WORKIVA INC

Overview

Workiva’s mission is to power transparent reporting for a better world. We believe that all stakeholders including consumers, employees, shareholders, and regulators expect more from business – more action, transparency, and disclosure of financial and non-financial information. We build solutions to meet that demand and streamline processes, connect data and teams, and ensure consistency – all within the Workiva platform, the world’s leading cloud platform for assured integrated reporting. Additionally, we offer the only unified software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) platform that brings customers’ financial reporting, Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”), and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (“GRC”) together in a controlled, secure, audit-ready platform.

From data to disclosure, the Workiva platform empowers customers by connecting and transforming data from hundreds of enterprise resource planning (“ERP”), human capital management (“HCM”), and customer relationship management (“CRM”) systems, as well as other third-party cloud and on-premise applications. Customers use our platform to create, review and publish data-linked documents, presentations, and reports with greater control, consistency, accuracy, and productivity. Our platform is flexible and scalable, so customers can easily adapt it to define, automate, and change their business processes in real time.

Workiva provides more than 6,000 organizations across the globe with SaaS platform solutions to help solve some of the most complex reporting and disclosure challenges. While our customers use our platform for more than 100 different use cases, across dozens of vertical industries, we organize our sales and marketing resources into three purpose-built solution groups (Financial Reporting, ESG, and GRC) focusing primarily on the offices of the Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”), Chief Sustainability Officer (“CSO”), and Chief Audit Executive (“CAE”).

We have experienced strong revenue growth since we released our first solution in March 2010. Our revenue increased from $443.3 million in 2021 to $630.0 million in 2023, representing a 19% compound annual growth rate. We incurred net losses of $37.7 million in 2021, $90.9 million in 2022 and $127.5 million in 2023. Approximately 89% of our revenue in 2023 was derived from subscription and support fees, with the remainder from professional services.

2023 Company Highlights and Milestones

•In April 2023, Julie Iskow, the previous President and Chief Operating Officer, succeeded Marty Vanderploeg as Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”). Vanderploeg transitioned from CEO to the role of Non-Executive Chair of the Board of Directors.

•In Q2, we promoted experienced executives into the roles of Chief Technology Officer, Chief Customer Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer.

•In April 2023, we were named among the 100 Best Companies to Work For by Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work.

•In the first half of 2023, we hired three new sales executives to lead our global sales regions: (i) the Americas, (ii) Europe, Middle East, and Africa (“EMEA”), and (iii) Asia-Pacific (“APAC”).

•In the first half of 2023, Workiva launched enhancements to our ESG solution including expanded data collection, integration with the Carbon Disclosure Project (“CDP”), support for additional ESG frameworks and support for the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (“ESRS”).

•In August 2023, we released Generative Artificial Intelligence (“Gen-AI”) on the Workiva platform. Our approach will enable customers to decide which industry-leading large language model, including those from Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, best fit their needs.

•In August 2023, we issued $702 million of 1.250% convertible senior notes due 2028. We used $396.9 million of the net proceeds to repurchase $273.8 million principal amount, together with accrued and unpaid interest thereon, of our 1.125% convertible senior notes due 2026. We intend to use the balance of proceeds for working capital, general corporate purposes, and strategic investments and acquisitions.

•In September 2023, we hosted our hybrid Workiva Amplify conference which included over 5,700 customers, partners and prospects representing over 2,000 companies joining us either virtually or in-person.

•In September 2023, we received a rating of AAA in the MSCI ESG Ratings assessment for the second year in a row. The coveted AAA rating represents MSCI’s highest rating and signifies industry-leader status in managing the most significant ESG risks and opportunities.

•In Q3, we hired three experienced SaaS leaders in the roles of Chief Information Officer, Chief Accounting Officer, and Chief Product Officer.

•In November 2023, Workiva hosted its second annual Amplify conference in Europe. The hybrid event attracted over 600 customers and prospects and was our largest ever in-person event in Europe.

•During 2023, we added 8 new innovation patents, bringing our total to 76.

Macro Trends

Six macro trends have been driving demand for Workiva's platform: the shift to the cloud; digital transformation; remote and hybrid work; influx of disparate data sources; increased regulatory environment; and increased stakeholder demands for ESG data.

Shift to the Cloud. Enterprises around the world have been shifting deployment of data management systems from on-premises to the cloud. A shift to the cloud started more than two decades ago with CRM and other front-office systems. In the last 10 years, enterprises also began adopting the cloud for managing middle- and back-office systems, owing to advantages in data security, data accessibility and total cost of operation. Having always delivered a cloud native platform, we have assisted many of our clients in adopting our cloud solutions and believe that the market has shifted to a cloud first or in many cases a cloud only set of purchasing requirements.

Digital Transformation. While the importance of digital transformation has been increasing in recent years, we believe that the pandemic accelerated that need and underscored the critical importance of collaborative cloud platforms for reporting and disclosure. As the world economy underwent increasing disruption, we believe that those companies that have embraced digital transformation were better able to maintain business continuity and improve productivity. Each of our fit-for-purpose solutions helps in critical aspects of our customers’ digital transformation journeys and simplifies the complex work around reporting and disclosure.

Remote and Hybrid Work Environments. We believe that remote and hybrid work are here to stay. To attract and retain talent in the marketplace of knowledge workers, enterprises are responding to pressure to adopt more flexible work environments. Companies that manage a growing number of digital workplace employees are implementing collaborative technologies to streamline work processes and automate decision-making, actions and responses.

Influx of disparate data sources. As organizations capture and collect more data in more systems, the assembly, aggregation, and consolidation of that data becomes more complex. Integrating with and connecting to source systems and applications is one of the key requirements to address the technical complexity of reporting and disclosure, and is top of mind for the organizations we serve.

Increased Regulatory Environment. The regulatory environment continues to expand globally in both scope and complexity. Regulations are increasing as are demands for more data and disclosure. Regulators are also demanding greater use of structured, machine-readable data in companies’ disclosures. Many regulators have already or will be implementing structured data mandates, requiring companies to tag data in their financial statements using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (“XBRL”), which is a royalty-free, international standard designed specifically for digital reporting of financial, performance, risk and compliance information. XBRL provides a unique, machine-readable tag for individual disclosures within business reports.

Increased Stakeholder Demands for ESG Data. We believe that stakeholder capitalism is increasing in importance and therefore it is more critical than ever for companies to be transparent and accountable not just to investors but to all stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, partners and communities. Today, more than ever, environmental impact, social responsibility, and corporate governance are impacting the valuations of companies and the ability of institutions to invest in those companies. ESG reporting is complex. It requires the ingestion, capture, management, and reporting of financial and non-financial data from many disparate sources, and it requires the collaboration of multiple internal stakeholders across finance, risk management, and sustainability teams.

Growth Vectors

We are focusing our investment on four major growth opportunities: The Workiva Platform, Fit-for-Purpose Solutions, Global Expansion, and our Partner Ecosystem.

The Workiva Platform. People all over the world use our connected, cloud platform to seamlessly enable collaboration and deep integration into existing work streams to simplify their most complex reporting challenges. We offer the only unified SaaS platform that brings customers’ financial reporting, ESG, and GRC together in a controlled, secure, audit-ready platform. Our platform creates a competitive advantage and positions us to win in the expanding business reporting market.

Fit-for-Purpose Solutions. Workiva is the leading provider of cloud-based reporting solutions that are designed to solve financial and non-financial business challenges at the intersection of data, process and people. We are entering into new markets and geographies with an expanded solutions portfolio. Workiva is focused on growing our business through selling multi-solution deals and account expansions. Three solution groups that are part of this growth strategy are Financial Reporting, ESG, and GRC:

•Financial Reportingis our longest-tenured group of solutions and continues to represent a significant global opportunity for Workiva among private and public companies. Our customers' external and internal financial reporting processes have adapted significantly to accommodate factors such as increasing regulatory pressure, integration of non-financial data and disclosures, as well as other considerations that influence financial reporting such as economic volatility and geopolitical instability. Additionally, XBRL tagging is expanding beyond traditional financial statements and footnotes within regulatory filings. We believe this evolution in financial reporting processes will continue, which we expect will drive the need for expanded financial reporting solution capabilities including an increase in source data integrations, enhanced automations, an increase in cross-functional team collaboration, and integrated Gen-AI. We believe that by expanding our robust financial reporting capabilities and deepening our alignment to our other offerings such as ESG and GRC, there may be additional growth opportunities for Workiva.

•Environmental, Social, Governance Reporting. ESG represents a generational opportunity for growth and we plan to continue to accelerate our investments to meet stakeholders’ growing need for ESG information. In an increasingly transparent world, organizations across the globe are disclosing non-financial key performance indicators around environmental, social, and governance issues. ESG-related information is beginning to appear in mainstream financial reports and we believe this trend will accelerate in the coming years. Workiva’s fit-for-purpose ESG solution provides an effective platform to help organizations manage, collaborate, and disclose their ESG information to stakeholders. We will continue to leverage what we believe is the superior ESG reporting solution to grow our business.

•Governance, Risk, and Compliance. GRC is a broad market segment that can be defined by a number of solution areas including internal audit, internal controls, risk management, policy management, vendor risk, and IT risk. Risk Management is a high priority for CEOs and across boardrooms all over the globe. Workiva’s GRC solution suite enables and excels at identifying, tracking, and managing risk so that customers can operate legally, ethically, and in compliance with regulations. In December 2023, Workiva was named as a strong performer among GRC platforms by independent research firm, Forrester Research. We will continue to leverage our GRC leadership to grow our business.

Global Expansion. We believe growth outside of North America presents an attractive opportunity because the factors that drive demand for our solutions in North America are similar to those in other developed countries, including the need to manage complex datasets, reduce errors and risk, improve efficiency and respond to regulatory requirements.

In 2023, we generated approximately 15% of our consolidated revenue from EMEA and APAC, and we expect these global markets to contribute an increasing percentage of total revenue.

Partner Ecosystem. We believe that our ecosystem of partners extends our geographic reach, accelerates the usage and adoption of our platform, and enables more efficient delivery of professional services. We intend to expand and deepen our relationships with global and regional partners, including global consulting firms, systems integrators, large and mid-sized independent software vendors and implementation partners. Our over 200 advisory, technology, and service partners offer a wider range of domain and functional expertise that broadens our platform’s capabilities and promotes Workiva as part of the digital transformation projects they drive for their customers.

Workiva Platform

The Workiva platform is multi-tenant cloud software deployed in multiple regions worldwide. Our platform, built primarily on Amazon Web Services (“AWS”), is composed of both proprietary and open-source technologies.

We believe the following characteristics highlight our platform’s key competitive advantages:

Features and Functionality. Our platform allows customers to connect data from multiple ERP, HCM and CRM systems, as well as other third-party cloud and on-premise applications with complete control, context, and clarity. Workiva's drag-and-drop data transformation and preparation capabilities deliver previews and provide insights instantaneously. Organizations can simply extract data from sources into the Workiva platform where they can perform queries, filter, and clean the datasets, and do it across millions of records that typical spreadsheets can’t handle. Once the data is connected in the Workiva platform, users can automate data and workflow updates, track every change and seamlessly collaborate with colleagues to create trusted reports and regulatory filings.

With our platform’s data-linking capabilities, every change is automatically updated in all linked instances—including narrative and numbers—throughout spreadsheets, word-processing documents, charts and graphs, presentation decks and dashboards in our platform. Linking enables data consistency and traceability and ensures that collaborators are working with the most current data.

Our platform's detailed audit trail provides accountability and transparency by tracking every change made by every user over time. A complete record of data provenance and all changes helps our customers mitigate risk, gain insights and make better, data-driven decisions.

With permission controls in our platform, administrators can manage access at all levels so each user can create, review and edit data and documents. This control feature also enables users to grant access to their external auditors, outside counsel and other consultants, which further streamlines the review process and reduces expenses.

Easy to Deploy and Configure. The Workiva platform can be deployed within days or weeks for new customers and can be easily configured by the customer for individual employees or entire teams. Because our solutions are browser-based, customers avoid costly, time-intensive deployments typically associated with on-premise enterprise software.

High Performance. The architecture, design, deployment and management of our solutions provide enterprise-grade scalability, availability and security. The performance of the Workiva platform has been tested and proven by some of the largest, most demanding enterprises in the world.

Continuous Improvement. Frequent collaboration with customers and development iteration allow us to make continuous improvements by releasing a new version of our platform several times each week.

Scales Rapidly. The Workiva platform is designed to support millions of end users as a result of its scalability and our relationship with AWS. Our customers have created billions of links to seamlessly achieve a single source of data, among multiple documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Secure. Many of the largest enterprises in the world trust us with their most sensitive data. We employ stringent data security, reliability, integrity and privacy practices. In addition to our regular customer security assessments, we engage in continuous and ongoing penetration and vulnerability testing (manual and automatic, internal and third-party) and adhere to standards established by third parties such as Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (“FedRAMP”) and ISO 27001. We also engage third-party auditors to evaluate our controls against the service organization controls (“SOC”) compliance frameworks.

Generative AI. Our Gen-AI capabilities enhance the way finance, risk, and sustainability teams work, improving content creation, editing, and collaboration. With the complex and sensitive work associated with financial reporting, ESG reporting, audit, and risk, responsible AI usage is paramount—particularly when it comes to data security, subject-matter expertise, and human oversight. Workiva’s generative AI experience brings productivity gains backed by ethical and responsible implementation. In 2023, we implemented our policy outlining the guidelines and principles for the responsible and ethical usage of AI and Machine Learning (ML) technologies within Workiva. This policy applies to all employees, contractors, partners, and other third parties who interact with or utilize AI/ML systems on behalf of their organizations. We believe the use of AI/ML must be guided by principles of fairness, transparency, accountability, and respect for privacy and security. Customers are using the Gen-AI capabilities to author new content quickly, refine, edit, and rewrite content, generate ideas and perspectives, and research with a thought partner on demand.

Marketplace. The Workiva Marketplace enables organizations to streamline existing processes and solve new business problems by activating more than 200 ready-made templates and no-code data connectors, and services from industry experts and trusted partners — all within the Workiva platform’s connected and secure ecosystem. Its offerings include process checklists, carefully organized and linked reports, style guides, perfectly formatted presentations, and more. Accounting, sustainability, audit, financial planning and analysis, financial services, and legal teams can easily add templates or connectors directly into an existing Workiva workspace and optimize workflow with process automation, practical examples, and industry best practices.

Fit-for-Purpose Solutions

We market and sell over 30 fit-for-purpose solutions that are categorized into four reporting groups: Financial Reporting; ESG; GRC; and Industry Verticals.

Financial Reporting

Global Statutory Reporting. We see growing demand for our platform in the United States (“U.S.”) and in Europe for statutory reporting, which is a complex process for our multinational customers that are required to report statutory financial information throughout different countries and local jurisdictions where they do business. Currently, most of these enterprises rely on hundreds of legacy word-processing documents and spreadsheets with no digital audit trail. This disconnected, manual process is prone to errors and creates the risk of accounting inconsistencies in reports between legal entities across jurisdictions. Without a standardized process and central oversight, companies face enormous risk and high expenses related to outsourcing to a bevy of consultants and accounting firms, which weakens control and extends review time.

Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (“SEDAR”) Reporting. Our platform gives customers control over the entire SEC reporting process, from data collection to drafting to embedding supporting documentation to the actual filing with Inline XBRL. Our SEC reporting solution allows our customers to prepare and file all major SEC reports, such as Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K, as well as Form S-1 and other registration statements, proxy statements and Section 16 reports. Features tailored to the SEC reporting process include the capability to concurrently create reports in the HTML format required for filing on the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (“EDGAR”) system and the ability to perform XBRL tagging as well as to submit SEC reports with Inline XBRL (“iXBRL”). Foreign Private Issuers can use our platform to include XBRL tagging in their 20-F and 40-F filings with the SEC. Workiva also enables customers to create earnings press releases, earnings call scripts, presentations and other investor relations materials with data linked to the corresponding filing. Canadian issuers can use our platform to draft and submit reports through SEDAR.

Capital Markets. Workiva offers an end-to-end technology platform supporting our customers throughout their journey as they move from being a privately held company to being publicly traded. We believe that our platform approach and fit-for-purpose solutions provide a competitive differentiation in the market. Private companies can purchase the Workiva platform for financial reporting, management reporting and controls management. They may do this up to a year or two in advance of their target initial public offering (“IPO”) date. As these companies go through the IPO process, they then have the opportunity to use the capital markets solution on our platform to manage the creation of their Form S-1 to register their securities with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Around the time they go public, many of these customers may then purchase our SEC solution, which enables companies to prepare and file all major SEC reports, and expand the use of our platform to support their audit requirements under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”).

Annual & Interim Reporting. Workiva provides customers control over their entire financial reporting process, from data collection to drafting to embedding supporting documentation to submitting their financial statements to their board, ownership structure and/or debt holders. Workiva enables customers to manage their entire process of creating financial statements with more confidence through connecting directly to their financial source systems like ERPs and general ledgers. This reduces human error and increases data reliability during financial statement consolidation. Workiva also enables speed through automation which reduces the time-consuming, stressful process of gathering financial data, freeing your time for telling your financial story.

European Single Electronic Format (“ESEF”). We believe ESEF is an accelerator for modernization of corporate reporting in Europe. ESEF is an annual financial reporting regulation specified by the European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”). The ESMA mandate requires all specified issuers on European Union (“E.U.”) & United Kingdom regulated markets to file annual account statements in a digital format using iXBRL. The key driver for ESEF is greater transparency and requires standardized reporting, consistently structured and accessible for stakeholders, thus we believe making it an ideal fit for Workiva. More than 4,000 European issuers are subject to the required taxonomy for their annual financial reports.

Management Reporting. Public and private companies, government agencies and higher-education institutions must create a vast array of complex financial and managerial reports. Organizations of all sizes typically have to collect, track, manage and report on a wide range of operating metrics to drive better business outcomes. Our customers continuously find new use cases across their organizations, including Financial Planning and Analysis (“FP&A”), board/committee and quarterly reporting, C-Suite reporting, strategic business plans, financial statements, variance reports, monthly management reports, managing and tracking key performance indicators, data collection for domestic sales, performance reporting, and employee benefit financial statements.

Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting

ESG Reporting. Workiva’s ESG Reporting solution enables organizations to deliver high-quality disclosures to their most important stakeholders, including investors, regulatory agencies, executive management, and their boards by connecting information directly across sustainability reports, statutory disclosures, annual reports, earnings call scripts, and regulatory filings, with support for XBRL tagging. Our platform also helps organizations proactively confront a complex and rapidly changing regulatory landscape to create integrated and assured reports that will address the disclosure requirements of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (“CSRD”) in the E.U., California’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (SB-253) and Climate-Related Financial Risk Act (SB-261), and the proposed SEC climate disclosure rule in the U.S.

Our platform streamlines the ESG reporting process end-to-end, from data collection and management to final report. Customers use our solution to collect quantitative and qualitative values to report for ESG topics, reference ESG frameworks and standards to align with stakeholder interests, request and track the data collection of ESG values, and connect information across reports, from sustainability reports to financial reports and internal presentations, to create a single source of truth for ESG metrics and disclosures.

Customers can use the ESG Explorer to review and compare guidelines from multiple frameworks and standards, including Global Reporting Initiative (“GRI”) Standards, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (“SASB”), Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (“TCFD”), and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”).

ESG Program, the digital hub on workiva.com, creates a connected and collaborative hub for ESG teams and stakeholders to operationalize their ESG initiatives. Customers can identify and organize the topics that are material to their organization, create automated processes to collect, review, and maintain metrics from systems of records and other data providers, and connect metrics to reports, presentations, and surveys, including submitting responses to CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project).

Governance, Risk, and Compliance

Controls Management. Our customers use our platform to increase efficiency in documenting, implementing and assessing internal controls over financial reporting (“ICFR”) as required by SOX. SOX also requires public company Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers to individually certify that their annual and quarterly financial reports are accurate and complete and to assess the effectiveness of their ICFR. Increased scrutiny from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on audits of management’s assessment of internal controls – and the transition in the framework used for assessing internal controls – is driving public companies to find more efficient and accurate solutions for SOX compliance. Our customers can collect data from multiple departments, centralize that information in a linked platform, create and track process narratives and flows with co-workers, embed evidence and directly test controls.

Internal Audit Management. We sell to the broad-based audit market because users in that market often collaborate with colleagues working in SOX, risk and controls across an organization. Internal audit management extends throughout an organization, attracting Workiva customers from a wide range of departments. Internal audit management includes audit risk assessments, the audit planning process, workpaper management, testing, issues management and audit reports that encompass the audit committee report and the internal audit group. Workiva enables simultaneous collaboration with control and accountability and enables robust documentation, accurate audit conclusions and complete audit trails, which are essential to auditors, executives and boards. With permission controls, administrators can restrict access at all levels for each user to create, review and edit data and documents that relate directly to them. This control feature also enables users to grant access to their external auditors, which further streamlines the review process and reduces expenses.

Enterprise Risk Management (“ERM”). With our platform, our customers can integrate their risk management practices throughout the organization while maintaining information privacy, audit trails and security resulting in highly efficient and transparent compliance. We also sell a solution for ERM to help enterprises identify systemic risks, determine risk probabilities, assess risk magnitude, plan strategic responses, report to boards and other stakeholders and ultimately make real-time ERM decisions.

Policy and Procedure Management. Our customers can use our platform to establish a connected, enterprise-wide policy and procedure management process. Teams can access and manage all content for policies, standards, procedures and guidelines for the entire enterprise in our platform, and they can efficiently manage ongoing policy review cycles throughout the year. Customers can map policies directly to risks, controls, processes and regulations and create a consistent template-driven format or taxonomy for all policies. Customers can also distribute and track employee attestation of policies and procedures with automated certification reminders and progress dashboards.

Industry Verticals

Financial Services. We market our platform globally to banks, insurance and investment firms with fit-for-purpose solutions to simplify the complexity of regulatory, financial, risk and ESG reporting. Examples of banking regulations our customers face include global regulatory standards (Basel 1, 2 and 3); regional regulatory requirements (e.g., Federal Reserve for the U.S. and European Banking Authority and European Central Bank requirements across E.U. member States); and at the in-country level (e.g. Central Bank Stress Tests). These regulations cover a wide array of capital and liquidity standards that banks are required by law to disclose publicly, privately to regulators and internally to support board and executive level decision-making.

Our platform aids insurance customers to meet insurance regulatory requirements in the U.S. and globally. For example, in the U.S., insurers are regulated both in their state of domicile and in other states in which they are licensed to sell insurance, and Workiva supports insurance statutory reporting by state and other use cases such as actuarial memorandum. In Europe, we assist our clients with their in-country regulatory reporting requirements, such as with the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the Basel norms for insurance companies. They use the platform to meet insurance reporting regulations for regulatory capital requirements and specific disclosure requirements publicly, privately to regulators and internally to support board and executive level decision-making.

We also market our platform to assists asset management firms and fund administrators with end to end internal and external fund reporting including financial, regulatory, and investor reporting.

Public Sector. State and local governments use our platform to streamline and modernize Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports and budgeting. We are also expanding adoption of our platform across U.S. government agencies. With our FedRAMP authorization, we can help federal agencies connect, control and report up to 80 percent of their information types.

Energy & Utility Sector. Workiva provides connected reporting solutions that improve data accuracy for energy and utilities companies across state commission filings, utility rate making documents, SEC filings, financial and performance reports, and SOX documentation. We market our platform to help companies comply with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) XBRL mandate. More than 200 utility, natural gas, oil pipeline and centralized service companies are required to file quarterly and annual reports using XBRL.

Research and Development

Our research and development organization is responsible for the design, development, testing, and validation of our platform and fit-for-purpose solutions. We focus on innovating and developing new solutions and furthering the openness and extensibility of our platform. We believe that delivering new functionality for our customers is an integral part of our product strategy and provides our customers with access to a broad array of options and information critical to enhancing their reporting, disclosure and digital transformation efforts. We have invested more than $920 million over the last decade to create a differentiated technology platform for our customers. We expect that we will continue to make strategic investments in research and development to broaden our platform capabilities, strengthen our existing solutions, enhance our user experience and ecosystem with integrations, and develop new solutions. We focus on customer engagement to envision the future of our platform to bring about new capabilities and versions of existing solutions to market quickly in order to remain competitive in the marketplace.

Customers

Thousands of organizations, including global enterprises with hundreds of thousands of employees, trust Workiva. Customers include over 90% of the top 100 public and private companies that report annual revenue figures to a government agency, as well as over 85% of the top 500 companies, and over 80% of the top 1,000 companies. As of December 31, 2023, we had more than 6,000 customers. Our customers are passionate, loyal supporters of our solutions, as demonstrated by our subscription and support revenue retention rate of 97.9% as of the December 2023 measurement date. Our subscription and support revenue retention rate including add-on solutions was 110.3% as of December 31, 2023.

Additionally, Workiva hosts Customer Advisory Boards (“CABs”) focused around three industry disciplines: Financial Reporting, ESG, and GRC that allow Workiva to listen and respond to evolving needs of our customers. Our CABs are forums for leaders to exchange expertise and drive positive business outcomes in their organizations. We recognize our members as experts in their fields with valuable perspectives on the direction of their industries—including how those industries can be improved by technology. The CABs meet virtually multiples times throughout the year and twice in-person with the objectives of:

•sharing insights into individual members’ reporting and compliance needs, as well as the needs of the organizations to which they belong;

•discussing best practices and sharing success stories;

•providing candid thoughts and feedback about the Workiva platform as it exists today, as well as its trajectory for the future; and

•generating interest of building trust in the global economy with transparent data and connected reporting.

Competition

The intensity and nature of our competition vary significantly across our different solutions, as changes in regulation and market trends result in evolving customer requirements and demand for enterprise software. Our primary competitors include:

•Status quo, manual business processes that rely on legacy software productivity tools;

•Diversified enterprise software providers;

•Niche software providers that provide point solutions;

•Providers of professional services, including consultants and financial printers;

•ESG Reporting and data management software providers;

•Governance, risk, and compliance software providers; and

•Business intelligence / performance management software providers.

As our markets expand, we expect to compete with more highly specialized software vendors, as well as larger vendors that may continue to acquire or bundle their products more effectively.

The principal competitive factors in our market include: product features, reliability, performance and effectiveness; product line breadth, diversity and applicability; product extensibility and ability to integrate with other technology infrastructures; price and total cost of ownership; adherence to industry standards and certifications; strength of sales and marketing efforts; and brand awareness and reputation. We believe that our cloud-based platform has the combination of features and value to our customers that will continue to allow us to compete effectively.

Sales and Marketing

Sales

We sell our subscription contracts and related services globally, primarily through our direct sales organization which employs a combination of field sales, inside sales and partnership channels.

Our sales organization comprises sales development representatives, pre-sales engineers and account managers. Our sales development representatives qualify sales-accepted opportunities for our account managers. Our pre-sales engineers focus on solutions and custom product demonstrations and consultative sales. Our account managers work to attract new customers as well as expand our platform into new use cases and departments across our current customers’ organizations.

Our customer success and professional services teams also help our account managers build our existing customer relationships by providing advice and best practices that enable users to harness the full power of our platform.

We plan to continue strengthening our sales coverage in our current markets, as well as expand our sales footprint in locations where we see a demand for our solutions. To achieve this growth, we plan to continue hiring motivated sales people with experience in enterprise software sales and in specific geographical regions. We believe that our approach to hiring sales people, along with a progressive training, culture and compensation package will allow us to retain sales talent and continue to drive growth.

In 2023, we continued to expand our ecosystem of partners, including global consulting firms, systems integration and technology firms, and leading regional consulting firms. Our highly skilled advisory and implementation partners offer a wide range of subject-matter expertise that broadens our platform’s capabilities and promotes Workiva as part of the digital transformation projects they implement for their customers. Our technology partners enable powerful data and process integrations that enable our customers to connect their existing ecosystem of solutions directly to our platform. Our partners help to extend our customer reach through marketing and promotion and help accelerate the sale and delivery of our platform.

Marketing

Our marketing organization promotes our brand, generates demand for our offerings, and researches and assesses product market needs. Our advance planning team assesses customer needs, conducts industry-based research and identifies new markets. Our product marketing team develops the go-to-market strategy for Workiva solutions and manages pricing and licensing strategies. The product marketing team also supports our sales team with playbooks that include profiles of typical buyers, key messages, value propositions, competitive analysis and sales strategies.

Our demand generation programs are categorized by technology solution and industry and are focused on engaging business leaders, process owners and technology teams. We use a variety of marketing programs across traditional and social channels to target current and prospective customers. Our marketing team hosts virtual and in-person events to educate prospects and customers and generate demand for our solutions.

Customer Success and Professional Services

Our customer success and professional services teams help our account managers build relationships with customers by providing advice that enables them to harness the full power of our platform.

Customer Success. Our customer success team partners with users of our platform to understand their business objectives and offers best practices in the use of our software. We deliver 24/7 live customer support via phone, digital messaging and web-based conferencing. We provide intensive training to our customer success team and segment them for each solution and market focus.

Professional Services. Our professional services include initial setup of documents; XBRL mapping, tagging and review; best practices implementation; and business process consulting. Our XBRL team of accounting and financial reporting professionals provide XBRL mapping, tagging and review services to our customers. We also employ a team of consultants who offer services to customers to improve and streamline their Workiva-related data processes.

We pay for employees to maintain professional certifications and licenses that are important to our customers, and we host regular company-wide employee education sessions on business, industry, technology and workplace topics.

Intellectual Property

Our intellectual property and proprietary rights are important to our business. To safeguard these rights, we rely on a combination of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret laws and contractual protections in the U.S. and other jurisdictions.

As of December 31, 2023, we had 76 issued patents and 17 patent applications pending relating to our platform or related technology. We cannot assure you that any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will require us to narrow or otherwise limit our claims. Any patents issued may be contested, designed around, found unenforceable, or invalidated, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing them. We also license software from third parties for integration into our solutions, including open source software and other software available on commercially reasonable terms. We cannot assure you that such third parties will maintain such software or continue to make it available.

We control access to and use of our proprietary software and other confidential information through the use of internal and external controls, including contractual protections with employees, contractors, end-customers, and partners, and our software is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. Despite our efforts to protect our trade secrets and proprietary rights through intellectual property rights, licenses, and confidentiality agreements, unauthorized parties may still copy or otherwise obtain and use our software and technology. In addition, we intend to expand our international operations, and effective patent, copyright, trademark, and trade-secret protection may not be available or may be limited in foreign countries.

If we continue to be successful, we believe that competitors will be more likely to try to develop solutions and services that are similar to ours and that may infringe our proprietary rights. It may also be more likely that competitors or other third parties will claim that our platform infringes upon their proprietary rights.

Our industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent claims and related litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights. In particular, leading companies in the enterprise software industry have extensive patent portfolios and are regularly involved in both offensive and defensive litigation. From time to time, third parties, including certain of these leading companies, may assert claims of infringement, misappropriation or other violations of intellectual property rights against us, and our standard license and other agreements obligate us to indemnify our customers against such claims. Successful claims of infringement by a third party could prevent us from distributing certain solutions or performing certain services, require us to expend time and money to develop non-infringing solutions, or force us to pay substantial damages (including enhanced damages if we are found to have willfully infringed patents or copyrights), royalties or other fees. In addition, to the extent that we gain greater visibility and market exposure as a public company, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims from third parties. We cannot assure you that we do not currently infringe, or that we will not in the future infringe, upon any third-party patents, copyrights or other proprietary rights.

We have registered a number of trademarks and logos, including “Workiva,” “Wdesk” and “Wdata” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in several jurisdictions outside U.S. States. In addition, we intend to expand our international operations, and we cannot assure you that these names will be available for use in all such jurisdictions.

Litigation

From time to time, we may become involved in legal proceedings or be subject to claims arising in the ordinary course of our business. Although the results of litigation and claims cannot be predicted with certainty, we currently believe that the final outcome of any currently pending legal proceedings to which we are a party will not have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition or cash flows. Regardless of the outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on us because of defense and settlement costs, diversion of management resources and other factors.

Government Regulations

We believe that our businesses and operations are in substantial compliance with all applicable government laws and regulations. Any additional measures to maintain compliance are not expected to materially affect our capital expenditures, competitive position, financial position or results of operations. Various legislative and administrative regulations applicable to us have become effective or are under consideration in many parts of the world. To date, such developments have not had a substantial adverse impact on our revenues, earnings or cash flows. However, if new or amended laws or regulations impose significant operational restrictions and compliance requirements upon us or our business, our capital expenditures, results of operations, financial condition and competitive position could be negatively impacted. Refer to Item 1A. Risk Factors for further information.

Corporate ESG Commitments

We are committed to transparency in ESG. We believe society expects more from the business community: authenticity, trust, truth, and transparency. These expectations lie at the heart of what Workiva does for customers and ourselves. To meet these expectations, Workiva uses global compliance and voluntary frameworks as a springboard to move us towards a holistic ESG strategy, including materiality assessment, stakeholder engagement, targets, and initiatives, that connects with financial and sustainability opportunity and risk to drive value.

We are committing to ESG through innovation and collaboration with a high level of governance, accountability and disclosure.

A few examples of our continued action and commitments:

•We have made significant progress towards our established ESG targets in innovation, people, environment and philanthropy.

•Workiva was the first SaaS company to join the United Nations’ CFO Coalition for the SDGs, where we work alongside other global CFOs to guide companies in aligning their sustainability commitments with credible corporate finance strategies to create real world impact.

•Workiva's integrated platform, blending sustainability reporting with financial reporting and GRC, enables seamless team collaboration and automation, ensures data accessibility, aggregation and assurance, and offers highly flexible and integrated reporting capabilities to advance companies’ ESG strategies and impacts. In addition to developing our platform for ESG reporting, we facilitate broader conversation and promote education and awareness through our ESG professional group, ESG education and training workshops at Amplify, webinars, blogs, an ESG Talk podcast, and our global ESG practitioner survey.

Workiva’s ESG strategy is anchored by a robust governance structure of internal and external stakeholders, including:

•General oversight by and accountability to the Nominating and Governance Committee of the company’s Board of Directors (the “Board”). Our Board committee charters include responsibilities relating to ESG oversight as applicable to each of our Audit, Compensation, and Nominating and Governance committees. Detailed descriptions of the duties and responsibilities of each of our committees can be found in our most recent proxy statement.

•An ESG Task Force led by our CFO to ensure forward progress of our ESG targets, and committed to alignment with the United Nations SDGs and the TCFD, GRI, SASB, and CDP. Our ESG Task Force is appointed by our President and CEO and is comprised of executives responsible for the oversight of various priority ESG issues.

•An external ESG Advisory Council comprised of a group of experts who are knowledgeable about global ESG regulation, strategy, practices, and reporting. Leveraging the expertise of our ESG Advisory Council helps us develop relevant products and take actions that are innovative, socially responsible and meet the demands of our stakeholders.

To learn more about Workiva’s ESG efforts, track our progress in developing forward-looking targets and key initiatives, go to https://www.workiva.com/about/our-sustainability.

Human Capital

Workiva is a great place to work and has trusted and equipped our employees to work from wherever and whenever is best for them. We have been on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list since 2019 and attribute our success to our values-based culture. Our employee engagement rate is 93% and we have an employee attrition rate of 11% which is lower than the industry average. Workiva offers market-competitive compensation and benefits to attract and retain the best employees.

By staying true to our company values, we have become a stronger and even more innovative team. As of December 31, 2023, Workiva employed 2,526 full-time people worldwide. Our headcount as of December 31, 2023 increased 3.2% from 2,447 full-time employees as of December 31, 2022.

Innovation thrives when people feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard. Diversity, equity and inclusion are core values at Workiva, and an important component of our social commitment in our ESG strategy. We strive to create a workplace where everyone is comfortable bringing their best, authentic self to work every day. As we scale, we know that continuing to develop our workforce is essential to our growth.

Workiva fosters a work environment that encourages fairness, teamwork, and respect among all employees. We value all backgrounds, beliefs and interests, and we recognize this diversity as an important source of our innovation and success. We believe that our culture of diversity, equity and inclusion increases employee engagement, empowerment, and satisfaction. As of December 31, 2023, women represented 41% of our global workforce and 34% of our leadership (director and above). As of December 31, 2023, 20% of our U.S. employees and 16% of our U.S. leadership (director and above) were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. Increasing diversity in our workforce and key operational leadership roles is an organizational priority. Current key initiatives include Business Employee Resource Groups (“BERG”), learning and development and talent acquisition. The Company maintains its BERG chapters globally across seven communities: Asian, Black, Disabilities, Hispanic & Latino, LGBTQ+, Veterans, and Women. Each BERG is sponsored and supported by senior leaders across the enterprise.

The health and safety of our colleagues and anyone who enters our workplace around the world is of paramount importance to Workiva. Workiva offers mental health benefits and offers extra paid mental wellness days to all employees worldwide.

None of our U.S. employees are represented by a labor organization or are a party to any collective bargaining arrangement. We have never experienced a strike or similar work stoppage, and we consider our relations with our employees to be good. For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, employee compensation and benefits accounted for approximately 81% of our total operating expense.

Corporate Information

Workiva Inc. is a Delaware corporation with principal executive offices located at 2900 University Boulevard, Ames, Iowa 50010. Our telephone number is (888) 275-3125 and our website address is www.workiva.com.

Copies of 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 Section 13(a) and 15(d) of the Exchange Act, are available, free of charge, on our website as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material electronically with or furnish it to the SEC. The SEC also maintains a website that contains our SEC filings. The address of the site is www.sec.gov.