Workday Earnings 2020-01-31
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UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
Form 10-K
(Mark One)
| ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 | |||||
For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2020
OR
| TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 | |||||
For transition period from to
Commission File Number 001-35680
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
| (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) | (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) | ||||
(Address of principal executive offices)
(925 ) 951-9000
(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
| Title of each class | Trading Symbol(s) | Name of each exchange on which registered | ||||||
(Nasdaq Global Select Market) | ||||||||
Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the Act:
None
Indicate by a check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ý No ¨
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes ¨ No ý
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 (the “Exchange Act”) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days: Yes ý No ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ý No ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of large accelerated filer, accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, and emerging growth company in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
| ý | Accelerated filer | ☐ | |||||||||
| Non-accelerated filer | ☐ | Smaller reporting company | |||||||||
| Emerging growth company | |||||||||||
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ý
The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting stock of the registrant as of July 31, 2019 (based on a closing price of $199.98 per share) held by non-affiliates was approximately $32.9 billion. As of February 28, 2020, there were approximately 170 million shares of the registrant’s Class A common stock and 62 million shares of the registrant’s Class B common stock outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| PART I | ||||||||
| Item 1. | ||||||||
| Item 1A. | ||||||||
| Item 1B. | ||||||||
| Item 2. | ||||||||
| Item 3. | ||||||||
| Item 4. | ||||||||
| PART II | ||||||||
| Item 5. | ||||||||
| Item 6. | ||||||||
| Item 7. | ||||||||
| Item 7A. | ||||||||
| Item 8. | ||||||||
| Item 9. | ||||||||
| Item 9A. | ||||||||
| Item 9B. | ||||||||
| PART III | ||||||||
| Item 10. | ||||||||
| Item 11. | ||||||||
| Item 12. | ||||||||
| Item 13. | ||||||||
| Item 14. | ||||||||
| PART IV | ||||||||
| Item 15. | ||||||||
| Item 16. | ||||||||
PART I
SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This report contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to safe harbor protection under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements contained in this report other than statements of historical fact, including statements regarding our future operating results and financial position, our business strategy and plans, and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements. The words “believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect,” “seek,” “plan,” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, operating results, business strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives, and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, including those described in the “Risk Factors” section, which we encourage you to read carefully. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, the future events and trends discussed in this report may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied by the forward-looking statements.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activities, performance, or achievements. We are under no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this report or to conform these statements to actual results or revised expectations.
As used in this report, the terms “Workday,” “registrant,” “we,” “us,” and “our” mean Workday, Inc. and its subsidiaries unless the context indicates otherwise.
Our fiscal year ends on January 31. References to fiscal 2020, for example, refer to the year ended January 31, 2020.
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Overview
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. Founded in 2005, Workday delivers financial management, human capital management, planning, and analytics applications designed for the world’s largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Organizations ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises have selected Workday. We achieved this leadership position through our innovative and adaptable technology, our core values, and our commitment to customer satisfaction. Workday is leading the way in helping organizations better manage their financial and human capital resources with one system that helps enable them to plan, execute, analyze, and extend — all powered by machine learning.
Organizations today operate in environments that are highly complex and changing at an increasingly rapid rate. Managers and employees must synthesize vast amounts of information and react quickly to changes in global business and regulatory environments. To be successful, they need adaptable software that enables informed decision making about the enterprise-wide allocation of their current and future people and financial resources. Additionally, managers and employees expect to interact with enterprise systems in an open, intuitive, and collaborative way, including real-time access through a wide range of mobile and computing devices.
Workday is delivered in the cloud, enabling organizations to embrace change in their operating environments. Our rapid innovation cycles provide customers with new product functionality, support for regulatory requirement updates, increased performance, and an enhanced user experience, all delivered via biannual feature releases in addition to weekly updates that require minimal downtime. With this product delivery model, Workday customers benefit from the most current technologies without the burden of costly, time-consuming upgrades typically associated with traditional on-premise software. Through every update and feature release, all Workday customers remain on the same version of the software, with access to one data model, one security model, one user experience, and one Workday community.
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Our innovative technology leverages the most recent advances in cloud computing and data management, allowing us to deliver applications that are highly functional, flexible, secure, and fast. This approach substantially reduces the need for our customers to buy and support a broad range of IT infrastructure, significantly reducing costs and minimizing complexity. Key features of our technology infrastructure include:
•a multi-tenant architecture, in which customers are on the same version of our software, enabling innovations to be deployed quickly;
•objects that represent real-world entities, such as employees, benefits, budgets, charts of accounts, and organizations, combining business logic and data in one place and creating actionable analytics that are part of our core transactional system of record;
•in-memory data management, allowing the rapid and efficient delivery of embedded business intelligence;
•embedded machine learning, providing better predictions so customers can make more informed financial and workforce decisions; and
•open, standards-based web-services application programming interfaces and pre-built packaged integrations and connectors.
Our Products
Workday Financial Management
Workday Financial Management is a comprehensive, unified set of applications built on a single global core with a full range of financial capabilities, relevant analytics and metrics, and fully auditable process management built to help streamline financial processes for global organizations. Workday Financial Management provides core finance functions, including:
•general ledger, accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, asset management, revenue management, and grants management; and
•built-in financial, operational, and management reporting and analysis in real time without the use of complex and expensive bolt-on business intelligence systems.
Workday Spend Management
•Workday Expenses delivers user-friendly technology to capture, monitor, and control employee expenses on any device
•Scout Sourcing from Scout RFP (“Scout”), acquired by Workday in December 2019, helps organizations source faster and improve spend outcomes from project intake to contract and supplier management
•Workday Procurement provides a single solution to manage the procure-to-pay process for both goods and services spend
•Workday Inventory provides an end-to-end solution for all aspects of the materials management process that helps organizations manage their internal supply chain.
Workday Accounting Center
Workday Accounting Center, which we currently expect to be available in fiscal 2021, will provide a single point of control and maintenance for accounting rules across an organization, automating accounting and enriching financial data for reporting and analysis by transforming business activity from various data sources, such as loan origination systems or insurance claims systems, into journal entries.
Workday Human Capital Management
Workday Human Capital Management (“HCM”) enables organizations to attract, manage, develop, and retain their global workforce. Workday HCM includes:
•Global human resources management, including workforce lifecycle management, organization management, compensation, absence, and employee benefits administration;
•Global talent management including goal management, performance management, succession planning, and career and development planning; and
•Skills cloud, a machine-learning-powered universal skills language to help source, utilize, develop, and retain talent with the necessary skills to meet evolving business needs.
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Workday Talent Management
•Workday Recruiting helps hiring managers, the interview team, and recruiters acquire talent faster, while supporting the candidate experience
•Workday Learning combines peer-generated content, interactive media, and learning management in a single application, delivering a unified learning experience across the workforce
•Workday People Experience applications, which we currently expect to be available in fiscal 2021, will use machine learning to curate unique experiences by user, such as guidance in career development, answers to human resources and payroll questions, and customized content
•Workday Credentials, which we currently expect to be available in fiscal 2021, will allow organizations to issue verified credentials such as employment history, education, skills, and compensation information to individuals. Individuals will be able to manage and share their credentials via a mobile app
•Workday Talent Optimization, which we currently expect to be available in fiscal 2021, will provide innovative solutions to help organizations grow and develop talent, including a talent marketplace to connect employees to internal opportunities matched to their skills and interests, a career hub to help employees grow their careers with machine learning-driven career guidance and learning recommendations, and employee experience analytics to provide leaders with on-demand access to employee engagement insights.
Workday Workforce Management
•Workday Time Tracking, our time and attendance management application, is designed to automate workforce management processes, reducing costs and compliance risks
•Workday Payroll addresses a full spectrum of enterprise payroll needs with control, accuracy, and flexibility. We provide payroll solutions in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and France as well as a global payroll cloud partner program to support additional customer needs.
Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud
Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud helps organizations better plan, execute, and analyze across the enterprise. It empowers finance, human resources, and business units with flexible modeling capabilities that enable collaborative, company-wide business planning, including financial, workforce and sales planning.
Workday Analytics Offerings
Workday Prism Analytics enables customers to bring together data from Workday or any other source and blend, transform, and prepare it for analysis, while providing finance and human resources teams with secure, self-service access to the data they need.
Workday People Analytics uses augmented analytics to surface key insights on human resources areas, such as hiring, organizational composition, and diversity and inclusion, and narrate the findings in a natural language called a “story.” This reduces time spent on manual data exploration, while empowering decision-makers to take action on critical trends.
Workday Data-as-a-Service (“DaaS”) is a cloud service that provides valuable data to customers to enable more informed decision making. Workday Benchmarking is a Workday DaaS offering that provides key metrics to customers seeking a better understanding of their company’s relative performance in comparison to peers to help achieve optimal performance in their respective markets.
Workday Industry Solutions
Workday Student is a student and faculty information system to help colleges and universities manage the student lifecycle, including admissions and recruiting, financial aid, student records, and curriculum management. The Workday Student application suite includes: Academic Foundation, Student Recruiting, Student Admissions, Curriculum Management, Student Records, Academic Advising, Financial Aid, Student Financials, and Student Recruiting.
Workday Professional Services Automation supports the complete billable projects lifecycle, including project and resource management, time and expense tracking, project billing, revenue recognition, financial reporting, and analytics within a single solution.
Workday Healthcare combines procurement, inventory, financials, planning, and analytics in a single cloud-based system. This solution helps healthcare providers reduce supply chain costs, improve inventory control, and automate purchasing and tracking of items and services needed to support patient care.
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Workday Cloud Platform
Workday Cloud Platform is designed to allow customers to extend Workday's core applications, enabling customers to address unique business or industry use cases. The platform includes tools for building, deploying and serving extension applications from within the Workday cloud.
Customers
Our diverse customer base includes medium-sized and large, global companies, as well as smaller organizations that primarily use our planning product. Our customers span numerous industry categories, including technology, financial services, business and professional services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, retail and hospitality, education, government, and non-profit. No individual customer represented more than 10% of our revenues during fiscal 2020.
We have built a company culture centered around customer success and satisfaction. As part of this, we have designed programs to provide customers with service and education options to enhance their experience with our applications. These options include 24/7 support; training; a professional services ecosystem of trained Workday consulting teams and system integrators; a Customer Success Management group to assist customers in production; and Workday Community, an online portal where customers can collaborate and share knowledge and best practices.
Backlog
Backlog, which is equivalent to our remaining performance obligations, represents our total contractual commitments for which subscription services will be performed. Backlog generally increases with bookings and generally converts into revenue as contractual commitments are fulfilled. For further information, see Note 15, Unearned Revenue and Performance Obligations, of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Employees
As of January 31, 2020, we had approximately 12,200 employees. We also engage contractors and consultants. None of our employees are represented by a labor union. We have not experienced any work stoppages, and we consider our relations with our employees to be very good.
Sales and Marketing
We sell Workday subscription services primarily through our direct sales organization, which is comprised of field sales and field sales support personnel. The Workday Field Sales team is aligned by geography, industry, and/or prospect size. We generate customer leads, accelerate sales opportunities, and build brand awareness through our marketing programs and strategic relationships. Our marketing programs target senior business leaders, including finance, procurement, human resources, and IT executives.
As a core part of our strategy, we have developed an ecosystem of partners to both broaden and complement our application offerings and to provide services that are outside of our focus. These relationships include software and technology partners, consulting and deployment service providers, Workday Ventures partners, and business process outsourcing partners, who help enable Workday to address challenges our customers face while focusing on executing against our strategy.
Product Development
Our ability to compete depends in large part on our continuous commitment to product development and our ability to rapidly introduce and acquire new products, technologies, features, and functionality. Our product development organization is responsible for product design, development, testing, and certification. We focus our efforts on developing new products and core technologies as well as further enhancing the usability, functionality, reliability, security, performance, and flexibility of existing products.
Competition
The overall market for enterprise application software is rapidly evolving, highly competitive, and subject to changing technology, shifting customer needs, and frequent introductions of new products. We currently compete with large, well-established, enterprise application software vendors, such as Oracle Corporation (“Oracle”) and SAP SE (“SAP”). We also face competition from other enterprise software vendors, from regional competitors that only operate in certain geographic markets, and from vendors of specific applications that address only one or a portion of our applications, some of which offer cloud-based solutions. These vendors include The Ultimate Software Group, Inc.; Automatic Data Processing, Inc.; Infor, Inc.; Ceridian HCM Holding Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; Anaplan, Inc.; and Coupa Software Inc.
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In addition, other cloud companies that provide services in different markets may develop applications or acquire companies that operate in our target markets, and some potential customers may elect to develop their own internal applications. However, the domain expertise that is required for a successful solution in the areas of financial management, HCM, and analytics may inhibit new entrants that are unable to invest the necessary capital to accurately reflect global requirements and regulations. We expect continued consolidation in our industry that could lead to significantly increased competition.
We believe the principal competitive factors in our markets include:
•level of customer satisfaction and quality of customer references;
•speed to deploy and ease of use;
•breadth and depth of application functionality;
•total cost of ownership;
•brand awareness and reputation;
•adaptive technology platform;
•capability for configuration, integration, security, scalability, and reliability of applications;
•operational excellence to ensure system availability, scalability, and performance;
•ability to innovate and rapidly respond to customer needs;
•domain expertise on financial, human resources, and payroll regulations;
•size of customer base and level of user adoption;
•customer confidence in financial stability and future viability; and
•ability to integrate with legacy enterprise infrastructures and third-party applications.
We believe that we compete favorably based on these factors. Our ability to remain competitive will largely depend on our ongoing performance in product development and customer support.
For more information regarding the competitive risks we face, see the information under “Item 1A: Risk Factors” included elsewhere in this report.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks, as well as contractual protections, to establish and protect our intellectual property rights. We require our employees, contractors, consultants, suppliers, and other third parties to enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements, and we control access to software, documentation, and other proprietary information. Although we rely on intellectual property rights, including trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks, as well as contractual protections and controls to establish and protect our proprietary rights, we believe that factors such as the technological and creative skills of our personnel; creation of new products, features and functionality; and frequent enhancements to our applications are more essential to establishing and maintaining our technology leadership position.
Corporate Information
We were incorporated in March 2005 in Nevada, and in June 2012 we reincorporated in Delaware. Our principal executive offices are located at 6110 Stoneridge Mall Road, Pleasanton, California 94588, and our telephone number is (877) WORKDAY. Our website address is www.workday.com. The information on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not part of this report. Workday, the Workday logo, our Built for the future® tagline, and other trademarks of ours are our registered intellectual property in the United States and elsewhere. Other trademarks, service marks, or trade names appearing in this report are the property of their respective owners.
Available Information
We file annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy and information statements, and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a), 14, and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, (the “Exchange Act”). The public may obtain these filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”)’s website at http://www.sec.gov, which contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding Workday and other companies that file materials with the SEC electronically. Copies of Workday’s reports on Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q, and Forms 8-K, may be obtained, free of charge as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material with, or furnish such material to, the SEC, electronically through our website, http://www.workday.com/company/investor_relations/sec_filings.php.
Workday uses its blogs.workday.com website as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD.
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ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. You should consider carefully the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this report, including the consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this report, before making an investment decision. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of, or that we currently believe are not material, may also become important factors that materially and adversely affect our business. If any of the following risks actually occurs, our business operations, financial condition, operating results, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. The market price of our securities could decline due to the materialization of these or any other risks, and you could lose part or all of your investment.
Risk Factors Related to Our Business
If our security measures are breached or unauthorized access to customer or user data is otherwise obtained, our applications may be perceived as not being secure, customers and end users may reduce the use of or stop using our applications, and we may incur significant liabilities.
Our applications involve the storage and transmission of our customers’ sensitive and proprietary information, including personal or identifying information regarding our customers, their employees, customers, and suppliers, as well as financial and payroll data and other sensitive business and personal information. As a result, unauthorized access, acquisition, use, or destruction of this data, or unavailability of data, could expose us to regulatory actions, litigation, investigations, remediation obligations, damage to our reputation and brand, supplemental disclosure obligations, loss of customer, consumer, and partner confidence in the security of our applications, destruction of information, indemnity obligations, impairment to our business, and resulting fees, costs, expenses, loss of revenues, and other potential liabilities. We devote significant financial and personnel resources to implement and maintain security measures. While we have security measures in place that are designed to protect against these risks, preserve the integrity of customer and personal information, and prevent data loss, misappropriation, and other security breaches, our security measures may be compromised as a result of intentional misconduct, including by computer hackers, employees, contractors, or vendors, as well as software bugs, human error, technical malfunctions, or other malfeasance.
Cybersecurity threats and attacks are often targeted at companies such as ours and may take a variety of forms ranging from individual and groups of hackers to sophisticated organizations, including state-sponsored actors. Key cybersecurity risks range from viruses, worms, and other malicious software programs, including phishing attacks, to “mega breaches” targeted against cloud services and other hosted software, any of which can result in disclosure of confidential information and intellectual property, defective products, production downtimes, and compromised data. As the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not identified until they are launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these attacks or to implement adequate preventative measures. Although we have developed systems and processes that are designed to protect our data, our customer data, and other user data, to prevent data loss, and to prevent or detect security breaches, there can be no assurance that such measures will be effective against all cybersecurity threats.
Furthermore, we have acquired a number of companies, products, services, and technologies over the years. Although we devote significant resources to address any known security issues with respect to such acquisitions, we may still inherit additional risks when we integrate these companies within Workday. In addition, if a high-profile security breach occurs with respect to an industry peer, our customers and potential customers may generally lose trust in the security of financial management, HCM, planning, procurement, or analytics applications, or in cloud applications for enterprises in general. Any or all of these issues could negatively affect our ability to attract new customers, cause existing customers to elect to terminate or not renew their subscriptions, result in reputational damage, cause us to pay remediation costs and/or issue service credits or refunds to customers for prepaid and unused subscription services, require us to compensate our customers or other users for certain losses, or result in lawsuits, regulatory fines, or other action or liabilities, which could adversely affect our business and operating results.
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If we fail to properly manage our technical operations infrastructure, experience service outages or delays in the deployment of our applications, or our applications fail to perform properly, we may be subject to liabilities and our reputation and operating results may be adversely affected.
We have experienced significant growth in the number of users, transactions, and data that our operations infrastructure supports. We seek to maintain sufficient excess capacity in our operations infrastructure to meet the needs of all of our customers and users, as well as our own needs, and to ensure that our services and solutions are accessible within an acceptable load time. We also seek to maintain excess capacity to facilitate the rapid provision of new customer deployments and the expansion of existing customer deployments. In addition, we need to properly manage our technological operations infrastructure in order to support version control, changes in hardware and software parameters, updates, the evolution of our applications, and to reduce infrastructure latency associated with dispersed geographic locations. However, the provision of new hosting infrastructure requires significant lead time. If we do not accurately predict our infrastructure requirements, we may experience service outages. Furthermore, if our operations infrastructure fails to scale, we may experience delays in providing service as we seek to obtain additional capacity, and no assurance can be made that we will be able to secure such additional capacity on the same or similar terms as we currently have, which could result in a significant increase in our operating costs. Furthermore, any failure to scale and secure additional capacity could result in delays in new feature rollouts, reduce the demand for our applications, result in customer and end user dissatisfaction, and adversely affect our business and operating results.
We have experienced, and may in the future experience, system disruptions, outages, and other performance problems, including the failure of our applications to perform properly. These problems may be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, vendor issues, software defects, human error, viruses, worms, security attacks (internal and external), fraud, spikes in customer usage, and denial of service issues. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. Because of the large amount of data that we collect and process in our systems, it is possible that these issues could result in data loss or corruption, or cause the data to be incomplete or contain inaccuracies that our customers and other users regard as significant. Furthermore, the availability or performance of our applications could also be adversely affected by our customers’ and other users’ inability to access the internet. For example, our customers and other users access our applications through their internet service providers. If a service provider fails to provide sufficient capacity to support our applications or otherwise experiences service outages, such failure could interrupt our customers’ and other users’ access to our applications, which could adversely affect their perception of our applications’ reliability and our revenues.
Our customer agreements typically provide for monthly service level commitments. If we are unable to meet the stated service level commitments or suffer extended periods of unavailability for our applications as a result of the foregoing or otherwise, we may be contractually obligated to issue service credits or refunds to customers for prepaid and unused subscription services, our customers may make warranty or other claims against us, or we could face contract terminations, which would adversely affect our attrition rates. Any extended service outages could result in customer losses and adversely affect our reputation, business, and operating results.
Furthermore, our errors and omissions insurance may be inadequate or may not be available in the future on acceptable terms, or at all. In addition, our policy may not cover all claims made against us and defending a suit, regardless of its merit, could be costly and divert management’s attention.
We depend on data centers and computing infrastructure operated by third parties, and any disruption in these operations could adversely affect our business and operating results.
We host our applications and serve our customers from data centers located in the United States, Europe, and Canada. While we control and have access to our servers and all of the components of our network that are located in these data centers, we do not control certain aspects of these facilities, including their operation and security. The owners of these data center facilities have limited or no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. If we are unable to renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms, or if any of these data center operators are acquired or cease to do business, we may be required to transfer our servers and other infrastructure to new data center facilities, and we may incur significant costs and experience possible service interruptions in connection with doing so.
In addition, we also rely upon third-party hosted infrastructure partners globally, including Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) and Dimension Data, to serve customers and operate certain aspects of our services, such as environments for development testing, training, sales demonstrations, and production usage. Any disruption of or interference at our hosted infrastructure partners would impact our operations and our business could be adversely impacted.
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Problems faced by these data center operators or hosted infrastructure partners, with the telecommunications network providers with whom we or they contract, or with the systems by which our telecommunications providers allocate capacity among their customers, including us, could adversely affect the experience of our customers or other users. These data center operators or hosted infrastructure partners could decide to close their facilities or cease operations without adequate notice. In addition, any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy, faced by these data center operators, our hosted infrastructure partners, or any of the other service providers with whom we or they contract may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict.
Additionally, if these data center operators or hosted infrastructure partners are unable to keep up with our needs for capacity, this could have an adverse effect on our business. Any changes in third-party service levels at these data centers or at our hosted infrastructure partners or any errors, defects, disruptions, or other performance problems with our applications or the infrastructure on which they run could adversely affect our reputation and may damage our customers’ or other users’ stored files or result in lengthy interruptions in our services. Interruptions in our services might adversely affect our reputation and operating results, cause us to issue refunds or service credits to customers for prepaid and unused subscription services, subject us to potential liabilities, result in contract terminations, or adversely affect our renewal rates.
Furthermore, our financial management application is essential to Workday’s and our customers’ financial projections, reporting, and compliance programs, particularly customers who are public reporting companies. Any interruption in our service may affect the availability, accuracy or timeliness of such projections, reporting and compliance programs and as a result could damage our reputation, cause our customers to terminate their use of our applications, require us to issue refunds for prepaid and unused subscription services, require us to compensate our customers for certain losses, and prevent us from gaining additional business from current or future customers as well as impact our ability to accurately and timely meet our reporting and other compliance obligations.
Privacy concerns and domestic or foreign laws and regulations may reduce the effectiveness of our applications, result in significant costs and compliance challenges, and adversely affect our business and operating results.
Our customers can use our applications to collect, use, and store personal or identifying information regarding a variety of individuals in connection with their operations, including but not limited to their employees, contractors, students, job applicants, customers, and suppliers. Additionally, individuals using our WayToTM by Workday application may store, manage, and share with certain organizations credentials such as employment history, education, skills, and compensation information. National, state and local governments and agencies in the countries in which our customers operate have adopted, are considering adopting, or may adopt laws and regulations regarding the collection, use, storage, transfer, processing, protection, and disclosure of personal information obtained from consumers and individuals, which could impact our ability to offer our services in certain jurisdictions or our customers’ ability to deploy our solutions globally. Privacy and data protection laws are particularly stringent, and the costs of compliance with and other burdens imposed by such laws, regulations, and standards may limit the use and adoption of our services, reduce overall demand for our services, lead to significant fines, penalties, or liabilities for noncompliance, or slow the pace at which we close sales transactions, any of which could harm our business. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit the adoption, effectiveness, or use of our applications. Moreover, if we or our subprocessors fail to adhere to adequate data protection practices around the usage of and access to our customers’ and other users’ personal data or fail to report a data breach or other loss of data within timeframes mandated by law or our customer contracts, we may be liable for certain losses, and it may damage our reputation and brand.
Additionally, we expect that existing laws, regulations, and standards may be interpreted in new and differing manners in the future and may be inconsistent among jurisdictions. Future laws, regulations, standards, and other obligations, and changes in the interpretation of existing laws, regulations, standards, and other obligations could result in increased regulation, increased costs of compliance and penalties for non-compliance, and limitations on data collection, use, disclosure, and transfer for Workday and our customers. In 2016, the European Union (“EU”) adopted a new regulation governing data privacy called the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which became effective in May 2018. The GDPR establishes new requirements applicable to the handling of personal data and imposes penalties for non-compliance of up to 4% of worldwide revenue. Customers, particularly in the EU, are seeking assurances from their suppliers, including us, that their processing of personal data of EU nationals is in accordance with the GDPR. If we are unable to provide adequate assurances to such customers, demand for our applications could be adversely affected. In addition, we must continue to seek assurances from our subprocessors that they are handling personal data in accordance with GDPR requirements in order to meet our own obligations under the GDPR. In addition, the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) took effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA gives California consumers certain rights similar to those provided by the GDPR, and customers and other users may seek similar assurances from suppliers regarding compliance. Moreover, there are a number of other legislative proposals in the EU and the United States, at both the federal and state level, as well as other jurisdictions that could impose additional and potentially conflicting obligations in areas affecting our business.
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In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy and other industry groups have established or may establish various new, additional, or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. Our customers may expect us to meet voluntary certifications or adhere to other standards established by third parties. If we are unable to maintain these certifications or meet these standards, it could reduce demand for our applications and adversely affect our business and operating results.
The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, privacy laws and regulations that are applicable to the businesses of our customers may adversely affect our customers’ ability and willingness to process, handle, store, use, and transmit demographic and personal data, which in turn could limit the use, effectiveness, and adoption of our applications and reduce overall demand. In addition, the other bases on which we and our customers rely on for the transfer of data, such as model contracts, continue to be subjected to regulatory and judicial scrutiny. In 2016, the EU and United States agreed to the Privacy Shield framework for data transferred from the EU to the United States, but this new framework has been challenged by private parties and may face additional challenges by national regulators or additional private parties. In 2017, another legal challenge to the validity of the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (a data transfer mechanism) was referred to the Court of Justice of the EU for review. If we or our customers are unable to transfer data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, it could decrease demand for our applications, require us to restrict our business operations, and impair our ability to maintain and grow our customer base and increase our revenue.
The markets in which we participate are intensely competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our operating results could be adversely affected.
The markets for financial management and HCM applications are highly competitive, with relatively low barriers to entry for some applications or services. Our primary competitors are Oracle and SAP, well-established providers of financial management and HCM applications, which have long-standing relationships with many customers. Some customers may be hesitant to switch vendors or to adopt cloud applications such as ours and may prefer to maintain their existing relationships with competitors. Oracle and SAP are larger and have greater name recognition, significantly longer operating histories, larger marketing budgets, and significantly greater resources than we do. These vendors, as well as other competitors, could offer financial management and HCM applications on a standalone basis at a low price or bundled as part of a larger sale. In order to take advantage of customer demand for cloud applications, legacy vendors are expanding their cloud applications through acquisitions, strategic alliances, and organic development. We also face competition from other enterprise software vendors, from regional competitors that only operate in certain geographic markets, and from vendors of specific applications that address only one or a portion of our applications, some of which offer cloud-based solutions. These vendors include, without limitation: The Ultimate Software Group, Inc., Automatic Data Processing, Inc., Infor, Inc., Ceridian HCM Holding Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Anaplan, Inc., and Coupa Software Inc. In addition, other cloud companies that provide services in different target markets may develop applications or acquire companies that operate in our target markets, and some potential customers may elect to develop their own internal applications. As the market matures and as existing and new market participants introduce new types of technologies and different approaches that enable organizations to address their human capital management and financial needs, we expect this competition to intensify in the future.
Many of our competitors are able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, and sale of their products and services. This may allow our competitors to respond more effectively than us to new or emerging technologies and changes in market conditions. Furthermore, our current or potential competitors may be acquired by, or merge with, third parties with greater available resources and the ability to initiate or withstand substantial price competition. For example, Kronos Incorporated and The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. have recently announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement. In addition, many of our competitors have established marketing relationships, access to larger customer bases, and major distribution agreements with consultants, system integrators, and resellers. Our competitors may also establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties that may further enhance their offerings or resources. If our competitors’ products, services, or technologies become more accepted than our products, if they are successful in bringing their products or services to market earlier than ours, or if their products or services are more technologically capable than ours, then our revenues could be adversely affected. In addition, some of our competitors may offer their products and services at a lower price. Pricing pressures and increased competition could result in reduced sales, reduced margins, losses, or a failure to maintain or improve our competitive market position, any of which could adversely affect our business and operating results.
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If we are not able to realize a return on our current development efforts or offer new features, enhancements, and modifications to our services, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.
Developing software applications and related enhancements, features, and modifications is expensive, and the investment in product development often involves a long return on investment cycle. Accelerated application introductions and short application life cycles require high levels of expenditures that could adversely affect our operating results if not offset by revenue increases, and we believe that we must continue to dedicate a significant amount of resources to our development efforts to maintain our competitive position. However, we may not receive significant revenues from these investments for several years, if at all. If we are unable to provide new features, enhancements, and modifications in a cost-effective manner that achieve market acceptance or that keep pace with rapid technological developments, our business and operating results could be adversely affected. For example, we are focused on enhancing the features and functionality of our applications to improve their utility to larger customers with complex, dynamic, and global operations. The success of enhancements, new features, and applications depends on several factors, including their timely completion, introduction, and market acceptance as well as access to the technologies required to build and improve our applications, such as the datasets required to train our machine learning models. As a result, we may not be successful in developing these new features, enhancements, modifications, and applications, and bring them to market timely, if at all. Failure in this regard may significantly impair our revenue growth by negatively impacting our customer renewal rates or our ability to attract new customers.
Our growth depends on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties as well as our ability to successfully integrate our applications with a variety of third-party technologies.
We depend on relationships with third parties such as deployment partners, technology and content providers, and other key suppliers, and are also dependent on third parties for the license of certain software and development tools that are incorporated into or used with our applications. In addition, we rely upon licensed third-party software to help improve our internal systems, processes, and controls. Identifying partners, and negotiating and documenting relationships with them, requires significant time and resources. We may be at a disadvantage if our competitors are effective in providing incentives to third parties to favor their products or services or to prevent or reduce subscriptions to our services, or in negotiating better rates or terms with such third parties. In addition, acquisitions of our partners by our competitors could end our strategic relationship with the acquired partner and result in a decrease in the number of our current and potential customers, or the support services available for third-party technology may be negatively affected by mergers and consolidation in the software industry. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with these third parties, or in monitoring the quality of their products or performance, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenues could be impaired and our operating results may suffer.
To the extent that our applications depend upon the successful operation of third-party software in conjunction with our software, any undetected errors or defects in this third-party software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our applications, delay new application introductions, result in a failure of our applications, and injure our reputation. Furthermore, software may not continue to be available to us on commercially reasonable terms. Although we believe that there are commercially reasonable alternatives to the third-party software we currently license, this may not always be the case, or it may be difficult or costly to replace. Integration of new software into our applications may require significant work and require substantial investment of our time and resources.
We also need to continuously modify and enhance our applications to keep pace with changes in third-party internet-related hardware, iOS, Android, other mobile-related technologies, and other third-party software, communication, browser, and database technologies. We must also appropriately balance the application capability demands of our current customers with the capabilities required to address the broader market. Furthermore, uncertainties about the timing and nature of new network platforms or technologies, or modifications to existing platforms or technologies, could increase our product development expenses. Any failure of our applications to operate effectively with future network platforms and other third-party technologies could reduce the demand for our applications, result in customer and end user dissatisfaction, and adversely affect our business and operating results. We may experience difficulties in managing improvements to our systems, processes, and controls or in connection with third-party software, which could materially impair our ability to provide solutions or professional services to our customers in a timely manner, cause us to lose customers, limit us to smaller deployments of our solutions, or increase our technical support costs.
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Our historic revenue growth rates should not be viewed as indicative of our future performance.
Our revenue growth rates have declined and may decline again in the future as the size of our customer base and market penetration increases. In addition, our future rate of growth is subject to a number of uncertainties, including general economic and market conditions, as well as risks associated with growing companies in rapidly changing industries. Other factors may also contribute to declines in our growth rates, including slowing demand for our services, increasing competition, a decrease in the growth of our overall market, our failure to continue to capitalize on growth opportunities, the maturation of our business, and customer and user concerns regarding privacy and security with respect to placing sensitive information on a cloud-based platform, among others. As our growth rates decline, investors’ perceptions of our business and the trading price of our securities could be adversely affected.
Additionally, our ability to accurately forecast our future rate of growth is limited. It is difficult to predict customer and other user adoption rates and demand for our applications, the future growth rate and size of the cloud computing market for financial management and HCM services, or the entry of competitive applications. We plan our expense levels and investments on estimates of future revenue and anticipated rates of growth. If our growth does not meet estimates, we may not be able to adjust our spending quickly enough to avoid an adverse impact on our financial results as a consequence of spending that is not aligned with our actual performance.
Moreover, we have encountered and will encounter risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, including the risks and uncertainties described herein. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties (which we use to plan our business) are incorrect or change due to changes in our markets, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could differ materially from our expectations and our business could suffer.
We have experienced rapid growth, and if we fail to manage our growth effectively, we may be unable to execute our business plan, maintain high levels of service and operational controls, or adequately address competitive challenges.
We have experienced, and are continuing to experience, a period of rapid growth in our customers, headcount, and operations. We anticipate that we will continue to expand our customer base, headcount, and operations. This growth has placed, and future growth will place, a significant strain on our management, administrative, operational, and financial infrastructure. Our success will depend in part on our ability to manage this growth effectively and to scale our operations. To manage the expected growth of our operations and personnel, we will need to continue to improve our operational, financial, and management controls as well as our reporting systems and procedures. Failure to effectively manage growth could result in difficulty or delays in deploying customers, declines in quality or customer satisfaction, increases in costs, difficulties in introducing new features, or other operational difficulties, and any of these difficulties could adversely impact our business performance and operating results.
We may lose key employees or be unable to attract, train, and retain highly skilled employees.
Our success and future growth depend largely upon the continued services of our executive officers, other members of senior management, and other key employees. We do not have employment agreements with our executive officers or other key personnel that require them to continue to work for us for any specified period, and they could terminate their employment with us at any time. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team and to other key employee roles resulting from organizational changes or the hiring or departure of executives or other employees, which could have a serious adverse effect on our business and operating results.
To execute our growth plan, we must attract, train, and retain highly qualified personnel. In the technology industry, and particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, the competition is intense for highly skilled employees, especially for engineers with significant experience in designing and developing software and internet-related services, including in the areas of machine learning and artificial intelligence, for cybersecurity professionals, and for senior sales executives. In addition, the expansion of our sales infrastructure, both domestically and internationally, is necessary to grow our customer base and business. Identifying and recruiting qualified personnel and training them in our sales methodology, our sales systems, and the use of our software requires significant time, expense, and attention. Our business may be adversely affected if our efforts to attract and train new members of our direct sales force do not generate a corresponding increase in revenues. From time to time, we have experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications, and we may not be able to fill positions in desired geographic areas or at all.
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Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have and may offer more lucrative compensation packages than we offer. Job candidates and existing employees carefully consider the value of the equity awards they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived or actual value of our equity awards declines, or if the mix of equity and cash compensation that we offer is unattractive, it may adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain highly skilled employees. Our recruiting efforts may also be limited by laws and regulations, such as restrictive immigration laws, and restrictions on travel or availability of visas. Additionally, job candidates may be threatened with legal action under agreements with their existing employers if we attempt to hire them, which could have a chilling effect on hiring and result in a diversion of our time and resources. We must also continue to retain and motivate existing employees through our compensation practices, company culture, and career development opportunities. If we fail to attract new personnel or to retain our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects could be adversely affected.
If we cannot maintain our corporate culture, we could lose the innovation, teamwork, and passion that we believe contribute to our success, and our business may be harmed.
We believe that a critical component of our success has been our corporate culture, as reflected in our core values: employees, customer service, innovation, integrity, fun, and profitability. We also believe that our commitment to our corporate culture, as well as our commitment to building products and services that help provide our customers with information regarding their own workforce and corporate culture, is part of the reason why our customers choose us. As we continue to grow, both organically and through acquisitions of employee teams, and develop the infrastructure associated with being a more mature public company, we will need to maintain our corporate culture among a larger number of employees who are dispersed throughout various geographic regions. Any failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our future success, including our ability to retain and recruit personnel and to achieve our corporate objectives, including our ability to quickly develop and deliver new and innovative products.
Because we encounter long sales cycles when selling to large customers and we recognize subscription services revenues over the term of the contract, downturns or upturns in new sales will not be immediately reflected in our operating results and may be difficult to discern.
We generally recognize subscription services revenues over time as services are delivered to the customer, which typically occurs over a period of three years or longer. As a result, most of the subscription services revenues we report in each quarter are derived from the recognition of unearned revenue relating to subscriptions entered into during previous quarters. Consequently, a decline in new or renewed subscription contracts in any single quarter will likely have a minor impact on our revenue results for that quarter. However, such a decline will negatively affect our revenues in future quarters. Additionally, because much of our sales efforts are targeted at large enterprise customers, our sales cycles involve greater costs, longer sales cycles, the provision of greater levels of education regarding the use and benefits of our applications, less predictability in completing some of our sales, and varying deployment timeframes based on many factors including the number, type, and configuration of applications being deployed, the complexity, scale, and geographic dispersion of the customers’ business and operations, the number of integrations with other systems, and other factors, many of which are beyond our control. Our typical sales cycles are six to twelve months but can extend for eighteen months or more, and we expect that this lengthy sales cycle may continue or expand as customers increasingly adopt our applications beyond HCM. Longer sales cycles could cause our operating and financial results to suffer in a given period. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our applications, and potential changes in our pricing policies or rate of renewals may not be fully reflected in our operating results until future periods. Additionally, we may be unable to adjust our cost structure to reflect any such changes in revenues. In addition, a majority of our costs are expensed as incurred, while revenues are recognized over the life of the customer agreement. As a result, increased growth in the number of our customers could result in our recognition of more costs than revenues in the earlier periods of the terms of our agreements. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenues through additional sales in any period, as subscription services revenues from new customers generally are recognized over the applicable subscription term.
Our business could be adversely affected if our users are not satisfied with the deployment, training, and support services provided by us and our partners.
Our business depends on our ability to satisfy our customers and end users, both with respect to our application offerings and the professional services that are performed to help them use features and functions that address their business needs. High customer satisfaction requires that our customers undergo a successful implementation and be properly trained on our applications to effectively implement and increase their level of adoption of such applications. Incorrect or improper implementation or use of our applications could result in customer and user dissatisfaction and harm our business and operating results.
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Professional services may be performed by our own staff, by a third party, or by a combination of the two. Our strategy is to work with third parties to increase the breadth of capability and depth of capacity for delivery of these services to our customers, and third parties provide a majority of deployment services for our customers. If customers are not satisfied with the quality of work performed by us or a third party or with the type of professional services or applications delivered, then we could incur additional costs to address the situation, the revenue recognition of the contract could be impacted, and the dissatisfaction with our services could damage our ability to expand the applications subscribed to by our customers. We must also align our product development and professional services operations in order to ensure that customers’ evolving needs are met. Negative publicity related to our customer relationships, regardless of its accuracy, may further damage our business by affecting our ability to compete for new business with current and prospective customers.
Additionally, in order to maximize the value of our applications, we must continue to educate and train our customers and end users to develop the skills necessary to harness the power of our applications. If we are not able to effectively educate and train our users, they may choose not to renew their subscriptions, market perceptions of our company and our applications may be impaired, and our reputation and brand may suffer. Customers and other users also depend on our support organization to provision the environments used by our customers and to resolve technical issues relating to our applications. We may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate short-term increases in demand for support services. We also may be unable to modify the format of our support services to compete with changes in support services provided by our competitors. Increased demand for these services, without corresponding revenues, could increase costs and adversely affect our operating results. Failure to maintain high-quality technical support and training, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality support or training, could adversely affect our reputation, our ability to offer and sell our applications, our renewal rates, and our business and operating results.
Our ability to predict the rate of customer subscription renewals or adoptions and the impact these renewals and adoptions will have on our revenues or operating results is limited.
As the markets for our applications mature, or as new competitors introduce new products or services that compete with ours, we may be unable to attract new customers at the same price or based on the same pricing model as we have used historically. From time to time, we may also change our pricing structure, which could adversely impact demand for our products. Moreover, large customers, which are a primary focus of our sales efforts, may demand greater price concessions. As a result, in the future we may be required to reduce our prices, which could adversely affect our revenues, profitability, financial position, and cash flow.
In addition, our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our applications after the expiration of either the initial or renewed subscription period. Our customers may renew for fewer elements of our applications or on different pricing terms. Our customers’ renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including their level of satisfaction with our pricing or our applications and their ability to continue their operations and spending levels. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions for our applications on similar pricing terms, our revenues may decline, and our business could suffer. In addition, over time the average term of our contracts could change based on renewal rates or for other reasons.
Our future success also depends, in part, on our ability to sell additional products to our current customers, and the success rate of such endeavors is difficult to predict, especially with regard to any new lines of business that we may introduce from time to time. This may require increasingly costly marketing and sales efforts that are targeted at senior management, and if these efforts are not successful, our business and operating results may suffer. Additionally, acquisitions of our customers could lead to cancellation of our contracts with those customers or by the acquiring companies, thereby reducing the number of our existing and potential customers.
If we fail to develop widespread brand awareness cost-effectively, our business may suffer.
We believe that developing and maintaining widespread positive awareness of our brand is critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our applications, retaining and attracting customers, and hiring and retaining employees. However, brand promotion activities may not generate the customer awareness or increased revenues we anticipate, and even if they do, any increase in revenues may not offset the significant expenses we incur in building our brand. In addition, positions we take on social and ethical issues from time to time may impact our ability to attract or retain customers, and any perceived changes to our public commitments to sustainability, equality and ethical use could adversely impact our brand, reputation, and relationships with our customers and other users.
If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our brand, we may fail to attract or retain customers necessary to realize a sufficient return on our brand-building efforts, or to achieve the widespread brand awareness that is critical for broad customer adoption of our applications. Additionally, the loss of one or more of our key customers, or a failure to renew our subscription agreements with one or more of our key customers, could significantly impair our ability to market our applications which, in turn, could have a negative impact on our revenues, reputation, and our ability to obtain new customers. In addition, if our brand is negatively impacted, it may be more difficult to hire and retain employees.
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We have acquired, and may in the future acquire, other companies, employee teams, or technologies, which could divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders, and otherwise disrupt our operations and adversely affect our operating results.
We have acquired, and may in the future acquire, other companies, employee teams, or technologies to complement or expand our applications, enhance our technical capabilities, obtain personnel, or otherwise offer growth opportunities. For example, during the third quarter of fiscal 2019, we acquired Adaptive Insights, and during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, we acquired Scout. The pursuit of acquisitions may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various expenses in identifying, investigating, and pursuing suitable acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated.
We may not be able to integrate acquired personnel, operations, and technologies successfully, or effectively manage the combined operations following any acquisition. We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits from an acquisition due to a number of factors, including:
•inability to integrate or benefit from an acquisition in a profitable manner;
•acquisition-related costs, liabilities, or tax impacts, some of which may be unanticipated;
•difficulty in integrating the intellectual property, technology infrastructure, and operations of the acquired business, including difficulty in addressing security issues of the acquired business;
•difficulty in integrating and retaining the personnel of the acquired business, including integration of the culture of the acquired company and Workday;
•difficulty in leveraging the data of the acquired business if it includes personal data;
•ineffective or inadequate controls, procedures, or policies at the acquired company;
•multiple product lines or service offerings, as a result of our acquisitions, that are offered, priced, and supported differently;
•difficulties and additional expenses associated with synchronizing product offerings, customer relationships, and contract portfolio terms and conditions between Workday and the acquired business;
•potential unknown liabilities or risks associated with the acquired businesses, including those arising from existing contractual obligations or litigation matters;
•adverse effects on our existing business relationships with business partners and customers as a result of the acquisition;
•potential write-offs of acquired assets and potential financial and credit risks associated with acquired customers;
•inability to maintain relationships with key customers, suppliers, and partners of the acquired business;
•difficulty in predicting and controlling the effect of integrating multiple acquisitions concurrently;
•lack of experience in new markets, products, or technologies;
•difficulty in integrating operations and assets of an acquired foreign entity with differences in language, culture, or country-specific regulatory risks;
•diversion of management’s attention from other business concerns;
•use of resources that are needed in other parts of our business; and
•use of substantial portions of our available cash to consummate the acquisition.
In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to acquired goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. In the future, if our acquisitions do not yield expected returns, we may be required to take charges to our operating results based on this impairment assessment process, which could adversely affect our operating results.
Acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities or the issuance of debt, which could adversely affect our operating results. In addition, if an acquired business fails to meet our expectations, our business, operating results, and financial position may suffer.
Sales to customers outside the United States or with international operations expose us to risks inherent in global operations.
A key element of our growth strategy is to develop a worldwide customer base. Operating globally requires significant resources and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, economic, and political risks that are different from those in the United States. Our international expansion efforts may not be successful in creating demand for our applications outside of the United States or in effectively selling subscriptions to our applications in all of the markets we enter. In addition, we will face risks in doing business on a global scale that could adversely affect our business, including:
•the need to localize and adapt our applications for specific countries, including translation into foreign languages, localization of contracts for different legal jurisdictions, and associated expenses;
•the need for a go-to-market strategy that aligns application management efforts and the development of supporting infrastructure;
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•stricter data privacy laws including requirements that customer data be stored and processed in a designated territory and obligations on us as a data processor;
•difficulties in appropriately staffing and managing foreign operations and providing appropriate compensation for local markets;
•difficulties in leveraging executive presence and company culture globally;
•different pricing environments, longer sales cycles, and longer trade receivables payment cycles, and collections issues;
•new and different sources of competition;
•potentially weaker protection for intellectual property and other legal rights than in the United States and practical difficulties in enforcing intellectual property and other rights;
•laws, customs, and business practices favoring local competitors;
•restrictive governmental actions focused on cross-border trade, such as import and export restrictions, duties, quotas, tariffs, trade disputes, and barriers or sanctions that may prevent us from offering certain portions of our products or services to a particular market, may increase our operating costs or may subject us to monetary fines or penalties in case of unintentional noncompliance due to factors beyond our control;
•compliance challenges related to the complexity of multiple, conflicting, and changing governmental laws and regulations, including employment, tax, privacy, intellectual property, and data protection laws and regulations;
•increased compliance costs related to government regulatory reviews or audits, including those related to international cybersecurity requirements;
•increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities;
•restrictions on the transfer of funds;
•ensuring compliance with anti-corruption laws, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and UK Bribery Act;
•the effects of currency fluctuations on our revenues and expenses and customer demand for our services;
•the cost and potential outcomes of any international claims or litigation;
•adverse tax consequences and tax rulings; and
•unstable economic and political conditions.
Any of the above factors may negatively impact our ability to sell our applications and offer services globally, reduce our competitive position in foreign markets, increase our costs of global operations, and reduce demand for our applications and services from global customers. Additionally, the majority of our international costs are denominated in local currencies and we anticipate that over time an increasing portion of our sales contracts outside the U.S. may be denominated in local currencies. Therefore, fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies may impact our operating results when translated into U.S. dollars. Such fluctuations may also impact our ability to predict our future results accurately. Although we have a hedging program to help mitigate some of this volatility and related risks, there can be no assurance that the hedging program will be effective in offsetting the adverse financial impacts that may result from unfavorable movements in foreign currency exchange rates.
If we are not able to realize a return on the investments we have made toward entering new markets and new lines of business, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.
We continue to seek opportunities to enter into new markets and/or new lines of business, some of which we may have very limited or no experience in. As an entrant to new markets and new lines of business, we may not be effective in convincing prospective customers that our solutions will address their needs, and we may not accurately estimate our infrastructure needs, human resource requirements, or operating expenses with regard to these new markets and new lines of business. We may also fail to accurately anticipate adoption rates of these new lines of business or their underlying technology. For example, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and blockchain are propelling advancements in technology, but if they are not widely adopted and accepted or fail to operate as expected, our business and reputation may be harmed. Also, we may not be able to properly price our solutions in these new markets, which could negatively affect our ability to sell to customers. Furthermore, customers in these new markets or of the new lines of business may demand more features and professional services, which may require us to devote even greater research and development, sales, support, and professional services resources to such customers. If we fail to generate adequate revenue from these new markets and lines of business, or if we fail to do so within the envisioned timeframe, it could have an adverse effect on our business or financial condition.
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Unfavorable laws, regulations, interpretive positions or standards governing new and evolving technologies that we incorporate into our products and services could result in significant cost and compliance challenges and adversely affect our business and operating results.
Some of our products and services currently utilize or will utilize new and evolving technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. While existing laws and regulations may apply to these types of technologies, the overall regulatory environment governing these types of technologies is still currently undeveloped and likely to evolve as government interest in these technologies increases. Regulation of these technologies also varies greatly among international, federal, state, and local jurisdictions and is subject to significant uncertainty. Governments and agencies may in the future change or amend existing laws, or adopt new laws, regulations, or guidance, or take other actions which may severely impact the permitted uses of these technologies. Any failure by us to comply with applicable laws, regulations, guidance, or other rules could result in costly litigation, penalties, or fines. In addition, these regulations could establish and further expand our obligations to customers, individuals, and other third parties with respect to these types of products and services, limit the countries in which such products and services may be used, restrict the way we structure and operate our business, and reduce the types of customers and individuals who can use our products and services. Increased regulation and oversight of products or services which utilize or rely on these new technologies may result in costly compliance burdens or otherwise increase our operating costs, detrimentally affecting our business. These new technologies could subject us to additional litigation brought by private parties, which could be costly, time-consuming, and distracting to management and could result in substantial expenses and losses.
In addition, as with many innovations, machine learning and artificial intelligence present additional risks and challenges that could affect their adoption and therefore our business. For example, the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence present emerging ethical issues, and if we enable or offer solutions on this front that are controversial, due to their impact, or perceived impact, on human rights, privacy, employment, or in other social contexts, we may experience brand or reputational harm, competitive harm, or legal liability. Also, our positions on social and ethical issues may impact our ability to attract or retain customers and other users. In particular, our brand and reputation are associated with our public commitments to sustainability, equality, and ethical use, and any perceived changes in our dedication to these commitments could impact our relationships with potential and current customers and other users.
Adverse economic conditions may negatively impact our business.
Our business depends on the overall demand for enterprise software and on the economic health of our current and prospective customers. Any significant weakening of the economy in the United States or Europe and of the global economy, limited availability of credit, a reduction in business confidence and activity, decreased government spending, economic uncertainty and other difficulties, such as rising interest rates and increased inflation, may affect one or more of the sectors or countries in which we sell our applications. Alternatively, a strong dollar could reduce demand for our applications and services in countries with relatively weaker currencies.
Also, the withdrawal of the UK from the EU (“Brexit”) has created economic and political uncertainty, including volatility in the value of foreign currencies. The impact of Brexit depends on the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and such impact may not be fully realized for several years or more. This uncertainty may cause some of our customers or potential customers to curtail spending and may ultimately result in new regulatory, operational, and cost challenges to our UK and global operations. In addition, the recent coronavirus outbreak has caused additional uncertainty in the global economy. These adverse conditions could result in reductions in sales of our applications, longer sales cycles, reductions in subscription duration and value, slower adoption of new technologies, and increased price competition. Any of these events would likely have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial position.
We have a history of cumulative losses, and we do not expect to be profitable on a GAAP basis for the foreseeable future.
We have incurred significant losses in each period since our inception in 2005. These losses and our accumulated deficit reflect the substantial investments we make to acquire new customers and develop our applications. We expect our operating expenses to increase in the future due to anticipated increases in sales and marketing expenses, product development expenses, operations costs, and general and administrative costs, and therefore we expect our losses on a GAAP basis to continue for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, to the extent we are successful in increasing our customer base, we will also incur increased losses in the acquisition period because costs associated with acquiring customers are generally incurred up front, while subscription services revenues are generally recognized ratably over the terms of the agreements, which are typically three years or longer. You should not consider our recent growth in revenues as indicative of our future performance. We cannot ensure that we will achieve GAAP profitability in the future or that, if we do become profitable, we will sustain profitability.
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Our quarterly results may fluctuate significantly and may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business.
Our quarterly operating results, including the levels of our revenues, operating margin, profitability, cash flow, unearned revenue, and remaining subscription services revenue performance obligations, which we also refer to as backlog, may vary significantly in the future and period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. Accordingly, the results of any one quarter should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. Our quarterly financial results may fluctuate as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control, and as a result, may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business. Fluctuation in quarterly results may negatively impact the value of our securities. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our quarterly financial results include, without limitation, those listed below:
•our ability to attract new customers;
•the timing and rate at which we sign agreements with customers;
•the financial condition and creditworthiness of our customers;
•the addition or loss of large customers, including through acquisitions or consolidations;
•customer renewal rates;
•the timing of operating expenses and recognition of revenues;
•the amount and timing of operating expenses related to the maintenance and expansion of our business, operations, and infrastructure;
•network outages or security breaches;
•general economic and market conditions;
•increases or decreases in the number of elements of our services or pricing changes upon any renewals of customer agreements;
•changes in our pricing policies or those of our competitors;
•the mix of applications sold during a period;
•seasonal variations in sales of our applications, which have historically been highest in our fiscal fourth quarter;
•the timing and success of new application and service introductions by us or our competitors;
•changes in the competitive dynamics of our industry, including consolidation among competitors, customers, or strategic partners;
•changes in laws and regulations that impact our business or reported financial results, including changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States; and
•the timing of expenses related to acquisitions and potential future charges for impairment of goodwill.
We are subject to risks associated with our equity investments including partial or complete loss of invested capital, and significant changes in the fair value of this portfolio could adversely impact our financial results.
We invest in early to late stage companies for strategic reasons and to support key business initiatives, and we may not realize a return on our equity investments. Many such companies generate net losses and the market for their products, services, or technologies may be slow to develop or never materialize. These companies are often dependent on the availability of later rounds of financing from banks or investors on favorable terms to continue their operations. The financial success of our investment in any company is typically dependent on a liquidity event, such as a public offering, acquisition, or other favorable market event reflecting appreciation to the cost of our initial investment. The capital markets for public offerings and acquisitions are dynamic and the likelihood of liquidity events for the companies we have invested in could deteriorate, which could result in a loss of all or a substantial part of our investment in these companies.
Further, valuations of non-marketable equity investments are inherently complex due to the lack of readily available market data. In addition, we may experience additional volatility to our statements of operations due to changes in market prices of our marketable equity investments and the valuation and timing of observable price changes or impairments of our non-marketable equity investments. This volatility could be material to our results in any given quarter and may cause our stock price to decline.
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Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights domestically and internationally could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.
Our success and ability to compete depend in part upon our intellectual property. We rely on patent, copyright, trade secret and trademark laws, trade secret protection, and confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and others to protect our intellectual property rights. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property rights may be inadequate. While we have patent applications pending in the United States, we may be unable to obtain patent protection for the technology covered in our patent applications. In addition, any patents issued to us in the future may not provide us with competitive advantages or may be successfully challenged by third parties. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability, and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties, including those affiliated with state-sponsored actors, to copy or reverse engineer our applications, including with the assistance of insiders, and use information that we regard as proprietary to create products and services that compete with ours. Some license provisions protecting against unauthorized use, copying, transfer, and disclosure of our technology may be unenforceable under the laws of jurisdictions outside the United States. In addition, the laws of some countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States.
We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with the parties with whom we have strategic relationships and business alliances. No assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to and distribution of our applications and proprietary information. Further, these agreements do not prevent our competitors or partners from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our applications.
We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time-consuming, and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims, and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Our failure to secure, protect, and enforce our intellectual property rights could have a serious adverse effect on our brand and business.
We may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights.
There is considerable patent and other intellectual property development activity in our industry. Our competitors, as well as a number of other entities and individuals, may own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our industry. From time to time, third parties may claim that we are infringing upon their intellectual property rights, and we may be found to be infringing upon such rights. In the future, they may claim that our applications and underlying technology infringe or violate their intellectual property rights, even if we are unaware of the intellectual property rights that others may claim cover some or all of our technology or services. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our services, require us to change our products, technology, or business practices, or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. We may also be obligated to indemnify our customers or business partners or pay substantial settlement costs, including royalty payments, in connection with any such claim or litigation and to obtain licenses, modify applications, or refund fees, which could be costly. Even if we were to prevail in such a dispute, any litigation regarding our intellectual property could be costly and time-consuming and divert the attention of our management and key personnel from our business operations. Furthermore, from time to time we may introduce or acquire new products, including in areas where we historically have not competed, which could increase our exposure to patent and other intellectual property claims.
Some of our applications utilize open source software, and any failure to comply with the terms of one or more of these open source licenses could negatively affect our business.
Some of our applications include software covered by open source licenses, which may include, by way of example, GNU General Public License and the Apache License. The terms of various open source licenses have not been interpreted by United States courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market our applications. By the terms of certain open source licenses, we could be required to release the source code of our proprietary software, and to make our proprietary software available under open source licenses, if we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner. In the event that portions of our proprietary software are determined to be impacted by an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code, re-engineer all or a portion of our technologies, or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our technologies, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and services. In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the origin of the software. Many of the risks associated with usage of open source software cannot be eliminated and could negatively affect our business.
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Catastrophic events may disrupt our business.
Our corporate headquarters are located in Pleasanton, California, and we have data centers located in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The west coast of the United States contains active earthquake zones and the southeast is subject to seasonal hurricanes. Additionally, we rely on our network and third-party infrastructure and enterprise applications, internal technology systems, and our website for our development, marketing, operational support, hosted services, and sales activities. We also rely on AWS’s and Dimension Data’s distributed computing infrastructure platforms that are located in a wide variety of regions. In the event of a major earthquake, hurricane, or other natural disaster or a catastrophic event such as fire, power loss, telecommunications failure, vandalism, civil unrest, cyber-attack, geopolitical instability, war, terrorist attack, pandemics or other public health emergencies (such as the recent coronavirus outbreak), or the effects of climate change (such as drought, flooding, wildfires, increased storm severity, and sea level rise), we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, delays in our product development, lengthy interruptions in our services, breaches of data security, and loss of critical data, all of which could cause reputational harm or otherwise have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
We may discover weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting, which may adversely affect investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and consequently the market price of our securities.
As a public company, we are required to design and maintain proper and effective internal controls over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal controls. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires that we evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting and provide a management report on the internal controls over financial reporting, which must be attested to by our independent registered public accounting firm. If we have a material weakness in our internal controls over financial reporting, we may not detect errors on a timely basis and our financial statements may be materially misstated.
The process of compiling the system and processing documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404 is challenging and costly. In the future, we may not be able to complete our evaluation, testing, and any required remediation in a timely fashion. If we identify material weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting, if we are unable to comply with the requirements of Section 404 in a timely manner, if we are unable to assert that our internal controls over financial reporting are effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our securities could be negatively affected, and we could become subject to investigations by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the SEC, or other regulatory authorities, which could require additional financial and management resources. In addition, because we use Workday’s financial management application, any problems that we experience with financial reporting and compliance could be negatively perceived by prospective or current customers, and negatively impact demand for our applications.
We may not be able to utilize a portion of our net operating loss or research tax credit carryforwards, which could adversely affect our profitability.
As of January 31, 2020, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards due to prior period losses. If not utilized, the pre-fiscal 2018 federal and the state net operating loss carryforwards expire in varying amounts between fiscal 2021, and 2040. The federal net operating losses generated in and after fiscal 2018 do not expire and may be carried forward indefinitely. We also have federal research tax credit carryforwards, which if not utilized will begin to expire in fiscal 2021. These net operating loss and research tax credit carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to reduce future income tax liabilities, which could adversely affect our profitability. In addition, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, our ability to utilize net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes, such as research tax credits, in any taxable year may be limited if we experience an “ownership change.” A Section 382 “ownership change” generally occurs if one or more stockholders or groups of stockholders who own at least 5% of our stock increase their ownership by more than 50 percentage points over their lowest ownership percentage within a rolling three-year period. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. It is possible that an ownership change, or any future ownership change, could have a material effect on the use of our net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes, which could adversely affect our profitability.
Adverse tax laws or regulations could be enacted or existing laws could be applied to us or our customers, which could increase the costs of our services and adversely impact our business.
We operate and are subject to taxes in the United States and numerous other jurisdictions throughout the world. Changes to federal, state, local, or international tax laws on income, sales, use, indirect, or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances on multinational corporations are currently being considered by the United States and other countries where we do business. These contemplated legislative initiatives include, but are not limited to, changes to transfer pricing policies and definitional changes to permanent establishment that could be applied solely or disproportionately to services provided over the internet. These contemplated tax initiatives, if finalized and adopted by countries, may ultimately impact our effective tax rate and could adversely affect our sales activity resulting in a negative impact on our operating results and cash flows.
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In addition, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances could be interpreted, changed, modified, or applied adversely to us (possibly with retroactive effect), which could require us to pay additional tax amounts, fines or penalties, and interest for past amounts. Existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances could also be interpreted, changed, modified, or applied adversely to our customers (possibly with retroactive effect), which could require our customers to pay additional tax amounts with respect to services we have provided, fines or penalties, and interest for past amounts. If we are unsuccessful in collecting such taxes from our customers, we could be held liable for such costs, thereby adversely impacting our operating results and cash flows. If our customers must pay additional fines or penalties, it could adversely affect demand for our services.
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Tax Act”) was enacted on December 22, 2017, and significantly affected U.S. tax law by changing how the U.S. imposes income tax on multinational corporations. The U.S. Department of Treasury has broad authority to issue regulations and interpretative guidance that may significantly impact how we will apply the law and impact our operating results in the period issued. The Tax Act requires complex computations not previously provided in U.S. tax law. As such, the application of accounting guidance for such items is currently uncertain. Further, compliance with the Tax Act and the accounting for such provisions require accumulation of information not previously required or regularly produced. As additional regulatory guidance is issued by the applicable taxing authorities and as accounting treatment is clarified, we will perform additional analysis on the application of the law and refine estimates in calculating the effect, which may produce different results and will be reflected in the period the analysis is completed.
Risks Related to Our Class A Common Stock
Our Chairman and CEO have control over key decision making as a result of their control of a majority of our voting stock.
As of January 31, 2020, our co-founder and Chairman David Duffield, together with his affiliates, held voting rights with respect to approximately 52 million shares of Class B common stock and 0.4 million shares of Class A common stock. As of January 31, 2020, our co-founder and CEO Aneel Bhusri, together with his affiliates, held voting rights with respect to approximately 8 million shares of Class B common stock and 0.2 million shares of Class A common stock. In addition, Mr. Bhusri holds exercisable stock options to acquire approximately 1 million shares of Class B common stock and 0.1 million RSUs, which will be settled in an equivalent number of shares of Class A common stock. Further, Messrs. Duffield and Bhusri have entered into a voting agreement under which each has granted a voting proxy with respect to certain Class B common stock beneficially owned by him effective upon his death or incapacity as described in our registration statement on Form S-1 filed in connection with our initial public offering. Messrs. Duffield and Bhusri have each initially designated the other as their respective proxies. Accordingly, upon the death or incapacity of either Mr. Duffield or Mr. Bhusri, the other would individually continue to control the voting of shares subject to the voting proxy. Collectively, the shares described above represent a substantial majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. As a result, Messrs. Duffield and Bhusri have the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. In addition, they have the ability to control the management and affairs of our company as a result of their positions as our Chairman and CEO, respectively, and their ability to control the election of our directors. Mr. Duffield, in his capacity as a board member, and Mr. Bhusri, in his capacity as a board member and officer, each owe a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner they reasonably believe to be in the best interests of our stockholders. As stockholders, even as controlling stockholders, they are entitled to vote their shares in their own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our stockholders generally.
The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control with our Chairman and CEO, and also with other executive officers, directors, and affiliates; this will limit or preclude the ability of non-affiliates to influence corporate matters.
Our Class B common stock has 10 votes per share and our Class A common stock, which is the stock that is publicly traded, has one vote per share. Stockholders who hold shares of Class B common stock, including our executive officers, directors, and other affiliates, together hold a substantial majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock as of January 31, 2020. Because of the ten-to-one voting ratio between our Class B and Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock collectively will continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore be able to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval until the conversion of all shares of all Class A and Class B shares to a single class of common stock on the date that is the first to occur of (i) October 17, 2032, (ii) such time as the shares of Class B common stock represent less than 9% of the outstanding Class A and Class B common stock, (iii) nine months following the death of both Mr. Duffield and Mr. Bhusri, or (iv) the date on which the holders of a majority of the shares of Class B common stock elect to convert all shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock into a single class of common stock. This concentrated control will limit or preclude the ability of non-affiliates to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future.
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Future transfers by holders of Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting to Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as certain transfers effected for estate planning purposes. The conversion of Class B common stock to Class A common stock will have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of Class B common stock who retain their shares in the long term. If, for example, our Chairman and CEO retain a significant portion of their holdings of Class B common stock for an extended period of time, they could, in the future, continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock.
Our stock price has been volatile in the past and may be subject to volatility in the future.
The trading price of our Class A common stock has been volatile historically and could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors described below. These factors, as well as the volatility of our Class A common stock, could also impact the price of our convertible senior notes. The factors that may affect the trading price of our securities, some of which are beyond our control, include:
•overall performance of the equity markets;
•fluctuations in the valuation of companies perceived by investors to be comparable to us, such as high-growth or cloud companies, or in valuation metrics, such as our price to revenues ratio;
•guidance as to our operating results that we provide to the public, differences between our guidance and market expectations, our failure to meet our guidance, or changes in recommendations by securities analysts that follow our securities;
•announcements of technological innovations, new applications or enhancements to services, acquisitions, strategic alliances, or significant agreements by us or by our competitors;
•announcements of negative corporate developments by our competitors and other high-growth or cloud companies including, among other things, any announcements related to security incidents;
•disruptions in our services due to computer hardware, software, or network problems;
•announcements of customer additions and customer cancellations or delays in customer purchases;
•recruitment or departure of key personnel;
•the economy as a whole, market conditions in our industry, and the industries of our customers;
•trading activity by directors, executive officers and significant stockholders, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell their shares;
•the exercise of rights held by certain of our stockholders, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or our stockholders;
•the size of our market float and significant stock option exercises;
•any future issuances of securities;
•sales and purchases of any Class A common stock issued upon conversion of our convertible senior notes or in connection with the convertible note hedge and warrant transactions related to such convertible senior notes;
•our operating performance and the performance of other similar companies; and
•the sale or availability for sale of a large number of shares of our Class A common stock in the public market.
Additionally, the stock markets have at times experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and may in the future affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. These fluctuations have, in some cases, been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of these companies. Further, the trading prices of publicly traded shares of companies in our industry have been particularly volatile and may be very volatile in the future.
In the past, some companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, which could harm our business.
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We have substantial indebtedness in the form of convertible senior notes, which may adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.
In June 2013, we completed an offering of $250 million of 1.50% convertible senior notes due July 15, 2020 (“2020 Notes”). In September 2017, we completed an offering of $1.15 billion of 0.25% convertible senior notes due October 1, 2022 (“2022 Notes”). As a result of these convertible notes offerings, we incurred $250 million principal amount of indebtedness, which we may be required to pay at maturity in 2020, and $1.15 billion principal amount of indebtedness, which we may be required to pay at maturity in 2022, or upon the occurrence of a fundamental change (as defined in the applicable indenture). We may incur substantial additional debt in the future, some of which may be secured debt. There can be no assurance that we will be able to repay this indebtedness when due, or that we will be able to refinance this indebtedness on acceptable terms or at all. Our ability to pay cash upon conversion or repurchase of the 2020 Notes or the 2022 Notes may be limited by law, regulatory authority, or agreements governing our future indebtedness and is dependent on our future performance, which is subject to economic, financial, competitive, and other factors beyond our control. Any future debt may also contain limitations on our ability to pay cash upon a conversion request or repurchase upon a fundamental change.
In addition, this indebtedness could, among other things:
•make it difficult for us to pay other obligations;
•make it difficult to obtain favorable terms for any necessary future financing for working capital, capital expenditures, debt service requirements, or other purposes;
•adversely affect our liquidity and result in a material adverse effect on our financial position upon repayment of the indebtedness;
•require us to dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to service and repay the indebtedness, reducing the amount of cash flow available for other purposes;
•limit our flexibility in planning for and reacting to changes in our business; and
•negatively impact our credit rating, which could affect our business.
The convertible note hedge and warrant transactions may affect the value of our Class A common stock.
In connection with the sale of our convertible notes, we entered into convertible note hedge transactions with institutions that we refer to as the option counterparties. We also entered into warrant transactions with the option counterparties pursuant to which we sold warrants for the purchase of our Class A common stock. The convertible note hedge transactions are expected to offset the potential dilution to our Class A common stock upon any conversion of the convertible notes. The warrant transactions could separately have a dilutive effect to the extent that the market price per share of our Class A common stock exceeds the exercise price of the relevant warrants.
The option counterparties or their respective affiliates may modify their hedge positions by entering into or unwinding various derivatives with respect to our Class A common stock and/or purchasing or selling our Class A common stock or other securities of ours in secondary market transactions prior to the maturity of the convertible notes. This activity could suppress or inflate the market price of our Class A common stock.
We will also be subject to the risk that these option counterparties may default under the convertible note hedge transactions. Our exposure to the credit risk of the option counterparties will not be secured by any collateral. If one or more of the option counterparties to one or more of our convertible note hedge transactions becomes subject to insolvency proceedings, we will become an unsecured creditor in those proceedings with a claim equal to our exposure at the time under those transactions. Our exposure will depend on many factors but, generally, the increase in our exposure will be correlated to the increase in the market price of our Class A common stock during the related settlement period. In addition, upon a default by one of the option counterparties, we may suffer dilution with respect to our Class A common stock as well as adverse financial consequences.
Delaware law and provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws could make a merger, tender offer, or proxy contest difficult, thereby depressing the market price of our Class A common stock.
Our status as a Delaware corporation and the anti-takeover provisions of the Delaware General Corporation Law may discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control by prohibiting us from engaging in a business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years after the person becomes an interested stockholder, even if a change of control would be beneficial to our existing stockholders. In addition, our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws contain provisions that may make the acquisition of our company more difficult, including the following:
•any transaction that would result in a change in control of our company requires the approval of a majority of our outstanding Class B common stock voting as a separate class;
•our dual class common stock structure, which provides our chairman and CEO with the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring stockholder approval, even if they own significantly less than a majority of the shares of our outstanding Class A and Class B common stock;
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•our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors with staggered three-year terms and directors are only able to be removed from office for cause;
•when the outstanding shares of our Class B common stock represent less than a majority of the combined voting power of common stock:
◦certain amendments to our restated certificate of incorporation or restated bylaws will require the approval of two-thirds of the combined vote of our then-outstanding shares of Class A and Class B common stock;
◦our stockholders will only be able to take action at a meeting of stockholders and not by written consent; and
◦vacancies on our board of directors will be able to be filled only by our board of directors and not by stockholders;
•only our chairman of the board, chief executive officer, either co-president, or a majority of our board of directors are authorized to call a special meeting of stockholders;
•certain litigation against us can only be brought in Delaware;
•we will have two classes of common stock until the date that is the first to occur of (i) October 17, 2032, (ii) such time as the shares of Class B common stock represent less than 9% of the outstanding Class A and Class B common stock, (iii) nine months following the death of both Mr. Duffield and Mr. Bhusri, or (iv) the date on which the holders of a majority of the shares of Class B common stock elect to convert all shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock into a single class of common stock;
•our restated certificate of incorporation authorizes undesignated preferred stock, the terms of which may be established, and shares of which may be issued, without the approval of the holders of Class A common stock; and
•advance notice procedures apply for stockholders to nominate candidates for election as directors or to bring matters before an annual meeting of stockholders.
These anti-takeover defenses could discourage, delay, or prevent a transaction involving a change in control of our company. These provisions could also discourage proxy contests and make it more difficult for stockholders to elect directors of their choosing and to cause us to take other corporate actions they desire, any of which, under certain circumstances, could depress the market price of our securities.
If securities or industry analysts publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, or discontinue publishing research about our business, the price and trading volume of our securities could decline.
The trading market for our securities will depend in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our Class A common stock or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, the price of our securities would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our securities could decrease, which might cause the price and trading volume of our securities to decline.
We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.
We have never declared nor paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business, and we do not expect to declare or pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Consequently, stockholders must rely on sales of their common stock after price appreciation as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment.
ITEM 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
None.
ITEM 2. PROPERTIES
Our corporate headquarters, which includes operations and product development facilities, is located in Pleasanton, California. It consists of approximately 493,000 square feet of leased facilities, 677,000 square feet of owned facilities, and a 6.9 acre parcel of leased land. The land lease will expire in 2108. In addition, we lease office space in various locations, including North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, and data center capacity throughout North America and Europe. We expect to expand our facilities capacity at our corporate headquarters and in certain field locations during fiscal 2021, to support our continued growth. We believe that we will be able to obtain additional space on commercially reasonable terms.
We lease certain office space from an affiliate of our Chairman, Mr. Duffield, adjacent to our corporate headquarters. We have and will continue to seek independent evaluations of current market rates at the time of lease negotiations with the goal of leasing at a rate comparable to the current market price. We are currently considering purchasing these buildings.
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ITEM 3. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
From time to time, we are or may be involved in various legal proceedings arising from the normal course of business including matters related to alleged infringement of third-party patents and other intellectual property rights, commercial, employment, and other claims. We are not presently a party to any litigation the outcome of which we believe, if determined adversely to us, would individually or taken together have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, cash flows, or financial condition. Defending such proceedings is costly and can impose a significant burden on management and employees, we may receive unfavorable preliminary or interim rulings in the course of litigation, and there can be no assurances that favorable final outcomes will be obtained. The resolution of legal matters could prevent us from offering one or more of our applications, services, or features to others, could require us to change our technology or business practices, pay monetary damages, or enter into short- or long-term royalty or licensing agreements, or could otherwise be material to our financial condition or cash flows, or both, or adversely affect our operating results.
ITEM 4. MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES
Not applicable.
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PART II
ITEM 5. MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS, AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES
Market Information for Common Stock
Our Class A common stock has traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “WDAY” since September 20, 2017. Prior to that time, it traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Our Class B common stock is not listed or traded on any stock exchange.
Dividend Policy
We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business and do not expect to declare or pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Any further determination to pay dividends on our capital stock will be at the discretion of our board of directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on our financial condition, operating results, capital requirements, general business conditions, and other factors that our board of directors considers relevant.
Stockholders
As of February 28, 2020, there were 17 stockholders of record of our Class A common stock, including The Depository Trust Company, which holds shares of our common stock on behalf of an indeterminate number of beneficial owners, as well as 87 stockholders of record of our Class B common stock.
Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans
The information required for this Item is incorporated by reference from our Proxy Statement to be filed for our 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.
Stock Performance Graph
The following shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or deemed “filed” for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act or subject to Regulation 14A or 14C, other than as provided by this Item 5, or to the liabilities of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or incorporated by reference into any of our other filings under the Exchange Act or the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, except to the extent we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing.
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This chart compares the cumulative total return on our common stock with that of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 1500 Application Software Index. The chart assumes $100 was invested at the close of market on January 31, 2015, in the Class A common stock of Workday, Inc., the S&P 500 Index, and the S&P 1500 Application Software Index, and assumes the reinvestment of any dividends. The stock price performance on the following graph is not necessarily indicative of future stock price performance.
| Company/Index | 1/31/2015 | 1/31/2016 | 1/31/2017 | 1/31/2018 | 1/31/2019 | 1/31/2020 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Workday, Inc. | $ | 100.00 | $ | 79.30 | $ | 104.57 | $ | 150.88 | $ | 228.45 | $ | 232.36 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| S&P 500 Index | 100.00 | 99.33 | 119.22 | 150.70 | 147.20 | 179.10 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| S&P 1500 Application Software Index | 100.00 | 113.48 | 144.13 | 212.86 | 256.87 | 343.17 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities
None.
Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer and Affiliated Purchases
During the three months ended January 31, 2020, we did not repurchase any of our securities.
ITEM 6. SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA
The consolidated statements of operations data and the consolidated balance sheets data are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements and should be read together with “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” our consolidated financial statements, and the related notes included elsewhere in this filing. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of our results in any future period.
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| Year Ended January 31, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| *As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (in thousands, except per share data) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Consolidated Statements of Operations Data: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Revenues: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Subscription services | $ | 3,096,389 | $ | 2,385,769 | $ | 1,787,833 | $ | 1,290,733 | $ | 920,196 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Professional services | 530,817 | 436,411 | 355,217 | 283,707 | 236,494 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total revenues | 3,627,206 | 2,822,180 | 2,143,050 | 1,574,440 | 1,156,690 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Costs and expenses (1): | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Costs of subscription services | 488,513 | 379,877 | 273,461 | 213,389 | 149,869 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Costs of professional services | 576,745 | 455,073 | 355,952 | 270,156 | 224,558 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Product development | 1,549,906 | 1,211,832 | 910,584 | 680,531 | 469,944 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | 1,146,548 | 891,345 | 683,367 | 565,328 | 413,530 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | 367,724 | 347,337 | 222,909 | 198,122 | 148,578 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total costs and expenses | 4,129,436 | 3,285,464 | 2,446,273 | 1,927,526 | 1,406,479 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operating loss | (502,230) | (463,284) | (303,223) | (353,086) | (249,789) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Other income (expense), net | 19,783 | 39,532 | (11,563) | (32,427) | (24,242) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Loss before provision for (benefit from) income taxes | (482,447) | (423,752) | (314,786) | (385,513) | (274,031) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Provision for (benefit from) income taxes | (1,773) | (5,494) | 6,436 | (814) | 1,017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Net loss | $ | (480,674) | $ | (418,258) | $ | (321,222) | $ | (384,699) | $ | (275,048) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Net loss attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders | $ | (480,674) | $ | (418,258) | $ | (321,222) | $ | (384,699) | $ | (275,048) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Net loss per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders, basic and diluted | $ | (2.12) | $ | (1.93) | $ | (1.55) | $ | (1.94) | $ | (1.45) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Weighted-average shares used to compute net loss per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders | 227,185 | 216,789 | 207,774 | 198,214 | 190,016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
(1)Costs and expenses include share-based compensation expenses as follows (in thousands):
| Year Ended January 31, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Costs of subscription services | $ | 49,919 | $ | 36,754 | $ | 26,280 | $ | 20,773 | $ | 12,060 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Costs of professional services | 80,401 | 55,535 | 37,592 | 26,833 | 19,526 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Product development | 434,188 | 320,876 | 229,819 | 166,529 | 109,362 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | 176,758 | 132,810 | 100,762 | 86,229 | 51,617 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | 118,614 | 127,443 | 83,972 | 78,265 | 57,405 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| As of January 31, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| *As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (in thousands) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Consolidated Balance Sheet Data: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cash and cash equivalents | $ | 731,141 | $ | 638,554 | $ | 1,134,355 | $ | 539,923 | $ | 300,087 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Marketable securities | 1,213,432 | 1,139,864 | 2,133,495 | 1,456,822 | 1,669,372 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Working capital | 125,218 | 269,905 | 1,898,104 | 1,239,202 | 1,468,067 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Property and equipment, net | 936,179 | 796,907 | 546,609 | 365,877 | 214,158 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operating lease right-of-use assets | 290,902 | — | — | — | — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total assets | 6,816,365 | 5,520,746 | 4,947,424 | 3,268,282 | 2,812,370 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total unearned revenue | 2,309,203 | 1,949,270 | 1,537,147 | 1,221,543 | 891,882 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Convertible senior notes, net | 1,262,286 | 1,204,778 | 1,491,354 | 534,423 | 507,476 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total operating lease liabilities | 307,572 | — | — | — | — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total liabilities | 4,329,814 | 3,562,304 | 3,367,059 | 1,991,674 | 1,586,090 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total stockholders’ equity | 2,486,551 | 1,958,442 | 1,580,365 | 1,276,608 | 1,226,280 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Year Ended January 31, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| *As Adjusted | *As Adjusted | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (in thousands) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cash Flow Data: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities | $ | 864,598 | $ | 606,658 | $ | 465,727 | $ | 350,626 | $ | 258,637 | |||||||||||||||||||
*The summary consolidated financial data for the years ended January 31, 2017, and 2016, and as of January 31, 2017, and 2016 reflects the adoption of Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (“Topic 606”), and ASU No. 2016-18, Statement of Cash Flows, Restricted Cash.
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ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
You should read the following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included elsewhere in this report. The following discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates, and beliefs. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this report, particularly in “Risk Factors.”
The following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations covers fiscal 2020 and 2019 items and year-over-year comparisons between fiscal 2020 and 2019. Discussions of fiscal 2018 items and year-over-year comparisons between fiscal 2019 and 2018 that are not included in this Form 10-K can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2019, that was filed with the SEC on March 18, 2019.
Overview
Founded in 2005, Workday delivers financial management, human capital management, planning, and analytics applications designed for the world’s largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. We help organizations better manage their financial and human capital resources with one system that helps enable them to plan, execute, analyze, and extend — all powered by machine learning.
Our diverse customer base includes medium and large, global companies, as well as smaller organizations that primarily use our planning product. Our cycle of frequent updates has facilitated rapid innovation and the introduction of new applications throughout our history. We began offering our HCM application in 2006 and our Financial Management application in 2007. Since then we have continued to invest in innovation and have consistently introduced new services to our customers, including through the acquisition of Adaptive Insights in fiscal 2019, and Scout RFP in fiscal 2020.
We have achieved significant growth in a relatively short period of time with a substantial amount of our growth coming from new customers. Our current financial focus is on growing our revenues and expanding our customer base. While we are incurring losses today, we strive to invest in a disciplined manner across all of our functional areas to sustain continued near-term revenue growth and support our long-term initiatives.
We offer Workday applications to our customers on an enterprise-wide subscription basis, typically with contract terms of three years or longer and with subscription fees largely based on the size of the customer’s workforce. We generally recognize revenues from subscription fees ratably over the term of the contract. We currently derive a substantial majority of our subscription services revenues from subscriptions to our HCM application. We market our applications primarily through our direct sales force.
Our operating expenses have increased significantly in absolute dollars in recent periods, primarily due to the significant growth of our employee population. We had approximately 12,200 and approximately 10,500 employees as of January 31, 2020, and 2019, respectively. We expect our product development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses as a percentage of total revenues to decrease over time as we grow our revenues, and we anticipate that we will gain economies of scale by increasing our customer base without direct incremental development costs.
We intend to continue investing for long-term growth. We have invested, and expect to continue to invest, heavily in our product development efforts to deliver additional compelling applications and to address customers’ evolving needs. In addition, we plan to continue to expand our ability to sell our applications globally, particularly in Europe and Asia, by investing in product development and customer support to address the business needs of local markets, increasing our sales and marketing organizations, acquiring, building and/or leasing additional office space, and expanding our ecosystem of service partners to support local deployments. We expect to make further significant investments in our data center capacity as we plan for future growth. We are also investing in personnel to service our growing customer base.
We also regularly evaluate acquisitions and investment opportunities in complementary businesses, employee teams, services, technologies, and intellectual property rights in an effort to expand our product and service offerings. We expect to continue making such acquisitions and investments in the future, and we plan to reinvest a significant portion of our incremental revenue in future periods to grow our business and continue our leadership role in the industry. While we remain focused on improving operating margins, these acquisitions and investments will increase our costs on an absolute basis in the near-term. Many of these investments will occur in advance of experiencing any direct benefit from them and could make it difficult to determine if we are allocating our resources efficiently.
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Since inception, we have also invested heavily in our professional services organization to help ensure that customers successfully deploy and adopt our applications. Additionally, we continue to expand our professional service partner ecosystem to further support our customers. We believe our investment in professional services, as well as partners building consulting practices around Workday, will drive additional customer subscriptions and continued growth in revenues. Due to our ability to leverage the expanding partner ecosystem, we expect that the rate of professional services revenue growth will decline over time and continue to be lower than subscription revenue growth.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenues
We primarily derive our revenues from subscription services and professional services. Subscription services revenues primarily consist of fees that give our customers access to our cloud applications, which include related customer support. Professional services fees include deployment services, optimization services, and training.
Subscription services revenues accounted for 85% of our total revenues during fiscal 2020, and represented 96% of our total unearned revenue as of January 31, 2020. Subscription services revenues are driven primarily by the number of customers, the number of workers at each customer, the specific applications subscribed to by each customer, and the price of our applications.
The mix of the applications to which a customer subscribes can affect our financial performance due to price differentials in our applications. Pricing for our applications varies based on many factors, including the complexity and maturity of the application and its acceptance in the marketplace. New products or services offerings by competitors in the future could also impact the mix and pricing of our offerings.
Subscription services revenues are recognized over time as they are delivered and consumed concurrently over the contractual term, beginning on the date our service is made available to the customer. Our subscription contracts typically have a term of three years or longer and are generally non-cancelable. We generally invoice our customers annually in advance. Amounts that have been invoiced are initially recorded as unearned revenue.
Our consulting engagements are generally billed on a time and materials basis or fixed price basis. For contracts billed on a time and materials basis, revenue is recognized over time as the professional services are performed. For contracts billed on a fixed price basis, revenue is recognized over time based on the proportion of the professional services performed. In some cases, we supplement our consulting teams by subcontracting resources from our service partners and deploying them on customer engagements. As our professional services organization and the Workday-related consulting practices of our partner firms continue to develop, we expect these partners to increasingly contract directly with our subscription customers. As a result of this trend, and the increase of our subscription services revenues, we expect our professional services revenues as a percentage of total revenues to decline over time.
Costs and Expenses
Costs of subscription services revenues. Costs of subscription services revenues consist primarily of employee-related expenses related to hosting our applications and providing customer support, the costs of data center capacity, and depreciation of computer equipment and software.
Costs of professional services revenues. Costs of professional services revenues consist primarily of employee-related expenses associated with these services, the costs of subcontractors, and travel expenses.
Product development. Product development expenses consist primarily of employee-related costs. We continue to focus our product development efforts on adding new features and applications, increasing the functionality, and enhancing the ease of use of our cloud applications.
Sales and marketing. Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of employee-related costs, sales commissions, marketing programs, and travel expenses. Marketing programs consist of advertising, events, corporate communications, brand building, and product marketing activities. Sales commissions are considered incremental costs of obtaining a contract with a customer and are deferred and amortized. Sales commissions for initial contracts are deferred and then amortized on a straight-line basis over a period of benefit that we have determined to be five years. Sales commissions for renewal contracts are deferred and then amortized on a straight-line basis over the related contractual renewal period.
General and administrative. General and administrative expenses consist of employee-related costs for finance and accounting, legal, human resources, information systems personnel, professional fees, and other corporate expenses.
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Results of Operations
Revenues
Our total revenues for fiscal 2020, 2019, and 2018 were as follows (in thousands):
| Year Ended January 31, | |||||||||||||||||
| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | |||||||||||||||
| Subscription services | $ | 3,096,389 | $ | 2,385,769 | $ | 1,787,833 | |||||||||||
| Professional services | 530,817 | 436,411 | 355,217 | ||||||||||||||
| Total revenues | $ | 3,627,206 | $ | 2,822,180 | $ | 2,143,050 | |||||||||||
Total revenues were $3.6 billion for fiscal 2020, compared to $2.8 billion for fiscal 2019, an increase of $0.8 billion, or 29%. Subscription services revenues were $3.1 billion for fiscal 2020, compared to $2.4 billion for fiscal 2019, an increase of $0.7 billion, or 30%. The increase in subscription services revenues was due primarily to an increased number of customer contracts as compared to the prior year. Professional services revenues were $531 million for fiscal 2020, compared to $436 million for fiscal 2019, an increase of $95 million, or 22%. The increase in professional services revenues was due primarily to Workday performing deployment and integration services for a greater number of customers than in the prior year period.
Operating Expenses
GAAP operating expenses were $4.1 billion for fiscal 2020, compared to $3.3 billion for fiscal 2019, an increase of $0.8 billion, or 26%. The increase was primarily due to an increase in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount.
We use the non-GAAP financial measure of non-GAAP operating expenses to understand and compare operating results across accounting periods, for internal budgeting and forecasting purposes, for short- and long-term operating plans, and to evaluate our financial performance. We believe that non-GAAP operating expenses reflect our ongoing business in a manner that allows for meaningful period-to-period comparisons and analysis of trends in our business. We also believe that non-GAAP operating expenses provide useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating results and prospects in the same manner as management and in comparing financial results across accounting periods and to those of peer companies.
Non-GAAP operating expenses are calculated by excluding share-based compensation expenses, and certain other expenses, which consist of employer payroll tax-related items on employee stock transactions and amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets.
Non-GAAP operating expenses were $3.1 billion for fiscal 2020, compared to $2.5 billion for fiscal 2019, an increase of $0.6 billion, or 24%. The increase was primarily due to an increase in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount.
Reconciliations of our GAAP to non-GAAP operating expenses were as follows (in thousands):
| Year Ended January 31, 2020 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| GAAP Operating Expenses | Share-Based Compensation Expenses (1) | Other Operating Expenses (2) | Non-GAAP Operating Expenses (3) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Costs of subscription services | $ | 488,513 | $ | (49,919) | $ | (40,326) | $ | 398,268 | |||||||||||||||
| Costs of professional services | 576,745 | (80,401) | (6,440) | 489,904 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Product development | 1,549,906 | (434,188) | (30,684) | 1,085,034 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | 1,146,548 | (176,758) | (40,774) | 929,016 | |||||||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | 367,724 | (118,614) | (8,592) | 240,518 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Total costs and expenses | $ | 4,129,436 | $ | (859,880) | $ | (126,816) | $ | 3,142,740 | |||||||||||||||
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| Year Ended January 31, 2019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| GAAP Operating Expenses | Share-Based Compensation Expenses (1) | Other Operating Expenses (2) | Non-GAAP Operating Expenses (3) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Costs of subscription services | $ | 379,877 | $ | (36,754) | $ | (31,395) | $ | 311,728 | |||||||||||||||
| Costs of professional services | 455,073 | (55,535) | (3,653) | 395,885 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Product development | 1,211,832 | (320,876) | (21,230) | 869,726 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | 891,345 | (132,810) | (19,725) | 738,810 | |||||||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | 347,337 | (127,443) | (5,120) | 214,774 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Total costs and expenses | $ | 3,285,464 | $ | (673,418) | $ | (81,123) | $ | 2,530,923 | |||||||||||||||
| Year Ended January 31, 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| GAAP Operating Expenses | Share-Based Compensation Expenses (1) | Other Operating Expenses (2) | Non-GAAP Operating Expenses (3) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Costs of subscription services | $ | 273,461 | $ | (26,280) | $ | (7,043) | $ | 240,138 | |||||||||||||||
| Costs of professional services | 355,952 | (37,592) | (2,045) | 316,315 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Product development | 910,584 | (229,819) | (23,128) | 657,637 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | 683,367 | (100,762) | (4,567) | 578,038 | |||||||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | 222,909 | (83,972) | |||||||||||||||||||||