OOMA INC - Annual Report: 2018 (Form 10-K)

UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2018

OR

For the transition period from                 to

Commission File Number: 001-37493

Ooma, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in charter)

525 Almanor Avenue, Suite 200, Sunnyvale, California 94085

(Address of principal executive offices and zip code)

Registrant’s telephone number (650) 566-6600

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 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 Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.    YES  ☒    NO  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit and post such files).    YES  ☒    NO  ☐

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§229.405) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of Registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K.  x

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company or 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 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 as of July 31, 2017 was approximately $140 million based upon the closing price reported for such date on the New York Stock Exchange.  

19.4 million shares of common stock were issued and outstanding as of March 23, 2018.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the registrant’s definitive Proxy Statement for its 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference in Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Such Proxy Statement will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year to which this report relates. Except with respect to information specifically incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K, the Proxy Statement is not deemed to be filed as part of this Form 10-K.

Table of Contents

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2018 (“Form 10-K”) contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). The words “believe,” “will,” “may,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “should,” “plan,” “expect,” “predict,” “could,” “potentially” and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements, which may include, but are not limited to, statements concerning the following:

You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Such statements are based on management’s expectations as of the date of this filing and involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results, events or circumstances to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include those described throughout this report and particularly in the sections entitled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” Given these risks and uncertainties, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider all of the information in this Form 10-K and in other documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this Form 10-K to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this filing or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements.  Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures or investments we may make.

When we use the terms “Ooma,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our” in this report, we are referring to Ooma, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries unless the context requires otherwise. Ooma, Butterfleye, PureVoice and the Ooma logo are trademarks of Ooma, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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PART I

Item 1. Business

Overview

Ooma creates powerful connected experiences for businesses and consumers. Our smart SaaS platform serves as a communications hub, which offers cloud-based telephony, home security and other connected services. Our business and residential communications solutions deliver our proprietary PureVoice high-definition voice quality, advanced features and integration with mobile devices, at competitive pricing and value. Our platform helps create smart workplaces and homes by providing communications, monitoring, security, automation, productivity and networking infrastructure applications.

We drive the adoption of our platform by providing communications solutions to the large and growing markets for business, residential and mobile users, and then accelerate growth by offering new and innovative connected services to our user base. Our customers adopt our platform by making a one-time purchase of one of our on-premise appliances, connecting the appliance to the internet, and activating subscription services, for which they primarily pay on a monthly basis. We believe we have achieved high levels of customer retention and loyalty by delivering exceptional quality and customer satisfaction.

Our services run on our unique platform consisting of four proprietary elements: our multi-tenant cloud service, custom on-premise appliance, mobile applications and end-point devices. Ooma’s cloud provides a high-quality, secure, managed, and reliable connection integrating every element of our platform. Our on-premise appliances incorporate both a custom-designed, Linux-based computer and a high-speed network router, with several key features, including wireless connectivity to end-point devices and custom firmware and software applications that are remotely upgradable and extensible to new services. Our mobile applications enable customers to access our product features from anywhere, and our end-point devices enable additional functionality and services. Our platform powers all aspects of our business, not only providing the infrastructure for the communications portion of our business, but also enabling a number of other current and future valuable productivity, automation, monitoring, safety, security, and networking infrastructure applications.

We offer our solutions in the U.S. and Canadian markets and recently began expanding our operations outside of North America. We believe that our differentiated platform and our long-term customer relationships uniquely position us to add new connected services and exploit adjacent markets, all without significant capital investment or high customer acquisition costs to drive their adoption. We believe that our platform is particularly well-suited to enable the delivery of connected services because it is always on, monitored and interactive. We expect the adoption of our connected services to support the continued growth of our recurring revenue stream.

We have experienced significant revenue and user growth in recent periods, growing our Ooma Office and Ooma Telo core users from approximately 746,000 as of January 31, 2016 to approximately 929,000 as of January 31, 2018, representing growth of approximately 25%. We believe that we have one of the lowest customer churn rates in the industry, with an average annual core user churn rate of approximately 9% for the year ended January 31, 2018. Our total revenue was $114.5 million, $104.5 million and $88.8 million in fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. Subscription and services revenue, which primarily includes the recurring portion of our total revenue, has increased as a percentage of our total revenue over the last three years, from approximately 82% in fiscal 2016 to 89% in fiscal 2018. We have continued to make significant investments in research and development, brand marketing, and channel development, incurring net losses of ($13.1) million, ($12.9) million and ($14.1) million in fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. Our Adjusted EBITDA was ($0.2) million, ($1.4) million and ($6.5) million in fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. See “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” below for additional information, including non-GAAP reconciliations.

We were incorporated in 2003 as a Delaware corporation and our stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “OOMA.” Our corporate headquarters is located in Sunnyvale, California.

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Our Products and Services

Business Communications

Ooma Office is a fully-featured multi-user communications system for small businesses of any size, providing everything needed to manage communications in and out of the office with a suite of powerful features at an affordable price. Unlike pure cloud-based phone services that only work with IP phones, our unique hybrid SaaS platform allows for the use of standard analog phones, mobile phones and fax machines, as well as select IP phones and internet fax. Ooma Office analog desktop extensions work wirelessly with no wiring infrastructure. This makes setup intuitive and easy enough for the user to install and manage without assistance from an IT professional.

Ooma Office consists of an on-premise appliance (base unit) and an Ooma Linx end-point device, which wirelessly connects regular desktop telephones and fax machines to the user’s high-speed internet connection. The user can configure the system online, using the Ooma Office Manager web portal. Ooma Office provides features not typically available to small businesses, including a virtual receptionist, music-on-hold, ring groups, a conference bridge, internet and analog fax capability, and mobility features, such as voicemail forwarding to a designated e-mail address. We also refer to Ooma Office as our Small Business Solution and we may refer to them interchangeably.

The Ooma Office Mobile HD app allows users to make, receive and transfer phone calls, listen to voicemails and manage their Ooma account on the go with any iOS or Android device.

We continue to invest in Ooma Office to complete a set of additional features, including support for businesses with more than one location. In March 2018, we acquired Voxter Communications, Inc., a provider of Unified Communications-as-a-Service (“UCaaS”) solutions for mid-market and enterprise businesses, which is expected to complement our Ooma Office solution and allow us to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes.

Residential Communications

Ooma Telo is a complete home communications solution designed to serve as the primary phone line in the home, delivering high-quality voice communications and unique and valuable features. Users buy an Ooma Telo and plug it into a high-speed internet connection and standard home phone devices. Users have the option to transfer their existing phone number for a one-time fee or to select a new number at no cost. Once set up, users have access to free nationwide calling, international calling with low rates and standard features such as: voicemail, call waiting, caller ID, network address book and 911 calling, with text alerts when 911 is dialed from the home. Based on a typical monthly phone bill of $40 for standard landline service, we estimate that users can save approximately $1,200 in three years by using an Ooma Telo.

The Ooma Premier Service is a suite of over 25 advanced calling features that have been designed to enhance the capabilities of Ooma Telo on a monthly or annual subscription basis. Ooma Premier helps our users enhance their privacy, personalize their home phone, stay connected on the go, better manage and access their voicemail, expand calling options, and connect with a variety of devices and services to enable new functionality and automation. We also offer other premium subscription services to our customers, independent of Ooma Premier, including an international calling plan and voicemail transcription service.

The Ooma Mobile HD app allows users to make and receive phone calls and access Ooma features and settings with any iOS or Android device over a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection. The app includes unlimited outbound calls within the U.S., subject to normal residential usage limitations, and enables users to make international calls on their mobile devices using Ooma’s attractive international calling plan.

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Our platform enables an ecosystem for connected services by integrating with other automation solutions. For example, we have integrated Ooma Telo with products from Nest Labs, Inc., a Google company, including the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector, the Amazon Echo and Amazon Alexa voice service, and a variety of products integrated through the If-This-Then-That platform (“IFTTT”). By combining Ooma’s communications intelligence with these products’ functions, we enable innovative and valuable features.

Ooma Telo supports a line of accessories, or end-point devices, to expand the capabilities of the system to serve the needs of an entire household:

Ooma Telo Air.  Connects to the Internet wirelessly using the home’s Wi-Fi network and can be paired with mobile phones to answer incoming mobile calls from any phone in the home.

Ooma handset.  Cordless handset delivering smart features, such as the ability to sync the phone book with online contacts and display picture caller ID by syncing with social media. One-touch voicemail access lets users check messages anywhere in the home and the intercom button allows them to talk between handsets or transfer calls.

Wireless + bluetooth adapter.  Allows users to install the Ooma Telo device anywhere in the home within range of their wireless network. Bluetooth is used to pair Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones to the Ooma Telo so that incoming calls on the user’s mobile phone can ring on the user’s home phones.

Safety phone.  A wireless, small form-factor, hands-free speakerphone that can be worn as a pendant. Two speed dial buttons can each be preset with up to three different numbers, including 911. The preset buttons can also be configured to trigger e-mails or SMS notification alerts when assistance is requested. The Safety Phone supports two-way voice communication and can also be used to answer phone calls.

Home Security

Ooma Home is a comprehensive do-it-yourself home security solution that connects to Ooma Telo and provides safety for homeowners when at home or away. The system includes motion, water, door and window, and garage door sensors in addition to the unique ability to remotely place a local 911 call from the home. Ooma Home also now includes geofencing capabilities to automatically arm and disarm the security system, and in the near-term we hope to add a new siren and a smoke detector. The Ooma home security app is the interface through which users can interact with Ooma Home to pair sensors, toggle between home, away and vacation modes, and manage and receive notifications.

As part of developing our comprehensive home security solution, we acquired Butterfleye, Inc. in December 2017, a smart video camera with artificial intelligence for facial and audio recognition.

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Talkatone

Our Talkatone mobile app is available to anyone with an iOS or Android mobile device. Users download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play for free. Users select a phone number that they can use to make free U.S. and Canada calls and texts using a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection within and out of network. Advertising is displayed within the Talkatone mobile app and users can purchase premium services such as ad-free usage and international calling plans.

Segment Information

We operate in one industry segment, generating revenue from two sources: (1) subscription and services revenue, which are generated from sales of subscription plans for communications solutions and other connected services; and (2) product and other revenue, generated primarily from the sale of on-premise appliances and end-point devices to our end-customers through our website and from sales through distributors, retailers and resellers.

Operating segments are defined as components of an entity for which separate financial information is evaluated regularly by the chief operating decision maker, who in our case is the chief executive officer, in deciding how to allocate resources and assess performance. Our subscription plans, services and product offerings operate on a single SaaS platform and our chief operating decision-maker evaluates our financial information and resources and assesses the performance of these resources on a consolidated basis. Accordingly, we have determined that we have a single reportable segment and operating segment structure.

Sales and Marketing

Our sales and marketing objective is to grow our customer base, and sell to our existing customers additional services using an integrated and multi-channel marketing approach. We continually test and refine our marketing and sales tactics to drive sales at a low customer acquisition cost. Our sales and marketing expenses were $37.3 million, $33.8 million and $28.5 million in fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively.

Marketing and Advertising

Traditional. We use television and radio advertising to build awareness and interest for our products and services, which benefits the Ooma Telo, Ooma Office and Ooma Home solutions. We believe that television advertising provides an opportunity to build the Ooma brand cost-effectively, educate prospects on Ooma’s unique combination of quality and value, and capture prospects’ attention. Small businesses and consumers who see our television ads are directed to our web site, our inbound sales personnel, and/or to key retail partners. Radio is used in a highly targeted manner primarily to reach small business owners and decision makers as they commute to and from their workplace.

Online. We use online marketing including search engine marketing, search engine optimization, online video, digital display advertising and social media to attract customers as they do online research for the products and services we offer. We continue to reach out to our prospect leads over time using e-mail and telemarketing until they purchase or the lead is retired.

Word-of-mouth. We actively mobilize our customers and advocates to spread word-of-mouth marketing by sharing Ooma news and information through social media and e-mail. We sell additional services to our existing customer base by offering free trials and promotional offers, as well as sending e-mail communications and leaving messages on their Ooma voicemail service.

Sales, Customers and Backlog

Our small business and residential products are sold through direct channels, retail and resellers. The direct channel and resellers are our primary distribution channel for small business and the retail channel is our primary distribution channel for residential customers. Our direct sales force is focused on small business sales and includes highly trained sales representatives located in the U.S. responding to inbound telephone calls and sales leads generated through marketing activity and our website.

Our retail distribution includes national and regional consumer electronics, big box retailers and leading online retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Walmart and others. No single customer accounted for 10% or more of our total revenue for fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016.

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We generally sign monthly and annual contracts for our subscriptions and invoice our customers on a monthly basis for the services purchased. Products are generally shipped and billed shortly after receipt of an order. We do not believe that our product backlog at any particular time is meaningful because it is not necessarily indicative of future revenue in any given period as such orders may be rescheduled or cancelled without penalty prior to shipment. The majority of our product revenue comes from orders that are shipped and received in the same quarter. 

Customer Support

Our primary customer support objective is to satisfy our customers and educate them on the features and benefits of our products to optimize the overall user experience. We employ an active customer management strategy in which we drive incremental revenue through cross-selling of products and services. Our customer support teams also manage the porting process for our customers as well as billing and payment activities.

We maintain two customer contact centers, one operated by us in Newark, California, which primarily supports our Ooma Office customers, and the other operated by a third-party provider in Manila, Philippines, which primarily supports our residential customers. We utilize a variety of communication media to serve the needs of our customers including telephone, online chat, online tutorials and e-mail.

Engineering, Research and Development

We take an integrated approach to the development of our technology. Our extensive engineering resources span both hardware and software and our business scope encompasses the entire platform, giving us the ability to drive new integrated solutions for our customers. We believe our integrated engineering and business strategy is a significant competitive advantage and makes it feasible for us to leverage our platform to deliver a broad range of productivity, automation and infrastructure connected services.

We have invested significant time and resources into developing our engineering, research and development team, resulting in a group with diverse skills, ranging from digital and radio frequency hardware design to embedded software, network software, telecommunications, database architecture, operations support systems, billing, security, web design and mobile app development. Because our team develops and manages all aspects of our solutions, we are able to offer an integrated solution that works seamlessly between software and hardware and respond to customer feedback to add in additional features and services that work across the entire platform. Our team consists of a core set of engineers located primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, augmented by development teams in a number of international locations.

Our research and development expenses were $29.3 million, $24.2 million and $18.5 million in fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively.

Our Platform

Our unique hybrid SaaS platform consists of our proprietary cloud, on-premise appliances, mobile applications and end-point devices. They work in concert to support our advanced features, high-quality and the ability to offer customized connected services, which are vital to driving our high level of customer satisfaction and low customer churn.

The integrated approach to our technology allows us to operate at a reduced cost and provides competitive advantages:

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Cloud Infrastructure

Our multi-tenant cloud infrastructure provides a high-quality, secure, managed and reliable suite of services integrating all elements of the platform. We have built a proprietary cloud in order to optimize quality of service, reliability and security, which are essential elements of our communications solutions. Our cloud simplifies the task of offering new services, and provides consistent performance and economies of scale for all of our connected services. Ooma’s key cloud capabilities include: telecommunications, custom hosted services, interconnections to third party services (cloud-to-cloud), on-premise appliance management, remote diagnostics support and billing.

On-Premise Appliances

Our purpose-built on-premise appliances are both a custom-designed, Linux-based computer and a high-speed network router, with several key features, including wireless connectivity to end-point devices and custom firmware and software applications that are remotely upgradable and extensible to new services.

Mobile Applications

We have made significant investments in developing mobile applications for the iOS and Android operating systems. As a result, nearly every connected service and feature we deploy enhances or can be enhanced through integration with our customer’s mobile device. In fiscal 2018, we integrated our PureVoice HD technology into the Ooma Mobile HD app. We plan to continue enhancing our mobile apps to incorporate features related to our partners’ services and other connected services.

Operations and Manufacturing

We deliver our services through two separate data centers located in Northern California and Virginia, both hosted in third-party leased facilities. While our service operations are partially redundant, account provisioning and billing are operated out of the San Jose facility. Our network operations and carrier operations teams are responsible for designing our core routing and switching infrastructure, managing growth and maintenance (including the introduction of new services) and orchestrating vendor relationships for hosted services, IP transit and carrier services and daily operation of our cloud and other services. The design of these services, and the tools for monitoring and managing them, are developed in combination with our engineering team.

We contract with manufacturers in Taiwan and China to produce our on-premise appliances and end-point devices. We also contract with a manufacturer in Israel to produce components of our home security solutions. We configure and ship to our channel partners and end users through our internal manufacturing and logistics team based in Newark, California. Our internal logistics team also manages reverse logistics for channel and warranty returns and works closely with our engineering team to develop tooling and processes that bring new products into production.

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Competition

The market for communications solutions and other connected services for small business, home and mobile users is complex, fragmented and defined by constant shifts in technology and customer demands. We expect competition to continue increasing in the future. We believe that the defining factors driving competition in our market include:

We believe that we compete favorably on the basis of the factors listed above. We face competition from a broad range of providers of communications solutions and other connected services for small business, home and mobile users. Some of these competitors include:

Competition with Established Telephone and Cable Companies

Established telephone companies such as AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink, and national cable companies such as Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable represent a significant portion of our competition in the telecommunications market. These competitors are many times larger and better capitalized than Ooma, continue to make substantial investments in competitive products, features and services, and take significant advantage of their existing business relationships with their very large customer bases.  For example, these cable and phone companies often bundle home phone service with Internet access and/or cable television access, and the pricing of these various “bundles” may imply a zero or very low price to the customer for home phone service. While we believe that we compete favorably based upon our service features, quality and pricing, such aggressive pricing tactics make it more difficult for us to attract the existing customers of our large competitors.

Competition with Non-traditional Communications Providers

Non-traditional communication providers such as Facebook, Google Voice, WhatsApp and Pinger offer telephony services at little or no cost as an added benefit to their existing customers, and/or to attract additional users.  

Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of patents, trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements with our employees, consultants and other third parties, as well as other contractual protections to establish and protect our intellectual property rights. We control access to our software, documentation and other proprietary information, and our software is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.

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As of January 31, 2018, we had 17 issued patents and 15 patent applications pending in the U.S., and 6 patent applications pending in foreign jurisdictions, all of which are associated with U.S. applications. Our issued patents will expire approximately between 2028 and 2035. We cannot assure you whether any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will require us to narrow our claims. Any issued patents may be contested, circumvented, found unenforceable or invalidated, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing them. We are also a party to various license agreements with third parties who typically grant us the right to use certain third-party technology in conjunction with our products and services, or to integrate software into our products, including open source software and other software available on commercially reasonable terms. Despite the foregoing protections, unauthorized parties may attempt to misappropriate our rights or to copy or obtain and use our proprietary technology to develop products and services with the same functionality as ours. Policing unauthorized use of our technology and intellectual property rights is difficult, and enforcing our intellectual property rights is expensive and uncertain.

Although our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect our proprietary technology and other intellectual property rights, we believe the technological and creative skills of our personnel, the development of new features and functionality and frequent enhancements to our products and services are the primary methods of establishing and maintaining our technology leadership position.

Employees

As of January 31, 2018, we had 243 full-time employees, nearly all of whom were located in the U.S. None of our employees are either represented by a labor union or subject to a collective bargaining agreement. We have not experienced any work stoppages and we believe that our employee relations are good. We also contract with third-party contractors whose employees or subcontractors’ employees perform services for us.

Regulatory Matters

Traditional telephone service historically has been subject to extensive federal and state regulation, while Internet services generally have been subject to less regulation. Because some elements of VoIP resemble the services provided by traditional telephone companies and others resemble the services provided by internet service providers, the VoIP industry has not fit easily within the existing framework of telecommunications law and until recently has developed in an environment largely free from regulation. The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), the U.S. Congress, and various regulatory bodies in the states and in foreign countries have begun to assert regulatory authority over VoIP providers and are continuing to evaluate how VoIP will be regulated in the future.

Federal Regulation

As a provider of internet communications services, we are subject to a number of FCC regulations. Among others, these regulatory obligations include: contributing to the Federal Universal Service Fund (“USF”), the Telecommunications Relay Service Fund and federal programs related to phone number administration; providing access to E-911 services; protecting customer information; and porting phone numbers upon a valid customer request. If we do not comply with any current or future rules or regulations that apply to our business, we could be subject to substantial fines and penalties, may have to restructure our service offerings, exit certain markets or raise the price of our services, any of which could ultimately harm our business and results of operations.

State Regulation

The FCC has preempted much regulation of internet voice communications services. However, a number of states have ruled that non-nomadic internet voice communications services may or do fall within the definition of “telecommunications services” or are otherwise within state telecommunications regulatory jurisdiction and therefore those states assert that they have authority to regulate the service. Although no states currently require certification for nomadic internet voice communications service providers, a number of states have imposed certain traditional telecommunications requirements on such services. For example, a number of states require us to contribute to state USF and E-911 and pay other surcharges, which are passed through to our customers, while others are actively considering extending their public policy programs to include the services we provide. We expect that state public utility commissions will continue their attempts to apply state telecommunications regulations to internet voice communications services like ours.

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International Regulation

As we expand internationally, we will be subject to laws and regulations in the countries in which we offer our services. Regulatory treatment of internet communications services outside the U.S. varies from country to country, is often unclear, and may be more onerous than imposed on our services in the U.S. In Canada, our service is regulated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (“CRTC”) which, among other things, imposes requirements similar to the U.S. related to the provision of E-911 services in all areas of Canada where the traditional telephone carrier offers such 911 services. Our regulatory obligations in foreign jurisdictions could have a material adverse effect on our ability to expand internationally, and on the use of our services in international locations.

See “Risks Related to Federal, State and International Regulation” in Item 1A. Risk Factors below for more information.

Available Information

Our headquarters are located at 525 Almanor Avenue Suite 200, Sunnyvale, California 94085, and our telephone number is (650) 566-6600. Our corporate website address is www.ooma.com. We use the Investor Relations page of our website as a routine channel for distribution of important information, including news releases, analyst presentations, financial information and corporate governance practices. Our filings with the SEC are posted on our website and available free of charge as soon as reasonably practical after they are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. The SEC’s website, www.sec.gov, contains reports, proxy statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. The content on any website referred to in this Form 10-K is not incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K unless expressly noted.

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ITEM 1A. Risk Factors

Our current and prospective investors 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 our consolidated financial statements and the related notes, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and the “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements,” before making investment decisions regarding our common stock. The risks and uncertainties described below may not be the only ones we face, but include the most significant factors currently known by us. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of, or that we currently believe are not material, also may become important factors that affect us. If any of the risks actually occur, our business, financial condition, results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the trading price of our common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment.

Risks Related to Our Business and Our Industry

If we are unable to attract new users of our services on a cost-effective basis, our business will be materially and adversely affected.

In order to grow our business, we must continue to attract new users on a cost-effective basis. We use and periodically adjust the mix of advertising and marketing programs to promote our services. Significant increases in the pricing of one or more of our advertising channels could increase our advertising costs or may cause us to choose less expensive and perhaps less effective channels to promote our services. As we add to or change the mix of our advertising and marketing strategies, we may need to expand into channels with significantly higher costs than our current programs, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations. We will incur advertising and marketing expenses in advance of when we anticipate recognizing any revenue generated by such expenses, and we may fail to experience an increase in revenue or brand awareness as a result of such expenditures. We have made in the past, and may make in the future, significant expenditures and investments in new advertising campaigns, and we cannot assure you that any such investments will lead to the cost-effective acquisition of additional customers. New users are drawn to our products and services by rankings circulated by organizations such as Amazon, Apple and Google app stores and highly regarded publications such as PC Magazine. If we are unable to maintain effective advertising programs and garner favorable rankings, our ability to attract new customers could be materially and adversely affected, our advertising and marketing expenses could increase substantially, and our results of operations may suffer.

We market our products and services principally to small businesses and households. Many of these consumers tend to be less technically knowledgeable and may be resistant to new technologies such as our cloud-based communications solutions and our connected services. Because our potential customers need to connect additional hardware at their location and take other technical steps not required for the use of traditional communications services such as telephone, fax and e-mail, these consumers may be reluctant to use our service. These customers may also lack sufficient resources, financial or otherwise, to invest in learning about our services, and therefore may be unwilling to adopt them. If these consumers choose not to adopt our services, our ability to grow our business will be limited.

Our customers may terminate their subscriptions for our service at any time without penalty, and increased customer turnover, or costs we incur to retain our customers and encourage them to add users and, in the future, to purchase additional functionalities and premium services, could materially and adversely affect our financial performance.

Our customers generally do not have long-term contracts with us and may terminate their subscription for our service at any time without penalty or early termination charges. We cannot accurately predict the rate of customer terminations or average monthly service cancellations or failures to renew, which we refer to as churn. Our Ooma Telo customers subscribing to Premium Services have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for such services and may elect to terminate their subscription for any number of reasons. Our Ooma Office customers may choose to reduce the number of lines or remove some of the solutions to which they subscribe. Ooma Office customers generally pay more for their subscriptions than residential or mobile customers, so any increased churn in small business customers could materially and adversely affect our financial performance and user churn, resulting in a significant impact on our results of operations, and an increase in the cost we incur in our efforts to retain our customers and encourage them to upgrade their services and increase their number of users.

Our core user churn rate could increase in the future if customers are not satisfied with our service, the value proposition of our services, our ability to otherwise meet their needs and expectations, and/or other factors beyond our control. As a result, we may have to acquire new customers or new users within our existing customer base on an ongoing basis simply to maintain our existing level of revenue. If a significant number of customers terminate, reduce or fail to renew their subscriptions, we may need to incur significantly higher marketing expenditures than anticipated to maintain or increase our revenue, which could harm our business and results of operations.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 11

Our business is susceptible to a broad array of market forces, and any of our efforts to mitigate risk of customer churn due to one factor may divert management’s time and focus away from efforts to address customer churn due to other factors. This broad-based susceptibility to churn could materially and adversely affect our financial performance.

Our future success also depends in part on our ability to sell additional subscriptions and functionalities to our current customer base, which may require increasingly sophisticated, costlier sales efforts and a longer sales cycle. Any increase in the costs necessary to upgrade, expand and retain existing customers could materially and adversely affect our financial performance. Such increased costs could cause us to increase our subscription rates, which could increase our customer turnover rate. If our efforts to convince customers to add users and, in the future, to purchase additional functionalities are not successful, our business may suffer.

We face competition in our markets by our competitors and may lack sufficient financial or other resources to compete successfully. Mergers or other strategic transactions involving our competitors could weaken our competitive position, which could adversely affect our ability to compete effectively and harm our results of operations.

The cloud-based communications and connected services industries are highly competitive. We face continued competition from (i) established communications providers, such as AT&T Inc., Comcast Corporation and Verizon Communications Inc. in the U.S., and Rogers Communications Inc. and others in Canada; (ii) other communications companies such as 8x8, Inc., magicJack VocalTec Ltd., RingCentral, Inc. and Vonage Holdings Corp.; (iii) companies such as Broadsoft, Inc. (recently acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc.) and Microsoft Corporation that generally license their software and their resellers; (iv) traditional on-premise, hardware communications providers, such as Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Mitel, Inc., and their resellers; (v) mobile communications app companies providing “over-the-top” solutions, such as LINE Corporation, Pinger, Inc., Viber (Rakuten, Inc.) and WhatsApp Inc.; and (vi) large internet companies, such as Google and its free calling service, Google Voice, and the Google Home personal assistant device, for which Google recently launched a free outbound calling service, and Amazon and its Alexa platform and Alexa free calling service. All of these companies currently or may in the future host their solutions through the cloud. We also face competition in the home security market from (i) established providers such as SimpliSafe and ADT, as well as from (ii) new home security offerings such as Nest Secure and Ring Protect (Amazon recently acquired Ring Inc.).

We believe that some of our existing competitors may consolidate or be acquired. For example, Cisco Systems, Inc. completed its acquisition of BroadSoft, Inc., in February 2018 and Mitel, Inc. completed its acquisition of ShoreTel, Inc., in September 2017. In addition, some of our competitors may enter into new alliances with each other or may establish or strengthen cooperative relationships with systems integrators, third-party consulting firms or other parties. Any such consolidation, acquisition, alliance or cooperative relationship could adversely affect our ability to compete effectively and lead to pricing pressure and our loss of market share, and could result in a competitor with greater financial, technical, marketing, service and other resources, all of which could harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Aggressive business tactics by our competitors may reduce our revenue.

Increased competition may result in aggressive business tactics by our competitors, including: offering products similar to our platform and solutions on a bundled basis at no charge; announcing competing products combined with extensive marketing efforts; providing financial incentives to consumers; and asserting intellectual property rights irrespective of the validity of the claims.  Our retail partners may offer the products and services of competing companies, which would adversely affect our business. Competition from other companies may also adversely affect our negotiations with service providers and suppliers, including, in some cases, requiring us to lower our prices. We may not be able to compete successfully with the offerings and sales tactics of other companies, which could result in the loss of customers and, as a result, our revenue and profitability could be adversely affected.

We rely significantly on retailers and reseller partnerships to sell our products; our failure to effectively develop, manage and maintain these sales channels could materially and adversely affect our revenue and business.

We currently sell Ooma Telo and Ooma Office through a combination of direct sales, leading retailers such as Amazon, Costco.com, Best Buy and Walmart, and our reseller partnerships and a significant portion of our product sales are made through our retail and reseller partnership channels. Our future success depends on our ability to effectively maintain, develop and expand our retail channel and reseller partnership sales as we seek to grow and expand our customer base. We generally do not have long-term contracts with our retailers, distributors and reseller partners, and we have in the past and may in the future experience a loss of or reduction in sales through any of these third parties, which could materially reduce our revenue. Our competitors may in some cases be effective in causing our current and potential retailers, and reseller partners to favor their services or prevent or reduce sales of our services. If we fail to maintain relationships with current retailers and reseller partners, fail to develop relationships with new retailers and reseller partners in new markets or expand the number of retailers and reseller partners in existing markets, fail to manage, train, or provide appropriate incentives to our existing retailers and reseller partners, or if they are not successful in their sales efforts, sales of our products and services may decrease and our results of operations would suffer.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 12

In addition, our Talkatone application relies significantly on the Apple and Google app stores for distribution. Its future success depends on our continued ability to distribute Talkatone through these app stores and increase its visibility therein. If Apple or Google determine that Talkatone is non-compliant with their app store vendor policies, they may revoke our rights to sell Talkatone through their app store at any time, which could adversely affect our revenue.

We depend on a small number of vendors to manufacture the on-premise appliances, end-point devices and home security systems we sell, and any delay or interruption in manufacturing, configuring and delivering by these third parties would result in delayed or reduced shipments to our customers and may harm our business.

We primarily rely on Mitac Computing Technology Corporation for production of our on-premise appliances, Hualin Precision Technology Co., Ltd. (“Hualin”) for production of our end‑point devices, Hualin and Crow Corporation for production of our home security systems we sell to our customers. We currently do not have long-term contracts with these vendors and they are not obligated to provide products to or perform services for us for any specific period, in any specific quantities or at any specific price, except as may be provided in a particular purchase order. If these third parties are unable to deliver products of acceptable quality or in a timely manner, our ability to bring services to market, the reliability of our services and our reputation could suffer. We expect that it could take several months to effectively transition to new third-party manufacturers or fulfillment agents. We may also decide to switch to or bring on additional contract manufacturers in order to better meet our needs. Switching to or bringing on a new contract manufacturer and commencing production is expensive and time-consuming and may cause delays in order fulfillment at our existing contract manufacturers or cause other disruptions. For example, we are in the process of bringing on additional contract manufacturers as a result of our recent acquisition of Butterfleye. We do not have past experience with these manufacturers and it is possible that we may encounter unexpected issues as we scale our operations with them.

Additionally, several components used in our on-premise appliances and end-point devices are “single sourced” and any interruption in the suppliers of such components could cause our business to suffer as we identify alternative sources of components. In the past, labor strikes in West Coast ports have delayed shipments of our products from our manufacturers. Future repetition of such delays could negatively affect our ability to deliver product to our customers in a timely manner and may harm our business and hinder our growth.

To deliver our services, we rely on third parties for our network connectivity and co‑location facilities for certain features in our services and for certain elements of providing our services.

We expect that we will continue to rely on third-party service providers for hosting, internet access and other services that are vital to our service offering for the foreseeable future. Equinix, Inc. provides data center facilities; Comcast, NTT Inc. and others provide backbone internet access; and Bandwidth.com, Onvoy and others provide origination services. We also rely on third-party services for our SMS and speech-to-text services which are sole-sourced. Intrado is our sole provider of 911 services. If any of these network service providers stop providing us with access to their infrastructure, fail to provide these services to us on a cost-effective basis, cease operations, or otherwise terminate these services, the delay caused by qualifying and switching to another third-party network service provider, if one is available, could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

We may be required to transfer our servers to new data center facilities if we are unable to renew our leases on acceptable terms, if at all, or the owners of the facilities decide to close their facilities, and we may incur significant costs and possible service interruption in connection with doing so. Any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy or foreclosure, faced by our third-party data center operators or any of the service providers with which we or they contract, may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. Additionally, if our data centers are unable to keep up with our increasing needs for capacity, our ability to grow our business could be materially and adversely impacted.

If problems occur with any of these third-party network or service providers, it may cause errors or reduced quality in our services, and we could encounter difficulty identifying the source of the problem. The occurrence of errors or reduced quality in our service, whether caused by our systems or a third-party network or service provider, may result in the loss of our existing customers, delay or loss of market acceptance of our services, termination of our relationships and agreements with our resellers or liability for failure to meet service level agreements, and may seriously harm our business and results of operations.

We rely on purchased or leased hardware and software licensed from third parties in order to offer our service. In some cases, we integrate third-party licensed software components into our platform. This hardware and software may not continue to be available at reasonable prices or on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Any loss of the right to use any of this hardware or software could significantly increase our expenses and otherwise result in delays in the provisioning of our service until equivalent technology is either developed by us, or, if available, is identified, obtained and integrated. Any errors or defects in third-party hardware or software could result in errors or a failure of our service which could harm our business.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 13

We also contract with one or more third parties to provide enhanced 911, or E-911, services, including assistance in routing emergency calls and terminating E-911 calls. Our providers operate a national call center that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to receive certain emergency calls and maintain public service answering point, or PSAP, databases for the purpose of deploying and operating E-911 services. On mobile devices, we generally rely on the underlying cellular or wireless carrier to provide E-911 services. Any failure to perform, including interruptions in service, by our vendors, could cause failures in our customers’ access to E-911 services and expose us to significant liability and damage our reputation.

Interruptions in our services could harm our reputation, result in significant costs to us and impair our ability to sell our services.

Because our technology platform is complex, incorporates a variety of new computer hardware, and the platform continues to evolve, our services may have errors or defects that are identified after customers begin using such services, which could result in unanticipated service interruptions. Although we test our services to detect and correct errors and defects before their initial release and before we make updates or other changes to such services, we have occasionally experienced significant service interruptions as a result of undetected errors or defects and may experience future interruptions of service if we fail to detect and correct errors and defects. For example, in April and May 2015 while working to upgrade our network, we encountered unexpected problems with the communications between our data centers, as well as certain server capacity issues, which led to multiple intermittent service outages, some of which lasted for up to approximately eight hours for some of our customers. While we have identified root causes of these service outages, and in each case were able to restore service to all of the affected customers, we continue to take corrective actions to address these root causes. We were able to correct such root causes without incurring material expenses, and the outages in April and May 2015 did not materially affect our results of operations. However, the costs incurred in correcting root causes for future service outages may be substantial and these and other related consequences could negatively impact our results of operations.

We currently serve our customers from data center hosting facilities located in Northern California and Virginia, where we lease space from Equinix, Inc. These facilities and the procedures we have implemented to restore services quickly in the event of a service outage, by themselves, will not prevent future outages. Any damage to, or failure of, these facilities, the communications network providers with whom we or they contract or with the systems by which our communications providers allocate capacity among their customers, including us, could result in interruptions in our service. Additionally, in connection with the expansion or consolidation of our existing data center facilities, we may move or transfer our data and our customers’ data to other data centers. Despite precautions we take during this process, any unsuccessful data transfers may impair or cause disruptions in the delivery of our service.

Despite precautions taken at our hosting facilities, the occurrence of a natural disaster or an act of terrorism or other unanticipated problems at these facilities could result in lengthy interruptions in our service. Even with the disaster recovery arrangements that we have in place, our service could be interrupted. Any defects in, or unavailability of, the components of our platform that cause interruptions of our services could, among other things: cause a reduction in revenue or a delay in market acceptance of our services; require us to issue refunds to our customers or expose us to claims for damages; cause us to lose existing customers and make it more difficult to attract new customers; divert our development resources or require us to make extensive changes to our software, which would increase our expenses and slow innovation; increase our technical support costs; and harm our reputation and brand.

We rely on third parties for some of our software development, quality assurance and operations, and anticipate we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

We outsource certain of our software development and design, quality assurance and operations activities to third-party contractors that have employees and consultants in a number of international locations. Our dependence on third-party contractors creates numerous risks, in particular, the risk that we may not maintain control or effective management with respect to these business operations. Our agreements with these third-party contractors are either not terminable by them (other than at the end of the term or upon an uncured breach by us) or require at least 30 days’ prior written notice of termination. If we experience problems with our third-party contractors, the costs charged by our third-party contractors increase, or our agreements with our third-party contractors are terminated, we may not be able to develop new solutions, enhance or operate existing solutions or provide customer support in an alternate manner that is equally or more efficient and cost-effective. If we are unsuccessful in maintaining existing and, if needed, establishing new relationships with third parties, our ability to efficiently operate existing services or develop new services and provide adequate customer support could be impaired, and as a result, our competitive position or our results of operations could suffer.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 14

We rely on third parties to provide the majority of our customer service and support representatives. If these third parties do not provide our customers with reliable, high‑quality service, our reputation and our business will be harmed, and we may be exposed to significant liability.

We offer customer support through both our online account management website and our toll-free customer support number. Our customer support is currently provided via a third-party provider located in the Philippines, as well as our employees in the U.S. We currently offer support almost exclusively in English. The ability to support our customers may be disrupted by natural disasters, inclement weather conditions, civil unrest, strikes, acts of terrorism and other adverse events in the Philippines. Furthermore, as we expand our operations internationally, we may need to make significant expenditures and investments in our customer service and support to adequately address the complex needs of international customers, such as support in multiple foreign languages. In addition, a significant service outage may cause a high volume of customer support inquiries, and our third‑party customer service center may not be able to respond to such inquiries in a timely manner. Industry consolidation among providers of services to us may impact our ability to obtain these services or increase our costs for these services.

Our limited history operating our business at its current scale makes it difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, which may increase the risk of investing in our stock.  

Our business has experienced rapid growth in recent periods. We became a public company following our initial public offering (“IPO”) in July 2015 and our revenues have grown from $88.8 million in fiscal 2016 to $114.5 million in fiscal 2018 and our operating expenses have increased from $59.6 million in fiscal 2016 to $81.8 million in fiscal 2018. Because we have only a limited history operating our business at its current scale, it is difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, including our ability to plan for and model future growth. We have encountered and expect to continue encountering risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing markets. If our assumptions regarding these uncertainties are incorrect or change in reaction to changes in our markets, or if we do not manage or address these risks successfully, our results of operations could differ materially from our expectations, and our business could suffer. Any success we may experience in the future will depend, in large part, on our ability to, among other things:

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 15

We may not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.

We have incurred substantial net losses since our inception, including net losses of approximately $13.1 million, $12.9 million and $14.1 million in fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. We have expended significant resources to develop, market, promote, and sell our products and solutions and we expect to continue investing for future growth. Although we generated positive cash flow from operations in fiscal 2018, we may not continue to do so in the future as a result of our increased expenditures, and we will have to generate and sustain increased revenue to sustain positive cash flows and achieve future profitability. Achieving profitability will require us to increase revenue, manage our cost structure and avoid significant liabilities. Revenue growth may slow, revenue may decline or we may incur significant losses in the future for a number of possible reasons, including general macroeconomic conditions, increasing competition (including competitive pricing pressures), a decrease in the growth of the markets in which we compete, or failure for any reason to continue capitalizing on growth opportunities. Additionally, we may encounter unforeseen operating expenses, difficulties, complications, delays, service delivery and quality problems and other unknown factors that may result in losses in future periods. If these losses exceed our expectations or our revenue growth expectations are not met in future periods, our financial performance will be harmed and our stock price could be volatile or decline.

Our rates of growth may decline in the future.

Our user growth and revenue growth rates may decline over time as the size of our active user base increases, and it is possible that the size of our active user base may fluctuate or decline in one or more markets, particularly as we achieve greater market penetration. Our revenue growth rate may generally decline over time as our revenue increases to higher levels. As our growth rates decline, investors' perceptions of our business may be adversely affected and the trading price of our common stock could decline.

We may not be able to effectively manage our growth and the increased complexity of our business, which could negatively impact our brand, financial performance and increase the risk of investing in our stock.

We have recently experienced substantial growth in our business, including an increase in the number of customers we consider to be our core users. This growth has placed and may continue to place significant demands on our management and our operational and financial infrastructure. As our operations grow in size, scope and complexity, we will need to increase our sales and marketing efforts and add additional sales and marketing personnel worldwide and to improve and upgrade our systems and infrastructure to attract, service, and retain an increasing number of users. For example, we expect the volume of simultaneous calls to increase significantly as our user base grows. Our network hardware and software may not be able to accommodate this additional simultaneous call volume. The expansion of our systems and infrastructure will require us to commit substantial financial, operational and technical resources in advance of an increase in the volume of business, with no assurance that the volume of business will increase. Any such additional capital investments will increase our cost base. Continued growth could also strain our ability to maintain reliable service levels for our users, develop and improve our operational, financial and management controls, enhance our reporting systems and procedures and recruit, train, and retain highly skilled personnel. If we fail to achieve the necessary level of efficiency in our organization as we grow, and if the current and future members of our management team do not effectively scale with this growth, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected.

Our business could suffer if we cannot obtain or retain direct inward dialing numbers, or DIDs, are prohibited from obtaining local or toll-free numbers, or are limited to distributing local or toll-free numbers to only certain customers.

Our future success depends on our ability to procure large quantities of local and toll-free DIDs in the U.S. and foreign countries in desirable locations at a reasonable cost and without restrictions. Our ability to procure and distribute DIDs depends on factors outside of our control, such as applicable regulations, the practices of the communications carriers that provide DIDs, the cost of these DIDs, and the level of demand for new DIDs. Due to their limited availability, there are certain popular area code prefixes we generally cannot obtain. Our inability to acquire DIDs for our operations would make our services less attractive to potential customers in the affected local geographic areas. In addition, future growth in our customer base and the customer bases of our competitors will increase our dependence on needing sufficiently large quantities of DIDs.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 16

If we are unable to effectively process local number and toll-free number portability provisioning in a timely manner, our growth may be negatively affected.

We support local number and toll-free number portability, which allows our customers to transfer to us and thereby retain their existing phone numbers when subscribing to our services. During the number transfer process, our new customers must maintain both our service and their existing phone service. We depend on third-party carriers to transfer phone numbers, a process we do not control, and these third-party carriers may refuse or substantially delay the transfer of these numbers to us. Local number portability is considered an important feature by many potential customers, and if we fail to reduce any related delays, we may experience increased difficulty in acquiring new customers. Moreover, the FCC requires us to comply with specified number porting timeframes when customers leave our service for the services of another provider. In Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, has imposed a similar number portability requirement on service providers like us. If we, or our third-party carriers, are unable to process number portability requests within the requisite timeframes, we could be subject to fines and penalties. Additionally, in the U.S., both customers and carriers may seek relief from the relevant state public utility commission, the FCC, or in state or federal court for violation of local number portability requirements.

If we fail to continue developing our brand or our reputation is harmed, our business may suffer.

We believe that continuing to strengthen our current brand will be critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our services and will require continued focus on active marketing efforts. The demand for and cost of online and traditional advertising have been increasing and may continue to increase. Accordingly, we may need to increase our investment in, and devote greater resources to, advertising, marketing, and other efforts to create and maintain brand loyalty among users. Brand promotion activities may not yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses incurred in building our brands. If we fail to promote and maintain our brand, or if we incur substantial expense in an unsuccessful attempt to promote and maintain our brands, our business could be materially and adversely affected.

Our services, as well as those of our competitors, are regularly reviewed and commented upon by online and social media sources, as well as computer and other business publications. Negative reviews, or reviews in which our competitors’ products and services are rated more highly than our solutions, could negatively affect our brand and reputation. From time to time, our customers have expressed dissatisfaction with our services, including dissatisfaction with our customer support, our billing policies and the way our services operate. If we do not handle customer complaints effectively, our brand and reputation may suffer, we may lose our customers’ confidence, and they may choose to terminate, reduce or not to renew their subscriptions. In addition, many of our customers participate in social media and online blogs about internet-based services, including our services, and our success depends in part on our ability to minimize negative and generate positive customer feedback through such online channels where existing and potential customers seek and share information. If actions we take or changes we make to our services upset these customers, their blogging could negatively affect our brand and reputation. Complaints or negative publicity about our services or customer service could materially and adversely impact our ability to attract and retain customers and our business, financial condition and results of operations.

A security breach could delay or interrupt service to our customers, compromise the integrity of our systems or data that we collect, result in the loss of our intellectual property or confidential information, harm our reputation, or subject us to significant liability.

Our operations depend on our ability to protect our network from interruption or damage resulting from unauthorized access or entry, computer viruses or malware or other events beyond our control, and our ability to detect any such events. In the past, we may have been subject to undetected distributed denial-of-service, or DDOS cyberattacks, or other forms of attacks by hackers intent on bringing down our services or accessing confidential information, and we may be subject to DDOS and other forms of attacks in the future. We cannot assure you that our backup systems, regular data backups, physical, technological and organizational security protocols and measures and other procedures that are currently in place, or that may be in place in the future, will be adequate to detect or prevent unauthorized access to our systems, significant damage, system interruption, degradation or failure, or data loss or to respond to a cyberattack once launched. Additionally, hackers may attempt to directly gain access to a customer’s on-premise appliance, or their mobile phone, which may delay or interrupt services, or may subject our customers to further security risks, including in relation to any connected household devices a customer might have now or in the future, such as our connected home security sensors and our partner’s connected devices, such as Nest’s devices, or to our network more generally. Also, our services are web-based, and the amount of data we store for our users on our servers has been increasing as our business has grown.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 17

Despite the implementation of security measures, our infrastructure may be vulnerable to hackers, computer viruses, worms, other malicious software programs or similar disruptive problems caused by our customers, employees, consultants or other internet users who attempt to invade public and private data networks. In some cases, we do not have in place disaster recovery facilities for certain ancillary services, such as email delivery of messages. Currently, nearly all our customers authorize us to bill their credit or debit card accounts directly for all transaction fees that we charge. We rely on encryption and authentication technology to ensure secure transmission of confidential information, including customer credit and debit card numbers. Despite our efforts to encrypt and secure transmission of confidential customer information, hackers with sufficiently sophisticated technology or methods may still be able to infiltrate our systems to gain unauthorized access to payment card information. Further, advances in computer capabilities, new discoveries in the field of cryptography or other developments may result in a compromise or breach of the technology we use to protect transaction data.

Additionally, third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce domestic and international employees, consultants or customers into disclosing sensitive information, such as user names, passwords or customer proprietary network information, or CPNI, or other information in order to gain access to our customers’ data or to our data. CPNI includes information such as the phone numbers called by a customer, the frequency, duration, and timing of such calls, and any services purchased by the customer, such as call waiting, call forwarding and caller ID, in addition to other information that may appear on a customer’s bill. Third parties may also attempt to fraudulently induce employees, consultants or customers into disclosing sensitive information regarding our intellectual property and other confidential business information, or our information technology systems. In addition, because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access, or to sabotage systems, change frequently and generally are not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Any system failure or security breach that causes interruptions or data loss in our operations or in the computer systems of our customers or leads to the misappropriation of our or our customers’ confidential or personal information, or CPNI, could result in significant liability to us. Such failure or breach could cause our service to be perceived as not being secure, subject us to regulatory requirements such as FCC notification, result in significant monetary costs, such as fines, legal fees and expenditures to improve and enhance our security measures, cause considerable harm to us and our reputation (including requiring notification to customers, regulators or the media) and deter current and potential customers from using our services. Additionally, we could incur significant costs, both monetary and with respect to management’s time and attention, to investigate and remediate a data security breach. Because our onboarding and billing functions are conducted primarily through a single data center, any security breach in that data center may cause an interruption in our business operations. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Failures in internet infrastructure or interference with broadband access could cause current or potential customers to believe that our systems are unreliable, leading our current customers to switch to our competitors or potential customers to avoid using our services.

Many of our services depend on our customers’ broadband access to the internet, usually provided through a cable or digital subscriber line, or DSL, connection. In addition, users who access our services and applications through mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, must have a high-speed connection, such as Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G or LTE, to use our services and applications. Currently, this access is provided by companies that have significant and increasing market power in the broadband and internet access marketplace, including incumbent phone companies, cable companies and wireless companies. Increasing numbers of users and increasing bandwidth requirements may degrade the performance of internet and mobile infrastructure, resulting in outages or deteriorations in connectivity and negatively impacting the quality with which we can deliver our solutions. As our customer base grows and their usage of communications capacity increases, we will be required to make additional investments in network capacity to maintain adequate data transmission speeds, the availability of which may be limited, or the cost of which may be on terms unacceptable to us. If adequate capacity is not available to us as our customers’ usage increases, our network may be unable to achieve or maintain sufficiently high data transmission capacity, reliability or performance. Furthermore, as the rate of adopting new technologies increases, the networks on which our services and applications rely may not be able to sufficiently adapt to the increased demand for these services, including ours. In the past, we have experienced disruptions to our service. For example, in April and May 2015, we experienced multiple intermittent service outages that lasted for up to eight hours for some of our customers. Frequent or persistent interruptions could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems or services are unreliable, leading them to switch to our competitors or to avoid our services, and could permanently harm our reputation and brands. Because some of our services rely on integration between features that use both wired and wireless infrastructures, any of the aforementioned problems with either wired or wireless infrastructure may result in the inability of customers to take advantage of our integrated services and therefore may decrease the attractiveness of our collective services to current and potential customers.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 18

The success of our business relies on customers’ continued and unimpeded access to broadband service. Providers of broadband services may block or degrade our services or charge their customers more for using our services, which could adversely affect our revenue and growth.

Some of the providers of broadband internet access and high-speed mobile access, such as AT&T and Verizon, market and sell products and services to our current and potential customers that directly compete with our own offerings, which can potentially give such providers a competitive advantage. Broadband providers also may take measures that affect their customers’ ability to use our service, such as degrading the quality of the data packets we transmit over their lines, giving those packets low priority, giving other packets higher priority than ours, blocking our packets entirely or attempting to charge their customers more for also using our services. In the past, actions like these taken by U.S. providers would violate the net neutrality rules adopted by the FCC and described below, however the FCC recently reversed the net neutrality rules, and most foreign countries have not adopted formal net neutrality or open internet rules, creating an increased risk broadband providers will engage in such anti-competitive measures against the Company in the United States and elsewhere.

In 2015, the FCC reclassified broadband internet access services as a “telecommunications service” subject to new open internet regulations and certain common carrier regulations, including the obligation to provide service on just and reasonable terms, requirements related to customer privacy and requirements for accessibility for people with disabilities. These regulations also prohibited blocking or discriminating against lawful services and applications and prohibited “paid prioritization,” or providing faster speeds or other benefits in return for compensation.

In December 2017, the FCC largely reversed the existing net neutrality rules, including the classification of broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service subject to certain common carrier regulations. The FCC’s order is the subject of pending appeals by several parties. The FCC’s order could affect the market for broadband internet access service in a way that impacts our business, for example by increasing the cost of broadband internet service and thereby depressing demand for our services or by increasing the costs of services we purchase.

Our quarterly and annual results of operations have fluctuated in the past and may continue to do so in the future. As a result, we may fail to meet or to exceed the expectations of research analysts or investors, which could cause our stock price to fluctuate.

Our quarterly and annual results of operations have varied historically from period to period, and we expect that they will continue to fluctuate due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control, including:

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Any one of the factors above, or the cumulative effect of some or all of the factors referred to above, may result in significant fluctuations in our quarterly and annual results of operations. This variability and unpredictability could result in our failure to meet our internal operating plan or the expectations of securities analysts or investors for any period, which could cause our stock price to decline. In addition, a significant percentage of our operating expenses is fixed in nature and is based on forecasted revenue trends. Accordingly, in the event of revenue shortfalls, we may not be able to mitigate the negative impact on net income (loss) and margins in the short term. If we fail to meet or exceed the expectations of research analysts or investors, the market price of our shares could fall substantially and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class-action suits.

We may not be able to secure additional financing on favorable terms, or at all, to meet our future capital needs.

We intend to continue making expenditures and investments to support the growth of our business. In the future, we may require additional capital to pursue our business objectives and to respond to business opportunities, challenges, or unforeseen circumstances, including the need to develop new solutions or enhance our existing solutions, enhance our operating infrastructure, and acquire complementary businesses and technologies. Accordingly, we may decide to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. However, additional funds may not be available when we need them on terms acceptable to us, or at all. Our credit agreements include restrictive covenants and any debt financing we secure in the future could involve further restrictive covenants, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities. In addition, volatility in the credit markets may have an adverse effect on our ability to obtain debt financing. If we raise additional funds through further issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences, and privileges superior to those of holders of our common stock. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us, our ability to continue pursuing our business objectives and to respond to business opportunities, challenges or unforeseen circumstances could be significantly limited, and our business, results of operations, financial condition and prospects could be materially and adversely affected.

Shifts in trends or the emergence of new technologies may render our solutions obsolete or require us to expend significant resources to develop, license, or acquire new services or applications on a timely and cost-effective basis in order to remain competitive.

The cloud-based communications and connected services industries are emerging markets characterized by rapid changes in customer requirements, frequent introductions of new and enhanced services, and continuing and rapid technological advancement. To compete successfully in these emerging markets, we must anticipate and adapt to unpredictable technological changes and evolving industry standards and continue to design, develop, manufacture and sell new and enhanced services that provide increasingly higher levels of performance and reliability at lower cost. We derived approximately 71% of our revenue from Ooma Telo for fiscal 2018 and expect it will continue to account for a majority of our revenue for the foreseeable future. However, our future success will also depend on our ability to introduce and sell new services, features and functionality that enhance or are beyond the voice, fax, text and connected services we currently offer, as well as to improve usability and support and increase customer satisfaction. Our failure to develop solutions that satisfy customer preferences in a timely and cost-effective manner may harm our ability to renew our subscriptions with existing customers and to create or increase demand for our services and may materially and adversely impact our results of operations.

The introduction or announcement of new services and technologies by our competitors could make our solutions obsolete, cause customers to defer purchases of our services, or otherwise adversely affect our business and results of operations. We may experience difficulties with software development, operations, design or marketing that could delay or prevent the introduction or implementation of new or enhanced services and applications. We have in the past experienced delays in the planned release dates of new features and upgrades, and have discovered defects in new services and applications after their introduction. We cannot assure you that new features or upgrades will be released according to schedule, or that, when released, they will not contain defects. Either of these situations could result in adverse publicity, loss of revenue, delay in market acceptance or claims by customers brought against us, all of which could harm our reputation, business, results of operations and financial condition. Moreover, the development of new or enhanced services or applications may require substantial investment, and we must continue to invest a significant amount of resources in our research and development efforts to remain competitive. We do not know whether these investments will be successful. If we are unable to develop, license or acquire new or enhanced services and applications on a timely and cost‑effective basis, or if such new or enhanced services and applications do not achieve adequate market acceptance, we may not be able to realize a return on our investments and our business, financial condition and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.

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Our success depends, in part, on increased public acceptance of our connected services and applications.

Our future growth depends on our ability to significantly increase revenue generated from our communications solutions, our Ooma Home security service, and other connected services. The markets for cloud-based communications, home security services and connected services are evolving rapidly and are characterized by an increasing number of market entrants. If these markets fail to develop, develop more slowly than we anticipate or develop in a manner different than we expect, our services could fail to achieve market acceptance, which in turn could materially and adversely affect our business.

Our future growth in the small business market depends on the continued use of voice communications by businesses, as compared to e-mail and other data-based methods. A decline in the overall rate of voice communications by businesses would harm our business. Furthermore, our continued growth depends on future demand for and adoption of internet voice communications systems and services and on future demand for connected communications services. Although the number of broadband subscribers worldwide has grown significantly in recent years, only a small percentage of businesses have adopted internet voice communications services to date. For demand and adoption of internet voice communications services by businesses to increase, internet voice communications networks must improve the quality of their service for real-time communications by managing the effects of and reducing packet loss, packet delay, and packet jitter, as well as unreliable bandwidth, so that high-quality service can be consistently provided. Additionally, the cost and feature benefits of internet voice communications must be sufficient to cause customers to switch from traditional phone service providers. We must devote substantial resources to educate potential customers about the benefits of internet voice communications solutions, in general, and of our services in particular. If any or all of these factors fail to occur, our business may be materially and adversely affected.

Our Ooma Telo product and services are being sold to individuals and families. With the growth in cellular and other mobile technologies, many consumers have chosen to eliminate altogether their home telephone service. Our ability to continue growing our user base depends on our ability to convince our customers and potential customers that our service is sufficiently useful and cost-effective, such that it makes sense to maintain or reestablish home telephone services with us. Our growth could slow and our financial condition could be adversely affected if the trend of eliminating home telephone service continues or accelerates.

Our Ooma Home security service faces significant competition in a market segment where the Ooma brand is relatively unknown, and where there are several established large providers, such as ADT and SimpliSafe, as well as new market entrants with significantly greater resources than ours, such as Google and its Nest Secure home security system and service. If we fail to create sufficient recognition of the Ooma brand in the home security market, fail to provide features or benefits in our home security service seen as desirable by consumers, or fail to convince consumers of the relative benefits of our home security service when compared to those of our competitors, our service could fail to achieve market acceptance and therefore not generate significant increases to our revenue.

Our mobile platform, available to any consumer with a Wi-Fi or cellular data connected mobile device, operates in a market that is fragmented and difficult to get noticed by consumers. Many of our competitors in this market have been able to establish a significant user base and reputation in the market, which may make it more difficult for our products to be adopted. Furthermore, as new mobile devices are released, we may encounter difficulties supporting these devices and services, and we may need to devote significant resources to the creation, support, and maintenance of our mobile applications. Additionally, our competitors may allocate additional resources to marketing and promotion of their products, making it even more difficult to be noticed. It is also unclear how the adoption of “over-the-top” based communications will continue to grow. If the number of consumers using “over-the-top” based communications stagnates or declines, such movement may result in an intensified competition for consumers in this space.

Accusations of infringement of third-party intellectual property rights could materially and adversely affect our business.

There has been substantial litigation in the areas in which we operate regarding intellectual property rights. In the past, we have been sued by third parties claiming infringement of their intellectual property rights and we may be sued for infringement from time to time in the future. In the past, we have settled infringement litigation brought against us; however, we cannot assure you that we will be able to settle any future claims or, if we are able to settle any such claims, that the settlement will be on terms favorable to us. Our broad range of technology may increase the likelihood that third parties will claim that we infringe their intellectual property rights.

We have in the past received, and may in the future receive, notices of claims of infringement, misappropriation or misuse of other parties’ proprietary rights, such as the Deep Green Wireless Litigation described in Note 11: Commitments and Contingencies in the accompanying notes to our consolidated financial statements. Notwithstanding their merits, accusations and lawsuits like these often require significant time and expense to defend, may negatively affect customer relationships, may divert management’s attention away from other aspects of our operations and, upon resolution, may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial condition and cash flows.

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Certain technology necessary for us to provide our services may, in fact, be patented by other parties either now or in the future. If such technology were validly patented by another person, we would have to negotiate a license for the use of that technology. We may not be able to negotiate such a license at a price that is acceptable to us or at all. The existence of such a patent, or our inability to negotiate a license for any such technology on acceptable terms, could force us to cease using the technology and cease offering products and services incorporating the technology, which could materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

If we were found to be infringing on the intellectual property rights of any third party, we could be subject to liability for such infringement, which could be material. We could also be prohibited from using or selling certain products or services, prohibited from using certain processes, or required to redesign certain products or services, each of which could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

These and other outcomes may:

Our limited ability to protect our intellectual property rights could materially and adversely affect our business.

We rely, in part, on patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret law to protect our intellectual property in the U.S. and abroad. We cannot assure you that the particular forms of intellectual property protection we seek, including business decisions about when to file patents and when to maintain trade secrets, will be adequate to protect our business. We seek to protect our technology, software, documentation and other information under trade secret and copyright law, which afford only limited protection. For example, we typically enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants, third-party contractors, customers and vendors in an effort to control access to use and distribution of our technology, software, documentation and other information. These agreements may not effectively prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of confidential information and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of such unauthorized use or disclosure, and it may be possible for a third party to legally reverse engineer, copy or otherwise obtain and use our technology without authorization. In addition, improper disclosure of trade secret information by our current or former employees, consultants, third-party contractors, customers or vendors to the public or others who could make use of the trade secret information would likely preclude that information from being protected as a trade secret.

We also rely, in part, on patent law to protect our intellectual property in the U.S. and internationally. See Item 1. Business above for additional information. We cannot predict whether our pending patent applications will result in issued patents or whether any issued patents will effectively protect our intellectual property. Even if a pending patent application results in an issued patent, the patent may be circumvented or its validity may be challenged in various proceedings in U.S. District Court, before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or before their foreign equivalents, such as reexamination, which may require legal representation and involve substantial costs and diversion of management time and resources. In addition, we cannot assure you that every significant feature of our solutions is protected by our patents, or that we will mark our products with any or all patents they embody. As a result, we may be prevented from seeking damages in whole or in part for infringement of our patents.

The unlicensed use of our brand, including domain names, by third parties could harm our reputation, cause confusion among our customers and impair our ability to market our products and services. To that end, we have registered numerous trademarks and service marks, have applied for registration of additional trademarks and service marks and have acquired a number of domain names in and outside the U.S. to establish and protect our brand names as part of our intellectual property strategy. If our applications receive objections or are successfully opposed by third parties, it will be difficult for us to prevent third parties from using our brand without our permission. Moreover, successful opposition to our applications might encourage third parties to make additional oppositions or commence trademark infringement proceedings against us, which could be costly and time consuming to defend against. There have been in the past, and may be in the future, instances where third parties have used our trade names, or have adopted confusingly similar trade names to ours. If we are not successful in protecting our trademarks, our trademark rights may be diluted and subject to challenge or invalidation, which could materially and adversely affect our brand.

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Despite our efforts to implement our intellectual property strategy, we may not be able to protect or enforce our proprietary rights in the U.S. or internationally (where effective intellectual property protection may be unavailable or limited). For example, we have entered into agreements containing confidentiality and invention assignment provisions in connection with the outsourcing of certain software development, quality assurance and development activities to third-party contractors in a number of international locations. We have also entered into an agreement containing a confidentiality provision with a third-party contractor located in the Philippines, where we have outsourced a significant portion of our customer support function. Such agreements may not adequately protect our proprietary rights in the applicable jurisdictions and foreign countries, as their respective laws may not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the U.S. In addition, our competitors may independently develop technologies similar or superior to our technology, duplicate our technology in a manner that does not infringe our intellectual property rights or design around any of our patents. Furthermore, detecting and policing unauthorized use of our intellectual property is difficult and resource-intensive. Moreover, litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights, to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, or to defend against claims of infringement or invalidity. Such litigation, whether successful or not, could result in substantial costs and diversion of management time and resources and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We license technology from third parties we do not control and cannot be assured of retaining such licenses.

We rely upon certain technology, including hardware and software, licensed from third parties. There can be no assurance that the technology licensed by us will continue to provide competitive features and functionality or that the licenses for technology currently utilized by us or other technology which we may seek to license in the future, will be available to us on commercially reasonable terms or at all. The loss of, or inability to maintain, existing licenses could result in shipment delays or reductions until equivalent technology or suitable alternative products are developed, identified, licensed and integrated, and could harm our business. These licenses are typically offered on standard commercial terms made generally available by the companies providing the licenses. The cost and terms of these licenses individually are not material to our business.

If we experience excessive fraudulent activity or cannot meet evolving credit card association merchant standards, we could incur substantial costs and lose the right to accept credit cards for payment, which could cause our customer base to decline significantly.

Nearly all of our customers authorize us to bill their credit card accounts directly for service fees that we charge. If people pay for our services with stolen credit cards, we could incur substantial third-party vendor costs for which we may not be reimbursed. Further, our customers provide us with credit card billing information online or over the phone, and we do not review the physical credit cards used in these transactions, which increases our risk of exposure to fraudulent activity. We also incur charges, which we refer to as chargebacks, from the credit card companies’ claims that the customer did not authorize the credit card transaction to purchase our service, something we have experienced in the past. If the number of unauthorized credit card transactions becomes excessive, we could be assessed substantial fines for excess chargebacks and we could lose the right to accept credit cards for payment. We have also been affected by the credit card breaches at various retail stores, which have caused millions of consumers to cancel credit cards as a result of the breach. We have found that some consumers do not renew their services after a card cancellation, which can have a material negative impact on our revenue. In addition, credit card issuers may change merchant standards, including data protection and documentation standards, required to utilize their services from time to time.

We are currently not in compliance with all of the applicable technical requirements of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI, but we are working to become fully compliant as soon as is practicable. If we fail to become compliant or maintain compliance with current merchant standards, such as PCI, or fail to meet new standards, the credit card associations may fine us or, while unusual, may impose certain restrictions on our ability to accept credit cards or terminate our agreements with them, rendering us unable to accept credit cards as payment for our services. Our services have been in the past, and may also be in the future, subject to fraudulent or abusive usage in violation of applicable law or our acceptable use policies, including but not limited to revenue share fraud, domestic traffic pumping, subscription fraud, premium text message scams, and other fraudulent schemes, any of which could result in our incurring substantial costs for the completion of calls. Although our customers are required to set passwords and Personal Identification Numbers, or PINs, to protect their accounts and may configure in which destinations international calling is enabled from their extensions, third parties have accessed and used our customers’ accounts and extensions through fraudulent means in the past, and they may do so in the future, which also could result in substantial call completion and other costs for us. In addition, third parties may have attempted in the past, and may attempt in the future, to fraudulently induce domestic and international employees or consultants into disclosing customer credentials and other account information. Communications fraud can result in unauthorized access to customer accounts and customer data, unauthorized use of customers’ services, and charges to customers for fraudulent usage and expenses we must pay to carriers. We may be required to pay for these charges and expenses with no reimbursement from the customer, and our reputation may be harmed if our services are subject to fraudulent usage.

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Although we implement multiple fraud prevention and detection controls, we cannot assure you that these controls will be adequate to protect against fraud. Substantial losses due to fraud or our inability to accept credit card payments, which could cause our paid customer base to significantly decrease, could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition and ability to grow our business.

Potential problems with our information systems could interfere with our business and operations.

We rely on our information systems and those of third parties for processing customer orders, distribution of our services, billing our customers, processing credit card transactions, customer relationship management, supporting financial planning and analysis, accounting functions and financial statement preparation and otherwise running our business. Information systems may experience interruptions, including interruptions of related services from third-party providers, which may be beyond our control. Such business interruptions could cause us to fail to meet customer requirements. All information systems, both internal and external, are potentially vulnerable to damage or interruption from a variety of sources, including without limitation, computer viruses, security breaches, energy blackouts, natural disasters, terrorism, war, telecommunication failures and employee or other theft, as well as third-party provider failures. Any disruption in our information systems and those of the third parties upon which we rely could have a significant impact on our business.

We may implement enhanced information systems in the future to meet the demands resulting from our growth and to provide additional capabilities and functionality. The implementation of new systems and enhancements is frequently disruptive to the underlying business of an enterprise, and can be time-consuming and expensive, increase management responsibilities and divert management attention. Any disruptions relating to our systems enhancements or any problems with the implementation, particularly any disruptions impacting our operations or our ability to accurately report our financial performance on a timely basis during the implementation period, could materially and adversely affect our business. Even if we do not encounter these material and adverse effects, the implementation of these enhancements may be much costlier than we anticipated. If we are unable to successfully implement the information systems enhancements as planned, our financial position, results of operations and cash flows could be negatively impacted.

Our use of open source technology could impose limitations on our ability to commercialize our services.

We use open source software in our platform on which our services operate. There is a risk that the owners of the copyrights in such software may claim that such licenses impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market or provide our services. If such owners prevail in such claim, we could be required to make the source code for our proprietary software (which contains our valuable trade secrets) generally available to third parties, including competitors, at no cost, to seek licenses from third parties in order to continue offering our services, to re-engineer our technology, or to discontinue offering our services in the event re-engineering cannot be accomplished on a timely basis or at all, any of which could cause us to discontinue our services, harm our reputation, result in customer losses or claims, increase our costs or otherwise materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations. If a copyright holder of such open source software were to allege we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from the sale of our solutions that contained the open source software and required to comply with the foregoing conditions, which could disrupt the distribution and sale of some of our solutions.

We depend largely on the continued services of our senior management and other key employees, the loss of any of whom could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Our future performance depends on the continued services and contributions of our senior management and other key employees to execute on our business plan, and to identify and pursue opportunities and services innovations. The loss of services of senior management or other key employees could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our development and strategic objectives. All of our executive officers and senior management may terminate employment with us at any time with no advance notice. The replacement of any of these senior management personnel would likely involve significant time and costs, and such loss could significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our business objectives. Many members of our senior management have been our employees for many years and therefore have significant experience and understanding of our business that would be difficult to replace. Our inability to attract and retain the necessary personnel could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of business. We do not maintain key person insurance for any of our personnel.

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If we are unable to hire, retain and motivate qualified personnel, our business will suffer.

Our future success depends, in part, on our continued ability to attract and retain highly skilled personnel. We believe there is, and will continue to be, intense competition for highly skilled technical and other personnel with experience in our industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located, and in other locations where we may maintain offices in the future. We must provide competitive compensation packages and a high-quality work environment to hire, retain and motivate employees. If we are unable to retain and motivate our existing employees or attract qualified personnel to fill key positions, we may be unable to manage our business effectively, including the development, marketing and sale of existing and new services, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. To the extent we hire personnel from competitors, we may be subject to allegations such personnel have been improperly solicited or divulged proprietary or other confidential information.

We may expand through acquisitions of, or investments in, other companies, each of which may divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders, increase expenses, disrupt our operations and harm our results of operations.

Our business strategy may, from time to time, include acquiring or investing in complementary services, technologies or businesses. We may not be able to find suitable acquisition candidates, and we may not be able to complete acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all.  If we do complete acquisitions, we may not ultimately strengthen our competitive position or achieve our goals, and any acquisitions we complete could be viewed negatively by users or investors. If we fail to successfully integrate such acquisitions, or the technologies associated with such acquisitions, the revenue and operating results of the combined company could be adversely affected. Acquisitions may disrupt our ongoing operations, divert management from their primary responsibilities, subject us to additional liabilities, increase our expenses and adversely impact our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows. We may not successfully evaluate or utilize the acquired technology and accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition transaction, including accounting charges.

We may have to pay cash, incur debt or issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition, each of which could affect our financial condition or the value of our capital stock. The sale of equity to finance any such acquisitions could result in dilution to our stockholders. If we incur debt it would result in increased fixed obligations and could also subject us to covenants or other restrictions that would impede our ability to manage our operations. In addition, our future operating results may be impacted by performance earnouts or contingent payments. Furthermore, acquisitions may require large one-time charges and can result in increased debt or contingent liabilities, adverse tax consequences, additional stock-based compensation expense and the recording and subsequent amortization or impairments of amounts related to certain purchased intangible assets, any of which could negatively impact our future results of operations.

When we enter into mergers or other strategic transactions in which we acquire other companies, for example, our acquisitions of Voxter Communications in March 2018 and Butterfleye in December 2017, we cannot guarantee we will be able to successfully integrate the teams, assets, or business of these target companies into our business, that we will be able to fully recover the costs of such transactions or that we will be successful in leveraging such strategic transactions into increased business for our products.

We are expanding our international operations, which may expose us to significant risks.

To date, we have not generated significant revenue from outside of the U.S. and Canada, but we recently expanded our operations outside North America as we ramp up to provide services in a number of countries internationally. For example, Voxter Communications operates in Canada, and its customers have operations in Canada and several other countries outside of the U.S. The future success of our business will depend, in part, on our ability to expand our operations and customer base worldwide. Operating in international markets requires significant resources and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, economic and political risks different from those in the U.S. Because of our limited experience with international operations and developing and managing sales and distribution channels in international markets, our international expansion efforts may not be successful. In addition, we will face risks in doing business internationally that could materially and adversely affect our business, including:

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Our failure to manage any of these risks successfully could harm our future international operations and our overall business.

We may not be able to manage our inventory levels effectively, which may lead to shortages of inventory, excess inventory or inventory obsolescence that would force us to incur inventory write-downs.

Our vendor-supplied on-premise appliances and end-point devices have lead times of up to several months for delivery and are built to satisfy our demand forecasts that are necessarily imprecise. It is likely that from time to time we will have either an excess or shortage of product inventory. In addition, because we rely on third-party vendors for the supply of our devices, our inventory levels are subject to the conditions regarding the timing of purchase orders and delivery dates not within our control. Excess inventory levels would subject us to the risk of inventory obsolescence, while insufficient levels of inventory may negatively affect relations with customers. For instance, our customers rely upon our ability to meet committed delivery dates, and any disruption in the supply of our services could result in loss of customers or harm to our ability to attract new customers. Retailers may elect to return any unsold inventory without any penalty, which could result in a write down for excess inventory. Any of these factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.

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Catastrophic events or political instability could disrupt and cause harm to our business.

Our corporate headquarters, offices and one of our data center facilities are located in Northern California, a region that frequently experiences earthquakes. In addition, our third-party contract manufacturer facilities in China and our sole third-party customer service and support facility in the Philippines are located on the Pacific Rim near known earthquake fault zones that are vulnerable to damage from earthquakes, tsunamis and/or typhoons. We and our contractors are also vulnerable to other types of disasters, such as power loss, fire, floods, pandemics, cyber-attack, war, political unrest and terrorist attacks and similar events that are beyond our control. If any disasters were to occur, our ability to operate our business could be seriously impaired, and we may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, loss of intellectual property, delays in our services development, lengthy interruptions in our services, breaches of data security and loss of critical data, all of which could harm our future results of operations. In addition, we do not carry earthquake insurance and we may not have adequate insurance to cover our losses resulting from other disasters or other similar significant business interruptions. Any significant losses not recoverable under our insurance policies could seriously impair our business and financial condition.

Changes in effective tax rates, or adverse outcomes resulting from examination of our income or other tax returns, could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

Our future effective tax rates could be subject to volatility or adversely affected by a number of factors, including:

As we expand our operations outside the U.S. and Canada, certain changes to U.S. tax laws, including limitations on the ability to defer U.S. taxation on earnings outside of the U.S. until those earnings are repatriated to the U.S. could affect the tax treatment of our foreign earnings. Any changes in our effective tax rate could adversely affect our results of operations.

We may be unable to use some or all of our net operating loss carryforwards, which could materially and adversely affect our reported financial condition and results of operations.

As of January 31, 2018, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards, or NOLs, of $83.0 million and $62.0 million, respectively, available to offset future taxable income, which will begin to expire in 2030 if not utilized. We also have federal and research and development tax credit carryforwards that will begin to expire in 2030 and California research and development tax credit carryforwards with no expiration date.  Realization of these net operating loss and research tax credit carryforwards depends on future income, and there is a risk that our existing carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations. No deferred tax assets have been recognized on our balance sheet related to these NOLs, as they are fully reserved by a valuation allowance. If we have previously had, or have in the future, one or more Section 382 “ownership changes”, or if we do not generate sufficient taxable income, we may not be able to utilize a material portion of our NOLs, even if we achieve profitability. If we are limited in our ability to use our NOLs in future years in which we have taxable income, we will pay more taxes than if we were able to fully utilize our NOLs. This could materially and adversely affect our results of operations.

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Risks Related to Federal, State and International Regulation

Our services are subject to regulation and future legislative or regulatory actions could adversely affect our business and expose us to liability.

Federal Regulation. Our business is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC. As a communications services provider, we are subject to FCC regulations relating to privacy, disability access, law enforcement access, porting of numbers, revenue reporting, Federal Universal Service Fund contributions and other regulatory assessments, E‑911, and other matters. If we do not comply with FCC rules and regulations, we could be subject to FCC enforcement actions, substantial fines, loss of licenses, and possibly restrictions on our ability to operate or offer certain of our services. Any enforcement action by the FCC, which may include a public process, would hurt our reputation in the industry, possibly impair our ability to sell our services to customers and could have a materially adverse impact on our revenue.

State Regulation. We are also subject to state consumer protection laws, as well as U.S. state, municipal and local sales, use, excise, utility user and ad valorem taxes, fees or surcharges. The imposition of such regulatory obligations or the imposition of additional taxes on our services could increase our cost of doing business and limit our growth.

International Regulation. As we expand internationally, we may be subject to telecommunications, consumer protection, data privacy and other laws and regulations in the foreign countries where we offer our services. For example, we are subject to regulation in Canada by the CRTC, subject to Canadian federal privacy laws and provincial consumer protection legislation. Our international operations are potentially subject to country-specific governmental regulation and related actions that may increase our costs and prevent us from offering or providing our products and services in certain countries. Certain of our services may be used by customers located in countries where VoIP and other forms of IP communications may be illegal or require special licensing. In countries where local laws and regulations prohibit (or come to prohibit) the use of our products, users may continue to use our products and services, which could subject us to costly penalties or governmental action adverse to our business and damaging to our brand and reputation, our international expansion efforts, or our business and operating results.

The adoption of additional 911 requirements by the FCC could increase our costs that could make our service more expensive, decrease our profit margins, or both.

The FCC is actively considering additional 911 requirements for interconnected VoIP providers, non-interconnected VoIP providers and texting providers. The outcome of the FCC’s proceedings cannot be determined at this time and we may or may not be able to comply with any such obligations that may be adopted. At present, we have no means to automatically identify the physical location of our customers on the internet. Changes to the FCC’s VoIP E‑911 rules may adversely affect our ability to deliver our service to new and existing customers in all geographic regions or to nomadic customers who move to a location where emergency calling services compliant with the FCC’s mandates are unavailable. Our compliance with the FCC’s VoIP E-911 order and related costs puts us at a competitive disadvantage to VoIP service providers who are either not subject to the requirements or have chosen not to comply with the FCC’s mandates. We cannot guarantee emergency calling service consistent with the VoIP E‑911 order will be available to all of our customers, especially those accessing our services on a mobile device or from outside of the U.S. The FCC’s current VoIP E-911 order or follow-on orders or clarifications, the impact on our customers due to service price increases or other factors could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or operating results.

The FCC order reforming the system of payments between regulated carriers we partner with to interface with the public switched telephone network, or PSTN, could increase our costs of providing service, which could result in increased rates for service, making our offerings less competitive than others in the marketplace, or reduce our profitability.

In 2011, the FCC reformed the system under which regulated providers of telecommunications services compensate each other for various types of traffic, including VoIP traffic that terminates on the PSTN, and applied new call signaling requirements to VoIP and other service providers. The FCC’s rules concerning charges for transmission of VoIP traffic could result in an increased cost to terminate the traffic, could reduce the availability of services or increase the price of services from our underlying providers, or could otherwise impact the wholesale telecommunications market in a way that adversely impacts our business. To the extent that we transmit traffic not subject to a specific intercarrier compensation arrangement and another provider were to assert that the traffic we exchange with them is subject to higher levels of compensation than what we, or the third parties terminating our traffic to the PSTN, pay today (if any), our termination costs could increase.

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If we cannot comply with the FCC’s rules imposing call signaling requirements on VoIP providers like us, we may be subject to fines, cease and desist orders, or other penalties.

The FCC’s rules regarding the system of compensation for various types of traffic require, among other things, interconnected VoIP providers like us, who originate interstate or intrastate traffic destined for the PSTN, to transmit the telephone number associated with the calling party to the next provider in the call path. Intermediate providers must pass unaltered calling party number or charge number signaling information they receive from other providers to subsequent providers in the call path. To the extent that we pass traffic that does not have appropriate calling party number or charge number information, we could be subject to fines, cease and desist orders, or other penalties.

We may not be able to comply with FCC rules governing completion of calls to rural areas and related reporting requirements.

In November 2013, the FCC adopted rules that impose recording, retention, and reporting requirements on VoIP providers like us. These rules support the Commission’s ability to monitor and redress rural call completion problems, as well as their efforts to enforce restrictions on blocking, choking, reducing, or restricting calls. Under the rules, a covered provider must record and retain, for at least nine months, information about calls attempts to rural areas and must report that data to the FCC on a quarterly basis. If we cannot comply with these rules, we could be subject to investigation and enforcement action and could be exposed to substantial liability. The FCC also has increased enforcement activity related to completion of calls to rural customers, and we could be subject to substantial fines and to conduct requirements that could increase our costs if we are the subject of an enforcement proceeding and cannot demonstrate calls from our customers to rural customers are completed at a satisfactory rate. On July 14, 2017, the FCC released a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to consider alternatives to the existing rural call completion requirements, but has not yet taken action on that Notice.

The FCC has continued to increase regulation of interconnected VoIP services and may at any time determine certain VoIP services are telecommunications services subject to traditional common carrier regulation.

The FCC is considering, in various proceedings, issues arising from the transition from traditional copper networks to IP networks. The FCC is also considering whether interconnected VoIP services should be treated as telecommunications services, which could subject interconnected VoIP services to additional common carrier regulation. The FCC’s efforts may result in additional regulation of IP network and service providers, which may negatively affect our business.

Reform of federal and state Universal Service Fund programs could increase the cost of our service to our customers, diminishing or eliminating our pricing advantage.

The FCC and a number of states are considering reform or other modifications to Universal Service Fund programs, including the manner in which companies, like us, contribute to the federal USF program, and whether non-interconnected VoIP providers, texting providers and broadband providers, among others, should contribute to the USF. If the FCC or certain states adopt new contribution mechanisms or otherwise modify contribution obligations that increase our contribution burden, we will either need to raise the amount we currently collect from our customers to cover this obligation or absorb the costs, which would reduce our profit margins. A number of states require us to contribute funds to state USF programs, while others are actively considering extending their programs to include the services we provide. We currently pass-through USF contributions and certain other fees and surcharges to our customers, which may result in our services becoming less competitive as compared to those provided by others. If our pricing advantage is diminished or eliminated, or if we are required to absorb these increased costs and not pass-through to our customers, our results of operations would be negatively impacted.

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Our products must comply with industry standards, FCC regulations, state, local, country‑specific and international regulations, and changes may require us to modify existing products and/or services.

In addition to reliability and quality standards, the market acceptance of telephony over broadband IP networks is dependent upon the adoption of industry standards so that products from multiple manufacturers are able to communicate with each other. Our unique hybrid SaaS connectivity platform relies on communication standards such as SIP, SRTP and network standards such as TCP/IP and UDP to interoperate with other vendors’ equipment. There is currently a lack of agreement among industry leaders about which standard should be used for a particular application and about the definition of the standards themselves. We also must comply with certain rules and regulations of the FCC regarding electromagnetic radiation and safety standards established by Underwriters Laboratories, as well as similar regulations and standards applicable in other countries. As standards evolve, we may be required to modify our existing products or develop and support new versions of our products. We must comply with certain federal, state and local requirements regarding how we interact with our customers, including marketing practices, consumer protection, privacy, and billing issues, the provision of 9-1-1 emergency service and the quality of service we provide to our customers. The failure of our products and services to comply, or delays in compliance, with various existing and evolving standards could delay or interrupt volume production of our VoIP telephony products, subject us to fines or other imposed penalties, or harm the perception and adoption rates of our service, any of which would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or operating results.

Failure to comply with communications and telemarketing laws could result in significant fines or place significant restrictions on our business.

We rely on a variety of marketing techniques, including telemarketing and email marketing campaigns. We also record certain telephone calls between our customers or potential customers and our sales and service representatives for training and quality assurance purposes. These activities are subject to a variety of state and federal laws such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (also known as the Federal Do-Not-Call law, or the TCPA), the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (also known as the CAN-SPAM Act) and various U.S. state laws regarding telemarketing and telephone call recording. These laws are subject to varying interpretations by courts and governmental authorities and often require subjective interpretation, making it difficult to predict their application and therefore making our compliance efforts more challenging. We cannot be certain our efforts to comply with these laws, rules and regulations will be successful, or, if they are successful, that the cost of such compliance will not be material to our business. Changes to these or similar laws, or to their application or interpretation, or new laws, rules and regulations governing our communication and marketing activities could adversely affect our business. In the event that any of these laws, rules or regulations significantly restricts our business, we may not be able to develop adequate alternative communication and marketing strategies. Further, non-compliance with these laws, rules and regulations carries significant financial penalties and the risk of class action litigation, which would adversely affect our financial performance and significantly harm our reputation and our business.

We process, store, and use personal information and other data, which subjects us and our customers to a variety of evolving governmental regulation, industry standards and self‑regulatory schemes, contractual obligations, and other legal obligations related to privacy, which may increase our costs, decrease adoption and use of our products and services, and expose us to liability.

There are a number of U.S. federal, state and local, and foreign laws and regulations, as well as contractual obligations and industry standards, that provide for certain obligations and restrictions with respect to data privacy and security, and the collection, storage, retention, protection, use, processing, transmission, sharing, disclosure, and protection of personal information and other customer data. The scope of these obligations and restrictions is changing, subject to differing interpretations, and may be inconsistent among countries or conflict with other rules, and their status remains uncertain.

For example, in the U.S. and in other jurisdictions, a variety of regulations are currently being proposed that would increase restrictions on online service providers in the field of data privacy and security, and we believe that the adoption of such increasingly restrictive regulation is likely. In Canada, penalties for non-compliance with certain Canadian anti-spam legislation that became effective over 2014 and 2015 are considerable, including administrative monetary penalties of up to $10 million and a private right of action. Within the EU, strict laws already apply in connection with the collection, storage, retention, use, processing, transmission, sharing, disclosure and protection of personal information, and other customer data. Data protection regulators within the EU and other jurisdictions have the power to fine non-compliant organizations significant amounts and seek injunctive relief, including the cessation of certain data processing activities.  

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, becomes effective in May 2018 and comprehensively regulates the processing of personal data of any individual residing in the EU. The GDPR provides for significant penalties in the event of violations, including fines of up to 4% of the violating company’s worldwide revenue. We are taking administrative, contractual and other measures designed to achieve compliance with the GDPR, but we cannot guarantee these measures will be sufficient or complete when the GDPR goes into effect in May 2018.  

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Obligations and restrictions imposed by current and future applicable laws, regulations, contracts and industry standards may increase the cost of our operations, affect our ability to provide all the current features of our small business, residential and mobile products and services and our customers’ ability to use our products and services, and could require us to modify the features and functionality of our products and services. Such obligations and restrictions may limit our ability to collect, store, process, use, transmit and share data, and to allow our customers to collect, store, retain, protect, use, process, transmit, share and disclose data with others through our products and services. Compliance with such obligations and restrictions could increase the cost of our operations. Failure to comply with obligations and restrictions related to data privacy and security could subject us to lawsuits, fines, criminal penalties, statutory damages, consent decrees, injunctions, adverse publicity and other losses that could harm our business.

Our customers can use our services to store contact and other personal or identifying information, and to process, transmit, receive, store and retrieve a variety of communications and messages, including, for our Ooma Office customers, information about their own customers and other contacts. In addition, customers may use our services to transmit and store protected health information, or PHI, that is protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Noncompliance with laws and regulations relating to privacy such as HIPAA, as amended, and the HIPAA regulations, may lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities. Our actual compliance, our customers’ perception of our compliance, costs of compliance with such regulations and customer concerns regarding their own compliance obligations (whether factual or in error) may limit the use and adoption of our service and reduce overall demand. Furthermore, privacy concerns, including the inability or impracticality of providing advance notice to customers of privacy issues related to the use of our services, may cause our customers’ customers to resist providing the personal data necessary to allow our customers to use our services effectively. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our service in certain industries.

In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy groups and industry groups have adopted and are considering the adoption of various self-regulatory standards and codes of conduct that may place additional burdens on us and our customers, which may further reduce demand for our services and harm our business.

While we try to comply with all applicable data protection laws, regulations, standards, and codes of conduct, as well as our own posted privacy policies and contractual commitments to the extent possible, any failure by us to protect our users’ privacy and data, including as a result of our systems being compromised by hacking or other malicious or surreptitious activity, could result in a loss of user confidence in our services and ultimately in a loss of users, which could materially and adversely affect our business. Our customers may also accidentally disclose their passwords, store them on a mobile device that is lost or stolen, or otherwise fall prey to attacks outside our system, creating the perception that our systems are not secure against third-party access. If our third-party contractors or vendors violate applicable laws or our policies, such violations may also put our customers’ information at risk and could in turn have a material and adverse effect on our business.

Use or delivery of our services may become subject to new or increased regulatory requirements, taxes or fees.

The increasing growth and popularity of internet voice communications heighten the risk that governments will regulate or impose new or increased fees or taxes on internet voice communications services. To the extent the use of our services continues to grow, regulators may be more likely to seek to regulate or impose new or additional taxes, surcharges or fees on our services. Similarly, advances in technology, such as improvements in locating the geographic origin of internet voice communications, could cause our services to become subject to additional regulations, fees or taxes, or could require us to invest in or develop new technologies, which may be costly. In addition, as we continue to expand our user base and offer more services, we may become subject to new regulations, taxes, surcharges or fees. Increased regulatory requirements, taxes, surcharges or fees on internet voice communications services, which could be assessed by governments retroactively or prospectively, would substantially increase our costs, and, as a result, our business would suffer. In addition, the tax status of our services could subject us to conflicting taxation requirements and complexity with regard to the collection and remittance of applicable taxes. Any such additional taxes could harm our results of operations.

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We are subject to anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws with respect to our operations and non-compliance with such laws can subject us to criminal and/or civil liability and harm our business.

We are subject to the FCPA, the U.S. domestic bribery statute contained in 18 U.S.C. § 201, the U.S. Travel Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, and possibly other anti-bribery and anti‑money laundering laws in countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption laws are interpreted broadly and prohibit companies and their employees and third-party intermediaries from authorizing, offering, or providing, directly or indirectly, improper payments or benefits to recipients in the public or private sector. We use third-party representatives for product testing, customs, export, and import matters outside of the U.S. As we increase our international sales and business, we may engage with business partners and third party intermediaries to sell our products and services abroad and to obtain necessary permits, licenses, and other regulatory approvals. We or our third-party intermediaries may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities. We can be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of these third-party intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, partners, and agents, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities.

Noncompliance with anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws could subject us to whistleblower complaints, investigations, sanctions, settlements, prosecution, other enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, significant fines, damages, other civil and criminal penalties or injunctions, suspension and/or debarment from contracting with certain persons, the loss of export privileges, reputational harm, adverse media coverage, and other collateral consequences. If any subpoenas or investigations are launched, or governmental or other sanctions are imposed, or if we do not prevail in any possible civil or criminal litigation, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially harmed. In addition, responding to any action will likely result in a materially significant diversion of management’s attention and resources, significant defense costs and other professional fees. Enforcement actions and sanctions could further harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We are subject to governmental export and import controls, economic embargoes and trade sanctions that could impair our ability to expand our business to, and compete in, international markets and could subject us to liability if we are not in compliance with applicable laws.

Our products and services are subject to export and import laws and regulations, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations, U.S. Customs regulations, and various economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls. U.S. export control laws and economic sanctions programs generally prohibit the export of certain products and services to countries, governments and persons subject to U.S. economic embargoes and trade sanctions unless a license, approval, or other authorization is obtained from the U.S. Government. Obtaining the necessary authorizations and licenses for a particular sale may be time-consuming, is not guaranteed and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities. If we fail to comply with these laws and regulations, we and certain of our employees could be subject to substantial civil or criminal penalties, including the possible loss of export or import privileges, government investigations, reputational harm, fines which may be imposed on us and responsible employees or managers, and, in extreme cases, the incarceration of responsible employees or managers.

In addition, any changes in our products or services, or changes in applicable export, import, embargo and trade sanctions regulations, may create delays in the introduction and sale of our products and services in international markets or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our products and services to certain countries, governments, or persons altogether. Any change in export, import, embargo, or trade sanctions regulations, shift in the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons or technologies targeted by such regulations, could also result in decreased use of our products and services, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our products and services to existing or potential customers with international operations. Any decreased use of our products and services or limitation on our ability to export or sell our products and services would likely adversely affect our business.

We may be subject to liabilities on past services for taxes, surcharges and fees.

We collect and remit state or municipal sales, use, excise, utility user and ad valorem taxes, fees, or surcharges on the charges to our customers for our services or goods in only those jurisdictions where we believe we have a legal obligation to do so or for business reasons to reduce risk. In addition, we have historically substantially complied with the collection of certain California sales/use taxes and financial contributions to the California 9-1-1 system (the Emergency Telephone Users Surcharge) and federal USF. With limited exception, we believe we are generally not subject to taxes, fees, or surcharges imposed by other state and municipal jurisdictions or that such taxes, fees, or surcharges do not apply to our service. There is uncertainty as to what constitutes sufficient “in state presence” for a state or local municipality to levy taxes, fees and surcharges for sales made over the internet. Taxing authorities have in the past, and likely will in the future, challenge our position on the lack of enforceability of such taxes, fees and surcharges where we have no relevant presence, and audit our business and operations with respect to sales, use, telecommunications and other taxes, which could result in increased tax liabilities for us or our customers, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations and our relationships with our customers. We have seen an increase recently in the number and frequency of

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such state and local tax authority challenges, audits and related demands, which we are defending against vigorously. A complaint was filed by the County of Berks, Pennsylvania on January 21, 2016 alleging that we are subject to their taxes, fees and surcharges and have failed to remit the required 911 charges. In addition, on November 28, 2016, Ooma filed a complaint against the Oregon Department of Revenue contesting a tax assessment against the Company for the Oregon Emergency Communications Tax, to which the Department of Revenue alleges we are subject. See Note 11: Commitments and Contingencies of the accompanying notes of our consolidated financial statements.

Finally, the application of other indirect taxes (such as sales and use tax, value added tax, or VAT, goods and services tax, business tax, and gross receipt tax) to e-commerce businesses, such as ours, is a complex and evolving area. In November 2007, the U.S. federal government enacted legislation extending the moratorium on states and other local authorities imposing access or discriminatory taxes on the internet through November 2014. This moratorium does not prohibit federal, state, or local authorities from collecting taxes on our income or from collecting taxes due under existing tax rules. The application of existing, new, or future laws, whether in the U.S. or internationally, could have adverse effects on our business, prospects, and results of operations. There have been, and will continue to be, substantial ongoing costs associated with complying with the various indirect tax requirements in the numerous markets in which we conduct or will conduct business.

Risks Related to Being a Public Company

If we fail to develop and maintain an effective system of internal control over financial reporting, we may not be able to accurately report our financial results in a timely manner, which may adversely affect investor confidence in our company and, as a result, the value of our common stock.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the rules and regulations of the applicable listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange. Compliance with these rules and regulations has increased and will continue to increase our legal and financial compliance costs, and has made and will continue to make some activities more difficult, time-consuming or costly, and increase demand on our systems and resources, particularly after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” 

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we make a formal assessment and provide an annual management report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and, if required, improve our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting to meet this standard, significant resources and management oversight may be required. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could harm our business and results of operations.

Our control environment may not be sufficient to remediate or prevent future material weaknesses or significant deficiencies from occurring. A control system, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance that the control system’s objectives will be met. Due to the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and all instances of fraud will be detected. If we are unable to conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if we are required to restate our financial statements as a result of ineffective internal control over financial reporting, we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, which would cause the price of our common stock to decline.

Our independent registered public accounting firm is not required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act until the later of the year following our first annual report required to be filed with SEC, or the date we are no longer an “emerging growth company,” as defined by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (“JOBS Act”). At such time, our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our controls are documented, designed or operating. Our remediation efforts may not enable us to avoid a material weakness in the future.

Our actual operating results may differ significantly from our guidance.

From time to time, we plan to release earnings guidance in our quarterly earnings conference calls, quarterly earnings releases, or otherwise, regarding our future performance that represents our management’s estimates as of the date of release. This guidance, which will include forward‑looking statements, will be based on projections prepared by our management. Projections are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while presented with numerical specificity, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control and are based upon specific assumptions with respect to future business decisions, some of which will change. We intend to state possible outcomes as high and low ranges which are intended to provide a sensitivity analysis as variables are changed but are not intended to imply that actual results could not fall outside of the suggested ranges. The principal reason that we release guidance is to provide a basis for our management to discuss our

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business outlook with analysts and investors. Accordingly, we do not accept any responsibility for any projections or reports published by any such third parties.

Guidance is necessarily speculative in nature, and it can be expected that some or all of the assumptions underlying the guidance furnished by us will not materialize or will vary significantly from actual results. Accordingly, our guidance is only an estimate of what management believes is realizable as of the date of release. Actual results may vary from our guidance and the variations may be material. In light of the foregoing, investors are urged not to rely upon our guidance in making an investment decision regarding our common stock.

Any failure to successfully implement our operating strategy or the occurrence of any of the events or circumstances set forth in this “Risk Factors” section in this report could result in the actual operating results being different from our guidance, and the differences may be adverse and material.

We are an “emerging growth company,” and we cannot be certain if the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, and are taking advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to public companies that are not “emerging growth companies,” including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We cannot predict if investors will find our common stock less attractive because we may rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock, and our stock price may be more volatile and may decline.

We will cease to be an “emerging growth company” upon the earliest of (i) January 31, 2021, (ii) the last day of the first fiscal year in which our annual gross revenue exceeds $1.0 billion, (iii) the date on which we have, during the previous three-year period, issued more than $1.0 billion in non-convertible debt securities or (iv) as of the end of any fiscal year in which the market value of our common stock held by non-affiliates exceeded $700 million as of the end of the second quarter of that fiscal year.

Risks Related to Owning Our Common Stock

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market, or the perception these sales might occur, could cause our stock price to decline.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market, or the perception these sales might occur, could cause the market price of our common stock to decline and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. At January 31, 2018, we had 19.1 million shares of common stock outstanding of which approximately 17.7 million shares were freely tradable. In addition, we have registered shares of common stock which we may issue under our employee stock plans and they may be sold freely in the public market upon issuance. We may issue our shares of common stock or securities convertible into our common stock from time to time in connection with a financing, acquisition, and investments or otherwise. Any such issuance could result in substantial dilution to our existing stockholders and cause the trading price of our common stock to decline.

If securities analysts do not publish or cease publishing research or reports about our business or if they publish negative evaluations of our stock, the price of our stock could decline.

We expect that the trading price for our common stock will be affected by any research or reports that industry or financial analysts publish about us or our business. If one or more of the analysts who elect to cover us downgrade their evaluations of our stock or provide more favorable relative recommendations about our competitors, the price of our stock could decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of our company, our stock may lose visibility in the market, which in turn could cause its price to decline.

We have never paid cash dividends and do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our common stock.

We do not anticipate paying any cash dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future. If we do not pay cash dividends, you would receive a return on your investment in our common stock only if the market price of our common stock increases before you sell your shares. Furthermore, we are party to credit agreements which contain negative covenants that limit our ability to pay dividends.

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Our charter documents and Delaware law could prevent a takeover that stockholders consider favorable and could also reduce the market price of our stock.

Our Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation and our Amended and Restated Bylaws contain provisions that could delay or prevent a change in control of our company. These provisions could also make it more difficult for stockholders to elect directors and take other corporate actions. These provisions include:

These provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management. In addition, the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporate Law govern us. These provisions may prohibit large stockholders, in particular those owning 15% or more of our outstanding voting stock, from merging or combining with us for a certain period of time without the consent of our board of directors. These and other provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our bylaws and under Delaware law could discourage potential takeover attempts, reduce the price investors might be willing to pay in the future for shares of our common stock and result in the market price of our common stock being lower than it would be without these provisions.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will be the exclusive forum for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the sole and exclusive forum for any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty owed by any of our directors, officers or other employees to us or our stockholders, any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to any provisions of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws, or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine. The choice of forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage such lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees. If a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions.

Our stock price has been and will likely continue to be volatile and could fluctuate or decline, resulting in a substantial loss of your investment.

Our stock price may fluctuate in response to a number of events and factors, such as quarterly operating results; changes in our financial projections provided to the public or our failure to meet those projections; our operating and financial performance and prospects and the performance of other similar companies; the public's reaction to our press releases, other public announcements and filings with the SEC; significant transactions, or new features, products or services by us or our competitors; changes in financial estimates and recommendations by securities analysts; failure of securities analysts to cover or track our common stock; media coverage of our business and financial performance; trends in our industry; any significant change in our management; sales of common stock by us, our investors or members of our management team; and changes in general market, economic and political conditions in the U.S. and global economies or financial markets.

The market price of our common stock could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to, among other things, the factors described in this “Risk Factors” section or otherwise, and other factors beyond our control, such as fluctuations in the valuations of companies perceived by investors to be comparable to us. In addition, the stock market in general, and the market prices for companies in our industry, have experienced volatility that often has been unrelated to operating performance. These broad market and industry fluctuations may adversely affect the price of our stock, regardless of our operating performance. In the past, many companies that have experienced volatility in their stock price have become subject to securities class action litigation. We have been the target of this type of litigation and may continue to be a

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target in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, which could harm our business.

If we fail to meet expectations related to future growth, profitability, or other market expectations, our stock price may decline significantly, which could have a material adverse impact on investor confidence and employee retention.

We are currently subject to securities class action litigation in connection with our initial public offering and may be subject to similar litigation in the future. If the outcome of this litigation is unfavorable, it could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

The Company, its directors, and certain officers have been named as defendants in a consolidated securities class actions (“the Securities Litigation”). See Note 11: Commitments and Contingencies of the notes of our consolidated financial statements for a detailed description of the Securities Litigation and the allegations currently made therein. The Company is vigorously defending itself against the allegations in the Securities Litigation. However, as with all litigation, the Company cannot predict the outcome of the proceedings or estimate the losses that it may incur in connection with the Securities Litigation. The Company will, however, incur certain costs and fees associated with its defense, including costs related to its obligation to indemnify certain parties named in the action. While the Company carries insurance that may offset some of the costs associated with the Securities Litigation, the Company may incur substantial costs, expenses and burdens not covered by insurance. In addition, the pendency of the Securities Litigation may cause burdens and distractions to the Company’s management. Any adverse judgments, settlements, or consequences of the Securities Litigation could have a material, adverse effect on the Company’s business and financial condition.

In the future, especially following periods of volatility in the market price of our shares, other purported class action or derivative complaints may be filed against us. The outcome of the pending and potential future litigation is difficult to predict and quantify and the defense of such claims or actions can be costly. In addition to diverting financial and management resources and general business disruption, we may suffer from adverse publicity that could harm our brand or reputation, regardless of whether the allegations are valid or whether we are ultimately held liable. A judgment or settlement that is not covered by or is significantly in excess of our insurance coverage for any claims, or our obligations to indemnify the underwriters and the individual defendants, could materially and adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

ITEM 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments

None.

ITEM 2. Properties

Our corporate headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California and consists of lease space aggregating approximately 33,400 square feet. We also lease additional office and warehouse space in the San Francisco Bay Area for various product development, operational and customer support purposes. Pursuant to co-location agreements, we lease space from third-party data center hosting facilities in Northern California, Texas and Virginia that support our cloud infrastructure. We believe our existing facilities are adequate to meet our current requirements. We believe that we will be able to obtain additional space at other locations at commercially reasonable terms to support our continuing expansion.

ITEM 3. Legal Proceedings

For a discussion of legal proceedings, see Note 11: Commitments and Contingencies – Legal Proceedings in the notes to our consolidated financial statements included in Part II, Item 8, "Financial Statements and Supplementary Data" of this Form 10-K, which information is incorporated herein by reference.

ITEM 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

Not applicable.

Ooma Inc. | FY2018 Form 10-K | 36

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 common stock has been trading on the NYSE under the symbol “OOMA” since July 17, 2015. The following table sets forth for the periods indicated the high and low intra-day sales prices per share of our common stock, as quoted on the NYSE.

Holders of Record. As of January 31, 2018, there were approximately 93 holders of record of our common stock. Because many of our shares of common stock are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of stockholders represented by these record holders.

Dividend Policy. We have not declared or paid, and do not anticipate declaring or paying in the foreseeable future, any cash dividends on our capital stock.

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Stock Price Performance Graph.  This performance graph shall not be deemed “filed” for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or incorporated by reference into any filing of Ooma, Inc. under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, except as shall be expressly set forth by specific reference in such filing. The stock price performance on this performance graph is not necessarily indicative of future stock price performance.

Sales of Unregistered Securities. Not applicable.

Use of Proceeds. On July 17, 2015, our registration statement on Form S-1 was declared effective by the SEC for our IPO. There has been no material change in the planned use of proceeds from our IPO.

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ITEM 6. Selected Consolidated Financial Data

The information set forth below for the five years ended January 31, 2018 is not necessarily indicative of results of future operations, and should be read in conjunction with MD&A and the consolidated financial statements, related notes and other financial information included elsewhere in this Form 10-K (in thousands, except share and per share data):

Consolidated Statements of Operations Data:

Consolidated Balance Sheets Data:

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ITEM 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes to those statements included elsewhere in this Form 10-K. In addition to historical financial information, the following discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of many factors, including those discussed under “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Form 10-K. The last day of our fiscal year is January 31, and we refer to our fiscal year ended January 31, 2018 as fiscal 2018, our fiscal year ended January 31, 2017 as fiscal 2017, and our fiscal year ended January 31, 2016 as fiscal 2016. All other references to years are references to calendar years.

Executive Overview

Ooma creates powerful connected experiences for businesses and consumers. Our smart SaaS platform serves as a communications hub, which offers cloud-based telephony, home security and other connected services. Our business and residential communications solutions deliver our proprietary PureVoice high-definition voice quality, advanced features and integration with mobile devices, at competitive pricing and value. Our platform helps create smart workplaces and homes by providing communications, monitoring, security, automation, productivity and networking infrastructure applications.

We drive the adoption of our platform by providing communications solutions to the large and growing markets for business, residential and mobile users, and then accelerate growth by offering new and innovative connected services to our user base. Our customers adopt our platform by making a one-time purchase of one of our on-premise appliances, connecting the appliance to the internet, and activating our subscription and services, for which they primarily pay on a recurring monthly basis. We believe we have achieved high levels of customer retention and loyalty by delivering exceptional quality and customer satisfaction.

We generate subscription and services revenue by selling subscriptions and other services for our communications solutions, as well as other connected services. We generate our product and other revenue from the sale of our on-premise appliances and our end-point devices, as well as from porting fees to enable customers to transfer their existing phone numbers to the Ooma service. We offer our solutions in the U.S. and Canadian markets and recently began expanding our operations outside of North America.

Beginning in fiscal 2018, we modified our key business metrics to focus on data related to our primary business which is Ooma Telo for residential customers and Ooma Office for small business customers. Accordingly, our key business metrics below for core users, annualized exit recurring revenue and net dollar subscription retention rate reflect this change and exclude Business Promoter users and revenue for all periods presented.

See Item 1. Business above for additional information regarding our business, products and services, competitive market and regulatory matters.

Fiscal 2018 and Recent Highlights

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We recently completed two business acquisitions as part of bringing unique differentiated solutions to the marketplace.

Key Factors Affecting Our Performance

Our historical financial performance and key business metrics have been, and we expect that our financial performance and key business metrics in the future will be, primarily driven by the following factors.

Core user growth. Our core user growth is a key indicator of our market penetration, the growth of our business and our anticipated future subscription and services revenue.

Low core user churn. We believe that maintaining our current low core user churn is an important factor in our ability to continue to improve our financial performance and is a distinguishing advantage over many of our competitors. We focus on providing high-quality services and support to our users so they are motivated to remain with us. Our core user churn rate is higher for Ooma Office customers than Ooma Telo customers, which is driven in part by the failure rate of small businesses. Accordingly, we expect that our overall core user churn rate will increase if sales of our small business products increase relative to sales of residential products.

Growth in additional services. We believe that there is significant opportunity for us to increase the additional subscription and services that our customers purchase from us in both the business and residential markets. Customers who purchase additional subscription and services from us generate more value to Ooma over the life of our customer relationship. In order to drive adoption of additional services, we will need to continue to enhance our existing solutions and develop new connected services. For example, we are investing to develop our comprehensive home security solution and continue to invest in Ooma Office to launch a handful of additional features, including support for businesses with more than one location.

Investing in long-term revenue growth. We believe that our total addressable market opportunity is large and we intend to continue investing in sales and marketing to grow our user base. However, we expect the markets in which we conduct our business will remain highly competitive. We recently entered the home security market and face significant competition from incumbent providers promoting their own home security related offerings. We also expect to continue investing in research and development to enhance our platform and develop additional connected services. As described above, we recently completed two business acquisitions, and we may evaluate additional possible acquisitions of businesses, products and technologies that are complementary to our business.

In addition, we are adopting ASC 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers effective February 1, 2018, which will result in timing and presentation changes affecting our consolidated balance sheet and statement of operations. Under ASC 606, product revenue for sales made through our channel partners will be recognized upon the sale to the partners (sell-in basis) instead of upon resale by the partners to the end customers (sell-through basis). Beginning with the first quarter of fiscal 2019, we will also defer all incremental commission costs of acquiring customer contracts and amortize them to sales and marketing expense over an estimated customer life of five years. Previously, we expensed sales commissions as incurred. Refer to Note 3: Recent Accounting Standards in the notes to our consolidated financial statements for additional details regarding our evaluation of ASC 606.

Key Business Metrics

We review the key metrics below to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, formulate financial projections and make strategic decisions. Key business metrics exclude Business Promoter data for all periods presented because it is not part of our primary cloud communications business. We believe that this change enables us to better evaluate the performance of our primary cloud communications business in a given period compared to those in prior and future periods.

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The following table sets forth our key metrics for each of the periods indicated (in thousands, except percentages):

Core Users increased 8% year-over-year, which was primarily driven by growth in both business and residential users. We believe that the number of our core users is an indicator of our market penetration, the growth of our business and our anticipated future subscription and services revenue. We define our core users as the number of active residential user accounts and office user extensions. We believe that the relationship that we establish with our core users positions us to sell additional premium communications services and other new connected services to them.

Annualized Exit Recurring Revenue increased year-over-year due to an increase in the average revenue per core user, which was driven by the increase in total Office core users and in part by the changes made to our residential customer pricing structure in October 2017. We believe that AERR is an indicator of recurring subscription and services revenue for near-term future periods. We estimate our AERR by dividing our recurring quarterly subscription revenue (excluding Talkatone revenue) by the average number of core users each quarter, and annualize by multiplying by four. We then multiply that result by the number of core users at the end of the period to calculate AERR.

Net Dollar Subscription Retention Rate increased year-over-year due to an increase in the average revenue per core user as we continued to offer more services to our customers and in part due to the changes made to our residential customer pricing structure in October 2017. We believe that our net dollar subscription retention rate provides insight into our ability to retain and grow our subscription and services revenue, and is an indicator of the long-term value of our customer relationships and the stability of our revenue base. It measures the percentage year-over-year change in our recurring subscription revenue per core user (excluding Talkatone revenue), which is then adjusted by factoring in the percentage of our core users we have retained during the same period. Our net dollar subscription retention rate is affected by changes in average amounts that our core users pay to us, fluctuations in the number of our core users, and our core user churn rate.

We calculate our estimated net dollar subscription retention rate for our core users by multiplying:

by:

Adjusted EBITDA

We use Adjusted EBITDA to manage our business, evaluate our performance and make planning decisions. We consider this measure to be a useful measure of our operating performance, because it contains adjustments for unusual events or factors that do not directly affect what management considers being the core operating performance, and are used by our management for that purpose. We also believe this measure enables us to better evaluate our performance by facilitating a meaningful comparison of our core operating results in a given period to those in prior and future periods. In addition, investors often use similar measures to evaluate the operating performance with competitors. Adjusted EBITDA represents net loss before interest and other income, depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation and related taxes, and acquisition-related costs. 

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Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results as reported under GAAP.  Some of these limitations are:

Because of these limitations, you should consider Adjusted EBITDA alongside other financial performance measures, including net loss and our other GAAP results.

The following table provides a reconciliation of net loss (the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure) to Adjusted EBITDA for each of the periods indicated (in thousands):

Components of Results of Operations

Revenue

Subscription and services revenue is comprised primarily of recurring subscription fees from customers accessing our communications solutions, such as Ooma Telo, Ooma Office, international calling plans and other subscriptions. Revenue is also generated from payments associated with directory assistance and advertisements through the Talkatone mobile application. We expect our subscription and services revenue to increase as we continue to expand our core user base, driven primarily by growth in Ooma Office.

Product and other revenue consists primarily of the sale of our on-premise appliances and end-point devices used in connection with our services (including shipping and handling fees for our direct customers), as well as porting fees we charge our customers to enable them to transfer their existing phone numbers to Ooma Office or Telo. We expect our product and other revenue to remain relatively flat on a year-over-year basis.

Cost of revenue and gross margin

Cost of subscription and services revenue includes payments made for third-party network operations and telecommunications services, credit card processing fees, costs to maintain data centers, including co-location fees for the right to place our servers in data centers owned by third parties, depreciation and maintenance of servers and equipment, personnel costs associated with customer care and network operations support, and allocated costs of facilities and information technology.

Cost of product and other revenue includes the costs associated with the manufacturing of our on-premise appliances and end-point devices, as well as personnel costs for employees and contractors, costs related to porting our customers’ phone numbers to our service, shipment of on-premise appliances and end-point devices, and allocated costs of facilities and information technology.

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Subscription and services gross margin may fluctuate from period-to-period based on the interplay of a number of factors, including the costs we pay to third-party telecommunications providers, the timing of capital expenditures and related depreciation charges, and changes in our headcount. We expect to continue investing in our network infrastructure and customer support function to support our growth and maintain quality of service and security. We expect our subscription and services gross margin to increase over the long-term, in part as our business revenue becomes a larger portion of total subscription revenue.

Product and other gross margin may fluctuate from period-to-period based on a number of factors, including total units shipped during a period as compared to the direct costs of production and relatively fixed personnel costs incurred during the period. We sell our on-premise appliances at an aggressive price point to facilitate the adoption of our platform. We expect our product and other gross margin to continue to be negative for the foreseeable future.

Our subscription and services gross margin is significantly higher than product and other gross margin. As a result, any significant change in the mix between subscription and services revenue and product and other revenue will cause our total gross margin to change. For example, in periods where we sell significantly more on-premise appliances, we would expect our total gross margin to be impacted.

Operating expenses

Sales and marketing expenses are the largest component of our operating expenses and consist primarily of personnel costs for employees and contractors directly associated with sales and marketing activities, internet, television, radio and billboard advertising fees, public relations expenses, commissions we pay to resellers and other third parties, trade show expenses, travel expenses, marketing and promotional activities and allocated costs of facilities and information technology. We expect our sales and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to actively grow our core users and expand our operations internationally.

Research and development expenses are focused on developing new and expanded features for our services and improvements to our platform and backend architecture. Research and development is expensed as incurred and consists primarily of personnel costs for employees and contractors, allocated costs of facilities and information technology, software tools and product certification. We expect our research and development expenses to continue to grow in absolute dollars and as a percentage of total revenue.

General and administrative expenses consist of personnel costs for our finance, legal, human resources and other administrative employees. In addition, it includes professional service fees, legal fees and allocated costs of facilities and information technology. We expect our general and administrative expenses to remain relatively flat as a percentage of total revenue going forward.

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Consolidated Results of Operations

The following table sets forth selected consolidated statements of operations data for each of the periods indicated (in thousands):

Consolidated Statement of Operations: Comparison of fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016 (dollars in tables are in thousands)

Revenue

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Fiscal 2018 Compared to Fiscal 2017

Subscription and services revenue increased $10.9 million, or 12%, year-over-year, driven by a 59% increase in revenue from Ooma Office and a 12% increase from Ooma Telo, offset in part by a decline in revenue from Talkatone and Business Promoter. Year-over-year revenue growth reflected an 8% increase in our core users to approximately 929,000 as of January 31, 2018 from approximately 858,000 as of January 31, 2017, as well as changes to our residential customer pricing structure that were implemented in October 2017. Revenue earned from Business Promoter declined to approximately $1.8 million in fiscal 2018 from approximately $5.4 million in the prior year, due to our sale of the Business Promoter service in early August 2017.

The year-over-year decline in product and other revenue was primarily attributable to lower Telo-related sales, offset in part by growth in unit sales of home security sensors and end-point devices.

Fiscal 2017 Compared to Fiscal 2016

Subscription and services revenue increased by $18.1 million in fiscal 2017 as compared to fiscal 2016, primarily due to growth in our core users which increased to approximately 858,000 core users as of January 31, 2017 from approximately 746,000 core users as of January 31, 2016. The increase in subscription and services revenue was also in part due to an increase in our small business revenue driven by growth in Ooma Office.

Our product and other revenue decreased by $2.3 million in fiscal 2017 as compared to fiscal 2016, primarily due to a decrease in the volume of units sold and lower average selling prices as we continued to sell our on-premises appliances at an aggressive price to our customers.

Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin

Fiscal 2018 Compared to Fiscal 2017

Total gross margin increased to 59% in fiscal 2018 as compared to 57% in fiscal 2017, primarily due to higher proportionate growth of subscription and services revenue. The improvement in gross margin was driven by higher revenues from Ooma Office and the benefits of scale on a larger core user base. Product and other revenue gross margin of (20%) decreased year-over-year from (16%) due to a decrease in the sale of end-point devices and related porting fees.

Cost of subscription and services revenue for fiscal 2018 increased $1.8 million year-over-year, reflecting a $0.9 million increase in credit card processing fees, a $0.7 million increase in network infrastructure related costs, driven by our international expansion, and to a lesser extent increases in personnel and consultant costs that were partly offset by a decline in the Business Promoter cost of sales due to our sale of the Business Promoter service in August 2017.

The decrease in cost of product and other revenue of $0.6 million reflected higher freight costs due to increased direct consumer shipments in fiscal 2018 as compared to fiscal 2017.

Fiscal 2017 Compared to Fiscal 2016

Total gross margin increased to 57% in fiscal 2017 as compared to 53% in fiscal 2016, primarily due to higher proportionate growth of subscription and services revenue (as subscription and services revenue carries higher gross margin). The improvement in gross margin was primarily due to higher revenues from Ooma Office and also due to benefits of scale as our subscriber base increased.

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Cost of subscription and services revenue for fiscal 2017 increased $3.9 million year-over-year, reflecting a $1.6 million increase in telecom and hosting fees, driven by growth in our core users; a $0.9 million increase in credit card processing fees, a $0.7 million increase in personnel and consultant costs, driven by increased headcount and growth in business; and a $0.5 million increase in stock-based compensation.

The decrease in cost of product and other revenue of $0.6 million was primarily due to a decrease in the number of on-premise appliances sold in fiscal 2017 as compared to fiscal 2016, offset by an increase in the number of end-point devices sold to both our residential and small business customers.

Operating Expenses

Sales and Marketing

Fiscal 2018 Compared to Fiscal 2017.  Sales and marketing expenses for fiscal 2018 increased $3.5 million or 10% year-over-year, due to a $3.7 million increase in sales commissions, a net $1.1 million increase in personnel and consultant related costs, driven by higher headcount, coupled with a $0.6 million increase in facilities related costs and a $0.4 million increase in stock-based compensation. These higher expenses were offset in part by a net $2.6 million decrease in marketing activities, primarily Telo-related advertising expenses. The year-over-year growth in sales and marketing supported the expansion of our sales efforts to drive growth in our small business solutions.

Fiscal 2017 Compared to Fiscal 2016.  Sales and marketing expenses for fiscal 2017 increased $5.2 million or 18% year-over-year, due to a $3.2 million increase in personnel and consultant related costs, driven by higher headcount and growth in business, a $0.8 million increase in stock-based compensation, a $0.7 million increase in marketing activities and a $0.4 million increase in facilities and equipment related costs.

Research and Development

Fiscal 2018 Compared to Fiscal 2017.  Research and development expenses for fiscal 2018 increased $5.1 million or 21% year-over-year, primarily due to a $3.5 million increase in personnel and consultant related costs, driven by higher headcount, a $1.0 million increase in facilities, supplies and equipment related costs and a $0.4 million increase in stock-based compensation. The year-over-year growth in research and development supported the continued development of our office platform, including international expansion and the launch of WeWork locations, as well as adding new features and product offerings to our home security solution.

Fiscal 2017 Compared to Fiscal 2016.  Research and development expenses for fiscal 2017 increased $5.7 million or 31% year-over-year, primarily attributable to a $3.2 million increase in personnel and consultant related costs, driven by higher headcount to support Ooma Office growth, a $1.9 million increase in stock-based compensation and a $0.5 million increase in facilities and equipment related costs.

General and Administrative

Fiscal 2018 Compared to Fiscal 2017.  General and administrative expenses for fiscal 2018 increased $0.6 million or 4% year-over-year, reflecting a $1.0 million increase in personnel and consultant related costs and stock-based compensation costs, driven by higher headcount, offset in part by a $0.5 million decrease in legal expenses.

Fiscal 2017 Compared to Fiscal 2016.  General and administrative expenses for fiscal 2017 increased $2.0 million or 16% year-over-year, which was primarily attributable to a $1.8 million increase in stock-based compensation and a $0.4 million increase in legal and professional services fees, offset in part by a $0.3 million decrease in consultant costs.

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Other Income (Expense), net

Other income (expense) is comprised mainly of interest income related to our short-term investments during fiscal 2018 and 2017, as well as debt-related interest expense and stock warrant charges during fiscal 2016.

Fiscal 2018 Compared to Fiscal 2017

Other income, net increased by $0.3 million in fiscal 2018 as compared to fiscal 2017 due to higher interest income earned from our short-term investment portfolio.

Fiscal 2017 Compared to Fiscal 2016

Other income (expense), net increased by $1.7 million in fiscal 2017 as compared to fiscal 2016. The increase was primarily attributed to a decrease in interest expense of $0.9 million due to the payoff of our outstanding debt in July 2015 and an increase in interest income related to short-term investments of $0.4 million. In addition, due to the conversion and cash settlement of preferred stock warrants during the second quarter of fiscal 2016, change in fair value of warrants was zero and $(0.4) million in fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2016, respectively.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

In addition to disclosing financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP, this Form 10-K contains certain non-GAAP financial measures, including non-GAAP net loss and Adjusted EBITDA (see above). These non-GAAP financial measures exclude non-cash or non-recurring expenses including stock-based compensation expense and related taxes, amortization of intangibles, acquisition-related costs, change in fair value of acquisition-related contingent consideration, change in fair value of warrants and write-off of non-cash deferred debt issuance costs.

These non-GAAP financial measures are presented to provide investors with additional information regarding our financial results and core business operations. Ooma considers these non-GAAP financial measures to be useful measures of the operating performance of the Company, because they contain adjustments for unusual events or factors that do not directly affect what management considers to be Ooma’s core operating performance, and are used by the Company’s management for that purpose. Management also believes that these non-GAAP financial measures allow for a better evaluation of the Company’s performance by facilitating a meaningful comparison of the Company’s core operating results in a given period to those in prior and future periods. In addition, investors often use similar measures to evaluate the operating performance of a company.

Non-GAAP financial measures are presented for supplemental informational purposes only to aid an understanding of the Company’s operating results. The non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP, and may be different from non-GAAP financial measures presented by other companies. A limitation of the non-GAAP financial measures presented is that the adjustments relate to items that the Company generally expects to continue to recognize. The adjustment of these items should not be construed as an inference that the adjusted gains or expenses are unusual, infrequent or non-recurring. Therefore, both GAAP financial measures of Ooma’s financial performance and the respective non-GAAP measures should be considered together.

Reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures were as follows (in thousands):

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Quarterly Results of Operations and Trends

The following table sets forth selected quarterly financial data for each of the eight quarterly periods ended January 31, 2018 (in thousands, except percentages):

Revenue. Our total revenue has grown quarter-over-quarter primarily due to the continued growth in our subscriber base driven by an increase in our core users.

Gross Profit and Gross Margin. Over the past eight fiscal quarters, our gross profit has increased sequentially each quarter in absolute dollars and gross margin has increased from 56% to 61%, reflecting the increasing mix of subscription and services revenue as a percentage of total revenue.

Operating Expenses. Our quarterly operating expenses in absolute dollars increased sequentially for all the periods presented, primarily driven by growing employee and contingent headcount and personnel-related expenses, as well as marketing and advertising expenses associated with our efforts to increase our overall subscriber base and product sales.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

As of January 31, 2018, we had $51.8 million of total cash and investments. To date, we have funded our operations primarily through sales to our customers as well as proceeds from our IPO in July 2015. We believe that our existing cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments will be sufficient to meet our cash needs for at least the next 12 months. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including our growth rate, our needs for increased data center capacity to support our expanding customer base, the timing and extent of our sales and marketing and research and development expenditures, and the continuing market acceptance of our solutions. We may in the future make investments in or acquisitions of businesses or technologies, which may require the use of cash. For example, in the first quarter of fiscal 2019, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Voxter Communications for cash and stock consideration of approximately $3.6 million.

The table below provides selected cash flow information, for the periods indicated (in thousands):

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Operating Activities

The table below provides selected cash flow information, for the periods indicated (in thousands):