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UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549
FORM 10-K
(Mark One)
| | | | | |
☒ | ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 |
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021
OR
| | | | | |
☐ | TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 |
For the transition period from to
Commission File Number 001-40420
VIMEO, INC.
(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter)
Delaware
(State or Other Jurisdiction of
Incorporation or Organization)
85-4334195
(I.R.S. Employer
Identification Number)
555 West 18th Street
New York, New York 10011
(Address of principal executive offices, including Zip Code)
(212) 314-7300
(Registrant's telephone number, including area code)
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Title of each class | | Trading Symbol | | Name of each exchange on which registered |
Common Stock, par value $0.01 per share | | VMEO | | The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (Nasdaq Global Select Market) |
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:
None
Indicate by a check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☐ 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.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Large Accelerated filer | ☐ | Accelerated filer | ☐ | Non-accelerated filer | ☒ | Smaller reporting company | ☐ |
| | | | | | Emerging growth company | ☒ |
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☒
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act): Yes ☐ No ☒
As of June 30, 2021, the aggregate market value of shares of Vimeo common stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant (based upon the closing sale prices of such shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on June 30, 2021) was approximately $7.3 billion. In determining the market value of non-affiliate common stock, shares of the registrant’s common stock beneficially owned by officers, directors and affiliates have been excluded. This determination of affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes.
As of February 18, 2022, the following shares of the registrant’s common stock were outstanding:
| | | | | |
Common Stock | 156,794,851 | |
Class B common stock | 9,399,250 | |
Total | 166,194,101 | |
Table of Contents
SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains "forward looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "will," "may, "could," "should," "would," "anticipates," "estimates," "expects," "plans," "projects," "forecasts," "intends," "targets," "seeks" and "believes," as well as variations of these words, among others, generally identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, among others, statements relating to Vimeo’s future results of operations and financial condition, business strategy, and plans and objectives of management for future operations.
Forward-looking statements are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results could differ materially from those contained in or implied by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to:
•our limited operating history as a pure software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) company and our limited history of selling such plans on a sales-assisted basis,
•we have a history of losses,
•our prior rapid growth may not be indicative of future performance,
•our total addressable market may prove to be smaller than we expect,
•our ability to read data and make forecasts may be limited,
•we may need additional funding as we continue to invest in research and development and expand internationally,
•we may not have the right product/market fit,
•we may not be able to attract free users or paid subscribers,
•we may not be able to convert our free users into subscribers,
•competition in our market is intense,
•we may not be able to scale our business effectively,
•we may experience service interruptions,
•hosting and delivery costs may increase unexpectedly, our success depends on our ability to reach customers and acquire subscribers through digital app stores
•our business involves hosting large quantities of user content,
•we may face liability for hosting a variety of tortious or unlawful materials,
•we collect, store and process large amounts of content and personal information and any loss of or unauthorized access to such data could materially impact our business,
•the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business,
•we have been the target of cyberattacks by malicious actors, and
•the risks described in the section titled "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risk factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for our management to predict all risk factors nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ from those contained in, or implied by, any forward-looking statements.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We cannot assure you that the events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K and the documents that we reference in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and have filed as exhibits to this report with the understanding that our actual future results, levels of activity, performance, and achievements may be materially different from what we expect. Any forward-looking statements only speak as of the date of this document, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking information or statements, whether written or oral, to reflect any change, except as required by law. All forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements.
PART I
Item 1. Business
For the purpose of the following business description about Vimeo, “we,” “our” or “us” refers to Vimeo.com, Inc. (formerly known as Vimeo, Inc.) with respect to periods prior to the completion of the Spin-off and to Vimeo, Inc. (formerly known as Vimeo Holdings, Inc.) with respect to periods following the completion of the Spin-off.
Overview
Our mission
Our mission is to enable professional-quality video for all.
We believe that we can empower every professional, team and organization to use video, with tools that are far easier and more effective than ever before.
Who we are
We are the world’s leading all-in-one video software solution, providing the full breadth of video tools through a software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) model.
We provide a single turnkey solution to create, collaborate and communicate with video. Businesses face significant barriers to use video today, including time, cost, lack of technical expertise and the need to pay for and manage multiple software vendors. Our cloud-based software eliminates these barriers and solves essential video needs, including:
•Creation: Record, produce, edit and stream videos, for both live and on-demand viewing.
•Collaboration: Share videos privately with clients and teams, review and comment on work-in-progress videos and manage team access and permissions.
•Distribution: Share videos publicly, including: publishing on a website, blog, marketplace or social media platform, broadcasting through a secure corporate portal, or building a branded video destination or storefront.
•Hosting: Organize and manage a central video library across users and teams, in one centralized location.
•Marketing: Use video to engage customers.
•Monetization: Monetize video through a subscription fee, pay-per-view model or third-party advertising, across devices, currencies and payment methods.
•Analytics: Measure video performance across platforms, including tracking viewer engagement and drop-off rates, sources of traffic and customer leads.
We serve a growing community of over 260 million registered users (those users who have created an account with us using an email address) in over 190 countries. Our users include creative professionals, small businesses, marketers, agencies, schools, nonprofits and large organizations. They range from the Emmy-nominated animator working on her next short, to the beauty entrepreneur creating videos for Instagram and her Shopify store, to the Fortune 500 company live streaming town halls and remotely training sales associates at stores around the world.
We operate at a significant scale. As of December 31, 2021, our video player was embedded on millions of websites and is powering billions of views a month, with more than 300,000 new videos being uploaded to our platform each day. Our brand is well known and highly regarded, and most of our new users find us organically. We are also regarded as an industry leader in video technology, having set new standards in adopting higher resolutions, advanced imaging and audio protocols, new video compression formats and intelligent streaming algorithms.
Businesses need video
In the past decade, video has gone from a form of entertainment to the most engaging and effective medium to communicate ideas, build brands, promote products and connect with each other. This is because video is a far richer and more expressive medium than text or static images. As consumers spend more time online and as workforces become more distributed, businesses need to keep pace with their customers and employees, who increasingly expect to consume engaging video content.
Yet for too many businesses, professional-quality video remains out of reach due to lack of time, budget and expertise. For example:
•the average professionally-produced video takes weeks to make and costs thousands of dollars, but has a shelf life on social media of just a few days. Simply shooting content on one’s phone won’t produce a high-quality product demo, brand video or Facebook ad given the need to edit and stitch together multiple shots and add branding, music, voice-over and motion graphics.
•collaborating on video projects is inefficient and full of friction, often requiring multiple pieces of software, shared passwords, expensive licenses and wasted time sharing feedback in back-and-forth email chains.
•producing a live event typically requires expensive hardware and a professional production team. Even the largest companies struggle today to make their town halls, conferences, webinars and training programs high-quality and engaging.
•companies lack a centralized, secure video library where all their videos are intuitively organized and easily searchable. They also lack robust and centralized video analytics to measure the return on their video investment across platforms and teams.
Vimeo solves essential video needs
We offer a SaaS solution that spans the full breadth of a business’s video needs. Our cloud-based software enables users to create, collaborate and communicate with video, eliminating the need to pay for multiple software providers and removing the barriers of time, budget and technical expertise for a wide range of use cases. For example:
•a global company can integrate video across all of its corporate communications, from town halls and training to virtual conferences and product launches;
•any employee in an organization can live stream engaging events, whether to market a product, host a town hall with employees or educate customers;
•a flower shop owner can promote their store re-opening on social media with professional-looking videos they create on their phone in a few clicks;
•a fitness studio can launch its own video channel to stream classes in TV-quality in a matter of minutes; and
•a freelancer or creative agency can showcase their portfolio, collaborate with clients and deliver projects securely, all from a single account.
Trends in Our Favor
We believe that we are witnessing the rapid proliferation of video into every aspect of business communication. We expect many more businesses to require video in the future, aided by the following secular trends:
•Consumers expect engaging video. Consumers increasingly expect engaging and real-time video from both brands and employers. We expect the marked growth of self-produced video on social media platforms to put more pressure on businesses to produce professional-quality videos for these platforms as well. At work, employees are increasingly driving IT modernization as they demand the latest technologies from their personal lives in their workplace.
•Video works better than image and text. Video is the most engaging medium. A 2018 analysis by Twitter showed that social media posts with video attract 10 times more engagement than those without, and a 2018 analysis by LinkedIn showed that videos are shared 20 times more often than other content formats. A 2020 study on advertising by Amazon shows that video increases clicks, conversion rates and visitor time-on-site, which can assist with both driving traffic and search engine optimization (SEO).
•The nature of work is changing, and organizations must adapt. As workforces become more distributed and teams rely more on software to interact with their colleagues, video has become a critical tool to increase employee engagement, productivity and retention. A 2020 study completed by GlobalWebIndex for Vimeo shows that employees at companies that use video are 75% more likely to rate employee engagement highly and 72% more likely to rate productivity highly. Beyond distributed teams, the COVID-19 pandemic has likely ignited a permanent trend towards workplace flexibility.
•Video is broadly distributed. In the past, online video was primarily viewed on desktop computers that required a physical high-speed Internet connection. Today, mobile phones and tablets enable high-definition video recording and playback, 5G network coverage is expanding, and connected TVs have made their way to many households. With consumers spending an average of over six hours a day watching online video content (based upon 2020 data from Nielsen), we expect more viewing surfaces to emerge in the future, from emerging platforms to virtual reality headsets to augmented reality devices to self-driving cars. As audiences engage on more devices, businesses will increasingly need a central hub to publish video across these platforms.
Our Market Opportunity
Target customers
Our target customers include small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs), larger enterprises, marketers, agencies and creative professionals.
We believe that anyone who produces video content, markets to customers, works with distributed teams or hosts in-person experiences is a potential Vimeo user. We further believe that once our users begin to experience the benefits of our
platform, they tend to greatly expand their use of video internally and externally. As a result, we expect that use of our platform will increase the broader market penetration of video across all customer types and use cases.
Geographic market
Our market is global. Our products are used by customers in over 190 countries.
Total addressable market
Based on our internal data, in 2021 we estimated our total addressable market to be approximately $40 billion, growing to $70 billion in 2024. While our opportunity includes a range of customer types, we believe the largest market segments are:
•Small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) who use video for marketing to consumers. IDC estimates the number of global SMBs to be 348 million. We estimate that there is an approximately $20 billion market of SMBs willing to pay for video software, aided by the growing need for brands of all sizes to reach their customers on social media and increase engagement on their websites and marketplaces. We expect this market to grow to approximately $25 billion in 2024.
•Enterprises who use video for internal and external communications. CapIQ estimates that there are more than one million global enterprises with annual revenues above $10 million. We believe every one of these organizations will look to use video, and that as our product portfolio expands to cover more use cases, departments and employees within the enterprise, we can materially expand both our footprint and contract value. We estimate the addressable market for enterprises to be currently at approximately $20 billion and expect it to grow to approximately $45 billion in 2024.
Our Business Model and Services
We earn revenue primarily through a SaaS business model, selling subscriptions to our cloud-based software on an annual or monthly basis. We employ a “freemium” pricing strategy, offering free membership and access to our video tools alongside paid subscription plans for advanced video capabilities. As of December 31, 2021, over 95% of our subscribers purchased plans without ever speaking to customer support or going through a salesperson.
Basic (free) memberships
Anyone can access a basic (free) membership to Vimeo by signing up with an email address. With a basic membership, users can create, record, upload and share videos through our website and native apps for free. Our free users are subject to weekly and total caps on uploaded videos, and do not have access to advanced video capabilities such as live streaming or the ability to add team members. We provide opportunities to upgrade to a paid subscription at natural points in the user’s experience, such as when a free user nears or hits an uploaded video cap. We also highlight the advanced video capabilities of our subscription plans natively within our free user product experience.
Self-serve subscription plans
We offer paid subscription plans on a “self-serve” basis, meaning that users can sign up directly through our website or apps and pay subscription fees with a credit card or an in-app purchase mechanism. We charge fees that typically range from $7 per month to $900 per year for features that vary depending on the plan type. These features include video creation, collaboration, distribution, hosting, marketing, monetization and analytics. We also offer the ability to add multiple team members to our higher-priced plans. As of December 31, 2021, nearly 15% of our subscribers had added team members.
Sales-assisted subscription plans
We sell subscription plans through our sales force. These "sales-assisted" plans provide additional features beyond our self-serve plans, plus options for dedicated support, account management, service level agreements and professional live event services. Our sales-assisted contracts range from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and for the quarter ended December 31, 2021, nearly 80% of our new sales-assisted contracts came from customers who were existing free users or self-serve subscribers first. As of December 31, 2021, sales-assisted customers represented 30% of our revenue. Our sales-assisted plans include:
•Vimeo Enterprise: Vimeo’s video offering for large organizations that includes intuitive tools to record and upload content, secure live streaming of events, a corporate video library, webinar functionality, single-sign-on support, content delivery network optimization to improve quality-of-service in corporate networks, robust analytics, and the ability to use our technology on a white-label basis (so that a company’s own branding is featured instead of Vimeo’s).
•Vimeo OTT: an over-the-top (OTT) video monetization solution that allows customers to launch and run their own video streaming channel directly to their audience through a branded web portal, mobile apps and Internet-enabled TV apps. Our customers have a direct relationship with the end viewers of their content, and we handle everything from app development to billing to customer support. Customers may offer their videos on a subscription basis, an à la carte basis, an ad-supported basis or for free.
•Vimeo Custom: plans optimized for high-volume users, e.g., plans that offer significantly higher storage or bandwidth.
Sales and Marketing
We acquire subscribers primarily through: (1) conversion of free users to subscribers through organic efforts, including word-of-mouth referrals and in-product messaging; (2) acquisition of subscribers through marketing spend, primarily through digital media channels; (3) our sales force (for sales-assisted customers); and (4) acquisition of subscribers through third party partnerships and integrations.
Key Benefits to Customers
We believe that our solutions provide the following benefits to our customers:
•Centralized video solution. We provide an integrated video software solution that enables video creation, hosting, distribution and measurement in one interface. Our platform eliminates the need to purchase and manage multiple software providers for editing, storage, publishing and analytics.
•Scalable, reliable video delivery. Our video player delivers a best-in-class playback and live streaming experience for audiences of all sizes, and we optimize video delivery across devices, geographies, bandwidth and network performance. Our technology enables streaming of high dynamic range (HDR) video in up to 8K resolution, and is built to scale with organizations as their needs advance.
•Easy to use. We provide a self-serve and intuitive interface that can be easily navigated by even first-time users. The vast majority of our users never speak to a customer support agent or salesperson. Our platform removes the need for video-specific expertise and high-touch user support and troubleshooting.
•Fast setup, no hardware required. Our cloud-based software runs natively on desktop and mobile devices without requiring any specialized hardware or need to download third-party software.
•Attractive return on investment. We provide the advanced capabilities of a live TV studio (on-screen graphics, video switching, audio mixing, audience Q&A and polls) and sophisticated marketing tools (branding customization, in-video calls-to-action, email capture and cross-platform distribution) at an accessible price point. For large organizations, switching to our platform reduces the time and cost associated with expensive on-premises infrastructure and continual maintenance.
•Fully branded, customizable experience. We enable subscribers to fully customize the video player experience and exercise complete control over their content and who sees it. We also enable subscribers to build branded video channels, destinations and storefronts off Vimeo, so they can directly own the relationship with their viewers.
•Interoperable and integrated. Vimeo integrates with cloud-based software applications such as Shopify, GoDaddy, Dropbox, Google, Slack, Adobe, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Asana and Figma. We also have an ecosystem of distribution partners where we enable native publishing of videos, including Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and TikTok.
•Developer-friendly. We enable anyone to build on top of our platform. Our flexible video APIs (application programming interfaces) allow external developers and engineering teams to build their own applications using our technology.
•Robust customer support. We offer 24/7/365 support globally, through live chat, email, telephone and video. For the year ended December 31, 2021, our customer support team achieved a customer satisfaction score (CSAT) of over 90%. We are committed to providing our users with best-in-class support, as we believe this is a critical driver of our ability to build long-term relationships with them.
Our Growth Strategy
We focus on the following areas to drive our growth:
•Grow our free user base: Our adoption is driven by a virtuous cycle of users collaborating on and sharing videos. Every time a free user uploads a video that someone else watches, that viewer experiences a part of our platform. As a result, our addressable customer base expands each time our users publish or broadcast videos to their audience, privately share Vimeo links, collaborate with their team on a video project or embed Vimeo’s video player on another platform. These actions attract viewers, who may then decide to register and become users. Our player is embedded on millions of websites and has powered over a hundred billion views.
•Convert free users into subscribers: We provide a high-quality free product with numerous features that have the potential to be used repeatedly, and we offer price- and feature-optimized tiering of our subscription plans to drive organic conversion of free users to subscribers over time.
•Extend customer value: We seek to employ a “land and expand” strategy where we inspire our existing subscribers to increase video adoption and usage and upgrade to higher-priced plans over time. For sales-assisted customers, we seek to expand the number of employees, teams and departments using our platform and increase contract value organization-wide.
•Product innovation: We continuously innovate and improve our platform by investing in research and development, customer insights and business intelligence analytics. We strive to make both our free and paid experiences more compelling so that our users find increasing value in our services.
•Partnerships: We seek to grow our presence on third-party platforms with native product integrations, and encourage third-party platforms to natively integrate their software and tools with us.
•International: We seek to attract more subscribers outside of the U.S. through localized product, marketing and sales efforts in other countries.
•Sales and marketing: We intend to increase investments in marketing and in our sales team to reach and convert more customers. We monitor our sales and marketing spend and return on investment closely to ensure that we are acquiring customers in an efficient manner.
Competition and Competitive Advantages
Competition
Due to the breadth of our all-in-one video solution, we face competition from a range of companies that provide cloud-based video software tools:
•We compete with large social media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, which allow users to upload and share videos for free. While these platforms provide far fewer video capabilities, they offer a large built-in audience, social media-specific features, and the ability to monetize video plays through advertising. We currently partner with the majority of these platforms and view our role as the agnostic distribution platform to help businesses create and publish content across social media.
•We compete with traditional online video distributors that provide video hosting, content management, distribution, analytics, and in-stream advertisements to larger customers. Operators of these services tend to focus on large media organizations and often also provide custom solutions. We further compete with targeted video point solutions that offer a subset of video capabilities such as screen recording or event-based live streaming.
•As we expand more into enterprise capabilities, we expect to compete more with two-way video communications software such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. These services allow multiple users to communicate with each other in real time via video and are increasingly adding features that overlap with our platform, including support for webinars and centralized video management. We currently offer integrations and partnerships with many of these companies.
•Finally, we face competition from services that were not traditionally video-centric, such as Slack (real-time text-based communications), Dropbox (cloud storage), and Canva (graphic design). These services have increasingly added support for video features including screen recording, video hosting and playback, and video creation. We currently offer integrations and partnerships with many of these companies as well.
Competitive advantages
We believe that our competitive advantages include:
•Centralized video solution. Vimeo is unique in that we provide an integrated video software solution that eliminates the need to connect and pay for multiple software providers for video creation, hosting, distribution and analytics. The breadth of our tools enables us to offer more value at a competitive price point, and serve a broader range of customer types and use cases.
•Agnostic distribution: Social media platforms are overwhelmingly focused on increasing advertising dollars through viewership on their own properties. However, most businesses need and want to distribute their videos across multiple (if not all) platforms to reach the highest number of potential customers. We are an agnostic provider who can facilitate distribution across these platforms as well as on websites, apps and marketplaces. Our business model is aligned with our users’ need to put their videos everywhere, and as a result we can provide more distribution opportunities than social media platforms can or are likely to provide. We therefore view social media platforms as our partners rather than competitors, and we already enable native distribution from Vimeo to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.
•Ad-free, fully branded experience. Unlike social media platforms, we offer our free users an ad-free video player, and enable subscribers to fully customize the video player experience and exercise complete control over their content. Because we don’t monetize audiences through advertising, we never try to drive traffic away from our users’ content or website. We further enable subscribers to build branded video channels, destinations and storefronts off Vimeo, so they can directly own the relationship with their viewers.
•High-quality product. Our video player delivers a best-in-class playback and live streaming experience for audiences of all sizes, optimized across devices, geographies, bandwidth and network performance. Our technology enables streaming of high dynamic range (HDR) video in up to 8K resolution, and is built to scale with organizations as their needs advance.
•Economies of scale. As we store and deliver more video, we are able to reduce our variable costs. The significant scale at which we operate has enabled us to improve our margins without increasing our prices. For example, our gross margin reached 75% for the quarter ended December 31, 2021. This further allows us to offer accessible pricing in areas that have been historically cost-prohibitive, such as professional-quality live streaming, over-the-top (OTT) delivery and 8K/HDR video streaming.
•Cross-platform data. As a result of our scale, we have deep insight into video engagement and performance across platforms. We expect to use this data over time to provide personalized insights, dynamically optimize content, improve video quality and recommend which types of videos to make, when and for which platform. Our ability to deliver smarter products and insights for our users increases with the more data we collect, and the amount of data we collect increases as our users grow.
•Creative community. Many creatives whose work we have recognized as Staff Picks have said that Vimeo’s recognition helped them launch their video careers, and the majority of them showcased their work primarily on Vimeo. We believe that the diversity, size and engagement of our creative community is an asset that is difficult for others to replicate.
Technology
We use proprietary video creation, storage, delivery and playback technology that we have developed or acquired over the past 17 years. We are at the forefront of adopting next-generation video codecs like HEVC and AV1, which use advanced data compression and state-of-the-art prediction techniques to increase video playback quality.
We invest heavily in research and development to drive product improvements and innovation. As of December 31, 2021, over 40% of our employees were in product and engineering roles. The majority of our development work is done in-house, complemented by open-source software, off-the-shelf commercial software, and proprietary vendor-developed software.
Acquisitions
In 2016, we acquired VHX, a provider of over-the-top OTT streaming and monetization services. In 2017, we acquired Livestream, a provider of professional live streaming services. In 2019, we acquired Magisto, a provider of AI-driven video creation and editing tools. Today each of these capabilities is available through the Vimeo platform. In 2021, we acquired WIREWAX, a provider of interactive and shoppable video tools, and Wibbitz, a provider of video creation tools.
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property includes registered trademarks, such as VIMEO, in the U.S. and over 15 other countries; 18 U.S. patents that claim various technologies that we may use in our operations, including patents directed to live video streaming and video editing using artificial intelligence technologies, with expiration dates ranging from 2028 to 2039; copyrights in our source code, website, apps and creative assets; over 220 domain names, including Vimeo.com and Livestream.com; and trade secrets.
Human Capital
As a software technology company, our employees are our number one resource. As of December 31, 2021, we had 1,219 full-time employees, of whom 474 were based outside of the U.S. None of our employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Overall, we consider our relations with employees to be good.
Our Company Culture
We believe that our company culture is a critical driver of our business success. We are a mission-driven company and have designed a set of guiding principles, along with our programs and processes, to help us maximize the potential of every individual in our company. Our principles are:
•Start with Users.
•Ask Why.
•Aim High.
•Own It.
•Be Real.
We believe this approach fosters a culture that is transparent, innovative and ambitious, all of which enable us to drive long-term customer value and achieve competitive differentiation.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
We believe our impact is greatest when our workforce represents the diverse and global community that we serve. Accordingly, we view diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts as integral to our success. We have a robust DE&I program that is headed by a dedicated head of DE&I, who reports to our Chief People Officer. Our DE&I efforts include:
•Hiring practices: We use a number of techniques, primarily directed toward expanding our pipeline, to achieve a diverse workforce. Beginning in 2020, we started implementing, across selected departments in the U.S., a goal of ensuring that women, BIPOC (black, indigenous and people of color), LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, genderqueer, queer, intersexed, agender and asexual) and candidates with disabilities comprise a minimum of 30% of candidates who reach the hiring manager interview stage of our hiring process.
•Employee community (resource) groups (ECGs): ECGs at Vimeo are employee-led and organizationally-supported groups of employees that are drawn together by shared characteristics (such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) or shared interests. Participation is open to all. Each ECG has a leader and an executive sponsor from our leadership team. ECGs serve as a resource, point of connection, and community for underrepresented employees and their allies, and are an important part of building and maintaining an equitable, diverse and inclusive workforce and community. ECGs also play an integral role in helping Vimeo reach its strategic DE&I goals as they relate to our business operations, our workplace and our community.
•Cultural education, bias mitigation, and allyship: We provide regular programming on cultural awareness, bias mitigation, and allyship by partnering with third parties. All new hires are required to participate in unconscious bias training.
•Skill development: We provide mentoring opportunities for employees as well as learning and development resources, including an annual stipend for educational activities relevant to one’s job. In addition, we provide regular manager training and coaching opportunities to continue to build skills.
As of December 31, 2021, our U.S. workforce was, based upon employee self-identification, 59% white, 15% Asian, 4% of two or more racial groups, 6% black, 7% of Hispanic or Latin background, and 0.3% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; 9% declined to self-identify. As of the same date, our workforce was 60% male, 39% female, and 1% non-binary. We publicly publish metrics on these and other measures of diversity at least once annually.
Compensation
We believe in a performance-based culture and have structured our compensation packages to reflect that. Employees are paid either a salary or on an hourly basis depending on their job duties and legal requirements. For non-sales salaried employees, we set targets for discretionary bonuses as a percentage of base salary, and we determine year-end bonuses based upon a combination of company performance, team performance, and individual performance. Sales-based employees are entitled to commissions based upon sales.
We maintain an employee equity program in which we grant equity to all full-time employees and permanent part-time employees who regularly work at least 70% of a workweek. We presently grant restricted stock units (RSUs) through a program that we call the “YourChoice RSU” program, which gives employees the ability to choose between alternative RSU awards of different sizes and vesting periods and provides for refresh grants at regular intervals. We expect to continue providing employees with equity.
In addition to these compensation methods, we provide a broad range of benefits, including comprehensive health and retirement benefits, that we believe meet or exceed market levels. For example, for U.S. full-time employees, we match all pre-tax contributions by our employees to our 401(k) plan, as well as post-tax contributions by our employees to Roth individual retirement accounts, dollar for dollar in an amount of up to 10% of an employee’s base salary (subject to an annual cap).
We are committed to providing competitive and equitable pay. We base our compensation on market data and conduct evaluations of our salary bands and compensation practices with a third-party consultant on a regular basis to determine the competitiveness and fairness of our packages.
Talent development
We are committed to empowering our people with career advancement and learning opportunities. We do this by providing, among other things: guidance on expectations for job levels; bi-annual employee evaluations; mentoring programs; training for new managers; professional and leadership development training for ECG leaders; one-on-one coaching for leadership roles; and a stipend for annual learning and development opportunities.
Government Regulation
We are subject to domestic and foreign laws that affect companies conducting business on the internet generally, including laws relating to the liability of providers of online services for their operations and the activities of their users.
Because we host user-uploaded content, we may be subject to laws concerning such content. In the U.S., we rely, to a significant degree, on laws that limit the liability of online providers for user-uploaded content, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Countries outside the U.S. generally do not provide as robust protections for online providers and may instead regulate such entities to a higher degree. For example, in certain countries, online providers may be liable for hosting certain types of content or may be required to remove such content within a short period of time upon notice. We or our customers may also be subject to laws that regulate
streaming services or online platforms, such as the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive or EU Regulation 2019/1150, which regulates platform-to-business relations.
Because we receive, store and use a substantial amount of information received from or generated by our users, we are also impacted by laws and regulations governing privacy and data security in the U.S. and worldwide. Examples of such regimes include Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the EU’s General Data Protection Law (GDPR), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These laws generally regulate the collection, storage, transfer and use of personal information.
Due to our subscription business model, we are subject to a variety of laws governing online transactions, payment card transactions and the automatic renewal of online agreements. In the U.S., these matters are regulated by, among other things, the federal Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (ROSCA) and various state laws.
As a U.S.-based company with foreign offices, we are subject to a variety of foreign laws governing our foreign operations, as well as U.S. laws that restrict trade and certain practices, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Available Information
Our website is located at https://www.vimeo.com, and our investor relations website is located at https://www.investors.vimeo.com. Copies of our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to these reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available, free of charge, on our investor relations website as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are filed with, or furnished to, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC. The SEC also maintains a website at http://www.sec.gov that contains our SEC filings and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.
We webcast our earnings calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we provide notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, press and earnings releases, and blogs as part of our investor relations website. We have used, and intend to continue to use, our investor relations website as means of disclosing material nonpublic information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Further corporate governance information, including our board committee charters and code of conduct, is also available on our investor relations website under the heading “Governance.” The contents of our websites are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.
Item 1A. Risk Factors
Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and related notes, before making a decision to invest in our securities. The risks and uncertainties described below may not be the only ones we face. If any of the risks actually occur, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. In that event, the market price of our common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment.
Risks Related to Our Business and Strategy
We have a limited operating history as a pure software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) company and a limited history of selling such plans on a sales-assisted basis.
In our 16-year history, we have explored or experimented with various service offerings, including a proprietary streaming service, and various monetization methods, including advertising, transactions and subscriptions. In 2008, we began selling SaaS subscription plans on a “self-serve” basis (i.e., directly through online means). In 2017, we decided to focus on selling SaaS subscriptions, including on a sales-assisted basis (i.e., through a sales force). Since then, we have significantly increased our sales headcount and expect to continue to grow the sales function. As a result of our limited experience with sales-assisted operations, we may experience inefficiencies and our cost of acquiring customers could decline relative to the lifetime revenue of those customers.
We have a history of losses.
We have not earned a profit in any full fiscal year since our inception, and we cannot be certain as to when or if we will achieve or maintain profitability. Because the market for SaaS video services is rapidly evolving and highly competitive, we
must continue to invest in research and development. If such investment does not allow us to scale or attract and retain users and subscribers, we will not be able to achieve profitability.
We may need additional funding as we continue to grow our business.
Our cash flow may be insufficient to fund the capital investments we need to make to grow our business. We may need to raise additional funds by way of a primary offering of shares of our common stock, which would dilute existing stockholders. We may also raise additional funds through additional borrowings. To obtain such funding, we may need to pledge assets and agree to certain financial covenants.
Our prior rapid growth may not be indicative of future performance.
We experienced rapid growth during 2020 and the first half of 2021. Since then, we have since seen our revenue growth rate decline. Many factors may contribute to declines in our growth rate, including high prior period growth, decreased demand associated with the reduction in social distancing efforts, increased competition, slowing demand for our platform, a failure by us to continue capitalizing on growth opportunities, and the maturation of our business, among others. If our growth rate does not increase or declines further, investors’ perceptions of our business and the trading price of our common stock could be adversely affected.
We believe our revenue growth depends on a number of factors, including, but not limited to:
•our reputation and brand recognition;
•demand for the types of video services we offer;
•the actual and perceived quality, integrity and value of the video services we provide;
•our development and timely deployment of innovative video services that provide value to our users and subscribers;
•our ability to price our video services competitively;
•our ability to acquire new subscribers sustainably, through a combination of organic efforts (continuing to convert a meaningful portion of our free user base into paying subscribers), paid acquisition (marketing), sales efforts (for sales-assisted) and partnerships;
•our ability to retain and upsell existing subscribers by continuing to provide them with value;
•the scalability of our technology platform;
•the quality of our support and onboarding efforts for users and subscribers;
•the growth of our employee base in a highly competitive market for talent;
•our ability to expand internationally;
•our ability to maintain the security and reliability of our platform;
•our ability to successfully integrate new businesses that we acquire;
•changes in laws that allow us to host and distribute large quantities of user and subscriber content; and
•domestic and global macroeconomic conditions.
Any one or more of the above factors could cause our revenue growth to be harmed.
Our total addressable market may prove to be smaller than we expect.
While we believe, based primarily upon internal data, that all businesses will need video to succeed, the number of entities that are willing and able to pay fees for software-based video services may not be as large as we expect. We have not engaged a third party to conduct research to validate our data and thesis.
Our ability to read data and make forecasts may be limited.
We rely heavily on data to run our business and make strategic decisions, including decisions about capital deployment. If we misread signals or lack the ability to accurately forecast demand, we may make the wrong decisions. In hindsight, we have learned that part of the increased demand associated with the COVID-19 pandemic particularly for livestreaming and from segments such as faith and fitness, was specific to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and could not be sustained when social distancing measures receded.
We may need additional funding as we continue to invest in research and development and expand internationally.
Our cash flow may be insufficient to fund the capital investments we need to make to grow our business. We may need to raise additional funds by way of a primary offering of shares of our common stock, which would dilute existing stockholders. We may also raise additional funds through additional borrowings. To obtain such funding, we may need to pledge assets and agree to certain financial covenants.
We may not have the right product/market fit.
Our business depends upon attracting new subscribers and retaining existing ones. To do so, we must provide products with an attractive value proposition. We may fail to do that if we:
•fail to innovate and provide new and useful features that our users and subscribers want;
•release products that fail to reliably operate (due to bugs or service interruptions);
•release products too late relative to competitors;
•price our products in an uncompetitive manner; or
•fail to educate our users and subscribers about our features.
We may not be able to attract free users or paid subscribers.
We rely on both organic means (i.e., search engine optimization, word of mouth, etc.) and paid marketing (i.e., online advertisements) to attract new customers, whether paid or unpaid. We may fail to attract new customers if:
•we do not have products with compelling features that customers want;
•we fail to price our products in a competitive manner;
•organic traffic to our web properties declines;
•or we fail to reach potential paid subscribers through our advertising.
We may not be able to convert our free users into subscribers.
An essential part of our strategy for attracting subscribers depends upon offering basic services for free and converting a certain portion of our free users into subscribers over time. While a majority of our subscribers began as free users, only a small percentage of free users become paying users over time. Our ability to convert users into subscribers at this or a higher rate may not materialize if:
•the number of free users we attract declines, which could occur due to, among other things, reduced visibility of our brand or services;
•we overestimate the number of free users who have the propensity to pay due to issues with duplicative, fraudulent or spam accounts;
•our free users do not consistently use the free product, either because they are unaware of the features we offer or because the features are not perceived as useful;
•we fail to optimize the conversion of free users by communicating the value of our subscription plans;
•we experience headwinds in our international expansion due to variety of reasons, including language and cultural barriers, as well as unfavorable regulatory environments; or
•our service offerings and pricing are not competitive.
If our efforts to convert free users into subscribers do not succeed, we will have to rely more heavily on paid marketing efforts to acquire new subscribers and therefore achieve growth. Such a shift would cause us to incur higher costs in acquiring users, which would reduce our gross margin profile.
Competition in our market is intense.
We operate in a highly competitive market. We compete with a variety of companies including large social media networks, real-time video communications services, traditional online video distributors, and niche software providers for business customers. We also face increasing competition for cloud providers that were not traditionally video-centric. These competitors may be able to undercut us on price (e.g., by providing free services), provide superior services, or take advantage
of a large installed user base. In addition, we expect that more competitors will emerge given the relatively low barriers to entry for software-based video creation applications, particularly mobile-based applications. New competitors could take the form of start-ups or large, well-funded companies that already operate in markets adjacent to us.
We may not be able to scale our business effectively.
We may not be able to capitalize on the market’s demand for video if we cannot scale our operations. For example, we might experience delays in onboarding new customers and responding to increased customer support tickets, and we may not be able to handle increased loads on our servers during peak times. The occurrence of these or other similar events would result in missed opportunities or user and subscriber frustration that could negatively affect user and subscriber growth and retention.
We may experience service interruptions.
We typically do not provide 100% uptime across our video services in any given month. This may be due to technical errors (bugs), human error (by employees and contractors), interruptions experienced by key vendors (such as cloud-based service or payment providers), higher than anticipated traffic and/or cyberattacks. Interruptions in key aspects of our video services (notably, video delivery and payment processing) could result in lost business, credits against future fees from subscribers with service level agreements, increased user and subscriber support tickets, remediation costs and increased subscriber churn (lost renewals). We have experienced subscriber churn in response to specific lapses in uptime, particularly in the context of livestreaming. In severe cases, we could face litigation or reputational risk, particularly if an interruption occurs during a high-profile event.
Hosting and delivery costs may increase unexpectedly.
Hosting and delivery costs comprise the largest component of our cost of goods sold and thus materially influence our gross margin. These costs could increase unexpectedly if we experience rapid growth over a short period of time (either in terms of users and subscribers or bandwidth consumed), we fail to address subscribers who use more bandwidth than our plans permit (e.g., either by failing to charge them overage fees or by failing to limit their bandwidth) or we fail to distribute increased bandwidth across our content delivery network ("CDN") vendors in a cost-optimal manner by, for example, moving traffic to the lowest-cost provider. We may not be able to pass these costs onto subscribers.
Our success depends on our ability to reach customers and acquire subscribers through digital app stores.
We provide applications (“apps”) that operate on third-party operating systems, devices, or browsers. The operators of these platforms, including in particular Apple (Apple App Store) and Google (Google Play Store and Google Chrome Web Store), exercise significant control over what apps may be offered. These platforms could decide not to market and distribute some or all of our products and services, require costly changes, favor their own products and services over ours and/or significantly increase their fees.
We may offer our apps on a free or paid basis and/or offer the ability to purchase subscription plans within an app (i.e., “in-app purchase”). When purchases are made through these platforms (including through in-app purchase), we pay meaningful service fees, which form part of our cost of goods sold. For example, in the case of Apple, we pay a 30% fee for the first 12 months of a subscription and 15% thereafter. Over the past several years, we have seen an increasing trend away from desktop traffic to mobile traffic. If the percentage of our paid users from in-app purchase increases, our gross margin will decline.
Third-party platforms continually upgrade their software and change their terms of service, sometimes with little to no notice. Some of these upgrades may cause our apps to perform poorly and therefore require us to undertake costly development to provide a new version of our apps. We may not be able to ensure that our apps will work as intended with the upgraded platform software or that newer versions will be backwards-compatible with users who have not upgraded their platform’s software. In addition, some platforms may introduce changes that may diminish our ability to offer certain features or to understand how our users are interacting with our apps and websites. For example, in 2021, Apple introduced a new version of iOS (its operating system for the iPhone and iPad) that required app developers to allow users to opt-out of data tracking across apps and websites. This change has diminished our ability to market our products.
We depend on integrations with third parties to enable key features of our video services and to acquire new subscribers.
Some of our video services are integrated, typically through application programming interfaces (“APIs”), with numerous third parties, including companies that compete with us. For example, we provide a “publish to social” feature which allows our
users and subscribers to publish their videos to their accounts on Facebook and/or YouTube. This type of feature makes our video services valuable because it effectively allows us to serve as a hub for managing all of the videos for a given user or subscriber across numerous platforms. If platforms change their policies to no longer permit this feature, our video services would be less attractive to our users and subscribers.
We depend on key third-party vendors to provide core services.
We depend on third-party vendors to, among other things, provide customer support, develop software, host videos uploaded by our users, transcode videos (compressing a video file and converting it into a standard format optimized for streaming), stream videos to viewers and process payments. Specifically, Google Cloud Platform (“GCP”) provides us with hosting and computing services, Amazon S3 provides us with hosting services and we use multiple CDNs to deliver traffic worldwide. Certain of these third-party vendors have experienced outages in the past that have caused key Vimeo video services to be unavailable for several hours. We do not have backup systems for GCP or Amazon S3. Consequently, outages in those services materially affect our video services. Outages may expose us to having to offer credits to subscribers, loss of subscribers and reputational damage. We may not be able to fully offset these losses with any credits we might receive from our vendors.
We depend on search engines and social media networks for traffic.
We depend on search engines and social media networks to acquire traffic to our website. These third parties have the ability to influence who reaches our website and video services through algorithmic search rankings and other policy decisions, which are subject to frequent change. Some of these third parties or their affiliates compete with us and may have an incentive to favor their competing services over ours. In the past, traffic to our website and video services has been negatively impacted as a result of certain policy changes by both search engines and social media networks.
We depend on internet service providers (“ISPs”) to deliver traffic to end users and subscribers.
For our video services to operate, users and subscribers must have a connection to the internet. Typically, our users and subscribers access the internet through a wireline or wireless data service offered by ISPs. There is currently no federal regulation in the U.S. limiting the practices that ISPs may use to impact data flowing from websites and online applications to users and subscribers of online products and services generally. As a result, ISPs could discriminate against data that we deliver to users or subscribers (or data our users upload to us) by blocking us outright, slowing us down or otherwise degrading our quality vis-à-vis competing traffic. ISPs could also cause their customers to favor competing services by “zero rating” traffic to and from our competitors (in other words, not counting competitor traffic against an ISP customer’s data caps) but declining to zero rate our traffic. These practices could make us less attractive as a provider of video services. Alternatively, we may have to pay fees to ISPs to maintain parity with competitors, which could adversely affect our profitability.
If we experience excessive fraudulent activity, we could incur substantial costs and lose the right to accept credit cards for payment, which could cause our customer base to decline significantly.
Our self-serve subscription plan customers authorize us to bill their credit card accounts through our third-party payment processing partners. If customers pay for their subscription plans with stolen credit cards, we could incur substantial third-party vendor costs for which we may not be reimbursed. We also incur charges, which we refer to as chargebacks, from the credit card companies for claims that the customer did not authorize the credit card transaction for subscription plans, something that we have experienced in the past. In addition, credit card issuers may change merchant standards, including data protection and documentation standards, required to utilize their services from time to time. Our third-party payment processing partners must also maintain compliance with current and future merchant standards to accept credit cards as payment for our paid subscription plans, and they have experienced interruptions or errors which have caused us to lose revenue.
We have recently experienced higher than industry standard rates of chargebacks and unauthorized credit card transactions. As a result of such activity, we are presently in monitoring programs with multiple payment card providers and are paying monthly amounts charged by those providers as penalties. We are actively working to reduce the incidence of chargebacks and unauthorized credit card transactions. If we fail to materially reduce such activity, we could be assessed increasing penalties, and we could lose the right to accept credit cards for payment. The loss of a payment option would cause our subscriber base to significantly decrease and would materially harm our business.
We may engage in merger and acquisition activities, which may require significant management attention, disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value, and adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
As part of our business strategy to expand our platform and grow our business in response to changing technologies, customer demand, and competitive pressures, we have made and may in the future make investments or acquisitions in other companies, products, or technologies. The identification of suitable acquisition candidates can be difficult, time-consuming, and costly, and we may not be able to complete acquisitions on favorable terms, if at all. If we do complete acquisitions, we may not ultimately strengthen our competitive position or achieve the goals of such acquisition, and any acquisitions we complete could be viewed negatively by customers or investors. We may encounter difficult or unforeseen expenditures in integrating an acquisition, particularly if we cannot retain the key personnel of the acquired company. Existing and potential customers may also delay or reduce their use of our products due to a concern that the acquisition may decrease effectiveness of our products (including any newly acquired products). In addition, if we fail to successfully integrate such acquisitions, or the assets, technologies, or personnel associated with such acquisitions, into our company, the business and results of operations of the combined company would be adversely affected.
Acquisitions may disrupt our ongoing operations, divert management from their primary responsibilities, subject us to additional liabilities, increase our expenses, subject us to increased regulatory requirements, cause adverse tax consequences or unfavorable accounting treatment, and expose us to claims and disputes by stockholders and third parties. We may not successfully evaluate or utilize the acquired technology and accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition transaction, including accounting charges. We may have to pay cash for any such acquisition, which would limit other potential uses for our cash. If we incur debt to fund any such acquisition, such debt may subject us to material restrictions in our ability to conduct our business, result in increased fixed obligations, and subject us to covenants or other restrictions that would decrease our operational flexibility and impede our ability to manage our operations. If we issue a significant amount of equity securities in connection with future acquisitions, existing stockholders’ ownership would be diluted.
The novel coronavirus that causes the disease known as COVID-19 has caused a global health crisis that has caused significant economic and social disruption.
The potential long-term impact and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy and our business continue to be difficult to assess or predict. Related public health and safety measures have resulted in significant social disruption and have had (and are likely to continue to have) an adverse effect on economic conditions, consumer confidence and spending, inflation, interest rates, and business investment, all of which have affected our business. In addition, the gradual cessation of health and safety measures, particularly social distancing measures, has likely resulted in lower demand for our services.
We may experience increased operating costs as a result of COVID-related health and safety measures. For example, we have implemented and may continue to implement enhanced preventative measures, including with respect to real estate, compliance and insurance-related expenses. Moreover, we may also experience business disruption if the operations of our contractors, vendors or business partners are adversely affected.
Failure to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial condition.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”) requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. We have limited experience complying with SOX as a standalone public company, and our independent registered public accounting firm is not required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting until after we are no longer an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act. We have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. If any of these new or improved controls and systems do not perform as expected, we may experience material weaknesses in our controls. Such failure could harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition and could cause a decline in the trading price of our common stock.
Risks Related to Human Capital
Our success will depend upon our continued ability to identify, hire, develop, motivate and retain highly skilled individuals worldwide.
In order to build and scale our business, we will need to further increase our employee base, particularly in the areas of engineering, product development, sales (domestically and internationally), customer support and shared services. Competition for executives, software developers, product managers, sales personnel and other key employees in our industry is intense. In
particular, we compete with many other companies for software developers and designers with high levels of experience in designing, developing and managing software for video solution technologies, as well as for skilled sales and operations professionals. At times, we have experienced, and we may continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications, and we may not be able to fill positions. Our ability to attract and retain talent and to fully experience the benefits of that talent depends upon:
•our reputation;
•our compensation and benefit packages;
•our ability to successfully onboard new employees;
•our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion;
•our ability to maintain our corporate culture while growing headcount, adding employees in new countries and locations and operating on a remote or hybrid basis; and
•the competitive landscape in the geographic markets for talent in which we compete.
Our compensation packages may not be sufficient.
While we have established compensation programs (which include cash compensation, equity-based programs and other benefits) to attract and retain employees, these compensation arrangements may not be sufficient in the highly competitive labor market in which we participate. In addition, in 2021, many of the countries in which we operate, including the United States, experienced higher than normal inflation, which, among other reasons, has placed pressure on us to raise wages. Large competitors and non-competitors in the technology space may offer compensation arrangements that may significantly exceed those that we are able to offer. If we fail to provide competitive compensation arrangements, we may fail to attract and retain talent. In addition, if we do not ensure the effective transfer of knowledge to successors and smooth transitions (particularly in the case of senior management), our business may be adversely affected. On the other hand, if we increase compensation levels in a significant way in order to compete for talent, our profitability will suffer and, if we increase stock-based compensation, our shareholders will face further dilution.
We may fail to attract or retain employees for issues that negatively impact our image.
Our ability to attract and retain employees could also be adversely affected by issues that negatively impact our image, such as incidents of actual or perceived discrimination, controversial business decisions, including decisions about user content, and issues with the quality of our products (such as bugs or interruptions in services, among other issues).
We may face productivity challenges arising from our work environment.
In 2020, we moved to a remote working environment with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the outbreak of COVID-19 variants disrupted our return to office plans, even as vaccines allowed a greater degree of normalcy. We now operate our offices in a hybrid manner, with some of our overseas offices working on a completely remote basis. Continued delays of returning to the physical office environment could impede our productivity. Even when we return to the office setting, we may experience productivity challenges associated with having some employees remote and some in person and having employees unable to work due to illness or childcare concerns. In addition, moving back to a physical office environment could adversely affect the hiring and retention of employees who prefer to work remotely.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has impacted our team and business operations.
Since 2017, we have had operations in Ukraine. As of the year ended December 31, 2021, we had 80 employees in Ukraine. Our Ukraine team is primarily focused on research and developments activities, with 71% of the team in engineering roles. On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. As a result of this war, some of our Ukraine team members have been forced to relocate to other countries and within Ukraine, with many unable to perform all or some work duties. We are closely monitoring the developing situation, are committed to supporting our Ukraine team members, and are prioritizing safety over work. The ongoing conflict could cause harm to our team members and otherwise impair their ability to work for extended periods of time, as well as disrupt telecommunications systems, banks and other critical infrastructure necessary to conduct business in Ukraine. In addition, if large parts of Ukraine become subject to U.S. sanctions, we may be legally unable to do business in Ukraine. If these contingencies come to pass, our product roadmap and productivity generally could be adversely impacted and we may incur additional costs.
Risks Related to User Content and Personal Information
Our business involves hosting large quantities of user content.
Our business is hosting video content supplied by others. Some of the videos uploaded to our platform will invariably violate a third party’s rights or a law, rule or regulation, and if so, we could, in turn, face lawsuits, liability and negative publicity for hosting such content.
We have been sued for hosting content that allegedly infringed on a third-party copyright.
We cannot guarantee that we will be shielded from third-party copyright infringement lawsuits and related liability for hosting user and subscriber content by laws such as the online safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (“DMCA”), which are intended to limit the liability of online providers with respect to user- and subscriber-uploaded content. In addition, even if we ultimately succeed in demonstrating that the DMCA limits our liability, litigating these issues is costly and time-consuming. For details regarding pending lawsuits of this nature, see “Note 13— Commitments and Contingencies” to the consolidated financial statements included in Item 8—Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data.
Some countries outside of the United States have laws that, like the DMCA, limit the copyright infringement liability of service providers. However, these laws may impose different requirements upon us and may not protect us to the same degree as the DMCA. We cannot guarantee that we will be compliant with foreign requirements. For example, as described in "Note 13—Commitments and Contingencies” to the consolidated financial statements included in Item 8—Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data, we have been sued in Italy for the copyright infringement of our users.
If the laws limiting our liability for user and subscriber copyright infringement are changed, either by amendment, regulatory action or judicial interpretation, we could face increased compliance costs and increased risk of liability for copyright infringement. In 2018, the European Union passed Article 17 to revise the EU’s existing framework for limiting the liability of service providers for copyright infringement. EU member state laws that have implemented Article 17 may require us to undertake new and costly screening activities or to obtain costly licenses from rights holders or both.
We may face liability for hosting a variety of tortious or unlawful materials.
In the United States, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally limits our liability for hosting tortious and otherwise illegal content. The immunities conferred by Section 230 could be narrowed or eliminated through amendment, regulatory action or judicial interpretation. In 2018, Congress amended Section 230 to remove immunities for content that promotes or facilitates sex trafficking and prostitution. In the most recent session of Congress, multiple bills have been introduced to further limit Section 230. Some bills would repeal or substantially curtail Section 230, while some exempt specific claims or categories of content from Section 230’s reach.
Laws like Section 230 generally do not exist outside of the United States, and some countries have enacted laws that require online content providers to remove certain pieces of content within short time frames. If we fail to comply with such laws, we could be subject to prosecution or regulatory proceedings. In addition, some countries may decide to ban our service based upon a single piece of content. We have been subject to temporary bans in certain countries, including India, Russia and Turkey, for hosting content that those governments determined to be illegal.
We may also face liability when we remove content and accounts that we believe are violating our acceptable use policy, and we have been sued in the past for certain content-removal decisions. While we believe that Section 230 allows us to restrict or remove certain categories of content, its protections may not always end a lawsuit at an early stage, potentially resulting in costly and time-consuming litigation.
We have faced negative publicity for removing, or declining to remove, certain content, regardless of whether such content violated any law.
Individuals and groups may upload controversial content to our platform. Removing or failing to remove such content may result in negative publicity, which could harm our efforts to attract and retain users and subscribers. We have also faced criticism from users and subscribers for removing content and terminating accounts in compliance with the DMCA.
We collect, store, and process large amounts of content and personal information and any loss of or unauthorized access to such data could materially impact our business.
We collect, store and process large amounts of content and personal information of our users and subscribers. A significant portion of this data is private or intended for a limited audience. For example, one of our core product features is the
ability of users and subscribers to set privacy settings to their videos and thereby determine how the video is to be distributed. A large portion of the videos we host are not publicly available or are available only through channels determined by our users. In addition, we rely on user information, including automatically collected information, to operate our business.
If we fail to secure our data, we might experience the loss, leakage, or inadvertent disclosure of such data. This may occur due to vulnerabilities in our software, human error, or internal or external malfeasance. We have experienced the leakage of data to actors who crawl our website and scrape data. We also routinely receive reports from security researchers regarding potential vulnerabilities in our applications or third party software that we use. We have also experienced cases where user error has caused private data to be exposed. Incidents affecting user data, regardless of the cause, take time for us to investigate and can be frustrating for our users.
A data breach could expose us to regulatory actions and litigation. Depending on the circumstances, we may be required to disclose a suspected breach to regulators, affected individuals and/or the public. This could lead to regulatory actions, including the possibility of fines, class-action or traditional litigation by affected individuals, reputational harm, costly investigation and remedial efforts, the triggering of indemnification obligations under data-protection agreements with subscribers, vendors, and partners and/or higher premiums for cyber insurance, as well as harm to our brand and customer confidence.
We have been the target of cyberattacks by malicious actors, and our actual or perceived failure to adequately protect personal information and confidential information that we (or our service providers or business partners) collect, store or process could trigger contractual and legal obligations, harm our reputation, subject us to liability and otherwise adversely affect our business including our financial results.
We have been targeted with cyberattacks in the past and may be targeted again. Potential attackers span a spectrum from unsophisticated amateurs to highly advanced organizations supported by state actors and use a variety of vectors, including malware, ransomware attacks, denial-of-service attacks, and social engineering. Malicious actors may seek to impede our services (e.g., a denial-of-service attack) or infiltrate our systems for the purpose of introducing malware (e.g., ransomware), deleting or corrupting data, or exfiltrating data.
A cyberattack may cause significant and lasting negative consequences. We may face significant expense in responding to the attack, severely diminished operational capacity, and the loss of data necessary to operate. If the attack results in a data breach, we may be subject to legal liability. Even if financial, legal, or operational harm is avoided, an attack could cause persistent reputational harm to our company.
Our users and subscribers could also be targeted by malicious actors. In the past, we have had instances in which user passwords were guessed by malicious actors or were exposed in breaches of other services and then used by malicious actors to access the user’s account in our system. These cases take time to remediate and are frustrating for our users and subscribers, some of whom may blame us for the situation.
Risks Related to Laws and Regulations
We and our service providers collect, process, transmit and store the personal information of our users, which creates legal obligations and exposes us to potential liability under federal, state, and international laws applicable to privacy and data protection.
We are subject to a variety of existing and new laws concerning the collection, storing, processing, and transferring of user information. In the U.S., we are subject to federal laws, such as Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, as well as a variety of state laws including the California Consumer Privacy Act and the Illinois Biometric Information Protection Act. The failure to comply with applicable privacy laws could lead to regulatory actions, including the possibility of fines, class-action or traditional litigation, reputational harm and/or costly investigation and remediation efforts. We have been sued for violating the Illinois Biometric Information Protection Act (see the section entitled “Part 1. Item 13—Commitments and Contingencies”).
Outside of the U.S., we are subject to privacy laws of the countries in which we conduct business. For example, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) imposes detailed requirements related to the collection, storage and use of personal information related to people located in the EU. The GDPR authorizes fines up to 4% of a company’s annual turnover. Privacy laws have proliferated in the past several years, both in the U.S. and worldwide. Because of the speed of change in the area of privacy law, it is impossible to foresee changes in the regulatory environment and we may be forced to make sudden operational shifts in an effort to maintain compliance. New laws, or new interpretations of or stricter
enforcement of existing laws, may increase our compliance costs, restrict our ability to determine how our users are using our services, and increase our potential liability in the event of non-compliance. For example, in Europe, we have had to make changes to how we use cookies and other tracking technologies and these changes have reduced our visibility into how our users are using our services.
Our ability to transfer personal information to the United States and other jurisdictions may be restricted.
Some countries outside of the United States (including European Union member states, other members of the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) may limit the transfer of certain data regarding their residents to other countries. Such laws have the potential to adversely affect our business. For example, prior to June 2020, many U.S companies (including Vimeo) participated in the U.S.-EU and U.S.-Swiss “Privacy Shield” program, which provided a basis on which to transfer personal information from the EU and Switzerland to the U.S. In June 2020, the EU High Court of Justice determined that the program did not adequately protect EU residents’ privacy rights. We continue to transfer data from the EU to the U.S. under alternative legal bases, including standard contractual clauses, which were updated in 2021. The use of standard contractual clauses has been challenged. In addition, rulings by certain European data protection authorities have indicated that, in some cases, U.S.-based providers cannot be used due to their inability to ensure that the personal information of European residents is safeguarded.
If we were unable to transfer personal information from the EU (or any other country), we could face fines for noncompliance and we may have to host personal information locally. Should this occur, we would face higher costs and operational challenges, which could adversely affect our business and gross margin.
Compliance obligations imposed by private entities may adversely affect our business.
Private-market participants may deploy technologies or require certain practices that limit our ability to obtain or use certain information about our users and subscribers. For example, Google has indicated that it will ultimately phase out the use of cookies to track users of its search services in future versions of its Chrome web browser, and Apple has updated its iOS mobile operating system to require app developers to obtain opt-in consent before tracking users of its various services. As these types of changes continue to be implemented, our ability to determine how our users and subscribers are using our video services and to use targeted advertising in a cost-effective manner may be limited.
We may fail to comply with laws regulating subscriptions and free trials.
Subscriptions to our video services automatically renew unless the subscriber cancels the subscription before the end of the current period, and we often provide free or discounted trial periods. There are various laws regulating such offers, such as the U.S. Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (“ROSCA”) and analogous state-level laws. Non-compliance could result in voided contracts, lost revenue, damages and class action or traditional lawsuits.
Changes in laws or industry practices concerning subscription services may have a negative impact on renewal rates.
New laws or interpretations of existing laws may impose obligations that make it difficult or impossible to implement the automatic renewal of subscriptions to Vimeo’s video service. For example, if we were required to obtain express opt-in consent for automatic renewal of our video service and were not permitted to deny transactions to people who fail to opt-in, the related rate of renewal would likely decrease substantially. Similarly, private entities involved in payment collection and processing may also effectively regulate subscriptions to our video services. Failure to comply with these rules could result in our inability to process automatic renewals. Finally, we have no control over policy decisions by app platforms regarding automatic renewals. Policy changes by app platforms could adversely impact our renewal rates for subscription to our video services, and in turn, our business.
The sale of our products is subject to a variety of sales, use and value-added taxes, both in the United States and worldwide.
In 2018, in South Dakota v. Wayfair, the United States Supreme Court held that states may charge taxes on purchases made by their residents from out-of-state sellers who have no physical nexus to the state. As a result of this decision, we are subject to taxes in states where one or more of our services is taxable, the state permits taxation based upon economic nexus, and we meet certain thresholds. We are also, as before, subject to taxes in states in which we maintain a physical presence. We cannot guarantee complete tax compliance.
We are required to comply with governmental export control laws and regulations. Our failure to comply with these laws and regulations could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
Our products are subject to various restrictions under U.S. export control and sanctions laws and regulations, including the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”) and various economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”). We may have experienced violations in the past and we cannot guarantee that the precautions we take will prevent future violations of export control and sanctions laws. If in the future we are found to be in violation of U.S. sanctions or export control laws, it could result in substantial fines and penalties for us and for the individuals working for us.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
The market price and trading volume of our common stock has been, and may continue to be, volatile and has faced, and may continue to face, negative pressure.
The market price of our common stock has been and will likely continue to be volatile and could be subject to fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control. These fluctuations could cause you to lose all or part of your investment in our common stock. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the trading price of our common stock include the following:
•actual or anticipated fluctuations in operating results;
•actions of securities analysts who initiate or maintain coverage of us, changes in earnings estimated by securities analysts or in our ability to meet those estimates;
•the operating and stock price performance of comparable companies;
•significant data breaches, disruptions to, or other incidents involving our products;
•changes to the regulatory and legal environment under which we operate;
•announcements by us or our competitors of new products, features, or services;
•changes in relationships with significant customers; and
•domestic and worldwide economic conditions, including employment rates and interest rates.
These factors, among others, may result in short- or long-term negative pressure on the value of our common stock. In addition, technology stocks have historically and recently experienced high levels of volatility. In the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their securities have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future, which could result in substantial expenses and divert our management’s attention.
Barry Diller, certain members of his family and Joseph Levin are able to exercise significant influence over the composition of our Board of Directors, matters subject to stockholder approval and our operations.
As of December 31, 2021, Mr. Diller, his spouse, Diane von Furstenberg, and his stepson, Alexander von Furstenberg, collectively held shares of our Class B common stock and common stock that represent approximately 38% of our total outstanding voting power. These shares are also subject to a voting agreement with Mr. Levin, Chief Executive Officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp ("IAC") and the chairman of our Board of Directors.
As a result of this beneficial ownership of our securities, such individuals are, collectively, in a position to influence (subject to our organizational documents and Delaware law), the composition of our Board of Directors and the outcome of corporate actions requiring shareholder approval, such as mergers, business combinations and dispositions of assets, among other corporate transactions. The disparity between the voting power of the holders of our Class B common stock and the corresponding economic ownership position could also create incentives for such holders to either seek to obtain benefits for themselves (in the form of compensation or other contractual benefits, for example) in a form not available to all stockholders on a pro rata basis. In addition, this concentration of investment and voting power could discourage others from initiating a potential merger, takeover or other change of control transaction that may otherwise be beneficial to us and our stockholders, which could adversely affect the market price of our securities.
In addition, the holders of our Class B common stock could sell all or a portion of those shares to a third party, which could result in the purchaser obtaining significant influence over us, the composition of our Board of Directors, matters subject
to stockholder approval and our operations, without consideration being paid to holders of shares of our common stock, and without holders of shares of our common stock having a right to consent to the identity of such purchaser.
Our dual-class common stock structure and aspects of our charter and by-laws may negatively impact the market price of our common stock.
Our Class B common stock has 10 votes per share and our common stock has one vote per share. We cannot predict whether our dual-class common stock structure, combined with the concentrated voting power of Mr. Diller and members of his family as the holders of all of our outstanding Class B common stock, will result in a lower or more volatile market price of our common stock, or other adverse consequences.
For example, certain stock index providers, such as S&P Dow Jones, exclude companies with multiple classes of shares of common stock from being added to certain stock indices, including the S&P 500. In addition, several stockholder advisory firms and large institutional investors oppose the use of multiple class structures. As a result, the dual class structure of our common stock may prevent the inclusion of our common stock in such indices, may cause stockholder advisory firms to publish negative commentary about our corporate governance practices or otherwise seek to cause us to change our capital structure, and may result in large institutional investors not purchasing shares of our common stock. Any exclusion from stock indices could result in a less active trading market for our common stock. Any actions or publications by stockholder advisory firms or institutional investors critical of our corporate governance practices or capital structure could also adversely affect the value of our common stock.
The difference in the voting rights between our common stock and Class B common stock could also harm the value of our common stock to the extent that any investor or potential future purchaser of our common stock ascribes value to the right of holders of our Class B common stock to ten votes per share of Class B common stock, or could potentially result in our Class B common stock of receiving higher consideration in a sale of our company than that paid to holders of our common stock. The existence of two classes of common stock could also result in less liquidity for our common stock than if there were only one class of common stock.
In addition, our charter and by-laws require securities actions to be brought in federal court and derivative actions to be filed in Delaware. These features may impact the value of our stock.
We do not expect to declare any regular cash dividends in the foreseeable future.
Vimeo, Inc. has never declared or paid any cash dividends on its capital stock, and we do not intend to pay any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our Board of Directors. Accordingly, holders of our common stock may need to rely on sales of our common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment.
Risks Relating to the Spin-off and our Relationship with IAC
If the Spin-off were to fail to qualify as a transaction that is generally tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes, we and our stockholders could suffer material adverse consequences.
As described more fully in Item 7 under the heading “Spin-off,” on May 25, 2021, Vimeo completed its separation from the remaining businesses of IAC through a series of transactions (which we refer to as the “Spin-off”) that resulted in the distribution of new capital stock to pre-transaction stockholders of IAC and stockholders of the pre-transaction Vimeo operating entity (which we refer to as the “Distribution”). In connection with the Spin-off, IAC received an opinion of IAC’s outside counsel, among other things, to the effect that the Distribution would qualify as a “reorganization” within the meaning of Sections 368(a)(1)(D) and 355(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the "Code"). The opinion of counsel was based upon and relied on, among other things, various facts and assumptions, as well as certain representations, statements and undertakings of IAC and Vimeo, including those relating to the past and future conduct of IAC and Vimeo. If any of these representations, statements or undertakings was at the time of the Spin-off, is, or becomes, inaccurate or incomplete, or if any of the representations or covenants contained in any of the transaction-related agreements and documents or in any document relating to the opinion of counsel are inaccurate or not complied with by IAC, Vimeo or any of their respective subsidiaries, the opinion of counsel may be invalid and the conclusions reached therein could be jeopardized.
Notwithstanding receipt of the opinion of counsel regarding the Distribution, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (the “IRS”) could determine that the Distribution should be treated as a taxable transaction for U.S. federal income tax purposes if it determines that any of the representations, assumptions or undertakings upon which the opinion of counsel were based are
inaccurate or have not been complied with. The opinion of counsel represents the judgment of such counsel and is not binding on the IRS or any court, and the IRS or a court may disagree with the conclusions in the opinion of counsel. Accordingly, notwithstanding receipt by IAC of the opinion of counsel, there can be no assurance that the IRS will not assert that the Distribution does not qualify for tax-free treatment for U.S. federal income tax purposes or that a court would not sustain such a challenge. In the event the IRS were to prevail with such a challenge, we and our stockholders could suffer material adverse consequences.
If the Distribution were to fail to qualify as a transaction that is generally tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes under Sections 355 and 368(a)(1)(D) of the Code, in general, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, IAC would recognize a taxable gain as if it had sold the Vimeo stock in a taxable sale for its fair market value. In such circumstance, IAC stockholders who received Vimeo common stock in the Distribution would be subject to tax as if they had received a taxable distribution equal to the fair market value of such shares. Even if the Distribution were otherwise to qualify as a tax-free transaction under Sections 355(a) and 368(a)(1)(D) of the Code, the Distribution may result in taxable gain to IAC, but not its stockholders, under Section 355(e) of the Code if the Distribution were deemed to be part of a plan (or series of related transactions) pursuant to which one or more persons acquire, directly or indirectly, shares representing a 50 percent or greater interest (by vote or value) in IAC or Vimeo. For this purpose, any acquisitions of IAC stock or Vimeo stock within the period beginning two years before, and ending two years after, the Distribution are presumed to be part of such a plan, although IAC or Vimeo may be able to rebut that presumption (including by qualifying for one or more safe harbors under applicable regulations promulgated from time to time under the Code (collectively, “Treasury Regulations").
In connection with the Spin-off, IAC and Vimeo entered into a tax matters agreement pursuant to which, among other things, each of IAC and Vimeo are responsible for certain tax liabilities and obligations following the Spin-off. Under the tax matters agreement, Vimeo is generally required to indemnify IAC for any taxes resulting from the failure of the Distribution to qualify for the intended tax-free treatment (and related amounts) to the extent that the failure to so qualify is attributable to (i) an acquisition of all or a portion of the equity securities or assets of Vimeo, whether by merger or otherwise (and regardless of whether Vimeo participated in or otherwise facilitated the acquisition), (ii) other actions or failures to act by Vimeo or (iii) any of the representations or undertakings made by Vimeo in any of the Spin-off related agreements or in the documents relating to the opinion of counsel being incorrect or violated. Any such indemnity obligations could be material.
We may not be able to engage in desirable capital-raising or strategic transactions following the Spin-off.
Under current U.S. federal income tax law, a distribution that otherwise qualifies for tax-free treatment can be rendered taxable to the distributing corporation and its stockholders, as a result of certain post-distribution transactions, including certain acquisitions of shares or assets of the corporation the stock of which is distributed. To preserve the tax-free treatment of the Distribution, the tax matters agreement imposes certain restrictions on us and our subsidiaries during the two-year period following the Distribution (including restrictions on share issuances, business combinations, sales of assets and similar transactions). The tax matters agreement also prohibits us from taking or failing to take any other action that would prevent the Distribution from qualifying as a transaction that is generally tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes under Sections 355 and 368(a)(1)(D) of the Code. These restrictions may limit our ability to pursue certain equity issuances, strategic transactions (including acquisitions by others of the Company), repurchases or other transactions that we may otherwise believe to be in the best interests of our stockholders or that might increase the value of our business.
Actual or potential conflicts of interest may develop between our management and directors, on the one hand, and the management and directors of IAC, on the other hand, or between management and directors of either entity and the management and directors of Expedia Group, Inc. or Match Group, Inc.
Certain of our and IAC’s executive officers and directors own both IAC capital stock and Vimeo capital stock, and certain members of IAC’s senior management team are members of our Board of Directors. This overlap could create, or appear to create, potential conflicts of interest when IAC’s and our directors and executive officers face decisions that could have different implications for IAC and Vimeo. For example, potential conflicts of interest could arise in connection with the resolution of any dispute between IAC and Vimeo regarding terms of the agreements governing the relationship between IAC and Vimeo after the Spin-off, including the separation agreement, the employee matters agreement, the tax matters agreement, the transition services agreement or any commercial agreements between the parties or their affiliates. Potential conflicts of interest could also arise if IAC and Vimeo enter into any commercial arrangements in the future.
Additionally, we have a provision in our certificate of incorporation providing that no officer or director of Vimeo who is also an officer or director of IAC, Expedia Group or Match Group will be liable to Vimeo or our stockholders for breach of any fiduciary duty by reason of the fact that any such individual directs a corporate opportunity to any of such entities instead of Vimeo, or does not communicate information regarding a corporate opportunity to Vimeo that the officer or director has directed to any of such entities. The corporate opportunity provision may have the effect of exacerbating the risk of potential
conflicts of interest between IAC and Vimeo, or between Vimeo and Expedia Group or Match Group, because the provision effectively shields an overlapping director/executive officer from liability for breach of fiduciary duty in the event that such director or officer chooses to direct a corporate opportunity to one of such entities instead of to Vimeo.
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
None.
Item 2. Properties
We recruit and hire employees in jurisdictions around the world based on a range of factors, including the available talent pool, the type of work being performed, the relative cost of labor, regulatory requirements and costs, and other considerations. Since April 2020, the majority of our workforce has been working remotely. Although we expect most of our employees to return to physical offices in the future, the nature and extent of that return is uncertain. Our facilities, most of which are leased in the United States and various jurisdictions abroad, generally consist of executive and administrative offices, data centers and sales offices. All of our offices are leased, and we do not own any real property.
Our corporate headquarters are located at IAC's corporate headquarters in New York, New York. While we believe that our current facilities are adequate to meet our foreseeable needs, we intend to expand our facilities in the future as we continue to add employees around the world. We believe that suitable additional or alternative space will be available on commercially reasonable terms, as necessary, to accommodate our future growth.
Item 3. Legal Proceedings
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures
Not applicable.
PART II
Item 5. Market for Registrant's Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchasers of Equity Securities
Market Information for Our Common Stock
Our common stock has been listed on Nasdaq under the symbol “VMEO” since May 25, 2021. Prior to that date, there was no public trading market for our common stock.
Holders of Record
As of February 18, 2022, we had 927 holders of record of our common stock and one holder of record of our Class B common stock. Because many of our shares of common stock are held in street name by brokers and other nominees on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of beneficial owners of our common stock represented by these holders of record.
Dividend Policy
Vimeo, Inc. has never declared or paid any cash dividends on its capital stock. Prior to the Spin-off, on November 5, 2020, the Vimeo OpCo board of directors declared a cash dividend in the amount of $0.22 per share of Vimeo OpCo voting common stock and Vimeo OpCo non-voting common stock. The dividend payment date was set as November 13, 2020, and the dividend was paid to Vimeo OpCo stockholders of record as of the close of business on November 5, 2020.
We currently intend to retain any future earnings and do not expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Any future determination to declare cash dividends will be made at the discretion of our Board of Directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on a number of factors, including our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, contractual restrictions, general business conditions, and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant.
Securities Authorized for Issuance Under Equity Compensation Plans
The information required by this item is incorporated by reference from the section entitled "Securities Authorized for Issuance Under Equity Compensation Plans" included in Part II. Item 12 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Stock Performance Graph
This performance graph shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or to be “filed” with the SEC, for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or otherwise subject to the liabilities under that Section, and shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into any of our filings under the Securities Act.
The following graph compares (i) the cumulative total stockholder return on our common stock from May 25, 2021 (the date our common stock commenced regular-way trading on Nasdaq) through December 31, 2021 with (ii) the cumulative total return of the Standard & Poor's ("S&P") 500 Index and the Standard & Poor’s Information Technology Index over the same period, assuming the investment of $100 in our common stock and in both of the other indices on May 25, 2021 and the reinvestment of dividends. The graph uses the closing market price on May 25, 2021 of $45.39 per share as the initial value of our common stock. As discussed above, we have never declared or paid a cash dividend on our common stock and do not anticipate declaring or paying a cash dividend in the foreseeable future. The returns shown are based on historical results and are not intended to suggest future performance.
Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities
We believe that each of the following issuances was exempt from registration under the Securities Act in reliance on Regulation S under the Securities Act regarding sales by an issuer in offshore transactions, Regulation D under the Securities Act, Rule 701 under the Securities Act or pursuant to Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act regarding transactions not involving a public offering. No underwriters were used in the below issuances.
Minority Investments in Vimeo OpCo
On November 5, 2020, Vimeo.com, Inc. ("Vimeo OpCo," formerly known as Vimeo, Inc.) and IAC Group, LLC ("IAC Group") entered into an investment agreement (the “November 2020 Investment Agreement”) with entities affiliated with Thrive Capital (the “Thrive Entities”) and an entity affiliated with GIC Private Limited (together with the Thrive Entities, the “November Investors”), pursuant to which on November 10, 2020, the November Investors acquired an aggregate of 8,655,510 shares of Vimeo voting common stock for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $150 million, or $17.33 per share, with the transaction valuing Vimeo at an enterprise value of approximately $2.75 billion.
In connection with the investment, Vimeo OpCo, IAC Group and the November Investors entered into an amendment to the existing Vimeo OpCo shareholders agreement. The majority of the provisions of the Vimeo shareholders agreement terminated upon the consummation of the Spin-off and/or the Merger, other than certain confidentiality and registration rights provisions. Additionally, pursuant to the amendment to the Vimeo shareholders agreement, Vimeo OpCo and IAC Group agreed that if the Thrive Entities continue to own at least 75% of the shares of Vimeo voting common stock acquired by the Thrive Entities pursuant to the November 2020 Investment Agreement, and the Thrive Entities owned at least 2% of the outstanding common stock of Vimeo at the time of the Spin-off, the Thrive Entities would have the right to recommend a candidate for consideration for appointment to the initial post-Spin-off Vimeo board of directors, and Vimeo and IAC Group would consider such candidate in good faith.
In addition, the amendment to the Vimeo OpCo shareholders agreement specified certain separation principles relating to a potential Spin-off, with the November Investors’ agreement to cooperate with the Spin-off generally conditioned on compliance with such separation principles (other than departures not materially adverse to the November Investors). The amendment to the shareholders agreement also required that, in connection with the Spin-off, all holders of Vimeo OpCo shares, other than IAC and its affiliates, be given the benefit of an anti-dilution adjustment described in the joint prospectus filed by Vimeo and IAC with the SEC on April 8, 2021.
On January 25, 2021, Vimeo OpCo and IAC Group entered into investment agreements with funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and entities affiliated with Oberndorf Enterprises, LLC, pursuant to which Vimeo OpCo issued and sold 6,170,934 shares of Vimeo OpCo voting common stock for $200 million, or $32.41 per share, at a $5.2 billion pre-money valuation, and 2,828,854 shares of Vimeo OpCo voting common stock for $100 million, or $35.35 per share, at a $5.7 billion pre-money valuation.
In connection with the investment, the investors became parties to the Vimeo OpCo shareholders agreement.
Dividend Payment
On November 5, 2020, prior to the completion of the investment pursuant to the November 2020 Investment Agreement, the Vimeo OpCo board of directors declared a cash dividend in the amount of $0.22 per share of Vimeo OpCo voting common stock and Vimeo OpCo non-voting common stock. The dividend payment date was set as November 13, 2020, and the dividend was paid to Vimeo OpCo stockholders of record as of the close of business on November 5, 2020.
Grants of Equity Awards
During the year ended December 31, 2021, we granted stock-based compensation generally in the form of restricted stock units, pursuant to the 2021 Plan. Additionally, we entered into a Restricted Stock Agreement (the “RSA”) with Joseph Levin, Chairman of the Vimeo Board of Directors and IAC’s Chief Executive Officer, which provided for a grant of 4,870,500 shares of Vimeo common stock (“Vimeo Restricted Shares”). For further information, see Note 10—Stock-Based Compensation” to the consolidated financial statements included in Item 8—Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The issuances of these securities were exempt pursuant to Rule 701, as transactions pursuant to a compensatory benefit plan, or Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act for transactions by an issuer not involving a public offering or Regulation S under the Securities Act. All recipients either received adequate information about us or had access, through employment or other relationships, to such information.
Issuer Purchase of Equity Securities
None.
Item 6. [Reserved]
Not applicable.
Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations for Vimeo
Spin-off
On May 25, 2021, Vimeo completed its separation from the remaining businesses of IAC/InterActiveCorp ("IAC") through a series of transactions (which we refer to as the “Spin-off”) that resulted in the pre-transaction stockholders of IAC directly owning shares in both IAC and Vimeo, and in Vimeo becoming a separately traded public company.
The Spin-off was structured to include the following steps:
•Certain restructuring transactions, including, among other things, the transfer to Vimeo of IAC’s equity interests in Vimeo.com, Inc. ("Vimeo OpCo," formerly known as Vimeo, Inc.), and the repayment by Vimeo OpCo of all outstanding intercompany debt owed to IAC and its subsidiaries (other than Vimeo OpCo’s subsidiaries).
•Amending IAC’s certificate of incorporation to provide for:
◦the reclassification of each share of IAC common stock, par value $0.001 into (i) one share of IAC common stock, par value $0.0001 and (ii) 1/100th of a share of IAC Series 1 mandatorily exchangeable preferred stock that was automatically exchanged for a number of shares of Vimeo common stock equal to an exchange ratio of 1.6235 (the "Spin-off Exchange Ratio," with holders receiving cash in lieu of any fractional shares of Vimeo common stock resulting, after aggregation, from the reclassification); and
◦the reclassification of each share of IAC Class B common stock, par value $0.001 into (i) one share of IAC Class B common stock, par value $0.0001 and (ii) 1/100th of a share of IAC Series 2 mandatorily exchangeable preferred stock that was automatically exchanged for a number of shares of Vimeo Class B common stock equal to the Spin-off Exchange Ratio (with holders receiving cash in lieu of any fractional shares of Vimeo Class B common stock resulting, after aggregation, from the reclassification).
•The effectiveness of certain other amendments to IAC's certificate of incorporation.
Prior to the Spin-off, IAC indirectly owned approximately 88% of Vimeo OpCo's outstanding shares, with the remaining Vimeo OpCo shares held by third parties. In connection with the Spin-off, the Vimeo OpCo shareholders agreement required IAC to cause the conversion of the Vimeo OpCo shares held by such non-IAC Vimeo OpCo stockholders into Vimeo common stock, which we refer to as the “Vimeo minority exchange.” The shareholders agreement also required that the non-IAC Vimeo OpCo stockholders be compensated (in the form of additional Vimeo equity) for dilution resulting from the issuance of Vimeo options in respect of vested IAC employee option awards that were adjusted in the Spin-off. Each such Vimeo OpCo shareholder was compensated for their ratable portion of 50% of the intrinsic value of the Vimeo options so issued, measured at the time of the Spin-off. The Vimeo Merger, as defined below, was completed pre-market on May 25, 2021 and satisfied these obligations.
On the terms and subject to the conditions of the Agreement and Plan of Merger, as amended and restated on March 12, 2021 (the “Vimeo Merger Agreement”), following the Spin-off on May 25, 2021, Stream Merger Sub, Inc., a Delaware corporation and a wholly owned subsidiary of Vimeo (“Merger Sub”) merged with and into Vimeo OpCo, with Vimeo OpCo surviving as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vimeo (the “Vimeo Merger”). Each share of Vimeo OpCo capital stock held prior to the Vimeo Merger by a non-IAC Vimeo OpCo stockholder was converted into 1.0143 ("Vimeo Merger Exchange Ratio") shares of Vimeo common stock (with holders receiving cash in lieu of any fractional shares of Vimeo common stock resulting, after aggregation, from the Vimeo Merger).
Additionally, each restricted stock unit ("RSU") corresponding to shares of Vimeo OpCo ("Vimeo OpCo RSU") was converted into an RSU corresponding to shares of Vimeo common stock (“Vimeo RSU”), with the number of shares covered by such Vimeo RSU equal to the number of shares covered by the Vimeo OpCo RSU times the Vimeo Merger Exchange Ratio. Each stock appreciation right ("SAR") corresponding to shares of Vimeo OpCo (“Vimeo OpCo SAR”) was converted into a SAR corresponding to shares of Vimeo common stock (“Vimeo SAR”), with the number of shares covered by such Vimeo SAR equal to the number of shares covered by the Vimeo OpCo SAR times the Vimeo Merger Exchange Ratio and the per share exercise price of such Vimeo SAR equal to the per share exercise price of the Vimeo OpCo SAR divided by the Vimeo Merger Exchange Ratio.
Key Terms:
When the following terms appear in this Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations for Vimeo, they have the meanings indicated below:
•Subscribers - is the number of users who have an active subscription to one of Vimeo's paid plans measured at the end of the relevant period. We count each account with a subscription plan as a subscriber. In the case of sales-assisted customers (formerly referred to as "enterprise customers") who maintain multiple accounts across our platforms as part of a single sales-assisted subscription plan, we count only one subscriber. We do not count team members who have access to a subscriber’s account as additional subscribers.
•Average Subscribers - is the sum of the number of Subscribers at the beginning and at the end of the relevant measurement period divided by two.
•Average Revenue per User (“ARPU”) – is the annualized revenue for the relevant period divided by Average Subscribers. For periods that are less than a full year, annualized revenue is calculated by dividing the revenue for that particular period by the number of calendar days in the period and multiplying this value by the number of days in that year.
•Gross Margin - is revenue less cost of revenue, divided by revenue.
•Cost of revenue - consists primarily of hosting fees, credit card processing fees, compensation expense (including stock-based compensation expense) and other employee-related costs for personnel engaged in customer care functions, traffic acquisition costs, which includes the amortization of in-app purchase fees, outsourced customer care personnel costs, rent expense and facilities costs. In-app purchase fees are monies paid to Apple and Google in connection with the processing of in-app purchases of subscriptions and product features through the in-app payment systems provided by Apple and Google.
•Research and development expense - consists primarily of compensation expense (including stock-based compensation expense) and other employee-related costs that are not capitalized for personnel engaged in the design, development, testing and enhancement of product offerings and related technology, software license and maintenance costs, rent expense and facilities costs.
•Sales and marketing expense - consists primarily of advertising expenditures, which include online marketing, including fees paid to search engines, social media sites, e-mail campaigns, display advertising, video advertising and affiliate marketing, and offline marketing, which includes conferences and events, compensation expense (including stock-based compensation expense) and other employee-related costs for Vimeo's sales force and marketing personnel, software license and maintenance costs, rent expense and facilities costs.
•General and administrative expense - consists primarily of compensation expense (including stock-based compensation expense) and other employee-related costs for personnel engaged in executive management, finance, legal, tax, information technology and human resources, fees for professional services (including transaction-related costs related to the Spin-off and acquisitions), rent expense, facilities costs, and software license and maintenance costs.
•Credit Facility - On February 12, 2021, Vimeo OpCo entered into a $100 million revolving credit facility that expires on February 12, 2026. At December 31, 2021, there were no outstanding borrowings under the Credit Facility.
•Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization ("Adjusted EBITDA") - is a non-GAAP financial measure. See "Principles of Financial Reporting" for the definition of Adjusted EBITDA and a reconciliation of net loss to operating loss to Adjusted EBITDA for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020. MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW
Vimeo is the world’s leading all-in-one video software solution, providing the full breadth of video tools through a software-as-a-service model. Vimeo’s comprehensive and cloud-based tools empower its users to create, collaborate and communicate with video on a single, turnkey platform.
Sources of Revenue
Vimeo's revenue is derived primarily from SaaS subscription fees paid by customers for self-serve and sales-assisted subscription plans (formerly referred to as "enterprise subscription plans"). Revenue is recognized on a straight-line basis over the contractual term of the arrangement beginning on the date that the service is made available to the customer. Subscription periods generally range from one month to three years with the most common being an annual subscription and are generally non-cancellable.
Distribution, Marketing and Advertiser Relationships
Vimeo pays to market and distribute its services on third-party search engines and social media websites, and through e-mail campaigns, display advertising, video advertising and affiliate marketing. Vimeo also pays traffic acquisition costs, which consist of fees paid to Apple and Google related to the distribution and the facilitation of in-app purchases of product features. These distribution channels might also offer other third parties services and products, which compete with those Vimeo offers.
Vimeo also markets and offers its services and products through branded websites, allowing customers to transact directly with it in a convenient manner. Vimeo has made, and expects to continue to make, significant investments in online marketing to drive traffic to its websites.
Results of Operations
The following discussion should be read in conjunction with Item 8—Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data. For a discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for the year ended December 31, 2020 compared to the year ended December 31, 2019, please refer to "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and the annual audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020 and notes thereto included in the registration statement on Form S-1 of Vimeo, Inc. filed with the Securities Exchange Commission on May 26, 2021. Results of operations for the periods presented as a percentage of our revenue are as follows:
| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | |
| (as a % of revenue) |
Revenue | 100 | % | | 100 | % | | |
Cost of revenue (exclusive of depreciation shown separately below) | 26 | | | 31 | | | |
Gross profit | 74 | | | 69 | | | |
Operating expenses: | | | | | |
Research and development expense | 27 | | | 23 | | | |
Sales and marketing expense | 39 | | | 37 | | | |
General and administrative expense | 22 | | | 18 | | | |
Depreciation | — | | | — | | | |
Amortization of intangibles | 1 | | | 5 | | | |
| | | | | |
Total operating expenses | 89 | | | 83 | | | |
Operating loss | (16) | | | (14) | | | |
Interest expense | — | | | — | | | |
Interest expense—related party | — | | | (3) | | | |
Other income (expense), net | 3 | | | — | | | |
Loss before income taxes | (13) | | | (18) | | | |
Income tax provision | — | | | — | | | |
Net loss | (13) | % | | (18) | % | | |
Revenue
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | $ Change | | % Change |
Revenue (in thousands) | $ | 391,678 | | | $ | 283,218 | | | $ | 108,460 | | | 38% |
| | | | | | | |
Operating metrics: | | | | | | | |
Subscribers (in thousands) | 1,694 | | | 1,530 | | | 164 | | | 11% |
Average Subscribers (in thousands) | 1,612 | | | 1,381 | | | 231 | | | 17% |
ARPU | $ | 243 | | | $ | 205 | | | $ | 38 | | | 18% |
Revenue increased $108.5 million, or 38%, driven primarily by a 17% increase in Average Subscribers and an 18% increase in ARPU. The growth in Average Subscribers was due to the increase in customers as individuals, businesses and organizations continued to adopt video to communicate due, in part, to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. ARPU increased primarily due to the growth in sales-assisted subscribers, for which average annual contract values are much greater than self-serve subscribers. We expect revenue to continue to grow over time, though not at the same pace as in 2021.
Cost of revenue (exclusive of depreciation shown separately below) and Gross profit
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | $ Change | | % Change |
| (Dollars in thousands) |
Cost of revenue (exclusive of depreciation shown separately below) | $ | 102,537 | | | $ | 89,077 | | | $ | 13,460 | | | 15 | % |
Gross profit | 289,141 | | | 194,141 | | | 95,000 | | | 49 | % |
Gross profit margin | 74% | | 69% | | | | |
Cost of revenue increased $13.5 million, or 15%, due primarily to increases of $6.3 million in hosting fees, $5.2 million in credit card processing fees and in-app purchase fees, and $2.1 million in compensation expense. The increase in hosting fees was due to the increase in Average Subscribers, partially offset by cost optimization initiatives. The increase in credit card processing fees and in-app purchase fees was due primarily to the increase in Average Subscribers.
Gross profit margin increased due primarily to revenue growth as well as cost optimization initiatives for hosting, which decreased as a percentage of revenue.
Operating Expenses
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | $ Change | | % Change |
| (Dollars in thousands) |
Research and development expense | $ | 105,586 | | | $ | 64,238 | | | $ | 41,348 | | | 64% |
Sales and marketing expense | 152,691 | | | 105,630 | | | 47,061 | | | 45% |
General and administrative expense | 85,111 | | | 49,846 | | | 35,265 | | | 71% |
Depreciation | 923 | | | 460 | | | 463 | | | 101% |
Amortization of intangibles | 5,846 | | | 14,744 | | | (8,898) | | | (60)% |
Total operating expenses | $ | 350,157 | | | $ | 234,918 | | | $ | 115,239 | | | 49% |
Research and development expense increased $41.3 million, or 64%, due primarily to increased investment in products. The increased investment included $35.6 million in compensation expense (including an increase of $13.2 million in stock-based compensation expense), $2.5 million in software license and maintenance costs, and $1.7 million in consulting costs. The increase in compensation expense was primarily due to increased headcount, the issuance of new equity awards in 2021, and the modification of certain equity awards in connection with the Spin-off and Vimeo Merger.
Sales and marketing expense increased $47.1 million, or 45%, due primarily to increases of $22.1 million in compensation expense (including an increase of $4.1 million in stock-based compensation expense), $21.8 million in advertising costs, and $1.8 million in software license and maintenance costs. The increase in compensation expense was primarily due to growth in
the sales force and the issuance of new equity awards in 2021. The increase in advertising costs was a result of increased investment in paid media as the business scales.
General and administrative expense increased $35.3 million, or 71%, due primarily to increases of $21.7 million in compensation expense (including an increase of $15.5 million in stock-based compensation expense), $9.2 million in professional fees, and $1.9 million in software license and maintenance costs. The increase in compensation expense was due to increased headcount, the issuance of new equity awards in 2021 (including the Vimeo Restricted Shares as described in "Note 10—Stock-Based Compensation"), and the modification of certain equity awards in connection with the Spin-off and Vimeo Merger. The increase in professional fees was primarily due to costs associated with the implementation of new enterprise systems, acquisitions, and third party recruiting services, partially offset by a decrease in costs associated with the Spin-off. Depreciation increased $0.5 million, or 101%, due primarily to the reduction in the estimated useful life of certain leasehold improvements.
Amortization of intangibles decreased $8.9 million, or 60%, due primarily to certain intangibles that were fully amortized in the second half of 2020.
Operating loss
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | $ Change | | % Change |
| (Dollars in thousands) |
Operating loss | $ | (61,016) | | | $ | (40,777) | | | $ | (20,239) | | | (50) | % |
Operating loss increased $20.2 million, or 50%, due to an increase in operating expenses of $115.2 million, partially offset by an increase in gross profit of $95.0 million. The increase in operating expenses was due primarily to increases in compensation expense of $79.4 million (including an increase of $32.8 million in stock-based compensation), advertising costs of $21.8 million, professional fees of $12.6 million and software license and maintenance costs of $6.1 million, partially offset by a decrease in amortization of intangibles of $8.9 million. The increase in gross profit was due to higher revenue and improved gross margin (74% in 2021 compared to 69% in 2020).
Adjusted EBITDA
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | $ Change | | % Change |
| (Dollars in thousands) |
Adjusted EBITDA | $ | (9,354) | | | $ | (13,908) | | | $ | 4,554 | | | 33 | % |
As a percentage of revenue | (2)% | | (5)% | | | | |
Adjusted EBITDA increased $4.6 million to $9.4 million of a loss, due primarily to higher revenue and improved gross margin percentages, partially offset by increases in compensation expense, advertising costs, professional fees, and software license and maintenance costs.
Non-Operating Expenses
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | $ Change | | % Change |
| (Dollars in thousands) |
Interest expense | $ | (438) | | | $ | — | | | $ | (438) | | | NM |
Interest expense—related party | $ | (726) | | | $ | (9,116) | | | $ | 8,390 | | | 92 | % |
Other income (expense), net | $ | 10,241 | | | $ | 93 | | | $ | 10,148 | | | NM |
Interest expense relates to amortization of deferred financing costs and commitment fees associated with the Credit Facility, which commenced on February 12, 2021. See “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Revolving Credit Facility” for additional information about the Credit Facility.
Interest expense—related party relates to interest expense charged by IAC and its subsidiaries on the related party notes. The notes were repaid to IAC in January 2021.
Other income (expense), net generally relates to net foreign exchange gains and losses. For the year ended December 31, 2021, Other income (expense), net also includes a net gain of $10.2 million related to the sale of Vimeo’s retained interest in its former hardware business. For the year ended December 31, 2020, Other income (expense), net includes a gain of $0.5 million related to funds released from escrow related to the acquisition of Magisto and a gain of $0.3 million related to the sale of an investment.
Income tax provision
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | $ Change | | % Change |
| (Dollars in thousands) |
Income tax provision | $ | (828) | | | $ | (828) | | | $ | — | | | — | % |
Vimeo is in a net operating loss ("NOL") position for U.S. federal and state income tax purposes and certain foreign jurisdictions. The largest deferred tax assets are NOLs. Vimeo has recorded a valuation allowance for its net deferred tax assets because it has concluded that it is more likely than not that the NOLs will not be utilized due to its history of pre-tax losses.
For the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to year ended December 31, 2020, the income tax provision primarily relates to international and state taxes for jurisdictions in which Vimeo conducts business, and was flat as pre-tax income in these jurisdictions did not change significantly.
PRINCIPLES OF FINANCIAL REPORTING
We have provided Adjusted EBITDA in this report to supplement our financial information presented in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP"). We use this non-GAAP financial measure internally in analyzing our financial results and believe that use of this non-GAAP financial measure is useful to investors as an additional tool to evaluate ongoing operating results and trends and in comparing our financial results with other companies in our industry, many of which present a similar non-GAAP financial measure. However, our presentation of this non-GAAP financial measure may differ from the presentation of similarly titled measures by other companies. Adjusted EBITDA is the metric on which our internal budgets are based and also the metric by which management is compensated. We believe that investors should have access to, and we are obligated to provide, the same set of tools that we use in analyzing our results. This non-GAAP measure should be considered in addition to results prepared in accordance with GAAP, but should not be considered a substitute for or superior to GAAP results. We endeavor to compensate for the limitations of the non-GAAP measure presented by providing the comparable GAAP measure with equal or greater prominence and descriptions of the reconciling items, including quantifying such items, to derive the non-GAAP measure. We encourage investors to examine the reconciling adjustments between the GAAP and corresponding non-GAAP measure, which we discuss below.
Definition of Non-GAAP Measure
Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization ("Adjusted EBITDA") is defined as operating loss excluding: (1) stock-based compensation expense; (2) depreciation; and (3) acquisition-related items consisting of (i) amortization of intangible assets, (ii) impairments of goodwill and intangible assets, if applicable, and (iii) gains and losses recognized on changes in the fair value of contingent consideration arrangements. We believe this measure is useful for analysts and investors as this measure allows a more meaningful comparison between our performance and that of our competitors. The above items are excluded from our Adjusted EBITDA measure because these items are non-cash in nature. Adjusted EBITDA has certain limitations because it excludes the impact of these expenses.
The reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA is as follows:
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 |
| (In thousands) |
Net loss | $ | (52,767) | | | $ | (50,628) | |
Add back: | | | |
Income tax provision | 828 | | | 828 | |
Other (income) expense, net | (10,241) | | | (93) | |
Interest expense—related party | 726 | | | 9,116 | |
Interest expense | 438 | | | — | |
Operating loss | (61,016) | | | (40,777) | |
Add back: | | | |
Stock-based compensation expense | 44,893 | | | 11,665 | |
Depreciation | 923 | | | 460 | |
Amortization of intangibles | 5,846 | | | 14,744 | |
Adjusted EBITDA | $ | (9,354) | | | $ | (13,908) | |
Non-Cash Expenses That Are Excluded From Non-GAAP Measure
Stock-based compensation expense consists of expense associated with the grants of restricted stock units, Vimeo restricted shares, and stock appreciation rights ("SARs"), including performance-based SARs. These expenses are not paid in cash and we view the economic costs of stock-based awards to be the dilution to our share base. We also consider the dilutive impact of stock-based awards in GAAP diluted earnings per share, to the extent such impact is dilutive. Stock-based awards are generally settled on a gross basis in shares of Vimeo common stock such that individual award holders will pay their withholding tax obligation, generally by selling shares of Vimeo common stock (including a portion of the shares received in connection with the applicable exercise).
Depreciation is a non-cash expense relating to our leasehold improvements and equipment and is computed using the straight-line method to allocate the cost of depreciable assets to operations over their estimated useful lives, or, in the case of leasehold improvements, the lease term, if shorter.
Amortization of intangible assets and impairments of goodwill and intangible assets are non-cash expenses related to acquisitions. At the time of an acquisition, the identifiable definite-lived intangible assets of the acquired company, such as customer relationships, technology and trade names, are valued and amortized over their estimated lives. An impairment is recorded when the carrying value of an intangible asset or goodwill exceeds its fair value. We believe that intangible assets represent costs incurred by the acquired company to build value prior to acquisition and the related amortization and impairments of intangible assets or goodwill, if applicable, are not ongoing costs of doing business.
Gains and losses recognized on changes in the fair value of contingent consideration arrangements are accounting adjustments to report contingent consideration liabilities at fair value. These adjustments can be highly variable and are excluded from our assessment of performance because they are considered non-operational in nature and, therefore, are not indicative of current or future performance or the ongoing cost of doing business.
VIMEO'S FINANCIAL POSITION, LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES
Financial Position
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 |
| (In thousands) |
Cash and cash equivalents: | | | |
United States | $ | 317,134 | | | $ | 107,018 | |
All other countries | 4,766 | | | 2,993 | |
Total cash and cash equivalents | $ | 321,900 | | | $ | 110,011 | |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
Debt—related party: | | | |
Promissory note due on demand—related party | $ | — | | | $ | 44,565 | |
Promissory note due May 2, 2023—related party | — | | | 50,000 | |
Total debt—related party | $ | — | | | $ | 94,565 | |
Vimeo's international cash can be repatriated without significant tax consequences.
Cash Flow Information
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 |
| (In thousands) |
Net cash provided by (used in): | | | |
Operating activities | $ | 15,954 | | | $ | 13,861 | |
Investing activities | (6,824) | | | $ | 42 | |
Financing activities | $ | 203,058 | | | $ | 93,868 | |
Net cash provided by operating activities consists of earnings adjusted for non-cash items and the effect of changes in working capital. Non-cash adjustments include stock-based compensation expense, gain on the sale of an asset, amortization of intangibles, provision for credit losses, and depreciation.
Year ended December 31, 2021
Adjustments to net loss consist primarily of $44.9 million of stock-based compensation expense, a $10.2 million net gain related to the sale of Vimeo's retained interest in its former hardware business, and $5.8 million of amortization of intangibles. The increase from changes in working capital primarily consists of increases in deferred revenue of $36.7 million and accounts payable and other liabilities of $14.1 million, partially offset by increases in accounts receivable of $19.2 million and prepaid expenses and other assets of $6.4 million. The increase in deferred revenue was due primarily to growth in sales of annual subscriptions. The increase in accounts payable and other liabilities was primarily due to the timing of invoice payments, partially offset by the payment of related-party accrued interest. The increase in accounts receivable was primarily due to the implementation of a new billing system and growth in the business. The increase in prepaid expenses and other assets was primarily due to an increase in prepaid software license and maintenance costs and insurance.
Net cash used in investing activities includes the acquisitions of Wibbitz and WIREWAX, net of cash acquired of $14.2 million, and proceeds of $7.9 million related to the sale of Vimeo's retained interest in its former hardware business, partially offset by capital expenditures of $0.4 million.
Net cash provided by financing activities includes $299.8 million in net proceeds from the issuance of 9.0 million shares of Vimeo OpCo's Class A common stock and $3.4 million of proceeds from the exercise of stock options, partially offset by the repayment of related-party debt of $94.6 million, withholding taxes paid related to the exercise of equity awards of $4.1 million, and $1.4 million of deferred financing costs related to the Credit Facility.
Year ended December 31, 2020
Adjustments to net loss consist primarily of $14.7 million of amortization of intangibles, $11.7 million of stock-based compensation expense, and $1.8 million of provision for credit losses. The increase from changes in working capital primarily consists of increases in deferred revenue of $56.3 million, partially offset by an increase in accounts receivable of $7.4 million. The increase in deferred revenue was primarily due to growth in sales of annual subscriptions. The increase in accounts receivable was primarily related to growth in customers due, in part, to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the timing of cash receipts.
Net cash provided by investing activities includes $0.5 million in funds released from escrow related to the 2019 acquisition of Magisto and $0.3 million in proceeds from the sale of an investment, partially offset by capital expenditures of $0.8 million, primarily related to leasehold improvements.
Net cash provided by financing activities includes $149.6 million in proceeds from the issuance of 8.7 million shares of Class A common stock and $32.6 million of proceeds from the issuance of related-party debt, partially offset by $35.5 million in principal payments on related-party debt, $31.1 million of dividends paid to Class A and Class B Vimeo OpCo common stockholders, $11.6 million for cash reimbursed to IAC for IAC common shares issued to settle Vimeo OpCo stock appreciation rights that were exercised in November and December of 2020, and $10.1 million of cash reimbursed to IAC for withholding taxes paid on behalf of Vimeo employees for the exercise of stock appreciation rights.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Funding of Vimeo OpCo by IAC Prior to the Vimeo OpCo Primary Equity Raise in November 2020
Prior to Vimeo OpCo's November 10, 2020 primary equity sale, described below, Vimeo OpCo's principal source of liquidity had been the funding received from IAC and its subsidiaries, which was provided, in part, through IAC’s centrally managed U.S. treasury function. The funding by IAC had been sufficient to enable Vimeo OpCo to fund its normal operating requirements, including capital expenditures and acquisitions.
November 2020 Primary Equity Raise and Dividend
On November 10, 2020, Vimeo OpCo raised $150 million of equity capital via the sale of approximately 8.7 million shares of Vimeo OpCo Class A Voting common stock at a price of $17.33 per share, based on a pre-money valuation of $2.75 billion. During November 2020, Vimeo OpCo paid a cash dividend of $0.22 per share of Vimeo OpCo Class A Voting common stock and Vimeo OpCo Class B non-voting common stock to holders of record on November 5, 2020, for approximately $31 million in aggregate, of which $30.7 million was paid to IAC.
January 2021 Primary Equity Raise and Repayment of Debt Payable to IAC
In January 2021, Vimeo OpCo raised $300 million of equity capital via the sale of 6.2 million shares of Vimeo OpCo Class A Voting common stock for $200 million, or $32.41 per share, at a $5.2 billion pre-money valuation, and 2.8 million shares of Vimeo OpCo Class A Voting common stock for $100 million, or $35.35 per share, at a $5.7 billion pre-money valuation. A portion of the proceeds from the January 2021 primary equity raise was used to repay the debt payable to IAC, including accrued interest.
Revolving Credit Facility
On February 12, 2021, Vimeo OpCo entered into a $100 million revolving credit facility (the "Credit Facility"), which expires on February 12, 2026. Any borrowings under the Credit Facility are guaranteed by Vimeo's wholly-owned material domestic subsidiaries, if any, and are secured by substantially all assets of Vimeo and any guarantors, subject to certain exceptions. At December 31, 2021, the commitment fee, which is based on the consolidated net leverage ratio most recently reported and the average daily amount of the available revolving commitments, was 20 basis points. Any borrowings under the Credit Facility would bear interest, at Vimeo's option, at either a base rate or LIBOR, in each case plus an applicable margin, which is determined by reference to a pricing grid based on Vimeo’s consolidated net leverage ratio. The financial covenants require Vimeo to maintain a minimum liquidity of not less than $50.0 million until December 31, 2022 and, thereafter, at the end of each quarterly test period, a consolidated net leverage ratio (as defined in the agreement) of not more than 5.5 to 1.0. The Credit Facility also contains customary affirmative and negative covenants, including covenants that would limit Vimeo’s ability to pay dividends or make distributions on or repurchase certain equity interests in the event a default has occurred or Vimeo’s consolidated net leverage ratio exceeds 4.0 to 1.0. At December 31, 2021, there were no outstanding borrowings
under the Credit Facility. In December 2021, Vimeo agreed to cease any borrowings under certain non-USD currencies and certain USD tenors due to the applicable LIBOR benchmark rates no longer being available publicly from and after December 31, 2021 and until an amendment is made to the Credit Facility to replace LIBOR with an alternative benchmark.
Outstanding Stock-based Awards
Prior to the Spin-off, equity awards were settled on a net basis, with the award holder entitled to receive shares of IAC common stock with a value equal to the intrinsic value of the Vimeo OpCo award upon settlement less an amount equal to the required cash tax withholding payment, which was paid by IAC on behalf of the employee. Vimeo reimbursed IAC in cash for the withholding taxes remitted on behalf of the Vimeo employees and generally reimbursed IAC for the IAC shares through the issuance of shares of Vimeo common stock.
After the Spin-off, equity awards are settled in shares of Vimeo common stock, generally on a gross basis, such that individual award holders will be required to pay their withholding tax obligation, which they will generally be able to do by selling shares of Vimeo common stock (including a portion of the shares received in connection with the applicable settlement).
Liquidity Assessment
At December 31, 2021, Vimeo had approximately $321.9 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt. At December 31, 2021, approximately 87% of Vimeo’s subscribers were on annual subscription plans.
Vimeo believes its existing cash and cash equivalents and expected positive cash flows generated from operations will be sufficient to fund its normal operating requirements, including capital expenditures, and other commitments for the foreseeable future. This assessment includes the effect of non-cancellable purchase obligations, which primarily relate to cloud computing arrangements, and operating leases, which primarily relate to office space.. For further details, see "Note 12—Leases" and "Note 13—Commitments and Contingencies" to the consolidated financial statements included in Item 8—Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data. Historically, Vimeo's capital expenditures have not been material; however, 2022 capital expenditures are expected to be higher than 2021 capital expenditures, driven primarily by increased leasehold improvements. The $100 million of available borrowings under Vimeo’s Credit Facility will be a potential source of additional financial flexibility and liquidity, if needed. Vimeo’s liquidity could be negatively affected by a decrease in demand for our products and services, or the occurrence of unexpected expenses. Vimeo may need to raise additional capital through future debt or equity financings to make additional acquisitions and investments or to provide for greater financial flexibility. Additional financing may not be available on terms favorable to Vimeo or at all.
Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements
CRITICAL ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND ESTIMATES
The following disclosure is provided to supplement the descriptions of Vimeo's accounting policies contained in "Note 2—Summary of Significant Accounting Policies" to the consolidated financial statements included in Item 8—Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data in regard to significant areas of judgment. Management of Vimeo is required to make certain estimates, judgments and assumptions during the preparation of its consolidated financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP"). These estimates, judgments and assumptions impact the reported amount of assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses and the related disclosure of assets and liabilities. Actual results could differ from these estimates. Because of the size of the financial statement elements to which they relate, some of Vimeo's accounting policies and estimates have a more significant impact on its consolidated financial statements than others. What follows is a discussion of Vimeo's critical accounting policies and estimates. Business Combinations
Vimeo invested $14.2 million in acquisitions of businesses in 2021. Management makes a critical determination at the time of an acquisition related to the allocation of the purchase price of the business to the assets acquired and the liabilities assumed based upon their fair values including identifiable intangible assets that either arise from a contractual or legal right or are separable from goodwill.
The allocation of purchase price to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed is based upon their fair values on the acquisition date and is complex because of the judgments involved in determining these values. The determination of purchase price and the fair value of monetary assets acquired and liabilities assumed is typically less complex and involves less judgment than the valuation of intangible assets. Vimeo usually obtains the assistance of outside valuation experts in the allocation of the purchase price to the identifiable intangible assets acquired, such as acquired technology, customer relationships, trade names and trademarks. While outside valuation experts may be used, management has ultimate responsibility for the valuation methods, models and inputs used and the resulting purchase price allocation. The excess purchase price over the value of net tangible and identifiable intangible assets acquired is recorded as goodwill.
In connection with certain business combinations, Vimeo has entered into contingent consideration arrangements that are determined to be part of the purchase price. Accrued contingent consideration as of December 31, 2021 was $12.2 million. There were no contingent consideration arrangements as of December 31, 2020.
The premise underlying the accounting for contingent consideration arrangements is that there are divergent views as to the acquired company’s valuation between Vimeo and the selling shareholders of the acquiree. Therefore, future payments of a portion of the purchase price may be linked to one or more financial (e.g., revenue and/or profit performance) and/or operating (e.g., number of subscribers or integration) metrics or milestones that will be achieved over a specified time frame in the future based upon the performance of the business. Each of these arrangements is evaluated to determine if contingent payments are part of the purchase price or post-acquisition compensation expense which would be recognized over any future service period. If determined to be part of the purchase price, such contingent payments are initially recorded at its fair value at the time of the acquisition and the fair value is included in the aggregate purchase price. Vimeo determines the fair value of the contingent consideration arrangements by using probability weighted analyses to determine the amounts of the gross liability, and, if the arrangement is long-term in nature, applying a discount rate that appropriately captures the risk associated with the obligation to determine the net amount reflected in the financial statements. The contingent consideration arrangements are reassessed and measured at fair value at each subsequent reporting period thereafter until settled. The changes in the fair value of the contingent consideration arrangements during each reporting period, including the accretion of the discount, if applicable, are recognized in “General and administrative expense” in the statement of operations. Significant changes in the specified forecasted financial or operating metrics can result in significant adjustments to fair value, which can result in volatility of general and administrative expense as the resulting remeasurement gains and losses are recorded.
Recoverability of Goodwill
Goodwill is Vimeo's largest asset, with a carrying value of $242.6 million and $219.3 million at December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively.
Vimeo assesses goodwill for impairment annually as of October 1 or more frequently if an event occurs or circumstances change that would more likely than not reduce its fair value below its carrying value. Goodwill is tested for impairment at the reporting unit level which is either the “operating segment level,” or one level below, which is referred to as a “component.” The level at which the impairment test is performed requires judgment in identifying operating segments and components, and whether or not any components can be aggregated for purposes of the impairment test. Management has determined that there is
one operating segment and no components below that level, resulting in a single reporting unit at the overall Vimeo level for purposes of testing goodwill for impairment.
In assessing goodwill for impairment, Vimeo has the option to first perform a qualitative assessment to determine whether the existence of events or circumstances leads to a determination that it is more likely than not that the fair value of a reporting unit is less than its carrying amount. If Vimeo determines that it is not more likely than not that the fair value of a reporting unit is less than its carrying amount, it is not required to perform any additional tests in assessing goodwill for impairment. However, if Vimeo concludes otherwise or elects not to perform the qualitative assessment, then it is required to perform a quantitative assessment to determine the fair value of its reporting units. If the carrying value of a reporting unit exceeds its fair value, an impairment equal to the excess is recorded.
For Vimeo's annual goodwill test at October 1, 2021, a qualitative assessment of goodwill was performed because Vimeo concluded it was more likely than not that its fair value was in excess of its carrying value. The primary factor that the Company considered in determining that no impairment exists was that Vimeo’s October 1, 2021 market capitalization of $5.0 billion exceeded its carrying value by approximately $4.6 billion.
Stock-based Compensation
Stock-based compensation is one of the ways Vimeo attracts, retains, inspires and rewards our management team and employees, including those employed by recently acquired companies, by allowing them to benefit directly from the value they help to create. Vimeo recorded stock-based compensation expense of $44.9 million, $11.7 million, and $5.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019 respectively. Included in stock-based compensation expense in the year ended December 31, 2021 is a modification charge of $9.5 million in connection with the Spin-off and Vimeo Merger. The form of awards granted to the Company’s employees and non-employee directors in 2021 were generally restricted stock units (“RSUs”) and in previous years, stock appreciation rights ("SARs") and in the case of certain executives, performance-based SARs. Additionally, Vimeo entered into a Restricted Stock Agreement (the “RSA”) with Joseph Levin, Chairman of the Vimeo Board of Directors and IAC’s Chief Executive Officer, which provided for a grant of 4,870,500 shares of Vimeo common stock (“Vimeo Restricted Shares”).
RSUs
The grant-date fair value of a Vimeo RSU was determined based on the closing sale price of Vimeo’s common stock on the date of grant. For Vimeo OpCo RSUs granted (prior to the Spin-off) in 2021, the grant date-fair value was determined by reference to the pre-money valuation of Vimeo OpCo's January 2021 Primary Equity Raise which was the most recently completed equity transaction prior to the grant-date between Vimeo OpCo and unrelated third-parties.
SARs
The fair value of a SAR or performance-based SAR is estimated using the Black‑Scholes option‑pricing model, which requires the use of subjective assumptions to determine the inputs to the model, which include estimating the expected term from grant date to exercise, the expected volatility of the underlying shares, the risk‑free interest rates and the expected dividend yield.
Vimeo Restricted Shares
The terms of the RSA were determined pursuant to the existing requirements of Mr. Levin’s restricted stock agreement with IAC ("IAC RSA") as in effect prior to the Spin-off. The Vimeo Restricted Shares cliff vest on November 5, 2030, based on the satisfaction of certain Vimeo stock price targets and Mr. Levin’s continuous service as a Vimeo director through the vesting date. The number of Vimeo Restricted Shares subject to the RSA is the result of the 3,000,000 shares of IAC Restricted common stock, subject to the IAC RSA, multiplied by the Spin-off Exchange Ratio.
The Vimeo Restricted Shares contain both a service and market condition and the fair value was determined using a lattice model that incorporated a Monte Carlo simulation of Vimeo's stock price and IAC’s stock price. The attribution of the estimated fair values of the awards (the sum of the grant date fair value of the original IAC award, plus any incremental value as a result of the modification of original IAC award) between IAC and Vimeo, was determined on a proportional basis as a function of the estimated fair value of each respective award as of the date of the Spin-off. The amount allocated to Vimeo was $87.3 million and is expected to be recognized over the remaining requisite service period through November 2030 subject to Mr. Levin’s continuous service as a Vimeo director.
Recoverability and Estimated Useful Lives of Long-Lived Assets
Vimeo reviews the carrying value of all long-lived assets, comprising right-of-use assets ("ROU assets"), leasehold improvements and equipment, and intangible assets with definite lives, for impairment whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying value of an asset may not be recoverable. The carrying value of a long-lived asset is not recoverable if it exceeds the sum of the undiscounted cash flows expected to result from the use and eventual disposition of the asset. If the carrying value is deemed not to be recoverable, an impairment loss is recorded equal to the amount by which the carrying value of the long-lived asset exceeds its fair value. In addition, Vimeo reviews the useful lives of its long-lived assets whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that these lives may be changed. The carrying value of these long-lived assets is $27.4 million and $15.8 million at December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively.
Income Taxes
Vimeo regularly assesses the realizability of deferred tax assets considering all available evidence including, to the extent applicable, the nature, frequency and severity of prior cumulative losses, forecasts of future taxable income, tax filing status, the duration of statutory carryforward periods, available tax planning and historical experience. As of December 31, 2021 and 2020, Vimeo is in a three-year cumulative loss position and has recorded a full valuation allowance against its net deferred tax assets of $52.0 million and $51.7 million, respectively.
Vimeo evaluates and accounts for uncertain tax positions using a two-step approach. Recognition (step one) occurs when Vimeo concludes that a tax position, based solely on its technical merits, is more-likely-than-not to be sustainable upon examination. Measurement (step two) determines the amount of benefit that is greater than 50% likely to be realized upon ultimate settlement with a taxing authority that has full knowledge of all relevant information. De-recognition of a tax position that was previously recognized would occur when Vimeo subsequently determines that a tax position no longer meets the more-likely-than-not threshold of being sustained. This measurement step is inherently difficult and requires subjective estimations of such amounts to determine the probability of various possible outcomes. At December 31, 2021 and 2020, Vimeo has unrecognized tax benefits of $2.5 million and $1.9 million, respectively. Vimeo considers many factors when evaluating and estimating its tax positions and unrecognized tax benefits, which may require periodic adjustment and which may not accurately anticipate actual outcomes. Although management currently believes changes to unrecognized tax benefits from period to period and differences between amounts paid, if any, upon resolution of issues raised in audits and amounts previously provided will not have a material impact on the liquidity, results of operations, or financial condition of Vimeo, these matters are subject to inherent uncertainties and management’s view of these matters may change in the future.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements
Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk
Foreign Currency Exchange
International revenue, which is based upon the location of the customer, accounted for 50%, 51%, and 49% of Vimeo's total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, respectively. Vimeo's self-serve subscription plans are generally priced in local currency for international customers and Vimeo's sales-assisted subscription plans (formerly referred to as "enterprise subscription plans") are generally priced in U.S. dollars for international customers. Vimeo's investments in foreign subsidiaries that transact business in a functional currency other than the U.S. dollar are not material and, therefore, translation gains and losses are not material.
In addition, foreign currency exchange gains or losses historically have not been material to Vimeo. Vimeo recorded foreign exchange losses of less than $0.1 million, $0.7 million, and $0.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019 respectively.
Item 8. Consolidated Financial Statements and Supplementary Data
Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
To the Shareholders and the Board of Directors of Vimeo, Inc.
Opinion on the Financial Statements
We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Vimeo, Inc. and subsidiaries (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, the related consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive operations, shareholders’ equity and cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2021, and the related notes and the financial statement schedule (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company at December 31, 2021 and 2020, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2021, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
Basis for Opinion
These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company's management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (U.S.) (“PCAOB”) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.
We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.
Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.
/s/ Ernst & Young LLP
We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2020.
New York, New York
March 1, 2022
VIMEO, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEET
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 |
| (In thousands, except par value amounts) |
ASSETS | | | |
Cash and cash equivalents | $ | 321,900 | | | $ | 110,011 | |
Accounts receivable, net of allowance of $1,324 and $476 at December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively | 29,451 | | | 12,785 | |
Prepaid expenses and other current assets | 18,811 | | | 7,932 | |
Total current assets | 370,162 | | | 130,728 | |
| | | |
Leasehold improvements and equipment, net | 2,868 | | | 3,321 | |
Goodwill | 242,586 | | | 219,337 | |
Intangible assets with definite lives, net | 11,008 | | | 10,854 | |
Other non-current assets | 22,737 | | | 6,839 | |
TOTAL ASSETS | $ | 649,361 | | | $ | 371,079 | |
| | | |
LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY | | | |
LIABILITIES: | | | |
Accounts payable, trade | $ | 17,501 | | | $ | 3,324 | |
Promissory notes due on demand—related party | — | | | 44,565 | |
Deferred revenue | 173,167 | | | 137,436 | |
Accrued expenses and other current liabilities | 67,385 | | | 47,432 | |
Total current liabilities | 258,053 | | | 232,757 | |
| | | |
Long-term debt—related party | — | | | 50,000 | |
Other long-term liabilities | 20,713 | | | 3,242 | |
| | | |
Commitments and contingencies | | | |
| | | |
SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY: | | | |
Common stock, $0.01 par value; 1,600,000 shares authorized; 156,708 shares issued and outstanding at December 31, 2021 | 1,567 | | | — | |
Class B common stock, $0.01 par value; 400,000 shares authorized; 9,399 shares issued and outstanding at December 31, 2021 | 94 | | | — | |
Class A Voting common stock of Vimeo OpCo, $0.01 par value; 150,000 shares authorized; 83,656 shares issued and outstanding at December 31, 2020 | — | | | 837 | |
Class B Non-Voting common stock of Vimeo OpCo, $0.01 par value; 150,000 shares authorized; 66,285 shares issued and outstanding at December 31, 2020 | — | | | 663 | |
Preferred stock $0.01 par value; 100,000 and 50,000 shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding at December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, respectively | — | | | — | |
Additional paid-in-capital | 704,796 | | | 366,676 | |
Accumulated deficit | (335,776) | | | (283,009) | |
Accumulated other comprehensive loss | (86) | | | (87) | |
Total shareholders' equity | 370,595 | | | 85,080 | |
TOTAL LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY | $ | 649,361 | | | $ | 371,079 | |
VIMEO, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF OPERATIONS
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | 2019 |
| (In thousands, except per share data) |
Revenue | $ | 391,678 | | | $ | 283,218 | | | $ | 196,015 | |
Cost of revenue (exclusive of depreciation shown separately below) | 102,537 | | | 89,077 | | | 77,665 | |
Gross profit | 289,141 | | | 194,141 | | | 118,350 | |
Operating expenses: | | | | | |
Research and development expense | 105,586 | | | 64,238 | | | 46,946 | |
Sales and marketing expense | 152,691 | | | 105,630 | | | 87,337 | |
General and administrative expense | 85,111 | | | 49,846 | | | 34,189 | |
Depreciation | 923 | | | 460 | | | 478 | |
Amortization of intangibles | 5,846 | | | 14,744 | | | 9,653 | |
| | | | | |
Total operating expenses | 350,157 | | | 234,918 | | | 178,603 | |
Operating loss | (61,016) | | | (40,777) | | | (60,253) | |
Interest expense | (438) | | | — | | | — | |
Interest expense—related party | (726) | | | (9,116) | | | (8,538) | |
Other income (expense), net | 10,241 | | | 93 | | | (6,441) | |
Loss before income taxes | (51,939) | | | (49,800) | | | (75,232) | |
Income tax provision | (828) | | | (828) | | | (345) | |
Net loss | $ | (52,767) | | | $ | (50,628) | | | $ | (75,577) | |
| | | | | |
Per share information: | | | | | |
Basic and diluted loss per share | $ | (0.33) | | | $ | (0.32) | | | $ | (0.47) | |
| | | | | |
Dividends declared per share | $ | — | | | $ | 0.22 | | | $ | — | |
| | | | | |
Stock-based compensation expense by function: | | | | | |
Cost of revenue | $ | 493 | | | $ | 73 | | | $ | 13 | |
Research and development expense | 16,114 | | | 2,931 | | | 1,439 | |
Sales and marketing expense | 4,693 | | | 603 | | | 543 | |
General and administrative expense | 23,593 | | | 8,058 | | | 3,296 | |
Total stock-based compensation expense | $ | 44,893 | | | $ | 11,665 | | | $ | 5,291 | |
VIMEO, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE OPERATIONS
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Years Ended December 31, |
| 2021 | | 2020 | | 2019 |
| (In thousands) |
Net loss | $ | (52,767) | | | $ | (50,628) | | | $ | (75,577) | |
Other comprehensive income (loss): | | | | | |
Change in foreign currency translation adjustments | 1 | | | 145 | | | (78) | |
Total other comprehensive income (loss) | 1 | | | 145 | | | (78) | |
Comprehensive loss | $ | (52,766) | | | $ | (50,483) | | | $ | (75,655) | |
| | | | | |
VIMEO, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY
Year Ended December 31, 2021
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | Common stock, 0.01 par value | | Class B common stock, $0.01 par value | | Class A Voting common stock of Vimeo OpCo, $0.01 par value | | Class B Non-Voting common stock of Vimeo OpCo, $0.01 par value | | Additional Paid-in-Capital | | Accumulated Deficit | | Accumulated Other Comprehensive Loss | | Total Shareholders' Equity | | | | | | |
| | $ | | Shares | | $ | | Shares | | $ | | Shares | | $ | | Shares | | | | | | | | | |
| | (In thousands) | | | | | | |
Balance at December 31, 2020 | | $ | — | | | — | | | $ | — | | | — | | | $ | 837 | | | 83,656 | | $ | 663 | | | 66,285 | | | $ | 366,676 | | | $ | (283,009) | | | $ | (87) | | | $ | 85,080 | | | | | | | |
Net loss | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | — | | — | | | — | | | (52,767) | | | — | | | (52,767) | | | | | | | |
Other comprehensive income | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | — | | — | | | — | | | — | | | 1 | | | 1 | | | | | | | |
Stock-based compensation expense | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | — | | — | | | 44,893 | | | — | | | — | | | 44,893 | | | | | | | |
Amounts related to settlement of equity awards | | 18 | | | 1,856 | | | — | | | — | | | 1 | | | 133 | | — | | — | | | (6,896) | | | — | | | — | | | (6,877) | | | | | | | |
Issuance of common stock, net of fees | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | 90 | | | 9,000 | | — | | — | | | 299,660 | | | — | | | — | | | 299,750 | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Exchange of shares related to Spin-off | | 1,500 | | | 149,981 | | | 94 | | | 9,399 | | | (928) | | | (92,789) | | | (663) | | | (66,285) | | | (3) | | | | | | | — | | | | | | | |
Restricted Stock Award | | 49 | | | 4,871 | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | (49) | | | | | | | — | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Other | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | 515 | | | — | | | — | | | 515 | | | | | | | |
Balance at December 31, 2021 | | $ | 1,567 | | | 156,708 | | | $ | 94 | | | 9,399 | | | $ | — | | | — | | | $ | — | | | — | | | $ | 704,796 | | | $ | (335,776) | | | $ | (86) | | | $ | 370,595 | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
VIMEO, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY
Years Ended December 31, 2020 and 2019
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Class A Voting common stock of Vimeo OpCo, $0.01 par value | | Class B Non-Voting common stock of Vimeo OpCo, $0.01 par value | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| $ | | Shares | | $ | | Shares | | Additional Paid-in Capital | | Accumulated Deficit | | Accumulated Other Comprehensive Loss | | Total Shareholders' Equity |
| (In thousands) |
Balance at December 31, 2018 | $ | 635 | | | 63,488 | | | $ | 528 | | | 52,816 | | | $ | 48,855 | | | $ | (125,722) | | | $ | (154) | | | $ | (75,858) | |
Net loss | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | (75,577) | | | — | | | (75,577) | |
Other comprehensive loss | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | (78) | | | (78) | |
Stock-based compensation expense | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | 5,291 | | | — | | | — | | | 5,291 | |
Amounts related to settlement of equity awards | — | | | 50 | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | |
Issuance of Vimeo OpCo common stock to IAC/InterActiveCorp in connection with the funding of the Magisto acquisition | 115 | | | 11,462 | | | 132 | | | 13,205 | | | 168,227 | | | — | | | — | | | 168,474 | |
Other | — | | | — | | | — | | | — | | | 1,381 | |