Five9 Inc

Revenue

Our revenue consists of subscription and related usage as well as professional services. We consider our subscription and related usage to be recurring revenue. This recurring revenue includes fixed subscription fees for the delivery and support of our VCC cloud platform, as well as related usage fees. The related usage fees are generally based on the volume of minutes for inbound and outbound client interactions. We also offer bundled plans, generally for smaller deployments, where the client is charged a single monthly fixed fee per agent seat that includes both subscription and unlimited usage in the contiguous 48 states and, in some cases, Canada. We offer monthly, annual and multiple-year contracts for our clients, generally with 30 days’ notice required for reductions in the number of agent seats. Increases in the number of agent seats can be provisioned almost immediately. Our clients, therefore, are able to adjust the number of agent seats used to meet their changing contact center volume needs. Our larger clients typically choose annual contracts, which generally include an implementation and ramp period of several months.

Fixed subscription fees, including plans with bundled usage, are generally billed monthly in advance, while variable usage fees are billed in arrears. Fixed subscription fees are recognized on a straight-line basis over the applicable term, which is predominantly the monthly contractual billing period. Support activities include technical assistance for our solution and upgrades and enhancements on a when and if available basis, which are not billed separately. Variable subscription related usage fees for non-bundled plans are billed in arrears based on client-specific per minute rate plans and are recognized as actual usage occurs. We generally require advance deposits from clients based on estimated usage. All fees, except usage deposits, are non-refundable.

In addition, we generate professional services revenue from assisting clients in implementing our solution and optimizing use. These services include application configuration, system integration and education and training services. Professional services are primarily billed on a fixed-fee basis and are typically performed by us directly. In limited cases, our clients choose to perform these services themselves or engage their own third-party service providers to perform such services. Professional services are recognized as the services are performed using the proportional performance method, with performance measured based on labor hours, provided all other criteria for revenue recognition are met.

While the implications of macroeconomic events on our business, results of operations and overall financial position remain uncertain over the long term, we expect that adverse economic conditions will continue to have an adverse impact on our revenue in future periods. For example, our installed base business, which typically contributes approximately half of our annual revenue growth, continues to experience macroeconomic headwinds.

Cost of Revenue

Our cost of revenue consists primarily of personnel costs, including stock-based compensation, fees that we pay to telecommunications providers for usage, Universal Service Fund, or USF, contributions and other regulatory costs, depreciation and related expenses of our servers and equipment, costs to build out and maintain co-location data centers, costs of public cloud-based data centers, allocated office and facility costs, amortization of acquired technology and amortization of internal-use software development costs. Cost of revenue can fluctuate based on a number of factors, including the fees we pay to telecommunications providers, which vary depending on our clients’ usage of our VCC cloud platform, the timing of capital expenditures and related depreciation charges and changes in headcount. We expect to continue investing in professional services, public cloud, cloud operations, client support and network infrastructure to maintain high quality and availability of services, which we believe will result in absolute dollar increases in cost of revenue but percentage of revenue declines in the long-term through economies of scale.

Operating Expenses

We classify our operating expenses as research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses.

Research and Development. Our research and development expenses consist primarily of salary and related expenses, including stock-based compensation, for personnel related to the development of improvements and expanded features for our services, as well as quality assurance, testing, product management and allocated overhead. We expense research and development expenses as they are incurred except for internal use software development costs that qualify for capitalization. We believe that continued investment in our solution is important for our future growth, and we expect our research and development expenses to increase in absolute dollars and fluctuate as a percentage of revenue in the near and longer term.

Sales and Marketing. Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of salaries and related expenses, including stock-based compensation, for personnel in sales and marketing, amortization of deferred contract acquisition costs, as well as advertising, marketing, corporate communications, travel costs and allocated overhead. We believe it is important to continue investing in sales and marketing to continue to generate revenue growth, and we expect sales and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars and fluctuate as a percentage of revenue in the near and longer term as we continue to support our growth initiatives.

General and Administrative. General and administrative expenses consist primarily of salary and related expenses, including stock-based compensation, for management, finance and accounting, legal, information systems and human resources personnel, professional fees, compliance costs, other corporate expenses and allocated overhead. We expect that general and administrative expenses will fluctuate in absolute dollars and as a percentage of revenue in the near term, but to increase in absolute dollars and decline as a percentage of revenue in the longer term.