about the results of those efforts;
•expectations concerning acquisitions and opportunities resulting from our acquisitions;
•expectations regarding hiring additional personnel globally in the areas of sales and marketing and research and development;
•intentions regarding our international earnings;
•expectations regarding our capital expenditures;
•expectations regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, results of operations and financial condition;
•our beliefs regarding the sufficiency of our cash and cash equivalents, cash flows from operating activities and borrowing capacity; and
•expectations regarding our spin-off from SolarWinds Corporation ("SolarWinds") into a newly created and separately traded public company.
Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially and adversely different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the following:
•risks related to our spin-off from SolarWinds into a newly created and separately-traded public company, including that the spin-off could disrupt or adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition, that the spin-off may not achieve some or all of any anticipated benefits with respect to our business; that the distribution, together with certain related transactions, may not qualify as a transaction that is generally tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes, which could result in N-able incurring significant tax liabilities, and, in certain circumstances, requiring us to indemnify SolarWinds for material taxes and other related amounts pursuant to indemnification obligations under the tax matters agreement;
•the possibility that the global COVID-19 pandemic may continue to adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition or the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy or on the business operations and financial conditions of our customers, their end customers and our prospective customers;
•our ability to sell subscriptions to new MSP partners, to sell additional solutions to our existing MSP partners and to increase the usage of our solutions by our existing MSP partners, as well as our ability to generate and maintain MSP partner loyalty;
•any decline in our renewal or net retention rates;
•the possibility that general economic conditions or uncertainty cause information technology spending to be reduced or purchasing decisions to be delayed, including as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic;
•the inability to generate significant volumes of high quality sales leads from our digital marketing initiatives and convert such leads into new business at acceptable conversion rates;
•our inability to successfully identify, complete and integrate acquisitions and manage our growth effectively;
•risks associated with our international operations;
•risks that cyberattacks, including the cyberattack on SolarWinds’ Orion Software Platform and internal systems announced by SolarWinds in December 2020, or the Cyber Incident, and other security incidents may result, in compromises or breaches of our, our MSP partners’, or their SME customers’ systems, the insertion of malicious code, malware, ransomware or other vulnerabilities into our, our MSP partners’, or their SME customers’ environments, the exploitation of vulnerabilities in our, our MSP partners’, or their SME customers’ security, the theft or misappropriation of our, our MSP partners’, or their SME customers’ proprietary and confidential information, and interference with our, our MSP
partners’, or their SME customers’ operations, exposure to legal and other liabilities, higher MSP partner and employee attrition and the loss of key personnel, negative impacts to our sales, renewals and upgrades and reputational harm and other serious negative consequences, any or all of which could materially harm our business;
•our status as a controlled company;
•our ability to attract and retain qualified employees and key personnel as a standalone public company;
•the timing and success of new product introductions and product upgrades by N-able or its competitors;
•our ability to protect and defend our intellectual property and not infringe upon others’ intellectual property;
•the possibility that our operating income could fluctuate and may decline as percentage of revenue as we make further expenditures to expand our operations in order to support additional growth in our business;
•potential foreign exchange gains and losses related to expenses and sales denominated in currencies other than the functional currency of an associated entity;
•our indebtedness, including potential restrictions on our operations and the impact of events of default; and
•such other risks and uncertainties described more fully in documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risk factors discussed in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent our management’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.
In this report “N-able,” “Company,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to N-able, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries, and references to “SolarWinds” and “Parent” refer to SolarWinds Corporation.
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Business Overview
We are a leading global provider of cloud-based software solutions for managed service providers ("MSPs"), enabling them to support digital transformation and growth for small and medium-sized enterprises ("SMEs"). With a flexible technology platform and powerful integrations, N-able makes it easy for MSPs to monitor, manage, and protect their end-customer systems, data, and networks. Our growing portfolio of remote endpoint management, security, and backup and recovery solutions is purpose-built for IT services management professionals. In addition, we provide extensive, proactive support—through enriching partner programs, hands-on training, and growth resources—to help MSPs deliver exceptional value and achieve success at scale. Through our multi-dimensional land and expand model and global presence, we are able to drive strong recurring revenue growth and profitability.
Organizations of all sizes are deploying technology to transform their businesses and compete effectively. As SMEs go through digital transformation, their reliance on technology as a competitive differentiator increases. IT environments are becoming increasingly complex, with the number of applications and endpoints proliferating while also becoming more interconnected, causing the sophistication and overhead required to deploy, manage and secure these assets to grow.
Many SMEs lack the resources or internal expertise to effectively manage their IT assets and adapt to the changing environment. This lack of resources and expertise coupled with the desire to better leverage technology in their businesses has created a growing need for SMEs to rely on MSPs for their IT deployment, management and security. MSPs become vital partners as more SMEs seek to implement technology solutions that help drive strategic business outcomes.
To effectively manage the operability and security of distributed and heterogeneous IT environments, MSPs require visibility and control over a variety of architectures, applications and connected endpoints. MSPs must also keep pace with rapid technological innovation or risk obsolescence. These challenges are made more difficult when the solutions upon which MSPs rely lack integration capabilities or otherwise fail to meet the technological and business needs of the MSPs and their customers.
We enable IT service providers of all types to act as MSPs by providing a platform that they can leverage to help SMEs access powerful and seamless technology to power their businesses. Our software platform is designed to be an integrated, enterprise-grade solution that serves as an operating system for our MSP partners and scales as their businesses grow. Built on a multi-tier, multi-tenant architecture, our platform allows our MSP partners to adapt to their customers’ requirements and improve service delivery by offering centralized visibility and role-based access control in both public and private cloud, on-premises and hybrid cloud environments.
Our platform consists of three core solution categories: remote monitoring and management, security and data protection and business management. Our broad remote monitoring and management capabilities include real-time availability and performance of networks and devices and automation of policies and workflows. We provide a layered protection approach spanning network and systems infrastructure, applications, and end user devices through our data protection, patch management, endpoint security, web protection, e-mail security and archiving and vulnerability assessment solutions. Our fully cloud-based data protection capabilities include storage efficient backup, high-speed restoration and disaster recovery for servers, workstations, files, data and key cloud-based applications. In addition, our business management solutions help improve the technical and service delivery efficiencies of our MSP partners and include professional services automation and password and documentation management.
We have a multi-dimensional land and expand model and global presence that allow us to capture opportunities efficiently within the worldwide MSP and SME markets. When we add an MSP partner, we also add their SME customers and we grow as the partner adds new customers, delivers new services based on our solutions and when the partner’s customers add devices and services. We support our MSP partners by offering partner success initiatives designed to help them better manage their own businesses, deliver service offerings powered by our platform and grow their customer bases. Our partner success initiatives help drive both retention and expansion as our MSP partners are provided with resources designed to help them better understand and pursue growth opportunities.
Our business model allows us to grow with our MSP partners. MSP partners with annualized recurring revenue, or ARR, over $50,000 on our platform grew from 1,473 as of December 31, 2020 to 1,678 as of December 31, 2021, representing an increase of 14%. Over the same period, MSP partners with over $50,000 of ARR on our platform grew from approximately 42% of our total ARR as of December 31, 2020 to approximately 47% of our total ARR as of December 31, 2021.
Our business is global, with 49%, 47% and 47% of our revenue generated outside of North America for each of the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. We generated revenue of $346.5 million, $302.9 million and $263.5