BOX INC - Annual Report: 2022 (Form 10-K)

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, 2022

OR

☐ TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM TO

Commission File Number 001-36805

Box, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its Charter)

900 Jefferson Ave.

Redwood City, California 94063

(Address of principal executive offices and Zip Code)

(877) 729-4269

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

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

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act (the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the 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 ☒ 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 (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ 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.

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 has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). YES ☐ NO ☒

The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the registrant, based on the closing price of a share of the registrant’s Class A common stock on July 31, 2021 as reported by the New York Stock Exchange on such date was approximately $3.6 billion. Shares of the registrant’s Class A common stock held by each executive officer and director of the registrant have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This calculation does not reflect a determination that certain persons are affiliates of the registrant for any other purpose.

As of February 28, 2022, the number of shares of the registrant’s Class A common stock outstanding was 143,423,689.

Box, Inc.

Annual Report on Form 10-K

For the Fiscal Year Ended January 31, 2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “could,” “intends,” “target,” “projects,” “contemplates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions. Forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K include, but are not limited to, statements about:

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These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those described in the section titled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment, and 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 forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements.

You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee that the future results, levels of activity, performance or events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur. Moreover, neither we nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations, except as required by law.

You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K and the documents that we reference in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and have filed with the SEC as exhibits to this Annual Report on Form 10-K with the understanding that our actual future results, levels of activity, performance, and events and circumstances may be materially different from what we expect.

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PART I

Item 1. BUSINESS

Overview

Box is the Content Cloud: one secure, cloud-native platform for managing the entire content journey. Content – from blueprints to wireframes, videos to documents, proprietary formats to PDFs – is the source of an organization’s unique value. Our cloud content management platform enables our customers, including 67% of the Fortune 500, to securely manage the entire content lifecycle, from the moment a file is created or ingested to when it’s shared, edited, published, approved, signed, classified, and retained. Box keeps content secure and compliant, while also allowing easy access and sharing of this content from anywhere, on any device – both within the organization and with external partners.

With our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, users can collaborate on content both internally and with external parties, automate content-driven business processes, develop custom applications, and implement data protection, security and compliance features to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, internal policies and industry standards and regulations. The Box Content Cloud accelerates business processes, improves employee productivity, enables secure remote work, and protects an organization’s most valuable data. Our platform enables a broad set of high-value business use cases across enterprises, hundreds of file formats and media types, and user experiences. Our platform integrates with leading enterprise business applications, and is compatible with multiple application environments, operating systems and devices, ensuring that workers can securely access their critical business content whenever and wherever they need it.

Our go-to-market strategy is focused on selling our platform as a solution for the entire enterprise with the full set of Box capabilities, leveraging our product suite offerings, and driving high-value significant business outcomes for our customers. This strategy combines top-down, high-touch sales efforts with end-user-driven bottoms-up adoption. We focus our efforts on larger enterprises, capitalizing on international growth, and utilizing our partner ecosystem, where most advantageous. Our sales representatives engage directly with IT decision makers including CEOs, CIOs, CISOs, IT directors and line of business department heads. We also field inbound inquiries and online sales opportunities. We further expand our market reach by leveraging our network of channel partners that comprises value-added resellers and systems integrators as well as our own consulting services. We offer individuals a free basic version of Box that allows them to experience first-hand our easy-to-use and secure solution. Use of Box often spreads virally within and across organizations, as users adopt Box and invite new users to collaborate. In addition, an organization will frequently purchase Box for one use case and then later expand its deployment to other use cases with larger groups of employees, leading to deeper engagement with our service. We focus our sales strategy on ensuring that new and existing customers understand and experience the transformative impact of Box.

We are building a rich technology partner ecosystem around Box. We offer more than 1,500 pre-built integrations with partners including Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce.com, Apple, Google, Slack, Adobe, Palo Alto Networks, Okta, Zoom and others, giving our users easy access to their content in Box without leaving these applications. In addition, in-house enterprise developers and independent software developers can use our developer platform and open application programming interfaces (APIs) to rapidly build and provision new applications that leverage and extend the core functionality of our services, increasingly with a focus on specific industries and vertical market use cases. To date, tens of thousands of third-party developers have leveraged our platform as the secure content layer for their applications.

We are committed to powering how the world does more good together. Box.org mobilizes our technology, talent, partners and institutional assets to enable nonprofits to innovate and fulfill their missions. Founded in 2014, Box.org now serves over 10,000 nonprofits with donated or discounted Box access, employee volunteer hours and cash grants from the Box.org Fund.

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The Box Solution

We offer web, mobile and desktop applications for cloud content management on a platform for developing custom applications, as well as industry-specific capabilities. Three core capabilities differentiate Box from potential competitors: frictionless security and compliance powered by our global cloud architecture, seamless external and internal collaboration and workflow automation, and expansive integrations and APIs that extend the value of our Content Cloud to every organization. Box features and functionality include the following:

Frictionless Security and Compliance

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To give our customers the flexibility to choose between à la carte and bundled subscription options, we offer Box Shield, Box Governance, Box GxP, Box KeySafe, and Box Zones both as standalone add-ons and as part of our bundled Enterprise Plus plan.

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Seamless Collaboration and Workflow

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Integrations and Developer Platform

Customers

As of January 31, 2022, we had over 100,000 paying organizations, and our solution was offered in 25 languages. We define paying organizations as separate and distinct buying entities, such as a company, an educational or government institution, or a distinct business unit of a large corporation, that have entered into a subscription agreement with us to utilize our services. Organizations typically purchase our solution in the following ways: (i) employees in one or more small groups within the organization may individually purchase our service; (ii) organizations may purchase IT-sponsored, enterprise-level agreements with deployments for specific, targeted use cases ranging from tens to thousands of user seats; (iii) organizations may purchase IT-sponsored, enterprise-level agreements where the number of user seats sold is intended to accommodate and enable nearly all information workers within the organization in whatever use cases they desire to adopt over the term of the subscription; and (iv) organizations may purchase our Box Platform service to create custom business applications for their internal use and extended ecosystem of customers, suppliers and partners.

We have developed several programs designed to provide customers with service options to quickly get them up and running and enhance their usage of Box. These services include 24x7 support provided by our Customer Success Management group and certain resellers; a professional services ecosystem that consists of our Box Consulting team and system integrators that help customers implement cloud content management oriented use cases; a Customer Success Management group to assist customers in production; and an online community with self-service training materials, best practice guides and product documentation.

No customer represented 10% or more of our revenue in the year ended January 31, 2022. Our geographic revenue and segment information is set forth in Notes 2 and 15, respectively, of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

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Sales and Marketing

We offer our solution to customers as a subscription-based service, with subscription fees based on customer requirements, including the number of users and functionality deployed. The majority of our customers subscribe to our service through one-year contracts, although we also offer our services for terms ranging from one month to three years or more. We typically invoice our customers at the beginning of the contract term, in multi-year, annual, quarterly or monthly installments. We recognize revenue as we satisfy our performance obligation. Accordingly, due to our subscription model, we recognize revenue for our subscription and premier services ratably over the term of the contract.

We employ a direct sales team to offer a higher touch experience. We also make it easy for users and organizations to subscribe to paid versions of our service on our self-service web portal. Our sales team is composed of inside sales, outbound sales and field sales personnel who are generally organized by account size and geography, and/or major industry focus. We also have a rich ecosystem of channel partners who expand our reach to both large and small enterprises.

We generate customer leads, accelerate sales opportunities and build brand awareness through our marketing programs and through our strategic relationships. Our marketing programs target senior IT leaders, technology professionals and senior line of business leaders.

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 a broad array of services that fall outside of Box’s areas of focus. These relationships include software and technology partners, as well as consulting and implementation services providers that enable Box to address a broader set of use cases for our customers.

Sales and marketing expenses were $298.6 million, $275.7 million and $317.6 million for the years ended January 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Research and Development

Our ability to compete depends in large part on our continuous commitment to product development and our ability to rapidly introduce new applications, technologies, features and functionality. In simple conceptual form, we provide a single, secure, easy-to-use platform built for the entire content lifecycle. In practice, we develop and maintain a set of sophisticated software services (e.g., search, share, secure, convert/view, logging) around content. These services, which comprise our platform, are used to develop our own applications (e.g., sync, desktop, web, native mobile) and also support the development of third-party applications.

Our product development organization is responsible for the specification, design, development and testing of our platform and applications. We focus our efforts on providing a platform that accelerates business processes, improves employee productivity, enables secure remote work, and protects an organization’s most valuable data. We strive to continually improve our applications so that they help users and teams become more productive in their day-to-day work.

Research and development expenses were $218.5 million, $201.3 million and $199.8 million for the years ended January 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Competition

The cloud content management market is large, highly competitive and highly fragmented. It is subject to rapidly evolving technology, shifting customer needs and frequent introductions of new products and services. We face competition from a broad spectrum of technology providers: traditional cloud content management vendors who deploy on-premise and offer deep records management, business process workflow, and archival capabilities; newer mobile enterprise vendors who are beginning to enter the content collaboration market; vendors whose core competency is simple file sync and share, which can be deployed on-premises, hybrid, or via a SaaS delivery model; and social collaboration vendors who focus on the conversations that occur between teams. Our primary competitors in the cloud content management market include, but are not limited to, Microsoft and OpenText (Documentum). In

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the enterprise file sync and share market, our primary competitors include, but are not limited to, Microsoft, Google and, to a lesser extent, Dropbox.

We may face future competition in our markets from other large, established companies, as well as from smaller specialized companies. In addition, we expect continued consolidation in our industry which could adversely alter the competitive dynamics of our markets including both pricing and our ability to compete successfully for customers.

The principal competitive factors in our market include:

We believe that we compete favorably on the basis of these factors, primarily because of our industry-leading security and compliance, cloud-native approach to real-time, internal and external collaboration, integrations and open platform. Our ability to remain competitive will depend to a great extent upon our ongoing performance in the areas of product development, core technical innovation, platform and partner ecosystem, and customer support. In addition, many of our competitors may have greater name recognition, longer operating histories, larger marketing budgets, significantly greater resources and established relationships with our partners and customers, which can give them advantageous positioning for their products despite other competitive merits of respective product features and functionality. Some competitors may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products than we can to ours, which could allow them to respond more quickly than we can to new technologies and changes in customer needs.

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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. As of January 31, 2022, our patents were set to expire between 2028 and 2040. We intend to pursue additional patent protection to the extent that we believe it would be beneficial and cost effective.

We require our employees, contractors, consultants and other third parties to enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements and control access to software, documentation and other proprietary information. Although we rely on the intellectual property rights and contractual protections described above, we believe that factors such as the technological and creative skills of our personnel, creation of new modules, features and functionality, and frequent enhancements to our applications are more essential to establishing and maintaining our technology leadership position.

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

We expect that software and other applications in our industry may be subject to third-party infringement claims as the number of competitors grows and the functionality of applications in different industry segments overlaps. Any of these third parties might make a claim of infringement against us at any time.

Backlog

We generally sign annual and multi-year subscription contracts for our cloud content management services. The frequency of our invoices to each customer is negotiated and varies among our subscription contracts. We continued to focus on annual payment frequencies for multi-year contracts in the twelve months ended January 31, 2022. As a result, for multi-year contracts, we frequently invoice an initial amount at contract signing followed by subsequent annual invoices. Until amounts are invoiced, they are typically not recorded in deferred revenue, billings or elsewhere in our consolidated financial statements other than disclosed as part of remaining performance obligations. To the extent future invoicing is determined to be certain, we consider such future subscription invoices to be non-cancellable backlog, which is disclosed as part of remaining performance obligations. Future invoicing is determined to be certain when we have an executed non-cancellable contract or a significant penalty that is due upon cancellation, and invoicing is not dependent on a future event such as the delivery of a specific new product or feature, or the achievement of contractual contingencies. We had $541.5 million and $438.1 million of non-cancellable backlog as of January 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively. The increase of non-cancellable backlog as of January 31, 2022 was primarily driven by expansion within existing customers as they broadened their deployment of our product offerings, longer customer contract durations, the addition of new customers, and the timing of customer-driven renewals.

We expect that the amount of backlog relative to the total value of our contracts will change from year to year due to several factors, including the timing and duration of customer subscription agreements, varying price, volume, and invoicing cycles of subscription contracts, the timing of scheduled customer renewals, and foreign currency fluctuations. Accordingly, we believe that fluctuations in backlog are not always a reliable indicator of future revenue and we do not utilize backlog as a key management metric internally.

Human Capital Resources

Our company is built on people: We call them Boxers. They come from a range of backgrounds and experiences, and each of them has a unique story to tell. Our goal is to fully leverage and engage the individual talents and capabilities of our diverse teams, ultimately creating an inclusive environment where Boxers feel they belong. As of January 31, 2022, we employed 2,172 people. 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. Box was recognized as #5 in Glassdoor Best Places to Work in 2022 and as one of Great Place to Work’s Best Workplaces for Parents in 2021.

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Diversity and Inclusion

One of our core values is creating a space where all Boxers can “Bring your (_____) self to work.” We take great pride in celebrating our differences, and we hire the best talent from all backgrounds. We want to build teams that are as diverse as our customers and the world we live in, with a broad representation of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, backgrounds, and perspectives — among many other dimensions of diversity.

When it comes to recruiting, our hiring philosophy is centered around the belief that building diverse teams enables us to do our best work. Our people and communities team hosts various training sessions focused on unconscious bias and interviewing best practices that are available to all Boxers through our LearnFest training series every quarter. Our recruiting team has specifically embedded unconscious bias topics into our company wide hiring guides, also known as the Box Recruiting Guides. Additionally, we have implemented programs such as culture interviewing and standardized assessments across the company to further limit unconscious bias in our hiring process. At our executive recruiting level, our policy is to interview at least one candidate from underrepresented backgrounds for all positions at the director level or above before making a hiring decision. At the university recruiting level, we have instituted programs to connect with underrepresented student groups and create a more fair and equitable hiring process. For example, our Box Business Fellowship provides students of historically underrepresented backgrounds with an opportunity to explore business careers in the tech industry. This program helps students develop the skills to succeed in tech industry roles and provides them with insights into the career opportunities available to them. In addition, participants in this program are also invited to an expedited interview process for available roles at Box.

We also ensure that Boxers can Bring their (_____) Self to Work by creating safe spaces for engagement and providing opportunities for networking and development, while promoting a culture of learning and allyship to ensure that the needs of underrepresented Boxers are supported. We support a dynamic array of employee-led resource communities for historically underrepresented groups and different communities at Box, including Box Women’s Network, Black Excellence Network, Latinx, Pride, and Box Vets, among others.

Learning and Development

We want all of our employees to have thriving careers where they grow and develop in meaningful ways. There is no one-size-fits-all career path at Box, so we seek to ensure that every Boxer has the tools and support they need to drive their career. We do this by giving all Boxers access to learning and development opportunities based around individual needs in order to build up skill sets and experience. These initiatives include:

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Pay Equity

We hold ourselves accountable, which is why we signed the California Equal Pay Pledge. As part of our commitment, we conduct an annual companywide gender pay analysis on hiring and promotion procedures to reduce unconscious bias and structural barriers to equitable compensation. In addition, we externally benchmark the compensation we provide for each role to ensure pay parity, and provide periodic pay equity updates to the compensation committee of our board of directors.

Boxer Experience Surveys

We survey employees two times a year to ensure that everyone’s voice gets heard and we better understand the key areas where we can improve employee experience. These key areas include our experience with our managers, our ability to get work done, and our sense of belonging at work. Survey results are reviewed and become part of our action plans at all levels of the organization. Our People and Communities team incorporates survey feedback into our programs, policies, and the cultivated experiences that drive our culture. Our functional leaders leverage the feedback to drive annual plans across their teams to improve efficiency, establish communication channels, and reinforce behaviors aligned with our values. Finally, following each survey, managers discuss employee experience results with their team and form a plan to address issues that are identified in survey results.

Employee Health and Safety

The health and safety of our employees is one of our top priorities. We strive to create an environment where Boxers are physically and mentally safe and healthy. We offer a comprehensive health and wellness benefits package to all employees.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, we convened a cross-functional team made up of leaders from across our organization who continue to meet frequently to ensure Boxers' safety and that business crisis plans are enacted, communicated, and running smoothly. As part of these plans, Box is currently offering flexible remote work arrangements to employees. To support the well-being of Boxers during these challenging times, we launched “Fresh Air Fridays” and "Mental Health Mondays," global company-wide days of paid time off, offered subscriptions to an app for meditation and mental health, partnered with a third-party family support system for families at Box, and provided additional paid time off for our employees, among other things.

Sustainability

Left unchecked, climate change disrupts the global economy, our company, and our stakeholders — so we take to heart our responsibility to protect the planet. We move organizations from legacy and paper-based processes to the cloud so customers can work securely and efficiently from anywhere. This reduces both office waste and commuting. As part of our mission to build a better world together, we have implemented various initiatives which include:

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Corporate Information

Our website address is www.box.com, and our investor relations website is located at www.box.com/investors. The information on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We were incorporated in 2005 as Box.Net, Inc., a Washington corporation, and later reincorporated in 2008 under the same name as a Delaware corporation. In November 2011, we changed our name to Box, Inc. The Box design logo, “Box” and our other registered and common law trade names, trademarks and service marks are the property of Box, Inc. Other trademarks, service marks, or trade names appearing in this Annual Report on Form 10-K 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, and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The SEC maintains a website at www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information that we file with the SEC electronically. Copies of our reports on Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q, Forms 8-K, and amendments to those reports may also be obtained, free of charge, electronically through our investor relations website located at www.box.com/investors as soon as reasonably practical after we file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC.

We also use our investor relations website as a channel of distribution for important company information. Important information, including press releases, analyst presentations and financial information regarding us, as well as corporate governance information, is routinely posted and accessible on certain Twitter accounts, such as @box, @levie and @boxincir. Information on, or that can be accessed through, our websites or these Twitter accounts is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and the inclusion of our website addresses and Twitter accounts are inactive textual references only.

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Item 1A. RISK FACTORS

Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and related notes, before making a decision to invest in our Class A common stock. If any of the risks actually occur, our business, financial condition, operating results and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment.

Risk Factors Summary

Our business is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those risks discussed at length below. These risks include, among others, the following:

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Risks Related to Our Business and Our Industry

The market in which we participate is intensely competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our operating results could be harmed.

The market for cloud content management services is fragmented, rapidly evolving and highly competitive, with relatively low barriers to entry for certain applications and services. Many of our competitors and potential competitors are larger and have greater brand recognition, longer operating histories, and significantly greater resources than we do. Our primary competitors in the cloud content management market include Microsoft and OpenText (Documentum). In the enterprise file sync and share market, our primary competitors include Microsoft, Google and, to a lesser extent, Dropbox. With the introduction of new technologies and market entrants, we expect competition to intensify in the future. If we fail to compete effectively, our business will be harmed. Some of our competitors offer their products or services at a lower price or for free, which has placed pricing pressure on our business. If we are unable to achieve our target pricing levels, our operating results will be negatively impacted. In addition, pricing pressures and increased competition could result in reduced sales, lower margins, losses or the failure of our services to achieve or maintain widespread market acceptance, any of which could harm our business.

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Many of our competitors are able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products or services. In addition, many of our competitors have established marketing relationships and major distribution agreements with channel partners, consultants, system integrators and resellers. Moreover, many software vendors could bundle products or offer them at lower prices as part of a broader product sale or enterprise license arrangement. Competitors may offer products or services that address business execution functions at lower prices or with greater depth than our services. Our competitors may be able to respond more quickly and effectively to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards or customer requirements. Furthermore, some potential customers, particularly large enterprises, may elect to develop their own internal solutions. For any of these reasons, we may not be able to compete successfully against our competitors.

Our business depends substantially on customers renewing their subscriptions with us and expanding their use of our services. Any decline in our customer renewals or failure to convince our customers to broaden their use of our services would harm our future operating results.

In order for us to maintain or improve our operating results, it is important that our customers renew their subscriptions with us when their existing subscription term expires. We cannot assure you that customers will renew their subscriptions upon expiration at the same or higher level of service, if at all. Although our net retention rate has increased in recent quarters, we have also experienced periods where it has decreased and it may decrease again in the future if our customers do not renew their subscriptions with us or decrease their use of our services. Our net retention rate was approximately 111% and 102% as of January 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively.

Although our net retention rate has increased in recent quarters, it may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our services, the effectiveness of our customer support services, the performance of our partners and resellers, our pricing, the prices of competing products or services, mergers and acquisitions affecting our customer base, our ability to successfully integrate acquired technology into our products, our ability to execute on our product roadmap, the effects of global economic conditions, such as those arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, or reductions in our customers’ spending levels. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions, renew them on less favorable terms, purchase fewer seats, or fail to purchase new product offerings, our revenue may decline, and we may not realize improved operating results from our customer base.

In addition, our business growth depends in part on our customers expanding their use of our services. The use of our cloud content management platform often expands within an organization as new users are added or as additional services are purchased by or for other departments within an organization. Further, as we have introduced new services throughout our operating history, our existing customers have constituted a significant portion of the users of such services. If our customers do not expand their use of our services, our operating results may be adversely affected.

If the market for cloud-based enterprise services declines or develops more slowly than we expect, our business could be adversely affected.

The market for cloud-based enterprise services is not as mature as the on-premise enterprise software market. Because we derive, and expect to continue to derive, substantially all of our revenue and cash flows from sales of our cloud content management solutions, our success will depend to a substantial extent on the widespread adoption of cloud computing in general and of cloud-based content management services in particular. Many organizations have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to integrate traditional enterprise software into their organizations and may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate to a cloud-based model for managing their content. It is difficult to predict customer adoption rates and demand for our services, the future growth rate and size of the cloud computing market or the entry of competitive services. The expansion of the cloud content management market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance and perceived value associated with cloud computing, as well as the ability of companies that provide cloud-based services to address security and privacy concerns. If there is a reduction in demand for cloud-based services, it could result in decreased revenue, harm our growth rates, and adversely affect our business and operating results.

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Because we recognize revenue from subscriptions for our services over the term of the subscription, downturns or upturns in new business may not be immediately reflected in our operating results.

We generally recognize revenue from customers ratably over the terms of their subscription agreements, which are typically one year, although we also offer our services for terms ranging from one month to three years or more. As a result, most of the revenue we report in each quarter is the result of subscription agreements entered into during prior quarters. Consequently, a decline in new or renewed subscriptions in any one quarter may not be reflected in our revenue results for that quarter. However, any such decline will negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales, our failure to achieve our internal sales targets, a decline in the market acceptance of our services, or a decrease in our net retention rate may not be fully reflected in our operating results until future periods. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through additional sales in any period, as revenue from additional sales must be recognized over the applicable subscription term.

If we are unable to attract new customers at rates that are consistent with our expectations, our future revenue and operating results could be adversely impacted.

In order for us to improve our operating results and continue to grow our business, it is important that we continue to attract new customers and expand deployment of our solutions and products with existing customers. To the extent we are successful in increasing our customer base, we could incur increased losses because costs associated with new customers are generally incurred up front, while revenue is recognized ratably over the term of our subscription services. Alternatively, to the extent we are unsuccessful in increasing our customer base, we could also incur increased losses as costs associated with marketing programs and new products intended to attract new customers would not be offset by incremental revenue and cash flow. Catastrophic events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may financially impact our existing and prospective customers and cause them to delay or reduce their technology spending, which may adversely affect our ability to attract new customers. All of these factors could negatively impact our future revenue and operating results.

The continuing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may have an adverse effect on our business, operations and future financial performance.

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Governments and municipalities around the world have instituted measures to control the spread of COVID-19, including quarantines, shelter-in-place orders, school closures, travel restrictions, vaccine mandates, and closure of non-essential businesses. These measures have led to significant adverse economic impacts which have had, and could continue to have, an adverse impact on our business operations in a number of ways, including, without limitation, (1) disruptions to our sales operations and marketing efforts as a result of restrictions on our sales team's ability to travel and meet customers in person, (2) negative impacts on our customers and prospects that could result in (i) extended customer sales cycles, delayed spending on our services, impairment of our ability to collect accounts receivable, and (ii) reduced payment frequencies, demand for our services, renewal rates, and spending on our services, and (3) negative impacts to the financial condition or operations of our vendors and business partners, as well as disruptions to the supply chain of hardware needed to offer our services. Moreover, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our offices in the United States have been closed since March 2020. Although we have begun re-opening offices in the United States for non-essential employees on a voluntary basis, our transition to a hybrid workforce (with a mix of employees working from offices and others working remotely) may lead to disruptions and decreased productivity and other adverse operational business impacts. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant economic impact affects our business, results of operations and financial condition will depend on future developments (such as the potential emergence of new variants, vaccines, treatments, and government responses to such developments), which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted.

Adverse economic conditions may negatively impact our business.

Our business depends on the overall demand for cloud content management services and on the economic health of our current and prospective customers. The United States and other key international economies have experienced cyclical downturns from time to time that have resulted in a significant weakening of the economy, more limited availability of credit, a reduction in business confidence and activity, and other difficulties that may

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affect the industries to which we sell our services. An economic downturn, recession, or uncertainty about economic conditions, including the effects of COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, could cause customers to delay or reduce their information technology spending. This could result in reduced sales, longer sales cycles, 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. In addition, there can be no assurance that cloud content management and collaboration spending levels will increase following any recovery.

If we are not able to successfully launch new products and services or provide enhancements or new features to our existing products and services, our business could be adversely affected.

Our industry is marked by rapid technological developments and new and enhanced applications and services. If we are unable to enhance our existing services or offer new services such as our electronic signature offering, Box Sign, that achieve market acceptance or keep pace with rapid technological developments, our business could be adversely affected. The success of any new services or enhancements to our existing services depends on several factors, including their timely completion, introduction and market acceptance. We also may experience business or economic disruptions that could adversely affect the productivity of our employees and result in delays in our product development process. For example, we have begun re-opening our offices in the United States to non-essential personnel for the first time in two years and transitioning to a hybrid workforce (with a mix of employees working from offices and others working remotely), which may lead to disruptions and decreased productivity that could result in delays in our product development process. Failure in this regard may significantly impair our revenue growth and our future financial results. In addition, because our services are designed to operate on a variety of systems, we must continuously modify and enhance our services to keep pace with changes in internet-related hardware, mobile operating systems, and other software, communication, browser and database technologies. We may not be successful in developing these modifications and enhancements or bringing them to market in a timely fashion. Furthermore, modifications to existing platforms or technologies will increase our research and development expenses. Any failure of our services to operate effectively with existing or future network platforms and technologies could reduce the demand for our services, result in customer dissatisfaction and adversely affect our business.

Our sales to government entities are subject to a number of additional challenges and risks.

We sell to government customers, which can be highly competitive, often requiring significant upfront time and expense without any assurance that these efforts will generate a sale. Government certification requirements may change, or we may lose one or more government certifications, and in doing so restrict our ability to sell into the government sector or maintain existing government customers until we attain revised certifications. Government demand and payment for our products and services are affected by public sector budgetary cycles and funding authorizations, with funding reductions or delays adversely affecting public sector demand for our solutions. Moreover, an extended federal government shutdown resulting from budgetary decisions may limit or delay federal government spending on our solutions and adversely affect our revenue. Government entities may also have statutory, contractual or other legal rights to terminate contracts with us for convenience or due to a default, and any such termination may adversely affect our future operating results.

As our sales efforts are increasingly focused on cloud content management use cases and are targeted at enterprise and highly-regulated customers, our sales cycles may become longer and more expensive, we may encounter greater pricing pressure and implementation and customization challenges, and we may have to delay revenue recognition for more complicated transactions, all of which could harm our business and operating results.

As our sales efforts are increasingly focused on cloud content management use cases and are targeted at enterprise and highly-regulated customers, we face greater costs, longer sales cycles and less predictability in the completion of some of our sales. In this market segment, a customer’s decision to use our services may be an enterprise-wide decision. These types of sales opportunities require us to provide greater levels of customer education regarding the uses and benefits of our services, as well as education regarding security, privacy, and data protection laws and regulations, especially for customers in more heavily regulated industries or with significant international operations. In addition, larger enterprises may demand more customization, integration, support services, and features. Furthermore, our sales efforts may be impeded by catastrophic events, including public health

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epidemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that limit our ability to travel or meet customers in person. These factors could increase our costs, lengthen our sales cycles and leave fewer sales support and professional services resources for other customers. Professional services may also be performed by a third party or a combination of our own staff and a third party. 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. If a customer is not satisfied with the quality or interoperability of our services with their own IT environment, we could incur additional costs to address the situation, which could adversely affect our margins. Moreover, any customer dissatisfaction with our services could damage our ability to encourage broader adoption of our services by that customer. In addition, any negative publicity resulting from such situations, regardless of its accuracy, may further damage our business by affecting our ability to compete for new business with current and prospective customers.

If we fail to meet the service level commitments we provide under our subscription agreements, we could be obligated to provide credits or refunds for prepaid amounts related to unused subscription services or face subscription terminations, which could adversely affect our revenue. Furthermore, any failure in our delivery of high-quality customer support services may adversely affect our relationships with our customers and our financial results.

Our customer subscription agreements provide service level commitments. If we are unable to meet our service level commitments or suffer periods of downtime that exceed the periods allowed under our customer agreements, we may be obligated to provide customers with service credits which could significantly impact our revenue in the period in which the downtime occurs and the credits could be due. We have encountered issues in the past, and may again in the future, that have caused Box services to be temporarily unavailable. We could also face subscription terminations, which could significantly impact our current and future revenue. Any extended service outages could also adversely affect our reputation, which would also impact our future revenue and operating results.

Our customers depend on us to resolve technical issues relating to our services. We may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate short-term increases in customer demand for support services. Increased customer demand for these services, without corresponding revenue, could increase costs and adversely affect our operating results. In addition, our sales process is highly dependent on the ease of use of our services, our reputation and positive recommendations from our existing customers. Any failure to maintain, or a market perception that we do not maintain, high-quality customer support could adversely affect our reputation and our ability to sell our services to existing and prospective customers.

We are in the process of expanding our international operations, which exposes us to significant risks.

A key element of our growth strategy is to expand our international operations and develop a worldwide customer base. In addition, we have opened, and may continue to open, international offices and hire employees to work at these offices in order to gain access to additional talent. For example, we recently established an office in Warsaw, Poland and acquired SignRequest B.V., a company located in The Netherlands. Operating in international markets requires significant resources and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, economic, geographic, social, and political risks that differ from those in the United States. Because of our limited experience with international operations and significant differences between international and U.S. markets, we may not succeed in creating demand for our services outside of the United States or in effectively selling our services in all of the international markets we enter. In addition, we will face challenges in doing business internationally that could adversely affect our business, including:

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We sell our services and incur operating expenses in various currencies. Therefore, fluctuations in the relative value of the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies may impact our operating results. We currently manage our exchange rate risk by matching foreign currency assets with payables and by maintaining minimal non-U.S. dollar cash reserves, but we do not have any other hedging programs in place to limit the risk of exchange rate fluctuation. In the future, however, to the extent our foreign currency exposures become more material, we may elect to deploy normal and customary hedging practices designed to more proactively mitigate such exposure. We cannot be certain such practices will ultimately be available and/or effective at mitigating all foreign currency risk to which we are exposed. If we are unsuccessful in detecting material exposures in a timely manner, any hedging strategies we deploy are not effective, or there are no hedging strategies available for certain exposures that are prudent given the associated risks and the potential mitigation of the underlying exposure achieved, our operating results or financial position could be adversely affected in the future.

In addition, the United Kingdom’s (UK) withdrawal from the European Union (EU), or Brexit, became effective on January 31, 2020. The UK and EU subsequently signed an EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. This agreement provides details on how some aspects of the UK and EU’s relationship will operate going forward, however there continues to be uncertainty over the practical consequences of Brexit. Many of the regulations that now apply in the UK will likely be amended in the future as the UK determines its new approach, which may result in significant divergence from EU regulations. This lack of clarity could lead to economic and legal uncertainty, including significant volatility in global stock markets and currency exchange rates, among other things. Any of these effects of Brexit, among others, could adversely affect our operations, especially in the United Kingdom, and our financial results.

If we are unable to maintain and promote our brand, our business and operating results may be harmed.

We believe that maintaining and promoting our brand is critical to expanding our customer base. Maintaining and promoting our brand will depend largely on our ability to continue to provide useful, reliable and innovative services, which we may not do successfully. We may introduce new features, products, services or terms of service that our customers do not like, which may negatively affect our brand and reputation. Additionally, the actions of third parties may affect our brand and reputation if customers do not have a positive experience using third-party apps or other services that are integrated with Box. Maintaining and enhancing our brand may require us to make substantial investments, and these investments may not achieve the desired goals. If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our brand or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.

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We have a history of cumulative losses, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability.

We incurred net losses of $41.5 million, $43.4 million, and $144.3 million in our fiscal years ended January 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively. As of January 31, 2022, we had an accumulated deficit of $1.4 billion. These losses and accumulated deficit reflect the substantial investments we made to acquire new customers and develop our services. We intend to continue scaling our business to increase our number of users and paying organizations and to meet the increasingly complex needs of our customers. As a result, we cannot assure you that we will achieve profitability in the future or that, if we do become profitable, we will sustain profitability.

Our quarterly results may fluctuate significantly and may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business.

Our quarterly operating results 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, and as a result, may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our quarterly financial results include, but are not limited to:

Risks Related to Data Privacy and Data Security

Actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in our services or any breaches of our security controls and unauthorized access to our or a customer’s data could harm our business and operating results.

The services we offer involve the storage of large amounts of our and our customers’ sensitive and proprietary information, some of which may be considered personally identifiable. Cyberattacks and other malicious internet-based activity, including ransomware, malware and viruses, continue to increase in frequency and magnitude and we

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face security threats from malicious third parties that could obtain unauthorized access to, or disrupt, our systems, infrastructure and networks. These threats may come from a variety of sources including nation-state sponsored espionage and hacking activities, industrial espionage, organized crime, sophisticated organizations, hacking groups and individuals and insider threats. These sources can also implement social engineering techniques to induce our partners, users, employees or customers to disclose passwords or other sensitive information or take other actions to gain access to our data or our users’ data. Hackers that acquire user account information at other companies can attempt to use that information to compromise the accounts of personnel, or our users’ accounts if an account shares the same sensitive information such as passwords. As we increase our customer base, our brand becomes more widely known and recognized, and our service is used in more heavily regulated industries where there may be a greater concentration of sensitive and protected data, such as healthcare, government, life sciences, and financial services, we may become more of a target for these malicious third parties.

In addition, because Box is configured by administrators and users to select their default settings, the third-party integrations they enable, and their privacy and permissions settings, an administrator or user could intentionally or inadvertently configure settings to share their sensitive data. For example, a Box user can choose to share the content they store in Box with third parties by creating a link that can be customized to be accessible by anyone with the link. While this feature is designed to be used for a variety of legitimate use cases in which a user wishes to share non-sensitive content with a broad or public audience, if a user were to intentionally or inadvertently configure a setting that allowed public access to their sensitive data, that data could be discovered and accessed by an unintended third party.

There can be no assurance that any security measures that we or third parties on which we rely have implemented will be effective against current or future security threats, and we cannot guarantee that our systems and networks or those of such third parties have not been breached or otherwise compromised, or that they and any software in our or their supply chains do not contain bugs, vulnerabilities, or compromised code that could result in a breach of or disruption to our systems and networks or the systems and networks of third parties that support us or our products or services. Given that our customers manage significant amounts of sensitive and proprietary information on our platform, and many of our customers are in heavily regulated industries where there may be a greater concentration of sensitive and proprietary data, our reputation and market position are particularly sensitive to impacts from actual or perceived security breaches or incidents, security vulnerabilities, or concerns regarding security. If our security measures or those of third parties on which we rely are or are believed to be inadequate or breached or otherwise compromised as a result of third-party action, employee negligence, error or malfeasance, product defects, social engineering techniques, improper user configuration or otherwise, and this results in, or is believed to result in, unauthorized access to or disclosure, modification, misuse, loss, corruption, unavailability, or destruction of our data or our customers’ data, or any other disruption of the confidentiality, integrity or availability of our data or our customers’ data, we could incur significant liability to various parties, including our customers and individuals or organizations whose information is stored by our customers, and our business, reputation or competitive position may be harmed. Techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to, or to sabotage, systems or networks, are constantly evolving and generally are not recognized until launched against a target. Therefore, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques, react in a timely manner, or implement adequate preventive measures, and we may face delays in our detection or remediation of, or other responses to, security breaches and other security-related incidents or vulnerabilities. We also expect to incur significant costs in our ongoing efforts to detect and prevent security breaches and other security-related incidents, and in the event of actual or perceived security breaches or other security-related incidents. Additionally, our service providers may suffer, or be perceived to suffer, data security breaches or other incidents that may compromise data stored or processed for us that may give rise to any of the foregoing.

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Our customer contracts often include (i) specific obligations that we maintain the availability of the customer’s data through our service and that we secure customer content against unauthorized access or loss, and (ii) provisions whereby we indemnify our customers for third-party claims asserted against them that result from our failure to maintain the availability of their content or securing the same from unauthorized access or loss. While our customer contracts contain limitations on our liability in connection with these obligations and indemnities, if an actual or perceived security breach or incident occurs, the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures could be harmed, we could be subject to indemnity or damage claims in certain customer contracts, and we could lose future sales and customers, any of which could harm our business and operating results. Furthermore, while our errors and omissions insurance policies include liability coverage for certain of these matters, if we experience a security breach or other incident, we could be subject to indemnity claims or other damages that exceed our insurance coverage. We also cannot be certain that our insurance coverage will be adequate for data handling or data security liabilities actually incurred, that insurance will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms, or at all, or that any insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, including our financial condition, operating results, and reputation.

Privacy concerns and laws or other regulations may reduce the effectiveness of our services and harm our business.

Users can use our services to store identifying information or information that otherwise is considered personal information. Federal, state and foreign government bodies and agencies have adopted or are considering adopting laws and regulations regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information obtained from consumers, businesses and other individuals and entities. Data protection, privacy, consumer protection, cybersecurity and other laws and regulations, particularly in Europe, are often more restrictive than those in the United States. The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, such laws, policies and regulations that apply to our business or our customers’ businesses may limit the use and adoption of our services and reduce overall demand for them.

These laws and regulations, which may be enforceable by private parties and/or governmental entities, are constantly evolving and can be subject to significant change. A number of new laws coming into effect and/or proposals pending before federal, state and foreign legislative and regulatory bodies could affect our business. For example, the European Commission enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which imposes significant obligations on companies regarding the handling of personal data and provides for penalties for noncompliance of up to the greater of 20 million euros or four percent of a company’s global revenue. Further, local data protection authorities in Europe may adopt regulations and/or guidance more stringent than the GDPR, which may impose additional compliance costs or other burdens that impact our business. In 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield framework, and imposed additional obligations on companies when relying on model contractual clauses approved by the European Commission (EC) to transfer personal data from the EU to the U.S. On September 8, 2020, the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner invalidated the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield in light of the CJEU’s decision. These developments or other developments relating to cross-border data transfer may result in the EC and European data protection regulators applying differing standards for, and requiring ad hoc verification of, transfers of personal data from the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, or the United Kingdom (UK) to the U.S. On June 4, 2021, the EC published new standard contractual clauses (SCCs) that are required to be implemented by companies relying on the SCCs as a basis for cross-border transfers of personal data. These or other developments relating to cross-border data transfer also may require us to change our policies and practices, engage in additional contractual negotiations, and undertake additional measures to legitimize personal data transfers, which may result in increased costs of compliance and limitations on our customers and us. This CJEU decision or other legal challenges relating to cross-border data transfers may serve as a basis for challenges to our personal data handling practices, or those of our customers, and may otherwise adversely impact our business, financial condition and operating results.

Brexit has created uncertainty around data protection issues and could lead to further legislative and regulatory changes. For example, the UK Data Protection Act of 2018 substantially implements the GDPR in the UK and was the subject of statutory amendments that further aligned it with the GDPR in 2019. In June 2021, the EC announced

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a decision that the UK is an “adequate country” to which personal data could be exported from the EEA, but this decision must be renewed and may face challenges in the future, creating uncertainty regarding transfers of personal data to the UK from the EEA. It remains unclear how UK data protection laws or regulations will develop, and how data transfers to and from the United Kingdom will be regulated, over time.

In 2018, the State of California enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which became operative on January 1, 2020. The CCPA requires covered companies to, among other things, provide new disclosures to California consumers and afford such consumers new abilities to opt-out of certain sales of personal information. Additionally, a new privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), was approved by California voters in November 2020. The CPRA’s substantive provisions become effective on January 1, 2023, and new guidance and supporting regulations are expected to be introduced by July 1, 2022. The CPRA will replace the CCPA and may potentially result in further uncertainty and require us to incur additional costs and expenses. Further, similar privacy legislation has been proposed and/or enacted in other states. Aspects of the interpretation and enforcement of the CCPA, CPRA and other enacted and proposed state laws remain unclear. We cannot fully predict the impact of these laws on our business or operations, but they may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply. There also have been a number of other recent legislative proposals in the United States, at both the federal and state level, that would impose new obligations in areas such as privacy and liability for copyright infringement by third parties.

In addition, some countries are considering or have enacted legislation requiring local storage and processing of data that could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our services. If we are unable to develop and offer services that meet our legal duties or help our customers meet their obligations under the laws or regulations relating to privacy, data protection, or information security, we may become subject to significant fines and penalties, which would harm our business.

We also expect laws, regulations, industry standards and other obligations worldwide relating to privacy, data protection, ransomware and cybersecurity to continue to evolve, and that there will continue to be new, modified, and re-interpreted laws, regulations, standards, and other obligations in these areas. We cannot yet determine the impact such future laws, regulations and standards, or amendments to or re-interpretations of, existing laws and regulations, industry standards, or other obligations may have on us or our business. Moreover, these existing and proposed laws, regulations, standards, and other actual or asserted obligations can be difficult and costly to comply with, delay or impede the development or adoption of our products and services, reduce the overall demand for our products and services, increase our operating costs, require modifications to our policies, practices, or products or services, require significant management time and attention, and slow the pace at which we close (or prevent us from closing) sales transactions. Additionally, any actual or alleged noncompliance with these laws, regulations, standards, or other actual or asserted obligations could result in negative publicity and subject us to investigations and other proceedings by regulatory authorities, claims, demands, and litigation by private entities, or other requested remedies or demands, including demands that we modify or cease existing business practices, and expose us to significant fines, penalties and other damages and liabilities. In addition to the possibility of fines, proceedings, demands, claims, and litigation, we may find it necessary or appropriate to fundamentally change our business activities and practices, including the establishment of in-region data storage or other data processing operations, or modify or cease offering certain products or services, any of which could have an adverse effect on our business. We may be unable to make such changes and modifications in a commercially reasonable manner or at all, and our ability to develop new offerings and features could be limited.

Furthermore, government agencies may seek to access sensitive information that our users upload to Box, or restrict users’ access to Box. Laws and regulations relating to government access and restrictions are evolving, and compliance with such laws and regulations could limit adoption of our services by users and create burdens on our business. Moreover, regulatory investigations into, or other proceedings by regulators or private entities involving, our compliance with privacy-related laws and regulations could increase our costs and divert management attention.

If we are not able to satisfy data protection, security, privacy, and other government- and industry-specific requirements, our growth could be harmed.

There are a number of data protection, security, privacy and other government- and industry-specific requirements, including those that require companies to notify individuals of data security incidents involving

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certain types of personal data. Security compromises experienced by our competitors, by our customers or by us may lead to public disclosures, which could harm our reputation, erode customer confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, negatively impact our ability to attract new customers, or cause existing customers to elect not to renew their agreements with us. Our customers also expect, and in some instances require, us to meet voluntary certifications or adhere to guidelines or standards established by third parties, to offer particular controls, or otherwise support customer-specific requirements. Although we currently have certain certifications such as AICPA SOC 1, 2 and 3 reports, and ISO/IEC 27001, 27017, and 27018, we may not be successful in continuing to maintain those certifications or in obtaining other certifications or otherwise being able to adhere to or comply with all customer requirements. In addition, some of the industries we serve have industry-specific requirements relating to compliance with certain security and regulatory standards, such as GxP and FedRAMP, and those required by HIPAA, FINRA, and the HITECH Act. As we expand into new industries and regions, we will likely need to comply with these and other new requirements to compete effectively. We may not always be able to support or comply with all of these customer requirements. If we cannot adequately comply with these requirements, our growth could be adversely impacted, we may face a loss of customers or difficulty attracting new customers in impacted industries, and we could incur significant liability and our reputation and business could be harmed.

Risks Related to Our Technical Operations Infrastructure and Dependence on Third Parties

If we are unable to ensure that our solutions interoperate with operating systems and software applications developed by others, our service may become less competitive, and our operating results may be harmed.

We offer our services across a variety of operating systems and through the internet. We are dependent on the interoperability of our platform with third-party mobile devices, tablets, desktop and mobile operating systems, as well as web browsers that we do not control. Any changes in such systems, devices or web browsers that degrade the functionality of our services or give preferential treatment to competitive services could adversely affect usage of our services and our ability to deliver high quality services. We may not succeed in developing relationships with key participants in the mobile industry or in developing services that operate effectively with these operating systems, networks, infrastructure, devices, web browsers and standards. In the event that our users experience difficulty accessing and using our services, our user growth may be harmed, and our business and operating results could be adversely affected.

If we fail to effectively manage our technical operations infrastructure, our customers may experience service outages and delays in the deployment of our services, which may adversely affect our business.

We have experienced significant growth in the number of users and the amount of data that our operations infrastructure supports. We seek to maintain sufficient excess capacity in our operations infrastructure to meet our customers’ needs. We also seek to maintain excess capacity to facilitate the rapid provisioning 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 and the evolution of our services. However, the provision of new hosting infrastructure requires significant lead-time. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, website disruptions, incidents of data corruption and loss, service outages and other performance problems. These problems may be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, changes to our core services architecture, changes to our infrastructure necessitated by legal and compliance requirements governing the storage and transmission of data, human or software errors, viruses, security attacks, fraud, spikes in customer usage, primary and redundant hardware or connectivity failures, dependent data center and other service provider failures and denial of service issues. Additionally, our ability to properly manage our technical operations infrastructure depends on the reliability of the global supply chain for hardware, network, and platform infrastructure equipment. Significant and unforeseen disruptions to the supply chain may impede our ability to meet our infrastructure capacity requirements. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time, which may harm our reputation and operating results. Furthermore, if we encounter any of these problems in the future, our customers may lose access to important data or experience data corruption or service outages that may subject us to financial penalties, other liabilities and customer losses. If our operations infrastructure fails to keep pace with increased sales, customers may experience delays as we seek to obtain additional capacity, which could adversely affect our reputation and our business.

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Interruptions or delays in service from our third-party data center hosting facilities and cloud computing and hosting providers could impair the delivery of our services and harm our business.

We currently store and process our customers’ information within multiple third-party data center hosting facilities located in Nevada and, increasingly, in third-party cloud computing and hosting facilities inside and outside of the United States. As we continue to migrate more of our storage and processing operations to cloud computing and hosting facilities operated by third parties, our service will become more susceptible to interruptions or delays that are out of our direct control. Similarly, as part of our disaster recovery arrangements, our production environment and metadata related to our customers’ data is currently replicated in near real time in facilities located in Nevada. In addition, all of our customers’ data is typically replicated on third-party storage platforms located inside and outside of the United States. These facilities may be located in areas prone to natural disasters and may experience events such as earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures and similar events. They may also be subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism, cyber-attacks and similar misconduct, including by state-sponsored or otherwise well-funded actors. Any damage to, or failure of, our systems generally, or those of the third-party cloud computing and hosting providers, could result in interruptions in our service, which may reduce our revenue, cause us to issue credits or pay penalties, cause customers to terminate their subscriptions and adversely affect our renewal rate and our ability to attract new customers. In addition, we may not have adequate insurance coverage to compensate for losses from a major interruption. Our business will also be harmed if our customers and potential customers believe our service is unreliable. Despite precautions taken at our third-party data center hosting facilities, the occurrence of disasters, security issues (including an act of terrorism or an armed conflict), certain geopolitical events, labor or trade disputes, or pandemics (such as COVID-19), could lead to a decision to close the facilities without adequate notice or other unanticipated problems that result in lengthy interruptions in our service or cause us to not comply with certification requirements. Even with the disaster recovery arrangements, we have never performed a full live failover of our services and, in an actual disaster, we could learn our recovery arrangements are not sufficient to address all possible scenarios and our service could be interrupted for a longer period than expected. We have encountered issues in the past, and may again in the future, that have caused Box services to be temporarily unavailable. As we migrate from data centers we currently operate to third-party cloud computing and hosting providers, we may move or transfer our data and our customers' data. Despite precautions taken during any of these data center moves and data transfers, any unsuccessful data transfers may impair the delivery of our service and materially and adversely disrupt our operations and our service delivery to our customers, which could result in contractual penalties or damage claims from customers. In addition, changes to our data center infrastructure could occur over a period longer than planned, require greater than expected investment and other internal and external resources and cause us to incur increased costs as we operate multiple data center facilities. It may also take longer than expected to realize the intended benefits from any data center infrastructure migrations and improvements, and disruptions or unexpected costs may continue to occur while we enhance our data center infrastructure.

Our services are becoming increasingly mission-critical for our customers and if these services fail to perform properly or if we are unable to scale our services to meet our customers’ needs, our reputation could be adversely affected, our market share could decline and we could be subject to liability claims.

Our services are becoming increasingly mission-critical to our customers’ business operations, as well as their ability to comply with legal requirements, regulations, and standards such as GxP, FINRA, HIPAA, and FedRAMP. These services and offerings are inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors that could cause interruptions in the availability of our services, as well as user error, which could result in loss or delayed market acceptance and sales, breach of contract or warranty claims, issuance of sales credits or refunds for prepaid amounts related to unused subscription services, loss of customers, diversion of development and customer service resources, and harm to our reputation. The costs incurred in correcting any material defects or errors might be substantial and could adversely affect our operating results. Further, 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 insurance may not cover all claims made against us and defending a lawsuit, regardless of its merit, could be costly and divert management’s attention.

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Because of the large amount of data that we collect and manage, it is possible that hardware failures, software errors, errors in our systems, or by third-party service providers, user errors, or internet outages could result in significant data loss or corruption. Furthermore, the availability or performance of our services could be adversely affected by a number of factors, including customers’ inability to access the internet, the failure of our network or software systems, security breaches or variability in customer traffic for our services. We have been, and in the future may be, required to issue credits or refunds for prepaid amounts related to unused services or otherwise be liable to our customers for damages they may incur resulting from some of these events.

Furthermore, we will need to ensure that our services can scale to meet the needs of our customers, particularly as we continue to focus on larger enterprise customers. If we are not able to provide our services at the scale required by our customers, potential customers may not adopt our solution and existing customers may not renew their agreements with us.

We rely on third parties for certain financial and operational services essential to our ability to manage our business. A failure or disruption in these services could materially and adversely affect our ability to manage our business effectively.

We rely on third parties for certain essential financial and operational services. We receive many of these services on a subscription basis from various software-as-a-service companies that are smaller and have shorter operating histories than traditional software vendors. Moreover, these vendors provide their services to us via a cloud-based model instead of software that is installed on our premises. We depend upon these vendors to provide us with services that are always available and are free of errors or defects that could cause disruptions in our business processes, and any failure by these vendors to do so, or any disruptions in networks or the availability of the internet, would adversely affect our ability to operate and manage our operations.

We employ third-party software for use in or with our services, and the inability to maintain licenses to this software, or errors in the software, could result in increased costs, or reduced service levels, which would adversely affect our business.

Our services incorporate certain third-party software obtained under open source licenses or licenses from other companies. We anticipate that we will continue to rely on such third-party software and development tools in the future. 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. In addition, integration of the software used in our services with new third-party software may require significant work and require substantial investment of our time and resources. Also, to the extent that our services 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 services, delay the introduction of new services, result in a failure of our services, and injure our reputation. Our use of additional or alternative third-party software would require us to enter into additional license agreements with third parties. If we are unable to maintain licenses to software necessary to operate our business, or if third-party software that we use contains errors or defects, our costs may increase, or the services we provide may be harmed, which would adversely affect our business.

Our growth depends in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties.

In order to grow our business, we anticipate that we will continue to depend on our relationships with third parties, such as alliance partners, resellers, distributors, system integrators and developers. For example, we have entered into agreements with partners such as Google, IBM, Macnica Networks, Microsoft, Mitsui Knowledge Industry and Salesforce to market, resell, integrate with or endorse our services. Identifying partners and resellers, and negotiating and documenting relationships with them, requires significant time and resources.

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We also depend on our ecosystem of system integrators, partners and developers to create applications that will integrate with our platform or permit us to integrate with their product offerings. This presents certain risks to our business, including:

In addition, our competitors may be effective in providing incentives to third parties to favor their products or services, or to prevent or reduce subscriptions to our services. In some cases, we also compete directly with our partners’ product offerings, and if these partners stop reselling or endorsing our services or impede our ability to integrate our services with their products, our business and operating results could be adversely affected. Moreover, competitor acquisitions of our partners could result in a decrease in the number of current and potential customers, as our partners may no longer facilitate the adoption of our services by potential customers.

If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with third parties, or realizing the anticipated benefits from such partnerships, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenue could be impaired and our operating results may suffer. Even if we are successful, we cannot assure you that these relationships will result in increased customer usage of our services or increased revenue.

Our business is subject to the risks of natural disasters, pandemics and other catastrophic events that could disrupt our business operations and our business continuity and disaster recovery plans may not adequately protect us from a serious disaster.

The occurrence of any catastrophic event, including a pandemic (such as COVID-19), earthquake, fire, flood, tsunami, or other weather event, power loss, telecommunications failure, software or hardware malfunctions, cyber-attack, war, or terrorist attack, could result in lengthy interruptions in our service. Our corporate headquarters is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region known for seismic activity. Our insurance coverage may not compensate us for losses that may occur in the event of an earthquake or other significant natural disaster. In addition, pandemics, acts of terrorism or war could cause disruptions to the internet or the economy as a whole, which could have a significant impact on our business and operating results. If our or our partners’ business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements prove to be inadequate, our services could be interrupted. Our partners, suppliers, and customers are also subject to the risk of catastrophic events. In those events, our ability to deliver our services in a timely manner, as well as the demand for our services, may be adversely impacted by factors outside our control. If our systems were to fail or be negatively impacted as a result of a natural disaster, pandemic or other catastrophic event, our ability to deliver our services to our customers would be impaired, we could lose critical data, our reputation could suffer and we could be subject to contractual penalties.

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If we overestimate or underestimate our data center capacity requirements, our operating results could be adversely affected.

We continuously evaluate our short- and long-term data center capacity requirements to ensure adequate capacity for new and existing customers while minimizing unnecessary excess capacity costs. If we overestimate the demand for our cloud content management services and therefore secure excess data center capacity, or if we are unable to meet our contractual minimum commitments, our operating margins could be reduced. If we underestimate our data center capacity requirements, we may not be able to service the expanding needs of customers and may be required to limit new customer acquisition, which would impair our revenue growth. Furthermore, regardless of our ability to appropriately manage our data center capacity requirements, only a small percentage of our customers currently use Box to organize all of their internal files, and an increase in the number of organizations, in particular large businesses and enterprises, that use our service as a larger component of their content storage requirements, could result in lower gross and operating margins or otherwise have an adverse impact on our financial condition and operating results.

Changes in laws and regulations related to the internet or changes in the internet infrastructure itself, or disruption in access to the internet or critical services on which the internet depends, may diminish the demand for our services, and could have a negative impact on our business.

The future success of our business depends upon the continued use and availability of the internet as a primary medium for commerce, communication and business services. Federal, state or foreign government bodies or agencies have in the past adopted, and may in the future adopt, laws or regulations affecting the use of the internet as a commercial medium. The adoption of any laws or regulations that adversely affect the growth, popularity or use of the internet, including laws or practices limiting internet neutrality, could decrease the demand for, or the usage of, our services, increase our cost of doing business, adversely affect our operating results, and require us to modify our services in order to comply with these changes. In addition, government agencies or private organizations may begin to impose taxes, fees or other charges for accessing the internet or commerce conducted via the internet. These laws or charges could limit the growth of internet-related commerce or communications generally, or result in reductions in the demand for internet-based services such as ours.

In addition, the use of the internet and, in particular, the cloud as a business tool could be adversely affected due to delays in the development or adoption of new standards and protocols to handle increased demands of internet activity, security, reliability, cost, ease of use, accessibility, and quality of service. The performance of the internet and its acceptance as a business tool have been adversely affected by “viruses,” “worms,” “denial of service attacks” and similar malicious activity. The internet has also experienced a variety of outages, disruptions and other delays as a result of this malicious activity targeted at critical internet infrastructure. These service disruptions could diminish the overall attractiveness to existing and potential customers of services that depend on the internet and could cause demand for our services to suffer.

Risks Related to Employees and Managing Our Growth

We depend on our key employees and other highly skilled personnel to grow and operate our business, and if we are unable to hire, retain and motivate our personnel, we may not be able to grow effectively.

Our future success depends upon our continued ability to identify, hire, develop, motivate and retain highly skilled personnel, representing diverse backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets, including senior management, engineers, designers, product managers, sales representatives, and customer support representatives. Identifying, recruiting, training and integrating qualified individuals will require significant time, expense and attention. In addition to hiring new employees, we must continue to focus on retaining our best employees, and fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment that enables all of our employees to prosper. Competition for highly skilled personnel is intense, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located. Moreover, our ability to attract and hire personnel may be materially adversely affected by changes to immigration laws or the availability of work visas. We may need to invest significant amounts of cash and equity to attract and retain new employees, and we may never realize returns on these investments. If we are not able to effectively add and retain employees, our ability to achieve our strategic objectives will be adversely impacted, and our business will be harmed.

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Our success is also dependent upon contributions from our executive officers and other key employees and, in particular, Aaron Levie, our co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. There may be changes in our senior management team that could disrupt our business. The loss of one or more of our executive officers or key employees, or the failure of our senior management team to work together effectively and execute our plans and strategies, could harm our business.

Failure to adequately expand and optimize our direct sales force and successfully maintain our online sales experience could impede our growth.

We will need to continue to optimize our sales infrastructure in order to grow our customer base and business. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have temporarily restricted most business-related travel, which may negatively impact our ability to recruit and train our sales force. Our business may be adversely affected if our efforts to expand and train our direct sales force do not generate a corresponding increase in revenue. If we are unable to hire, develop and retain talented sales personnel or if new direct sales personnel are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time, we may not realize the intended benefits of this investment or increase our revenue.

We maintain our Box website to efficiently service our high volume, low dollar customer transactions and certain customer inquiries. Our goal is to continue to evolve this online experience so it effectively serves the increasing and changing needs of our growing customer base. If we are unable to maintain an effective online solution to meet the future needs of our online customers and to eliminate fraudulent transactions occurring in this channel, we could see reduced online sales volumes as well as a decrease in our sales efficiency, which could adversely affect our results of operations.

Any acquisitions and investments we make could disrupt our business and harm our financial condition and operating results.

We have acquired, and may in the future acquire, other companies, employee teams, or technologies to complement or expand our services and grow our business. For example, in February 2021 we acquired SignRequest. We may not be able to successfully complete or integrate identified acquisitions. Moreover, we may not successfully evaluate or utilize the acquired technology or personnel, or accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition. The risks we face in connection with acquisitions include:

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Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with our past or future acquisitions and investments could cause us to fail to realize the anticipated benefits of these acquisitions or investments, cause us to incur unanticipated liabilities, and harm our business generally. Future acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities, the incurrence of debt, contingent liabilities, amortization expenses, incremental operating expenses or the write-off of goodwill, any of which could harm our financial condition or operating results.

Our company culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we could lose the innovation, creativity and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business may be harmed.

We believe that our culture has been and will continue to be a key contributor to our success. We expect to continue to hire additional employees as we expand our business. If we do not continue to develop our company culture or maintain our core values as we grow and evolve both in the United States and abroad, we may be unable to foster the innovation, creativity and teamwork we believe we need to support our growth.

Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

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

There is considerable patent and other intellectual property development activity in our industry. Our success depends on developing or licensing our own intellectual property and not infringing upon the valid intellectual property rights of others. Our competitors, as well as a number of other entities, including non-practicing entities, and individuals, may own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our industry.

From time to time, third parties have claimed, and in the future may claim, that we are infringing upon their intellectual property rights, and we may be found to be infringing upon such rights. We may be unaware of the intellectual property rights that others may claim cover some or all of our technology or services. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our services, or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. We may also be obligated to indemnify our 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 services, 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. During the course of any litigation, we may make announcements regarding the results of hearings and motions, and other interim developments. If securities analysts or investors regard these announcements as negative, the market price of our Class A common stock may decline.

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

Our success and ability to compete depend in part on our intellectual property. We primarily rely on copyright, patent, trade secret and trademark laws, trade secret protection and confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, customers, partners and others to protect our intellectual property rights. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property rights may be inadequate. We may not be able to obtain any further patents, and our pending applications may not lead to the issuance of patents. We may also have to expend significant resources to obtain additional patents as we expand our international operations.

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In order to protect our intellectual property rights, we may spend significant resources to monitor and protect these rights. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time-consuming and distracting to management and may 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. Accordingly, we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing upon or misappropriating our intellectual property. Our failure to secure, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could materially adversely affect our brand and adversely impact our business.

Our services contain open source software, and we license some of our software through open source projects, which may pose particular risks to our proprietary software, products, and services in a manner that could have a negative impact on our business.

We use open source software in our services and will use open source software in the future. In addition, we regularly contribute software source code to open source projects under open source licenses or release internal software projects under open source licenses, and anticipate doing so in the future. The terms of many open source licenses to which we are subject have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts, and there is a risk that open source software licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to provide or distribute our services. Additionally, from time to time third parties may claim ownership of, or demand release of, the open source software or derivative works that we developed using such software, which could include our proprietary source code, or otherwise seek to enforce the terms of the applicable open source license. These claims could result in litigation and could require us to make our software source code freely available, purchase a costly license or cease offering the implicated services unless and until we can re-engineer them to avoid infringement. This re-engineering process could require significant additional research and development resources, and we may not be able to complete it successfully. In addition to risks related to license requirements, use of certain open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source code may contain bugs or other defects and open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the functionality or origin of software. Additionally, because any software source code we contribute to open source projects is publicly available, our ability to protect our intellectual property rights with respect to such software source code may be limited or lost entirely, and we cannot prevent our competitors or others from using such contributed software source code. Any of these risks could be difficult to eliminate or manage and could have a negative effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

Risks Related to Our Financial Position and Need for Additional Capital

We may require additional capital to support our operations or the growth of our business, and we cannot be certain that this capital will be available on reasonable terms when required, or at all.

On occasion, we may need additional financing for a variety of reasons, including operating or growing our business, responding to business opportunities, undertaking acquisitions, or repaying our convertible senior notes. For example, in May 2021, we issued and sold 500,000 shares of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock for an aggregate purchase price of $500 million. Our ability to obtain additional financing, if and when required, will depend on investor and lender demand, our operating performance, the condition of the capital markets and other factors. We cannot guarantee that additional financing will be available to us on favorable terms when required, or at all. If we raise additional funds through the issuance of equity, equity-linked or debt securities, those securities may have rights, preferences or privileges senior to the rights of our Class A common stock, and our existing stockholders may experience dilution. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support the operation or growth of our business could be significantly impaired and our operating results may be harmed.

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Financing agreements we are party to or may become party to may contain operating and financial covenants that restrict our business and financing activities.

Our senior credit facility contains certain operating and financial restrictions and covenants that may restrict our and our subsidiaries’ ability to, among other things, incur indebtedness, grant liens on our assets, make loans or investments, consummate certain merger and consolidation transactions, dispose of assets, incur contractual obligations and commitments and enter into affiliate transactions, subject in each case to customary exceptions. We are also required to comply with a maximum senior secured leverage ratio, a maximum total leverage ratio and a minimum interest coverage ratio. These restrictions and covenants, as well as those contained in any future financing agreements that we may enter into, may restrict our ability to finance our operations, engage in, expand or otherwise pursue our business activities and strategies. Our ability to comply with these covenants may be affected by events beyond our control, and breaches of these covenants could result in a default under the senior credit facility and any future financial agreements that we may enter into and under other arrangements containing cross-default provisions. If not waived, defaults could cause our outstanding indebtedness under our senior credit facility and any future financing agreements that we may enter into to become immediately due and payable, and permit our lenders to terminate their lending commitments and to foreclose upon any collateral securing such indebtedness.

Risks Related to Financial, Accounting, Tax and Other Legal Matters

If we fail to maintain an effective system of disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable regulations could be impaired.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). We expect that compliance with these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time consuming and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems and resources.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures, and internal control over financial reporting. We are continuing to develop and refine our disclosure controls and other procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we file with the SEC is properly recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms. We are also continuing to improve our internal control over financial reporting. We have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources in order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting.

Our current controls and any new controls that we develop may become inadequate because of changes in conditions in our business, including increased complexity resulting from our international expansion. Further, weaknesses in our disclosure controls or our internal control over financial reporting may be discovered in the future. Additionally, to the extent that we acquire other businesses, the acquired company may not have a sufficiently robust system of internal controls and we may uncover new deficiencies. Any failure to develop or maintain effective controls, or any difficulties encountered in their implementation or improvement, could harm our operating results or cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations and may result in a restatement of our financial statements for prior periods. Any failure to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting could also adversely affect the results of management reports and independent registered public accounting firm audits of our internal control over financial reporting that we are required to include in our periodic reports that we file with the SEC. Ineffective disclosure controls and procedures, and internal control over financial reporting could also cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial and other information, which would likely have a negative effect on the market price of our Class A common stock. In addition, if we are unable to continue to meet these requirements, we may not be able to remain listed on the NYSE.

Any failure to maintain effective disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting could have a material and adverse effect on our business and operating results, and cause a decline in the market price of our Class A common stock.

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

Generally accepted accounting principles in the United States are subject to interpretation by the FASB, the SEC and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported financial results, and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement of a change. These or other changes in accounting principles could adversely affect our financial results. Any difficulties in implementing these pronouncements could cause us to fail to meet our financial reporting obligations, which could result in regulatory discipline and harm investors’ confidence in us.

Tax laws or regulations could be enacted or changed and existing tax laws or regulations could be applied to us or to our customers in a manner that could increase the costs of our services and adversely impact our business.

The application of federal, state, local and international tax laws to services provided electronically is unclear and continuously evolving. Income, sales, use or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be enacted or amended at any time, such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the United States, possibly with retroactive effect, and could be applied solely or disproportionately to services provided over the internet. These enactments or amendments could adversely affect our sales activity due to the inherent cost increase the taxes would represent and ultimately result in a negative impact on our operating results and cash flows.

In addition, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be interpreted or applied adversely to us, possibly with retroactive effect, which could require us or our customers to pay additional tax amounts, as well as require us or our customers to pay fines or penalties, as well as interest for past amounts. If we are unsuccessful in collecting such taxes due from our customers, we could be held liable for such costs, thereby adversely impacting our operating results and cash flows.

We may be subject to additional tax liabilities.

We are subject to income, sales, use, value added and other taxes in the United States and other countries in which we conduct business, and such laws and rates vary by jurisdiction. Our income tax obligations are based in part on our corporate structure and intercompany arrangements, including the manner in which we acquire, develop, value, and use our intellectual property and the valuations of our intercompany transactions. Certain jurisdictions in which we do not collect sales, use, value added or other taxes on our sales may assert that such taxes are applicable, which could result in tax assessments, penalties and interest, and we may be required to collect such taxes in the future. Judgment is required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes. These determinations are highly complex and require detailed analysis of the available information and applicable statutes and regulatory materials. In the ordinary course of our business, there are many transactions and calculations where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. Although we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, the final determination of tax audits and any related litigation could be materially different from our historical tax practices, provisions and accruals. If we receive an adverse ruling as a result of an audit, or we unilaterally determine that we have misinterpreted provisions of the tax regulations to which we are subject, there could be a material effect on our tax provision, net loss or cash flows in the period or periods for which that determination is made. In addition, liabilities associated with taxes are often subject to an extended or indefinite statute of limitations period. Therefore, we may be subject to additional tax liability (including penalties and interest) for a particular year for extended periods of time.

Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.

As of January 31, 2022, we had U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards of approximately $700.2 million, state net operating loss carryforwards of approximately $571.2 million, and foreign net operating loss carryforwards of approximately $313.0 million. Under Sections 382 and 383 of Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other pre-change tax attributes, such as research tax credits, to offset its post-change income and taxes may be limited. In general, an “ownership change” occurs if there is a cumulative change in our ownership by “5% shareholders” that exceeds 50 percentage points over a rolling three-year period. Similar

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rules may apply under state tax laws. If we experience ownership changes as a result of future transactions in our stock, then we may be further limited in our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and other tax assets to reduce taxes owed on the net taxable income that we earn. Any such limitations on the ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and other tax assets could adversely impact our business, financial condition and operating results.

We are subject to governmental export controls that could impair our ability to compete in international markets due to licensing requirements and economic sanctions programs that subject us to liability if we are not in full compliance with applicable laws.

Certain of our services are subject to export controls, including the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations and various economic and trade sanction regulations administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls. The provision of our products and services must comply with these laws. The U.S. export control laws and U.S. economic sanctions laws include prohibitions on the sale or supply of certain products and services to U.S. embargoed or sanctioned countries, governments, persons and entities and also require authorization for the export of encryption items. In addition, various countries regulate the import of certain encryption technology, including through import permitting and licensing requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to distribute our services or could limit our customers’ ability to implement our services in those countries.

Although we take precautions to prevent our services from being provided in violation of such laws, our solutions may have been in the past, and could in the future be, provided inadvertently in violation of such laws, despite the precautions we take. If we fail to comply with these laws, we and our employees could be subject to civil or criminal penalties, including the possible loss of export privileges, monetary penalties, and, in extreme cases, imprisonment of responsible employees for knowing and willful violations of these laws. We may also be adversely affected through penalties, reputational harm, loss of access to certain markets, or otherwise.

Changes in tariffs, sanctions, international treaties, export/import laws and other trade restrictions or trade disputes may delay the introduction and sale of our services in international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from deploying our services or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our services to certain countries, governments, persons or entities altogether. Any change in export or import regulations, economic sanctions or related laws, shift in the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons or technologies targeted by such regulations, could result in decreased use of our services, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our services to existing or potential customers with international operations. Any decrease in the use of our services or limitation on our ability to export or sell our services would likely adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results.

Failure to comply with anti-bribery, anti-corruption, and anti-money laundering laws could subject us to penalties and other adverse consequences.

We are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the U.K. Bribery Act and other anti-corruption, anti-bribery and anti-money laundering laws in various jurisdictions both domestic and abroad. In addition to our own sales force, we also leverage third parties to sell our products and services and conduct our business abroad. We and our third-party intermediaries may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities and may be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of these third-party business partners and intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, channel partners, and agents, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities. While we have policies and procedures to address compliance with such laws, we cannot assure you that our employees and agents will not take actions in violation of our policies or applicable law, for which we may be ultimately held responsible. Any violation of the FCPA or other applicable anti-bribery, anti-corruption, and anti-money laundering laws could result in whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage, investigations, loss of export privileges, severe criminal or civil sanctions, or suspension or debarment from U.S. government contracts, all of which may have an adverse effect on our reputation, business, operating results and prospects.

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Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock

Anti-takeover provisions contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws, as well as provisions of Delaware law, could impair a takeover attempt.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, amended and restated bylaws and Delaware law contain provisions which could have the effect of rendering more difficult, delaying or preventing an acquisition deemed undesirable by our board of directors. Among other things, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws include provisions:

These provisions, alone or together, could delay or prevent hostile takeovers and changes in control or changes in our management.

As a Delaware corporation, we are also subject to provisions of Delaware law, including Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which prevents certain stockholders holding more than 15% of our outstanding capital stock from engaging in certain business combinations without approval of the holders of at least two-thirds of our outstanding Class A common stock not held by such stockholder.

Any provision of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, amended and restated bylaws or Delaware law that has the effect of delaying, preventing or deterring a change in control could limit the opportunity for our stockholders to receive a premium for their shares of our capital stock, and could also affect the price that some investors are willing to pay for our Class A common stock.

The market price of our Class A common stock has been and may continue to be volatile, and you could lose all or part of your investment.

The market price of our Class A common stock has been and may continue to be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control and may not be related to our operating performance. In addition to the factors discussed in this “Risk Factors” section and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, factors that could cause fluctuations in the market price of our Class A common stock include the following:

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In addition, in the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market price of a particular company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against these companies. Any future securities litigation could result in substantial costs and a diversion of our management’s attention and resources.

Servicing our future debt may require a significant amount of cash, and we may not have sufficient cash flow from our business to settle conversions of our convertible senior notes in cash, repay the convertible senior notes at maturity, or repurchase the convertible senior notes as required following a fundamental change.

In January 2021, we issued $345.0 million aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes (the “Notes”). Prior to October 15, 2025, the Notes are convertible at the option of the holders only under certain conditions or upon occurrence of certain events. We have made an irrevocable election to settle the principal of the Notes in cash upon any conversion of the Notes. As a result, if holders of the Notes elect to convert their Notes, we will be required to make cash payments in respect of the Notes being converted. Holders of the Notes also have the right to require us to repurchase all or a portion of their Notes upon the occurrence of a fundamental change (as defined in the indenture governing the Notes) at a repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the Notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest. If the Notes have not previously been converted or repurchased, we will be required to repay the Notes in cash at maturity.

Our ability to make required cash payments in connection with conversions of the Notes, repurchase the Notes in the event of a fundamental change, or to repay or refinance the Notes at maturity will depend on market conditions and our past and expected future performance, which is subject to economic, financial, competitive, and other factors beyond our control. We also may not use the cash proceeds we raised through the issuance of the Notes in an optimally productive and profitable manner. Since inception, our business has generated net losses, and we may continue to incur significant losses. As a result, we may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing, or financing at acceptable terms, at the time we are required to repurchase or repay the Notes or pay cash with respect to Notes being converted.

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In addition, our ability to repurchase or pay cash upon conversion or at maturity of the Notes may be limited by law or regulatory authority. Our failure to repurchase Notes following a fundamental change or to pay cash upon conversion or at maturity of the Notes as required by the indenture would constitute a default under such indenture. A default under the indenture or the fundamental change itself could also lead to a default under our senior credit facility, our other outstanding indebtedness, or agreements governing our future indebtedness and could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. If the payment of the related indebtedness were to be accelerated after any applicable notice or grace periods, we may not have sufficient funds to repay the indebtedness and repurchase the Notes or to pay cash upon conversion or at maturity of the Notes.

The capped call transactions we entered into in connection with the issuance of the Notes may affect the value of our Class A common stock.

In connection with the issuance of the Notes, we entered into capped call transactions with various counterparties. The capped call transactions cover, subject to customary adjustments, the number of shares of our Class A common stock initially underlying the Notes. The capped call transactions are expected generally to reduce or offset the potential dilution to our Class A common stock upon any conversion of the Notes with such reduction or offset, as the case may be, subject to a cap based on the cap price.

From time to time, the counterparties to the capped call transactions 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 Notes. This activity could also cause or prevent an increase or a decrease in the market price of our Class A common stock or the Notes.

We are subject to counterparty risk with respect to the capped call transactions.

The counterparties to the capped call transactions that we entered into are financial institutions, and we will be subject to the risk that one or more of the counterparties may default or otherwise fail to perform, or may exercise certain rights to terminate, their obligations under the capped call transactions. Our exposure to the credit risk of the counterparties will not be secured by any collateral.

Global economic conditions have in the past resulted in the actual or perceived failure or financial difficulties of many financial institutions. If a counterparty to one or more capped call 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 such transaction. Our exposure will depend on many factors but, generally, our exposure will increase if the market price or the volatility of our Class A common stock increases. In addition, upon a default or other failure to perform, or a termination of obligations, by a counterparty, the counterparty may fail to deliver the consideration required to be delivered to us under the capped call transactions and we may experience more dilution than we currently anticipate with respect to our Class A common stock. We can provide no assurances as to the financial stability or viability of the counterparties.

Our business could be negatively affected as a result of actions of activist shareholders.

We value constructive input from investors and regularly engage in dialogue with our shareholders regarding strategy and performance. Our board of directors and management team are committed to acting in the best interests of all of our shareholders.

Responding to actions by activist stockholders could be costly and time-consuming, disrupt our operations and divert the attention of management and our employees. For example, we were recently engaged in a proxy contest with an activist shareholder that was very costly and diverted a significant amount of time from our board of directors and management. Additionally, perceived uncertainties as to our future direction as a result of shareholder activism or changes to the composition of our board of directors may lead to the perception of a change in the direction of our business or other instability, which may be exploited by our competitors and/or other activist shareholders and cause concern to our current or potential customers, employees, investors, strategic partners and other constituencies, which could result in lost sales and the loss of business opportunities and make it more difficult

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to attract and retain qualified personnel and business partners. If customers choose to delay, defer or reduce transactions with us or do business with our competitors instead of us, then our business, financial condition and operating results would be adversely affected. In addition, our share price could experience periods of increased volatility as a result of shareholder activism.

The holders of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock are entitled to vote on an as-converted to Class A common stock basis and have rights to approve certain actions. Additionally, KKR may exercise influence over us through their ability to designate a member of our board of directors.

In May 2021, we issued 500,000 shares of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock to a group of investors led by KKR. The holders of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock are generally entitled to vote with the holders of our Class A common stock on all matters submitted for a vote of holders of shares of Class A common stock (voting together with the holders of shares of Class A common stock as one class) on an as-converted basis.

Pursuant to the Investment Agreement, KKR has the right to designate one candidate for nomination for election to our board of directors for so long as KKR and its permitted transferees maintain minimum aggregate holdings of our stock as described in further detail in the Investment Agreement. Notwithstanding the fact that all directors are subject to fiduciary duties to us and to applicable law, the interests of the KKR director designee may differ from the interests of our security holders as a whole or of our other directors.

Additionally, the consent of the holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock is required in order for us to take certain actions, including issuances of securities that are senior to, or equal in priority with, the Series A Convertible Preferred Stock, and payments of special dividends in excess of an agreed upon amount.

As a result, the holders of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock may in the future have the ability to influence the outcome of certain matters affecting our governance and capitalization.

The issuance of shares of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock reduces the relative voting power of holders of our Class A common stock, and the conversion of those shares into shares of our Class A common stock would dilute the ownership of Class A common stockholders and may adversely affect the market price of our Class A common stock.

The holders of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock are entitled to vote, on an as-converted basis, together with holders of our Class A common stock on all matters submitted to a vote of the holders of our Class A common stock, which reduces the relative voting power of the holders of our Class A common stock. In addition, the conversion of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock into Class A common stock would dilute the ownership interest of existing holders of our Class A common stock, and any conversion of the Series A Convertible Preferred Stock would increase the number of shares of our Class A common stock available for public trading, which could adversely affect prevailing market prices of our Class A common stock.

Our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock has rights, preferences and privileges that are not held by, and are preferential to the rights of, our Class A common stockholders, which could adversely affect our liquidity and financial condition.

The holders of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock have the right to receive a payment on account of the distribution of assets on any voluntary or involuntary liquidation, dissolution or winding up of our business before any payment may be made to holders of any other class or series of capital stock. In addition, dividends on the Series A Convertible Preferred Stock accrue and are cumulative at the rate of 3.0% per annum, compounding quarterly, and paid-in-kind or paid in cash, at our election.

The holders of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock also have certain redemption rights, including the right to require us to repurchase all or any portion of the Series A Convertible Preferred Stock at any time following the seventh anniversary of the original issuance date, at 100% of the liquidation preference thereof plus all accrued but unpaid dividends. In addition, upon prior written notice of certain change of control events, the shares of the

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Series A Preferred Stock will automatically be redeemed by us for a repurchase price equal to the greater of (i) the value of the shares of Series A Preferred Stock as converted into Class A common stock at the then-current conversion price and (ii) an amount in cash equal to 100% of the then-current liquidation preference thereof plus all accrued but unpaid dividends. In the case of clause (ii) above, we will also be required to pay the holders of our Series A Preferred Stock a “make-whole” premium consisting of dividends that would have otherwise accrued from the effective date of such change of control through the fifth anniversary of the original issuance date.

These dividend and share repurchase obligations could impact our liquidity and reduce the amount of cash flows available for working capital, capital expenditures, growth opportunities, acquisitions, and other general corporate purposes. Our obligations to the holders of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock could also limit our ability to obtain additional financing, which could have an adverse effect on our financial condition. The preferential rights could also result in divergent interests between the holders of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock and holders of our Class A common stock.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish or cease publishing research or reports about us, our business, our market or our competitors, or if they adversely change their recommendations regarding our Class A common stock, the market price of our Class A common stock and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our Class A common stock is influenced, to some extent, by the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us, our business, our market or our competitors. If any of the analysts who cover us adversely change their recommendations regarding our Class A common stock or provide more favorable recommendations about our competitors, the market price of our Class A common stock would likely decline. If any of the analysts who cover us cease coverage of our company or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause the market price of our Class A common stock or trading volume to decline.

We do not expect to declare any dividends to holders of our Class A common stock in the foreseeable future.

We do not anticipate declaring any cash dividends to holders of our Class A common stock in the foreseeable future. Consequently, investors may need to rely on sales of our Class A common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment. Investors seeking cash dividends should not purchase shares of our Class A common stock.

Item 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

Not applicable.

Item 2. PROPERTIES

Our corporate headquarters, which includes research and development, sales, marketing, business operations and executive offices, is located in Redwood City, California. It consists of approximately 340,000 square feet of space under a lease that expires in fiscal 2029. We sublease a portion of this space.

We also lease offices in other locations, with our principal offices in San Francisco, California; Austin, Texas; New York, New York; Chicago, Illinois; London, England; Tokyo, Japan; and Warsaw, Poland. We intend to procure additional space as we add employees in our current locations and expand geographically. We believe that our facilities are adequate to meet our needs for the immediate future, and that, should it be needed, suitable additional space will be available to accommodate expansion of our operations.

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Item 3. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

Refer to Note 9 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K under the subheading “Legal Matters,” which is incorporated herein by reference.

Item 4. MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURE

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 began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “BOX” on January 23, 2015. Prior to that date, there was no public trading market for shares of our Class A common stock.

Holders of Record

As of February 28, 2022, there were 140 holders of record of our Class A common stock. Because many of our shares of Class A common stock are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of beneficial owners of our Class A common stock represented by these record holders.

Dividend Policy

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our Class A common stock. We currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not anticipate paying any dividends on our Class A common stock in the foreseeable future. Any future determination to declare dividends will be made 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 may deem relevant.

Holders of our Series A convertible preferred stock are entitled to a cumulative dividend. Refer to Note 11 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information about such dividends.

Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities

We did not sell any equity securities which were not registered under the Securities Act during the fiscal year ended January 31, 2022 that were not otherwise disclosed in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q or our Current Reports on Form 8-K.

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Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Share repurchase activity during the three months ended January 31, 2022 was as follows (in thousands, except per share data):

Performance Graph

This performance graph shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or to be “filed” with the SEC for purposes of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (Exchange Act), or otherwise subject to the liabilities under that Section, and shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into any filing of Box, Inc. under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Exchange Act.

The following graph compares the cumulative total return to stockholders on our common stock relative to the cumulative total returns of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, or S&P 500, and the NASDAQ Computer Index. An investment of $100 (with reinvestment of all dividends) is assumed to have been made in our Class A common stock

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and in each index on January 31, 2017 and its relative performance is tracked through January 31, 2022. The returns shown are based on historical results and are not intended to suggest future performance.

Item 6. [RESERVED]

Not applicable.

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Item 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with the consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This discussion contains forward-looking statements based upon current expectations that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those discussed in the section titled “Risk Factors” and in other parts of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Overview

Box is the Content Cloud: one secure, cloud-native platform for managing the entire content journey. Content – from blueprints to wireframes, videos to documents, proprietary formats to PDFs – is the source of an organization’s unique value. Our cloud content management platform enables our customers, including 67% of the Fortune 500, to securely manage the entire content lifecycle, from the moment a file is created or ingested to when it’s shared, edited, published, approved, signed, classified, and retained. Box keeps content secure and compliant, while also allowing easy access and sharing of this content from anywhere, on any device – both within the organization and with external partners.

With our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, users can collaborate on content both internally and with external parties, automate content-driven business processes, develop custom applications, and implement data protection, security and compliance features to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, internal policies and industry standards and regulations. The Box Content Cloud accelerates business processes, improves employee productivity, enables secure remote work, and protects an organization’s most valuable data. Our platform enables a broad set of high-value business use cases across enterprises, hundreds of file formats and media types, and user experiences. Our platform integrates with more than 1,500 leading enterprise business applications, and is compatible with multiple application environments, operating systems and devices, ensuring that workers can securely access their critical business content whenever and wherever they need it.

In addition, we continue to innovate by expanding our core services and offerings with a focus on frictionless security and compliance, seamless internal and external collaboration and workflow, and integration with best-of-breed applications. For example, we provide Box Shield, our advanced security offering that helps customers reduce the risk of accidental content leakage and protect their business from insider threats and account compromise; Box KeySafe, a solution that builds on top of Box’s strong encryption and security capabilities to give customers greater control over the encryption keys used to secure the file contents that are stored with Box; Box Governance, which gives customers a better way to comply with regulatory policies, satisfy e-discovery requests and effectively manage sensitive business information throughout its lifecycle; Box Relay, which allows our end users to easily build, manage and track their own workflows; Box Sign, which enables customers to securely send documents for electronic signature directly from Box; Box Platform, which further enables customers and partners to build enterprise apps using our open APIs and developer tools; and Box Zones, which gives global customers the ability to store their content locally in certain regions. We also offer self-service and managed content migration services with Box Shuttle, and with Box Consulting, we also provide in-house professional services such as implementation support, assisted content migration, and change management. The increasing traction of these product innovations allows our customers to realize the full set of capabilities of our Content Cloud.

We offer our solution to our customers as a subscription-based service, with subscription fees based on the requirements of our customers, including the number of users and functionality deployed. The majority of our customers subscribe to our service through one-year contracts, although we also offer our services for terms ranging from one month to three years or more. We typically invoice our customers at the beginning of the term, in multi-year, annual, quarterly or monthly installments. We recognize revenue as we satisfy our performance obligations. Accordingly, due to our subscription model, we recognize revenue for our subscription and premier services ratably over the term of the contract.

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Our objective is to build an enduring business that creates sustainable revenue and earnings growth over the long term. To best achieve this objective, we focus on growing the number of users and paying organizations through direct field sales, direct inside sales, indirect channel sales and through word-of-mouth by individual users, some of whom use our services at no cost. Individual users and organizations can also simply sign up to use our solution on our website. We believe this approach not only helps us build a critical mass of users but also has a viral effect within organizations as more of their employees use our service and encourage their IT professionals to deploy our services to a broader user base.

As of January 31, 2022, we had over 100,000 paying organizations, and our solution was offered in 25 languages. We define paying organizations as separate and distinct buying entities, such as a company, an educational or government institution, or a distinct business unit of a large corporation, that have entered into a subscription agreement with us to utilize our services.

Organizations typically purchase our solution in the following ways: (i) employees in one or more small groups within the organization may individually purchase our service; (ii) organizations may purchase IT-sponsored, enterprise-level agreements with deployments for specific, targeted use cases ranging from tens to thousands of user seats; (iii) organizations may purchase IT- sponsored, enterprise-level agreements where the number of user seats sold is intended to accommodate and enable nearly all information workers within the organization in whatever use cases they desire to adopt over the term of the subscription; and (iv) organizations may purchase our Box Platform service to create custom business applications for their internal use and extended ecosystem of customers, suppliers and partners. Customers can choose between an a la carte approach (i.e., by purchasing specific add-on products to complement their Box subscription) or one of our bundled Enterprise Plus plan, which include multiple add-on products to help accelerate customer time to value.

We intend to continue scaling our organization to meet the increasingly complex needs of our customers. Our sales and customer success teams are organized to efficiently serve organizations ranging from small businesses to the world’s largest global organizations. We have invested in our sales and marketing teams to sell our services around the world, as well as in our development efforts to deliver additional features and capabilities of our cloud services to address our customers’ evolving needs. We also expect to continue to make investments in both our infrastructure to meet the needs of our growing global user base and our professional services organization (Box Consulting) to address the strategic needs of our customers in more complex deployments and to drive broader adoption across a wide array of use cases.

Current Period Highlights

For the years ended January 31, 2022 and 2021, our revenue was $874.3 million and $770.8 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 13%. As of January 31, 2021, our remaining performance obligations were $1.1 billion, representing a 19% increase from our remaining performance obligations of $896.9 million as of January 31, 2021. For the year ended January 31, 2022, our operating loss was $27.6 million, and our operating margin was negative 3%, compared to our operating loss of $37.6 million and our operating margin of negative 5% for the year ended January 31, 2021. Our operating loss included $15.6 million in fees related to shareholder activism during the year ended January 31, 2022, compared to $1.4 million during the year ended January 31, 2021. For the year ended January 31, 2022, our net cash provided by operating activities was $234.8 million, compared to our net cash provided by operating activities of $196.8 million for the year ended January 31, 2021. For the year ended January 31, 2022, our free cash flow was positive $170.2 million, an increase of $49.9 million from our free cash flow of positive $120.3 million for the year ended January 31, 2021.

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Continuous Innovation

Despite the pandemic’s impact, we were able to continue delivering product innovation throughout our fiscal year 2022. During the fiscal year ended January 31, 2022, we launched several new products including, but not limited to:

COVID-19

We continue to monitor, analyze and respond to evolving developments regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, which has significantly impacted global economic activity and social practices. As part of these efforts, we have taken steps to protect the health and welfare of our employees by temporarily closing certain of our offices and suspending most business-related travel, while continuing our commitment and efforts to serve customers that rely on us. In addition, we have shifted substantially all of our customer and marketing events in the United States to virtual-only experiences.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has not had a material adverse impact on our financial results for our fiscal year 2022, the pandemic has negatively impacted some of our customers and prospects. As a result, we have experienced, and may continue to experience, increased customer churn and delayed sales cycles, as well as customers and prospective customers reducing budgets related to services that we offer. Despite these adverse impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how organizations get work done, with many businesses shifting to remote and hybrid remote work environments. This shift has created additional opportunities for Box by enabling our customers’ and prospects’ employees to engage in secure remote work through our platform.

The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic ultimately impacts our business, results of operations, and financial position will depend on future developments, which are uncertain and cannot be predicted at this time, and include the severity and duration of the pandemic, the occurrence of breakthrough cases and COVID-19 variants, the availability, effectiveness, and administration of COVID-19 vaccines globally, actions that may be taken by government authorities to contain the virus and minimize its economic impact, passing or not passing of further stimulus packages by governments, the impact of COVID-19 on our customers, business partners, and employees, and other factors identified in Part I, Item 1A "Risk Factors" of this Form 10-K. As a result, the extent and magnitude of the impact COVID-19 will have on our business and operating results cannot be predicted at this time.

Our Business Model

Our business model focuses on maximizing the lifetime value of a customer relationship. We make significant investments in acquiring new customers and believe that we will be able to achieve a positive return on these investments by retaining customers, cross-selling our add-on products and expanding the size of our deployments within our customer base over time. In connection with the acquisition of new customers, we incur and recognize

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significant upfront costs. These costs include sales and marketing costs associated with acquiring new customers, such as sales commission expenses, a portion of which are deferred and then amortized over a period of benefit, and marketing costs, which are expensed as incurred. We recognize revenue as we satisfy our performance obligations to customers. Accordingly, due to our subscription model, we recognize revenue for our subscription services ratably over the term of the contract.

We experience a range of profitability with our customers depending in large part upon their current stage. We generally incur higher sales and marketing expenses for new customers and existing customers who are still in an expanding stage. For new customers and for customers who are expanding their use of Box, our associated sales and marketing expenses typically represent a higher portion of revenue for the initial subscription term for new customers or the remaining subscription term for existing customers. For customers who are renewing their Box subscriptions, our associated sales and marketing expenses are significantly less than the revenue we recognize from those customers over the term of the renewed subscription. These differences are primarily driven by the higher compensation we provide to our sales force for new customers and customer subscription expansions compared to the compensation we provide to our sales force for routine subscription renewals by customers. We have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, lower sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue as our existing customer base grows over time and a relatively higher percentage of our revenue is attributable to renewals versus new or expanding Box deployments.

Key Business Metrics

We use the key metrics below for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. We believe that these key metrics provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance. We believe that both management and investors benefit from referring to these key metrics in assessing our performance and when planning, forecasting, and analyzing future periods. These key metrics also facilitate management's internal comparisons to our historical performance as well as comparisons to certain competitors' operating results. We believe these key metrics are useful to investors both because (1) they allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision-making and (2) they are used by institutional investors and the analyst community to help analyze the health of our business. The below data is presented in millions, except for percentage rate data.

Remaining Performance Obligations

Remaining performance obligations (RPO) represent, at a point in time, contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized. RPO consists of deferred revenue and backlog, offset by contract assets. Backlog is defined as non-cancellable contracts deemed certain to be invoiced and recognized as revenue in future periods. Future invoicing is determined to be certain when we have an executed non-cancellable contract or a significant penalty that is due upon cancellation, and invoicing is not dependent on a future event such as the delivery of a specific new product or feature, or the achievement of contractual contingencies. While Box believes RPO is a leading indicator of revenue as it represents sales activity not yet recognized in revenue, it is not necessarily indicative of future revenue growth as it is influenced by several factors, including seasonality of contract renewal timing, average contract terms and foreign currency exchange rates. Box monitors RPO to manage the business and evaluate performance.

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RPO as of January 31, 2022 was $1.1 billion, an increase of 19% from January 31, 2021. The increase in RPO was primarily driven by expansion within existing customers as they broadened their deployment of our product offerings, longer customer contract durations, the addition of new customers, and the timing of customer-driven renewals.

Billings

Billings represent our revenue plus the changes in deferred revenue and contract assets in the period. Billings we record in any particular period primarily reflect subscription renewals and expansion within existing customers plus sales to new customers, and represent amounts invoiced for all of our products and professional services. We typically invoice our customers at the beginning of the term, in multi-year, annual, quarterly or monthly installments. If the customer negotiates to pay the full subscription amount at the beginning of the period, the total subscription amount for the entire term will be reflected in billings. If the customer negotiates to be invoiced annually or more frequently, only the amount billed for such period will be included in billings.

Billings help investors better understand our sales activity for a particular period, which is not necessarily reflected in our revenue given that we recognize subscription revenue ratably over the contract term. We consider billings a significant performance measure. We monitor billings to manage our business, make planning decisions, evaluate our performance and allocate resources. We believe that billings offer valuable supplemental information regarding the performance of our business and will help investors better understand the sales volumes and performance of our business. We do not consider billings to be a non-GAAP financial measure because it is calculated using exclusively revenue, deferred revenue, and contract assets, all of which are financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP.

Billings during the year ended January 31, 2022 were $941.9 million, an increase of 16% from the year ended January 31, 2021. The increase in billings was primarily driven by expansion within existing customers as they broadened their deployment of our product offerings, the addition of new customers, and the timing of customer-driven renewals.

Our use of billings has certain limitations as an analytical tool and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for revenue or an analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. Billings are recognized when invoiced, while the related subscription and premier services revenue is recognized ratably over the contract term as we satisfy a performance obligation. Also, other companies, including companies in our industry, may not use billings, may calculate billings differently, may have different billing frequencies, or may use other financial measures to evaluate their performance, all of which could reduce the usefulness of billings as a comparative measure.

Over time, we expect to continue to normalize payment durations. In addition, as we have gained and expect to continue to gain more traction with large enterprise customers, we also anticipate our quarterly billings to increasingly concentrate in the back half of our fiscal year, especially in the fourth quarter.

A calculation of billings starting with revenue, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, is presented below (in thousands):

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Free Cash Flow

We define free cash flow as cash flows from​ operating activities less purchases of property and equipment, principal payments of finance lease liabilities, capitalized internal-use software costs, and other items that did not or are not expected to require cash settlement and that management considers to be outside ​of our core business. We specifically identify adjusting ​items in ​our reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP ​financial measures. We consider free cash flow to be a profitability and liquidity measure that provides useful information to management and investors about the amount of cash generated by the business that can possibly be used for investing in our business and strengthening the​ balance sheet, but it is not intended to represent the residual cash flow available for discretionary expenditures. A reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, its nearest GAAP equivalent, is presented in the non-GAAP Financial Measures section at the end of Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The presentation of free cash flow is also not meant to be considered in isolation or as an alternative to cash flows from operating activities as a measure of liquidity.

For the year ended January 31, 2022, free cash flow was $170.2 million, an increase of $49.9 million from the year ended January 31, 2021. The increase in free cash flow was primarily driven by an increase in cash provided by operating activities of $38.0 million, a decrease in principal payments of finance lease liabilities of $9.6 million and a decrease in capital expenditures of $4.3 million, partially offset by an increase in capitalized internal-use software costs of $2.0 million. The increase in cash provided by operating activities was driven by the increase in revenue outpacing the increase in cash expenses compared to the prior period, adjusted for the timing of working capital.

Net Retention Rate

Net retention rate is defined as the net percentage of Total Annual Recurring Revenue (Total ARR) retained from existing customers, including expansion. We define Total ARR as the annualized recurring revenue from all active customer contracts at the end of a reporting period. We adjust exchange rates used to calculate Total ARR on an annual basis, at the beginning of each fiscal year. We calculate constant currency Total ARR growth rates by applying the current period rate to prior period results. We calculate our net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the Total ARR from customers as of 12 months prior to such period end (Prior Period Total ARR). We then calculate Total ARR from these same customers as of the current period end (Current Period Total ARR). Finally, we divide the Current Period Total ARR by the Prior Period Total ARR to arrive at our net retention rate. In calculating our net retention rate, we include only Total ARR associated with those customers who have subscribed to Box for at least 12 months. We present net retention rate on a constant currency basis to provide a framework for assessing how our business performed excluding the effects of foreign currency rate fluctuations. We believe our net retention rate is an important metric that provides insight into the long-term value of our subscription agreements and our ability to retain and grow revenue from our customer base. Net retention rate is an operational metric and there is no comparable GAAP financial measure to which we can reconcile this particular key metric.

Our net retention rate was 111%, 102%, and 104% as of January 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Our net retention rates were primarily attributable to seat growth in existing customers and strong attach rates of add-on products and our bundled Enterprise Plus plan. As our customers purchase add-on products or our bundled Enterprise Plus plan, we tend to realize significantly higher average contract values and stronger net retention rates as compared to customers who only purchase our core product. We believe our go-to-market efforts to deliver a solution selling strategy and our investments in product, customer success, and Box Consulting, including our Box Shuttle migration offering, have been significant factors in our customer retention results. As we penetrate customer accounts, we expect our net retention rate to remain above 100% for the foreseeable future.

Components of Results of Operations

Revenue

We derive our revenue primarily from three sources: (1) subscription revenue, which is comprised of subscription fees from customers who have access to our content cloud platform including routine customer support; (2) revenue from customers purchasing our premier services package; and (3) revenue from professional services such as implementing best practice use cases, project management and implementation consulting services.

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To date, practically all of our revenue has been derived from subscription and premier services. Subscription and premier services revenue are driven primarily by the number of customers, the number of seats sold to each customer and the price of our services.

We recognize revenue as we satisfy our performance obligation. Accordingly, due to our subscription model, we recognize revenue for our subscription and premier services ratably over the contract term. We typically invoice our customers at the beginning of the term, in multi-year, annual, quarterly or monthly installments. Our subscription and premier services contracts are typically non-cancellable and do not contain refund-type provisions. The majority of our customers subscribe to our service through one-year contracts, although we also offer our services for terms ranging between one month to three years or more.

Professional services are generally billed on a fixed price basis, for which revenue is recognized over time based on the proportion performed. Professional services revenue was not material as a percentage of total revenue for all periods presented.

Revenue is presented net of sales and other taxes we collect on behalf of governmental authorities.

Cost of Revenue

Our cost of revenue consists primarily of costs related to providing our subscription services to our paying customers, including employee compensation and related expenses for data center operations, customer support and professional services personnel, payments to outside technology service providers, depreciation of servers and equipment, security services and other tools, as well as amortization expense associated with acquired technology and capitalized internally developed software. We allocate overhead such as rent, information technology costs and employee benefit costs to all departments based on headcount. As such, general overhead expenses are reflected in cost of revenue and each of the operating expense categories set forth below.

Operating Expenses

Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel costs are the most significant component of each category of operating expenses. Operating expenses also include allocated overhead costs for facilities, information technology costs and employee benefit costs.

Research and Development. Research and development expense consists primarily of employee compensation and related expenses, as well as allocated overhead. Our research and development efforts are focused on scaling our platform, building an ecosystem of best-of-breed applications and platforms, infrastructure, adding enterprise grade features, functionality and enhancements such as workflow automation, intelligent content management capabilities, and advanced security to enhance the ease of use of our cloud content management services. We capitalize certain qualifying costs to develop software for internal use incurred during the application development stage.

Sales and Marketing. Sales and marketing expense consists primarily of employee compensation and related expenses, sales commissions, marketing programs, travel-related expenses, as well as allocated overhead. Marketing programs include but are not limited to advertising, events, corporate communications, brand building, and product marketing. Sales and marketing expense also consists of data center and customer support costs related to providing our cloud-based services to our free users. We market and sell our cloud content management services worldwide through our direct sales organization and through indirect distribution channels such as strategic resellers.

General and Administrative. General and administrative expense consists primarily of employee compensation and related expenses for administrative functions including finance, legal, human resources, recruiting, information systems, security, compliance, fees for external professional services and cloud-based enterprise systems, as well as allocated overhead. External professional services fees are primarily comprised of outside legal, accounting, audit and outsourcing services.

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Interest and Other Expense, Net

Interest and other expense, net consists of interest expense, interest income, gains and losses from foreign currency transactions, and other income and expense. Interest expense consists primarily of interest charges for our line of credit and interest rate swap agreement, interest expense related to finance leases, and the amortization of issuance costs of our convertible senior notes. Interest income consists primarily of interest earned on our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments. We have historically invested our cash and cash equivalents in overnight deposits, certificates of deposit, money market funds, and short term, investment-grade corporate debt, marketable securities and asset backed securities.

Provision for Income Taxes

Provision for income taxes consists primarily of income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business and state income taxes in the United States and, as applicable, changes in our deferred taxes and related valuation allowance positions, uncertain tax positions, and taxes associated with jurisdictional transfers of intellectual property.

Results of Operations

The following tables set forth our results of operations for the periods presented (in thousands and as a percentage of our revenue):

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A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for the year ended January 31, 2022 compared to the year ended January 31, 2021 is presented below. A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for the year ended January 31, 2021 compared to the year ended January 31, 2020 can be found under Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2021, filed with the SEC on March 19, 2021, which is available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.

Comparison of the Years Ended January 31, 2022 and 2021

Revenue

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The increase in revenue was primarily driven by an increase in the number of large deals and higher attach rates of our bundled offering. The increase in subscription services was also driven by the addition of new customers, as the number of paying organizations increased by 6% from January 31, 2021 to January 31, 2022. In the year ended January 31, 2022, we experienced significant growth in the Japan market, driving an increase in revenue from non-U.S. customers to 32%, compared to 28% in the year ended January 31, 2021. This increase was partially offset by customers partially churning their deployment with Box.

Cost of Revenue

The increase in absolute dollars during the fiscal year was primarily due to an increase of $14.5 million in hosted data service costs and bandwidth, an increase of $5.1 million in acquired intangible assets amortization, and an increase of $3.4 million in enterprise subscription software costs. Cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue remained flat year-over-year. We expect our cost of revenue to increase in dollars but decrease as a percentage of revenue over time as we continue to optimize data center efficiencies and invest in public cloud infrastructure.

Research and Development

The increase in absolute dollars during the fiscal year was primarily due to an increase of $7.0 million in stock-based compensation expense driven by equity grants to existing and new employees, an increase of $5.7 million in employee and related costs due to higher headcount, an increase of $1.5 million in enterprise subscription software costs, and an increase of $1.3 million in consulting services. Research and development expenses as a percentage of revenue decreased 100 basis points year-over-year. We continue to invest in enhancements of our products and services, developing new products, and further differentiating our offerings. We expect our research and development expenses to increase in dollars but decrease as a percentage of revenue over time as we continue to make significant improvements to our content cloud product offerings and services.

Sales and Marketing

The increase in absolute dollars during the fiscal year was primarily due to an increase of $10.5 million in stock-based compensation expense due to equity grants to existing and new employees, an increase of $9.2 million in commission expense, driven by growth in sales and improved pacing of sales, and an increase of $4.7 million in employee and related costs due to higher headcount. The increase in sales and marketing expenses was partially offset by a decrease of $1.4 million in travel-related costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue decreased 200 basis points year-over-year due to our focus on driving greater efficiency from our solution selling strategy and simplifying our product offerings, as well our focus on higher performing geographies and segments producing a greater return on investment.

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Our sales and marketing expenses are generally higher for acquiring new, or expanding existing, customers than for renewals of existing customer subscriptions. We expect to continue to invest in capturing our large market opportunity globally and capitalize on our competitive position with continued focus on our profitability objectives. We expect our sales and marketing expenses to increase in dollars but decrease as a percentage of revenue over time as our existing customer base grows and a relatively higher percentage of our revenue is attributable to renewals versus new or expanding Box deployments and as we continue to focus on improving sales productivity and simplifying our product offerings. While we expect certain expenses that were reduced due to COVID-19 to increase over time, we currently do not expect to return to pre-COVID-19 levels, even after we return to an office-based environment.

General and Administrative

The increase in absolute dollars during the fiscal year was primarily due to an increase of $14.2 million in fees related to shareholder activism, an increase of $5.9 million in stock-based compensation expense driven by equity grants to existing and new employees, an increase of $2.2 million in consulting and audit services, an increase of $2.2 million in employee and related costs driven by the annual merit increase to salaries, and a $1.0 million impairment charge related to capitalized cloud computing arrangements. General and administrative expense as a percentage of revenue increased 100 basis points year-over-year. We expect our general and administrative expense to slowly increase in dollars but to decrease as a percentage of revenue over time as we benefit from greater operational efficiency.

Interest Expense, Net and Other Income (Loss), Net

* Percentage change not meaningful

The increase in absolute dollars during the fiscal year was primarily due to an increase of $6.2 million in foreign currency losses, an increase of $1.2 million in the amortization of issuance costs related to our convertible debt, and a decrease of $0.3 million in interest income from our certificates of deposit and money market funds due to a lower interest rate environment. This was partially offset by a decrease of $2.4 million in interest expense related to our finance leases and line of credit.

Provision for Income Taxes

The increase in absolute dollars during the fiscal year was due to $1.6 million in higher foreign tax expense from recurring operations and $1.0 million in non-recurring tax expense associated with the transfer of intellectual property between our entities.

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Liquidity and Capital Resources

As of January 31, 2022, we had cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, and short-term investments of $586.9 million. Our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments are comprised primarily of overnight cash deposits, money market funds, and certificates of deposit. Since our inception, we have financed our operations primarily through equity financing, cash generated from operations and debt financing. We believe our existing cash and cash equivalents, together with our finance leases and credit facilities, will be sufficient to meet our working capital and capital expenditure needs for at least the next 12 months. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors including our growth rate, subscription renewal activity, billing frequency, data center expansions, the timing and extent of spending to support development efforts, the expansion of international activities, the introduction of new and enhanced service offerings, and the continuing market acceptance of our services. We may in the future enter into arrangements to acquire or invest in complementary businesses, services and technologies, including intellectual property rights. We may be required to seek additional equity or debt financing. In the event that additional financing is required from outside sources, we may not be able to raise it on terms acceptable to us or at all.

Cash Flows

We generated positive cash flow from operations. While we may continue to incur operating losses, we expect to continuously improve overall cash flow from operations through improvements to our working capital management processes which will provide capital resources for strategic initiatives to grow our business.

For the years ended January 31, 2022, 2021, and 2020, our cash flows were as follows (in thousands):

Operating Activities

For the year ended January 31, 2022, cash provided by operating activities was $234.8 million. The primary factors affecting our operating cash flows during this period were our net loss of $41.5 million, favorably offset by non-cash charges of $179.0 million for stock-based compensation, $78.2 million for depreciation and amortization of our property and equipment and capitalized software, and $45.9 million for amortization of deferred commissions. Cash provided by operating activities during the year ended January 31, 2022 were further adjusted by net cash outflows of $29.7 million provided by changes in our operating assets and liabilities.

The primary drivers for the changes in operating assets and liabilities include a $59.2 million increase in deferred commissions resulting from capitalization of incremental commissions paid to our sales force, a $47.4 million decrease in operating lease liabilities, a $27.2 million increase in accounts receivable that was primarily due to higher sales and timing of our cash collections, and a $16.1 million increase in prepaid expenses and other assets. This was partially offset by a $63.1 million increase in deferred revenue, a $41.8 million decrease in operating right-of-use assets, and a $15.3 million increase in accounts payable, accrued expenses and other liabilities.

Investing Activities

Cash used in investing activities of $239.4 million for the year ended January 31, 2022 was primarily driven by $170.0 million in purchases of short-term investments, $59.4 million in cash paid for acquisitions, net of cash acquired, $5.8 million of capitalized internally developed software costs, and $4.7 million of fixed asset purchases.

Financing Activities

Cash used in financing activities of $172.9 million for the year ended January 31, 2022 was primarily driven by $561.6 million in repurchases of our common stock, $57.4 million of employee payroll taxes paid related to net

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share settlement of restricted stock, $50.4 million of principal payments of finance lease liabilities, and $9.6 million of dividend payments to preferred stockholders. This was partially offset by $485.1 million from the issuance of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock, net of issuance costs and $25.4 million from issuances of common stock under our employee equity plans.

Debt

In January 2021, we issued $345.0 million aggregate principal amount of 0.00% convertible senior notes due January 15, 2026. The Notes are senior unsecured obligations and do not bear regular interest. Each $1,000 principal amount of the Notes is convertible into 38.7962 shares of our Class A common stock, which is equivalent to a conversion price of approximately $25.78 per share, subject to adjustment upon the occurrence of specified events. We have made an irrevocable election to settle the principal portion of the Notes only in cash. Accordingly, upon conversion, we will pay the principal in cash and we will pay or deliver, as the case may be, the conversion premium in cash, shares of common stock or a combination of cash and shares of common stock, at our election.

In connection with the pricing of the Notes, we entered into privately negotiated capped call transactions with certain counterparties (the "Capped Calls"). The Capped Calls each have a strike price of approximately $25.80 and initial cap prices of $35.58 per share, subject to certain adjustments.

On November 27, 2017, we entered into a secured credit agreement (as amended or otherwise modified from time to time, the "November 2017 Facility"). On July 26, 2021, we entered into Amendment No. 4 to the November 2017 Facility. Pursuant to the terms of the amendment, the maturity date of borrowings under the November 2017 Facility is July 26, 2024, the revolving commitment is $65.0 million, and it provides for a sublimit for the issuance of letters of credit of $45.0 million. As of January 31, 2022, debt outstanding under the November 2017 Facility was $30.0 million.

Refer to Note 10 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for detailed descriptions of the Notes and the November 2017 Facility.

Recent Financing Activities

Series A Convertible Preferred Stock

On April 7, 2021, we entered into an investment agreement (the "Investment Agreement") with certain investment funds managed or advised by KKR (collectively "KKR") relating to the issuance and sale of 500,000 shares of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock, par value of $0.0001 per share, for an aggregate purchase price of $500 million, or $1,000 per share (the "Issuance"). The closing of the Issuance occurred on May 12, 2021. Refer to Note 11 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a detailed description of our Series A Convertible Preferred Stock.

Tender Offer

On June 2, 2021, we announced the commencement of a tender offer to purchase up to $500 million in value of shares of our Class A common stock. On June 30, 2021, upon the completion of the tender offer, we announced that we repurchased 9.2 million shares at a price of $25.75 for a total amount of $238.2 million.

Share Repurchase Plan

On July 9, 2021, our board of directors authorized a $260 million Class A common stock Share Repurchase Plan. On November 27, 2021, our board of directors authorized a $200 million expansion of the Share Repurchase Plan. Refer to Note 17 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for information regarding a subsequent expansion of the Share Repurchase Plan, which occurred after January 31, 2022 and authorized up to an additional $150 million for repurchase.

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As of January 31, 2022, we had repurchased 13.3 million shares under this plan at a weighted average price of $24.61 for a total amount of $328.5 million.

Contractual Obligations and Commitments

Our principal commitments consist of (i) obligations under operating leases for office spaces and data centers, (ii) obligations under finance leases for servers and related equipment for our data center operations, (iii) purchase obligations not recognized on the consolidated balance sheet as of January 31, 2022, which relate primarily to infrastructure services and IT software and support services, and (iv) debt, including obligations under both our November 2017 Facility and Notes. For more information regarding our obligations for leases, purchase agreements, and debt, refer to Notes 6, 9, and 10, respectively, in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

Through January 31, 2022, we did not have any relationships with unconsolidated entities that have, or are reasonably likely to have, a material effect on our financial statements.

Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates

Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States. The preparation of these consolidated financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, costs and expenses, and related disclosures. On an ongoing basis, we evaluate our estimates and assumptions. Our actual results may differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions.

We believe that of our significant accounting policies, which are described in Note 2 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, the following accounting policies involve a greater degree of judgment and complexity. Accordingly, these are the policies we believe are the most critical to aid in fully understanding and evaluating our consolidated financial condition and results of our operations. The estimates and assumptions included in our critical accounting policies have not changed during the year ended January 31, 2022 from those disclosed during the year ended January 31, 2021.

Revenue Recognition

We derive our revenue from three sources: (1) subscription revenue, which is comprised of subscription fees from customers who have access to our content cloud platform which includes routine customer support; (2) revenue from customers purchasing our premier services package; and (3) revenue from professional services such as implementing best practice use cases, project management and implementation consulting services.

Revenue is recognized when control of these services is transferred to a customer. The amount of revenue recognized reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to in exchange for those services. Revenue recognition is subject to uncertainty due to the judgments made in applying the revenue recognition framework.

We determine revenue recognition through the following steps:

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Subscription and Premier Services Revenues

We recognize revenue as we satisfy our performance obligation. Accordingly, due to our subscription model, we recognize revenue for our subscription and premier services ratably over the contract term.

We typically invoice our customers at the beginning of the term, in multi-year, annual, quarterly or monthly installments. Our subscription and premier services contracts generally range from one to three years in length, are typically non-cancellable and do not contain refund-type provisions. Revenue is presented net of sales and other taxes we collect on behalf of governmental authorities.

Professional Services

Professional services are generally billed on a fixed price basis, for which revenue is recognized over time based on the proportion performed.

Contracts with Multiple Performance Obligations

Our contracts can include multiple performance obligations which may consist of some or all of subscription services, premier services, and professional services. For these contracts, we account for individual performance obligations separately if they are distinct. The transaction price is allocated to the separate performance obligations on a relative standalone selling price basis. We determine the standalone selling prices based on our overall pricing objectives, taking into consideration discounting practices, the size and volume of our transactions, the customer demographic, the geographic area where services are sold, price lists, our go-to-market strategy, historical standalone sales and contract prices.

Deferred Revenue

Deferred revenue consists of billings in advance of revenue recognition generated by our subscription services, premier services, and professional services described above.

Deferred Commissions

Sales commissions earned by our sales force are considered incremental and recoverable costs of obtaining a contract with a customer. Sales commissions for new contracts are deferred and then amortized on a straight-line basis over a period of benefit that we have estimated to be five years. Arriving at this period of benefit involves judgment. We determined the period of benefit by taking into consideration both qualitative and quantitative factors, including the duration of our customer contracts, the life cycles of our technology and other factors. If these factors change or different assumptions are used, our period of benefit could change and result in a materially different amortization of sales commissions. Sales commissions for renewal contracts are deferred and then amortized on a straight-line basis over the related contractual renewal period. Amortization expense is included in sales and marketing expenses on the consolidated statements of operations.

Stock-Based Compensation

We measure and recognize compensation expense for all stock-based awards granted to our employees and other service providers, including stock options, restricted stock units, restricted stock and purchase rights granted under our 2015 Equity Incentive Plan (2015 Plan) and 2015 Employee Stock Purchase Plan (2015 ESPP), based on the estimated fair value of the award on the grant date. We use the Black-Scholes option pricing model to estimate the fair value of stock option awards and purchase rights granted under our 2015 Plan and 2015 ESPP. We use the market closing price of our Class A common stock as reported on the New York Stock Exchange for the fair value of restricted stock units granted after our initial public offering. We recognize the fair value of stock options and restricted stock units as an expense, net of estimated forfeitures, on a straight-line basis over the requisite service period. We recognize the fair value of purchase rights granted under our 2015 ESPP as an expense on a straight-line basis over the offering period.

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Our Black-Scholes option pricing model requires the input of certain assumptions, including the fair value of the underlying common stock, the expected term of the option, the expected volatility of the price of our common stock, risk-free interest rates, and the expected dividend yield of our common stock. The assumptions used in our option pricing model represent management’s best estimates. These estimates involve inherent uncertainties and the application of management’s judgment. If factors change and different assumptions are used, our stock-based compensation expense could be materially different in the future.

These assumptions are estimated as follows:

Refer to Note 12 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a summary of the assumptions used to estimate the fair value of stock option and ESPP purchase rights.

For performance-based restricted stock units that vest based upon continued service and achievement of certain performance conditions established by the board of directors for a predetermined period, the fair value is determined based upon the market closing price of our Class A common stock on the date of the grant; compensation expense is recognized over the requisite service period if it is probable that the performance condition will be satisfied based on the accelerated attribution method.

In addition, we have issued performance-based stock options that vest based upon continued service through the vesting term and achievement of certain market conditions established by the board of directors for a predetermined period. We measure stock-based compensation expense for performance-based stock options containing market conditions based on the estimated grant date fair value determined using the Monte Carlo valuation model; we recognize compensation expense for such awards over the requisite service period using the accelerated attribution method.

We estimate the expected forfeiture rate and only recognize expense for those shares that are expected to vest. We estimate the expected forfeiture rate at the date of grant based on historical experience and our expectations regarding future pre-vesting termination behavior of employees and other service providers and revise the estimates, if necessary, in subsequent periods if actual forfeitures differ from those estimates. To the extent our actual forfeiture rate is different from our estimate, stock-based compensation expense is adjusted accordingly.

We will continue to use judgment in evaluating the assumptions related to our stock-based compensation on a prospective basis. As we continue to accumulate additional data related to our common stock, we may have refinements to our estimates, which could materially impact our future stock-based compensation expense.

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Business Combinations

We allocate the fair value of purchase consideration to the tangible assets acquired, liabilities assumed and intangible assets acquired based on their estimated fair values. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair values of these identifiable assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Such valuations require management to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Significant estimates in valuing certain intangible assets include, but are not limited to, future expected cash flows from acquired users, acquired technology, and trade names from a market participant perspective, useful lives and discount rates. Management’s estimates of fair value are based upon assumptions believed to be reasonable, but which are inherently uncertain and unpredictable and, as a result, actual results may differ from estimates. During the measurement period, which is one year from the acquisition date, we may record adjustments to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed, with the corresponding offset to goodwill. Upon the conclusion of the measurement period, any subsequent adjustments are recorded to earnings.

Recently Adopted and Issued Accounting Pronouncements

Refer to Note 2 in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K regarding the effect of recently adopted and issued accounting pronouncements on our financial statements.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

Regulation S-K Item 10(e), “Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures in Commission Filings,” defines and prescribes the conditions for use of non-GAAP financial information. Our measures of non-GAAP operating income (loss), non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP net income (loss), non-GAAP net income (loss) per share, and free cash flow (collectively, the non-GAAP financial measures) each meet the definition of a non-GAAP financial measure.

We use these non-GAAP financial measures and our key metrics for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures and key metrics provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance by excluding certain expenses that may not be indicative of our recurring core business operating results. We believe that both management and investors benefit from referring to these non-GAAP financial measures and key metrics in assessing our performance and when planning, forecasting, and analyzing future periods. These non-GAAP financial measures and key metrics also facilitate management’s internal comparisons to our historical performance as well as comparisons to our competitors’ operating results. We believe these non-GAAP financial measures and key metrics are useful to investors both because (1) they allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision-making and (2) they are used by our institutional investors and the analyst community to help them analyze the health of our business.

Non-GAAP operating income (loss) and non-GAAP operating margin

We define non-GAAP operating income (loss) as operating income (loss) excluding expenses related to stock-based compensation (SBC), acquired intangible assets amortization, and as applicable, other special items. Non-GAAP operating margin is defined as non-GAAP operating income (loss) divided by revenue. Although SBC is an important aspect of the compensation of our employees and executives, determining the fair value of certain of the stock-based instruments we utilize involves a high degree of judgment and estimation and the expense recorded may bear little resemblance to the actual value realized upon the vesting or future exercise of the related stock-based awards. Furthermore, unlike cash compensation, the value of stock options, which is an element of our ongoing stock-based compensation expense, is determined using a complex formula that incorporates factors, such as market volatility, that are beyond our control. For restricted stock unit awards, the amount of stock-based compensation expenses is not reflective of the value ultimately received by the grant recipients. Management believes it is useful to exclude SBC in order to better understand the long-term performance of our core business and to facilitate comparison of our results to those of peer companies. Management also views amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, such as the amortization of the cost associated with an acquired company’s developed technology and trade names, as items arising from pre-acquisition activities determined at the time of an acquisition. While these intangible assets are continually evaluated for impairment, amortization of the cost of purchased intangibles is

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a static expense, one that is not typically affected by operations during any particular period. Furthermore, Box excludes the following expenses as they are considered by management to be special items outside of Box’s core operating results: (1) fees related to shareholder activism, which include directly applicable third-party advisory and professional service fees, (2) expenses related to certain litigation, (3) expenses associated with restructuring activities, consisting primarily of severance and other personnel-related costs, and (4) expenses related to announced acquisitions, including transaction and discrete tax costs. There are no expenses related to litigation excluded from non-GAAP operating income (loss) in any of the periods presented.

Non-GAAP net income (loss) and net income (loss) per share

We define non-GAAP net income (loss) as net loss excluding expenses related to stock-based compensation, acquired intangible assets amortization and as applicable, other special items. We specifically identify other adjusting items in our reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP net income (loss). These items include expenses related to certain litigation and the amortization of the issuance costs associated with our Notes, which are amortized as interest expense, because they are considered by management to be special items outside our core operating results. We define non-GAAP net income (loss) per share as non-GAAP net income (loss) divided by the weighted-average outstanding shares. Similarly, the same adjusting items specified in our reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP net income (loss) are also excluded from the calculation of non-GAAP net income (loss) per share.

Free Cash Flow

We define free cash flow as cash flows from​ operating activities less purchases of property and equipment, principal payments of finance lease liabilities, capitalized internally developed software costs, and other items that did not or are not expected to require cash settlement and that management considers to be outside ​of our core business. We specifically identify other adjusting ​items in ​our reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP ​financial measures. We consider free cash flow to be a profitability and liquidity measure that provides useful information to management and investors about the amount of cash generated by the business that can possibly be used for investing in our business and strengthening ​the​ balance sheet, but it is not intended to represent the residual cash flow available for discretionary expenditures. A reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, its nearest GAAP equivalent, is presented below. The presentation of free cash flow is also not meant to be considered in isolation or as an alternative to cash flows from operating activities as a measure of liquidity.

Limitations on the use of non-GAAP financial measures

A limitation of our non-GAAP financial measures is that they do not have uniform definitions. Our definitions will likely differ from the definitions used by other companies, including peer companies, and therefore comparability may be limited. Thus, our non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, or in isolation from, measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. Additionally, in the case of stock-based compensation expense, if we did not pay a portion of compensation in the form of stock-based compensation expense, the cash salary expense included in cost of revenue and operating expenses would be higher which would affect our cash position.

We compensate for these limitations by reconciling non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. We encourage investors and others to review our financial information in its entirety, not to rely on any single financial measure and to view our non-GAAP financial measures in conjunction with the most comparable GAAP financial measures.

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Our reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures for years ended January 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020 are as follows (in thousands, except per share data and percentages):