UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM
(Mark One)
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For the fiscal year ended
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For the transition period from to .
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Date of event requiring this shell company report
Commission file number:
(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)
Island of
(Jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)
Amdocs, Inc.
625 Maryville Centre Drive,
(Address of principal executive offices)
Amdocs, Inc.
Telephone:
Email:
(Name, Telephone, E-mail and/or Facsimile number and Address of Company Contact Person)
Securities registered or to be registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
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Title of each class
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Trading Symbol
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Name of each exchange on which registered
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Securities registered or to be registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:
[None]
Securities for which there is a reporting obligation pursuant to Section 15(d) of the Act:
[None]
Indicate the number of outstanding shares of each of the issuer’s classes of capital or common stock as of the close of the period covered by the annual report.
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Title of Class
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Number of Shares Outstanding (1)
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Ordinary Shares, par value £0.01 |
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.
If this report is an annual or transition report, indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
Yes ☐
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.
Note – Checking the box above will not relieve any registrant required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 from their obligations under those Sections.
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate website, 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).
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, or a non-accelerated filer. See definition of “accelerated filer and large accelerated filer” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. (Check one):
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Emerging growth company |
If an emerging growth company that prepares its financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, 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. ☐
The term “new or revised financial accounting standard” refers to any update issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to its Accounting Standards Codification after April 5, 2012.
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report.
If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements.
Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐
Indicate by check mark which basis of accounting the registrant has used to prepare the financial statements included in this filing:
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International Financial Reporting Standards as issued |
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by the International Accounting Standards Board |
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If this is an annual report, indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).
Yes ☐ No
(1) Net of 168,981,982 shares held in treasury. Does not include 2,156,445 ordinary shares reserved for issuance upon exercise of stock options and vesting of restricted stock units granted under our stock option plan or by companies we have acquired.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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ITEM 1. |
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ITEM 2. |
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ITEM 3. |
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ITEM 4. |
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ITEM 4A. |
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ITEM 5. |
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ITEM 6. |
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ITEM 7. |
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ITEM 8. |
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ITEM 9. |
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ITEM 10. |
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ITEM 11. |
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ITEM 12. |
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ITEM 13. |
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ITEM 14. |
MATERIAL MODIFICATIONS TO THE RIGHTS OF SECURITY HOLDERS AND USE OF PROCEEDS |
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ITEM 15. |
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ITEM 16A. |
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ITEM 16B. |
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ITEM 16C. |
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ITEM 16D. |
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ITEM 16E. |
PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES BY THE ISSUER AND AFFILIATED PURCHASERS |
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ITEM 16F. |
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ITEM 16G. |
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ITEM 16H. |
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ITEM 16I. |
DISCLOSURE REGARDING FOREIGN JURISDICTION THAT PREVENT INSPECTION |
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ITEM 16J. |
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ITEM 16K. |
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ITEM 17. |
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ITEM 18. |
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ITEM 19. |
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Unless the context otherwise requires, all references in this Annual Report on Form 20-F to “Amdocs,” “we,” “our,” “us” and the “Company” refer to Amdocs Limited and its consolidated subsidiaries and their respective predecessors, and references to our software products refer to current and subsequent versions. Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States, or U.S. GAAP, and are expressed in U.S. dollars. References to “dollars” or “$” are to U.S. dollars. Our fiscal year ends on September 30 of each calendar year. References to any specific fiscal year refer to the year ended September 30 of the calendar year specified. For example, we refer to the fiscal year ending September 30, 2023 as “fiscal 2023” or “fiscal year 2023.”
We own, have rights to or use trademarks or trade names in conjunction with the sale of our products and services, including Amdocs, CES and Make it Amazing, among others.
Forward-Looking Statements
This Annual Report on Form 20-F contains forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the United States federal securities laws) that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. You can identify these forward-looking statements by words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “seek,” “estimate,” “project,” “forecast,” “continue,” “potential,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “intend” and “may,” and other words that convey uncertainty of future events or outcome. Statements that we make in this Annual Report that are not statements of historical fact also may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that may cause our actual results to differ materially from the expectations that we describe in our forward-looking statements. There may be events in the future that we are not accurately able to predict, or over which we have no control. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Although we may elect to update forward-looking statements in the future, we disclaim any obligation to do so, even if our assumptions and projections change, except where applicable law may otherwise require us to do so. Readers should not rely on those forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this Annual Report on Form 20-F.
Important factors that may affect these projections or expectations include, but are not limited to: the effects of macro-economic conditions, prevailing level of macro-economic, business, and operational uncertainty, including as a result of geopolitical events or other global or regional events such as the recent attacks in Israel and the ensuing armed conflict with Hamas, as well as the current inflationary environment, and the effects of these conditions on the Company’s customers’ businesses and levels of business activity, , including the effect of the current economic uncertainty and industry pressure on the spending decisions of our customers, our ability to grow in the business markets that we serve, our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses, adverse effects of market competition, rapid technological shifts that may render our products and services obsolete, potential loss of a major customer, our ability to develop long-term relationships with our customers, our ability to successfully and effectively implement artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in our offerings and operations, and risks associated with operating businesses in the international market. For a discussion of these and other important factors, and other risks, please read the information set forth below under the caption “Risk Factors.”
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PART I
ITEM 1. IDENTITY OF DIRECTORS, SENIOR MANAGEMENT AND ADVISERS
Not applicable.
ITEM 2. OFFER STATISTICS AND EXPECTED TIMETABLE
Not applicable.
ITEM 3. KEY INFORMATION Risk Factors
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
We are exposed to general global economic and market conditions, particularly those impacting the communications industry.
We provide software and services primarily to service providers in the communications industry, and our business is therefore highly dependent upon conditions in that industry. Developments in the communications industry, such as the impact of global economic conditions, industry consolidation, emergence of new competitors, commoditization of voice, video and data services and changes in the regulatory environment, at times have had, and could continue to have, a material adverse effect on our existing or potential customers. These conditions have reduced, and may continue to reduce, the growth rates that the communications industry had previously experienced and caused the market value, financial results and prospects and capital spending levels of many communications companies to decline or degrade. Industry consolidation involving our customers, which has been significant in recent years, may place us at risk of losing business to the incumbent provider to one of the parties to the consolidation or to new competitors. During previous economic downturns, the communications industry experienced significant financial pressures that caused many in the industry to cut expenses and limit investment in capital intensive projects and, in some cases, led to restructurings and bankruptcies. Continuing uncertainty as to the pace of economic recovery following such economic downturns may have adverse consequences for our customers and our business.
Downturns in the business climate for communications companies have in the past resulted, and may in the future result, in slower customer buying decisions and price pressures that adversely affected, and may continue to adversely affect, our ability to generate revenue. The current macro-economic conditions, including as a result of geopolitical events or other global or regional events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the current inflationary environment and foreign exchange rate fluctuations, and the effects of these conditions on our customers’ businesses and levels of business activity and the resulting spending decisions of customers, have had and may continue to have a negative impact on our business by decreasing our new customer engagements and the size of initial or ongoing spending commitments under those engagements, as well as decreasing the level of demand and expenditures by existing customers. In addition, a slowdown in buying decisions may extend our sales cycle period and may limit our ability to forecast our flow of new contracts. If such adverse business conditions continue, our business may be harmed.
If we fail to adapt to changing market conditions and cannot compete successfully with existing or new competitors, our business could be harmed.
We may be unable to compete successfully with existing or new competitors, particularly as we expand into new market segments. Our failure to adapt to changing market conditions, new market segments such as 5G, the cloud, and AI including GenAI, and to compete successfully with established or new competitors could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition. We face intense competition for the software products and services that we sell, including competition for the managed services we provide to customers under long-term service agreements. These managed services include management of data center operations and IT infrastructure, application management and ongoing support, systems modernization and consolidation, cloud environment management and management of end-to-end IT processes for the business and operations of our customers.
The market for communications information systems is highly competitive and fragmented, and we expect competition to continue to increase. We compete with independent software and service providers and with the in-house IT and network departments of communications companies. Our main competitors include firms that provide IT services (including consulting, systems integration and managed services), software vendors that sell products for particular aspects of a total information system, software vendors that specialize in systems for particular communications services (such as internet, wireline and wireless services, cable, satellite and service bureaus) and network equipment providers that offer software systems in combination with the sale of network equipment. We also compete with companies that provide digital commerce software and solutions. We believe that our ability to compete with other vendors as well as with in-house IT and network departments of communications companies, depends on a number of factors, including:
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A number of our competitors have long operating histories, large customer bases, substantial financial, technical, sales, marketing and other resources, and strong name recognition. Current and potential competitors have established, and may establish in the future, cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties to increase their abilities to address the needs of our existing or prospective customers. In addition, our competitors have acquired, and may continue to acquire in the future, companies that may enhance their market offerings, or may themselves be acquired by larger companies with more resources and ability to leverage existing business relationships. Accordingly, new competitors or alliances among competitors may emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share. As a result, our competitors may be able to adapt more quickly than us to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements, and may be able to devote greater resources to the promotion and sale of their products. Additionally, our competitors are increasingly able to offer services related to their software, platform and other solutions that require integration with their other existing services. These more integrated services may represent more attractive alternatives to customers than some of our software products and services. We cannot assure you that we will be able to compete successfully with existing or new competitors. If we fail to adapt to changing market conditions and to compete successfully with established or new competitors, our results of operations and financial condition may be adversely affected.
If we do not continually enhance our products and service offerings, introduce new products and features and adopt and monetize new technologies and methodologies in the marketplace, we may have difficulty retaining existing customers and attracting new customers.
We believe that our future success will depend, to a significant extent, upon our ability to enhance our existing products and services, to introduce new products, services and features to meet the requirements of our customers, and to adopt and leverage new technologies and methodologies such as 5G, the cloud, microservices-based architecture, DevSecOps, automation, and AI, in a rapidly developing and evolving market. We devote significant resources to refining and expanding our base software modules and to developing our products, services and development methodologies and tools. We have recently introduced new solutions involving GenAI, as well as predictive analytics and robotic process automation. Our inability to identify any future changes or disruptions in the technology space, inability to develop services around them, tailor our go-to-market strategy to take these services to our global customers ahead of our competition and enhance our delivery capabilities to execute those services may impact our competitive positioning, market share and revenues. In some instances, we rely on cooperative relationships with third parties to assist us in delivering certain products and services to our customers. Our present or future products, services and technology may not satisfy the evolving needs of the communications industry or of other industries that we serve. If we are unable to anticipate or respond adequately to such needs, due to resource, technological or other constraints, our business and results of operations could be harmed.
Our future success will depend on our ability to develop and maintain long-term relationships with our customers and to meet their expectations in providing products and performing services.
We believe that our future success will depend to a significant extent on our ability to develop and maintain long-term relationships with successful network operators and service providers with the financial and other resources required to invest in significant ongoing development of our products and services. If we are unable to develop new customer relationships, our business will be harmed. In addition, our business and results of operations depend in part on our ability to provide high-quality services to customers that have already implemented our products. If we are unable to meet customers’ expectations in providing products or performing services, our business and results of operations could be harmed.
Our business is dependent on a limited number of significant customers, and the loss of any one of our significant customers, or a significant decrease in business from any such customer, could harm our results of operations.
Our business is dependent on a limited number of significant customers, of which AT&T has historically been our largest. AT&T accounted for 24% and 27% of our revenue in fiscal years 2023 and 2022, respectively. In fiscal years 2023 and 2022, our next largest customer, T-Mobile, accounted for 23% and 20% of our revenue, respectively. For each of AT&T and T-Mobile we provide multiple services, run multiple activities and have a large portion of the business under our managed services. We cannot assure you that our revenues from AT&T, T-Mobile or any of our significant customers will remain the same or grow in future years. Aggregate revenue derived from the multiple business arrangements we have with the ten largest of our significant customers accounted for approximately 70% of our revenue in fiscal years 2023 and 2022. The loss of any significant customer, including as a result of industry consolidation involving our customers, a significant decrease in business from any such customer or a reduction in customer
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revenue due to adverse changes in the terms of our contractual arrangements, market conditions, customer circumstances (such as financial condition and market position) or other factors could harm our results of operations and financial condition. Revenue from individual customers may fluctuate from time to time based on the commencement, scope and completion of projects or other engagements, the timing and magnitude of which may be affected by market or other conditions.
Although we have received a substantial portion of our revenue from recurring business with established customers, many of our major customers do not have any obligation to purchase additional products or services from us and generally have already acquired fully paid licenses for their installed systems. Therefore, our customers may not continue to purchase new systems, system enhancements or services in amounts similar to previous years or may delay implementation or significantly reduce the scope of committed projects, each of which could reduce our revenue and profits. See “Risk Factors — We are exposed to general global economic and market conditions, particularly those impacting the communications industry".
If our security measures for our software, hardware, services or cloud offerings are compromised and as a result, our data, our customers’ data, our IT systems, or our customers’ IT systems are accessed improperly, made unavailable, or improperly modified, our products and services may be perceived as vulnerable and it may materially affect our business and result in potential legal liability.
Our products and services, including our cloud offerings, store, retrieve, and manage our customers’ information and data, as well as our own data. We have a reputation for secure and reliable product offerings and related services and we have invested a great deal of time and resources in protecting the integrity and security of our products, services and the internal and external data that we manage. Despite our efforts to implement security measures, we cannot guarantee that our systems are fully protected from vulnerabilities related to IT-related viruses, worms and other malicious software programs, attacks, break-ins and similar disruptions from unauthorized tampering by computer hackers and other threat actors including insiders. Cybersecurity threats are constantly expanding and evolving, thereby increasing the difficulty of detecting and defending against them. For example, we might not discover a security breach or a loss of information for a significant amount of time after the breach, and might not be able to anticipate attacks or implement sufficient mitigating measures. Also, due to geopolitical conflicts (such as the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine) and threats and acts of terrorism (such as the recent events in Israel), we and our third-party vendors and customers are vulnerable to a heightened risk of cybersecurity attacks, “phishing” attacks, viruses, malware, ransomware, hacking or similar breaches from nation-state actors. Such cybersecurity incidents could include, but are not limited to, an attempt to gain unauthorized access to digital systems for purposes of misappropriating assets or sensitive information, corrupting data, or causing operational disruption. “Phishing” and other types of attempts to obtain unauthorized information or access are often sophisticated and difficult to detect or defeat. In particular, ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly prevalent and can lead to significant reputational harm, loss of data, operational disruption, and significant monetary loss. Organized criminals, nation state threat actors, motivated hacktivists and other threat actors that target us have the possibility of impacting our systems, networks, data and business operations. In order to properly recover from a ransomware attack, extortion payments are demanded by threat actors; however, we may be unwilling or unable to make payments of this nature based on laws and regulations that may apply. In addition, security measures in our products and services may be penetrated or bypassed by computer hackers and others who may gain unauthorized access to our or our customers’ or partners’ software, hardware, cloud offerings, networks, data or systems. These actors may use a wide variety of methods, which may include developing and deploying malicious software to attack our products and services and gain access to our networks and data centers, using social engineering techniques or acting in a coordinated manner to launch distributed denial of service or other coordinated attacks. This is also true for third party data, products or services incorporated into our own. Data may also be accessed or modified improperly as a result of customer, partner or employee error or malfeasance and third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce customers, partners, employees or suppliers into disclosing sensitive information such as user names, passwords or other information in order to gain access to our data or IT systems or our customers’ or partners’ data or IT systems. Our exposure to cybersecurity and data privacy breach incidents may increase due to a large number of employees working remotely. Any of the foregoing occurrences could create system disruptions and cause shutdowns or denials of service or compromise data, including personal or confidential information, of ours, our partners or our customers. Additionally, our customers may fail to implement recommended or required updates to our software on their systems timely, or at all, which in turn makes them more vulnerable to the kinds of cybersecurity and data privacy breach incidents described in greater detail above. If any such incidents were to affect customers using our software, it could negatively affect our reputation and, in turn, our results of operations. Any of the foregoing risks may be heightened by our use of AI, GenAI, machine learning (ML), data analytics and similar tools and technologies (collectively, “AI and Related Tools”) (For more information on risks related to AI and Related Tools, please see “Risk Factors — Our use of AI and Related Tools may adversely impact our business and subject us to possible litigation.”)
If a cyberattack or other security incident (for example phishing, advanced persistent threats, or social engineering) were to result in unauthorized access to, or deletion of, and/or modification and/or exfiltration of our customers’ data, other external data or our own data or our IT systems or if the services we provide to our customers were disrupted, customers could lose confidence in the security and reliability of our products and services, including our cloud offerings, and perceive them not to be secure. This in turn could lead to fewer customers using our products and services and result in reduced revenue and earnings. The costs we would incur to address and fix these security incidents would increase our expenses. These risks will increase as we continue to grow our cloud
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solutions and network offerings and store and process increasingly large amounts of data, including personal information and our customers’ confidential information and data and other external data, and host or manage parts of our customers’ businesses in cloud-based IT environments. In addition, we have acquired certain companies, products, services and technologies over the years and have partnered with other companies for certain of our other offerings. While we make significant efforts to address any IT security issues with respect to our acquired companies and partners, we may still inherit such risks when we integrate these companies, products, services and technologies or work with our partners.
Any of the events described above could cause our customers to make claims against us for damages allegedly resulting from a security breach or service disruption, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We are subject to laws, directives, and regulations relating to the collection, use, retention, disclosure, security and transfer of personal data. These laws, directives, and regulations, and their interpretation and enforcement continue to evolve rapidly and may be inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; we will need to expend time and resources to ensure compliance with these evolving regulations, and failure to understand and comply with these regulations can have an impact on our results of operations and financial condition. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in the European Union (EU) on May 25, 2018. The GDPR regulates the processing of personal data originated in the EU and its transfer out of the EU and applies globally to all of our activities conducted from an establishment in the EU, to related products and services that we offer to EU customers and to non-EU customers which offer services in the EU. The GDPR also affects our role as product developers, as we are required to adopt “privacy by design” principles in order to address our customers’ need to apply privacy adequate solutions when handling their subscribers’ data. The GDPR also increases financial penalties for noncompliance, including possible fines of up to 4% of global annual revenues for the preceding financial year or €20 million (whichever is higher) for the most serious violations. The United Kingdom operates a separate but similar regime to the European Union, which, together with the amended United Kingdom Data Protection Act 2018 (collectively, the UK GDPR) allows for fines of up to the greater of £17.5 million or 4% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year. Further, we are subject to the Israeli Protection of Privacy Law 5741 (PPL), and the Privacy Protection Regulations (Data Security) 5777. The PPL imposes certain obligations on the owners of databases containing personal data, including, among other things, a requirement to register databases with certain characteristics. The Protection of Privacy Regulations (Data Security) 5777, which became effective concurrently with the GDPR, impose comprehensive data security requirements on the processing of personal data. Additionally, new local privacy laws have been introduced and/or enacted recently as part of an overall trend, including in Brazil, Canada, Guernsey, India and Singapore. For example, the Indian Parliament passed the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act in August 2023 – the first comprehensive cross-sectoral law on personal data protection in India – which is currently expected to become effective in June 2024. In the United States, there have been proposals for federal privacy legislation and state-level privacy laws have also been enacted within the past year, including in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Utah and Virginia, while other states, such as Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, have adopted more narrowly focused privacy or cybersecurity laws but may pass more comprehensive legislation in the future. Noncompliance with our legal obligations relating to privacy and data protection could result in penalties, fines, legal proceedings by governmental entities or others, loss of reputation, legal claims by individuals and customers and significant legal and financial exposure, and could affect our ability to retain and attract customers.
Our use of AI and Related Tools, as well as applications, features, and functionality that we may introduce in the future, may result in difficulties, including with product development and integration, and may otherwise not prove efficient or profitable, may not be widely or timely accepted by our customers or the market, may enhance intellectual property, cybersecurity, operational and technological risks, or may otherwise adversely impact our business or operations, or subject us to possible litigation.
As we continue to diversify our product offerings, we may utilize AI and Related Tools in connection with our business and in our solutions. We have begun to include GenAI capabilities through our amAIz framework in our existing products, and have entered into new partnerships to leverage the existing GenAI networks. Given the short time that has elapsed since GenAI became commercially viable, and the rapid pace of change in the GenAI space, we have limited experience with GenAI and may experience any number of difficulties including with respect to product development and integration with our existing offerings, IT systems and service providers. Additionally, there are significant risks involved in utilizing AI and Related Tools and no assurance can be provided that the usage of such AI and Related Tools will enhance our business, the business of our customers, or assist us in being more efficient or profitable. Further, AI and Related Tools may have errors or inadequacies that are not easily detectable. For example, certain AI and Related Tools may utilize historical market or sector data in their analytics. To the extent that such historical data is not indicative of the current or future conditions in the applicable market or sector, or the AI and Related Tools fail to filter biases in the underlying data or collection methods, the usage of AI and Related Tools may lead us or our customers to make determinations on behalf of our business or our customers’ business that are based on such flawed data, including decisions, that may have an adverse effect. If AI and Related Tools are incorrectly designed or the data used to train them is incomplete, inadequate or biased in some way, use of AI and Related Tools may inadvertently reduce efficiency or cause unintentional or unexpected outputs that are incorrect, do not match our or our customers’ business goals, do not comply with our or our customers’ policies or interfere with the performance
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of our or our customers’ products, services, business and reputation. Additionally, reliance on AI and Related Tools could pose ethical concerns and lead to a lack of human oversight and control, which could have negative implications for our organization or that of our customers. Any of the foregoing flaws in our or our service providers’ AI and Related Tools or the AI and Related Tools of others in our industry, whether actual or perceived, may adversely impact our business, reputation, operations, and product or service offerings.
Further, as we incorporate GenAI and other AI and Related Tools in our product and service offerings, including in new markets, we will face new sources of competition, new business models, and new partner, service provider and customer relationships. In order to be successful, we will need to cultivate new industry relationships and strengthen existing relationships to bring new GenAI and other AI and Related Tool solutions and offerings to market, and the success of any GenAI, AI and Related Tools or similar solutions we develop will depend on many factors, including market demand our ability to win and maintain customers, and the cost, performance and perceived value of any such offerings we develop, including amAIz, as well as their compatibility with our existing offerings. As a result, there can be no assurance that any GenAI or other AI and Related Tool solutions we develop will be adopted by the market, or be profitable or viable. Our limited experience with respect to GenAI offerings could limit our ability to successfully execute on this growth strategy or adapt to market changes. If we are unsuccessful in developing, integrating and offering GenAI and other AI and Related Tool solutions, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.
In addition, the use of AI and Related Tools may enhance intellectual property, cybersecurity, operational and technological risks. The technologies underlying AI and Related Tools and their use cases are subject to a variety of laws, including intellectual property, privacy, consumer protection and federal equal opportunity laws. If we do not have sufficient rights to use the data on which AI and Related Tools rely, we may incur liability through the violation of such laws, third-party privacy or other rights or contracts to which we are a party. Furthermore, the technologies underlying AI and Related Tools are complex and rapidly developing, and as a result, it is not possible to predict all of the legal, operational or technological risks related to the use of AI and Related Tools. Moreover, AI and Related Tools are the subject of evolving review by various governmental and regulatory agencies, including the SEC and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and EU regulatory bodies, and changes in laws, rules, directives and regulations governing the use of AI and Related Tools may adversely affect the ability of our business to use AI and Related Tools.
If we are unable to protect our proprietary technology from misappropriation or enforce our intellectual property rights, our business may be harmed.
Any misappropriation of our technology or the development of competitive technology could seriously harm our business. Our software and software systems are largely comprised of software and systems we have developed or acquired and that we regard as proprietary. We rely upon a combination of trademarks, patents, contractual rights, trade secret law, copyrights, non-disclosure agreements and other methods to protect our proprietary rights. We enter into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with our customers, workforce and marketing representatives and with certain contractors with access to sensitive information, and we also limit customer access to the source codes of our software and our software systems. We have undertaken, and will continue to undertake, appropriate actions to protect our technology. The ability to develop and use our software and software systems requires knowledge and professional experience that we believe is unique to us and would be very difficult for others to independently obtain. However, our competitors may independently develop technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to ours.
Intellectual property laws are complex and subject to change, and existing trade secret, copyright, trademark and patent laws offer only limited protection. For example, there is uncertainty concerning the scope of patent and other intellectual property protection, including for GenAI, software and business methods. Even where we obtain intellectual property protection, the steps we have taken to protect our proprietary rights may be inadequate. If so, we might not be able to prevent others from using what we regard as our technology to compete with us. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect our proprietary technology or allow enforcement of confidentiality covenants to the same extent as the laws of the United States. Any of the foregoing risks may be heightened by our use of AI and Related Tools (For more information on risks related to AI and Related Tools, please see “Risk Factors — Our use of AI and Related Tools may adversely impact our business and subject us to possible litigation.”)
If we have to resort to legal proceedings to enforce our intellectual property rights, the proceedings could be burdensome, protracted and expensive and could involve a high degree of risk, including the risk of counterclaims that allege that we infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate the intellectual property of another party, regardless of whether we are successful in such proceedings.
We may be required to increase or decrease the scope of our operations in response to changes in the demand for our products and services, and if we fail to successfully plan and manage changes in the size of our operations, our business will suffer.
In the past, we have both grown and contracted our operations, in some cases rapidly, in order to profitably offer our products and services in a continuously changing market. If we are unable to manage these changes and plan and manage any future changes in the size and scope of our operations, our business will suffer.
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Restructurings and cost reduction measures that we have implemented, from time to time, have reduced the size of our operations and workforce. Reductions in personnel can result in significant severance, administrative and legal expenses and may also adversely affect or delay various sales, marketing and product development programs and activities. These cost reduction measures have included, and may in the future include, employee separation costs and consolidating and/or relocating certain of our operations to different geographic locations.
Acquisitions, organic growth and absorption of significant numbers of customers’ employees in connection with managed services projects have, from time to time, increased our headcount. During periods of expansion, we may need to serve several new customers or implement several new large-scale projects in short periods of time. This may require us to attract and train additional IT professionals at a rapid rate, as well as quickly expand our facilities, which we may have difficulties doing successfully.
We may not receive significant revenues from our current research and development efforts for several years, if at all.
Developing software and digital products is expensive and the investment in the development of these products often involves a long return on investment cycle. An important element of our corporate strategy is to continue to make significant investments in research and development and related products and service opportunities both through internal investments and the acquisition of intellectual property, including from companies that we have acquired. Accelerated products and service introductions and short software and hardware life cycles require high levels of expenditures for research and development that could adversely affect our operating results if not offset by revenue increases. We believe that we must continue to dedicate a significant amount of resources to our research and development efforts to maintain our competitive position. However, we cannot guarantee that we will receive significant revenues from these investments for several years, if at all.
We continuously seek to acquire companies or technologies and we cannot assure that we will be able to identify attractive opportunities, be successful in the integration of our acquisitions nor that such activities will strengthen our financial or competitive position.
We regularly review and assess potential acquisitions and targets in order to expand our offerings and enhance our market diversification and strategic strengths. In recent years, we have completed numerous acquisitions and we are actively evaluating potential new opportunities, some of which could be significant, stand alone or in the aggregate. In the future, we intend to continue expanding our portfolio of products, services and technologies that we believe we will advance our business strategy through acquisitions. However, we may not be able to identify suitable future targets, consummate them on favorable terms or complete otherwise favorable acquisitions because of antitrust, regulatory or other concerns. For instance, some countries, including the United States and countries in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, are considering or have adopted restrictions on transactions involving foreign investments. Additionally, even if we are able to identify and consummate new acquisitions, the success of such new acquisitions will depend on many factors, including our ability to win and maintain customers in new industries and markets. Also, the effects of macro-economic conditions, prevailing level of macro-economic, business, and operational uncertainty may impact our ability to grow acquired entities, which could result in reduction of their valuations. In addition, geopolitical conflicts and political instability may also result in further scrutiny and more complex approval processes over international transactions in countries where we operate. Furthermore, rapid technological changes such as GenAI that may affect the acquired technology and could result in reduction of value of such technologies. We cannot assure you that the acquisitions we have completed, or any future acquisitions that we may make, will enhance our products and services or strengthen our financial or competitive position.
In addition, we cannot assure you that we have identified, or will be able to identify, all material adverse issues related to the integration of our acquisitions, such as significant defects in the internal control policies of companies that we have acquired, acquisition of intellectual property maintained by our targets that may result in allegations or claims of infringement or which may not be adequately protected, or conflicting commitments among our and our target’s customers. Our acquisitions could lead to difficulties in integrating acquired personnel and operations and in retaining and motivating key personnel from these businesses. In some instances, we may need to depend on the seller of an acquired business to provide us with certain transition services in order to meet the needs of our customers. Any failure to recognize significant defects in the internal control policies of acquired companies or properly integrate and retain personnel, and any interruptions of transition services, may require a significant amount of time and resources to address. Acquisitions may disrupt our ongoing operations, expose us to potential identified or unknown security vulnerabilities, divert management from day-to-day responsibilities, increase our expenses and harm our results of operations or financial condition.
We seek to enter into new strategic partnerships and alliances, and cannot assure you that these activities will materialize as expected, enhance our products and services, and they may adversely affect our results of operations.
It is a part of our business strategy to pursue new strategic partnerships and alliances in order to offer new products or services or to otherwise enhance our market position and customer reach. Consistent with this strategy, we have entered into partnerships and collaborations and continue to review potential new opportunities. For example, in connection with our focus on new and existing
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domains, such as B2B and the cloud, and the adoption of new technologies such as GenAI, we have entered into new partnerships as well as expanded upon our existing partnerships with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud and NVIDIA. We expect to continue to build on these partnership and others to update, enhance and build our offerings and customer base. However, we may face difficulty finding partners that enhance our offerings and brand, in particular if we simultaneously compete with such partners in other industries and markets. We may be limited in the scope of the partnership which may hinder the success of any ventures we enter into with such partners. We also may not be able to realize the business objectives and targets set for those partnerships as a result of, among other things, organizational culture differences, difficulty or unwillingness to share certain information between partners, technology misalignment, business model misalignment or our ability to properly motivate disparate sales forces. Additionally, our customers may not favorably view our partnership offerings and may choose to not adopt such offerings. Changes in our partner's strategy may also adversely impact our ability to continue to make partnership offerings available in the future. Due to the multiple risks and difficulties associated with such activities, there can be no assurance that we will be successful in achieving our expected strategic, operating, and financial goals for any such partnership or alliance.
Our international presence exposes us to risks associated with varied and changing political, cultural, legal, compliance and economic conditions worldwide.
We are affected by risks associated with conducting business internationally. We maintain development facilities in Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States, and have operations in North America, Europe, Eurasia, Israel, Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Although a substantial majority of our revenue is derived from customers in North America, we obtain significant revenue from customers in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America. Our strategy is to continue to broaden our North American and European customer bases and to continue to expand into international markets, including emerging markets, such as those in Latin America, Africa, Eurasia, India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Conducting business internationally exposes us to certain risks inherent in doing business in numerous markets, including:
One or more of these factors could have a material adverse effect on our operations, which could harm our results of operations and financial condition.
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As we continue our efforts to expand our business internationally, including in emerging markets such as those in Latin America, Africa, Eurasia, India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, we face a number of challenges specific to those regions, including more volatile economic conditions, competition from companies that are already present in the market, the need to identify correctly and leverage appropriate opportunities for sales and marketing, poor protection of intellectual property, inadequate protection against crime (including counterfeiting, corruption and fraud), lack of due process, political instability and corruption, inadvertent breaches of local laws or regulations and difficulties in recruiting sufficient personnel with appropriate skills and experience. Local business practices in jurisdictions in which we operate, and particularly in emerging markets, may be inconsistent with international regulatory requirements, such as anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws and regulations (including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the U.K. Bribery Act) to which we are subject. It is possible that some of our employees, subcontractors, agents or partners may violate such legal and regulatory requirements, which may expose us to criminal or civil enforcement actions, including penalties and suspension or disqualification from U.S. federal procurement contracting. If we fail to comply with such legal and regulatory requirements, our business and reputation may be harmed.
We are subject to numerous, changing and sometimes conflicting legal regimes on various matters, including sanctions and trade controls. The sanctions environment has resulted in new sanctions and trade restrictions, such as in response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, among other, which may impair trade with certain sanctioned individuals and countries, and negatively impact regional trade ecosystems among our clients and us, including business operations in impacted territories.
In addition, the ability of foreign nationals to work in the United States, Europe and other regions in which we have customers depends on their and our ability to obtain the necessary visas and work permits for our personnel who need to travel internationally. If we are unable to obtain such visas or work permits, or if their issuance is delayed or if their length is shortened, this may impact our ability to provide services to our customers in a timely and cost-effective manner. Immigration and work permit laws and regulations in the countries in which we have customers are subject to legislative and administrative changes as well as changes in the application of standards and enforcement.
In addition, our brand and reputation are also associated with our public commitments to various environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, including our goals and targets for sustainability and inclusion and diversity. Our goals and targets are set to multiple time frames extending out through 2040, and our disclosures on these matters and any failure to achieve our goals and targets whether in the short-term, mid-term or long-term, could harm our reputation and adversely affect our customer relationships or our recruitment and retention efforts. In addition, positions we take or do not take on social issues may be unpopular with some of our employees or with our customers or potential customers, which may in the future impact our ability to attract or retain employees or customers.
Political, civil and national conditions in the Middle East and other countries may adversely affect our business.
Of the development centers we maintain worldwide, two of our largest development centers are located in India and Israel. In Israel, the centers are located in several different sites, with our main facility in the center of the country. Less than 15% of our workforce is located in Israel, with revenue from customers in Israel comprising less than 0.5% of total revenue. As a result, we are directly influenced by the political, economic and military conditions affecting Israel and its neighboring regions. Any major hostilities involving Israel could have a material adverse effect on our business. We maintain contingency plans to provide ongoing services to our customers in the event that escalated political or military conditions disrupt our normal operations. These plans include the transfer of some development operations within Israel to several of our other sites both within and outside of Israel. Implementation of these plans could disrupt our operations and cause us to incur significant additional expenditures, which could adversely affect our business and results of operations.
Conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East, including with countries which border Israel, have resulted in continued political uncertainty and violence in the region. Relations between Israel and Iran continue to be seriously strained, especially with regard to Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, efforts to improve Israel’s relationship with the Palestinian Authority have failed to result in a permanent solution, and there have been numerous periods of hostility in recent years. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel, which has resulted in certain of our workforce shifting to remote work, and some military reserve service call-ups in Israel. Although the October attack in Israel had minimal impact on our overall business activities and operations, further escalation of the current events, or deterioration of relations with countries in the Middle East or elsewhere, might require additional business or operational adjustments, which might result in additional costs and potential disruptions to our operations, as well as potential losses of revenue and may have a material adverse effect on our business.
Globally, rising racial, ethnic and religious intolerance, as well as threats of terrorism, increases in hateful and nationalistic rhetoric, political violence and anti-social behavior, present challenges which may result in disruptions to our business operations or the loss of revenue which could adversely affect our business and results of operations. Terrorist activity in India and Pakistan has contributed to tensions between those countries and our operations in India may be adversely affected by future political and other events in the region.
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Our international operations expose us to risks associated with fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates that could adversely affect our business.
Although we have operations throughout the world, approximately 70% to 80% of our revenue and approximately 50% to 60% of our operating costs are denominated in, or linked to, the U.S. dollar. Accordingly, we consider the U.S. dollar to be our functional currency. As we conduct business internationally, fluctuations in exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and the currencies not denominated in, or linked to, the U.S. dollar in which revenues are earned or costs are incurred may have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition. From time to time, we may experience increases in the costs of our operations outside the United States, as expressed in dollars, as well as decreases in revenue not denominated in, or linked to, the U.S. dollar, each of which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition.
As a result of macro-economic conditions, including as a result of geopolitical events or other global or regional events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, political instability or conflicts and threats and acts of terrorism, as well as the current inflationary environment, foreign exchange rates fluctuation may continue to present challenges in future periods should significant increases in volatility in foreign exchange markets occur. Due to volatility in foreign exchange rates, particularly during periods of economic instability such as during the height of the financial crisis in fiscal 2008 or the recent recessionary periods, for example, we may recognize higher than usual foreign exchange losses under interest and other expense, net, mainly due to the significant revaluation of assets and liabilities denominated in other currencies attributable to the rapid and significant foreign exchange rate changes associated with the global economic turbulence. Although we utilize hedging strategies to prevent significant impacts to our financial results, we believe that foreign exchange rates may continue to present challenges in future periods should significant increases in volatility in foreign exchange markets occur.
Our policy is to hedge significant net exposures in the major foreign currencies in which we operate, and we generally hedge our net currency exposure with respect to expected revenue and operating costs and certain balance sheet items. We do not hedge all of our currency exposure, including for currencies for which the cost of hedging is prohibitively expensive. We cannot assure you that we will be able to effectively limit all of our exposure to foreign exchange rate fluctuations.
The imposition of exchange or price controls, devaluation policies, restrictions on withdrawal of foreign exchange, other restrictions on the conversion of foreign currencies or foreign government initiatives to manage local economic conditions, including changes to or cessation of any such initiatives, could also have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.
The skilled and highly qualified workforce that we need to develop, implement and modify our solutions may be difficult to hire, train and retain, and we have and could continue to face increased costs to attract and retain our skilled workforce.
Our business operations depend in large part on our ability to attract, hire, train, motivate and retain highly skilled information technology professionals, software programmers and communications engineers on a worldwide basis, particularly as we expand into new market segments such as network automation, the cloud and GenAI. In addition, our competitive success will depend on our ability to attract and retain other outstanding, highly qualified employees, consultants and other professionals. Because our software products are highly complex and are generally used by our customers to perform critical business functions, we depend heavily on skilled technology professionals. Skilled technology professionals are often in high demand and short supply. If we are unable to hire or retain qualified technology professionals to develop, implement and modify our solutions, we may be unable to meet the needs of our customers. In addition, serving several new customers or implementing several new large-scale projects in a short period of time may require us to attract and train additional IT professionals at a rapid rate.
We may face difficulties identifying and hiring qualified personnel and, in particular, we may face difficulties in our ability to attract and retain employees with technical and project management skills, including those from developing countries. Although we are heavily investing in training our new employees, we may not be able to train them rapidly enough to meet the increasing demands on our business, particularly in light of high attrition rates in some regions where we have operations. Additionally, there is increasing competition for talent in the technology sector that is driven by the accelerated push toward digital initiatives. Thus, our inability to hire, train and retain the appropriate personnel could further increase our costs of retaining a skilled workforce and make it difficult for us to manage our operations, meet our commitments and compete for new customer contracts. In particular, wage costs in lower- cost markets where we have historically added personnel, such as India, are increasing and we may need to continue increasing the levels of our employee compensation more rapidly than in the past to remain competitive.
As a result of our entry into new domains, we now compete for high-quality employees in those domains’ limited and competitive talent market. In addition, cost containment measures effected in recent years, such as increased presence in lower-costs countries, may lead to greater employee attrition and further increase the cost of retaining our most skilled employees. The transition of projects to new locations may also lead to business disruptions due to differing levels of employee knowledge and organizational
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and leadership skills. Although we have never experienced an organized labor dispute, strike or work stoppage, any such occurrence, including in connection with unionization efforts, could disrupt our business and operations and harm our financial condition.
In addition, a national union and a group of our employees had attempted in the past to secure the approval of the minimum number of employees needed for union certification with respect to our employees in Israel or elsewhere. While these efforts have not resulted in either group being recognized as a representative union, we cannot be certain there will be no such efforts in the future. In the event an organization is recognized as a representative union for our employees in Israel, we would be required to enter into negotiations to implement a collective bargaining agreement. We are unable to predict whether, and to what extent, efforts to unionize our employees would have an adverse effect on our business, operations or financial condition. Our continued growth and success will also depend upon the continued active participation of a relatively small group of senior management personnel, and requires us to hire, retain and develop our leadership bench. If we are unable to attract and retain talented, highly qualified senior management and other key executives, as well as provide for the succession of senior management, our growth and results of operations may be adversely impacted.
Claims by others that we infringe their proprietary technology and trade secrets could harm our business and subject us to potentially burdensome litigation.
Our software and software systems are the results of long and complex development processes, and although our technology is not significantly dependent on patents or licenses from third parties, certain aspects of our products make use of software components that we license from third parties, including our employees and contractors. As a developer of complex software systems, third parties may claim that portions of our systems violate their intellectual property rights.
Software developers, including us, have been and are becoming increasingly subject to infringement claims as the number of products and competitors providing software and services to the communications industry increases and overlaps occur. In addition, patent infringement claims are increasingly being asserted by patent holding companies, which do not use the technology subject to their patents, and whose sole business is to enforce patents against companies, such as us, for monetary gain. Any claim of infringement by a third party could cause us to incur substantial costs defending against the claim and could distract our management from our business. Furthermore, a party making such a claim, if successful, could secure a judgment that requires us to pay substantial damages. A judgment could also include an injunction or other court order that could prevent us from selling our products or offering our services, or prevent a customer from continuing to use our products. We also support service providers and media companies with respect to digital content services, which could subject us to claims related to such services. Our digital content services and offerings may also subject us to possible claims of infringement of the ownership rights to media content, for example, as well as to direct legal claims from retail consumers arising from the delivery of such services. Any of the foregoing risks may be heightened by our use of AI and Related Tools (For more information on risks related to AI and Related Tools, please see “Risk Factors — Our use of AI and Related Tools may adversely impact our business and subject us to possible litigation.”)
If anyone asserts a claim against us or one of our indemnitees relating to proprietary technology or information, we might seek to license their intellectual property. We might not, however, be able to obtain a license on commercially reasonable terms or on any terms. In addition, any efforts to develop non-infringing technology could be unsuccessful. Our failure to obtain the necessary licenses or other rights or to develop non-infringing technology could prevent us from selling our products and could therefore seriously harm our business.
Our use of “open source” software could adversely affect our ability to sell our services and subject us to possible litigation.
We use open source software in providing our solutions, and we may use additional open source software in the future. Such open source software is generally licensed by its authors or other third parties under open source licenses. Under such licenses, if we engage in certain defined manners of use, we may be subject to certain conditions, including requirements that we offer our solutions that incorporate the open source software for no cost; that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the open source software; and/or that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of the particular open source license. In addition, if a third-party software provider has incorporated open source software into software that we license from such provider in a manner that triggers one or more of the above requirements, we could be required to disclose any of our source code that incorporates or is a modification of such licensed software. If an author or other third party that distributes such open source software were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from the sale of our solutions that contained the open source software, and required to comply with the foregoing conditions, which could disrupt the distribution and sale of some of our solutions. In addition, generally open source software licenses do not contain any warranties and may not have available support from the authors or third parties from whom we license it. If such open source software contains prior defects, security vulnerabilities or infringes any third party right or we are unable to obtain or provide necessary support, we could be exposed to legal claims and significant legal expenses without the ability to seek contribution
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from the authors or third parties from whom we license open source software. If open source software that we utilize is no longer maintained, developed or enhanced by the relevant authors or third parties, our ability to develop new solutions, enhance our existing solutions or otherwise meet customer requirements for innovation, quality and price may be impaired.
System disruptions and failures may result in customer dissatisfaction, customer loss or both, which could materially and adversely affect our reputation and business.
Our systems are an integral part of our customers’ business operations. The continued and uninterrupted performance of these systems for our customers is critical to our success. Customers may become dissatisfied by any system failure that interrupts our ability to provide services to them.
Our ability to serve our customers depends on our ability to protect our systems and infrastructure against damage from fire, power loss, water damage, telecommunications and technology failure, cyberattacks, earthquake, severe weather conditions, terrorist attacks, vandalism and other similar unexpected adverse events. We also depend on various cloud providers and co-location data center providers which provide us environments, tools and applications on which we provide our products. Although we maintain insurance that we believe is appropriate for our business and industry, such coverage may not be sufficient or maybe difficult to obtain, to compensate for any significant losses that may occur as a result of any of these events. In addition, we have experienced systems outages and service interruptions in the past, none of which has had a material adverse effect on us. However, a prolonged system-wide outage or frequent outages for our infrastructure or our cloud providers’ infrastructure could cause harm to our customers and to our reputation and reduce the attractiveness of our services significantly, which could result in decreased demand for our products and services and could cause our customers to make claims against us for damages allegedly resulting from an outage or interruption. Any damage or failure that interrupts or delays our operations could result in material harm to our business and expose us to material liabilities.
Product defects, software errors, or service failures could adversely affect our business.
Design defects or software errors may cause delays in product introductions and project implementations and damage customer satisfaction, and may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. Our software products are highly complex and may, from time to time, contain design defects or software errors that may be difficult to detect and correct.
Because our products are generally used by our customers to perform critical business functions, design defects, software errors, misuse of our products, incorrect data from external sources, failures to comply with our service obligations or other potential problems within or outside of our control may arise during implementation or from the use of our products and services, and may result in financial or other damages to our customers, for which we may be held responsible. Although we have license and service agreements with our customers that contain provisions designed to limit our exposure to potential claims and liabilities arising from customer problems, these provisions may not effectively protect us against such claims in all cases and in all jurisdictions. In addition, as a result of business and other considerations, we may undertake to compensate our customers for damages caused to them arising from the use of our products and services, even if our liability is limited by a license or other agreement. Claims and liabilities arising from customer problems could also damage our reputation, adversely affecting our business, results of operations and financial condition and the ability to obtain “Errors and Omissions” insurance.
Changes in the tax legislation policies and regulations imposed by the jurisdictions in which we operate, the termination or reduction of certain government programs and tax benefits, or challenges by tax authorities of our tax positions could adversely affect our overall effective tax rate.
There can be no assurance that our effective tax rate of 14.7% for the year ended September 30, 2023 will not change over time as a result of changes in corporate income tax rates or other changes in the tax laws of Guernsey, the jurisdiction in which our holding company is organized, or of the various countries in which we operate. Any changes in tax laws could have an adverse impact on our financial results. In addition, there has been a general expectation of increased audits of multinational groups by tax authorities in various jurisdictions. There is no guarantee that our effective tax rate will not be adversely affected as a result of any such activity.
For example, there is growing pressure in many jurisdictions and from multinational organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the EU to amend existing international taxation rules in order to align the tax regimes with current global business practices. Specifically, in October 2015, the OECD published its final package of measures for reform of the international tax rules as a product of its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative, which was endorsed by the G20 finance ministers. Many of the initiatives in the BEPS package required and resulted in specific amendments to the domestic tax legislation of various jurisdictions and to existing tax treaties. We continuously monitor these developments. Although many of the BEPS measures have already been implemented or are currently being implemented globally (including, in certain cases, through adoption of the OECD’s “multilateral convention” to effect changes to tax treaties which entered into force on July 1, 2018 and
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through the European Union’s “Anti Tax Avoidance” Directives), it is still difficult in some cases to assess to what extent these changes would impact our tax liabilities in the jurisdictions in which we conduct our business or to what extent they may impact the way in which we conduct our business or our effective tax rate due to the unpredictability and interdependency of these potential changes. In January 2019 the OECD announced further work in continuation of the BEPS project, focusing on two “pillars.” On October 8, 2021, 137 countries approved a statement known as the OECD BEPS Inclusive Framework, which builds upon the OECD’s continuation of the BEPS project. The first pillar (“Pillar 1”) is focused on the allocation of taxing rights between countries for in-scope multinational enterprises that sell goods and services into countries with little or no local physical presence. Based on the guidelines published to date, the Company does not expect to fall within the scope of the rules of Pillar 1. The second pillar (“Pillar 2”) is focused on developing a global minimum tax rate of at least 15 percent (measured on a country by country basis) applicable to multinational groups with consolidated revenue over €750 million. Guernsey, as well as other jurisdictions where we operate, are included in the more than 140 countries which have agreed to enact legislation to implement the global minimum tax rate. The Company is continuing to evaluate the potential impact on future periods of the Pillar 2, pending legislative adoption by additional individual countries. It is difficult to assess at the present time to what extent such changes, if and when they are finally adopted, might adversely impact our effective tax rate.
In addition, following the screening by the EU Code of Conduct Group on Business Taxation (“COCG”) of third-country jurisdictions to assess their compliance for tax purposes, Guernsey was found to be a co-operative jurisdiction. However, the COCG has requested that Guernsey, along with a number of other jurisdictions, take further steps to ensure that its tax system does not facilitate offshore structures which attract profits without real economic activity. Legislation introducing economic substance requirements for companies in the Crown Dependencies was approved by the respective parliaments in December 2018 and amended and updated with effect from June 30, 2021. The legislation applied initially to all companies resident for tax purposes in the Crown Dependencies and was effective for accounting periods commencing on or after January 1, 2019. The most recent amendments extended the legislation to include partnerships but did not make material changes to the substance requirements applicable to Guernsey tax resident companies. The regulations require entities, including companies and partnerships, to demonstrate that they have sufficient substance in Guernsey via a series of requirements, or tests. We are monitoring the developments closely to ensure that the Company is compliant with the various requirements.
We rely on third-party vendor relationships to deliver our business, may expose us to supply disruptions, cost increases, security vulnerabilities and cyberattacks.
We are reliant on third-party vendors in the provision of our services, including our expanding cloud services and use of AI, including GenAI. Failure by any of our third-party vendors could interrupt our operations and the delivery of our solutions, and/or significantly increase costs as we transition to a new vendor. Similarly, if any of these third- party vendors would decide to significantly increase costs, it could have an adverse financial impact on our business, as it may require us to shift to a competing solution or redesign our solutions which might take considerable time, effort and money. Further, if a third party were to experience a material breach of its information technology systems which results in the unauthorized access, theft, use, destruction, or unauthorized disclosures of customers’ or employees’ data or confidential information of the Company stored in such systems or the introduction of security vulnerabilities into the Company's systems or products, including through cyberattacks or other external or internal methods, it could result in a material loss of revenues from the potential adverse impact on our reputation, our ability to retain or attract new customers, potential disruption or loss of services from the vendor and disruption to our business. Such a breach could also result in contractual claims, and could lead to our being named as a party in consumer litigation brought by or on behalf of impacted individuals. For more information on risks related to cybersecurity and data privacy, please see “Risk Factors — If our security measures for our software, hardware, services or cloud offerings are compromised and as a result, our data, our customers’ data, our IT systems, or our customers’ IT systems are accessed improperly, made unavailable, or improperly modified, our products and services may be perceived as vulnerable and it may materially affect our business and result in potential legal liability.”
In addition, IT hardware suppliers face shortages that are otherwise caused or exacerbated by the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment and/or global technology changes. As such, we may need to incur higher expenses when purchasing certain IT hardware and could face shortages of equipment and components that we and our employees rely upon in the conduct of our business and our operations and sales could be adversely impacted by such supply interruptions. Although we have not experienced material adverse impacts to date, additional or prolonged supplier shortages that have occurred or were exacerbated because of the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment and/or global technology changes could adversely impact our operations and the solutions that we offer.
Volatility and turmoil in the world’s capital markets may adversely affect our investment portfolio and other financial assets.
Our cash, cash equivalents and short-term interest-bearing investments totaled $743 million, as of September 30, 2023. Our short-term investments consist primarily of bank deposits, money market funds, corporate bonds, U.S. government treasuries and supranational and sovereign debt. Although we believe that we generally adhere to conservative investment guidelines, adverse market conditions have resulted in immaterial impairments of the carrying value of certain of our investment assets in recent fiscal years, and
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future adverse market conditions may lead to additional impairments. Realized or unrealized losses in our investments or in our other financial assets may adversely affect our financial condition, including by reducing the capital available for our business and requiring us to seek additional capital, which may not be available on favorable terms.
Declines in the financial condition of banks or other global financial institutions may adversely affect our normal financial operations. For example, in March 2023, failures of certain financial institutions created additional volatility in the banking sector. While we have not experienced any material impacts from such events, further failures, a lack of trust in the banking industry or material impacts on our customers from such failures could adversely affect our business.
We may be exposed to the credit risk of customers that have been adversely affected by adverse business conditions.
We typically sell our software and related services as part of long-term projects and arrangements. During the life of a project or arrangement, a customer’s budgeting constraints or other financial difficulties can impact the scope of such project or arrangement as well as the customer’s requirements and ability to make payments or comply with other obligations with respect to such project or arrangement. In addition, adverse general business conditions, as well as the risk that some of our customers may be highly leveraged and exposed to the recent rising in the costs of funding given increasing interest rates, may adversely affect our customers or degrade the creditworthiness of our customers over time, and we can be adversely affected by bankruptcies, incapability by our customers to raise sufficient funding for their operations or other business failures. For example, there has been recent turmoil in the global banking system and, while the volatility and the subsequent bank failures did not have a material direct impact on our business, such failures could materially affect our customers, resulting in their inability to meet their obligations under our agreements, which may in turn adversely impact our business and financial condition.
Our quarterly operating results may fluctuate, and a decline in revenue in any quarter could result in lower profitability for that quarter and fluctuations in the market price of our ordinary shares.
At times, we have experienced fluctuations in our quarterly operating results and anticipate that such movements may continue to occur. Fluctuations may result from many factors, including:
Generally, our revenue relating to software licenses that require significant customization, modification, implementation and integration is satisfied over time as work progresses. Given our reliance on a limited number of significant customers, our quarterly results may be significantly affected by the size and timing of customer projects and our progress in completing such projects.
We believe that the placement of customer orders may be concentrated in specific quarterly periods due to the time requirements and budgetary constraints of our customers. Although we recognize a significant portion of our revenue as projects are performed, progress may vary significantly from project to project, and we believe that variations in quarterly revenue are sometimes attributable to the timing of initial order placements. Due to the relatively fixed nature of certain of our costs, a decline of revenue in any quarter could result in lower profitability for that quarter. In addition, fluctuations in our quarterly operating results could cause significant fluctuations in the market price of our ordinary shares.
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Our revenue, earnings and profitability are affected by the length of our sales cycle, and a longer sales cycle could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.
Our business is directly affected by the length of our sales cycle. Information systems for communications companies are relatively complex and their purchase generally involves a significant commitment of capital, with attendant delays frequently associated with large capital expenditures and procurement procedures within an organization. The purchase of these types of products and services typically also requires coordination and agreement across many departments within a potential customer’s organization. Delays associated with such timing factors could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and financial condition. In periods of economic slowdown in the communications industry, our typical sales cycle lengthens, which means that the average time between our initial contact with a prospective customer and the signing of a sales contract increases. The lengthening of our sales cycle could reduce growth in our revenue. In addition, the lengthening of our sales cycle contributes to increased selling expenses, thereby reducing our profitability.
Risks Related to Our Indebtedness
There are risks associated with our outstanding and future indebtedness.
As of September 30, 2023, we had an aggregate of $650 million of outstanding indebtedness and we may incur additional indebtedness in the future. Our ability to pay interest and repay the principal for our indebtedness is dependent upon our ability to manage our business operations, generate sufficient cash flows to service such debt and the other factors discussed in this section, including macroeconomic factors such as rising interest rates. There can be no assurance that we will be able to manage any of these risks successfully.
We may also need to refinance a portion of our outstanding debt as it matures. There is a risk that we may not be able to refinance existing debt or that the terms of any refinancing may not be as favorable as the terms of our existing debt. Furthermore, if prevailing interest rates or other factors at the time of refinancing result in higher interest rates upon refinancing, then the interest expense relating to that refinanced indebtedness would increase.
In addition, changes by any rating agency to our outlook or credit rating could negatively affect the value of both our debt and equity securities and increase the interest amounts we pay on certain outstanding or future debt. These risks could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Ordinary Shares
The market price of our ordinary shares has and may continue to fluctuate widely.
The market price of our ordinary shares has from time to time fluctuated widely and may continue to do so. Many factors could cause the market price of our ordinary shares to rise and fall, including:
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In addition, the stock market frequently experiences significant price and volume fluctuations. In the past, market fluctuations have, from time to time, particularly affected the market prices of the securities of many high technology companies. These broad market fluctuations could adversely affect the market price of our ordinary shares.
It may be difficult for our shareholders to enforce any judgment obtained in the United States against us or our affiliates.
We are incorporated under the laws of the Island of Guernsey and a majority of our directors and executive officers are not citizens or residents of the United States. A significant portion of our assets and the assets of those persons are located outside the United States. As a result, it may not be possible for investors to effect service of process upon us within the United States or upon such persons outside their jurisdiction of residence. Also, we have been advised that there is doubt as to the enforceability in Guernsey of judgments of the United States courts of civil liabilities predicated solely upon the laws of the United States, including the federal securities laws.
ITEM 4. INFORMATION ON THE COMPANY
History, Development and Organizational Structure of Amdocs
Amdocs Limited was organized as a company with limited liability under the laws of the Island of Guernsey in 1988. Since 1995, Amdocs Limited has been a holding company for the various subsidiaries that conduct our business on a worldwide basis. Our global business is providing software and services solutions to leading communications and media companies in North America, Europe and the rest of the world. Our registered office is Hirzel House, Smith Street, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, GY1 2NG, and the telephone number at that location is +44-1481-728444.
The executive offices of our principal subsidiary in the United States are located at 625 Maryville Centre Drive, Suite 200, Saint Louis, Missouri 63141 and the telephone number at that location is +1-314-212-7000.
Our website address is www.amdocs.com. The information contained on, or that can be accessed from, our website does not form part of this Annual Report. The SEC maintains an internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers, such as we, that file electronically, with the SEC at www.sec.gov.
Our subsidiaries are organized under and subject to the laws of many countries. Our principal operating subsidiaries are in Canada, Cyprus, India, Ireland, Israel, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Please see Exhibit 8 to this Annual Report on Form 20-F for a listing of our significant subsidiaries.
As part of our strategy, we have pursued and may continue to pursue acquisitions, partnerships and other initiatives in order to offer new products or services or otherwise enhance our market position or strategic strengths. In recent years, we have completed numerous acquisitions, which, among other things, have expanded our business into digital commerce solutions and other digital offerings, 5G charging and policy, network and cloud technologies, software design and development and the media and entertainment domain. In August 2020, we acquired Openet, a provider of 5G charging, policy and cloud technologies, to extend our portfolio with open and network-centric technologies to help service providers differentiate in the 5G era. During fiscal year 2021, we acquired three technology companies. The largest of the three, acquired in March 2021, is Sourced Group, a leading global technology consultancy specializing in large-scale cloud transformations, to accelerate our strategy of taking the communications and media industry to the cloud and complement our portfolio of cloud-native products and services and further expand and diversify our customer base. During fiscal year 2022, we completed the acquisition of two immaterial technology companies (Roam Digital, a digital consultancy agency, and DevOpsGroup, a company specializing in cloud and DevOps adoption). In June 2023, we acquired the service assurance business of TEOCO, executing on our network strategy of providing service providers with a holistic, end-to-end service orchestration offering, with the aim to assure the quality of service and enable the monetization of dynamic, next-generation customer experiences, and in August 2023 we completed the acquisition of ProCom Consulting, a digital transformation SI services and business consulting company. In November 2023, we acquired Astadia, a company specializing in mainframe-to-cloud migration and modernization, as we further execute on our cloud strategy.
Business Overview
Amdocs is a leading provider of software and services for approximately 400 communications, entertainment and media industry and other service providers in developed countries and emerging markets. Our customers include some of the largest telecommunications companies in the world (including America Movil, AT&T, Bell Canada, Singtel, Telefonica, Telstra, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone), as well as broadband, mobile and entertainment providers (including Altice USA, Charter, Comcast, DISH, J:COM, Rogers Communications and Sky), small to midsized communications businesses and mobile virtual network enablers/mobile virtual network operators and providers of media and other services, such as financial services. Amdocs also holds relationships with hundreds of content owners and distributors around the globe, including MGM and Warner Bros. Discovery.
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Our software and services, which we develop, implement and manage, are designed to meet the business imperatives of our customers, create value for society and make our increasingly connected world more empowering by unlocking our customers’ innovative potential and enabling them to transform their boldest ideas into reality, and make customer experiences which are truly amazing. Our offerings are based on a product and services mix, using technologies and methodologies such as the cloud and cloud native, microservices, DevSecOps, low-code/no-code, edge computing, open source, bimodal operations, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and increasing amounts of automation through standard information technology (IT) tools, open APIs and AI, GenAI, and ML. As a result, our offerings enable service providers to efficiently and cost-effectively engage their customers, introduce new products and services, automate service and network operations, monetize connectivity and content, support new business models and generally enhance their understanding of their customers. Our technology, design-led thinking approach and expertise help service providers accelerate their journey to the cloud, enhance their entertainment offerings, deploy and manage existing and next-generation networks, and serve their customers across all channels. In order to fulfill our responsibilities to our customers, we sometimes engage third-party vendors and system integrators providing complementary products and services, including hardware and software.
We are able to offer customers superior products and services on a worldwide basis, in large part because of our highly qualified and trained technical, engineering, sales, marketing, consulting, and management personnel. We combine deep industry knowledge and experience, advanced methodologies, industry best practices and pre-configured tools to help deliver consistent results and minimize our customers’ risks. We invest significantly in the ongoing training of our personnel in key areas such as industry knowledge, software technologies and management capabilities. Based in significant part on the skills and knowledge of our workforce, as well as leading tools and methodologies, we believe that we have developed a reputation for reliably delivering quality solutions.
We believe the demand for our solutions is driven by our customers’ continued migration to the cloud, deployment of 5G networks and transformation into digital service providers to provide connectivity services, content and applications (apps) on any device through digital and non-digital channels. It is also driven by the trend towards integrated service offerings which we believe is leading to increased merger and acquisition activity among our customers who then require systems consolidation, which we provide, to ensure a consistent customer experience at all touchpoints. Our solutions enable service providers to help their consumer and enterprise (B2B) customers navigate the increasing number of devices, services, partner services and plans available in today’s digital world and the need of service providers to cope with the rapidly growing demand for content and data that these devices and services create, as well as to compete with over-the-top (OTT)-focused players. Regardless of whether service providers are bringing their first offerings to market, scaling for growth, consolidating systems or transforming the way they do business, we believe that they seek to differentiate themselves by delivering an amazing customer experience that is simple, personal, contextual and valuable at every point of engagement and across all channels.
We invest time and resources to identify and address cybersecurity risks, including risks that our customers face with regard to our systems, products or services. We have established policies and procedures, benchmarked against industry best practices, designed to protect the integrity and security of our products and services, and follow secure development practices. These policies and procedures as well as our cybersecurity strategies, including those related to risk and materiality assessment, incident response and disaster recovery are periodically evaluated by our management and Board of Directors. To foster a culture of security awareness and responsibility among our workforce we utilize educational tools, such as cybersecurity awareness training, and reporting procedures and tools, such as our 24/7 global cybersecurity center. Additionally, in light of the transition across the globe to a hybrid working environment, we have enabled secure solutions for collaboration and remote connectivity. We also work with our customers and use overlapping controls to defend against cybersecurity attacks and threats on customers’ networks, end-user devices, servers, applications, data and our cloud solutions.
As we work with our customers and partners to create a better-connected world, we seek to make a difference and we incorporate this commitment into our business culture, innovation, products and operations. We were selected for the 2023 S&P Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America, included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for 2023, recognized by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and have received a gold rating standard from EcoVadis, a leading provider of business sustainability ratings. We place high value on protecting the environment and minimizing negative environmental impacts that may be created by our operations, and are seeking to create sustainable products and services. For example, as we take the industry to the cloud, leveraging the economies of scale offered by the public cloud and the attributes of our cloud offerings, our customers should be better positioned to subsequently reduce their reliance on costly, space and energy-consuming hardware components. We have set a long-term climate change goal of becoming carbon neutral in our business operations (Scopes 1 and 2) by 2040 and also to reach 100 percent electricity from renewable sources by 2040. As mid-term targets, we have set goals approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 21% by end of fiscal year 2024 (from a 2019 base fiscal year). We are committed to diversity, believing a gender diverse, multi-cultural and multi-generational workforce provides strength and a competitive advantage. We seek to create a welcoming work environment for all employees, regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation. We run internal programs to increase representation and empower female employees. We have placed particular effort in recruiting more women for core technology and
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customer-facing roles, and 50% of our software testing engineers are women. We also promote initiatives designed to increase the representation of persons with disabilities and from different ethnicities. As we commit to enriching the lives of our employees, our efforts focus on providing a people-centric work environment, understanding that flexibility is key, from unlimited vacation to flexibility around how, when, and where a person works. We provide opportunities for growth and professional development, embracing a culture of continuous learning and upskilling, and have significantly expanded our employee well-being programs and investments. We also run a number of initiatives in our surrounding communities, including digital inclusion programs, STEAM education, and environmental awareness.
Our business is conducted on a global basis. We maintain development and support facilities worldwide, including Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States and have operations in North America, Europe, Eurasia, Israel, Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.
Industry Background
We believe service providers will maintain a strong focus on growing new revenue streams, cost reduction and driving more efficient operations, and that the trends of ongoing digital transformation with a focus on customer experience, migration to the cloud, next-generation networks, and consolidation within the industry will continue. Service providers are increasingly focusing on their core capabilities, investing in 5G and fiber rollouts, to meet the demand for increased bandwidth, faster pace of innovation for new digital services, as well as to improve their business and operational agility and optimize and monetize their investments in such services. At the same time, many service providers are partnering with leading suppliers to offer their customers a rich portfolio of offerings including media; entertainment; enterprise enablement; Internet of Things (IoT); and digital lifestyle services, all of which are driving growth in the demand for multi-modal customer engagement capabilities and data.
OTT-focused players and device manufacturers continue to penetrate the communications market and are also competing for customer attention in the entertainment market, while traditional content creators are increasingly streaming their content direct-to-consumer (D2C). Additionally, social networks such as Facebook and X (previously known as Twitter), alongside OTT-focused players such as Snapchat and WhatsApp, have become widely accepted alternatives to traditional voice communications and also provide video streaming services. To meet the challenges from new competitors, service providers are developing cooperative partnerships with OTT-focused players to improve the customer experience as well as vertically integrating with content creators. Pay TV providers are moving toward more OTT and on-demand video services in their need to respond to customers’ on-demand experience expectations. As the business-to-consumer (B2C) domain is crowded with disruptors and heightened competition from OTT players, service providers are also looking to strengthen their standing with enterprise customers, explore new opportunities in the wholesale market and provide IoT services to new vertical market segments, such as the home, health and automotive industries. In North America, cable companies and communication service providers are increasingly expanding their lines of business as growth engines, and moving into each other’s core business areas, with telcos offering fixed-wireless broadband connectivity and cable companies providing wireless services as mobile virtual network operators (MVNO)s.
To capture new revenue streams, service providers are expanding within existing and non-traditional business models and deploying new network technologies such as 5G. We believe 5G will enable service providers to grow their enterprise revenues through the introduction of new business models such as B2B2x, the rollout of private enterprise networks (PEN) and by exposing network-as-a-service (NaaS) functionality. As a result, we expect service providers will continue to place an emphasis on modernization and transformation projects for their networks and operational and business systems as they seek to introduce these new offerings, migrate to the cloud and offer innovative new services for both enterprise customers and individual consumers, and monetize these new capabilities.
GenAI has led to increased interest in applying AI to telecom operations, with emerging use cases in customer experience, especially in customer care, sales, and marketing, enabling service providers to introduce new differentiated offerings. We believe GenAI will also provide operators an opportunity to apply GenAI to solve problems in network optimization and fault management as well introduce enhanced productivity and efficiencies in their operations, and across all units from corporate to customer-facing.
We believe these factors create significant opportunities for vendors of information technology software products and providers of managed services and end-to-end systems integration, such as Amdocs.
Business Strategy
Our goal is to provide software and services solutions and support to communications and media companies of all sizes as they strive to deliver digital engagements, accelerate their migration to the cloud and remain competitive. We seek to accomplish our goal by pursuing the strategies described below.
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The Amdocs Offerings
Our understanding of our customers’ business needs and the importance of delivering an amazing experience to their end users provide the framework for our portfolio of capability-based products and services. Our offerings are designed to meet the challenges facing our customers as they roll out 5G networks, migrate to the cloud and transform into digital service providers within the framework of a hybrid IT environment, which requires them to rapidly introduce new cloud-native applications while still operating legacy systems. They enable modular expansion as a service provider evolves, ensuring lower-cost and reduced-risk implementations, while their microservices-based architecture enables the rapid deployment of complex applications as suites of independently deployable services that can be frequently upgraded via DevSecOps. With our portfolio’s open and modular structure, organized by capability such as monetization, commerce and care, consulting, delivery, operations and others, and matched to industry standards, our customers have the flexibility to choose business offerings that address their specific needs and improve their time to market and value. In the second quarter of fiscal 2023, we released Amdocs CES23, a 5G and cloud-native, microservices-based version of our market-leading customer experience suite, which is open and integrated all the way from the network to the end-user experience.
The CES23 suite enables service providers to build, bundle, deliver and monetize advanced services, leveraging their investments in technologies such as 5G standalone networks, multi-access edge computing (MEC), programmable networks, AI, GenAI, ML, and the cloud. With a holistic lead-to-care process, CES23 also provides enhanced business-to-business (B2B) capabilities for a streamlined business customer experience across marketing, sales, ordering, service activation, orchestration and consumption, and monetization, as well as operations, and enables the rapid introduction of advanced digital services and new business models aligned with partner-based solutions for all types of B2B segments and services.
The CES23 suite includes the newly launched AI-driven Customer Engagement Platform, based on our partnership with Microsoft announced in February 2023. This platform improves both the customer and employee experience, providing consumers and enterprise customers with a broad solution set for the B2B segment, spanning all customer engagement activities and journeys for streamlined business processes across all channels and applications – from browsing for services and devices, through ordering and fulfillment, to customer care. The CES23 suite further comprises the monetization suite for charging, billing, policy and revenue management among other functions, capable of monetizing hybrid connectivity services, content (OTT) offerings, as well as advanced partner-based digital services and 5G use cases; and our intelligent networking suite with a set of modular, flexible and open service lifecycle management capabilities designed for network automation journeys such as digital-to-network automation, end-to-end service and network orchestration, 5G slice & edge automation, and Network-as-a-Service.
In the third quarter of the fiscal year 2023, we launched amAIz, a leading telco GenAI framework set to accelerate service providers’ GenAI journeys. Amdocs amAIz is integrated across the entire Amdocs portfolio, and combines carrier-grade architecture leveraging open-source technology with large language AI models, to enable service providers to benefit from the innovative potential of GenAI. The CES23 suite also includes a low-code/no-code experience technology platform for our care and commerce solutions, and aligns with the TM Forum’s open API framework, offering a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) environment, built using Amdocs’ cloud-agnostic Microservices Management Platform to ensure agility and IT velocity. Our data intelligence solutions and applications span every aspect of the service provider’s business, with detailed use cases embedded within our products and best practices to help service providers become truly data-driven organizations. We have furthermore launched solutions for the 5G-specific needs of service providers as they begin to introduce, deliver and monetize new 5G services for consumers and businesses. These solutions encompass charging, policy, network data analytics and network exposure functions, managed by our centralized catalog. With our 5G solutions, we enable service providers to fully realize 5G and edge cloud capabilities and introduce new business models (e.g., B2B2C, B2B2B, Network-as-a-Service, private networks) by providing a holistic approach to flexible monetization for new monetizable network assets (e.g., network slice, quality-of-service) as well as for partner-based services, and by exposing network capabilities and network data to both customers and partners, enabling service providers to form or participate in a partner ecosystem.
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Overall, our technology offerings include individual products for commerce and care, catalog management, monetization, subscription management and content management, IoT, AI and GenAI, service and network automation and network deployment and optimization. We also offer Amdocs Subscription Marketplace, a SaaS-based platform designed to empower service providers to aggregate and monetize partners in a frictionless way to enable a superior customer experience. The platform includes an expansive network of pre-integrated digital services, ranging from media, gaming, eLearning, sports and retail to security and business services. Our Amdocs Digital Brands Suite, a fully pre-integrated digital business suite, is designed for digital telecom brands and small-scale service providers covering care, commerce, ordering and monetization needs. The Amdocs eSIM Cloud enables service providers to offer device “digital SIM” (eSIM) and other services for a variety of IoT consumer and industrial devices from Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google and other device manufacturers, while our mature cybersecurity practices and service help protect and manage enterprises. Our AI-powered, cloud-native, home operating system enables service providers to expand the home broadband experience, offering smart and proactive care, advanced customer experience insights and engagement as well as machine-learning marketing and network analytics.
Our broad portfolio of services capabilities ranges from consulting to delivery, quality engineering (testing), operations, systems integration, network services, experience-driven services, data, cloud and content services, across a wide variety of platforms and technologies. The extent and scope of services provided varies from customer to customer, depending on each customer's unique needs. Our services engagements can range in size and scope and include advising customers on business and technical strategy, designing and implementing particular business solutions, managing specific business operations processes, adopting DevSecOps, migrating applications to, and operating them on, the cloud and orchestrating large-scale transformation projects. We also provide end-to-end application development and maintenance, from ideation to deployment, managing all steps of the development lifecycle, supporting bi-modal development methodologies, as well as ongoing maintenance.
In addition, we are generally retained by the customer to provide ongoing services, such as maintenance, enhancement design and development and operational support, or to act as a lead systems integrator for post-production activities that may include interfaces with third-party and legacy systems. We also provide network deployment and optimization services, supporting the industry’s move to 5G and the cloud. For a substantial number of our customers, the implementation and integration of an initial system has been followed by the sale of additional systems and modules. We aim to establish long-term maintenance and support contracts with our customers. These contracts generally involve an expansion in the scope of support delivered and provide us with recurring revenue.
Our managed services, including those using ML, AI, GenAI, AI and Related Tools, predictive analytics, and robotic process automation, are designed to enable service providers’ IT and network departments to keep pace with the speed of business requirements as they continue their journey towards zero-touch operations, provide faster time to market for new services as well as the cost-effective management of existing offerings. Our Cloud Management Platform supports more agile and reliable operations and also includes dedicated tools that automate tasks that would traditionally require various software development skills. It contains a set of advanced technologies, blueprints, automated processes and integrations to external applications to enable our services across many aspects of the IT lifecycle in service provider environments. These services include solution development, quality engineering, cloud migration and operations, FinOps, hyper-automation, governance and more. Managed services provide multi-year, flexible and tailored support, managing IT, business processes and applications services, such as application development and maintenance, operations, IT and infrastructure hosting, cloud operations and in-house developed practices, and legacy modernization.
Our quality engineering services are designed to help modernize our customers’ approach to testing. They combine upskilling our customers’ organization, employing our AI-driven test automation platform, and integrating a DevSecOps approach to ensure faster time to market combined with higher product quality. We support the complete quality engineering spectrum of services, from project-based to enterprise-level engagements. Our services in this domain include consulting and executing on quality engineering modernization services, implementing next-gen technologies in areas such as network, data and AI services, maximizing the customer experience through digital and resiliency quality engineering, and improving and accelerating operations through continuous quality engineering and environment management quality engineering services.
Our data intelligence services support our customers' data strategies, whether driven by digital transformations, mergers and acquisitions, cloud adoption and 5G monetization, or specific data-driven business use cases. These data intelligence services span the entire lifecycle, from data strategy and architecture, through implementation and managed operations, along with the building and management of AI (including GenAI) business use cases.
Our cloud services help enterprises to adopt, migrate and operate on the cloud, and include strategy services to help ensure governance and compliance across the organization, as well as engineering services to help customers set up, run and optimize their cloud operations. We modernize and migrate both Amdocs and non-Amdocs applications and workloads to the cloud, and provide security services to help enterprises enhance their security posture and protect against human error and malicious actors.
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Our professional services are designed to assist customers in the selection, implementation, operation, management, modernization and maintenance of their IT, network and content systems. As a lead systems integrator, we assume end-to-end responsibility to monitor, manage and deploy the overall development and integration activities of Amdocs and third-party vendors throughout the transformation lifecycle and business-as-usual state. We also offer integration design and implementation services to help bridge between modern digital channels and a customer’s existing legacy back-end and third-party systems. Our unique integration platform as a service solution is built specifically for the challenges of the communications and media industry, enabling modernization with minimal impact on the systems of record and other legacy systems.
Our business and top-level technology strategy consulting services cover both Amdocs and non-Amdocs systems. Our consultants understand the service provider’s environment and bring with them the experience we accumulated when modernizing our own Amdocs product lines and re-skilling our people to master hybrids of the legacy and the new. We also provide experts in areas such as experience design, digital software engineering and cloud transformation. Our Cloud at Scale methodology, developed by Sourced Group, provides a rapid, secure path for service providers, including financial services providers, to adopt the cloud.
Our content services are designed to enable service providers to build rich, premium content offerings for their customers, accessing large libraries of licensed content, securely processed and distributed across any channel, device type or geography. Through content aggregation, localization and compliance management, metadata creation, encoding, distribution, asset management and delivery, our end-to-end content ecosystem helps service providers and content owners monetize content through a variety of commercial models.
Technology
Our portfolio architecture enables our applications to work in multiple customer environments ranging from on premise to public cloud.
To help service providers respond more quickly to changes in their markets, we embrace an open and integrated approach to our technology built on the following key principles:
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Sales and Marketing
Our sales and marketing activities are primarily directed at major communications and media companies.
As a result of the strategic importance of our solutions to the operations of service providers, a number of constituencies within a customer’s organization are typically involved in purchasing decisions, including senior management, information systems and network personnel and user groups, such as the finance, customer service and marketing departments.
Our sales activities are supported by marketing efforts and increasing cooperation with strategic partners. We interact with other third parties in our sales activities, including independent sales agents, information systems consultants engaged by customers and system integrators that provide complementary products and services. We also have value-added reseller agreements with leading hardware and software vendors. Our sales and marketing activities also support projects with our partner ecosystem of over 100 partner companies in domains such as digital and consumer experience, media and entertainment, IoT, data intelligence, security and privacy, the cloud and open source. Partner companies include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Intel, Google, NVIDIA, Oracle, Redhat, Dell EMC and VMware, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM, as well as start-up companies.
Customers
Our target market is comprised of service providers in the communications and media industry that require customer experience solutions with advanced functionality and technology. The companies in our target segment are typically market leaders. By working with such companies, we help ensure that we remain at the forefront of developments in the industry and that our product offerings continue to address the market’s most sophisticated needs. Additionally, with our Stellar Elements unit and Sourced Group, we deliver experience-driven and cloud transformations for customers in other industry verticals, such as financial services. We have a global orientation and customers in approximately 90 countries.
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Our customers include service providers, such as:
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Paramount |
A1 Telekom Austria Group |
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Partner |
ABN Amro Bank NV |
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PLDT |
Airtel |
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PPF Telecom Group |
Altice France |
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Proximus |
Altice USA |
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Rogers |
América Móvil |
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Safaricom |
Astro |
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SES |
AT&T |
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Singtel |
AT&T Mexico |
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Sky Italia |
Azercell |
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Sky UK |
Bank Hapoalim |
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StarHub |
Beeline |
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Sunrise |
Bell Canada |
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Telefónica Argentina (Movistar) |
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) |
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Telefónica Brasil (Vivo) |
Botswana Telecommunications Corporation |
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Telefónica Chile (Movistar) |
BT |
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Telefónica Peru (Movistar) |
Cable & Wireless |
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Telenet |
Capita |
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Telia Norway |
Cellcom |
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Telia Sweden |
Charter Communications |
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Telkom SA |
Claro Brasil |
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Telkomsel |
Claro Chile |
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Telstra |
Claro Dominican Republic |
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TELUS |
Claro Puerto Rico |
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Three Ireland |
Colt Technology Services |
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Three UK |
Comcast |
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Thryv |
Deutsche Telekom |
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TIM |
Dish |
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TIM Brasil |
EE |
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True |
Elisa |
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Turner |
Eros Now |
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T-Mobile |
etisalat by&e |
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UPC Broadband |
Far EasTone |
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US Cellular |
Fastweb |
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VEON |
Flow |
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Verizon |
Foxtel |
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Vimeo |
Globe Telecom |
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Virgin Media |
J:COM |
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Vodacom |
KT |
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Vodafone Albania |
Kyivstar |
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Vodafone Czech Republic |
LG Uplus |
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Vodafone Germany |
Liberty Global |
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Vodafone Hungary |
Lumen |
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Vodafone Idea |
M1 |
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Vodafone Ireland |
Magyar Telekom |
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Vodafone Italy |
Maxis |
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Vodafone Romania |
Melon Digital |
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Vodafone Spain |
MGM+ |
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Vodafone Turkey |
MTS |
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Vodafone UK |
Oi |
|
VodafoneZiggo |
Optus |
|
Warner Bros |
Orange Belgium |
|
Wind Tre |
Orange Liberia |
|
Winity Telecom |
Orange Spain |
|
XL Axiata |
24
The following is a summary of revenue by geographic area. Revenue is attributed to geographic region based on the location of the customer:
|
|
Year Ended September 30, |
|
|||||||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
|
2021 |
|
|||
North America |
|
|
67.7 |
% |
|
|
67.8 |
% |
|
|
65.1 |
% |
Europe |
|
|
14.4 |
% |
|
|
12.7 |
% |
|
|
14.5 |
% |
Rest of the World |
|
|
17.9 |
% |
|
|
19.5 |
% |
|
|
20.4 |
% |
Competition
The market for customer experience solutions in the communications and media industry continues to be highly competitive. Amdocs’ competitive landscape is comprised of internal IT departments of our customers, as well as independent competitors or new entrants that may compete broadly with us or in limited segments of our market, and can be generally categorized as follows (competitors in each category referenced below in alphabetical order):
We expect the competition in our industry to increase from many of such companies.
We believe that we are able to differentiate ourselves from these competitors by, among other things:
Employees
We invest significant resources in the training, retention and motivation of high-quality personnel. Training programs cover areas such as technology, applications, development methodology, project methodology, programming standards, industry background, business, management development and leadership. Our management development efforts are reinforced by an organizational structure that provides opportunities for talented managers to gain experience in general management roles. We also invest considerable resources in personnel motivation, including providing various incentive plans for sales staff and high-quality employees. Our future success depends in large part upon our continuing ability to attract and retain highly qualified managerial, technical, sales and marketing personnel and outstanding leaders. Moreover, we are committed to diversity and inclusion, believing a gender-diverse, multi-cultural workforce spread across the globe provides strength and a competitive business advantage.
25
See “Directors, Senior Management and Employees — Workforce Personnel” for further details regarding our employees and our relationships with them.
Property, Plants and Equipment
Our principal capital expenditures for fiscal 2023, 2022 and 2021 have been for computer equipment and software in our operating facilities and development centers, for which we spent approximately $84 million, $92 million and $89 million, respectively, and for the development of our new campus in Israel, for which we spent approximately $116 million and $101 million, in fiscal years 2022 and 2021, respectively (the amounts for fiscal year 2023 were immaterial as we completed during the year the move into our new campus).
Facilities
Our properties consist of leased and owned (only in Ra’anana, Israel) facilities an aggregate of approximately 2.9 million square feet worldwide, including significant leases in the Canada, Cyprus, India, Israel, the Philippines, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. The following table summarizes information with respect to the principal facilities leased and owned by us and our subsidiaries as of September 30, 2023:
Location |
|
Area (Sq. Feet) |
|
|
Americas |
|
|
601,078 |
|
EMEA |
|
|
1,117,655 |
|
APAC |
|
|
1,193,372 |
|
Total |
|
|
2,912,105 |
|
Our leases expire on various dates through 2033. In fiscal year 2023, the Company has started to use its campus in Ra’anana, Israel on land acquired by a legal entity owned equally by the Company and Union Investments and Development Limited (“Union”) pursuant to agreements entered into by the Company and Union in December 2017. The campus provides an advanced working environment that meets the needs of Amdocs Israel and its employees, and supports the Company’s future growth. The design for the campus is in accordance with LEED Gold standards and includes advanced energy and water saving systems.
Equipment
We develop our solutions over a system of Linux and Windows servers owned or leased by us, as well as over cloud providers. We use a variety of software products in our development centers, including products by Microsoft, CouchBase, Syncsort, Red Hat, CA, IBM, Hewlett-Packard or others. Our data storage is based mainly on equipment from EMC, InfiniDat, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
ITEM 4A. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
Not applicable.
ITEM 5. OPERATING AND FINANCIAL REVIEW AND PROSPECTS
Overview of Business and Trend Information
Amdocs is a leading provider of software and services for communications and media industry service providers in both developed countries and emerging markets. We believe the demand for our solutions is driven by our customers’ continued migration to the cloud, deployment of 5G networks and transformation into digital service providers to provide connectivity services, content and applications (apps) on any device through digital and non-digital channels. Regardless of whether service providers are bringing their first offerings to market, scaling for growth, consolidating systems or transforming the way they do business, we believe that they seek to differentiate their offerings by delivering a customer experience that is simple, personal, contextual and valuable at every point of engagement and across all channels.
We believe service providers will maintain a strong focus on growing new revenue streams, cost reduction and driving more efficient operations, and that the trends of ongoing digital transformation with a focus on customer experience, migration to the cloud, next-generation networks, and consolidation within the industry will continue. Service providers are increasingly focusing on their core capabilities and investing in 5G and fiber rollouts to meet the demand for increased bandwidth, faster pace of innovation for new digital services and the introduction of GenAI, as well as to improve their business and operational agility and optimize and monetize their investments in such services. At the same time, many service providers are partnering with leading suppliers to offer their
26
customers a rich portfolio of offerings including media; entertainment; enterprise enablement; Internet of Things (IoT); and digital lifestyle services, all of which is driving growth in the demand for multi-modal customer engagement capabilities and data.
We develop, implement and manage software and services designed to meet our customers’ business needs and empower them to transform their boldest ideas into reality. Our technology, design-led thinking approach and expertise help service providers to migrate to the cloud, manage and monetize their next-generation networks, further transform into digital service providers, accelerate their GenAI journeys, enhance their entertainment offerings, and serve their customers across all channels. With our portfolio’s open and modular structure, organized by capability and matched to industry standards, our customers have the flexibility to choose business offerings that address their specific needs and improve their time to market and value.
In part, we have sought, through acquisitions, to expand our products and services offerings and customer base and to enhance our ability to provide managed services to our customers. In recent years, we have completed numerous acquisitions (including our fiscal 2020 acquisition of Openet, our fiscal 2021 acquisition of Sourced Group, our fiscal 2022 acquisitions of Roam Digital and DevOpsGroup, our fiscal 2023 acquisitions of the service assurance business of TEOCO, and of ProCom Consulting and our acquisition of Astadia in November 2023), which, among other things, we believe will enable us to expand our 5G, digital and cloud-native capabilities, service assurance and technological expertise. As part of our strategy, we may continue to pursue acquisitions and other initiatives in order to offer new products or services, enter into new vertical markets or otherwise enhance our market position or strategic strengths.
The Amdocs Offerings
Our portfolio consists of software and services that address service providers’ business and operational needs. Our offerings, grouped by technology capabilities such as commerce and care, catalog management, monetization, subscription management and content management, IoT, AI and GenAI, service and network automation and network deployment and optimization, are designed to meet the challenges facing our customers as they roll out 5G networks, migrate to the cloud and transform into digital service providers within the framework of a hybrid IT environment, which requires them to rapidly introduce new cloud-native applications while still operating legacy systems. Our software is designed to enable modular expansion as a service provider evolves, and its microservices-based architecture enables the rapid deployment of complex applications as suites of independently deployable services that can be frequently upgraded via DevSecOps.
Our comprehensive line of services is designed to address every stage of a service provider’s lifecycle. They include consulting, delivery, quality engineering (testing), systems integration, operations, network services, experience-driven services, data, cloud, and content services. Our managed services provide multi-year, flexible and tailored IT business processes outsourcing and applications management services across all verticals, telco, financial services and media. They include application development, modernization and maintenance, IT and infrastructure services, testing and professional services that are designed to assist customers in the selection, implementation, operation, management and maintenance of their IT systems.
We believe that our business model of developing mission-critical software, deploying it at our customers and then operating it and supporting it on an ongoing basis, provides Amdocs with a high level of recurring revenue. This, together with our scalable global resource allocation model and our continuous operational excellence and efficiency improvements, enables us to deliver consistent operating margin performance over time.
We conduct our business globally, and as a result we are subject to the effects of global economic conditions and, in particular, market conditions in the communications and media industry. In fiscal year 2023, customers in North America accounted for 67.7% of our revenue, while customers in Europe and the rest of the world accounted for 14.4% and 17.9%, respectively. We maintain development facilities in Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States. Historically, AT&T has been our largest customer, accounting for 24% and 27% of our revenue in fiscal years 2023 and 2022, respectively. In fiscal years 2023 and 2022, our next largest customer, T-Mobile, accounted for 23% and 20% of our revenue, respectively. Aggregate revenue derived from the multiple business arrangements we have with our ten largest customers accounted for approximately 70% of our revenue in fiscal years 2023 and 2022. We believe that demand for our solutions is primarily driven by the following key factors:
27
Revenue from managed services arrangements is a significant part of our business, generating substantial, long-term recurring revenue streams and cash flow. Revenue from managed services arrangements accounted for approximately $2.86 billion and $2.76 billion of revenue in fiscal years 2023 and 2022, respectively. In managed services contracts, revenue from the operation of a customer’s system is recognized as services are performed based on time elapsed, output produced or volume of data processed. In the initial period of our managed services projects, we often invest in modernization and consolidation of the customer’s systems and may see also additional modernization cycles in our more mature managed services engagements. Managed services engagements can be less profitable in their early stages; however, margins tend to improve over time, and this improvement is seen more rapidly in the
28
initial period of an engagement, as we derive benefit from insertion of automation tools, operational efficiencies and from changes in the geographical mix of our resources.
Research and Development, Patents and Licenses
Our research and development activities involve the development of new software architecture, modules and product offerings in response to an identified market demand. We also expend additional amounts on applied research and software development activities to keep abreast of new technologies in the communications and media industry and to provide new and enhanced functionality to our existing product offerings. We leverage leading-edge development technologies and associated technologies, for example, DevSecOps, CI/CD and Agile, to ensure we are able to develop and deliver our solutions efficiently and cost-effectively.
Substantially all of our research and development expenditures are directed at our solutions. In recent years, we have also invested our research and development efforts in network control, optimization and orchestration and network functions virtualization technologies; applications to enable service providers to deploy and monetize technologies such as fiber, LTE, 5G, small cells and Wi-Fi; big data analytics and intelligence capabilities leveraging AI, GenAI and NLP toward consumer and business satisfaction, marketing effectiveness and network operations and experience; increased focus for the business segment, digital, commerce and entertainment domains; platforms for processing, distributing and monetizing content globally and on foundational technologies including microservices and cloud infrastructure readiness. We believe that our research and development efforts are a key element of our strategy and are essential to our success. However, an increase or a decrease in our total revenue would not necessarily result in a proportional increase or decrease in the levels of our research and development expenditures, which could affect our operating margin.
Our products are largely comprised of software and systems that we have developed or acquired and that we regard as proprietary. In recent years, we have invested in adopting open source components in an effort to reduce total cost of ownership for our customers, but our software and software systems remain the results of long, robust and intensive development processes. Although our technology is not significantly dependent on patents or licenses from third parties, certain aspects of our products continue to make use of software components licensed from third parties. As a developer of complex software systems, third parties may claim that portions of our systems infringe their intellectual property rights. The ability to develop and use our software and software systems requires knowledge and professional experience that we believe would be very difficult for others to independently obtain. However, our competitors may independently develop technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to ours. We have taken, and intend to continue to take, several measures to establish and protect our proprietary rights in our products and technologies from third-party infringement. We rely upon a combination of trademarks, patents, contractual rights, trade secret law, copyrights and non-disclosure agreements. We enter into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with our customers, employees and marketing representatives and with certain contractors with access to sensitive information; and we also limit customer access to the source code of our software and software systems.
Operating Results
The following table sets forth for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2023, 2022 and 2021, certain items in our consolidated statements of income reflected as a percentage of revenue (figures may not sum because of rounding):
|
|
Year Ended September 30, |
|
|||||||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
|
2021 |
|
|||
Revenue |
|
|
100 |
% |
|
|
100 |
% |
|
|
100 |
% |
Operating expenses: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
Cost of revenue |
|
|
64.7 |
|
|
|
64.6 |
|
|
|
65.5 |
|
Research and development |
|
|
7.7 |
|
|
|
7.8 |
|
|
|
7.3 |
|
Selling, general and administrative |
|
|
11.7 |
|
|
|
11.5 |
|
|
|
11.4 |
|
Amortization of purchased intangible assets and other |
|
|
1.2 |
|
|
|
1.6 |
|
|
|
1.8 |
|
Restructuring charges |
|
|
1.5 |
|
|
|
— |
|
|
|
— |
|
|
|
|
86.6 |
|
|
|
85.5 |
|
|
|
86.0 |
|
Operating income |
|
|
13.4 |
|
|
|
14.5 |
|
|
|
14.0 |
|
Interest and other expense, net |
|
|
(0.4 |
) |
|
|
(0.6 |
) |
|
|
(0.3 |
) |
Gain from sale of a business |
|
|
— |
|
|
|
0.2 |
|
|
|
5.3 |
|
Income before income taxes |
|
|
13.0 |
|
|
|
14.2 |
|
|
|
19.0 |
|
Income taxes |
|
|
1.9 |
|
|
|
2.2 |
|
|
|
2.9 |
|
Net income |
|
|
11.1 |
% |
|
|
12.0 |
% |
|
|
16.1 |
% |
Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests |
|
|
0.05 |
|
|
|
— |
|
|
|
— |
|
Net income attributable to Amdocs Limited |
|
|
11.1 |
% |
|
|
12.0 |
% |
|
|
16.1 |
% |
29
Fiscal Years Ended September 30, 2023 and 2022
The following is a tabular presentation of our results of operations for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023, compared to the fiscal year ended September 30, 2022. Following the table is a discussion and analysis of our business and results of operations for these fiscal years.
|
|
Year Ended September 30, |
|
|
Increase (Decrease) |
|
||||||||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
|
Amount |
|
|
% |
|
||||
|
|
(In thousands) |
|
|||||||||||||
Revenue(1) |
|
$ |
4,887,550 |
|
|
$ |
4,576,697 |
|
|
$ |
310,853 |
|
|
|
6.8 |
% |
Operating expenses: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
Cost of revenue |
|
|
3,159,941 |
|
|
|
2,957,547 |
|
|
|
202,394 |
|
|
|
6.8 |
|
Research and development |
|
|
374,855 |
|
|
|
354,706 |
|
|
|
20,149 |
|
|
|
5.7 |
|
Selling, general and administrative |
|
|
570,707 |
|
|
|
528,572 |
|
|
|
42,135 |
|
|
|
8.0 |
|
Amortization of purchased intangible assets and other |
|
|
57,156 |
|
|
|
71,075 |
|
|
|
(13,919 |
) |
|
|
(19.6 |
) |
Restructuring Charges |
|
|
70,901 |
|
|
|
— |
|
|
|
70,901 |
|
|
|
100.0 |
|
|
|
|
4,233,560 |
|
|
|
3,911,900 |
|
|
|
321,660 |
|
|
|
8.2 |
|
Operating income |
|
|
653,990 |
|
|
|
664,797 |
|
|
|
(10,807 |
) |
|
|
(1.6 |
) |
Interest and other expense, net |
|
|
(17,629 |
) |
|
|
(26,391 |
) |
|
|
8,762 |
|
|
|
(33.2 |
) |
Gain from sale of a business |
|
|
— |
|
|
|
10,000 |
|
|
|
(10,000 |
) |
|
|
(100.0 |
) |
Income before income taxes |
|
|
636,361 |
|
|
|
648,406 |
|
|
|
(12,045 |
) |
|
|
(1.9 |
) |
Income taxes |
|
|
93,399 |
|
|
|
98,905 |
|
|
|
(5,506 |
) |
|
|
(5.6 |
) |
Net income |
|
$ |
542,962 |
|
|
$ |
549,501 |
|
|
$ |
(6,539 |
) |
|
|
(1.2 |
)% |
Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests |
|
|
2,253 |
|
|
|
— |
|
|
|
2,253 |
|
|
|
100.0 |
% |
Net income attributable to Amdocs Limited |
|
$ |
540,709 |
|
|
$ |
549,501 |
|
|
$ |
(8,792 |
) |
|
|
(1.6 |
)% |
|
|
Year Ended September 30, |
|
|
Increase (Decrease) |
|
||||||||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
|
Amount |
|
|
% |
|
||||
|
|
(In thousands) |
|
|||||||||||||
North America (mainly United States) |
|
$ |
3,306,988 |
|
|
$ |
3,100,038 |
|
|
$ |
206,950 |
|
|
|
6.7 |
% |
Europe |
|
|
703,141 |
|
|
|
582,192 |
|
|
|
120,949 |
|
|
|
20.8 |
|
Rest of the world |
|
|
877,421 |
|
|
|
894,467 |
|
|
|
(17,046 |
) |
|
|
(1.9 |
) |
Revenue |
|
$ |
4,887,550 |
|
|
$ |
4,576,697 |
|
|
$ |
310,853 |
|
|
|
6.8 |
% |
Revenue. Revenue increased by $310.9 million, or 6.8%, to $4,887.6 million in fiscal year 2023, from $4,576.7 million in fiscal year 2022. Revenue from our two largest customers increased in aggregate by 6.8% in fiscal year 2023 compared to fiscal year 2022, while revenue from all other customers also increased in aggregate by 6.8%. This demonstrates strong business activity building next-generation platforms across a wide customer base. Revenue for fiscal year 2023 increased by 7.7% compared to fiscal year 2022, excluding approximately 0.9% negative foreign fluctuations impact.
In fiscal year 2023, revenue from customers in North America, Europe and the rest of the world accounted for 67.7%, 14.4% and 17.9%, respectively, of total revenue, compared to 67.8%, 12.7% and 19.5%, respectively, in fiscal year 2022.
Revenue from customers in North America as a percentage of total revenue remains stable. The increase in revenue from customers in North America in absolute amount was primarily attributable to higher revenue from key customers in North America.
Revenue from customers in Europe increased significantly in fiscal year 2023, despite the negative impact of foreign exchange fluctuations, as a result of an increase in transformation project activities and managed services arrangements, as we expand our presence in this region.
Revenue from customers in the rest of the world decreased mainly due to negative foreign fluctuations impact in fiscal year 2023 compared to fiscal year 2022. This is attributable primarily to timing differences as we transition between transformation projects that naturally ramp down to new awarded projects that gradually ramp up.
30
Cost of Revenue. Cost of revenue consists primarily of costs associated with providing services to customers, including compensation expense and costs of third-party products, as well as fee and royalty payments to software suppliers. Cost of revenue increased by $202.4 million, or 6.8%, to $3,159.9 million in fiscal year 2023, from $2,957.5 million in fiscal year 2022. The cost of revenue as a percentage of total revenue slightly increased, from 64.6% in fiscal year 2022 to 64.7% in fiscal year 2023, as the increase in cost of revenue in absolute amounts was commensurate with revenue growth. Our cost of revenue was also positively impacted by foreign exchange fluctuations.
Research and Development. Research and development expense is primarily comprised of compensation expense. Research and development expense increased by $20.1 million, or 5.7%, to $374.9 million in fiscal year 2023, from $354.7 million in fiscal year 2022, and slightly decreased as a percentage of total revenue from 7.8% in fiscal year 2022, to 7.7% in fiscal year 2023. The research and development expense increased in absolute amounts as we continue to invest in our cloud offerings, 5G and network related innovation and further developing our digital offerings. Our research and development efforts are a key element of our strategy and are essential to our success, and we intend to maintain our commitment to research and development. However, an increase or decrease in our revenue would not necessarily result in a proportional increase or decrease in the levels of our research and development expenditures, which could affect our operating margin. Please see “Research and Development, Patents and Licenses.”
Selling, General and Administrative. Selling, general and administrative expense, which is primarily comprised of compensation expense, increased by $42.1 million, or 8.0%, to $570.7 million in fiscal year 2023, from $528.6 million in fiscal year 2022. Selling, general and administrative expense slightly increased as a percentage of total revenue from 11.5% in fiscal year 2022, to 11.7% in fiscal year 2023. The increase in selling general and administrative expense was roughly commensurate with the revenue growth and was also attributable to increase in selling expense. Selling, general and administrative expense may fluctuate from time to time, depending upon such factors as changes in our workforce and sales efforts and the results of any operational efficiency programs that we may undertake.
Amortization of Purchased Intangible Assets and Other. Amortization of purchased intangible assets and other decreased by $13.9 million, or 19.6%, to $57.2 million in fiscal year 2023, from $71.1 million in fiscal year 2022. The decrease in amortization of purchased intangible assets and other was primarily attributable to a completion of amortization of previously purchased intangible assets, partially offset by an increase in amortization of intangible assets due to recently completed acquisitions.
Restructuring Charges. Restructuring charges in fiscal year 2023 were $70.9 million, with no such charges in fiscal year 2022 or the prior couple of years. The initial incurrence of restructuring charges in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, of $24.5 million were primarily associated with alignment of our workforce around the global site strategy, as well as the optimization of our hybrid work model. In the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023, we took proactive and appropriate measures to optimize expenditures and resource allocation in response to the prevailing level of economic uncertainty and industry pressure and recorded restructuring charges of $46.4 million. Please see Note 10 to our consolidated financial statements.
Operating Income. Operating income decreased by $10.8 million, or 1.6%, to $654.0 million in fiscal year 2023, from $664.8 million in fiscal year 2022. Operating income decreased as a percentage of total revenue, from 14.5% in fiscal year 2022 to 13.4% in fiscal year 2023. The decrease in operating income as a percentage of total revenue was attributable primarily to restructuring charges recorded in fiscal year 2023, which was partially offset by a decrease in expenses from amortization of purchased intangible assets and other, and positive foreign exchange impacts.
Interest and Other Expense, Net. Interest and other expense, net, decreased from a net expense of $26.4 million in fiscal year 2022 to a net expense of $17.6 million in fiscal year 2023. The decrease in interest and other expense, net, was primarily attributable to an increase in interest income partially offset by interest expense, due to higher interest rates, an increase in foreign exchange fluctuation charges, partially offset by changes of minority equity investments measured at fair value.
Gain from Sale of a Business. There was no gain from sale of a business in fiscal year 2023, while there was $10.0 million of such gain in fiscal year 2022. Please see Note 3 to our consolidated financial statements.
Income Taxes. Income taxes for fiscal year 2023 were $93.4 million on pre-tax income of $636.4 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 14.70% in fiscal year 2023, compared to 15.3% in fiscal year 2022. Our effective tax rate may fluctuate between periods as a result of discrete items that may affect a particular period, please see Note 11 to our consolidated financial statements.
Net income attributable to Amdocs Limited. Net income decreased by $8.8 million, or 1.6%, to $540.7 million in fiscal year 2023, from $549.5 million in fiscal year 2022. The slight decrease in net income is primarily attributable to decrease in operating income as a result of the restructuring charges recorded in fiscal year 2023, while there were no such charges in fiscal year 2022, and a gain from sale of a business recorded in fiscal year 2022, which did not recur in fiscal year 2023, partially offset by a decrease in
31
interest and expenses, net. Excluding the impact of the restructuring charges recorded in fiscal year 2023, net income would have increased compared to fiscal year 2022, as a result of our increased business activity.
Diluted Earnings Per Share. Diluted earnings per share increased by $0.05, or 1.1%, to $4.49 in fiscal year 2023, from $4.44 in fiscal year 2022. The increase was attributable to a decrease in the diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding, which resulted from share repurchases, partially offset by the decrease in net income. Please see also Note 21 to our consolidated financial statements.
Fiscal Years Ended September 30, 2022 and 2021
The following is a tabular presentation of our results of operations for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2022 compared to the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021. Following the table is a discussion and analysis of our business and results of operations for these fiscal years.
|
|
Year Ended September 30, |
|
|
Increase (Decrease) |
|
||||||||||
|
|
2022 |
|
|
2021 |
|
|
Amount |
|
|
% |
|
||||
|
|
(In thousands) |
|
|||||||||||||
Revenue(1) |
|
$ |
4,576,697 |
|
|
$ |
4,288,640 |
|
|
$ |
288,057 |
|
|
|
6.7 |
% |
Operating expenses: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
Cost of revenue |
|
|
2,957,547 |
|
|
|
2,810,967 |
|
|
|
146,580 |
|
|
|
5.2 |
|
Research and development |
|
|
354,706 |
|
|
|
312,941 |
|
|
|
41,765 |
|
|
|
13.3 |
|
Selling, general and administrative |
|
|
528,572 |
|
|
|
487,255 |
|
|
|
41,317 |
|
|
|
8.5 |
|
Amortization of purchased intangible assets and other |
|
|
71,075 |
|
|
|
78,784 |
|
|
|
(7,709 |
) |
|
|
(9.8 |
) |
|
|
|
3,911,900 |
|
|
|
3,689,947 |
|
|
|
221,953 |
|
|
|
6.0 |
|
Operating income |
|
|
664,797 |
|
|
|
598,693 |
|
|
|
66,104 |
|
|
|
11.0 |
|
Interest and other expense, net |
|
|
(26,391 |
) |
|
|
(10,797 |
) |
|
|
(15,594 |
) |
|
|
144.4 |
|
Gain from sale of a business |
|
|
10,000 |
|
|
|
226,410 |
|
|
|
(216,410 |
) |
|
|
(95.6 |
) |
Income before income taxes |
|
|
648,406 |
|
|
|
814,306 |
|
|
|
(165,900 |
) |
|
|
(20.4 |
) |
Income taxes |
|
|
98,905 |
|
|
|
125,932 |
|
|
|
(27,027 |
) |
|
|
(21.5 |
) |
Net income |
|
$ |
549,501 |
|
|
$ |
688,374 |
|
|
$ |
(138,873 |
) |
|
(20.2)% |
|
|
|
Year Ended September 30, |
|
|
Increase (Decrease) |
|
||||||||||
|
|
2022 |
|
|
2021 |
|
|
Amount |
|
|
% |
|
||||
|
|
(In thousands) |
|
|||||||||||||
North America (mainly United States) |
|
$ |
3,100,038 |
|
|
$ |
2,791,472 |
|
|
$ |
308,566 |
|
|
|
11.1 |
% |
Europe |
|
|
582,192 |
|
|
|
622,780 |
|
|
|
(40,588 |
) |
|
|
(6.5 |
) |
Rest of the world |
|
|
894,467 |
|
|
|
874,388 |
|
|
|
20,079 |
|
|
|
2.3 |
|
Revenue |
|
$ |
4,576,697 |
|
|
$ |
4,288,640 |
|
|
$ |
288,057 |
|
|
|
6.7 |
% |
Revenue. Revenue increased by $288.1 million, or 6.7%, to $4,576.7 million in fiscal year 2022, from $4,288.6 million in fiscal year 2021. The increase in revenue was attributable primarily to an increase in managed services arrangements and transformation activities in North America reflecting strong business activity building next-generation platforms for our customers and was partially offset by a decrease in revenue as a result of the divestiture of OpenMarket completed on December 31, 2020, and negative impact from foreign exchange fluctuations. Revenue for fiscal year 2022, excluding approximately 1.4%(1) negative foreign exchange fluctuations impact, primarily in Europe, increased by 8.1% compared to fiscal year 2021.
In fiscal year 2022, revenue from customers in North America, Europe and the rest of the world accounted for 67.8%, 12.7% and 19.5%, respectively, of total revenue, compared to 65.1%, 14.5% and 20.4%, respectively, in fiscal year 2021.
In fiscal year 2022, revenue from customers in North America, Europe and the rest of the world increased (decreased) by 11.1%, (6.5%) and 2.3% respectively, compared to fiscal year 2021. Excluding the negative impact of foreign exchange fluctuations as well as the divestiture of OpenMarket completed on December 31, 2020, revenue from customers in all these regions increased in fiscal year 2022 compared to fiscal year 2021.
The increase in revenue from customers in North America was primarily attributable to higher revenue from managed services arrangements and transformation activities from customers in North America, which was partially offset by the divestiture of OpenMarket completed on December 31, 2020.
32
Revenue from customers in Europe decreased in fiscal year 2022, primarily as a result of the negative impact of foreign exchange fluctuations as well as the divestiture of OpenMarket completed on December 31, 2020. This decrease was partially offset by an increase in development and modernization activities, as we expand our presence in this region.
Revenue from customers in the rest of the world in absolute amount increased while the percentage of total revenue increased at a higher rate, which resulted in a decrease of revenue from customers in rest of the world as a percentage of total revenue. This increase was partially offset by the negative impact of foreign exchange fluctuations.
Revenue from our two largest customers increased by 13.6% in fiscal year 2022 compared to fiscal year 2021. Revenue from all other customers, excluding the two largest customers, increased by 1.3% in fiscal year 2022, however, excluding the impact of negative foreign exchange fluctuations of 2.5%(1) and the impact of the divestiture of OpenMarket of 3.8%, revenue from all other customers, excluding the two largest customers, increased by 7.6% in fiscal year 2022 compared to fiscal year 2021.
Cost of Revenue. Cost of revenue consists primarily of costs associated with providing services to customers, including compensation expense and costs of third-party products, as well as fee and royalty payments to software suppliers. Cost of revenue increased by $146.6 million, or 5.2%, to $2,957.5 million in fiscal year 2022, from $2,811.0 million in fiscal year 2021. The cost of revenue as a percentage of total revenue decreased to 64.6% in fiscal year 2022 from 65.5% in fiscal year 2021. This decrease in cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was attributable to operational excellence and efficiency initiatives through the ongoing implementation of automation and other sophisticated tools, the divestiture of OpenMarket completed on December 31, 2020 (as OpenMarket’s cost of revenue as a percentage of total revenue was higher than the Company average), and the impact of changes of certain acquisition-related liabilities measured at fair value recognized in fiscal years 2022 and 2021. This decrease was partially offset by the increase of cost due to the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations.
Research and Development. Research and development expense is primarily comprised of compensation expense. Research and development expense increased by $41.8 million, or 13.3%, to $354.7 million in fiscal year 2022, from $312.9 million in fiscal year 2021. Research and development expense increased as a percentage of total revenue from 7.3% in fiscal year 2021, to 7.8% in fiscal year 2022, as we have been accelerating our investment in our cloud offerings, 5G and network related innovation and further developing our digital offerings. Our research and development efforts are a key element of our strategy and are essential to our success, and we intend to maintain our commitment to research and development. However, an increase or decrease in our revenue would not necessarily result in a proportional increase or decrease in the levels of our research and development expenditures, which could affect our operating margin. Please see “Research and Development, Patents and Licenses.”
Selling, General and Administrative. Selling, general and administrative expense, which is primarily comprised of compensation expense, increased by $41.3 million, or 8.5%, to $528.6 million in fiscal year 2022, from $487.3 million in fiscal year 2021. Selling, general and administrative expense slightly increased as a percentage of total revenue from 11.4% in fiscal year 2021, to 11.5% in fiscal year 2022, the increase in selling expense was commensurate with the revenue growth. Selling, general and administrative expense may fluctuate from time to time, depending upon such factors as changes in our workforce and sales efforts and the results of any operational efficiency programs that we may undertake.
Amortization of Purchased Intangible Assets and Other. Amortization of purchased intangible assets and other decreased by $7.7 million, or 9.8%, to $71.1 million in fiscal year 2022, from $78.8 million in fiscal year 2021. The decrease in amortization of purchased intangible assets and other was primarily attributable to a completion of amortization of previously purchased intangible assets, partially offset by an increase in amortization of intangible assets due to recently completed acquisitions.
Operating Income. Operating income increased by $66.1 million, or 11.0%, to $664.8 million in fiscal year 2022, from $598.7 million in fiscal year 2021. Operating income increased as a percentage of total revenue, from 14.0% in fiscal year 2021 to 14.5% in fiscal year 2022. In fiscal year 2022 our revenue increased at a higher rate than the increase in cost of revenue, which resulted in an increase in our operating income. The increase in operating income was partially offset by an increase in research and development expense and selling, general and administrative expense. Our operating income was negatively affected by foreign exchange fluctuations impacts.
Interest and Other Expense, Net. Interest and other expense, net, increased from a net expense of $10.8 million in fiscal year 2021 to a net expense of $26.4 million in fiscal year 2022. The increase in interest and other expense, net, was primarily attributable to an increase in foreign exchange fluctuation impacts and changes of minority equity investments measured at fair value, partially offset by decrease in interest expenses related to borrowing.
Gain from Sale of a Business. Gain from sale of a business, for fiscal year 2022 decreased by $216.4 million, or 95.6% to $10.0 million from $226.4 million for fiscal year 2021. Please see Note 3 to our consolidated financial statements.
33
Income Taxes. Income taxes for fiscal year 2022 were $98.9 million on pre-tax income of $648.4 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 15.3% in fiscal year 2022, compared to 15.5% in fiscal year 2021. The slight decrease in the effective tax rate is primarily attributable to a tax benefit recorded in fiscal year 2022, please see Note 11 to our consolidated financial statements. Our effective tax rate may fluctuate between periods as a result of discrete items that may affect a particular period.
Net Income. Net income decreased by $138.9 million, or 20.2%, to $549.5 million in fiscal year 2022, from $688.4 million in fiscal year 2021. The decrease in net income was primarily attributable to the gain from sale of a business, net of tax, which was recorded in fiscal year 2021, partially offset by an increase in operating income and a decrease in income taxes in fiscal year 2022.
Diluted Earnings Per Share. Diluted earnings per share decreased by $0.88, or 16.5%, to $4.44 in fiscal year 2022, from $5.32 in fiscal year 2021. The decrease in diluted earnings per share was primarily attributable to the gain from sale of a business, net of tax, which increased the diluted earnings per share for fiscal years 2022 and 2021, by $0.05 and $1.44, respectively. The decrease was attributable to a decrease in net income, partially offset by the decrease in the diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding, which resulted from share repurchases. Please see also Note 21 to our consolidated financial statements.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Cash, Cash Equivalents and Short-Term Interest-Bearing Investments. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term interest-bearing investments, totaled $742.5 million as of September 30, 2023, compared to $818.0 million as of September 30, 2022. The decrease was mainly attributable to $489.5 million used to repurchase our ordinary shares, $199.5 million of cash dividend payments, $124.4 million for capital expenditures, net, $121.8 million of payments for business acquisitions, partially offset by $822.6 million in positive cash flow from operations, reflecting healthy cash collections and $48.7 million of proceeds from stock option exercises. Net cash provided by operating activities amounted to $822.6 million and $756.7 million in fiscal years 2023 and 2022, respectively. The net cash provided in fiscal year 2021 included the cash benefit of a multi-year strategic partnership agreement with T-Mobile.
Our free cash flow for fiscal year 2023, was $698.2 million, and is calculated as net cash provided by operating activities of $822.6 million for the period less $124.4 million for capital expenditures, net.
Free cash flow is a non-GAAP financial measure and is not prepared in accordance with, and is not an alternative for, generally accepted accounting principles and may be different from non-GAAP financial measures with similar names used by other companies. Non-GAAP measures such as free cash flow should only be reviewed in conjunction with the corresponding GAAP measures. We believe that free cash flow, when used in conjunction with the corresponding GAAP measure, provides useful information to investors and management relating to the amount of cash generated by the Company’s business operations.
We believe that our current cash balances, cash generated from operations, our current lines of credit, loans, Senior Notes and our ability to access capital markets will provide sufficient resources to meet our operational needs, loan and debt repayment needs, fund share repurchases and the payment of cash dividends for at least the next fiscal year.
We have short-term interest-bearing investments comprised of marketable securities and bank deposits. We classify all of our marketable securities as available-for-sale securities. Such marketable securities consist primarily of money market funds, corporate bonds, U.S. government treasuries and supranational and sovereign debt, which are stated at market value. We believe we have conservative investment policy guidelines. Our interest-bearing investments are stated at fair value with the unrealized gains or losses reported as a separate component of accumulated other comprehensive loss, net of tax, unless a security is impaired due to a credit loss, in which case the loss is recorded in the consolidated statements of income. Our interest-bearing investments are priced by pricing vendors and are classified as Level 1 or Level 2 investments, since these vendors either provide a quoted market price in an active market or use other observable inputs to price these securities. During fiscal years 2023 and 2022 we did not recognize credit losses. Please see Notes 5 and 6 to our consolidated financial statements.
Revolving Credit Facility, Loans, Senior Notes, Letters of Credit, Guarantees and Contractual Obligations. In December 2011, we entered into the unsecured $500.0 million Revolving Credit Facility. In December 2014, December 2017 and March 2021, the Revolving Credit Facility was amended and restated to, among other things, extend the maturity date of the facility to December 2019, December 2022 and March 2026, respectively. As of September 30, 2023, we were in compliance with the financial covenants and had no outstanding borrowings under the Revolving Credit Facility.
In June 2020, we issued an aggregate principal amount of $650.0 million in Senior Notes that will mature in June 2030 and bear interest at a fixed rate of 2.538 percent per annum (the “Senior Notes”). The interest is payable semi-annually in June and December
34
of each year, commencing in December 2020. We incurred issuance costs of $6.1 million in relation to the Senior Notes, which are being amortized to interest expenses over the term of the Senior Notes using the effective interest rate. The Senior Notes are our senior unsecured obligations and rank equally in right of payment with all of our existing and future senior indebtedness, including any indebtedness we may incur from time to time under the Revolving Credit Facility. As of September 30, 2023, the noncurrent outstanding principal portion was $650.0 million. Please see Note 13 to our consolidated financial statements.
As of September 30, 2023, we had additional uncommitted lines of credit available for general corporate and other specific purposes and had outstanding letters of credit and bank guarantees from various banks totaling $64.5 million. These were supported by a combination of the uncommitted lines of credit that we maintain with various banks.
Acquisitions and Divestiture of Subsidiaries. During fiscal year 2023, we completed three immaterial business acquisitions for an aggregate net consideration of approximately $130.3 in cash, and a potential for additional consideration may be paid later based on achievement of certain performance metrics. Among them were the service assurance business of TEOCO and ProCom Consulting, a digital transformation SI services and business consulting company. During fiscal year 2022, we completed two immaterial acquisitions of technology companies, DevOps and Roam, for an aggregate net consideration of $54.1 million in cash, and a potential for additional consideration may be paid later based on achievement of certain performance metrics.
Capital Expenditures. Generally, the majority of our capital expenditures consist of purchases of computer equipment, and the remainder is attributable mainly to building and leasehold improvements. Our capital expenditures were approximately $124.4 million in fiscal year 2023, net (which included immaterial amounts as part of our remaining investment in our campus in Israel). Our fiscal year 2023 capital expenditures were mainly attributable to investments in our operating facilities and our development centers around the world.
Share Repurchases. From time to time, our Board of Directors can adopt share repurchase plans authorizing the repurchase of our outstanding ordinary shares. On May 12, 2021, our Board of Directors adopted a share repurchase plan authorizing the repurchase of up to $1.0 billion of our outstanding ordinary shares with no expiration date. The May 2021 plan permits us to purchase our ordinary shares in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions at times and prices that we consider appropriate. On August 2, 2023, our Board of Directors adopted a share repurchase plan for the repurchase of up to an additional $1.1 billion of our outstanding ordinary shares with no expiration date. The August 2023 plan permits us to purchase our ordinary shares in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions at times and prices that we consider appropriate. As of September 30, 2023, we had remaining authority to repurchase up to an aggregate of $1,100.7 million of our outstanding ordinary shares under the May 2021 and August 2023 plans. In fiscal year 2023, we repurchased approximately 5.4 million ordinary shares at an average price of $90.23 per share (excluding broker and transaction fees).
Cash Dividends. Our Board of Directors declared the following dividends during fiscal years 2023, 2022 and 2021:
Declaration Date |
|
Dividends Per |
|
|
Record Date |
|
Total Amount |
|
|
Payment Date |
||
August 2, 2023 |
|
$ |
0.435 |
|
|
September 29, 2023 |
|
$ |
51.1 |
|
|
October 27, 2023 |
May 10, 2023 |
|
$ |
0.435 |
|
|
June 30, 2023 |
|
$ |
51.8 |
|
|
July 28, 2023 |
January 31, 2023 |
|
$ |
0.435 |
|
|
March 31, 2023 |
|
$ |
52.3 |
|
|
April 28, 2023 |
November 8, 2022 |
|
$ |
0.395 |
|
|
December 30, 2022 |
|
$ |
47.6 |
|
|
January 27, 2023 |
August 3, 2022 |
|
$ |
0.395 |
|
|
September 30, 2022 |
|
$ |
47.7 |
|
|
October 28, 2022 |
May 11, 2022 |
|
$ |
0.395 |
|
|
June 30, 2022 |
|
$ |
48.2 |
|
|
July 29, 2022 |
February 1, 2022 |
|
$ |
0.395 |
|
|
March 31, 2022 |
|
$ |
48.5 |
|
|
April 29, 2022 |
November 2, 2021 |
|
$ |
0.36 |
|
|
December 31, 2021 |
|
$ |
44.4 |
|
|
January 28, 2022 |
August 4, 2021 |
|
$ |
0.36 |
|
|
September 30, 2021 |
|
$ |
45.0 |
|
|
October 29, 2021 |
May 12, 2021 |
|
$ |
0.36 |
|
|
June 30, 2021 |
|
$ |
45.6 |
|
|
July 23, 2021 |
February 2, 2021 |
|
$ |
0.36 |
|
|
March 31, 2021 |
|
$ |
46.0 |
|
|
April 23, 2021 |
November 10, 2020 |
|
$ |
0.3275 |
|
|
December 31, 2020 |
|
$ |
42.9 |
|
|
January 22, 2021 |
On November 7, 2023, our Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend payment of $0.435 per share and set December 29, 2023 as the record date for determining the shareholders entitled to receive the dividend, which is payable on January 26, 2024. On November 7, 2023 our Board of Directors also approved, subject to shareholder approval at the February 2, 2024 annual general meeting of shareholders, an increase in the quarterly cash dividend to $0.479 per share, anticipated to be paid in April, 2024.
Our Board of Directors considers on a quarterly basis whether to declare and pay, if any, a dividend in accordance with the terms of the dividend program, subject to applicable Guernsey law and based on several factors including our financial performance, outlook and liquidity. Guernsey law requires that our Board of Directors consider a dividend’s effects on our solvency before it may
35
be declared or paid. While the Board of Directors will have the authority to reduce the quarterly dividend or discontinue the dividend program should it determine that doing so is in the best interests of our shareholders or is necessary pursuant to Guernsey law, any increase to the per share amount or frequency of the dividend would require shareholder approval.
Contractual Obligations
The following table summarizes our contractual obligations as of September 30, 2023, and the effect such obligations are expected to have on our liquidity and cash flows in future periods (in millions):
|
|
Payments Due by Period |
|
|||||||||||||||||
Contractual Obligations |
|
Total |
|
|
Less Than |
|
|
1-3 |
|
|
4-5 |
|
|
More Than |
|
|||||
Long-term debt and accrued interests |
|
|
654.8 |
|
|
$ |
4.8 |
|
|
|
— |
|
|
|
— |
|
|
$ |
650.0 |
|
Pension funding |
|
|
8.3 |
|
|
|
0.9 |
|
|
|
2.6 |
|
|
|
1.7 |
|
|
|
3.1 |
|
Purchase obligations |
|
|
125.9 |
|
|
|
66.4 |
|
|
|
58.8 |
|
|
|
0.7 |
|
|
|
— |
|
Non-cancelable operating leases |
|
|
181.1 |
|
|
|
46.8 |
|
|
|
67.1 |
|
|
|
36.3 |
|
|
|
30.8 |
|
Total |
|
$ |
970.1 |
|
|
$ |
118.9 |
|
|
$ |
128.5 |
|
|
$ |
38.7 |
|
|
$ |
683.9 |
|
The total amount of unrecognized tax benefits for uncertain tax positions was $196.9 million as of September 30, 2023. Payment of these obligations if any would result from settlements with taxing authorities or final undisputed tax assessments. Due to the difficulty in determining the timing and exact outcome of resolution of audits in progress, these obligations are not included in the above table. During the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 to date, we settled certain tax audits, and as a result of the outcome of these settlements the unrecognized tax benefits balance is expected to reduce by $51,566, the majority of which is expected to be offset by income tax payments and changes in tax payables and deferred tax assets.
Deferred Tax Asset Valuation Allowance
As of September 30, 2023, we had deferred tax assets of $66.2 million, which were offset by valuation allowances due to the uncertainty of realizing any tax benefit for such credits and losses. These deferred tax assets derived primarily from tax credits, net capital and operating loss carryforwards related to some of our subsidiaries, please see Note 11 to our consolidated financial statements.
Critical Accounting Policies
Our discussion and analysis of our consolidated financial condition and results of operations are based upon our consolidated financial statements, which have been prepared in accorda