QUINSTREET, INC - Annual Report: 2020 (Form 10-K)

K

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

Form 10-K

For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2020

OR

Commission file number: 001-34628

QuinStreet, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

950 Tower Lane, 6th Floor

Foster City, California 94404

(Address of principal executive offices, including zip code)

(650) 587-7700

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

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

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

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

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 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 every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).    Yes  ☒    No  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer”, “smaller reporting company” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.  ☐

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

As of December 31, 2019, the aggregate market value of the voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant, based on the closing sale price of the Company’s common stock as reported by the Nasdaq Global Select Market on such date, was $716,784,346. For purposes of calculating the aggregate market value of shares held by non-affiliates, we have assumed that all outstanding shares are held by non-affiliates, except for shares owned by each of our executive officers, directors and 5% or greater stockholders. In the case of 5% or greater stockholders, we have not deemed such stockholders to be affiliates unless there are facts and circumstances indicating that such stockholders exercise any control over our company. The determination of executive officer or affiliate status is not a conclusive determination for other purposes.

Number of shares of common stock outstanding as of August 24, 2020: 52,659,296

Documents Incorporated by Reference:

Portions of the registrant’s definitive proxy statement relating to its 2020 annual stockholders’ meeting are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K where indicated.

QUINSTREET, INC.

FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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PART I

CAUTIONARY NOTE ON FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This report contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts, including statements regarding our future financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. Terminology such as “believe,” “may,” “might,” “objective,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “should,” “plan,” “expect,” “predict,” “potential,” or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions is intended to identify forward-looking statements. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, those listed in Part 1, Item 1A. “Risk Factors” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and elsewhere in this report, such as but not limited to:

Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations. Given these risks and uncertainties, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, and we qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.

Our Company

We are a leader in performance marketplace products and technologies. Our approach to proprietary performance marketing technologies allows clients to engage high intent digital media or traffic from a wide range of device types (e.g., mobile, desktop, tablet), in multiple formats or types of media (e.g., search engines, large and small media properties or websites, email), and in a wide range of cost-per-action, or CPA, forms. These forms of contact are the primary “products” we sell to our clients, and include qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications and customers. We specialize in customer acquisition for clients in high value, information-intensive markets, or “verticals,” including financial services, education, and home services. Our clients include some of the world’s largest companies and brands in those markets. The majority of our operations and revenue are in North America.

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We generate revenue by delivering measurable online marketing results to our clients. The benefits to our clients include cost-effective and measurable customer acquisition costs, as well as management of highly targeted but also highly fragmented online media sources and access to our world-class proprietary technologies. We are predominantly paid on a negotiated or market-driven “per click,” “per lead,” or other “per action” basis that aligns with the customer acquisition cost targets of our clients. We bear the cost of paying Internet search companies, third-party publishers, strategic partners and other online media sources to generate qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications or customers for our clients.

Our competitive advantages include our media buying power, proprietary technologies, extensive data and experience in performance marketing, and significant online media market share in the markets or verticals we serve. Our advantage in online media buying is key to our business model and comes from our ability to effectively segment and match high-intent, unbranded media or traffic – one of the largest sources of traffic for customer acquisition – to as many as hundreds of clients or client offerings and, in most cases, to match those visitors to multiple clients, which also satisfies the visitor’s desire to choose among alternatives and to shop multiple offerings. Together, the ability to match more visitors in any given flow of traffic or media to a client offering, and to do so multiple times, adds up to a significant media buying advantage compared to individual clients or other buyers for these types of media.

Our proprietary technologies have been developed over the past 21 years to allow us to best segment and match media or traffic, to deliver optimized results for our clients and to operate our high volume and highly complex channel cost-efficiently.

Our extensive data and experience in performance marketing reflect the execution, knowledge and learning from billions of dollars of media spend on these campaigns over time. This is a steep and expensive learning curve. These learnings address millions of permutations of media sources, mix and order of creative and content merchandising, and approaches to the matching and segmentation of Internet visitors to optimize their experience and the results for clients. Together, these learnings allow us to run thousands of campaigns simultaneously and cost-effectively for our clients at acceptable media costs and margins to us.

Because of our deep expertise and capabilities in running financially successful performance marketing programs, we are able to effectively compete for sources and partners of high-intent, unbranded media, and our market share in our client verticals of this media is significant. Our media sources include owned-and-operated organic or search engine optimization (“SEO”) websites, targeted search engine marketing (“SEM”) or pay-per-click (“PPC”) campaigns, social media and mobile programs, internal email databases, call center operations, partnerships with large and small online media companies, and more. Our collective media presence results in engagement with a significant share of online visitors in those markets or verticals, which leads us to be included in client online media buys.

We were incorporated in California on April 16, 1999 and reincorporated in Delaware on December 31, 2009. We have been a pioneer in the development and application of measurable marketing on the Internet. Clients pay us for the actual opt-in actions by visitors or customers that result from our marketing activities on their behalf, versus traditional impression-based advertising and marketing models in which an advertiser pays for a broad audience’s exposure to an advertisement.

Market Opportunity

Change in marketing strategy and approach

We believe that marketing approaches are changing as budgets shift from offline, analog advertising media to digital advertising media such as Internet marketing. These changing approaches require a shift to fundamentally new competencies, including:

From qualitative, impression-driven marketing to analytic, data-driven marketing

Growth in Internet marketing enables a more data-driven approach to advertising. The measurability of online marketing allows marketers to collect a significant amount of detailed data on the performance of their marketing campaigns, including the effectiveness of ad format and placement and user responses. This data can then be analyzed and used to improve marketing campaign performance and cost-effectiveness on substantially shorter cycle times than with traditional offline media.

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From account management-based client relationships to results-based client relationships

Marketers are becoming increasingly focused on strategies that deliver specific, measurable results. For example, marketers are attempting to better understand how their marketing spending produces measurable objectives such as meeting their target marketing cost per new customer. As marketers adopt more results-based approaches, the basis of client relationships with their marketing services providers is shifting from being more account management-based to being more results-oriented.

From marketing messages pushed on audiences to marketing messages pulled by self-directed audiences

Traditional marketing messages such as television and radio advertisements are broadcast to a broad audience. The Internet enables more self-directed and targeted marketing. For example, when Internet visitors click on PPC search advertisements, they are expressing an interest in and proactively engaging with information about a product or service related to that advertisement. The growth of self-directed marketing, primarily through online channels, allows marketers to present more targeted and potentially more relevant marketing messages to potential customers who have taken the first step in the buying process, which can in turn increase the effectiveness of marketers’ spending.

From marketing spending focused on large media buys to marketing spending optimized for fragmented media

We believe that media is becoming increasingly fragmented and that marketing strategies are changing to adapt to this trend. There are millions of Internet websites, tens of thousands of which have significant numbers of visitors. While this fragmentation can create challenges for marketers, it also allows for improved audience segmentation and the delivery of highly targeted marketing messages, but innovative technologies and approaches are necessary to effectively manage marketing given the increasing complexity resulting from more media fragmentation.

Increasing complexity of online marketing

Online marketing is a dynamic and increasingly complex advertising medium. There are numerous online channels for marketers to reach potential customers, including search engines, Internet portals, vertical content websites, affiliate networks, display and contextual ad networks, email, video advertising, and social media. We refer to these and other marketing channels as media. Each of these channels may involve multiple ad formats and different pricing models, amplifying the complexity of online marketing. We believe that this complexity increases the demand for our vertical marketing and media services due to our capabilities and to our experience managing and optimizing online marketing programs across multiple channels. Also, marketers and agencies often lack our ability to aggregate offerings from multiple clients in the same industry vertical, an approach that allows us to cover a wide selection of visitor segments and provide more potential matches to visitor needs. This approach can allow us to convert more Internet visitors into qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, or customers from targeted media sources, giving us an advantage when buying or monetizing that media.

Our Business Model

We deliver measurable and cost-effective marketing results to our clients, typically in the form of a qualified click, lead, inquiry, call, application, or customer. Clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, and applications can then convert into a customer or sale for clients at a rate that results in an acceptable marketing cost to them. We are paid typically by clients when we deliver qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, or customers as defined by our agreements with them. References to the delivery of customers means a sale or completed customer transaction (e.g., bound insurance policies or customer appointments with clients). Because we bear the costs of media, our programs must result in attractive marketing costs to our clients at media costs and margins that provide sound financial outcomes for us. To deliver clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, and customers to our clients, generally we:

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Media cost, or the cost to attract targeted Internet visitors, is the largest cost input to producing the measurable marketing results we deliver to clients. Balancing our clients’ customer acquisition cost and conversion objectives — or the rate at which the clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, or applications that we deliver to them convert into customers — with our media costs and yield objectives, represents the primary challenge in our business model. We have been able to effectively balance these competing demands by focusing on our media sources and creative capabilities, developing proprietary technologies and optimization capabilities, and working to constantly improve segmentation and matching of visitors to clients through the application of our extensive data and experience in performance marketing. We also seek to mitigate media cost risk by working with third-party publishers and media owners predominantly on a revenue-share basis, which makes these costs variable and provides for risk management. Media purchased on a revenue-share basis has represented the majority of our media costs and of the Internet visitors we convert into qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, or customers for clients, contributing significantly to our ability to maintain profitability.

Media and Internet visitor mix

We are a client-driven organization. We seek to be one of the largest providers of measurable marketing results on the Internet in the client industry verticals we serve by meeting the needs of clients for results, reliability and volume. Meeting those client needs requires that we maintain a diversified and flexible mix of Internet visitor sources due to the dynamic nature of online media. Our media mix changes with changes in Internet visitor usage patterns. We adapt to those changes on an ongoing basis, and also proactively adjust our mix of vertical media sources to respond to client- or vertical-specific circumstances and to achieve our financial objectives. Generally, our Internet visitor sources include:

Our Strategy

Our goal is to continue to be one of the largest and most successful performance marketing companies on the Internet, and eventually in other digitized media forms. We believe that we are in the early stages of a very large and long-term market opportunity. Our strategy for pursuing this opportunity includes the following key components:

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Clients

In fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, we had one client, The Progressive Corporation, that accounted for 21%, 22% and 23% of net revenue. No other client accounted for 10% or more of net revenue in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018. Our top 20 clients accounted for 55%, 54% and 57% of net revenue in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018. Since our service was first offered in 2001, we have developed a broad client base with many multi-year relationships. We enter into Internet marketing contracts with our clients, most of which are cancelable with little or no prior notice. In addition, these contracts do not contain penalty provisions for cancellation before the end of the contract term.

Sales and Marketing

We have an internal sales team that consists of employees focused on signing new clients and account managers who maintain and seek to increase our business with existing clients. Our sales people and account managers are each focused on a particular client vertical so that they develop an expertise in the marketing needs of our clients in that particular vertical.

Technology and Infrastructure

We have developed a suite of technologies to manage, improve and measure the results of the marketing programs we offer our clients. We use a combination of proprietary and third-party software as well as hardware from established technology vendors. We use specialized software for client management, building and managing websites, acquiring and managing media, managing our third-party publishers, and using data and optimization tools to best match Internet visitors to our marketing clients. We have invested significantly in these technologies and plan to continue to do so to meet the demands of our clients and Internet visitors, to increase the scalability of our operations, and enhance management information systems and analytics in our operations. Our development teams work closely with our marketing and operating teams to develop applications and systems that can be used across our business. In fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, we spent $14.2 million, $12.3 million and $13.8 million on product development.

Our primary data center is at a third-party co-location center in San Francisco, California. All of the critical components of the system are redundant, and we have a backup data center in Las Vegas, Nevada. We have implemented these backup systems and redundancies to minimize the risk associated with earthquakes, fire, power loss, telecommunications failure, and other events beyond our control.

Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of patent, trade secret, trademark and copyright laws in the United States and other jurisdictions together with confidentiality agreements and technical measures to protect the confidentiality of our proprietary rights. To protect our trade secrets, we control access to our proprietary systems and technology and enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and confidentiality agreements with other third-parties. QuinStreet is a registered trademark in the United States and other jurisdictions. We also have registered and unregistered trademarks for the names of many of our websites, and we own the domain registrations for many of our website domains.

Our Competitors

Our primary competition falls into two categories: advertising and direct marketing services agencies, and online marketing and media companies. We compete for business on the basis of a number of factors including return on marketing expenditures, price, access to targeted media, ability to deliver large volumes or precise types of customer prospects, and reliability.

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Advertising and direct marketing services agencies

Online and offline advertising and direct marketing services agencies control the majority of the large client marketing spending for which we primarily compete. So, while they are sometimes our competitors, agencies are also often our clients. We compete with agencies to attract marketing budget or spending from offline forms to the Internet or, once designated to be spent online, to be spent with us versus the agency or by the agency with others. When spending online, agencies spend with us and with portals, other websites and ad networks.

Online marketing and media companies

We compete with other Internet marketing and media companies, in many forms, for online marketing budgets. Most of these competitors compete with us in one client vertical. Examples include LendingTree in the financial services client vertical and EducationDynamics, LLC in the education client vertical. Some of our competition also comes from agencies or clients spending directly with larger websites or portals, including Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Government Regulation

We provide services through a number of different online and offline channels. As a result, we are subject to many federal and state laws and regulations, including restrictions on the use of unsolicited commercial email, such as the CAN-SPAM Act and state email marketing laws, and restrictions on the use of marketing activities conducted by telephone, including the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Our business is also subject to federal and state laws and regulations regarding unsolicited commercial email, telemarketing, user privacy, search engines, Internet tracking technologies, direct marketing, data security, data privacy, pricing, sweepstakes, promotions, intellectual property ownership and infringement, trade secrets, export of encryption technology, acceptable content and quality of goods, and taxation, among others.

In addition, we provide services to a number of our clients that operate in highly regulated industries, particularly in our financial services and education verticals. In our financial services vertical, our websites and marketing services are subject to various federal, state and local laws, including state licensing laws, federal and state laws prohibiting unfair acts and practices, and federal and state advertising laws. In addition, we are a licensed insurance agent in all fifty states. In our education client vertical, nearly all of the revenue is generated from post-secondary education institutions. Post-secondary education institutions are subject to extensive federal and state regulations and accrediting agency standards, including the Higher Education Act of 1965 as amended (the “HEA”), Department of Education regulations under the HEA, individual state higher education regulations, as well as regulations of the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and other federal agencies. Such state and federal regulations govern many aspects of these clients’ operations, including marketing and recruiting activities, as well as the school’s eligibility to participate in Title IV federal student financial aid programs, which is the principal source of funding for many of our education clients. Although we are not a higher education institution, we may be required to comply with such education laws and regulations as a result of our role as a vendor to higher education institutions, either directly or indirectly through our contractual arrangements with clients. Since 2010, there have been significant additions and changes to these regulations and increasing enforcement of them by regulators. In addition, Congress is considering changes to the HEA. These changes may place additional regulatory burdens on post-secondary schools generally, and specific initiatives may be targeted at companies like us that serve higher education institutions. In recent years, a particularly high level of regulatory and legislative scrutiny has been focused on for-profit higher education institutions, several of which are clients. The costs of compliance with these regulations and new laws may increase in the future and any failure on our part to comply with such laws may subject us to significant liabilities.

Employees

As of June 30, 2020, we had 592 employees, which consisted of 163 employees in product development, 26 in sales and marketing, 42 in general and administration and 361 in operations. None of our employees are represented by a labor union.

Available Information

We file reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and other filings required by the SEC. We make these reports and filings available free of charge on our website via the investor relations page on www.quinstreet.com as soon as reasonably practicable after such material is electronically filed with or furnished to the SEC. We also webcast our earnings calls and certain events we host with members of the investment community on our investor relations page at http://investor.quinstreet.com. The content of our website is not intended to be incorporated by reference into this report or in any other report or document we file, and any reference to this website and others included in this report is intended to be an inactive textual reference only.

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The public may read and copy any materials we file with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549. The public may obtain information on the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC maintains an Internet site (http://www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.

Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks described below and the other information in this periodic report. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of, or that we currently believe are not material, may also become important factors that adversely affect our business. If any of the following risks actually occur, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be adversely affected. In those cases, the trading price of our common stock could decline and you may lose all or part of your investment.

Risks Related to Our Business and Industry

We face risks and uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which could significantly disrupt our operations and which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows. These risks and uncertainties could pertain to other viruses, pandemics or other such unforeseen and broadbased public health crises.

Our business has been and may continue to be adversely impacted by the effects of COVID-19. In addition to negative macroeconomic effects on our business, decreased consumer demand for certain lines of products offered by our clients, and reduced client budgets, the COVID-19 pandemic and any other related adverse public health developments have caused and may further cause declines in revenue and margin, and disruption to our business may continue or worsen over a prolonged period. The businesses of our clients and third-party media publishers (including strategic partners) have also been negatively affected and may continue to be disrupted by reduced demand, declines in consumer credit, increased default rates, absenteeism, quarantines and restrictions on employees’ ability to work, office closures and travel or health-related restrictions. Depending on the magnitude and duration of such disruptions and their effect on client spending and/or the availability of quality media from third-party publishers including strategic partners, our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows could be adversely affected.

In addition, COVID-19 or other disease outbreaks has in the short-run, and may over the longer term, adversely affect the economies and financial markets within many countries, including in the United States, resulting in an economic downturn that has and could continue to negatively affect marketing and advertising spend in certain lines of products offered by our clients or on media availability or performance. For example, certain companies that operate in the credit-driven markets such as credit cards and personal loans have been negatively impacted by weak economic and employment conditions. Such continuing effects of COVID-19, and other similar effects, have resulted and may continue to result in reduced marketing and advertising spend or drops in media availability or performance, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows. There can be no assurance that any decrease in revenue or margin resulting from COVID-19 will be offset by increased revenue or margin in subsequent periods or that our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows will remain consistent with pre-pandemic expectations and/or performances.

Furthermore, we may experience disruptions to our business operations resulting from quarantines, self-isolations, or other movement and restrictions on the ability of our employees to perform their jobs that may impact our sales and marketing activities and our ability to design, develop or deliver our products and services in a timely manner or meet customer commitments, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows. In addition, we previously announced that we paused our financial advisor-led process to review strategic alternatives in large part due to market uncertainties resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, to the extent the COVID-19 pandemic or any worsening of the global business and economic environment as a result thereof adversely affects our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows, it may also have the effect of heightening or exacerbating many of the other risks described in these risk factors, such as those relating to a reduction in online marketing spend by our clients, a loss of clients or lower advertising yields, our dependence on third-party publishers including strategic partners, risks with respect to counterparties, annual and quarterly fluctuations in our results of operations, the impact of interest rate volatility on our visitor traffic, internal control over financial reporting, seasonal fluctuations, our ability to collect our receivables from our clients and risks relating to our ability to raise additional capital when and as needed.

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Given that the magnitude and duration of COVID-19’s impact on our business and operations remain uncertain, the continued spread of COVID-19 or the occurrence of other pandemics and the imposition of related public health measures and travel and business restrictions could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows.

We operate in an industry that is still developing and have a relatively new business model that is continually evolving, which makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects.

We derive all of our revenue from the sale of online marketing and media services, which is still a developing industry that has undergone rapid and dramatic changes in its relatively short history and which is characterized by rapidly-changing Internet media and advertising technology, evolving industry standards, regulatory uncertainty, and changing visitor and client demands. We believe that our implementation of our enhanced products and media strategies across our business is in a relatively early stage. For example, we recently introduced our new QuinStreet Rating Platform (“QRP”) product for insurance agents. As a result, we face risks and uncertainties such as but not limited to:

If we are unable to address these risks, our business, results of operations and prospects could suffer.

Negative changes in the market conditions and the regulatory environment have had in the past, and may in the future have, a material and adverse impact on our revenue, business and growth.

Adverse macroeconomic conditions could cause decreases or delays in spending by our clients and could harm our ability to generate revenue and our results of operations. Moreover, to date, we have generated a large majority of our revenue from clients in our financial services and education client verticals. Changes in the macroeconomic conditions including any economic downturn in general, or market conditions and the regulatory environment in these two highly-regulated client verticals in particular have in the past negatively impacted, and may continue to negatively impact, our clients’ businesses, marketing practices and budgets and, therefore, impact our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows.

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We, our third-party publishers’, and our clients’ businesses operate in highly regulated industries, subject to many laws and regulatory requirements, including federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding unsolicited commercial email, telemarketing, user privacy, search engines, Internet tracking technologies, direct marketing, data security, data privacy, pricing, sweepstakes, promotions, intellectual property ownership and infringement, trade secrets, export of encryption technology, acceptable content and quality of goods, and taxation, among others. Each of our financial services, education and other client verticals is also subject to various laws and regulations, and our marketing activities on behalf of our clients are regulated. Many of these laws and regulations are frequently changing and can be subject to vagaries of interpretation and emphasis, and the extent and evolution of future government regulation is uncertain. Keeping our business in compliance with or bringing our business into compliance with new laws, therefore, may be costly, affect our revenue and harm our financial results. We believe increased regulation may continue to occur in the area of data privacy, and laws and regulations applying to the solicitation, collection, retention, deletion and processing, sharing or use of personally identifiable information. For example, the State of California enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) that took effect on January 1, 2020. CCPA applies to our business and marketing activities. Among other things, CCPA requires covered businesses to provide new disclosures to California consumers about their data collection, use and sharing practices and with limited business exceptions, CCPA affords such consumers new rights to request deletion of data collected about them as well as to opt-out of certain data sharing practices. Further, foreign laws and regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which became effective in May 2018, may apply to our business and marketing activities that are offered to European Union users. The GDPR created a range of new compliance obligations and penalties for non-compliance are significant. The foregoing could affect our ability to use and share data and may result in expenditures to ensure our ability to store, use, process and share data in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. Violations or alleged violations of laws by us, our third-party publishers or our clients could result in damages, fines, criminal prosecution, unfavorable publicity, and restrictions on our ability to operate, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, new laws or regulations or changes in enforcement of existing laws or regulations applicable to our clients could affect the activities or strategies of our clients and, therefore, lead to reductions in their level of business with us.

For example, the Federal Communications Commission amended the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (the “TCPA”) that affects telemarketing calls including SMS or text messaging. Certain provisions of the regulations became effective in July 2012, and additional regulations requiring prior express written consent for certain types of telemarketing calls became effective in October 2013. Our efforts to comply with the TCPA have not had a material impact on traffic conversion rates. However, depending on future traffic and product mix, it could potentially have a material effect on our revenue and profitability, including increasing our and our clients’ exposure to enforcement actions and litigation. The changes to the TCPA regulations have resulted in an increase in individual and class action litigation against marketing companies for alleged TCPA violations. Additionally, we generate leads from which users provide a phone number, and a significant amount of revenue comes from calls made by our internal call centers as well as, in some cases, by third-party publishers’ call centers. We also purchase a portion of our lead data from third-party publishers and cannot guarantee that these third-parties will comply with the regulations. Any failure by us or the third-party publishers on which we rely for telemarketing, email marketing, and other lead generation activities to adhere to or successfully implement appropriate processes and procedures in response to existing regulations and changing regulatory requirements could result in legal and monetary liability, significant fines and penalties, or damage to our reputation in the marketplace, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Furthermore, our clients may make business decisions based on their own experiences with the TCPA regardless of our products and the changes we implemented to comply with the new regulations. These decisions may negatively affect our revenue or profitability.

In connection with our owned and our third-party publishers’ email campaigns to generate traffic for our clients, we are subject to various state and Federal laws regulating commercial email communications, including the federal CAN-SPAM Act. For example, in 2012, several of our clients were named defendants in a California Anti-Spam lawsuit relating to commercial emails which allegedly originated from us and our third-party publishers. While the matter was ultimately resolved in our clients’ favor, we were nonetheless obligated to indemnify certain of our clients for the fees incurred in the defense of such matter. Further, foreign laws and regulations, such as the Canadian Anti-Spam Law, may also apply to our business activities to the extent we are doing business with or marketing to consumers in foreign jurisdictions. If we or any of our third-party publishers fail to comply with any provisions of these laws or regulations, we could be subject to regulatory investigation, enforcement actions, and litigation, as well as indemnification obligations with respect to our clients. Any negative outcomes from such regulatory actions or litigation, including monetary penalties or damages, could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, results of operation, and reputation.

From time to time, we are subject to audits, inquiries, investigations, claims of non-compliance and lawsuits by federal and state governmental agencies, regulatory agencies, attorneys general, and other governmental or regulatory bodies, any of whom may allege violations of legal requirements. For example, in June 2012, we entered into an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance agreement following a civil investigation into certain of our marketing practices related to our education client vertical that was conducted by the attorneys general of a number of states. If the results of any future investigations, audits, inquiries, claims or litigation are unfavorable to us, we may be required to pay monetary fines or penalties or have restrictions placed on our business, which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows.

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Federal and state regulations and increased oversight of clients in our education vertical have negatively affected, and may continue to negatively affect, our clients’ businesses, marketing practices, and budgets, any or all of which could reduce our clients’ level of business with us and thereby have a material adverse effect on our financial results.

To date, we have generated a large portion of our revenue from our education client vertical, and nearly all of that revenue was generated from post-secondary education institutions. Post-secondary education institutions are subject to extensive federal and state regulations and accrediting standards (including the Higher Education Act, Department of Education regulations and individual state higher education regulations) and oversight by various regulatory enforcement authorities (including the Department of Education, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and state attorneys general). Such regulations govern many aspects of these clients’ operations, including marketing and recruiting activities, as well as private student lending and the school’s eligibility to participate in Title IV federal student financial aid programs, which is the principal source of funding for many of our education clients. In addition, there have been significant changes to these regulations in recent years and a high level of regulatory scrutiny and enforcement activity (e.g., investigations of our clients and other post-secondary education institutions). Heightened regulatory activity and legislative and regulatory scrutiny may continue in the post-secondary education sector. Such activity and scrutiny may have an adverse effect on our operating results as our management may be required to devote substantial time and resources to such matters, and such matters may result in lower client marketing spend.

For example, in January 2014, the Department of Education initiated an investigation of a then U.S. publicly traded former for-profit education client with respect to its enrollment activities and job placement, among other things, and in July 2014, the Department of Education signed an agreement with that same education provider requiring it to wind down or sell its campuses.

Similarly, in July 2015, the Federal Trade Commission initiated an investigation of another then U.S. publicly traded former for-profit education client with respect to its recruiting and enrollment practices, and in January 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against a different then U.S. publicly-traded former for-profit education client with respect to its advertising practices. In September 2016, the Department of Education took action which resulted in the closure of another large for-profit education provider. In January 2019, a U.S. publicly traded for-profit education client entered into agreements with attorneys general from 48 states and the District of Columbia thereby bringing closure to a five-year investigation. A large former not-for-profit education client also entered federal receivership in January 2019. These legal proceedings may delay payment of amounts owed to us or result in us receiving less than the amounts owed. Moreover, the Department of Education, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and several state attorneys general currently have open investigations with several other post-secondary educational institutions. Regulatory decisions may also adversely impact our education clients indirectly. For example, in October 2016, the Department of Education published its final defense to repayment rule, which streamlines and liberalizes a procedure whereby students may have their federal loans forgiven. And, in December 2017, the Department of Education announced a new tiered system approach to determine loan forgiveness. This may streamline the government’s review of students’ requests to have their loans forgiven, which may in turn involve claims by the government against education providers. In connection with these or other investigations of our clients’ marketing practices, regulatory authorities may also make requests to us for information, which requests may consume substantial time and resources and result in a negative effect on our operating results. These and other similar regulatory and enforcement activities have affected, and are expected to continue to affect, our clients’ businesses and marketing practices, which have resulted in, and may continue to result in, a decrease in these clients’ spending with us and fluctuations in the volume and mix of our business with these clients. This may be the case notwithstanding the fact that we are not a target of these regulatory investigations or inquiries and the fact that our marketing practices consist largely of utilizing client-provided or client-approved online marketing materials subject to client advertising guidelines.

In addition, changes in, or new interpretations of, applicable laws, regulations, standards or policies applicable to these clients could have a material adverse effect on their accreditation, authorization to operate in various states, or receipt of funds under Title IV programs, any of which, in turn, may harm our ability to generate revenue from these clients and negatively impact our financial results. For example, in September 2017, the Department of Education approved conversion of two for-profit post-secondary education institutions to operate as non-profit post-secondary education institutions. These types of conversions may not be successful, may subject the institutions to adverse publicity, which could reduce these clients’ business with us and adversely impact our business.

Finally, although we are not a higher education institution, we are sometimes required to comply with education laws and regulations as a result of our role as a vendor to higher education institutions, either directly or indirectly through our contractual arrangements with clients. Failure to comply with education laws and regulations to which we are subject could result in breach of contract and indemnification claims against us, subject us to regulatory sanctions and could cause damage to our reputation and impair our business.

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A reduction in online marketing spend by our clients, a loss of clients or lower advertising yields may seriously harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, a substantial portion of our revenue is generated from a limited number of clients and, if we lose a major client, our revenue will decrease and our business and prospects may be harmed.

We rely on clients’ marketing spend on our owned and operated websites and on our network of third-party publisher and strategic partner websites. We have historically derived, and we expect to continue to derive, the majority of our revenue through the delivery of qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, and customers. One component of our platform that we use to generate client interest is our system of monetization tools, which is designed to match content with client offerings in a manner that optimizes revenue yield and end-user experience. Clients will stop spending marketing funds on our owned and operated websites or our third-party publisher and strategic partner websites if their investments do not generate marketing results and ultimately users or if we do not deliver advertisements in an appropriate and effective manner. The failure of our yield-optimized monetization technology to effectively match advertisements or client offerings with our content in a manner that results in increased revenue for our clients could have an adverse impact on our ability to maintain or increase our revenue from client marketing spend.

Even if our content is effectively matched with advertisements or client offerings, our current clients may not continue to place marketing spend or advertisements on our websites. For example, macroeconomic conditions such as an economic downturn or public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted and may continue to impact certain lines of our clients’ marketing spend in the short-term and potentially in the long-term. If any of our clients decided not to continue to place marketing spend or advertising on our owned and operated websites or on our third-party publisher or strategic partner websites, we could experience a rapid decline in our revenue over a relatively short period of time. Any factors that limit the amount our clients are willing to and do spend on marketing or advertising with us, or to purchase marketing results from us, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows.

Furthermore, a substantial portion of our revenue is generated from a limited number of clients, including one client that accounted for 21% of our net revenue for fiscal year 2020. Our clients can generally terminate their contracts with us at any time or pause marketing spending without contract termination, and they do not have minimum spend requirements. Clients may also fail to renew their contracts or reduce their level of business with us, leading to lower revenue.

In addition, reductions in business by one or more significant clients has in the past triggered, and may in the future trigger, price reductions for other clients whose prices for certain products are determined in whole or in part by client bidding or competition which may reduce our ability to monetize media, further decreasing revenue. Any such future price or volume reductions, or drop in media monetization, could result in lower revenue or margin which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows. We expect that a limited number of clients will continue to account for a significant percentage of our revenue, and the loss of any one of these clients, or a material reduction in their marketing spending with us, could decrease our revenue and harm our business.

We depend on third-party publishers, including strategic partners, for a significant portion of our visitors. Any decline in the supply of media available through these third-party publishers’ websites or increase in the price of this media could cause our revenue to decline or our cost to reach visitors to increase.

A significant portion of our revenue is attributable to visitor traffic originating from third-party publishers (including strategic partners). In many instances, third-party publishers can change the media inventory they make available to us at any time in ways that could impact our results of operations. In addition, third-party publishers may place significant restrictions on our offerings. These restrictions may prohibit advertisements from specific clients or specific industries, or restrict the use of certain creative content or formats. If a third-party publisher decides not to make its media channel or inventory available to us, decides to demand a higher revenue-share or places significant restrictions on the use of such inventory, we may not be able to find media inventory from other websites that satisfies our requirements in a timely and cost-effective manner. Consolidation of Internet advertising networks and third-party publishers could eventually lead to a concentration of desirable inventory on websites or networks owned by a small number of individuals or entities, which could limit the supply or impact the pricing of inventory available to us. In the past, we have experienced declines in our financial services client vertical primarily due to volume declines caused by losses of available media from third-party publishers acquired by competitors, changes in search engine algorithms which reduced or eliminated traffic from some third-party publishers and increased competition for quality media. We cannot assure you that we will be able to acquire media inventory that meets our clients’ performance, price, and quality requirements, in which case our revenue could decline or our operating costs could increase.

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We depend upon Internet search companies to direct a significant portion of visitors to our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites. Changes in search engine algorithms have in the past harmed, and may in the future harm, the websites’ placements in both paid and organic search result listings, which may reduce the number of visitors to our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites and as a result, cause our revenue to decline.

Our success depends on our ability to attract online visitors to our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites and convert them into customers for our clients in a cost-effective manner. We depend on Internet search companies to direct a substantial share of visitors to our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites. Search companies offer two types of search results: organic and paid listings. Organic listings are displayed based solely on formulas designed by the search companies. Paid listings are displayed based on a combination of the advertiser’s bid price for particular keywords and the search engines’ assessment of the website’s relevance and quality. If one or more of the search engines or other online sources on which we rely for purchased listings modifies or terminates its relationship with us, our expenses could rise, we could lose consumers, and traffic to our websites could decrease. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our ability to maintain or grow the number of visitors to our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites from search companies is not entirely within our control. Search companies frequently revise their algorithms and changes in their algorithms have in the past caused, and could in the future cause, our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites to receive less favorable placements. We have experienced fluctuations in organic rankings for a number of our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites and some of our paid listing campaigns have also been harmed by search engine algorithmic changes. Search companies could determine that our or our third-party publishers’ websites’ content is either not relevant or is of poor quality.

In addition, we may fail to optimally manage our paid listings, or our proprietary bid management technologies may fail. To attract and retain visitors, we use search engine optimization (“SEO”) which involves developing content to optimize ranking in search engine results. Our ability to successfully manage SEO efforts across our owned and operated websites and our third-party publishers’ websites depends on our timely and effective modification of SEO practices implemented in response to periodic changes in search engine algorithms and methodologies and changes in search query trends. If we fail to successfully manage our SEO strategy, our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites may receive less favorable placement in organic or paid listings, which would reduce the number of visitors to our sites, decrease conversion rates and repeat business and have a detrimental effect on our ability to generate revenue. If visits to our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites decrease, we may need to use more costly sources to replace lost visitors, and such increased expense could adversely affect our business and profitability. Even if we succeed in driving traffic to our owned and operated websites, our third-party publishers’ websites and to our clients’ websites, we may not be able to effectively monetize this traffic or otherwise retain users. Our failure to do so could result in lower advertising revenue from our owned and operated websites as well as third-party publishers’ websites, which would have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

We are subject to risks with respect to counterparties, and failure of such counterparties to meet their obligations could cause us to suffer losses or negatively impact our results of operations and cash flows.

We have entered into, and expect to enter into in the future, various contracts, including contracts with clients, third-party publishers and strategic partners, that subject us to counterparty risks. The ability and willingness of our counterparties to perform their obligations under any contract will depend on a number of factors that are beyond our control and may include, among other things, general economic conditions including any economic downturn, public health crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, specific industry vertical conditions, and the overall financial condition of the counterparty. As a result, clients, third-party publishers or strategic partners may seek to renegotiate the terms of their existing agreements with us, terminate their agreements with us for convenience (where permitted) or avoid performing their obligations under those agreements. Should a counterparty fail to honor its contractual obligations with us or terminate its agreements with us for convenience (where permitted), we could sustain significant losses or write-offs, or we could be involved in costly litigation to defend, enforce and protect our contractual rights, both of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

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If we fail to continually enhance and adapt our products and services to keep pace with rapidly changing technologies and industry standards, we may not remain competitive and could lose clients or advertising inventory.

The online media and marketing industry is characterized by rapidly changing standards, changing technologies, frequent new product and service introductions, and changing user and client demands. The introduction of new technologies and services embodying new technologies and the emergence of new industry standards and practices could render our existing technologies and services obsolete and unmarketable or require unanticipated investments in technology. We continually make enhancements and other modifications to our proprietary technologies, and these changes may contain design or performance defects that are not readily apparent. If our proprietary technologies fail to achieve their intended purpose or are less effective than technologies used by our competitors, our business could be harmed.

Our future success will depend in part on our ability to successfully adapt to these rapidly changing online media formats and other technologies. If we fail to adapt successfully, we could lose clients or advertising inventory.

Our results of operations have fluctuated in the past and may do so in the future, which makes our results of operations difficult to predict and could cause our results of operations to fall short of analysts’ and investors’ expectations.

Historically, quarterly and annual results of operations have fluctuated due to changes in our business, our industry, and the general economic and regulatory climate. We expect our future results of operations to vary significantly from quarter to quarter due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic will in the short-run, and may over the longer term, make our results of operations difficult to predict. Our fluctuating results of operations could cause our performance and outlook to be below the expectations of securities analysts and investors, causing the price of our common stock to decline. Our business changes and evolves over time, and, as a result, our historical results of operations may not be useful to you in predicting our future results of operations. Factors that may increase the volatility of our results of operations include, but are not limited to, the following:

As a result of changes in our business model, increased investments, increased expenditures for certain businesses, products, services, and technologies, we anticipate fluctuations in our adjusted EBITDA margin.

We have invested and expect to continue to invest in new businesses, products, markets, services and technologies, including more expensive forms of media. For example, we expended significant resources in developing new products and technologies and made strategic outlays in, among other things, partnerships, which in the short term may have the effect of reducing our adjusted EBITDA margin. If we are unsuccessful in our monetization efforts with respect to new products and investments, we may fail to engage and retain users and clients. We may have insufficient revenue to fully offset liabilities and expenses in connection with these new products and investments and may experience inadequate or unpredictable return of capital on our investments. As a result of these new products and investments, we may expect fluctuations in our adjusted EBITDA margin.

To maintain target levels of profitability, from time to time, we may restructure our operations or make other adjustments to our workforce. For example, in November 2016, we announced a corporate restructuring resulting in the reduction of approximately 25% of personnel costs.

15

Our visitor traffic and our clients’ spend can be impacted by interest rate volatility.

Visitor traffic to our online platforms in our lending and banking client verticals may change as interest rates change. A decrease in interest rates may lead to more consumers looking to lower their borrowing costs. These consumers may visit our websites, websites within or outside our publisher network, or our clients’ websites. To the extent consumers visit websites not in our network our lending client vertical may be adversely impacted. A decrease in interest rates may also reduce consumer demand for banking products. Interest rate increases may decrease demand for lending products but may not increase demand for banking products. Federal Reserve Board actions, regulations restricting the amount of interest and fees that may be charged to consumers, increased borrower default levels, tightening or uncertainty with respect to underwriting standards, and general market conditions affecting access to credit could also cause significant fluctuations in consumer behavior, as well as volatility in client spending and demand for media, each of which could have a material and adverse effect on our business.

If we fail to compete effectively against other online marketing and media companies and other competitors, we could lose clients and our revenue may decline.

The market for online marketing is intensely competitive, and we expect this competition to continue to increase in the future both from existing competitors and, given the relatively low barriers to entry into the market, from new competitors. We compete both for clients and for high-quality media. We compete for clients on the basis of a number of factors, including return on investment of client’s marketing spending, price, and client service.

We compete with Internet and traditional media companies for high quality media and for a share of clients’ overall marketing budgets, including:

Finding, developing and retaining high quality media on a cost-effective basis is challenging because competition for web traffic among websites and search engines, as well as competition with traditional media companies, has resulted and may continue to result in significant increases in media pricing, declining margins, reductions in revenue, and loss of market share. In addition, if we expand the scope of our services, we may compete with a greater number of websites, clients, and traditional media companies across an increasing range of different services, including in vertical markets where competitors may have advantages in expertise, brand recognition, and other areas. Internet search companies with brand recognition, such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing, have significant numbers of direct sales personnel and substantial proprietary advertising inventory and web traffic that provide a significant competitive advantage and have a significant impact on pricing for Internet advertising and web traffic. Some of these companies may offer or develop more vertically targeted products that match users with products and services and, thus, compete with us more directly. The trend toward consolidation in online marketing may also affect pricing and availability of media inventory and web traffic. Many of our current and potential competitors also have other competitive advantages over us, such as longer operating histories, greater brand recognition, larger client bases, greater access to advertising inventory on high-traffic websites, and significantly greater financial, technical, and marketing resources. As a result, we may not be able to compete successfully. Competition from other marketing service providers’ online and offline offerings has affected and may continue to affect both volume and price, and, thus, revenue, profit margins, and profitability. If we fail to deliver results that are superior to those that other online marketing service providers deliver to clients, we could lose clients and market share, and our revenue may decline.

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We are exposed to online security risks and security breaches particularly given that we gather, transmit and store personally identifiable information. If we fail to maintain adequate security and supporting infrastructure, we may be in breach of our commitments to our clients. Unauthorized access to or accidental disclosure of confidential or proprietary data in our network systems may cause us to incur significant expenses and may negatively affect our reputation and business.

Nearly all of our products and services are web-based, and online performance marketing is data-driven. As a result, the amount of data stored on our servers has been increasing. We gather, transmit, and store information about our users and marketing and media partners, including personally identifiable information. This information may include social security numbers, credit scores, credit card information, and financial and health information, some of which is held or managed by our third-party vendors. As a result, we are subject to certain contractual terms, including third-party security reviews, as well as federal, state and foreign laws and regulations designed to protect personally identifiable information. Complying with these contractual terms and various laws could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner adverse to our business. In addition, our existing security measures may not be successful in preventing security breaches. As we grow our business, we expect to continue to invest in technology services, hardware and software. Creating the appropriate security support for our technology platforms is expensive and complex, and our execution could result in inefficiencies or operational failures and increased vulnerability to cyber-attacks. We may also make commitments to our clients regarding our security practices in connection with clients’ due diligence. If we do not adequately implement and enforce these security policies to the satisfaction of our clients, we could be in violation of our commitments to our clients and this could result in a loss of client confidence, damage to our reputation and loss of business. Despite our implementation of security measures and controls, our information technology and infrastructure are susceptible to circumvention by an internal party or third-party, such that electronic or physical computer break-ins, cyber-attacks, malware, viruses, fraud, employee error, and other disruptions and security breaches that could result in third-parties gaining unauthorized access to our systems and data. In addition, the increased use of mobile devices increases the risk of unintentional disclosure of data including personally identifiable information. We may be unable to anticipate all our vulnerabilities and implement adequate preventative measures and, in some cases, we may not be able to immediately detect a security incident. In the past, we have experienced security incidents involving access to our databases. Although to our knowledge no sensitive financial or personal information has been compromised and no statutory breach notification has been required, any future security incidents could result in the compromise of such data and subject us to liability or remediation expense or result in cancellation of client contracts. Any security incident may also result in a misappropriation of our proprietary information or that of our users, clients, and third-party publishers, which could result in legal and financial liability, as well as harm to our reputation. Any compromise of our security could limit the adoption of our products and services and have an adverse effect on our business.

We also face risks associated with security breaches affecting third-parties conducting business over the Internet. Consumers generally are concerned with security and privacy on the Internet, and any publicized security problems could negatively affect consumers’ willingness to provide private information on the Internet generally, including through our services. Some of our business is conducted through third-parties, which may gather, transmit, and store information about our users and marketing and media partners, through our infrastructure or through other systems. A security breach at any such third-party could be perceived by consumers as a security breach of our systems and in any event could result in negative publicity, damage our reputation, expose us to risk of loss or litigation and possible liability and subject us to regulatory penalties and sanctions. In addition, such third-parties may not comply with applicable disclosure or contractual requirements, which could expose us to liability.

Security concerns relating to our technological infrastructure, privacy concerns relating to our data collection practices and any perceived or public disclosure of actual unauthorized disclosure of personally identifiable information, whether through breach of our network or that of third-parties which we engage with, by an unauthorized party, employee theft, misuse, or error could harm our reputation, impair our ability to attract website visitors and to attract and retain our clients, result in a loss of confidence in the security of our products and services, or subject us to claims or litigation arising from damages suffered by consumers, and thereby harm our business and results of operations. In the past few years, several major companies, such as Equifax, Yahoo!, Sony, Home Depot, Target and LinkedIn, have experienced high-profile security breaches that exposed their customers’ personal information. In addition, we could incur significant costs for which our insurance policies may not adequately cover us and expend significant resources in protecting against security breaches and complying with the multitude of state, federal and foreign laws regarding data privacy and data breach notification obligations. We may need to increase our security-related expenditures to maintain or increase our systems’ security or to address problems caused and liabilities incurred by security breaches.

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Many people are using mobile devices to access the Internet. If we fail to optimize our websites for mobile access with respect to user interfaces, we may not remain competitive and could lose clients or visitors to our websites.

The number of people who access the Internet through mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets has increased dramatically in the past several years, and we expect the trend to continue. Our online marketing services and content were originally designed for desktop or laptop computers. The shift from desktop or laptop computers to mobile devices could potentially deteriorate the user experience for visitors to our websites and may make it more difficult for visitors to respond to our offerings. For example, a user’s experience on a mobile device with respect to user interfaces such as an online marketing website and content originally designed for desktop or laptop computers will be suboptimal unless such website and content are designed to accommodate and improve mobile access to ensure a positive user experience. It also requires us to develop new product offerings specifically designed for mobile devices, such as social media advertising opportunities. If we fail to optimize our websites cost effectively and improve the monetization capabilities of our mobile marketing services, we may not remain competitive, which may negatively affect our business and results of operations.

Third-party publishers, strategic partners, vendors, or their respective affiliates may engage in unauthorized or unlawful acts that could subject us to significant liability or cause us to lose clients and revenue.

We generate a significant portion of our web visitors from online media that we source directly from our third-party publishers’ and strategic partners’ owned and operated websites, as well as indirectly from the affiliates of our third-party publishers and strategic partners. We also rely on third-party call centers and email marketers. Some of these third-parties, strategic partners, vendors, and their respective affiliates are authorized to use our clients’ brands, subject to contractual restrictions. Any activity by third-party publishers, strategic partners, vendors, or their respective affiliates which violates the marketing guidelines of our clients or that clients view as potentially damaging to their brands (e.g., search engine bidding on client trademarks), whether or not permitted by our contracts with our clients, could harm our relationship with the client and cause the client to terminate its relationship with us, resulting in a loss of revenue. Moreover, because we do not have a direct contractual relationship with the affiliates of our third-party publishers and strategic partners, we may not be able to monitor the compliance activity of such affiliates. If we are unable to cause our third-party publishers and strategic partners to monitor and enforce our clients’ contractual restrictions on such affiliates, our clients may terminate their relationships with us or decrease their marketing budgets with us. In addition, we may also face liability for any failure of our third-party publishers, strategic partners, vendors or their respective affiliates to comply with regulatory requirements, as further described in the risk factor beginning, “Negative changes in the market conditions and the regulatory environment have had in the past, and may in the future have, a material and adverse impact on our revenue, business and growth.”

The law is unsettled on the extent of liability that an advertiser in our position has for the activities of third-party publishers, strategic partners, or vendors. Department of Education regulations impose liability on our education clients for misrepresentations made by their marketing service providers. In addition, certain of our contracts impose liability on us, including indemnification obligations, for the acts of our third-party publishers, strategic partners, or vendors. We could be subject to costly litigation and, if we are unsuccessful in defending ourselves, we could incur damages for the unauthorized or unlawful acts of third-party publishers, strategic partners, or vendors.

We rely on our management team and other key employees, and the loss of one or more key employees could harm our business.

Our success and future growth depend upon the continued services of our management team, including Douglas Valenti, Chief Executive Officer, and other key employees in all areas of our organization. From time to time, there may be changes in our key employees resulting from the hiring or departure of executives and employees, which could disrupt our business. We have, in the past, experienced declines in our business and a depressed stock price, making our equity and cash incentive compensation programs less attractive to current and potential key employees. If we lose the services of key employees or if we are unable to attract and retain additional qualified employees, our business and growth could suffer.

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If we are unable to collect our receivables from our clients, our results of operations and cash flows could be adversely affected.

We expect to obtain payment from our clients for work performed and maintain an allowance against receivables for potential losses on client accounts. Actual losses on client receivables could differ from those that we currently anticipate and, as a result, we might need to adjust our allowances. We may not accurately assess the creditworthiness of our clients. Macroeconomic conditions, such as any evolving industry standards, economic downturns, changing regulatory conditions, and changing visitor and client demands, could also result in financial difficulties for our clients, including insolvency or bankruptcy. As a result, this could cause clients to delay payments to us, request modifications to their payment arrangements that could extend the timing of cash receipts, or default on their payment obligations to us. For example, in the third quarter of fiscal year 2019, we recorded a one-time charge of $8.7 million for bad debt expense related to a large former education client, which arose in part due to the U.S. Department of Education placing restrictions on one of its for-profit school from Title IV programs. If we experience an increase in the time to bill and collect for our services, our results of operations and cash flows could be adversely affected.

We rely on certain advertising agencies for the purchase of various advertising and marketing services on behalf of their clients. Such agencies may have or develop high-risk credit profiles, which may result in credit risk to us.

A portion of our client business is sourced through advertising agencies and, in many cases, we contract with these agencies and not directly with the underlying client. Contracting with these agencies subjects us to greater credit risk than where we contract with clients directly. In many cases, agencies are not required to pay us unless and until they are paid by the underlying client. In addition, many agencies are thinly capitalized and have or may develop high-risk credit profiles. This credit risk may vary depending on the nature of an agency’s aggregated client base. If an agency were to become insolvent, or if an underlying client did not pay the agency, we may be required to write off account receivables as bad debt. Any such write-offs could have a materially negative effect on our results of operations for the periods in which the write-offs occur.

Damage to our reputation could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our business is dependent on attracting a large number of visitors to our owned and operated and our third-party publishers’ websites and providing clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, and customers to our clients, which depends in part on our reputation within the industry and with our clients. Certain other companies within our industry have in the past engaged in activities that others may view as unlawful or inappropriate. These activities by third-parties, such as spyware or deceptive promotions, may be seen as characteristic of participants in our industry and may therefore harm the reputation of all participants in our industry, including us.

Our ability to attract visitors and, thereby, potential customers to our clients, also depends in part on our clients providing competitive levels of customer service, responsiveness and prices to such visitors. If our clients do not provide competitive levels of service to visitors, our reputation and therefore our ability to attract additional clients and visitors could be harmed.

In addition, from time to time, we may be subject to investigations, inquiries or litigation by various regulators, which may harm our reputation regardless of the outcome of any such action. For example, in 2012 we responded to a civil investigation conducted by the attorneys general of a number of states into certain of our marketing and business practices resulting in us entering into an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance agreement. Negative perceptions of our business may result in additional regulation, enforcement actions by the government and increased litigation, or harm our ability to attract or retain clients, third-party publishers or strategic partners, any of which may affect our business and result in lower revenue.

Any damage to our reputation, including from publicity from legal proceedings against us or companies that work within our industry, governmental proceedings, users impersonating or scraping our websites, unfavorable media coverage, consumer class action litigation, or the disclosure of information security breaches or private information misuse, could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If we do not effectively manage any future growth or if we are not able to scale our products or upgrade our technology or network hosting infrastructure quickly enough to meet our clients’ needs, our operating performance will suffer and we may lose clients.

We have experienced growth in our operations and operating locations during certain periods of our history. This growth has placed, and any future growth may continue to place, significant demands on our management and our operational and financial infrastructure. Growth, if any, may make it more difficult for us to accomplish the following:

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Our future success depends in part on the efficient performance of our software and technology infrastructure. As the numbers of websites and Internet users increase, our technology infrastructure may not be able to meet the increased demand. Unexpected constraints on our technology infrastructure could lead to slower website response times or system failures and adversely affect the availability of websites and the level of user responses received, which could result in the loss of clients or revenue or harm to our business and results of operations.

In addition, our personnel, systems, procedures, and controls may be inadequate to support our future operations. The improvements required to manage growth may require us to make significant expenditures, expand, train and manage our employee base, and reallocate valuable management resources. We may spend substantial amounts to purchase or lease data centers and equipment, upgrade our technology and network infrastructure to handle increased traffic on our owned and operated websites and roll out new products and services. Any such expansion could be expensive and complex and could result in inefficiencies or operational failures. If we do not implement such expansion successfully, or if we experience inefficiencies and operational failures during its implementation, the quality of our products and services and our users’ experience could decline. This could damage our reputation and cause us to lose current and potential users and clients. The costs associated with these adjustments to our architecture could harm our operating results. Accordingly, if we fail to effectively manage any future growth, our operating performance will suffer, and we may lose clients, key vendors and key personnel.

Interruption or failure of our information technology and communications systems could impair our ability to effectively deliver our services, which could cause us to lose clients and harm our results of operations.

Our delivery of marketing and media services depends on the continuing operation of our technology infrastructure and systems. Any damage to or failure of our systems could result in interruptions in our ability to deliver offerings quickly and accurately or process visitors’ responses emanating from our various web presences. Interruptions in our service could reduce our revenue and profits, and our reputation could be damaged if users or clients perceive our systems to be unreliable. Our systems and operations are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, terrorist attacks, floods, fires, power loss, break-ins, hardware or software failures, telecommunications failures, cyber-attacks, computer viruses or other attempts to harm our systems, and similar events. If we or third-party data centers that we utilize were to experience a major power outage, we would have to rely on back-up generators. These back-up generators may not operate properly through a major power outage and their fuel supply could also be inadequate during a major power outage or disruptive event. Furthermore, we do not currently have backup generators at our Foster City, California headquarters. Information systems such as ours may be disrupted by even brief power outages, or by the fluctuations in power resulting from switches to and from back-up generators. This could give rise to obligations to certain of our clients which could have an adverse effect on our results of operations for the period of time in which any disruption of utility services to us occurs.

Our primary data center is at a third-party co-location center in San Francisco, California. All of the critical components of the system are redundant and we have a backup data center in Las Vegas, Nevada. We have implemented these backup systems and redundancies to minimize the risk associated with earthquakes, fire, power loss, telecommunications failure, and other events beyond our control; however, these backup systems may fail or may not be adequate to prevent losses.

Any unscheduled interruption in our service would result in an immediate loss of revenue. If we experience frequent or persistent system failures, the attractiveness of our technologies and services to clients and third-party publishers could be permanently harmed. The steps we have taken to increase the reliability and redundancy of our systems are expensive, reduce our operating margin and may not be successful in reducing the frequency or duration of unscheduled interruptions.

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Acquisitions, investments and divestitures could complicate operations, or could result in dilution and other harmful consequences that may adversely impact our business and results of operations.

Acquisitions have historically been, and continue to be, an important element of our overall corporate strategy and use of capital. In addition, although we recently announced that we paused our financial advisor-led review of strategic alternatives due in large part to market uncertainties as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we regularly review and assess strategic alternatives in the ordinary course of business, including potential acquisitions, investments or divestitures. These potential strategic alternatives may result in a wide array of potential strategic transactions that could be material to our financial condition and results of operations. For example, we acquired Modernize in July 2020, MBT in May 2019, CCM in April 2019, and AmOne in October 2018, and in the second half of fiscal year 2020, we divested our B2B client vertical, our businesses in Brazil consisting of QSB and VEMM along with its interests in EDB, and our mortgage business.

Acquisitions, investments or divestitures, and the process of evaluating strategic alternatives, involves a number of risks and uncertainties. For example, the process of integrating an acquired company, business or technology has in the past created, and may create in the future, unforeseen operating challenges, risks and expenditures, including with respect to: (i) integrating an acquired company’s accounting, financial reporting, management information and information security, human resource, and other administrative systems to permit effective management, and the lack of control if such integration is delayed or not implemented; (ii) integrating the controls, procedures and policies at companies we acquire appropriate for a public company; and (iii) transitioning the acquired company’s operations, users and customers onto our existing platforms. The success of our acquisitions and other investments will depend in part on our ability to successfully integrate and leverage them to enhance our existing products and services or develop compelling new ones. It may take longer than expected to realize the full benefits from these acquisitions or investments, such as increased revenue, enhanced efficiencies, or increased market share, or the benefit may ultimately be smaller than we expected. Our failure to address these risks or other problems encountered in connection with our acquisitions and investments could cause us to fail to realize the anticipated benefits of such acquisitions or investments, incur unanticipated liabilities and harm our business generally.

In addition, evaluating, negotiating and completing strategic transactions, including acquisitions, investments or divestitures, may distract management from our other businesses and result in significant expenses. Moreover, we may invest significant resources towards evaluating and negotiating strategic alternatives that do not ultimately result in a strategic transaction.

Our acquisitions or investments could also result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities, the incurrence of debt or deferred purchase price obligations, contingent liabilities, amortization expense, impairment of goodwill or restructuring charges, any of which could harm our financial condition or results. For example, under our acquisition agreement with MBT, we are required to pay $4.0 million in post-closing payments and an estimated earn-out of $1.5 million of which the earn-out was paid off in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020. Under our acquisition agreement with CCM, we are required to pay $7.5 million in post-closing payments and an estimated earn-out of $3.6 million. Under our acquisition agreement with AmOne, we are required to pay $8.0 million in post-closing payments. Under our acquisition agreement with Modernize, we are required to pay $27.5 million in post-closing payments. Also, the anticipated benefit of many of our strategic transactions, including anticipated synergies, may not materialize. In connection with a disposition of assets or a business, we may also agree to provide indemnification for certain potential liabilities or retain certain liabilities or obligations, which may adversely impact our financial condition or results.

We rely on call centers, Internet and data center providers, and other third-parties for key aspects of the process of providing services to our clients, and any failure or interruption in the services and products provided by these third-parties could harm our business.

We rely on internal and third-party call centers as well as third-party vendors, data centers and Internet providers. Notwithstanding disaster recovery and business continuity plans and precautions instituted to protect our clients and us from events that could interrupt delivery of services, there is no guarantee that such interruptions would not result in a prolonged interruption in our ability to provide services to our clients. Any temporary or permanent interruption in the services provided by our call centers or third-party providers could significantly harm our business.

In addition, any financial or other difficulties our third-party providers face may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which we cannot predict. We exercise little control over our third-party vendors, which increases our vulnerability to problems with the services they provide. We license technology and related databases from third-parties to facilitate analysis and storage of data and delivery of offerings. We have experienced interruptions and delays in service and availability for data centers, bandwidth and other technologies in the past. Any errors, failures, interruptions or delays experienced in connection with these third-party technologies and services could adversely affect our business and could expose us to liabilities to third-parties.

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We may need additional capital in the future to meet our financial obligations and to pursue our business objectives. Additional capital may not be available or may not be available on favorable terms and our business and financial condition could therefore be adversely affected.

While we anticipate that our existing cash and cash equivalents and cash we expect to generate from future operations will be sufficient to fund our operations for at least the next 12 months, we may need to raise additional capital, including debt capital, to fund operations in the future or to finance acquisitions. If we seek to raise additional capital in order to meet various objectives, including developing future technologies and services, increasing working capital, acquiring businesses, and responding to competitive pressures, capital may not be available on favorable terms or may not be available at all. Lack of sufficient capital resources could significantly limit our ability to take advantage of business and strategic opportunities. Any additional capital raised through the sale of equity or debt securities with an equity component would dilute our stock ownership. If adequate additional funds are not available, we may be required to delay, reduce the scope of, or eliminate material parts of our business strategy, including potential additional acquisitions or development of new technologies.

Our quarterly revenue and results of operations may fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter due to fluctuations in advertising spending, including seasonal and cyclical effects.

In addition to other factors that cause our results of operations to fluctuate, results are also subject to significant seasonal fluctuation. In particular, our quarters ending December 31 (our second fiscal quarter) are typically characterized by seasonal weakness. During that quarter, there is generally lower availability of media during the holiday period on a cost effective basis and some of our clients have lower budgets. In our quarters ending March 31 (our third fiscal quarter), this trend generally reverses with better media availability and often new budgets at the beginning of the year for our clients with fiscal years ending December 31. Moreover, our lending clients’ businesses are subject to seasonality. For example, our clients that offer home services products are historically subject to seasonal trends. These trends reflect the general patterns of the home services industry, which typically peak in the spring and summer seasons. Other factors affecting our clients’ businesses include macro factors such as credit availability, the strength of the economy and employment. Any of the foregoing seasonal trends, or the combination of them, may negatively impact our quarterly revenue and results of operations.

Furthermore, advertising spend on the Internet, similar to traditional media, tends to be cyclical and discretionary as a result of factors beyond our control, including budgetary constraints and buying patterns of clients, as well as economic conditions affecting the Internet and media industry. For example, weather and other events have in the past led to short-term increases in insurance industry client loss ratios and damage or interruption in our clients’ operations, either of which can lead to decreased client spend on online performance marketing. In addition, inherent industry specific risks (e.g., Insurance industry loss ratios and cutbacks) and poor macroeconomic conditions as well as other short-term events could decrease our clients’ advertising spending and thereby have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows.

If the market for online marketing services fails to continue to develop, our success may be limited, and our revenue may decrease.

The online marketing services market is relatively new and rapidly evolving, and it uses different measurements from traditional media to gauge its effectiveness. Some of our current or potential clients have little or no experience using the Internet for advertising and marketing purposes and have allocated only limited portions of their advertising and marketing budgets to the Internet. The adoption of online marketing, particularly by those companies that have historically relied upon traditional media for advertising, requires the acceptance of a new way of conducting business, exchanging information and evaluating new advertising and marketing technologies and services.

In particular, we are dependent on our clients’ adoption of new metrics to measure the success of online marketing campaigns with which they may not have prior experience. Certain of our metrics are subject to inherent challenges in measurement, and real or perceived inaccuracies in such metrics may harm our reputation and negatively affect our business. We present key metrics such as cost-per-click, cost-per-lead and cost-per-acquisition, some of which are calculated using internal data. We periodically review and refine some of our methodologies for monitoring, gathering, and calculating these metrics. While our metrics are based on what we believe to be reasonable measurements and methodologies, there are inherent challenges in deriving our metrics. In addition, our user metrics may differ from estimates published by third-parties or from similar metrics of our competitors due to differences in methodology. If clients or publishers do not perceive our metrics to be accurate, or if we discover material inaccuracies in our metrics, it could negatively affect our business model and current or potential clients’ willingness to adopt our metrics.

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We may also experience resistance from traditional advertising agencies who may be advising our clients. We cannot assure you that the market for online marketing services will continue to grow. If the market for online marketing services fails to continue to develop or develops more slowly than we anticipate, the success of our business may be limited, and our revenue may decrease.

If we do not adequately protect our intellectual property rights, our competitive position and business may suffer.

Our ability to compete effectively depends upon our proprietary systems and technology. We rely on patent, trade secret, trademark and copyright law, confidentiality agreements, and technical measures to protect our proprietary rights. We enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants, independent contractors, advisors, client vendors, and publishers. These agreements may not effectively prevent unauthorized disclosure of confidential information or unauthorized parties from copying aspects of our services or obtaining and using our proprietary information. For example, past or current employees, contractors or agents may reveal confidential or proprietary information. Further, these agreements may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized disclosures or uses, and we cannot assure you that our rights under such agreements will be enforceable. Effective patent, trade secret, copyright, and trademark protection may not be available in all countries where we currently operate or in which we may operate in the future. Some of our systems and technologies are not covered by any copyright, patent or patent application. We cannot guarantee that: (i) our intellectual property rights will provide competitive advantages to us; (ii) our ability to assert our intellectual property rights against potential competitors or to settle current or future disputes will be effective; (iii) our intellectual property rights will be enforced in jurisdictions where competition may be intense or where legal protection may be weak; (iv) any of the patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret or other intellectual property rights that we presently employ in our business will not lapse or be invalidated, circumvented, challenged, or abandoned; (v) competitors will not design around our protected systems and technology; or (vi) that we will not lose the ability to assert our intellectual property rights against others.

We have from time to time become aware of third-parties who we believe may have infringed our intellectual property rights. Such infringement or infringement of which we are not yet aware could reduce our competitive advantages and cause us to lose clients, third-party publishers or could otherwise harm our business. Policing unauthorized use of our proprietary rights can be difficult and costly. Litigation, while it may be necessary to enforce or protect our intellectual property rights, could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and management attention and could adversely affect our business, even if we are successful on the merits. In addition, others may independently discover trade secrets and proprietary information, and in such cases we could not assert any trade secret rights against such parties.

Third-parties may sue us for intellectual property infringement, which, even if unsuccessful, could require us to expend significant costs to defend or settle.

We cannot be certain that our internally developed or acquired systems and technologies do not and will not infringe the intellectual property rights of others. In addition, we license content, software and other intellectual property rights from third-parties and may be subject to claims of infringement if such parties do not possess the necessary intellectual property rights to the products they license to us.

In addition, we have in the past, and may in the future, be subject to legal proceedings and claims that we have infringed the patents or other intellectual property rights of third-parties. These claims sometimes involve patent holding companies or other adverse patent owners who have no relevant product revenue and against whom our own intellectual property rights, if any, may therefore provide little or no deterrence. For example, in December 2012, Internet Patents Corporation (“IPC”) filed a patent infringement lawsuit against us in the Northern District of California alleging that some of our websites infringe a patent held by IPC. IPC is a non-practicing entity that relies on asserting its patents as its primary source of revenue. In addition, third-parties have asserted and may in the future assert intellectual property infringement claims against our clients, and we have agreed in certain circumstances to indemnify and defend against such claims. Any intellectual property-related infringement claims, whether or not meritorious and regardless of the outcome of the litigation, could result in costly litigation, could divert management resources and attention and could cause us to change our business practices. Should we be found liable for infringement, we may be required to enter into licensing agreements, if available on acceptable terms or at all, pay substantial damages, or limit or curtail our systems and technologies. Moreover, we may need to redesign some of our systems and technologies to avoid future infringement liability. Any of the foregoing could prevent us from competing effectively and increase our costs.

Additionally, the laws relating to use of trademarks on the Internet are unsettled, particularly as they apply to search engine functionality. For example, other Internet marketing and search companies have been sued for trademark infringement and other intellectual property-related claims for displaying ads or search results in response to user queries that include trademarked terms. The outcomes of these lawsuits have differed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. We may be subject to trademark infringement, unfair competition, misappropriation or other intellectual property-related claims which could be costly to defend and result in substantial damages or otherwise limit or curtail our activities, and therefore adversely affect our business or prospects.

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Limitations on our ability to collect and use data derived from user activities, as well as new technologies that block our ability to deliver Internet-based advertising, and if our emails are not delivered and accepted or are routed by email providers less favorably than other emails could significantly diminish the value of our services and have an adverse effect on our ability to generate revenue.

When a user visits our websites, we use technologies, including “cookies,” to collect information such as the user’s IP address and the user’s past responses to our offerings. We also have relationships with data partners that collect and provide us with user data. We access and analyze this information in order to determine the effectiveness of a marketing campaign and to determine how to modify the campaign. The use of cookies is the subject of litigation, regulatory scrutiny and industry self-regulatory activities, including the discussion of “do-not-track” technologies and guidelines. With respect to industry self-regulatory activities, the leading web browsing companies have started or announced their intent to block or phase out third-party cookies from their web browsers.  

Additionally, users are able to block or delete cookies from their browser. Periodically, certain of our clients and publishers seek to prohibit or limit our collection or use of data derived from the use of cookies. Technologies, tools, software and applications (including new and enhanced web browsers) have been developed, and are likely to continue to be developed, that can block or allow users to opt out of display, search, and Internet-based advertising and content, delete or block the cookies used to deliver such advertising, or shift the location in which advertising appears on pages so that our advertisements do not show up in the most monetizable places on our pages or are obscured. As a result, the adoption of such technologies, tools, software, and applications could reduce the number of display and search advertisements that we are able to deliver and/or our ability to deliver Internet-based advertising and this, in turn, could reduce our results of operations.

Furthermore, if email service providers (“ESPs”) or internet service providers (“ISPs”), implement new or more restrictive email or content delivery or accessibility policies, including with respect to net neutrality, it may become more difficult to deliver emails to consumers or for consumers to access our websites and services. For example, if ESPs categorize our emails as “promotional,” then these emails may be directed to an alternate and less readily accessible section of a consumer’s inbox. In the event ESPs materially limit or halt the delivery of our emails, or if we fail to deliver emails to consumers in a manner compatible with ESPs’ email handling or authentication technologies, our ability to contact consumers through email could be significantly restricted. In addition, if we are placed on “spam” lists or lists of entities that have been involved in sending unwanted, unsolicited emails, or if ISPs prioritize or provide superior access to our competitors’ content, our business and results of operations may be adversely affected.

Interruptions, failures or defects in our data collection systems, as well as privacy concerns and regulatory changes or enforcement actions affecting our or our data partners’ ability to collect user data, could also limit our ability to analyze data from, and thereby optimize, our clients’ marketing campaigns. If our access to data is limited in the future, we may be unable to provide effective technologies and services to clients and we may lose clients and revenue.

If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal controls, our ability to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis or effectively prevent fraud could be impaired, which would adversely affect our ability to operate our business.

In order to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX Act”), our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of our financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States. We may in the future discover areas of our internal financial and accounting controls and procedures that need improvement. Our internal control over financial reporting will not prevent or detect all error and all fraud. A control system, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the control system’s objectives will be met. All control systems have inherent limitations, and, accordingly, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud will be detected. If we are unable to maintain proper and effective internal controls, we may not be able to produce accurate financial statements on a timely basis, which could adversely affect our ability to operate our business and could result in regulatory action.

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If we identify material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting or otherwise fail to maintain an effective system of internal control over financial reporting, the accuracy and timeliness of our financial reporting may be adversely affected.

We must maintain effective internal control over financial reporting in order to accurately and timely report our results of operations and financial condition. In addition, the SOX Act requires, among other things, that we assess the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of the end of our fiscal year, and the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures quarterly. If we are not able to comply with the requirements of the SOX Act in a timely manner, the market price of our stock could decline and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by Nasdaq, the SEC or other regulatory authorities, which would diminish investor confidence in our financial reporting and require additional financial and management resources, each of which may adversely affect our business and operating results.

In fiscal years 2017 and 2016, we identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. While no material weaknesses were identified in our internal control over financial reporting as of June 30, 2020, we cannot assure you that we will not in the future identify material weaknesses. In addition, the standards required for a Section 404 assessment under the SOX Act may in the future require us to implement additional corporate governance practices and adhere to additional reporting requirements. Our management may not be able to effectively and timely implement controls and procedures that adequately respond to the increased regulatory compliance and reporting requirements that are or will be applicable to us as a public company. If we fail to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, our business and reputation may be harmed and our stock price may decline.

As a creator and a distributor of Internet content, we face potential liability and expenses for legal claims based on the nature and content of the materials that we create or distribute, including materials provided by our clients. If we are required to pay damages or expenses in connection with these legal claims, our results of operations and business may be harmed.

We display original content and third-party content on our websites and in our marketing messages. In addition, our clients provide us with advertising creative and financial information (e.g., insurance premium or credit card interest rates) that we display on our owned and operated websites and our third-party publishers’ websites. As a result, we face potential liability based on a variety of claims, including defamation, negligence, deceptive advertising (including Department of Education regulations regarding misrepresentation in education marketing and Federal Trade Commission regulations), copyright or trademark infringement. We are also exposed to risk that content provided by third-parties or clients is inaccurate or misleading, and for material posted to our websites by users and other third-parties. These claims, whether brought in the United States or abroad, could divert our management’s time and attention away from our business and result in significant costs to investigate, defend, and respond to investigative demands, regardless of the merit of these claims. In addition, if we become subject to these types of claims and are not successful in our defense, we may be forced to pay substantial damages.

We face additional risks in conducting business in international markets.

We have entered into certain international markets and may enter into additional international markets in the future, including through acquisitions. We have limited experience in marketing, selling and supporting our services outside of the United States, and we may not be successful in introducing or marketing our services abroad.

There are risks and challenges inherent in conducting business in international markets, such as:

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If we are unable to successfully expand and market our services abroad, our business and future growth may be harmed, and we may incur costs that may not lead to future revenue.

We may be required to record a significant charge to earnings if our goodwill or intangible assets become impaired.

We have a substantial amount of goodwill and purchased intangible assets on our consolidated balance sheet as a result of acquisitions. The carrying value of goodwill represents the fair value of an acquired business in excess of identifiable assets and liabilities as of the acquisition date. The carrying value of intangible assets with identifiable useful lives represents the fair value of relationships, content, domain names, acquired technology, among others, as of the acquisition date, and are amortized based on their economic lives. We are required to evaluate our intangible assets for impairment when events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value may not be recoverable. Goodwill that is expected to contribute indefinitely to our cash flows is not amortized, but must be evaluated for impairment at least annually. If necessary, a quantitative test is performed to compare the carrying value of the asset to its estimated fair value, as determined based on a discounted cash flow approach, or when available and appropriate, to comparable market values. If the carrying value of the asset exceeds its current fair value, the asset is considered impaired and its carrying value is reduced to fair value through a non-cash charge to earnings. Events and conditions that could result in impairment of our goodwill and intangible assets include adverse changes in the regulatory environment, a reduced market capitalization or other factors leading to reduction in expected long-term growth or profitability. 

Goodwill impairment analysis and measurement is a process that requires significant judgment. Our stock price and any estimated control premium are factors affecting the assessment of the fair value of our underlying reporting units for purposes of performing any goodwill impairment assessment. For example, our public market capitalization sustained a decline after December 31, 2012 and June 30, 2014 to a value below the net book carrying value of our equity, triggering the need for a goodwill impairment analysis. As a result of our goodwill impairment analysis, we recorded a goodwill impairment charge in those periods. Additionally, in the third quarter of fiscal year 2016, our stock price experienced volatility and our public market capitalization decreased to a value below the net book carrying value of our equity, triggering the need for an interim impairment test. While no impairment was recorded as a result of the interim impairment test, it is possible that another material change could occur in the future. We will continue to conduct impairment analyses of our goodwill on an annual basis, unless indicators of possible impairment arise that would cause a triggering event, and we would be required to take additional impairment charges in the future if any recoverability assessments reflect estimated fair values that are less than our recorded values. Further impairment charges with respect to our goodwill could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

We could lose clients if we fail to detect click-through or other fraud on advertisements in a manner that is acceptable to our clients.

We are exposed to the risk of fraudulent clicks or actions on our websites or our third-party publishers’ websites, which could lead our clients to become dissatisfied with our campaigns, and in turn, lead to loss of clients and related revenue. Click-through fraud occurs when an individual clicks on an ad displayed on a website, or an automated system is used to create such clicks, with the intent of generating the revenue-share payment to the publisher rather than viewing the underlying content. Action fraud occurs when online lead forms are completed with false or fictitious information in an effort to increase a publisher’s compensable actions. From time to time, we have experienced fraudulent clicks or actions. We do not charge our clients for fraudulent clicks or actions when they are detected, and such fraudulent activities could negatively affect our profitability or harm our reputation. If fraudulent clicks or actions are not detected, the affected clients may experience a reduced return on their investment in our marketing programs, which could lead the clients to become dissatisfied with our campaigns, and in turn, lead to loss of clients and related revenue. Additionally, from time to time, we have had to, and in the future may have to, terminate relationships with publishers whom we believed to have engaged in fraud. Termination of such relationships entails a loss of revenue associated with the legitimate actions or clicks generated by such publishers.

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As a public company, we are subject to compliance initiatives that require substantial time from our management and result in significantly increased costs that may adversely affect our operating results and financial condition.

The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, and other rules implemented by the SEC and Nasdaq, impose various requirements on public companies, including corporate governance requirements, auditor attestation requirements and critical audit matters reporting. These and future laws and regulations may further increase our compliance costs. If compliance with these various legal and regulatory requirements diverts our management’s attention from other business concerns, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. These laws and regulations also make it more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced policy limits and coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain the same or similar coverage than available to a private company. As a result, it may be more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified individuals to serve on our board of directors, on committees of our board of directors, or as executive officers.

Risks Related to the Ownership of Our Common Stock

Our stock price has been volatile and may continue to fluctuate significantly in the future, which may lead to you not being able to resell shares of our common stock at or above the price you paid, delisting, securities litigation or hostile or otherwise unfavorable takeover offers.

The trading price of our common stock has been volatile since our initial public offering and may continue to be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control. These factors include those discussed in this “Risk Factors” section of this report and other factors such as:

In recent years, the stock market in general, and the market for technology and Internet-based companies in particular, has experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. Broad market and industry factors may seriously affect the market price of our common stock, regardless of our actual operating performance. As a result of this volatility, you may not be able to sell your common stock at or above the price paid for the shares. In addition, in the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market price of a particular company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against these companies. Such litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs and a diversion of our management’s attention and resources.

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Moreover, a low or declining stock price may make us attractive to hedge funds and other short-term investors which could result in substantial stock price volatility and cause fluctuations in trading volumes for our stock. A relatively low stock price may also cause us to become subject to an unsolicited or hostile acquisition bid which could result in substantial costs and a diversion of management attention and resources. In the event that such a bid is publicly disclosed, it may result in increased speculation and volatility in our stock price even if our board of directors decides not to pursue a transaction.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, or if they issue an adverse opinion regarding our stock, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock is influenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts publish about us, our business or the industries or businesses of our clients. If any of the analysts issue an adverse opinion regarding our stock or if our actual results do not meet analyst estimates, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts ceases coverage of our company or fails to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.

Our directors and executive officers and their respective affiliates have substantial influence over us and could delay or prevent a change in corporate control.

As of June 30, 2020, our directors and executive officers, together with their affiliates, beneficially or otherwise owned approximately 9% of our outstanding common stock. As a result, these stockholders, acting together, have substantial influence over the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. In addition, these stockholders, acting together, have significant influence over the management and affairs of our company. Accordingly, this concentration of ownership may have the effect of:

We cannot guarantee that our stock repurchase program will be fully consummated or that our stock repurchase program will enhance long-term stockholder value, and stock repurchases could increase the volatility of the price of our stock and could diminish our cash reserves.

Our board of directors has authorized a stock repurchase program allowing us to repurchase up to 966,000 outstanding shares of our common stock that commenced in October 2017. As of June 30, 2020, the number of shares that remains available for repurchase pursuant to our stock repurchase program is 903,636 shares. The timing and actual number of shares repurchased will depend on a variety of factors including the price, cash availability and other market conditions. The stock repurchase program, authorized by our board of directors, does not obligate us to repurchase any specific dollar amount or to acquire any specific number of shares and does not have an expiration date. The stock repurchase program could affect the price of our stock and increase volatility and may be suspended or terminated at any time, which may result in a decrease in the trading price of our stock. The existence of our stock repurchase program could also cause the price of our common stock to be higher than it would be in the absence of such a program and could potentially reduce the market liquidity for our common stock. Additionally, repurchases under our stock repurchase program will diminish our cash reserves. There can be no assurance that any stock repurchases will enhance stockholder value because the market price of our common stock may decline below the levels at which we repurchased such shares. Any failure to repurchase shares after we have announced our intention to do so may negatively impact our reputation and investor confidence in us and may negatively impact our stock price. Although our stock repurchase program is intended to enhance long-term stockholder value, short-term stock price fluctuations could reduce the program’s effectiveness.

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We may be subject to short selling strategies that may drive down the market price of our common stock.

Short sellers may attempt to drive down the market price of our common stock. Short selling is the practice of selling securities that the seller does not own but may have borrowed with the intention of buying identical securities back at a later date. The short seller hopes to profit from a decline in the value of the securities between the time the securities are borrowed and the time they are replaced. As it is in the short seller’s best interests for the price of the stock to decline, many short sellers (sometime known as “disclosed shorts”) publish, or arrange for the publication of, negative opinions regarding the relevant issuer and its business prospects to create negative market momentum. Although traditionally these disclosed shorts were limited in their ability to access mainstream business media or to otherwise create negative market rumors, the rise of the Internet and technological advancements regarding document creation, videotaping and publication by weblog (“blogging”) have allowed many disclosed shorts to publicly attack a company’s credibility, strategy and veracity by means of so-called “research reports” that mimic the type of investment analysis performed by large Wall Street firms and independent research analysts. These short attacks have, in the past, led to selling of shares in the market. Further, these short seller publications are not regulated by any governmental, self-regulatory organization or other official authority in the U.S. and they are not subject to certification requirements imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Accordingly, the opinions they express may be based on distortions, omissions or fabrications. Companies that are subject to unfavorable allegations, even if untrue, may have to expend a significant amount of resources to investigate such allegations and/or defend themselves, including shareholder suits against the company that may be prompted by such allegations. We have in the past, and may in the future, be the subject of shareholder suits that we believe were prompted by allegations made by short sellers.

Provisions in our charter documents under Delaware law and in contractual obligations could discourage a takeover that stockholders may consider favorable and may lead to entrenchment of management.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and bylaws contain provisions that could have the effect of delaying or preventing changes in control or changes in our management without the consent of our board of directors. These provisions include:

We are also subject to certain anti-takeover provisions under Delaware law. Under Delaware law, a corporation may not, in general, engage in a business combination with any holder of 15% or more of its capital stock unless the holder has held the stock for three years or, among other things, the board of directors has approved the transaction.

We do not currently intend to pay dividends on our common stock and, consequently, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our common stock.

We have not declared or paid dividends on our common stock and we do not intend to do so in the near term. We currently intend to invest our future earnings, if any, to fund our growth. Therefore, you are not likely to receive any dividends on your common stock in the near term, and capital appreciation, if any, of our common stock will be your sole source of gain for the foreseeable future. 

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None.

Our principal executive office is located in a leased facility in Foster City, California, consisting of approximately 44,556 square feet of office space under a lease with an expiration date in October 2023. This facility accommodates our principal engineering, sales, marketing, operations, finance and administrative activities. We also lease additional facilities to accommodate sales, marketing, and operations throughout the United States. Outside of the United States, we also lease facilities to accommodate engineering, sales, marketing, and operations in India.

We may add new facilities and expand our existing facilities as we add employees and expand our markets, and we believe that suitable additional or substitute space will be available as needed to accommodate any such expansion of our operations.

From time to time, we may become involved in legal proceedings and claims arising in the ordinary course of business. Certain of our outstanding legal matters include claims for indeterminate amounts of damages. We record a liability when we believe that it is probable that a loss has been incurred and the amount can be reasonably estimated. Based on our current knowledge, we do not believe that there is a reasonable possibility that the final outcome of pending or threatened legal proceedings to which we are a party, either individually or in the aggregate, will have a material adverse effect on our financial position, results of operations and cash flows. However, the outcome of such legal matters is subject to significant uncertainties.

Not Applicable.

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PART II

The following table shows the high and low sale prices per share of our common stock as reported on the Nasdaq Global Select Market for the periods indicated:

On August 24, 2020, the closing price as reported on the Nasdaq Global Select Market of our common stock was $13.31 per share and we had approximately 55 stockholders of record of our common stock.

We have never declared or paid, and do not anticipate declaring or paying, any dividends on our common stock. Any future determination as to the declaration and payment of dividends, if any, will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on then existing conditions, including our financial condition, operating results, contractual restrictions, capital requirements, business prospects and other factors our board of directors may deem relevant.

For equity compensation plan information refer to Item 12 in Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Stock Repurchase Program

In July 2017, the Board of Directors authorized a stock repurchase program allowing us to repurchase up to 905,000 outstanding shares of our common stock. In October 2017, the Board of Directors increased the number of outstanding shares that may be repurchased to 966,000 shares. There is no guarantee as to the exact number of shares that will be repurchased by us, and we may discontinue repurchases at any time. There were no repurchases under this stock repurchase program during fiscal year 2020. As of June 30, 2020, the number of shares that remains available for repurchase pursuant to our stock repurchase program is 903,636 shares.

Performance Graph

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

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The following performance graph shows a comparison from June 30, 2015 through June 30, 2020 of cumulative total return for our common stock, the Nasdaq Composite Index and the RDG Internet Composite Index. Such returns are based on historical results and are not intended to suggest future performance. Data for the Nasdaq Composite Index and the RDG Internet Composite Index assume reinvestment of dividends.

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

There were no unregistered sales of our equity securities in fiscal year 2020.

The following selected consolidated financial data should be read together with “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and with the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes appearing elsewhere in this report. The selected consolidated financial data in this section is not intended to replace our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes. The results of acquired businesses have been included in our consolidated financial statements since their respective dates of acquisition. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of our future results and any interim results are not necessarily indicative of the results for a full fiscal year.

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We derived the consolidated statements of operations data for fiscal years ended June 30, 2020, 2019 and 2018 and the consolidated balance sheets data as of June 30, 2020 and 2019 from our audited consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this report. The consolidated statements of operations data for fiscal years ended June 30, 2017 and 2016 and the consolidated balance sheets data as of June 30, 2018, 2017 and 2016 are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements, which are not included in this report.

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The following table presents a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income (loss) calculated in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the most comparable GAAP measure, for each of the periods indicated:

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You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto included elsewhere in this report. The following discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates and beliefs. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this report, particularly in the sections titled “Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements” and “Risk Factors.”

Management Overview

We are a leader in performance marketplace products and technologies. We specialize in customer acquisition for clients in high value, information-intensive markets or “verticals,” including financial services, education, and home services. Our clients include some of the world’s largest companies and brands in those markets. The majority of our operations and revenue are in North America.

We deliver measurable and cost-effective marketing results to our clients, typically in the form of a qualified click, lead, inquiry, call, application, or customer. Clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, and applications can then convert into a customer or sale for clients at a rate that results in an acceptable marketing cost to them. We are typically paid by clients when we deliver qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, or customers as defined by our agreements with them. References to the delivery of customers means a sale or completed customer transaction (e.g., funded loans, bound insurance policies or customer appointments with clients). Because we bear the costs of media, our programs must result in attractive marketing costs to our clients at media costs and margins that provide sound financial outcomes for us. To deliver clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, and customers to our clients, generally we:

Our primary financial objective has been and remains creating revenue growth from sustainable sources, at target levels of profitability. Our primary financial objective is not to maximize profits, but rather to achieve target levels of profitability while investing in various growth initiatives, as we continue to believe we are in the early stages of a large, long-term market opportunity.

Our business derives its net revenue from fees earned through the delivery of qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, or customers and, to a lesser extent, display advertisements, or impressions. Through a vertical focus, targeted media presence and our technology platform, we are able to deliver targeted, measurable marketing results to our clients.

Our financial services client vertical represented 75%, 73% and 70% of net revenue in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018. Our education client vertical represented 13%, 15% and 19% of net revenue in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018. Our other client vertical, consisting of home services and business-to-business technology, represented 12%, 12% and 11% of net revenue in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018. We generated the majority of our revenue from sales to clients in the United States.

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Trends Affecting our Business

COVID-19

We continue to monitor COVID-19 for impacts that may unfavorably affect our business, such as reductions in client spending on marketing and advertising, drops in media availability or performance, deteriorating consumer spending, fluctuations in interest rates, and credit quality of our receivables. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected and may continue to affect our business operations, including our employees, clients, publishers, business partners, and communities, and there is substantial uncertainty in the nature and degree of its continued effects over time. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacts our business going forward will depend on numerous evolving factors we cannot reliably predict, including the duration and scope of the pandemic; governmental, business, and individuals' actions in response to the pandemic; and the impact on economic activity including the length and depth of the economic recession or financial market instability. These factors may adversely impact consumer, business, and government spending as well as customers' ability to pay for our services on an ongoing basis. Refer to Risk Factors (Part I, Item 1A of this Form 10-K) for a discussion of these factors and other risks.

Client Verticals

Our financial services client vertical has been challenged by a number of factors in the past, including the limited availability of high quality media at acceptable margins caused by the acquisition of media sources by competitors, increased competition for high quality media and changes in search engine algorithms. These factors may impact our business in the future again. To offset this impact, we have enhanced our product set to provide greater segmentation, matching, transparency and right pricing of media that have enabled better monetization to provide greater access to high quality media sources. Moreover, we have entered into strategic partnerships and acquisitions to increase and diversify our access to quality media and client budgets. Our financial services client vertical also benefits from more spending by clients in digital media and performance marketing as digital marketing continues to evolve.

Our education client vertical has been significantly challenged by regulations and enforcement activity affecting U.S. for-profit education institutions over the past several years. For example, in July 2015, the Federal Trade Commission initiated an investigation of a publicly traded U.S. for-profit education client with respect to its recruiting and enrollment practices. These and other similar regulatory and enforcement activities have affected and are expected to continue to affect our clients’ businesses and marketing practices, which have, and may continue to, result in a decrease in these clients’ spending with us and other vendors and fluctuations in the volume and mix of our business with these clients. To offset the impact these regulatory and investigative activities have had on the U.S. for-profit education clients, we have broadened our product set from our traditional lead business with the addition of better qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, and customers; we believe these new enhanced products better match U.S. for-profit education client needs in the current regulatory environment. We have also broadened our markets in education to include not-for-profit schools. Moreover, we have entered into strategic partnerships and acquisitions to increase and diversify our access to quality media and client budgets.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also affecting our client verticals to varying degrees. For example, within our financial services client vertical, certain lines of business including personal loans, credit cards, and banking, have seen and may continue to see reductions in near-term demand for our services due to weakening economic and employment conditions, and the uncertainty over the length and depth of the economic downturn.

Development, Acquisition and Retention of High Quality Targeted Media

One of the primary challenges of our business is finding or creating media that is high quality and targeted enough to attract prospects for our clients at costs that provide a sound financial outcome for us. In order to grow our business, we must be able to find, develop, or acquire and retain quality targeted media on a cost-effective basis. Consolidation of media sources, changes in search engine algorithms and increased competition for available media has, during some periods, limited and may continue to limit our ability to generate revenue at acceptable margins. To offset this impact, we have developed new sources of media, including entering into strategic partnerships with other marketing and media companies and acquisitions. Such partnerships include takeovers of performance marketing functions for large web media properties; backend monetization of unmatched traffic for clients with large media buys; and white label products for other performance marketing companies. We have also focused on growing our revenue from call center, email, mobile and social media traffic sources.

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Seasonality

Our results are subject to significant fluctuation as a result of seasonality. In particular, our quarters ending December 31 (our second fiscal quarter) are typically characterized by seasonal weakness. In our second fiscal quarters, there is generally lower availability of media during the holiday period on a cost effective basis and some of our clients have lower budgets. In our quarters ending March 31 (our third fiscal quarter), this trend generally reverses with better media availability and often new budgets at the beginning of the year for our clients with fiscal years ending December 31.

Our results are also subject to fluctuation as a result of seasonality in our clients’ business. For example, revenue in our home services client vertical is subject to cyclical and seasonal trends, as the consumer demand for home services typically rises during the spring and summer seasons and declines during the fall and winter seasons. Other factors affecting our clients’ businesses include macro factors such as credit availability in the market, interest rates, the strength of the economy and employment.

Regulations

Our revenue has fluctuated in part as a result of federal, state and industry-based regulations and developing standards with respect to the enforcement of those regulations. Our business is affected directly because we operate websites and conduct telemarketing and email marketing, and indirectly affected as our clients adjust their operations as a result of regulatory changes and enforcement activity that affect their industries.

Clients in our financial services vertical have been affected by laws and regulations and the increased enforcement of new and pre-existing laws and regulations. In addition, our education client vertical has been significantly affected by the adoption of regulations affecting U.S. for-profit education institutions over the past several years, and a high level of governmental scrutiny is expected to continue. The effect of these regulations, or any future regulations, may continue to result in fluctuations in the volume and mix of our business with these clients.

An example of a regulatory change that may affect our business is the amendment of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (the “TCPA”) that affects telemarketing calls. Our clients may make business decisions based on their own experiences with the TCPA regardless of our products and compliance practices. Those decisions may negatively affect our revenue and profitability.

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Basis of Presentation

Net Revenue

Our business generates revenue from fees earned through the delivery of qualified clicks, leads, inquiries, calls, applications, customers and, to a lesser extent, display advertisements, or impressions. We deliver targeted and measurable results through a vertical focus that we classify into the following client verticals: financial services, education and “other” (which includes home services and business-to-business technology).

Cost of Revenue

Cost of revenue consists primarily of media and marketing costs, personnel costs, amortization of intangible assets, depreciation expense and facilities expense. Media and marketing costs consist primarily of fees paid to third-party publishers, media owners or managers, or to strategic partners that are directly related to a revenue-generating event and of pay-per-click, or PPC, ad purchases from Internet search companies. We pay these third-party publishers, media owners or managers, strategic partners and Internet search companies on a revenue-share, a cost-per-lead, or CPL, cost-per-click, or CPC, or cost-per-thousand-impressions, or CPM, basis. Personnel costs include salaries, stock-based compensation expense, bonuses, commissions and employee benefit costs. Personnel costs are primarily related to individuals associated with maintaining our servers and websites, our call center operations, our editorial staff, client management, creative team, content, compliance group and media purchasing analysts. Costs associated with software incurred in the development phase or obtained for internal use are capitalized and amortized to cost of revenue over the software’s estimated useful life.

Operating Expenses

We classify our operating expenses into three categories: product development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative. Our operating expenses consist primarily of personnel costs and, to a lesser extent, professional services fees, facilities fees and other costs. Personnel costs for each category of operating expenses generally include salaries, stock-based compensation expense, bonuses, commissions and related taxes, and employee benefit costs.

Product Development. Product development expenses consist primarily of personnel costs, facilities fees and professional services fees related to the development and maintenance of our products and media management platform. We are constraining expenses generally to the extent practicable.

Sales and Marketing. Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel costs, facilities fees and professional services fees. We are constraining expenses generally to the extent practicable.

General and Administrative. General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel costs of our finance, legal, employee benefits and compliance, technical support and other administrative personnel, accounting and legal professional services fees, facilities fees and bad debt expense. We are constraining expenses generally to the extent practicable.

Interest and Other Income, Net

Interest and other income, net, consists primarily of interest expense, interest income, and other income and expense. Interest expense is related to imputed interest on post-closing payments related to our acquisitions in fiscal year 2019. We have no borrowing agreements outstanding as of June 30, 2020; however interest expense could increase if, among other things, we enter into a new borrowing agreement to manage liquidity or make additional acquisitions through debt financing. Interest income represents interest earned on our cash and cash equivalents, which may increase or decrease depending on market interest rates and the amounts invested. Other income and expense includes gains and losses on foreign currency exchange, gains and losses on divestitures that were not considered to be strategically important to our business, impairment of investment and other non-operating items.

(Provision for) Benefit from Income Taxes

We are subject to tax in the United States as well as other tax jurisdictions or countries in which we conduct business. Earnings from our limited non-U.S. activities are subject to local country income tax and may be subject to U.S. income tax.

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Results of Operations

The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations for the periods indicated:

Gross Profit

Net Revenue

Net revenue increased by $35.2 million, or 8%, in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019. Revenue from our financial services client vertical increased by $39.8 million, or 12%, primarily due to our enhanced product set that provides greater segmentation, transparency, and right pricing of media which have enabled access to more media and client budgets. The change in revenue from our financial services client vertical was also driven by increased revenue from our personal loans business, primarily as a result of the acquisition of AmOne completed in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019, and increased revenue from our credit cards and banking business driven by expanding media sources, offset by a decline in revenue from our mortgage business as a result of lower refinancing activity and the divestiture of the business completed in April 2020, and a decline in revenue in credit-driven business during the last fiscal quarter due to the impact of COVID-19. Revenue from our education client vertical decreased by $7.3 million, or 11%, primarily due to the loss of a large not-for-profit education client who entered federal receivership in January 2019. Revenues from our other client vertical increased by $2.7 million, or 5%, primarily due to an increase of $9.7 million in our home services client vertical attributable to increased client demand, offset by a decrease of $7.0 million as a result of the divestiture of the B2B client vertical completed in February 2020.

Net revenue increased by $50.8 million, or 13%, in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018. Revenue from our financial services client vertical increased by $47.3 million, or 17%, primarily due to our enhanced product set that provides greater

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segmentation, transparency, and right pricing of media which have enabled access to more media and client budgets. The change in revenue from our financial services client vertical was also driven by increased revenue from our personal loans business, primarily as a result of the acquisition of AmOne, and increased revenue from our credit cards business driven by expanding media sources, offset by a decline in revenue from our mortgage business due to lower refinancing activity. Revenue from our education client vertical revenue decreased by $8.8 million, or 11%, primarily due to the loss of a large not-for-profit education client who entered federal receivership, lower availability of high quality media at acceptable margins due to competitor acquisitions of media sources, and decreased client budgets due to school closures. Revenues from our other client vertical increased by $12.3 million, or 28%, primarily due to increased client demand in our home services and business-to-business technology client verticals.

Cost of Revenue and Gross Profit Margin

Cost of revenue increased by $44.4 million, or 11%, in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019. This was primarily driven by increased media and marketing costs of $34.0 million, increased personnel costs including stock-based compensation expense of $7.6 million, and increased amortization of intangible assets of $2.5 million. The increase in media and marketing costs was due to higher revenue volumes. The increase in personnel costs and stock-based compensation is primarily due to higher headcount as a result of the acquisitions completed in fiscal year 2019. The increase in amortization expense is primarily due to the acquisitions of intangible assets in fiscal year 2019. Gross profit margin, which is the difference between net revenue and cost of revenue as a percentage of net revenue, was 11% in fiscal year 2020 compared to 14% in fiscal year 2019. The decrease in gross profit margin was attributable to increased media fees and personnel costs as a percentage of revenue.

Cost of revenue increased by $47.6 million, or 14%, in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018. This was primarily driven by increased media and marketing costs of $34.4 million, increased personnel costs of $7.6 million, increased stock-based compensation expense of $3.4 million, and increased amortization of intangible assets of $2.1 million. The increase in media and marketing costs was due to higher revenue volumes. The increase in personnel costs and stock-based compensation is primarily due to higher headcount as a result of the acquisition of AmOne in October 2018. The increase in amortization expense is primarily due to the acquisitions of intangible assets in fiscal year 2019. Gross profit margin was 14% for both fiscal years 2019 and 2018.

Operating Expenses

Product Development Expenses

Product development expenses increased $1.9 million, or 15% in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019 primarily due to increased personnel costs of $1.8 million as a result of annual compensation increases.

Product development expenses decreased $1.5 million, or 11% in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 primarily due to decreased personnel costs of $0.7 million as a result of decreased incentive compensation expense, and decreased stock-based compensation expense of $0.3 million.

Sales and Marketing Expenses

Sales and marketing expenses increased $0.1 million, or 1% in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019.

Sales and marketing expenses decreased $1.7 million, or 16% in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 primarily due to decreased personnel costs of $1.5 million as a result of lower headcount and decreased incentive compensation expense.

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General and Administrative Expenses

General and administrative expenses decreased $6.6 million, or 22%, in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019, primarily due to a charge of $8.7 million for bad debt expense related to a large former education client recorded in fiscal year 2019, offset by increased personnel costs including stock-based compensation expense of $1.4 million, and increased facilities expense of $0.6 million.

General and administrative expenses increased $11.3 million, or 61%, in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018, primarily due to a charge of $8.7 million for bad debt expense related to a large former education client, increased personnel costs of $0.8 million related to stock-based compensation expense, increased professional services fees of $0.7 million associated with our acquisitions during fiscal year 2019, and increased business tax expense of $0.2 million.

Interest and Other Income, Net

NM – not meaningful

Interest income relates to interest earned on our cash and cash equivalents in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018.

Interest expense increased $0.3 million, or 90%, in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019 primarily due to increased imputed interest on a higher average outstanding balance of the post-closing payments related to our business acquisitions completed in fiscal year 2019. Interest expense increased $0.4 million, or 100%, in fiscal year 2019 compared to fiscal year 2018 due to imputed interest on post-closing payments related to our business acquisitions during fiscal year 2019.

Other income, net, was $12.9 million in fiscal year 2020 primarily due to a net disposition gain of $13.6 million recognized from the business divestitures completed in fiscal year 2020. Other income, net, was immaterial in fiscal year 2019. Other income, net, was $0.7 million in fiscal year 2018 primarily due to income from the sale of other assets and domain names that were not considered strategically important to our business.

(Provision for) Benefit from Income Taxes

We recorded a provision for income taxes of $0.6 million in fiscal year 2020, primarily as a result of deferred federal and state income taxes of $3.5 million, offset by an expected tax refund of $3.1 million to be received from the California Franchise Tax Board, based on a settlement reached in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020.

We recorded a valuation allowance against the majority of our deferred tax assets at the end of fiscal year 2014. In the second quarter of fiscal year 2019, due to the preponderance of positive evidence, including our cumulative profit before taxes and future forecasts of continued profitability in the United States, we determined that sufficient positive evidence existed to conclude that substantially all of our valuation allowance was no longer needed. Accordingly, we recorded a one-time non-cash benefit from income taxes of $49.4 million related to the release of the valuation allowance for the majority of our federal and states deferred tax assets.

We recorded a provision for income taxes of $0.6 million in fiscal year 2018, primarily as a result of current state and foreign income taxes.

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Our effective tax rate was 3.1%, (482.9%) and 3.5% in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018. The change in the effective tax rate in fiscal year 2019 was primarily due to the release of the valuation allowance related to the United States federal and state deferred tax assets with the exception of California research and development tax credits and the benefit of excess share-based compensation tax deductions.

Selected Quarterly Financial Data

The following table sets forth our unaudited quarterly condensed consolidated statements of operations for the eight quarters ended June 30, 2020. We have prepared the statements of operations for each of these quarters on the same basis as the audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this report and, in the opinion of management, each statement of operations includes all adjustments, consisting solely of normal recurring adjustments, necessary for the fair statement of the results of operations for these periods. This information should be read in conjunction with the audited consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this report. These quarterly operating results are not necessarily indicative of our operating results for any future period.