General
McorpCX, Inc. (“we,” “us,” “our,” or the “Company”) was incorporated in the State of California on December 14, 2001. We are a customer experience (CX) management solutions company dedicated to helping organizations improve customer experiences, increase customer loyalty, reduce costs and increase revenue. The Company operated as The Innes Group, Inc., d/b/a MCorp Consulting until filing a Certificate of Amendment to the Articles of Incorporation renaming the Company Touchpoint Metrics, Inc., effective October 18, 2011. During the first quarter of 2015, the Company filed a d/b/a (doing business as) with the State of California Secretary of State to begin doing business as McorpCX. On June 11, 2015, at our Annual General Meeting, shareholders passed a resolution to change the name of the Company to McorpCX, Inc.
We are a customer experience services company, delivering consulting and technology solutions to customer-centric organizations. Our professional and related services include a range of customer experience management services such as research, training, strategy consulting and process optimization. Currently we are engaged in the business of delivering consulting and professional services that are designed to help corporations improve their customer listening and customer experience management capabilities. Going forward we will focus on developing and/or acquiring new technology solutions as part of our overall strategy. This supports our vision as a technology and service provider.
On August 16, 2018, the Company entered into a contribution agreement with its wholly owned subsidiary McorpCX, LLC, (“McorpCX LLC”) pursuant to which the Company transferred to McorpCX LLC all of the Company’s assets and liabilities related to the Company’s customer experience consulting business, excluding the underlying technology and databases related thereto which remained with the Company. In connection with this internal reorganization, Michael Hinshaw, resigned as the Company’s President and Chief Executive and was appointed President of McorpCX LLC in order to be able to focus the majority of his time and energies towards building the Company’s consulting business, which is now operated through McorpCX LLC.
We maintain our primary business address at 201 Spear Street, Suite 1100, San Francisco, CA 94105. Our telephone number is (415) 526-2655. Our registered agent for service of process is Northwest Registered Agents, Inc. Our web address is http://www.mcorp.cx. The inclusion of our internet address in this report does not include or incorporate by reference into this report any information contained on, or accessible through, our website. Our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy statements, amendments to those reports and other Securities and Exchange Commission, or “SEC”, filings are available free of charge through our website as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Additionally, copies of materials filed by us with the SEC may be accessed at www.sec.gov.
Our common stock trades on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada under the symbol “MCX” and on the OTCQB Venture Marketplace in the United States under the symbol “MCCX”.
Customer experience (CX)
CX is defined as the sum of all experiences a customer has with a company, its goods and its services, across various touchpoints and over the duration of their relationship with that company. Customer experience management (CXM) is a series of disciplines, methodologies and processes used to comprehensively understand, plan, measure and manage a customer’s experiences, with the goal of improving customer perceptions.
We are engaged in the business of helping corporations improve their CX and CXM capabilities and serve a wide variety of industries and customer sizes.
Products and Services
Our primary revenue source comes from consulting and professional services including research, training, strategy consulting and process optimization. To add value to our customers, we have developed technology products that support customer insight and understanding for our consulting clients. We will focus on developing and/or acquiring new technology solutions as part of our overall strategy. This focus supports our vision as a technology and service provider. Together, our services and products are designed to help organizations improve customer experiences, increase customer loyalty, reduce costs and increase revenue. We serve a wide variety of industries and customer sizes.
Professional Services
We provide professional and related consulting services including customer experience management consulting in the areas of research, strategy development, planning, education, training and best practices, and includes the articulation of customer-centric strategies and implementation roadmaps in support of these strategies.
These services are intended to help primarily large and medium sized organizations systematically and predictably plan, design and deliver better customer experiences, maximize their return on investment, improve their operational efficiency, and increase customers' adoption of their products and services.
Software
We have developed two SaaS-based software solutions, Touchpoint Mapping On Demand, referred to as “Touchpoint Mapping” and McorpCX | Persona, which are each designed to be delivered through a cloud-based platform. The Touchpoint Mapping platform can provide access to survey deployment, the ability to manage customer data, and access to customer-driven business intelligence (BI) by displaying data in a series of online dashboards. The McorpCX | Persona platform is intended to provide the ability to create, manage, access and share customer persona, with the intention of helping to digitize and automate the persona development process. In addition, we utilize licensed third party software with many of our clients to provide analytics and execute our client engagements. During the second half of 2017, we stopped further development of our exiting CX software products in order to re-assess the product roadmap to better define the future direction of our software platform, and in 2018 we suspended future sales of both Touchpoint Mapping and McorpCX | Persona. We intend to continue to focus on developing and/or acquiring technology solutions as part of our overall offerings to our customers. This focus supports are vision as a technology and service provider.
Our Strategy
Since our founding, we have been focused on customer experience improvement. The methodologies we have developed and deliver as a professional services firm have formed the foundation for our CX consulting, advisory and analytic expertise. We will focus on developing and/or acquiring new technology solutions. This focus supports are vision as a technology and service provider.
We used our CX consulting experience to create the foundation for a cloud-based software platform. Though we released the first version of Touchpoint Mapping in 2013 and released the first version of McorpCX | Persona in 2016, there are many potential unforeseen and significant market and competitive risks associated with the market penetration of our software products and related services, and we cannot predict the timing or probability of generating material sales revenue from them.
As of the date of this report, we have yet to engage the necessary development and client support or sales staff required to identify, develop, and close material product sales opportunities which we believe is required to achieve our product sales and revenue growth objectives. In addition, we believe that our current software capabilities are more limited in scope than our desired final software platform and as such, we will require significant further software development expenditures. Consequently, revenues from our consulting services provided to our clients continued to represent a majority of our revenue in 2019. To support our vision as a provider of technology and services to our customers, management plans to focus on developing and/or acquiring new technology solutions.
The Company is in the process of determining the optimal path forward for our software products based on current market dynamics, the competitive environment and customer feedback. We continue to evaluate various potential strategies with the goal of improving our ability to achieve additional revenue and profit growth for our software products. These possible strategies, which are generally focused on ways to create a more complete slate of customer experience solutions for our clients, may include further software or technology development expenditures, pursuit of merger, acquisitions or joint ventures with companies that provide complimentary products and services, software licensing arrangements, and investment in additional infrastructure within our Company. Each of these possible strategies will be thoroughly vetted by our board of directors to assess the expected level of enterprise value creation for each strategy compared to the various risks associated with each possible scenario. In addition, we may require financing to pursue these strategies that is beyond our current financial resources. Accordingly, there is no assurance that we will be able to pursue any strategies that are identified by our board of director.
Competition
The market for customer experience management solutions is highly competitive and increasingly fragmented. It is subject to rapidly changing technology, shifting organizational priorities and requirements, frequent introductions of new products and services, and increased marketing and sales activities of other industry participants.
Multiple competitors exist in the overlapping areas of on-demand and traditional marketing research, customer relationship management (CRM), Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM), Customer Journey Management and analytics and Digital Experience Management (DXM) software, services, management consulting and customer experience management consulting. For example, many CRM software companies include customer experience-specific insights as adjunct capabilities to their existing platforms, and others have rebranded their existing CRM software or customer satisfaction research software as customer experience software, which has the potential to create unforeseen competitive barriers and market confusion.
Many of our current and potential competitors have a significantly larger market presence, greater name recognition, access to more potential customers and substantially greater financial, technical, sales and marketing, management, support and other resources than we have. As a result, many of our competitors are able to respond more quickly than we can to new or changing opportunities and technologies, and may devote greater resources to the marketing, promotion and sale of their products than we can.
Given the growth of customer experience management as a business discipline and on-demand software as a way for companies to better understand and manage customer experiences across their business, there are likely many competitors we have not identified. Additionally, we expect that new competitors will continue to enter the customer experience management and on-demand customer experience software markets with competing products and services as the market continues to rapidly develop and mature.
We believe it is highly likely that existing and new competitors will rapidly acquire significant market share, which would negatively impact our ability to effectively market, compete and sell our products and services into the markets in which such competitors operate.
Dependence on Major Customers
The Company sells its products and services under various terms to a broad range of companies across multiple industries ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, with sales concentrated among a few large clients. For the twelve months ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, the percentage of the Company’s total sales to its largest customer was 28% and 35%, respectively, while sales to the Company’s second largest customer accounted for 18% and 29%, respectively of the Company’s total sales over those same time periods. See “Note 7 Concentrations” in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in this report.
Intellectual Property
We rely on our trademark and other intellectual property laws, contractual arrangements, such as assignment, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, and confidentiality procedures and technical measures to gain rights to and protect the technology and intellectual property used in our business. We actively pursue registration of our trademarks and service marks in the United States.
As of December 31, 2019, we own, through McorpCX LLC, four issued U.S. trademarks. The issued U.S. trademarks that we own are expected to expire between August 2020 and February 2027. Our trademarks include Touchpoint Mapping, MCORP., Loyalty Mapping and Touchpoint Metrics.
Our applications use a combination of “open source” software and technology we license from third parties. Open source software is made available to the general public in source code form for use, modification and redistribution on an “as-is” basis under the terms of a non-negotiable license. Though the third-party technology we rely upon may not continue to be available to us on commercially reasonable terms, we believe that alternative technology would likely be available to us in such circumstances.
Our policy is to require employees and independent contractors to sign agreements assigning to us any inventions, trade secrets, works of authorship, and other technology and intellectual property created by them on our behalf and agreeing to protect our confidential information, and all of our key employees and contractors have done so. In addition, we generally enter into confidentiality agreements with our vendors and customers. We also control and monitor access to our software, source code and other proprietary information.
Insurance
We maintain health, dental, workmen’s compensation, general liability, commercial auto, and professional liability/E&O insurance policies and director and officer insurance.
Employees
At the end of 2019 we had six full-time employees and fourteen independent contractors. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or covered by a collective bargaining agreement. We have never experienced any employment-related work stoppages and consider relations with our employees to be good. We intend to hire more employees and independent contractors on an as-needed basis.
Offices
We have two business addresses. Our headquarters is located at 201 Spear Street, Suite 1100, San Francisco, CA 94105. We also have a business office in San Anselmo, California located at 251 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, 94960.
Costs and Effects of Compliance with Local, State and Federal Environmental Laws
Given the nature of the Company’s business operations, local, state and federal environmental laws do not impose any material costs or have any material effect on the Company.
Government Regulation
We are not currently subject to direct federal, state or local regulation other than regulations applicable to businesses.
RISK FACTORS
The statements in this “Risk Factors” section describe material risks to our business and should be considered carefully. You should review carefully the risk factors listed below, as well as those factors listed in other documents we file with the SEC. Our disclosure and analysis in this annual report on Form 10-K and in our annual report to shareholders contain some forward-looking statements that set forth anticipated results based on management’s current plans and assumptions.
We have incurred losses from our operations and may continue to incur losses from our operations into the future. There is no assurance our future operations will result in profitable revenues. If we cannot generate sufficient revenues to operate profitably, we will cease operations and any investment will be lost.
During the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2018, we incurred net operating losses of approximately $0.8 million and $0.4 million, respectively. Our ability to achieve and maintain profitability and positive cash flow is dependent upon our ability to retain and expand our existing customer base and our ability to increase our revenues through the sale of our services and products.
There are many potential unforeseen and significant market and competitive risks associated our current products and services. Although we released the first version of Touchpoint Mapping in 2013, and we released the first version of McorpCX | Persona in 2016, we cannot predict the timing or probability of generating material sales revenue from either of them. As of the date of this report, we have yet to engage the necessary sales and marketing staff or the capabilities required to identify, develop, and close material product sales opportunities, and currently lack sufficient resources to market and sell our products in the manner which we believe is required to achieve our product sales and revenue growth objectives. In addition, we believe that our current CX software capabilities are more limited in scope than our desired final software platform and as such, we will focus on developing and/or acquiring new technology solutions. This focus supports our vision as a technology and service provider. Further, during the second half of 2017, we stopped further development of our CX software products in order to re-assess the product roadmap to better define the future direction of our software platform, and in 2018 we suspended future sales of both Touchpoint Mapping and McorpCX | Persona until we further assess the platform and the commercial viability of our software products in their current state. We can give no assurance that we will resume development or sales of either of our software products. Our consulting services business is project based, and as such there is no guarantee that past or current success in this area will lead to future revenue. It is our expectation that numerous unforeseen challenges will be encountered as we work to develop, market, distribute and sell our services and products. We cannot assure you that that we will be able to compete successfully against current or potential competitors, or that competition will not have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operations.
Our ability to achieve our objectives will stem in large part from our ability to develop and/or acquire new technology solutions., the licensing and adoption of our systems and methodologies, the development of direct and indirect sales and distribution channels through which we can distribute our products and services, and/or the definition and execution of other strategic plans. Based upon current plans, we expect to incur operating losses in future periods because we will be incurring expenses required to achieve our objectives and not generating revenues sufficient to generate profits. We cannot guarantee that we will be successful in generating sufficient revenues in the future. Failure to generate profits from operations may cause our business to fail.
Business or economic disruptions or global health concerns beyond our control could seriously harm our business and results of operations.
Broad-based business or economic disruptions could adversely affect our ongoing or planned business activities. For example, beginning in December 2019 an outbreak of a novel strain of coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China, and has since spread to a number of other countries, including the United States. The outbreak has prompted precautionary government-imposed closures of certain travel and businesses. We cannot presently predict the scope and severity of any potential business shutdowns or disruptions, but if we or any of the third parties with whom we engage were to experience shutdowns or other business disruptions, our ability to conduct our business in the manner and on the timelines presently planned could be materially and negatively impacted.
We are dependent on Michael Hinshaw, the President of McorpCX LLC to guide our consulting operations and we may be faced with interruptions and challenges to continuing our business if we were to lose the services of Mr. Hinshaw.
Our continuing consulting operations depend on the efforts, abilities and resources of Michael Hinshaw, the President of McorpCX LLC. Mr. Hinshaw plays an integral role in among other things:
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acquiring new clients for our consulting services;
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managing the relationships with our current clients and overseeing the consulting and product services provided to such clients; and
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providing thought leadership content for the Company and its clients.
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Since we believe there is currently no other employee of the Company who has both the ability and the resources to perform the services to the Company that Mr. Hinshaw is currently performing, if we lose the services of Mr. Hinshaw, we may have to cease operations.
If we do not attract new customers, we will not make a profit, which ultimately will result in a cessation of operations.
Our ability to maintain operations is predicated upon being retained to provide technology enabled products and services that improve customer experience management capabilities for corporations. As of December 31, 2019, we had approximately 6 customers active and 17 customers total for the year ended December 31, 2019. If we are unable to attract and maintain an adequate customer base to generate revenues, we will have to suspend or cease operations.
If the Company cannot protect its intellectual property rights, its operating results will suffer
Our intellectual property rights are important to our business. We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark, service mark, trade secret and other rights in the United States and other jurisdictions, as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary technology, processes and other intellectual property. We protect our intellectual property rights in a number of ways including entering into confidentiality and other written agreements with our employees, customers, consultants and partners in an attempt to control access to and distribution of our software, documentation and other proprietary technology and other information. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, third parties may, in an unauthorized manner, attempt to use, copy or otherwise obtain and market or distribute our intellectual property rights or technology or otherwise develop software or services with the same functionality as our software and services. Litigation may be necessary to enforce the Company’s intellectual property rights and to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others. Any litigation could result in substantial costs and diversion of management and other resources with no assurance of success and could seriously harm the Company’s business and operating results.
If we infringe on any patents of our competitors, we will be liable for damages and may be enjoined from conducting our proposed business. Further, because our patents do not cover the entirety of our product, someone could use the information and compete with us and we will have no recourse against him.
The market for our products and services is evolving rapidly
We are engaged in a new and rapidly evolving business, and consequently we may experience rapid shifts in demands for our products and services. These changes in demand may result from a number of factors, including, without limitation, changes in the perceived benefits of or need for our services and the introduction of technology-based solutions that supplant the need for professional consulting-based services. These changes in demand may adversely impact on our ability to earn revenues and achieve profitability.
We face intense competition for our products and services
The market for customer experience management solutions is highly competitive, increasingly fragmented, and subject to rapidly changing technology, shifting organizational priorities and requirements, frequent introductions of new products and services, and increased marketing activities of other industry participants. Many of our current competitors have a larger market presence, greater name recognition, access to more potential customers and substantially greater financial, technical, sales and marketing, management, support and other resources than we have, which allows such competitors to respond more quickly than we can to new or changing opportunities and technologies, and to devote greater resources to the marketing, promotion and sale of their products than we can.
Additionally, many CRM software companies include customer experience-specific insights as adjunct capabilities to their existing platforms, and others have rebranded their existing CRM software or customer satisfaction research software as customer experience software, which has the potential to create unforeseen competitive barriers and market confusion, which could negatively affect our operations.
Given the growth of customer experience management as a business discipline, we expect that new competitors will continue to enter the customer experience management and on-demand customer experience software markets with competing products and services as the market continues to rapidly develop and mature. We believe it is highly likely that existing and new competitors will rapidly acquire significant market share, which could negatively impact our ability to effectively market, compete and sell our products and services into the markets in which such competitors operate.
We have limited access to financing and capital to fund our operations
We primarily generate cash to fund our business operations from our business operations and from the proceeds from a private placement completed in 2016. However, since we have incurred net losses in each of 2016 through 2019, there is no assurance that our cash from operations will be sufficient to fund our business operations on an ongoing basis. Accordingly, we may require additional financing to continue our operations. We do not have any arrangements in place for any future debt or equity financing and there is no assurance that any financing would be available to us if required.
Our inability to generate sufficient cash flows may result in our Company not being able to continue as a going concern.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, the Company had a net loss of $760,955. In addition, the Company had a net loss of $411,216 for the year ended December 31, 2018. These circumstances result in substantial doubt as to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The Company's ability to continue as a going concern is dependent upon the Company's ability to continue to generate sufficient revenues to operate profitably or raise additional capital through debt financing and/or through sales of common shares.
The failure to achieve the necessary levels of profitability or obtain the additional funding would be detrimental to the Company. The Company’s consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments relating to the recoverability and classification of recorded assets, or the amounts and classification of liabilities that might be necessary should the Company be unable to continue as a going concern.
Because we have only five officers and five directors who are responsible for our managerial and organizational structure, there may not be effective disclosure and accounting controls to comply with applicable laws and regulations which could result in fines, penalties and assessments against us.
We have only five officers and five directors. These persons are responsible for our managerial and organizational structure, which include preparation of disclosure and accounting controls under the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. As such, they are responsible for the administration of the Company’s internal controls. Should they not properly administer the Company’s internal controls, we may be subject to sanctions and fines by the SEC.
As of December 31, 2019, management assessed the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and concluded that, during the period covered by this report, such internal controls and procedures were not effective to detect the inappropriate application of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. Management determined that this was due to deficiencies that existed in the design or operation of our internal controls over financial reporting that adversely affected our internal controls and that may be considered to be material weaknesses. See Item 9A Controls and Procedures – Internal Control Over Financial Reporting for more information. Although management has taken steps in 2019 to address the deficiencies in our internal controls, the Company currently does not have sufficient internal controls over financial reporting which could limit investment in the Company’s securities and expose the Company to SEC fines or administrative sanctions.
There is no assurance that we will be able to update our Touchpoint Mapping software or our McorpCX | Persona solution to incorporate features that our customers and potential customers require
Our Touchpoint Mapping software and our McorpCX | Persona solution have not been upgraded and ceased to be a functioning technology and any enhancements will be based on our understanding of the features that potential customers will require. However, there is no assurance that any enhancements we incorporate into updated Touchpoint Mapping or McorpCX | Persona software will provide our customers and potential customers with the features and functionality that they require. Accordingly, there is no assurance that we will be able to achieve material sales of our Touchpoint Mapping or McorpCX | Persona software on a stand-alone basis once further development is completed.
There are legal restrictions on the resale of our shares of common stock, including penny stock regulations under the United States federal securities laws. These restrictions may adversely affect the ability to resell our shares of common stock.
We anticipate that our common shares will continue to be subject to the penny stock rules under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). These rules regulate broker/dealer practices for transactions in “penny stocks.” Penny stocks are generally equity securities with a price of less than $5.00. The penny stock rules require broker/dealers to deliver a standardized risk disclosure document that provides information about penny stocks and the nature and level of risks in the penny stock market. The broker/dealer must also provide the customer with current bid and offer quotations for the penny stock, the compensation of the broker/dealer and its salesperson and monthly account statements showing the market value of each penny stock held in the customer’s account. The bid and offer quotations and the broker/dealer and salesperson compensation information must be given to the customer orally or in writing prior to completing the transaction and must be given to the customer in writing before or with the customer’s confirmation. In addition, the penny stock rules require that prior to a transaction, the broker and/or dealer must make a special written determination that the penny stock is a suitable investment for the purchaser and receive the purchaser’s written agreement to the transaction. The transaction costs associated with penny stocks are high, reducing the number of broker-dealers who may be willing to engage in the trading of our shares. These additional penny stock disclosure requirements are burdensome and may reduce all of the trading activity in the market for our common stock. As long as the common stock is subject to the penny stock rules, our shareholders may find it more difficult to sell their shares.
Our future sales of our common stock could cause our share price to decline.
There is no contractual restriction on our ability to issue additional shares of our common stock. We cannot predict the effect, if any, that market sales of our common stock or the availability of shares for sale will have on the market price prevailing from time to time. Sales by us of our common stock in the public market, or the perception that such sales may occur, could cause the trading price of our common stock to decrease or to be lower than it might be in the absence of those sales or perceptions.
The market price of our common stock may be volatile.
The trading price of our shares of common stock may be highly volatile and could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors. Some of the factors that may cause the market price of our shares of common stock to fluctuate include:
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Fluctuations in our quarterly financial results or the quarterly financial results of companies perceived to be similar to us;
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Changes in estimates of our financial results or recommendations by securities analysts;
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Failure of any of our products to achieve or maintain market acceptance;
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Changes in market valuations of similar companies;
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Significant products, contracts, acquisitions or strategic alliances of our competitors;
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Success of competing products or services;
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Changes in our capital structure, such as future issuances of securities or the incurrence of additional debt;
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Regulatory developments;
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Litigation involving our Company, our general industry or both;
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Additions or departures of key personnel;
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Investors’ general perception of us; and
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Changes in general economic, industry and market conditions.
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Failures or security breaches of our information technology systems could disrupt our operations and negatively impact our business.
We use information technologies to securely manage our operations and various business functions. We rely on various technologies to process, store and report on our business and to communicate electronically between our employees, consultants and customers. We also use information technologies to process financial information and results of operations for internal reporting purposes and to comply with regulatory, legal and tax requirements. Despite our security design and controls, and those of our third party providers, our information technology systems may be vulnerable to a variety of interruptions, including during the process of upgrading or replacing software, databases or components thereof, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, cyber-attacks, hackers, unauthorized access attempts and other security issues or may be breached due to employee error, malfeasance or other disruptions. Any such interruption or breach could result in operational disruptions or the misappropriation of sensitive data that could subject us to civil and criminal penalties, litigation or have a negative impact on our reputation. There can be no assurance that such disruptions or misappropriations and the resulting repercussions will not negatively impact our cash flows and materially affect our results of operations or financial condition.
In addition, many of our information technology systems, such as those we use for administrative functions, including human resources, payroll, accounting and internal and external communications, as well as the information technology systems of our third-party business partners and service providers, whether cloud-based or hosted in proprietary servers, contain personal, financial or other information that is entrusted to us by our customers and personnel. Many of our information technology systems also contain proprietary and other confidential information related to our business, such as business plans and research and development initiatives. To the extent we or a third party were to experience a material breach of our or such third party’s information technology systems that results in the unauthorized access, theft, use, destruction or other compromises of our customers’ or personnel’s data or confidential information stored in such systems, including through cyber-attacks or other external or internal methods, it could result in a violation of applicable privacy and other laws, and subject us to litigation and governmental investigations and proceedings, any of which could result in our exposure to material liability.
We may incur losses as a result of unforeseen or catastrophic events, including the emergence of a pandemic, terrorist attacks or natural disasters.
The occurrence of unforeseen or catastrophic events, including the emergence of a pandemic or other widespread health emergency (or concerns over the possibility of such an emergency), terrorist attacks or natural disasters, could create economic and financial disruptions and could lead to operational difficulties (including travel limitations) that could impair our ability to manage or operate our business and adversely affect our results of operations.
A small number of our shareholders could significantly influence our business.
There are a few significant shareholders of our common stock who own a substantial percentage of the outstanding shares of our common stock. These few significant shareholders, either individually or acting together, may be able to exercise significant influence over matters requiring shareholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of the Company or our assets. This concentration of ownership may make it more difficult for other shareholders to effect substantial changes in the Company, may have the effect of delaying, preventing or expediting, as the case may be, a change in control of the Company and may adversely affect the market price of our common stock. Further, the possibility that one or more of these significant shareholders may sell all or a large portion of their common stock in a short period of time could adversely affect the trading price of our common stock. Also, the interests of these few shareholders may not be in the best interests of all shareholders.
Limited liability of the Company’s executive officers and directors may discourage stockholders from bringing a lawsuit against them.
The Company’s Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws contain provisions that limit the liability of directors for monetary damages and provide for indemnification of officers and directors. These provisions may discourage stockholders from bringing a lawsuit against officers and directors for breaches of fiduciary duty and may also reduce the likelihood of derivative litigation against officers and directors even though such action, if successful, might otherwise have benefited the stockholders. In addition, a stockholder’s investment in the Company may be adversely affected to the extent that costs of settlement and damage awards against officers or directors are paid by the Company under the indemnification provisions of the Company’s Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws.
Under the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws of the Company, we may indemnify an officer or director who is made a party to any proceeding, including a lawsuit, because of his or her position, if he or she acted in good faith and in a manner he or she reasonably believed to be in our best interest. We may also advance expenses incurred in defending a proceeding. To the extent that the officer or director is successful on the merits in a proceeding as to which he or she is to be indemnified, we must indemnify him or her against all expenses incurred, including attorney's fees. With respect to a derivative action, indemnity may be made only for expenses actually and reasonably incurred in defending the proceeding, and if the officer or director is judged liable, only by a court order. The indemnification is intended to be to the fullest extent permitted by the laws of the State of California.