UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM
(Mark One)
For the fiscal year ended
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(Address, Including Zip Code, and Telephone Number, Including Area Code, of Registrant’s Principal Executive Offices)
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
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Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
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If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report.
If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements.
Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b).
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No
The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the Registrant, based on the $66.97 closing price of the shares of common stock on the New York Stock Exchange on June 30, 2023, was $
The number of shares of Registrant’s Common Stock outstanding as of February 23, 2024 was
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Portions of the Registrant’s Definitive Proxy Statement relating to the 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Such Definitive Proxy Statement will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days of the Registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2023.
1 | 2023 Form 10-K
Table of Contents
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PART I |
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Item 1. |
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Item 1A. |
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Item 1B. |
26 |
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Item 1C. |
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Item 2. |
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Item 3. |
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Item 4. |
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PART II |
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Item 5. |
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Item 6. |
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Item 7. |
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations |
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Item 7A. |
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Item 8. |
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Item 9. |
Changes in and Disagreements With Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure |
95 |
Item 9A. |
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Item 9B. |
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Item 9C. |
Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections |
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PART III |
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Item 10. |
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Item 11. |
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Item 12. |
Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters |
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Item 13. |
Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence |
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Item 14. |
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PART IV |
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Item 15. |
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2 | 2023 Form 10-K
Unless the context requires otherwise, references in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (“Form 10-K”) to “our company,” the “Company,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to Dayforce, Inc. and its direct and indirect subsidiaries on a consolidated basis. References to Dayforce reflect the Dayforce people platform. Effective January 31, 2024, Ceridian HCM Holding Inc. changed its corporate name to Dayforce, Inc. We ceased trading under the ticker symbol "CDAY" and began trading under our new ticker symbol, "DAY," on the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE"), and Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") effective on February 1, 2024.
We and our subsidiaries own or have the rights to various trademarks, trade names and service marks, including the following: Dayforce®, Ceridian®, Powerpay® and various logos used in association with these terms. Solely for convenience, the trademarks, trade names and service marks and copyrights referred to herein are listed without the ©, ®, and , symbols, but such references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that Dayforce, Inc., or the applicable owner, will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our or their, as applicable, rights to these trademarks, trade names, and service marks. Other trademarks, service marks, or trade names appearing in this Form 10-K are the property of their respective owners.
CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Form 10-K contains, or incorporates by reference, not only historical information, but also forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (“Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (“Exchange Act”) and that are subject to the safe harbor created by those sections. All statements other than statements of historical fact or relating to present facts or current conditions included in this Form 10-K are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements give our current expectations and projections relating to our financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business. You can identify forward-looking statements by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. These statements may include words such as “anticipate,” “estimate,” “expect,” "assume", “project,” “seek,” “plan,” “intend,” “believe,” “will,” “may,” “could,” “continue,” “likely,” “should,” and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with any discussion of the timing or nature of future operating or financial performance or other events but not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words.
Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy, and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, by their nature, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. As a result, our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include regional, national, or global political, economic, business, competitive, market, and regulatory conditions and those risks described in Part I, Item IA, “Risk Factors” of this Form 10-K. Although we have attempted to identify important risk factors, there may be other risk factors not presently known to us or that we presently believe are not material that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this Form 10-K. If any of these risks materialize, or if any of the above assumptions underlying forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results and developments may differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this Form 10-K. For the reasons described above, we caution against relying on any forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by us in this Form 10-K speaks only as of the date on which we make it. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or to revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law. Comparisons of results for current and any prior periods are not intended to express any future trends or indications of future performance, unless specifically expressed as such, and should be viewed as historical data.
3 | 2023 Form 10-K
PART I
Item 1. Business.
Overview
Dayforce, Inc., formerly known as Ceridian HCM Holding Inc., is a global human capital management (“HCM”) software company. Dayforce, our flagship Cloud HCM platform, provides a full suite of HCM functionality, including global human resources (“HR”), payroll and tax, workforce management, benefits, and talent intelligence functionality. In addition to Dayforce, we sell Powerpay, a Cloud HR and payroll solution for the Canadian small business market, through both direct sales and established partner channels. We also continue to support customers using our legacy North America solutions and customers using our acquired solutions in the Asia Pacific Japan ("APJ") region. We invest in maintenance and necessary updates with the legacy technology to support our customers and continue to migrate them to Dayforce. Revenue from our recurring solutions includes investment income generated from holding customer funds, also referred to as float revenue or float.
The following five strategic growth levers drive our long-term perspectives, near-term decision making, and stockholder alignment:
Products and Solutions
Dayforce
Dayforce is a single application that provides continuous real-time calculations across all modules to enable, for example, payroll administrators access to data through the entire pay period, and managers access to real-time data to optimize work schedules. Our Dayforce platform is used by organizations, regardless of industry or size, to optimize management of the entire employee lifecycle, including attracting, hiring, engaging, paying, and developing their people. In 2023, we received several accolades for our Dayforce solution, including being named as a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises for the fourth consecutive year; Leader in compliance, payroll administration, and overall product satisfaction in the Gartner Critical Capabilities for Cloud HCM suites for 1000+ Employee Enterprises; Top 5 solution in the 2023 Constellation Shortlist for both Global HCM Suites and Workforce Management Suites; Leader in the Sapient Insights Group HR Systems Survey for Time Management Systems and in the Sapient Insights HR Survey - HRMS Voice of the Customer User Experience and Vendor Satisfaction.
Human Resources
Dayforce Human Resources provides HR professionals, managers, and employees a single, complete record for all of their HR information. Our HR functionality is centered on a comprehensive, flexible workflow engine that streamlines and automates administrative tasks. The component maintains a record of critical forms for the employee, such as signed workplace policy agreements, Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, and direct deposit information.
In addition to its primary record-keeping functionality, Dayforce HR comes with an organizational management system that allows managers to view the profiles of their team members, which includes contact and time off details, as well as pay, benefits, and performance data. It is also accessible to employees, who can view the organizational chart, appropriate information about other employees in the organization, and their own pay and time details. There are several self-service options available in the product as well, such as change of address or adding a dependent, making it easy for employees to keep their profiles up to date.
4 | 2023 Form 10-K
Payroll and Tax
Dayforce empowers employers to manage their global payroll needs within a single system. Through our Dayforce platform, payroll administrators with localized payroll functionality are able to make updates to time and pay in real-time. Dayforce supports payroll in over 200 countries and territories around the world, whilst providing employers with a centralized global view of their payroll data. This global payroll model is powered by a combination of company-owned and partner unified payroll engines with an automated data exchange that affords employees and administrators to have a consistent, intuitive single user experience. Native payroll is available in certain countries across North America, APJ, and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa ("EMEA"), where Dayforce’s continuous calculation engine offers flexibility, accuracy, and efficiency in the payroll process. In these native markets, we also manage the movement and remittance of taxes to tax authorities on behalf of our customers. With a flexible rules-based configuration and regional partnerships, Dayforce helps organizations with regulation and compliance concerns regardless of where employees work or live. We are continuing to innovate and expand payroll functionality into new markets to enhance the customer experience for large enterprises operating globally.
In addition to customers who use our payroll services, certain customers use our tax filing services on a stand-alone basis. We recently modernized the technology platforms used to provide stand-alone tax services. Beginning in 2023, with the technology migration complete, we classified recurring revenues from stand-alone tax customers as Dayforce recurring revenue.
Workforce Management
Dayforce Workforce Management helps organizations equitably manage their workforces, improve operational efficiency, and enhance compliance by configuring the system to meet complex employment and working time rules and policies. Through Dayforce Workforce Management, customers are offered time and attendance, absence management, scheduling, task management, and labor planning. A variety of options are available for organizations to capture time and attendance data such as physical clocks and the mobile application.
Dayforce Wallet
Dayforce Wallet is a digital payment solution that gives employees instant access to their net earnings through on-demand pay requests. With Dayforce Wallet, employees’ funds are loaded onto a paycard, which generates interchange fee revenue when used. As of December 31, 2023, we had more than 1,860 customers signed onto Dayforce Wallet with over 1,150 customers live on the product and the average registration rate was above 60% of all eligible employees.
Benefits
Dayforce Benefits assists benefits administrators from enrollment to ongoing benefits administration, including eligibility, open enrollment and Affordable Care Act ("ACA") management. Our proprietary Benefits Decision Support scoring system guides employees through a self-service experience, giving information about each of the available benefit plans and the impact of plan options, to help them choose the best option for their specific needs.
The system integrates with hundreds of benefits carriers, contains a library of qualifiers to help define eligibility rules, and leverages real-time connections to payroll and HR to inform eligibility and calculate employee deductions. In addition, we offer Benefits Intelligence, which leverages enrollment data to get visibility into elections at the plan and option levels to help administrators analyze their program.
Talent Intelligence
Dayforce Talent Intelligence, a suite of next generation talent acquisition and talent management solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and driven by data, helps organizations recruit, hire, retain, and develop their workforce. Dayforce Talent Intelligence transforms talent management and recruitment strategies by using AI in conjunction with talent data from across the employee lifecycle to provide organizations insights that enable them to make more efficient, accurate, and fair talent decisions. Talent Intelligence can also objectively measure workforce demographics while identifying inequity in everything from payroll to promotion opportunities to help employers create actionable policy changes. Customers can leverage Talent Intelligence tools for recruiting, onboarding, engagement, performance management, succession planning, compensation management, and employee career planning and skills development.
5 | 2023 Form 10-K
Powerpay
Powerpay is a Cloud platform that provides scalable and straightforward payroll and HR solutions. We offer Powerpay for Canadian organizations with fewer than 100 employees.
Other
We also offer payroll and payroll-related services using legacy technology and on-premise technology from our acquired businesses in APJ, which we formerly referred to as Bureau. We invest in maintenance and necessary updates to support our customers. However, we generally stopped selling our legacy North America payroll solutions to new customers in the United States ("U.S.") and Canada, and we intend to stop actively selling our acquired on-premise payroll solutions to new customers on a stand-alone basis. In addition to customers who use our legacy payroll services, prior to modernizing the technology platforms utilized for stand-alone tax services, certain customers used our legacy tax filing services on a stand-alone basis through 2022.
Services and Support
We offer a broad portfolio of services to enable customer success. We believe it is important to work closely with our customers to understand their needs and deliver technology solutions and support that address them. We continue to increase our global reach in supporting and serving our customers. As part of our international strategy, we work with partners to perform services in certain geographies where we do not currently have international operations or the particular service required by our customers.
Implementation and Professional Services
Our internal implementation team leverages proprietary onboarding technology for new customer activation and professional services work. Our internal team is supplemented by third party services partners and system integration partners (“SI”). Our implementation services include solution configuration and activation for new customers. Professional services include add-on implementation services for existing customers, ongoing product configuration changes when the customer does not have the resources to do it themselves, product usage consulting and a variety of additional services, such as report writing, usage audits, and process improvement.
Customer Support
Our global customer support organization provides 24/7 application support from locations across North America, APJ, and EMEA. Our support function is organized into teams of representatives with deep product and domain expertise across our platform. These teams are aligned to groups of customers based on geography and product type to provide a combination of deep product and industry knowledge, consistent relationships, and high availability.
Customers
Dayforce is designed to serve organizations with 100 to over 100,000 employees. The Dayforce customer base has increased from 482 as of December 31, 2012 to 6,393 customers* on the platform as of December 31, 2023 representing approximately 6.84 million global employees*. We define a customer as a single organization, such as a company, a non-profit association, an educational institution, or government entity. We also have approximately 38,000 Powerpay customer accounts. No single customer accounted for more than 2% of our revenues during the year ended December 31, 2023.
Selling and Marketing
We sell our Cloud solutions through a direct sales force and a variety of third-party channels, organized by customer size and geography. We market Dayforce to organizations with more than 100 employees. We market Powerpay to organizations with fewer than 100 employees in Canada. The majority of our revenue growth comes from new Cloud customers.
* Excluding the 2021 acquisitions of Ascender HCM Pty Limited ("Ascender") and ATI ROW, LLC and Dayforce Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V. (formerly known as ADAM HCM MEXICO, S. de R.L. de C.V.) (collectively, "ADAM HCM")
6 | 2023 Form 10-K
Technology, Hosting, and Research and Development (“R&D”)
Technology and innovation are at the core of Dayforce, Inc. Our innovation and development process is customer-driven. We work directly with customers to understand their needs and to deliver solutions that address their challenges, taking into consideration the entire user experience, without being constrained by individual modules or applications. We are committed to protecting the information of our customers, our employees, and our contractors, along with other business data.
Our R&D team is responsible for the design, development, and testing of our applications. We believe that our modern Cloud technology stack, agile design and development methodology, and efficient software deployment process enable us to innovate quickly in response to industry trends. We host Cloud-based applications and serve the majority of our customers from data centers operated by third party providers, primarily Microsoft Azure, AWS, VMWare Cloud on AWS, and Navisite. While we control and have access to our servers and all of the components of our network that are located in our external data centers, we do not control the operation of these facilities. Additionally, we host our internal systems through data centers that we operate and lease in the U.S. and APJ.
Dayforce National Trust Bank
The Office of Comptroller of the Currency (the "OCC") authorized the Ceridian National Trust Bank (the "CNTB") to open on January 3, 2023. Effective on this date, the CNTB commenced banking operations, acting as trustee for our U.S. payroll trust. Historically, certain aspects of our U.S. client money movement activity were subject to regulation at both the federal and individual state levels with resulting inherent complexity across multiple jurisdictions. With the establishment of the CNTB, U.S. regulatory oversight will now be under the OCC, a single federal government agency. Our payroll trust structure will continue to benefit our customers by providing bankruptcy-remoteness protection for client funds pending remittance to employees of our clients, tax authorities, and other payees. On January 31, 2024, the CNTB became the Dayforce National Trust Bank (the "DNTB").
Intellectual Property
Our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect our proprietary technology and intellectual property. We rely on a combination of patents, copyrights, trade secrets, trade names, and trademarks, as well as confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements and other contractual protections, to establish and to safeguard our intellectual property rights.
Competition
The market for HCM technology solutions is highly competitive and subject to changing technology and shifting client needs. We compete with firms that provide both integrated and point solutions for HCM, as well as with local providers in each jurisdiction that we operate. Globally, we compete with legacy payroll service providers, as well as Cloud-enabled client-server HCM providers. We also face competition from modern HCM providers, whose solutions have been specifically built as single application platforms in the Cloud. In addition, we face competition from large, long-established enterprise application software vendors.
Competition in the global HCM market is primarily based on product and service quality, including ease of use and accessibility of technology, breadth of offerings, reputation, and price. We believe that we are competitive in each of these areas and that our single application always-on technology and product innovations, combined with our commitment to service and our geographic reach, distinguishes us from our competitors.
Seasonality
We have in the past and expect in the future to experience seasonal fluctuations in our revenues and new customer contracts with the fourth quarter historically being our strongest quarter for new customer contracts, renewals, and customer go-lives. Although the growth of our Cloud solutions and the ratable nature of our fees makes this seasonality less apparent in our overall results of operations, we expect our revenue to fluctuate quarterly and to be higher in the fourth and first quarters of each year. Fourth quarter revenue is driven by year-end processing fees and Dayforce customer go-lives; and first quarter revenue is driven by revenue earned for printing of year-end tax packages.
Environmental, Social, and Governance ("ESG") and Human Capital
We believe that transparency and accountability are essential to any company’s success. Our approach to ESG and Human Capital is guided by five pillars: Governance and Trust; Our People; Tech for Good; Our Communities; and the Environment.
7 | 2023 Form 10-K
Governance and Trust
We safeguard the trust given to us by our partners, our customers, and their employees. This means upholding high standards of corporate governance and ethics, ensuring customer data is protected, and developing products that are reliable and effective.
Our People
As of December 31, 2023, we had 9,084 employees, including 4,563 employees in North America, 2,906 in APJ, and 1,615 in EMEA. We provide a wide range of compensation and benefits to our employees that enhance the workplace experience. In addition to salaries, these benefits (which vary by country and region) include annual bonuses, equity awards, a global employee stock purchase program, retirement savings plans, healthcare and insurance benefits, fertility and family building benefits, health savings and flexible savings spending accounts, unlimited time away from work, parental leave, flexible and remote work options, employee assistance programs, and tuition reimbursement.
Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion within our workforce is also a priority for us. We have a company-wide employee Global Diversity Advisory Council, and our nine employee resource groups foster inclusion, connection, and career development opportunities for their members. Our Achieving Corporate Equity program helps to empower high-potential diverse talent and improve the internal mobility of employees from underrepresented and underserved communities.
As of December 31, 2023, women represented approximately 50% of our global workforce, including approximately 44% of employees in manager-level roles and above, and approximately 36% in vice president-level roles and above. In the U.S., approximately 12% of our workforce was Asian, 11% was Black or African American, 6% was Hispanic or Latino, 3% was multiracial, less than 1% was Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native, and approximately 65% was White. In the U.S., people of color represented approximately 24% of employees in manager-level roles and above, and approximately 27% of employees in vice president-level roles and above.
The health, safety, and wellbeing of our employees is of high importance to us. We host an annual global Mental Health Summit, and we offer two paid wellness days to all employees. In addition, our global emergency threat monitoring and mass communications system helps to ensure connectivity and support for our employees both during and after natural disasters and other dangerous events.
We are committed to providing meaningful professional development opportunities to our workforce. We maintain a culture of continuous learning and empowerment through programs that include professional skills training, leadership development, and job shadowing and job rotation opportunities.
Our ability to attract and retain top talent remains critical to our continued success as a business, and our employee Net Promoter Score in 2023 was 50.
Tech for Good
We believe that Tech for Good and responsible innovation can have a positive impact on all stakeholders. Our Dayforce Wallet product provides individuals with on-demand access to their earned pay, which enables them to better cover both everyday expenses as well as any urgent or unplanned costs. Our AI Governance Framework closely evaluates the potential use of AI from idea through all key stages of the product development lifecycle. Our Dayforce Engagement product helps our customers build a culture of inclusion and respect within their workforce, and it gives them the ability to measure employee sentiment on equity and belonging. Our Career Explorer product provides our customers’ employees access to data-driven career pathing, gives them information about open internal roles that match their interests and abilities, and provides actionable steps to help them reach their career goals.
Our Communities
We are committed to giving back to the communities in which we live and work. Through our employee-led charity Dayforce Cares, formerly Ceridian Cares, we provide financial support to individuals and families struggling with basic needs and quality of life across the U.S. and Canada. Since its inception, the foundation has given over $6.5 million in grants to over 4,500 people in need. In addition, 50% of our employees globally participated in our giving and volunteering program in 2023.
8 | 2023 Form 10-K
Environment
We are committed to doing our part to help address the climate crisis. This includes actively working to decrease our carbon footprint by pursuing two near-term reduction targets that cover Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Our decarbonization strategy includes consolidating our physical footprint globally, expanding our cloud strategy to sustainably deliver our data and technology solutions, and significantly reducing our in-house print operations. Each year, we source 100% renewable electricity across our global operations through the purchase of high-quality Energy Attribute Certificates. In 2023, we launched a new Responsible Sourcing Initiative to enhance the sustainability of our supply chain. We also developed a company-wide Environmental Sustainability Policy and added new provisions to our Vendor Code of Conduct to further embed sustainable practices into our direct operations and procurement processes.
We encourage you to review our ESG Report for more detailed information which can be found on our website at https://www.dayforce.com/who-we-are/corporate-responsibility. In addition, past ESG reports, our Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures Index, SASB Index, consolidated EEO-1 report, and ESG-related policies and principles can be found here. Our website and the information contained on, or that can be accessed through, the website is not deemed to be incorporated by reference into, and is not considered part of, this Form 10-K.
Available Information
Our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy and information statements, Section 16 reports, and amendments to reports and any registration statements filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a), 14 and 15(d) of the Exchange Act are available, free of charge at http://investors.dayforce.com as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material with, or furnish it to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), and are also available on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov.
Our restated certificate of incorporation, our fourth amended and restated bylaws, charters of our Acquisition and Finance, Audit, Compensation, and Corporate Governance and Nominating Committees of our Board of Directors (the “Board”), our Corporate Governance Guidelines, and our Code of Conduct, as well as any waivers from and amendments to our Code of Conduct are available on our website at https://investors.dayforce.com/corporate-governance/governance-documents. Our website and the information contained on, or that can be accessed through, the website is not deemed to be incorporated by reference into, and is not considered part of, this Form 10-K.
Information about Our Executive Officers
Our executive officers as of February 28, 2024 are as follows:
Name |
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Age |
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Position |
David D. Ossip |
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57 |
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Chair and Chief Executive Officer |
Samer Alkharrat |
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55 |
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Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer |
Christopher R. Armstrong |
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55 |
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Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer |
Stephen H. Holdridge |
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63 |
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President, Customer and Revenue Operations |
Jeffrey S. Jacobs |
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48 |
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Head of Accounting and Financial Reporting |
Jeremy R. Johnson |
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40 |
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Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer |
Joseph B. Korngiebel |
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53 |
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Executive Vice President, Chief Product and Technology Officer |
William E. McDonald |
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59 |
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Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary |
David D. Ossip
Mr. Ossip is our Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Ossip has held the position of Chair since August 2015 and sole Chief Executive Officer since November 2023. Previously, Mr. Ossip served as our Co-Chief Executive Officer from February 2022 until November 2023, and our Chief Executive Officer from July 2013 until February 2022. Mr. Ossip joined the Company following the Company’s acquisition of Dayforce Corporation in 2012, where he held the position of Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Ossip previously served as a director for Dragoneer Growth Opportunities Corp., a NYSE listed company, Dragoneer Growth Opportunities Corp. II, a Nasdaq listed company, and Dragoneer Growth Opportunities Corp. III, a Nasdaq listed company.
9 | 2023 Form 10-K
Samer Alkharrat
Mr. Alkharrat is our Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer, positions he has held since June 2023. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Alkharrat served as Chief Partner Officer at Workday, Inc., a provider of enterprise cloud applications, from March 2022 to February 2023. Previously, he held the position of President and Chief Revenue Officer at C3 AI, an artificial intelligence software provider, from June 2021 to February 2022. Prior to that, he served as the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at VMware LLC, a cloud service provider, from November 2019 to 2021. From August 2010 to November 2019, Mr. Alkharrat held the position of Chief Operating Officer at SAP SE, an enterprise application software provider.
Christopher R. Armstrong
Mr. Armstrong is our Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, a position he has held since February 2022. Mr. Armstrong joined the Company in 2004, and since then has held several commercial and operational leadership roles, including Executive Vice President, Chief Customer Officer from February 2020 until February 2022, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer from May 2019 until February 2020, Executive Vice President, Operations from March 2018 until May 2019, and Executive Vice President, Customer Support from April 2016 until March 2018.
Stephen H. Holdridge
Mr. Holdridge is our President, Customer and Revenue Operations, a position he has held since February 2023. Mr. Holdridge joined the Company in January 2020, serving as Global Head of Services until February 2022 and Executive Vice President, Chief Customer Officer from February 2022 until February 2023. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Holdridge held the position of Senior Executive Vice President, Worldwide Services at MicroStrategy, Inc., an analytics and business intelligence company, from November 2017 until July 2019.
Jeffrey S. Jacobs
Mr. Jacobs is our Head of Accounting and Financial Reporting and serves as the principal accounting officer, positions he has held since May 2020. Mr. Jacobs served as our Vice President, Finance from December 2016 until May 2020. Mr. Jacobs is a certified public accountant (inactive).
Jeremy R. Johnson
Mr. Johnson is our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, a position he has held since January 2024. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Johnson held the position of Chief Financial Officer at SmartRecruiters, Inc., a talent acquisition software platform, from September 2021 until December 2023. In addition to his role as Chief Financial Officer, for the period August 2022 to April 2023, Mr. Johnson also served as interim Chief Executive Officer for SmartRecruiters, Inc. Prior to that, Mr. Johnson held the position of Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis and Investor Relations at the Company from December 2020 to August 2021, and a variety of other roles within Finance at the Company from January 2012 to December 2020. Mr. Johnson is a certified public accountant.
Joseph B. Korngiebel
Mr. Korngiebel is our Executive Vice President, Chief Product and Technology Officer, positions he has held since July 2020. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Korngiebel held various positions at Workday, Inc., a provider of enterprise cloud applications, since March 2006, including Chief Technology Officer from May 2017 until July 2020.
William E. McDonald
Mr. McDonald is our Executive Vice President and General Counsel, positions he has held since July 2021, and Corporate Secretary, a position he has held since February 2016. Mr. McDonald served as Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel of the Company from February 2016 until July 2021.
10 | 2023 Form 10-K
Item 1A. Risk Factors.
Our business ordinarily encounters and addresses risks, some of which can cause our future results to be different than we currently anticipate. The risk factors described below represent our current view of some of the most important risks facing our business and are important to its understanding. The following information includes a number of forward-looking statements and should be read in conjunction with information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, the Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk and the consolidated financial statements and related notes.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
Revenues from our Cloud solutions have grown substantially over the last few years, and we believe a significant portion of our market capitalization is based upon maintaining our high Cloud solutions growth rate. Our efforts to continue increasing use of our Cloud solutions may not succeed and may reduce our revenue growth rate.
Our ability to continue to grow the revenues from our Cloud solutions through execution against our growth levers depends on the quality of our platform and solutions, and our ability to design our Cloud solutions to meet consumer demand; and our ability to increase sales from existing customers depends on our customers’ satisfaction with our product and need for additional solutions. Our participation in new markets for native payroll, sales to our existing base of customers, and application expansion in various modules and features, including the Dayforce Wallet, is relatively new, and it is uncertain whether these areas will ever result in significant revenues for us. Further, the entry into new markets, sales to our existing base of customers, or the introduction of new features, functionality, or applications beyond our current markets and functionality may not be successful.
The success of our growth strategies will depend upon our ability to anticipate and to adapt to changes in technology and industry standards, and to effectively develop, introduce, market, and gain broad acceptance of new product and service offerings and enhancements incorporating the latest technological advancements. Our success is also subject to the risk of future disruptive technologies, such as large language models, AI, and machine learning. The failure to develop enhancements to our applications for, or that incorporate, technologies such as AI, machine learning, and large language models may impact our ability to increase the efficiency of and reduce costs associated with our customers’ operations. We may not be able to successfully provide new or enhanced functionality and features for our existing solutions, including those that may involve AI or machine learning or be created using AI or machine learning, that achieve market acceptance or that keep pace with rapid technological developments.
We believe a significant portion of our market capitalization is based upon our high Cloud revenue growth rate, and if we are unable to sell our Cloud solutions, including the Dayforce Wallet, into new markets or to further penetrate existing markets, or to increase sales from existing customers, or we have failures in new product functionalities, our revenue may not grow as expected, which could have a material adverse effect on our market capitalization, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
If the movement of funds to initiate payroll-related transactions on behalf of our customers is disrupted, we may suffer significant losses which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our payroll and tax processing services involve the movement of significant funds from the account of a customer to its employees and to relevant taxing authorities. Typically, we rely upon third party vendors to initiate payments on behalf of our customers. These payments are made in a large number of jurisdictions, in great volume and in short time windows, all of which raise the possibility of an error that disrupts the movement of funds. Further, these types of transactions are subject to an increasingly complex series of regulations and laws that we, and/or our third-party vendors must comply with. Failure to comply with these regulations and laws could result in consequences up to and including a regulator enjoining us and/or our third-party vendors from engaging in the movement of funds. In addition, as described elsewhere, the systems on which these payroll-related transactions are based are in some cases antiquated or manual or may be subject to processing and/or technological errors in communicating with third-party technology systems. Any disruption or delay to data flow in these critical time periods could lead to the disruption of fund movement. Any disruption of fund movement could have significant consequences, including defaults under our customer agreements and exposure to monetary damages, in addition to reputational harm, that could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Our aging software infrastructure, technology, and sophistication of these systems, and our migration to new platforms, has and will continue to lead to increased costs, vulnerability to cyber-attack, or disruptions in operations that could have a material adverse effect on our business, market brand, financial condition, and results of operations.
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Our business continues to demand the use of sophisticated systems and technology, including technology infrastructure assets. These systems and technologies must be refined, updated and/or replaced with more advanced systems on a regular basis in order for us to meet both our customers’ and employees’ demands and expectations. Some of the crucial platforms on which we host our back office and legacy systems are aged and need to be replaced or are in the process of being replaced. Some of our customer instances have, and in the future will be, migrated to public Cloud environments. These technological changes are expensive and have and will continue to impact our profitability and demand attention from our senior leadership. If we are unable to replace our aged, crucial platforms, if some or all these platforms fail to operate due to a software error or infrastructure failure, if we fail to continue to refine and update our systems and technologies on a timely basis or within reasonable cost parameters, if we do not appropriately and timely train our employees to operate any of these new systems, if we fail to migrate to new systems in a manner free from disruption, if the new systems fail to perform as desired, or if we are unable to appropriately protect any of these systems, we could suffer the loss of data, vulnerabilities to cyber-attack, system outages or other performance problems, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
An information security breach of our systems or the loss of, or unauthorized access to, customer information or sensitive company information; the failure to comply with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) ongoing consent order regarding data protection; or a system disruption could have a material adverse effect on our business, market brand, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our business is dependent on our payroll, transaction, financial, accounting, and other data processing systems. We rely on these systems, which are maintained both internally and externally at third parties, to process, on a daily and time sensitive basis, a large number of complicated transactions. We, both through our internal systems and systems maintained by third parties, electronically receive, process, store, and transmit data and personal information about our customers and their employees, as well as our vendors and other business partners. We keep this information confidential. However, both our internal and third-party partners’ websites, networks, applications and technologies, and other information systems have been, and may in the future be targeted by malevolent parties for sabotage, disruption, ransom, or data misappropriation. Further, as we grow by acquisition, these risks become acute in the period following the acquisition, as we set about integrating the acquisition target’s systems into ours. Additionally, as we retire our legacy products like our bureau payroll services or sunset certain acquired products, we are decreasing investments in maintaining those systems which creates the potential for a security breach of one of those systems. The uninterrupted operation of our information systems and our ability to maintain the confidentiality and integrity of personal information and other customer and individual and company information that resides on our systems are critical to the successful operation of our business. We, and our third party providers, maintain systems and processes designed to protect this data and maintain business continuity, but notwithstanding such protective measures, there is a risk of intrusion, cyber-attacks or tampering that could compromise the integrity and privacy of this data. Any information security breach in our business processes or of our processing systems (whether they are maintained internally or externally at third parties) has the potential to impact our customer information and sensitive company information, including our financial reporting capabilities, which could result in the potential loss of business and our ability to accurately report financial results. If any of these systems fail to operate properly or become disabled even for a brief period of time, we could potentially miss a critical filing period, resulting in potential fees and penalties, or lose control of customer data, all of which could result in financial loss, a disruption of our business, liability to customers, regulatory intervention, or damage to our reputation. Further, our employees, service providers, and third parties frequently work on a remote or hybrid model, which may involve relying on less secure systems and may increase the risk of cybersecurity-related incidents. We cannot guarantee these private work environments and electronic connections to our work environment have the same security measures deployed in our physical offices.
Additionally, security breaches of customer and user information which occur outside of our systems may nevertheless result in increased business costs, lost revenues, damage to reputation, and exposure to litigation. In most instances, our customers administer access to the data of their employees and service providers. While we encourage customers to implement certain security controls, they may not implement appropriate controls to protect the identities used to access our products. As a result, customers may suffer a cybersecurity attack on their own systems, unrelated to our own, and allow a malicious actor access to the customer’s information held on our platform. Even if such a breach is unrelated to our security programs or practices, such breach could cause us reputational harm and require us to incur significant economic and operational consequences in order to adequately assess and respond to the breach, including further protecting our customers from their own vulnerabilities, and to implement appropriate safeguards to protect against future breaches.
We are subject to a twenty-year consent order with the FTC that became final in June 2011 stemming from a December 2009 criminal hack into our discontinued U.S. payroll application. We conceded no wrongdoing in the order and we were not subject to any monetary fines or penalties. However, in connection with the order, we are required to, among other things, maintain a comprehensive information security program that is reasonable and appropriate for our size and complexity, and for the type of personal information we collect. We are also required to have portions of our security
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program, which apply to certain segments of our U.S. business, reviewed by an independent third party on a biennial basis. Maintaining, updating, monitoring, and revising an information security program in an effort to ensure that it remains reasonable and appropriate in light of changes in security threats, changes in technology, and security vulnerabilities that arise from legacy systems is time-consuming and complex, and is an ongoing effort.
While we have taken and continue to take steps to ensure compliance with the consent order, if we are determined not to be in compliance with the consent order, or if any new breaches of security occur, the FTC may take enforcement actions or other parties may initiate a lawsuit. Any such resulting fines and penalties could have a material adverse effect on our liquidity and financial results, and any reputational damage therefrom could adversely affect our relationships with our existing customers and our ability to attain new customers. Insurance may be inadequate or may not be available in the future on acceptable terms, or at all. In addition, our insurance policies may not cover all claims made against us, and defending a lawsuit, regardless of its merit, could be costly, divert management’s attention, or damage our reputation.
Our solutions and our business are subject to a variety of laws and regulations, including those regarding privacy, data protection, and information security. Any failure by us or our third party service providers, as well as the failure of our services, to comply with these laws could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Failure to comply with privacy, data protection, and information security laws and regulations could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial condition, or have other adverse consequences. These laws, which are not uniform, govern the collection, storage, hosting, transfer (including in some cases, the transfer outside the country of collection), use, disclosure, security, retention, and destruction of personal information; they require us to give notice to individuals of privacy practices; give individuals certain access and correction rights with respect to their personal information; and regulate the use or disclosure of personal information for secondary purposes such as marketing. Under certain circumstances, some of these laws require us to provide notification to affected individuals, clients, data protection authorities and/or other regulators in the event of a data breach. In many cases, these laws apply not only to third-party transactions, but also to transfers of information among the Company and its subsidiaries. The European Union (the “EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), the California Consumer Protection Act (the “CCPA”) and its successor, the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), are among the most comprehensive of these laws. The number of related laws and regulations we are subject to continue to increase as we enter new markets in Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, and as we continue our entry into the consumer space through our Dayforce Wallet product. Restrictions on transfers of personal information from one geography to another continue to evolve. Complying with these laws and requirements, has resulted in significant costs to our business and may continue to require us to amend certain of our business practices. Further, enforcement actions and investigations by regulatory authorities related to data security incidents and privacy violations continue to increase. The future enactment of more restrictive laws, rules, or regulations and/or future enforcement actions or investigations could have a material adverse impact on us through increased costs or restrictions on our businesses and noncompliance could result in significant regulatory penalties and legal liability and damage our reputation. Restrictions on cross border data flows and data residency requirements may negatively impact our clients’ and our own ability to transfer personal information to the U.S. and other countries as part of our provision of services, and in support of our own operations, potentially impacting revenues. In addition, data security events and concerns about privacy abuses by other companies are changing consumer and social expectations for enhanced privacy and data protection. As a result, even the perception of noncompliance, whether or not valid, may damage our reputation. Finally, our ability to produce data-driven insights for our customers as we continue to leverage AI in our HCM technology may be constrained by current and future privacy, social and ethics regulatory requirements and considerations, thereby restricting our ability to use data in innovative ways. These regulatory requirements and considerations may also impose burdensome and costly requirements on our ability to leverage data, and potentially result in brand or reputational harm.
Our business plan is focused on an aggressive growth strategy. If we fail to manage our growth effectively or if our strategy is not successful, we may be unable to execute our business plan, to maintain high levels of service, or to adequately address competitive challenges.
We have experienced, and we believe we will continue to experience, a period of rapid growth in our operations and Cloud solutions. The growth of our operations and Cloud solutions has and may continue to place a strain on our management, administrative, operational, technological, and financial infrastructure. In order to manage our growth effectively, we will need to continuously improve our management, administrative, operational, technological, and financial systems, and our internal controls, reporting systems, and procedures to scaled global capabilities which may require investment as we grow and could result in disruption as we transform. Our attempts to develop new or enhanced functionality to our services, whether as part of our anticipated development road map or in response to enhancement requests we have committed to our customers, has been, and will continue to be expensive and impact our profitability. Failure to effectively manage growth or to achieve a profitable growth strategy could result in problems or delays in implementing customers, declines in quality or customer satisfaction, decreased profitability on new customer deals, increases in costs, complications or delays in
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introducing new features or fixing or updating our existing technology and infrastructure, or other operational challenges; and any of these difficulties could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
The markets in which we participate are highly competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
The markets in which we participate are highly competitive, and competition could intensify in the future. We believe the principal competitive factors in our market include: breadth and depth of product functionality, scalability and reliability of applications, robust workforce management, comprehensive tax services, modern and innovative Cloud technology platforms combined with an intuitive user experience, rapid technological change such as the rise of large language models, multi-country and jurisdiction domain expertise in payroll and HCM, quality of implementation and customer service, integration with a wide variety of third party applications and systems, total cost of ownership and return on investment, brand awareness, and reputation, pricing and distribution.
We face a variety of competitors, some of which are long-established providers of HCM solutions. Many of our current and potential competitors are larger, have greater name recognition, longer operating histories, larger marketing budgets, and significantly greater resources than we do, and are able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, and sale of their products and services. Some of our competitors do or could offer HCM solutions bundled as part of a larger product offering. Furthermore, our current or potential competitors may be acquired by third parties with greater available resources and the ability to initiate or to withstand substantial price competition. In addition, many of our competitors have established marketing relationships, access to larger customer bases, and major distribution agreements with consultants, system integrators, and resellers. Our competitors have and may continue to establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties that may further enhance their product offerings or resources. Although we have a global partnership strategy, additional investment and efforts will be necessary to fully implement and scale such a strategy.
If our competitors’ products, services, or technologies become more accepted than our applications are today, if they are successful in bringing their products or services to market earlier than ours, or if their products or services are more technologically capable than ours, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, some of our competitors may offer their products and services at a lower price compared to our products or their current pricing impacting our ability to achieve our target pricing. If we are unable to achieve our target pricing levels or if we experience significant pricing pressures, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our international growth strategy has and will continue to expose us to risks inherent in international sales and operations.
We have and will continue to expand our operations and sales into new international markets. Our expanding international operations are subject to risks that could adversely affect those operations or our business as a whole, including but not limited to the costs of establishing a market presence, localizing product and service offerings for foreign customers, difficulties in managing and staffing international operations, and increased expenses related to introducing corporate policies and controls in our international operations and increased reliance on partners to provide services in additional geographies. Further, the expansion of our product offering into new international markets has and will continue to result in an expansion of our monitoring of local laws and regulations, which increases our costs as well as the risk of the product not incorporating in a timely fashion or at all the necessary changes to enable a customer to be compliant with such laws, or in manual workarounds that are prone to errors.
Moreover, as part of our international strategy, we work with partners to perform services in certain geographies where we do not currently have international operations or the particular service required by our customers. As a result, we may experience business impact if our partners do not carry out the services as committed, or at a quality level that our customers demand, including potential for reduced margin from additional expense or impact to customer relationships.
Our international growth strategy has and may continue to include growth via acquisition. Our growth following an acquisition may also be dependent on our ability to transition acquired customers from current and legacy products to Dayforce, migrate and integrate acquired technologies or to increase sales by addressing broader HCM needs with additional modules of Dayforce.
If we are unable to provide the required services on a multinational basis, or if we are unable to effectively manage our international expansion, we could be subject to negative customer experiences, harm to our reputation or loss of customers, claims for any fines, penalties or other damages suffered by our customer, and other financial harm, including fines, penalties, or other damages suffered by us directly, which would negatively impact revenue and earnings. Although we have a multinational strategy, additional investment and efforts may be necessary to implement such strategy. Some of our business partners also have international operations and are subject to the risks described above.
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Customers depend on our solutions to assist them to comply with applicable laws, which requires us and our third party providers to constantly monitor applicable laws and to make applicable changes to our solutions. If our solutions have not been updated to enable the customer to comply with applicable laws or we fail to update our solutions on a timely basis, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Customers use our solutions to assist them to comply with payroll, HR, and other applicable laws for which the solutions are intended for use. We and our third party providers must monitor all applicable laws and as such laws expand, evolve, or are amended in any way, and when new regulations or laws are implemented, we may be required to modify our solutions to assist our customers to comply with such new regulations or laws, which requires an investment of our time and resources. We are also reliant on our third party providers to modify the solutions that they provide to our customers as part of our solutions to comply with changes to such laws and regulations. The number of laws and regulations that we are required to monitor has and will continue to increase as we expand both the geographic regions in which the solutions are offered and the types of products we offer to customers. These risks have become exacerbated as we expand by acquisition and are most acute in the period following the acquisition as we integrate the acquired business and its systems. In the event our solutions fail to assist a customer to comply with applicable laws, we are subject to negative customer experiences, harm to our reputation or loss of customers, claims for any fines, penalties or other damages suffered by our customer, and other financial harm, including fines, penalties, or other damages suffered by us directly.
If our current or future applications fail to perform properly, our reputation could be adversely affected, our market share could decline, and we could be subject to liability claims, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our applications are inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors that we are not yet aware of. Because of the large amount of data that we collect and manage, it is possible that failures or errors in our systems could result in data loss or corruption or cause the information that we collect to be incomplete or to contain inaccuracies that our customers regard as significant. Any defects in functionality or that cause interruptions in the availability of our applications could result in reputational, competitive, operational, or other business harm as well as financial costs and regulatory action, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, the costs incurred in correcting any material defects or errors might be substantial. While we conduct standard due diligence during our acquisition process, these risks are heightened as we grow by acquisition and dedicate resources to integrating the acquisition target’s systems into ours and take on the vulnerabilities that may exist at the acquisition target.
If we fail to manage our technical operations infrastructure, our existing customers may experience service outages, and our new customers may experience delays in the implementation of our applications, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We have experienced and will continue to experience significant growth in the number of users, transactions, and data that our operations infrastructure supports, including the acquisition of new systems via strategic transactions. We seek to maintain sufficient capacity in our operations infrastructure to meet the needs of our customers and to facilitate the rapid provision of new customer activations and the expansion of existing customer activations. In addition, we need to continue to properly manage our technological operations infrastructure to support version control, changes in hardware and software parameters, and the evolution of our applications. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, website disruptions, outages, and other performance problems. These problems may be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, viruses, security attacks, fraud, increased resource consumption from expansion or modification to our Dayforce code, spikes in customer usage, denial of service issues and Cloud interruptions run by third party service providers and our ability to react. The risks of these problems occurring may be exacerbated by our strategic acquisitions, especially in the period following the acquisition as we integrate the acquisition target’s systems into ours, as well as our aging technology infrastructure which in some cases is supported by older platforms. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. If we do not accurately predict our infrastructure requirements, our existing customers may experience service outages that may subject them to financial penalties, causing us to incur financial liabilities and customer losses.
Our growth depends in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties who provide us with services and license us software for use in or with both our applications and our internal operations.
In order to maintain and grow our business, we do, and we anticipate that we will continue to, depend on the continuation and expansion of relationships with third parties who provide us with services. These service provider partners include connected payroll partners, implementation partners, systems integrators, third party sales channel partners, the operators of data centers, and banks and other providers who execute wire transfers and other money movement services to support our customer payroll and tax services. Our agreements with these third party service providers are typically non-exclusive and do not prohibit them from working with our competitors. If any third-party service providers on which we rely to provide
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us with services experience a disruption, go out of business, are acquired by our competitors, experience a decline in quality, or terminate their relationship with us, we could experience a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operation.
In addition, we license software from third parties for use in or with both our applications and our internal operations, and the inability to maintain these licenses could result in increased costs, or reduced service levels, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. To the extent that our applications depend upon the successful operation of third party software in conjunction with our software, any undetected errors or defects in this third party software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our applications, delay new application introductions, and result in a failure of our applications, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Any failure to offer high-quality technical support services may adversely affect our relationships with our customers and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Once our applications are deployed, our customers depend on our support organization and the support capabilities of our partners to resolve technical issues relating to our applications, as well as our partner’s applications. We have recently engaged in a rebalancing of our global workforce that particularly impacted our support organization, which may result in disruption as we fill existing positions in our APJ geographies. We or our partners may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate short-term increases in customer demand for support services, and we may be limited in our ability to resolve the technical issues our customers have with our technology, or our partner’s technology. We or our partners also may be unable to modify the format of our or our partners’ support services to compete with changes in support services provided by our competitors. Increased customer demand for these services, without corresponding revenues, could increase costs and have an adverse effect on our results of operations. Ultimately, a client could elect to terminate their agreement due to dissatisfaction with support, resulting in lost recurring revenue. In addition, our sales process is highly dependent on our applications and business reputation and on positive recommendations from our existing customers. Any failure to maintain high-quality technical support, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality support, could adversely affect our reputation and our ability to sell our applications to existing and prospective customers, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
If our customers are not satisfied with the implementation and professional services provided by us or our partners, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our business depends on the ability to implement our solutions on a timely, accurate, and cost-efficient basis and to provide professional services at the high level demanded by our customers. Implementation and other professional services may be performed by our own staff, by a third party, or by a combination of the two. If a customer is not satisfied with the timely access or the quality of work performed, then we could incur loss of revenue or additional costs to address the situation, the customer’s dissatisfaction with such services could damage our ability to expand the number of applications subscribed to by that customer or we could be liable for loss or damage suffered as a result, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. If a new customer is dissatisfied with implementation, the customer could refuse to go-live, which could result in a delay in our collection of fees or could result in a customer seeking repayment of its implementation fees or suing us for damages or could force us to enforce the termination provisions in our customer contracts in order to collect revenue. In addition, negative publicity related to our customer relationships, regardless of its accuracy, may affect our ability to compete for new business with current and prospective customers, which could also have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We depend on our senior management team, and the loss of one or more key employees or an inability to attract and to retain highly skilled employees could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our success depends largely upon the continued services of our senior management team. Our executive officers, senior management or other key personnel have limited or no notice period applicable to their employment. Therefore, they could terminate their employment with us at any time. Additionally, we do not maintain key employee insurance on any of our executive officers, senior management, or key employees. The loss of one or more of our executive officers, senior management, or key employees could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
To execute our growth plan, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. Competition for talent is intense and has become more intense in recent years, including without limitation for individuals with high levels of experience in designing and developing software and Internet-related services and senior sales executives. We have, from time to time, experienced the need to increase compensation for current and prospective employees to retain and recruit employees of the desired qualifications which impacts our ability to profitably operate our business. In addition, we have and we expect to continue
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to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications, the cumulative loss of which could raise the risk of failures to operate our business to the quality needed and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
If our vendors or affiliates initiate payroll-related transactions on behalf of our customers and do not receive funds from the customer sufficient to cover the amounts paid on their behalf, we may suffer significant losses which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Under certain circumstances, funds may not be received from our customers to cover the transactions that our affiliates and third party vendors have initiated on our customers’ behalf. Additionally, there is a risk that an erroneous payment instruction may trigger inaccurate payments. There is, therefore, a risk that the customer’s funds will be insufficient to cover the amounts already paid on its behalf. Should customers default on their payment obligations in the future, should our affiliates or vendors make erroneous payments on behalf of a customer, should erroneous or defaulted payment recovery be unsuccessful, or should our affiliates or vendors suffer losses from similar issues, we may be required to advance substantial amounts of funds to cover such obligations, or to make our partners whole for any losses they suffer. In such an event, we may be required to seek additional sources of short-term liquidity, which may not be available on reasonable terms, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Further, should a customer on whose behalf our affiliate or vendor has initiated a transaction subsequently have financial difficulty or refuse to pay, collection of any funds advanced on its behalf may be difficult and we may suffer losses that could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operation.
Regulatory requirements placed on our software and services could impose increased costs on us, delay or prevent our introduction of new products and services, and impair the function or value of our existing products and services.
Our products and services are subject to increasing regulatory requirements, and as these requirements proliferate, we are required to change or adapt to comply. Changing regulatory requirements might render our services obsolete or might block us from developing new products and services. This might in turn impose additional costs upon us to comply or to further develop our products and services. Changing regulatory requirements can make introduction of new services more costly or more time-consuming than we currently anticipate and could even prevent introduction by us of new services or cause the continuation of our existing services to become more costly.
Federal, state, or foreign government bodies or agencies have in the past adopted, and may in the future adopt, laws or regulations affecting the use of the Internet as a commercial medium. Future changes in these laws or regulations could require us to modify our applications in order to comply with these changes. In addition, government agencies or private organizations may begin to impose taxes, fees, or other charges for accessing the Internet or commerce conducted via the Internet. These laws or charges could limit the growth of Internet-related commerce or communications generally, resulting in reductions in the demand for Internet-based applications such as ours, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
For our Dayforce Wallet product, we advance earned net wages and associated tax amounts on behalf of customers in connection with the “on-demand pay” payroll feature of the service in order to provide their employees access to earned wages in advance of their standard payroll cycles. A customer may fail to satisfy its obligation to repay us for those advanced monies which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
In the case of our “on-demand pay” service (a service that is offered as part of the Dayforce Wallet), credit is provided to our customers and funds are advanced on the customers’ behalf in order to fund the customers’ employees’ interim earned net wage payroll demands (including associated source and other deductions) with the requirement that the customers will repay the advance on the date of their next ordinary payroll run. These advances may or may not have priority over other creditors of our customers, and our other credit protection measures, if implemented, may be inadequate to make us whole. There is, therefore, a risk that our customers do not pay back the amounts we have already paid on their behalf, and in that event, we may possess limited legal recourse to recoup those funds from our customers. In the event of a customer’s failure to repay us, we may be required to seek additional sources of short-term liquidity, which may not be available on reasonable terms, or suffer credit losses, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Customer funds and wage funds of their employees that our trustees and third-party financial institution partners hold are subject to market, interest rate, credit, and liquidity risks. The loss of these funds could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
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Our trustees (in the case of customer funds held in our U.S. Employer Funds Trust and our Canada Payroll Trust) and our third party financial institution partners (in the case of employee wage funds held on their behalf as part of the U.S. Dayforce Wallet program and certain of our non-U.S. operations) may invest funds in one or more high-quality bank deposits, money market mutual funds, commercial paper, collateralized short-term investments, government securities, as well as highly rated asset-backed, mortgage-backed, municipal, corporate, and bank securities. These assets are subject to varying degrees of general market, interest rate, credit, and liquidity risks. These risks may be exacerbated, individually or in unison, during periods of unusual financial market volatility. We are required to fund the payroll and wage funds of our customers and their employees regardless of any loss realized on those investments affecting the principal funds held. In the event of a global financial crisis, such as that experienced in 2008, we could be faced with a severe constriction of the availability of liquidity, which could impact our ability to fund payrolls. Any loss of principal, or inability to access customer funds could have an adverse impact on our cash position and results of operations and could require us to obtain additional sources of liquidity, and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We may acquire other companies or technologies, which could divert our management’s attention, result in additional indebtedness or dilution to our stockholders, and otherwise disrupt our operations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We have, and we may in the future seek to acquire or to invest in businesses, applications, or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our applications, enhance our technical capabilities, or otherwise offer growth opportunities. The pursuit of potential acquisitions may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various expenses in identifying, investigating, and pursuing suitable acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated. In addition, we have limited experience in acquiring other businesses. If we acquire additional businesses, we may incur significant costs to integrate such businesses. Further, we may not be able to integrate the acquired personnel, operations, and technologies successfully or profitably, or to effectively manage the combined business following the acquisition. If an acquired business fails to meet our expectations, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In order to fund acquisitions, we may issue dilutive equity securities or incur additional debt, resulting in an increase in our interest payments.
A significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. In the future, if our acquisitions do not yield expected returns, we may be required to record charges based on this impairment assessment, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.
Failure to comply with anti-corruption laws and regulations, economic and trade sanctions, anti-money laundering laws and regulations, and similar laws could have a materially adverse effect on our reputation, results of operations or financial condition, or have other adverse consequences.
Regulators worldwide are exercising heightened scrutiny with respect to anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions, and anti-money laundering laws and regulations. Such heightened scrutiny has resulted in more aggressive investigations and enforcement of such laws and more burdensome regulations, any of which could have a material adverse impact on our business. We are growing our business throughout the world, including in numerous developing economies where companies and government officials are more likely to engage in business practices that are prohibited by domestic and foreign laws and regulations, including the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Such laws generally prohibit improper payments or offers of payments to foreign government officials and leaders of political parties, and in some cases, to other persons, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. We are also subject to economic and trade sanctions programs, including those administered by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which prohibit or restrict transactions or dealings with specified countries, their governments and, in certain circumstances, their nationals, and with individuals and entities that are specially designated, including narcotics traffickers and terrorists or terrorist organizations, among others. In addition, some of our businesses and entities in the U.S. and a number of other countries in which we operate are and will continue to be subject to anti-money laundering laws and regulations. These laws require us to develop and implement risk-based anti-money laundering programs, report large cash transactions and suspicious activity, and maintain transaction records. These laws and regulations include the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2000 (the “BSA”), that requires banks and money services businesses, among others, to develop and implement risk-based anti-money laundering programs, report large cash transactions and suspicious activity, and maintain transaction records.
We have implemented policies and procedures to monitor and address compliance with applicable anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions and anti-money laundering laws and regulations, and we are continuously in the process of reviewing, upgrading, and enhancing certain of our policies and procedures. However, there can be no assurance that our employees, consultants, or agents will not take actions in violation of our policies for which we may be ultimately responsible, or that our policies and procedures will be adequate or will be determined to be adequate by regulators. Any violations of
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applicable anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions or anti-money laundering laws or regulations could limit certain of our business activities until they are satisfactorily remediated and could result in civil and criminal penalties, including fines, which could damage our reputation and have a material adverse effect on our results of operation or financial condition. Further, bank regulators, including the OCC, which now regulates the DNTB, continue to impose additional and stricter requirements on banks to ensure they are meeting their BSA obligations, and banks are increasingly viewing money services businesses, as a class, to be higher risk customers for money laundering. As a result, our banking partners that assist in processing our money movement transactions may limit the scope of services they provide to us or may impose additional material requirements on us. Further, bank regulators, including the OCC, may increase regulatory investigations or governmental oversight to ensure we are meeting our BSA obligations. These regulatory restrictions on banks and changes to banks’ internal risk-based policies and procedures may result in a decrease in the number of banks that may do business with us, may require us to materially change the manner in which we conduct some aspects of our business, may decrease our revenues and earnings and could have a material adverse effect on our results or financial condition.
We may not be able to utilize a significant portion of our net operating loss, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.
As of December 31, 2023, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards due to prior period losses, which, if not utilized, will begin to expire in 2031 and 2024 for federal and state purposes, respectively. These net operating loss carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.
In addition, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”), our ability to utilize net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes in any taxable year may be limited if we experience an “ownership change.” A Section 382 “ownership change” generally occurs if one or more stockholders or groups of stockholders who own at least 5% of our stock increase their ownership by more than 50 percentage points over their lowest ownership percentage within a rolling three-year period. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. Future issuances of our stock could cause an “ownership change.” It is possible that an ownership change could have a material effect on our ability to utilize our net operating loss carryforwards, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.
Litigation and regulatory investigations aimed at us or resulting from actions of our predecessor may result in significant financial losses and harm to our reputation.
We face risk of litigation, regulatory investigations, and similar actions in the ordinary course of our business, including the risk of lawsuits and other legal actions relating to breaches of contractual obligations, tortious claims, employment and labor law matters, securities law claims, or claims related to erroneous transactions or breach of other laws or regulations from customers, stockholders, vendors, employees or other third parties which could result in fines, penalties, interest, loss of revenue, increased expense, or other damages. In particular, our clients have sought to pursue indemnification claims against us where they have been subject to wage compliance, payroll fraud, and data privacy claims. Litigation might result in substantial costs and may divert management’s attention and resources, which might materially harm our business, overall financial condition, and operating results. We may also be subject to various regulatory inquiries, such as information requests, subpoenas, and book and records examinations, from regulators and other authorities in the geographic markets in which we operate. A substantial liability arising from a lawsuit judgment or settlement or a significant regulatory action against us or a disruption in our business arising from adverse adjudications in proceedings against our directors, officers, or employees could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results or operations. Further, insurance might not cover such claims, might not provide sufficient payments to cover all the costs to resolve one or more such claims and might not continue to be available on terms acceptable to us. A claim brought against us that is uninsured or underinsured could result in unanticipated costs, thereby harming our operating results and leading analysts or potential investors to lower their expectations of our performance, which could reduce the trading price of our stock or potentially result in a lawsuit related to the reduced trading price of our stock.
Additionally, we are subject to claims and investigations as a result of our predecessor, Control Data Corporation (“CDC”), Ceridian Corporation, and other former entities for whom we are successor-in-interest with respect to assumed liabilities. For example, in September 1989, CDC became party to an environmental matters agreement with Seagate Technology plc (“Seagate”) related to groundwater contamination on a parcel of real estate in Omaha, Nebraska sold by CDC to Seagate. In February 1988, CDC entered into an arrangement with Northern Engraving Corporation and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in relation to groundwater contamination at a site in Spring Grove, Minnesota. We have also been subject to asbestos related claims for former CDC employees. Although we are fully reserved for these groundwater contamination liabilities, and partially insured for the asbestos claims, we cannot be certain if additional claims, investigations, or liabilities related to such predecessor companies will surface.
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Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.
Our success and ability to compete depend in part upon our intellectual property. We primarily rely on copyright, trade secret, and trademark laws; trade secret protection; and confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, customers, partners, and others to protect our intellectual property rights. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property rights may be ineffective or inadequate. In addition, use of AI tools may result in the release of confidential or proprietary information which could limit our ability to protect, or prevent us from protecting, our intellectual property rights.
In order to protect our intellectual property rights, we have and will likely be required to continue to spend significant resources to monitor and to protect these rights. Litigation brought to protect and to enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time-consuming, and distracting to management, with no guarantee of success, and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims, and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Our failure to secure, to protect, and to enforce our intellectual property rights could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights which could have a material adverse effect on our business.
There is considerable intellectual property development activity in our industry. Third parties, including our competitors, may own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our service offerings and may claim that we are infringing their intellectual property rights. Additionally, as we expand our use of AI, there is uncertainty regarding intellectual property ownership and license rights of AI algorithms and content generated by AI, and we may become subject to similar claims of infringement. We may be found to be infringing upon such rights, even if we are unaware of their intellectual property rights. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us or if we decide to settle, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, obtain licenses, modify applications, prevent us from offering our services, or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. We may also be obligated to indemnify our customers, vendors, or partners in connection with any such claim or litigation. Even if we were to prevail in such a dispute, any litigation regarding our intellectual property could be costly and time consuming.
The use of open source software in our applications may expose us to additional risks and harm our intellectual property rights.
Some of our applications include software covered by open source licenses. From time to time, there have been claims challenging the ownership of open source software against companies that incorporate such software into their products or applications. The terms of various open source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market our applications. By the terms of certain open source licenses, we could be required to release the source code of our proprietary software and to make our proprietary software available under open source licenses if we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner. In the event that portions of our proprietary software are determined to be subject to an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code, to re-engineer all or a portion of our technologies, or otherwise to be limited in the licensing of our technologies, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and services. Some open source software may include AI capabilities or other software that incorporates or relies on AI, or may have been created, in whole or in part, by AI. The use of such software may expose us to risks as the intellectual property ownership and license rights, including copyright, of AI software and tools, has not been fully interpreted by courts or been fully addressed by regulation. In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the origin of the software. Many of the risks associated with usage of open source software cannot be eliminated and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
The implementation of new accounting systems or applications could interfere with our business and operations.
The implementation of new systems and enhancements may be disruptive to our business and can be time-consuming and divert management’s attention. Any disruptions relating to our systems or any problems with implementation, particularly any disruptions impacting our operations or our ability to accurately report our financial performance on a timely basis, could materially and adversely affect our business and operations.
Risks Related to Our Indebtedness
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Our outstanding indebtedness could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and our ability to operate our business, and we may not be able to generate sufficient cash flows to meet our debt service obligations.
Our obligations under the Senior Secured Credit Facility are secured by first priority security interests in substantially all of our assets and the domestic subsidiary guarantors, subject to permitted liens and certain exceptions. Our outstanding indebtedness and any additional indebtedness we incur may have important consequences for us, including, without limitation, that:
Under the terms of the agreements governing our debt facilities, we are required to comply with specified operating covenants and, under certain circumstances, a financial covenant applicable to the Revolving Credit Facility, which may limit our ability to operate our business as we otherwise might operate it. If not cured, an event of default under our Senior Secured Credit Facility could result in any amounts outstanding, including any accrued interest and unpaid fees, becoming immediately due and payable, which would require us, among other things, to seek additional financing in the debt or equity markets, to refinance or restructure all or a portion of our indebtedness, to sell selected assets, and/or to reduce or to delay planned capital or operating expenditures. Such measures might not be sufficient to enable us to service our debt, and any such financing or refinancing might not be available on economically favorable terms or at all. If we are not able to generate sufficient cash flows to meet our debt service obligations or are forced to take additional measures to be able to service our indebtedness, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Aspects of the Capped Calls may not operate as planned and may affect the value of the Convertible Senior Notes and our common stock, and we are subject to counterparty credit risk with respect to the Capped Calls.
In connection with the pricing of the Convertible Senior Notes, we entered into the Capped Calls. Please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 9, "Debt" for additional information. The Capped Calls are expected generally to reduce the potential dilution to our common stock upon any conversion of the Convertible Senior Notes and/or offset any potential cash payments we are required to make in excess of the principal amount of converted Convertible Senior Notes, as the case may be, with such reduction and/or offset subject to a cap. The Capped Calls are complex transactions that are not part of the terms of the Convertible Senior Notes and may not operate as planned. If the Capped Calls do not operate as we intend, it may have an effect on the price of the Convertible Senior Notes or our common stock.
The option counterparties or their respective affiliates may modify their hedge positions by entering into or unwinding various derivatives with respect to our common stock and/or purchasing or selling our common stock or other securities of ours in secondary market transactions following any conversion of the Convertible Senior Notes, any repurchase of the Convertible Senior Notes by us on any fundamental change repurchase date, any redemption date, or any other date on which the Convertible Senior Notes are retired by us, in each case if we exercise our option to terminate the relevant portion of the Capped Calls. This activity could cause or avoid an increase or a decrease in the market price of our common stock or the Convertible Senior Notes, which could affect the ability of a noteholder to convert the Convertible Senior Notes and, to the extent the activity occurs during any observation period related to a conversion of Convertible Senior Notes, could affect the number of shares of common stock, if any, and value of the consideration that a noteholder will receive upon conversion of the Convertible Senior Notes. If any such Capped Call fails to become effective, the option counterparties or their respective affiliates may unwind their hedge positions with respect to our common stock, which could adversely affect the value of our common stock and the value of the Convertible Senior Notes. The option counterparties are financial institutions, and we are subject to the risk that they might default under the Capped Calls. Our exposure to the credit risk of the option counterparties is not secured by any collateral. If an option counterparty becomes subject to insolvency proceedings, we will become an unsecured creditor in those proceedings with a claim equal to our exposure at that time under our transactions with that option counterparty. Our exposure will depend on many factors, but, generally, the increase
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in our exposure will be correlated with increases in the market price or the volatility of our common stock. In addition, upon a default by an option counterparty, we may suffer adverse tax consequences and more dilution than we currently anticipate with respect to our common stock. We can provide no assurances as to the financial stability or viability of any option counterparty.
Conversion of our Convertible Senior Notes issued under the Indenture may adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.
Under certain circumstances, noteholders may convert their Convertible Senior Notes at their option prior to the scheduled maturities. Upon conversion of the Convertible Senior Notes, we will be obligated to make cash payments in an amount no less than the principal amount being converted, and any excess of the conversion value over the principal amount will be settled, at the Company’s election, in cash or shares of the Company’s common stock. In addition, noteholders will have the right to require us to repurchase their Convertible Senior Notes upon the occurrence of a fundamental change at a repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the Convertible Senior Notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if any, to, but not including, the fundamental change repurchase date (as defined in the Indenture). There is a risk that we may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing at the time we are required to make repurchases of Convertible Senior Notes surrendered therefor or Convertible Senior Notes being converted. Our failure to repurchase Convertible Senior Notes when the Indenture requires the repurchase or to pay any cash payable on future conversions of the Convertible Senior Notes as required by the Indenture would constitute a default under the Indenture. A default under the Indenture or the fundamental change itself could also lead to a default under agreements governing our future indebtedness. If the repayment of the related indebtedness were to be accelerated after any applicable notice or grace periods, we may not have sufficient funds to repay the indebtedness and repurchase the Convertible Senior Notes or make cash payments upon conversions thereof. In addition, even if noteholders do not elect to convert their Convertible Senior Notes, we could be required under applicable accounting rules to reclassify all or a portion of the outstanding principal of the Convertible Senior Notes as a current, rather than long-term, liability, which would result in a material reduction of our net working capital.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
The price of our common stock may be volatile, and investors may lose all or part of their investment.
The market price and volume of our common stock trading has experienced, and may continue to experience, wide fluctuations and volatility. Factors that may impact our performance and market price include those discussed elsewhere in this “Risk Factors” section of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and others such as: market factors such as economic recession or monetary policy actions by central banking authorities, announcement or filing with the SEC by us or our competitors of acquisitions, business plans or commercial relationships as well as new services; any major change in our senior management or board of directors; sales, or anticipated sales, of our stock, including sales by our officers, directors, and significant stockholders; issuance of new, negative, or changed securities analysts’ reports or recommendations or estimates; investor perceptions of us and the industries in which we or our customers operate; and threatened or actual litigation and governmental investigations.
These and other factors may cause the market price and demand for shares of our common stock to fluctuate substantially, which may limit or prevent investors from readily selling their shares of common stock and may otherwise negatively affect the liquidity of our common stock. In addition, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against companies following periods of volatility in the overall market and in the market price of a company’s securities. Securities litigation against us, regardless of the merits or outcome, could result in substantial costs, damage to our reputation, and divert the time and attention of our management from our business, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
The issuance of additional stock, including common stock issued upon conversion of our Convertible Senior Notes, will dilute all other stockholders.
The issuance of additional stock in connection with acquisitions, financings, our equity incentive plans, our Convertible Senior Notes, or otherwise will dilute all other stockholders. Our restated certificate of incorporation authorizes us to issue up to five hundred million shares of common stock and up to ten million shares of preferred stock with such rights and preferences as may be determined by our board of directors. Subject to compliance with applicable rules and regulations, we may issue all of these shares that are not already outstanding without any action or approval by our stockholders. We intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions or opportunities in the future. We may pay for such acquisitions or opportunities, in part or in full, through the issuance of additional equity securities. Further, the conversion of some or all of the Convertible Senior Notes will dilute the ownership interests of existing stockholders to the extent we deliver shares of our common stock upon conversion of any of the Convertible Senior Notes.
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Because we do not intend to pay cash dividends in the foreseeable future, investors may not receive any return on investment unless they are able to sell common stock for a price greater than the purchase price.
We have never declared nor paid cash dividends on our common stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business, and we do not expect to declare or to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Consequently, stockholders must rely on sales of their common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment. There is no guarantee that shares of our common stock will appreciate in value or even maintain the price at which investors have purchased their shares.
Anti-takeover protections in our restated certificate of incorporation, our fourth amended and restated bylaws, or our contractual obligations may discourage or prevent a takeover of our company, even if an acquisition would be beneficial to our stockholders.
Provisions contained in our restated certificate of incorporation and fourth amended and restated bylaws, as well as provisions of Delaware law, could delay or make it more difficult to remove incumbent directors or could impede a merger, takeover, or other business combination involving us or the replacement of our management, or discourage a potential investor from making a tender offer for our common stock, which, under certain circumstances, could reduce the market value of our common stock, even if it would benefit our stockholders.
In addition, under the agreements governing our credit facilities, a change of control would cause us to be in default or could trigger dilutive or additional expenses. For example, in the event of a change of control default, the administrative agent under our credit facilities would have the right (or, at the direction of lenders holding a majority of the loans and commitments under our credit facilities, the obligation) to accelerate the outstanding loans and to terminate the commitments under our credit facilities, and if so accelerated, we would be required to repay all of our outstanding obligations under our credit facilities.
Further, certain provisions in the Convertible Senior Notes and the Indenture could increase the cost of acquiring us or otherwise discourage a third party from acquiring us or removing incumbent management, including in a transaction that noteholders or holders of our common stock may view as favorable.
General Risk Factors
We have identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting and may identify material weaknesses in the future or otherwise fail to establish and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
As a public company, we are required to design and maintain proper and effective internal control over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal controls. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as amended, requires that we evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and provide a management report on the internal control over financial reporting, which must be attested to by our independent registered public accounting firm. Our independent registered public accounting firm may need to issue an adverse report if there is a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting.
A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. When evaluating our internal control over financial reporting, we may identify material weaknesses that we may not be able to remediate prior to the date of our annual management report.
We recently identified one material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, the GITC Material Weakness, as described in Part II, Item 9A, Controls and Procedures.
We have commenced measures to remediate the GITC Material Weakness and anticipate that it will be fully remediated before December 31, 2024. Until the GITC Material Weakness is remediated, we will continue to perform additional analyses and other post-closing procedures to ensure that our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the U.S. (“GAAP”). The GITC Material Weakness cannot be considered remediated until the newly designed control activities operate for a sufficient period of time and management has concluded, through testing, that the controls are operating effectively. We can give no assurance that the measures we are taking and plan to take in the future will remediate the GITC Material Weakness identified, or that any additional material weaknesses or restatements of financial results will not arise in the future. In addition, even if we are successful in strengthening our internal control over financial reporting, in the future those controls may not be adequate to prevent or identify irregularities or errors or to facilitate the fair presentation of our consolidated financial statements.
Any failure to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting could adversely impact our ability to report our
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financial position and results of operations on a timely and accurate basis. If our financial statements are inaccurate, investors may not have a complete understanding of our operations and we could face the risk of stockholder litigation. Likewise, if our financial statements are not filed on a timely basis, we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the stock exchanges on which our common stock is listed, the SEC or other regulatory authorities. There could also be a negative reaction in the financial markets due to a loss of investor confidence in us and the reliability of our consolidated financial statements, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Adverse economic and market conditions could affect our business, operating results, or financial condition.
Our business depends on the overall demand for HCM applications and on the economic health of our current and prospective clients. If economic conditions in the U.S., Canada, or in global markets deteriorate, clients may cease their operations, reduce headcount, delay or reduce their spending on HCM and other outsourcing services or attempt to renegotiate their contracts with us. In addition, global and regional macroeconomic developments, such as increased unemployment, decreased income, uncertainty related to future economic activity, reduced access to credit, increased interest rates, inflation, volatility in capital markets, and decreased liquidity, among other possible factors, could negatively affect our ability to conduct business. An economic decline could result in reductions in sales of our applications, decreased revenue, longer sales cycles, slower adoption of new technologies, and increased price competition, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, or financial condition. In addition, HCM spending levels may not increase following any recovery.
In recent years, there have been several instances when there has been uncertainty regarding the ability of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. President collectively to reach agreement on federal budgetary and spending matters. A period of failure to reach agreement on these matters, particularly if accompanied by an actual or threatened government shutdown, may have an adverse impact on the U.S. economy. Additionally, because certain of our clients rely on government resources to fund their operations, a prolonged government shutdown may affect such clients’ ability to make timely payments to us, which could adversely affect our operations results or financial condition.
Further, as part of our payroll and tax filing application, we collect and then remit client funds to taxing authorities and accounts designated by our clients. During the interval between receipt and disbursement, we may invest such funds in money market funds, demand deposit accounts, certificates of deposit, U.S. treasury securities and commercial paper. These investments are subject to general market, interest rate, credit and liquidity risks, and such risks may be exacerbated during periods of unusual financial market volatility. Any loss of or inability to access such funds could have an adverse impact on our cash position and results of operations and could require us to obtain additional sources of liquidity, which may not be available on terms that are acceptable to us, if at all.
Our quarterly results of operations have and may continue to fluctuate significantly and may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business.
Our quarterly results of operations, including the levels of our revenues, gross margin, profitability, cash flow, and deferred revenue, have varied and may vary significantly in the future, and period-to-period comparisons of our results of operations may not be meaningful. Accordingly, the results of any one quarter should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. Our quarterly financial results may fluctuate as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control, and as a result, may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business. These factors include: our ability to attract and retain new and current Cloud customers, as well as Dayforce Wallet customers; changes to services or pricing impacting our customer contracts; seasonal variations in sales of and revenue from our applications, changes to our operating expenses related to the maintenance and expansion of our business including newly acquired businesses, operations, and infrastructure; and general economic, industry, and market conditions, including the addition or loss of employees by our Cloud customers who generally pay on a per-employee, per-month ("PEPM") basis, interest rates, and accounting rules.
Catastrophic events may disrupt our business and expose us to risks that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and reputation.
Our business, financial condition, results of operations, access to capital markets and borrowing costs may be adversely affected by a major natural disaster or catastrophic event, including civil unrest, economic recession, geopolitical instability, war, terrorist attack, the effects of climate change, or pandemics or other public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 outbreak, and measures taken in response thereto. In the event of a major disaster or event impacting any of our locations or locations where our employees work virtually, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, delays in our application development, lengthy interruptions in our services, breaches of data security and loss of critical data. These catastrophic events have the potential to disrupt the business of our third-party
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suppliers, partners, or customers. All the potential impacts could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic created significant global volatility, uncertainty, and economic disruption. The extent to which it, or other similarly disrupting event, will continue to adversely affect our business, operations, and financial results will depend on numerous evolving factors, including developments which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, such as the duration and scope of the event, and that affect our ability to sell and to provide our services to our current and future customers, and the ability of our customers to pay for our services or to make us whole for advances of earned net wages and associated tax amounts made on their behalf by us.
Our disclosures and ambitions related to ESG matters may expose us to risks that could adversely affect our reputation and performance.
We publicly share certain information about our company’s ambitions, programs, and goals on ESG matters. These disclosures, the goals we have set, or a failure to meet these goals may generate increased scrutiny of our business that could harm our brand and our reputation. There has been a recent notable increase in current and proposed regulations at the state and federal level on publicly traded companies related to ESG matters. A failure to fully comply with these new regulatory requirements, or a failure to do so in a timely matter, could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and our perception by key stakeholders.
We operate and are subject to tax in multiple jurisdictions. Audits, investigations, and tax proceedings could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We are subject to income and non-income taxes in multiple jurisdictions. Income tax accounting often involves complex issues, and significant judgment is often required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes. We are regularly subject to tax examinations in these jurisdictions during which the tax authorities may challenge our tax positions. We regularly assess the likely outcomes of these examinations to determine the appropriateness of our tax reserves as well as our future tax liabilities. In addition, the application of withholding tax, value added tax, goods and services tax, sales tax, and other non-income taxes is not always certain, and we may be subject to examinations relating to such withholding or non-income taxes. We believe that our tax positions are reasonable and our tax reserves are adequate to cover any potential liability. However, if any of these tax authorities successfully challenge our positions, we may be liable for additional tax, penalties, and interest in excess of any reserves established, which may have a significant impact on our results and operations and future cash flow.
Changes in generally accepted accounting principles in the U.S. could have a material adverse effect on our previously reported results of operations.
Generally accepted accounting principles in the U.S. are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “FASB”), the SEC, and various bodies formed to promulgate and to interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our previously reported results of operations and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement of a change. Please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 2, “Summary of Significant Accounting Policies”, of this report for our assessment of recently issued and adopted accounting pronouncements.
Our debt may be downgraded, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
A reduction in the ratings that rating agencies assign to our debt may negatively impact our access to the debt capital markets and increase our cost of borrowing, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Volatility and weakness in bank and capital markets may adversely affect credit availability and related financing costs for us.
Disruptions in the financial markets can also adversely affect our lenders, insurers, customers, and other counterparties. During periods of volatile credit markets, there is risk that lenders, even those with strong balance sheets and sound lending practices, could fail, no longer participate in credit offerings, or refuse to honor their existing legal commitments and obligations to us, including but not limited to, extending credit up to the maximum amount permitted by the Revolving Credit Facility. If our lenders are unable to fund borrowings under their revolving credit commitments or we are unable to borrow or refinance our debt in the financial markets, it could substantially increase our cost of borrowing or be difficult to obtain sufficient funding to execute our business strategy or to meet our liquidity needs, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
25 | 2023 Form 10-K
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments.
None.
Item 1C. Cybersecurity.
As an HCM company, we face a multitude of cybersecurity threats from threat actors seeking to access or leverage the data we possess for malicious ends. Review of our information security program, including our cybersecurity policies, standards, and processes, is integrated into our Enterprise Risk Management ("ERM") program which is based on the COSO Enterprise Risk Management Framework and International Organization for Standardization ("ISO") 31000, the two most widely used global standards for ERM.
Our information security program aligns with recommended practices in security standards issued by ISO, AICPA (SSAE18), National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST") and other industry sources. Specifically, we maintain several ISO certifications (ISO 27001, 27701, 27017, 27018, 27036), NIST 800-171 compliance, and SOC 1 and 2 Type 2 reports to comply and adhere to industry standard practices. We have invested in our data security team, information security program, and security environment in order to identify, prevent, and mitigate cybersecurity threats and promptly identify and respond to cybersecurity incidents when they occur. Maintaining, monitoring, and updating our information security program to ensure that it remains reasonable and appropriate to changes in the security threat landscape, available technology, security vulnerabilities, and legal and contractual requirements applicable to us, is a continuous effort.
Risk Management and Strategy
We believe that effective cybersecurity depends upon the successful implementation and maintenance of a comprehensive information security program. Deploying suitable security technology, which encompasses analytics and automation, and leveraging the expertise of highly skilled security and risk professionals, is crucial in our strategy. Additionally, we prioritize data governance and data-centric security as integral components of our approach to ensure compliance, uphold privacy standards, and safeguard customer data.
We continue to work to enhance our capabilities in cloud security and assurance testing, security operations and automation, product security, and enterprise risk management. To combat the evolving cybersecurity risk landscape and the enhanced level of sophistication of cybersecurity threats, management has prioritized five areas of our information security program: global standards and operations, a risk-aware workforce, product security, detection and response, and data governance management. In addition, we maintain cybersecurity insurance; however, the costs related to cybersecurity threats or disruptions may not be fully insured.
We contract with several outside cybersecurity experts to audit and test security controls on a regular basis. Any risks or control gaps identified as a result of such assessments, audits, and reviews are reported to the most senior leadership of all functional areas of the Company, the Audit Committee of the Board (the "Audit Committee"), and the Board as appropriate, and we adjust our cybersecurity policies, standards, and practices as necessary.
We face a number of risks from cybersecurity threats, which may materially affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations, because our business is dependent on the successful operation of our payroll, transaction, financial, accounting, and other data processing systems. Although such risks have not materially affected us, including our business, financial condition, and results of operations to date, we have, from time to time, experienced threats to and breaches of our data and systems, and our third-party partners’ data and systems, including malware and computer virus attacks. Businesses we acquire maintain separate cybersecurity programs and processes that may differ in scope and complexity from our overall programs and processes as we set about integrating the acquisition target’s systems into ours.
We cannot eliminate all risks from cybersecurity threats or provide assurances that we have not detected a cybersecurity incident.
Please refer to Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors” for further discussion of our cybersecurity-related risks.
Governance
Our commitment to cybersecurity begins at the Board and extends to the most senior leadership of all functional areas of the Company. Our Audit Committee oversees our risk management process at the Board level. The Audit Committee’s responsibilities include regular review of policies and practices with respect to risk assessment and risk management, including in the areas of cybersecurity and other information technology risk and privacy.
26 | 2023 Form 10-K
The Company’s cybersecurity program is supervised by our Chief Information Security Officer ("CISO"). The CISO and his team are responsible for leading enterprise-wide cybersecurity, strategy, policy, standards, and processes. The CISO provides quarterly updates related to the cybersecurity program, including any notable incidents at regularly scheduled Audit Committee meetings. The CISO updates include details regarding the magnitude, financial impact, and remediation of cybersecurity incidents. Members of our Board of Directors and senior Company executives participate in annual tabletop exercises that focus on testing response plans to ransomware, cloud security, payroll disruption, and other incidents. In addition, in order to deploy a consistent cybersecurity framework, and to manage the risk of social engineering, software downloads, and phishing, we educate employees globally through ongoing security awareness training.
Our CISO has served in various roles in information technology and information security for over 25 years, with experience in technology risk management, cybersecurity, compliance, network engineering, information systems, and business resiliency. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors ("NACD"). At the management level, our CISO, who oversees our data security personnel, works closely with our Chief Risk Officer, who oversees our incident response and business continuity management programs, to assess and manage the cybersecurity element of our ERM program. Our Chief Risk Officer has extensive familiarity with our business, having been at Dayforce, Inc. for over 20 years. Our Chief Risk Officer focuses on risk management, business continuity planning, crisis management, audit processes, operations management, and executive and board of directors reporting.
Our CISO and Chief Risk Officer report to our Chief Operating Officer. These officers, along with our Chief Product and Technology Officer and our Chief Information Officer, drive our cybersecurity priorities at the executive level.
We have established a documented cybersecurity incident materiality assessment and disclosure program that is jointly managed by our Incident Response, Cybersecurity, and Corporate Legal teams. This program calls for the immediate assessment of potentially material cybersecurity incidents, and the appropriate escalation to our cross-functional Disclosure Committee in order to facilitate the prompt escalation of certain cybersecurity incidents so that decisions regarding the public disclosure and reporting of such incidents can be made by management in a timely manner and elevated to our Audit Committee or Board if needed.
Item 2. Properties.
Our corporate headquarters is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota and we also have a major office location in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, both in leased facilities. In addition, as of December 31, 2023, we lease office space in various other locations across North America, APJ, and EMEA. We believe that our current facilities meet our needs, and we are confident that we will be able to obtain additional space on commercially reasonable terms to accommodate future growth as needed. Refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 6, "Leases," to our consolidated financial statements for additional discussion of our leases.
Item 3. Legal Proceedings.
From time to time, we may become involved in legal proceedings arising in the ordinary course of our business. We are not presently a party to any legal proceedings that, if determined adversely to us, we believe would individually or taken together have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or liquidity. Discussion of legal matters is incorporated by reference from Part II, Item 8, Note 15, “Commitments and Contingencies,” of this Form 10-K and should be considered an integral part of Part I, Item 3, “Legal Proceedings”.
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.
Not applicable.
27 | 2023 Form 10-K
PART II
Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities.
Market Information for Common Stock
Our common stock is traded on the NYSE and the TSX. On February 1, 2024, our common stock began trading under the symbol "DAY". This replaced the symbol “CDAY”, which had been used since April 26, 2018, the date of our initial public offering.
Dividend Policy
We do not currently intend to pay cash dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future. However, in the future, subject to factors described below and our future liquidity and capitalization, we may change this policy and choose to pay dividends.
Stockholders
As of December 31, 2023, there were 54 stockholders of record of our common stock. The actual number of stockholders is considerably greater than this number of record holders, and includes stockholders who are beneficial owners but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and other nominees.
Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities
None.
Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
None.
Stock Performance Graph
The following shall not be deemed "filed" for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or incorporated by reference into any of our other filings under the Exchange Act or the Securities Act, except to the extent we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing.
The following graph compares the cumulative total shareholder returns on our common stock with the cumulative total return on the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 1500 Application Software Index. The graph assumes $100 was invested in each, based on closing prices from December 31, 2018 through December 31, 2023, utilizing the last trading day of each respective quarter. Stock price performance shown in the Stock Performance Graph for our common stock is historical and not necessarily indicative of future performance.
28 | 2023 Form 10-K
Prepared by Zacks Investment Research, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Copyright 1980-2022.
Item 6. [Reserved]
29 | 2023 Form 10-K
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.
The following is a discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes thereto included elsewhere in this report. This discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding industry outlook, our expectations for the future of our business, and our liquidity and capital resources as well as other non-historical statements. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to the risks and uncertainties described in “Risk Factors” and “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.” Our actual results may differ materially from those contained in or implied by these forward-looking statements.
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations covers fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2022 items and year-over-year comparisons between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2022. Discussions of fiscal 2021 items and year-over-year comparisons between fiscal 2022 and 2021 that are not included in this Form 10-K can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022, that was filed with the SEC on March 1, 2023.
Overview
Dayforce, Inc., formerly known as Ceridian HCM Holding Inc., is a global HCM software company. We categorize our solutions into three categories: Cloud recurring, other recurring (formerly referred to as Bureau), and professional services and other. Cloud recurring revenue is primarily generated from HCM solutions that are delivered via two Cloud offerings: Dayforce, our flagship Cloud HCM platform, and Powerpay, a Cloud HR and payroll solution for the Canadian small business market. We also continue to support customers using our legacy North America solutions and customers using our acquired solutions in APJ. We invest in maintenance and necessary updates to support our customers and continue to migrate them to Dayforce. Revenue from our Cloud recurring and other recurring solutions includes investment income generated from holding customer funds, also referred to as float revenue or float.
Dayforce provides global HR, payroll and tax, workforce management, benefits, and talent intelligence functionality. Our platform is used by organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to global organizations, regardless of industry, to optimize management of the entire employee lifecycle, including attracting, hiring, engaging, paying, and developing their people. Dayforce was built as a single application from the ground up that combines a modern, consumer-grade user experience with proprietary application architecture, including a single employee record and a rules engine spanning all areas of HCM. Dayforce provides continuous real-time calculations across all modules to enable, for example, payroll administrators access to data through the entire pay period, and managers access to real-time data to optimize work schedules. Our platform is designed to drive efficiencies for our customers and their employees by improving HCM decision-making processes, streamlining workflows, revealing strategic organizational insights, and simplifying legislative compliance. The platform is designed to ease administrative work for both employees and managers, creating opportunities for companies to increase employee engagement. We sell Dayforce through our direct sales force and partner ecosystem on a subscription PEPM basis. Our subscriptions are typically structured with an initial fixed term of between three and five years, with evergreen renewal thereafter.
Our Business Model
Our business model focuses on supporting the rapid growth of Dayforce and maximizing the lifetime value of our Dayforce customer relationships. Due to our subscription model, where we recognize subscription revenues ratably over the term of the subscription period, and our high customer retention rates, we have a high level of visibility into our future revenues. The profitability of a customer depends, in large part, on how long they have been a customer. We estimate that it takes approximately two years before we are able to recover our implementation, customer acquisition, and other direct costs on a new Dayforce customer contract.
Over the lifetime of the customer relationship, we have the opportunity to realize additional PEPM revenue, both as the customer grows or rolls out the Dayforce solution to additional employees, and also by selling additional functionality to existing customers that do not currently utilize our full suite. We also incur costs to manage the account, to retain customers, and to sell additional functionality. These costs, however, are significantly less than the costs initially incurred to acquire and to take customers live.
30 | 2023 Form 10-K
Revenues
We generate recurring revenues primarily from recurring fees charged for the use of our Cloud recurring solutions, Dayforce and Powerpay, as well as from our other recurring solutions. We also generate professional services and other revenue associated primarily with the work performed to assist customers with the planning, design, and implementation of their Cloud-based solution. Our solutions are typically provided through long-term customer relationships that result in a high level of recurring revenue. We also generate recurring revenue from investment income on our recurring customer funds before such funds are remitted to taxing authorities, customer employees, or other third parties. We refer to this investment income as float revenue.
For Dayforce, we primarily charge monthly recurring fees on a PEPM basis, generally one-month in advance of service, based on the number and type of solutions provided to the customer and the number of employees and other users at the customer. Our standard Dayforce contracts are generally for a three to five-year period. The average time it takes to implement Dayforce typically ranges from three months for smaller customers to twelve months for larger customers. We begin to generate recurring revenue when we provide a production instance to the customer. We also provide outsourced HR solutions to certain of our Dayforce customers, which are tailored to meet their individual needs, and entail performing the duties of a customer’s HR department, including payroll processing, time and labor management, performance management, and recruiting, as needed.
We offer Powerpay for Canadian organizations with fewer than 100 employees. The majority of Powerpay revenue is generated from recurring fees charged on a per-employee, per-process basis. Typical processes include the customer’s payroll runs, year-end tax packages, and delivery of customers’ remittance advices or checks. Powerpay can typically be implemented on a remote basis within one to three days, at which point we start receiving recurring fees.
For our Other recurring solutions, we typically charge recurring fees on a per-process basis. Typical processes include the customer’s payroll runs, year-end tax packages, and delivery of customers’ remittance advices or checks. In addition to customers who use our payroll services, certain customers use our tax filing services on a stand-alone basis. Our outsourced HR solutions are tailored to meet the needs of individual customers, and entail our contracting to perform many of the duties of a customer’s HR department, including payroll processing, time and labor management, performance management, and recruiting. We also perform individual services for customers, such as check printing, wage attachment and disbursement, and ACA management.
How We Assess Our Performance
In assessing our performance, we consider a variety of performance indicators in addition to revenue and net income (loss). Set forth below is a description of our key performance measures.
|
|
Year Ended December 31, |
|
|||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
||
Live Dayforce customers (a) |
|
|
6,393 |
|
|
|
5,993 |
|
Cloud annualized recurring revenue (ARR) (a,b) (in millions) |
|
$ |
1,250.6 |
|
|
$ |
1,041.3 |
|
Annual Dayforce revenue retention rate (a,b) |
|
|
97.1 |
% |
|
|
97.1 |
% |
Dayforce recurring revenue per customer (b,c) |
|
$ |
146,771 |
|
|
$ |
121,425 |
|
Adjusted EBITDA (b) (in millions) |
|
$ |
410.2 |
|
|
$ |
250.4 |
|
Adjusted EBITDA margin (b) |
|
|
27.1 |
% |
|
|
20.1 |
% |
Live Dayforce Customers
We use the number of live Dayforce customers as an indicator of future revenue and the overall performance of the business and to assess the performance of our implementation services. We market Dayforce to customers of all sizes, including small (under 500 employees), major (500 to 5,999 employees), and enterprise (6,000 or more employees).
31 | 2023 Form 10-K
The following table sets forth the number of live Dayforce customers* at the end of the years presented:
Cloud Annualized Recurring Revenue (“ARR”)
We use Cloud ARR, a non-GAAP financial measure, to measure the size and growth of our recurring Cloud business, which we believe is useful to management and investors. We derive the majority of our Cloud revenues from recurring fees, primarily PEPM subscription charges. We also derive recurring revenue from fees related to the rental and maintenance of clocks, charges for once-a-year services, such as year-end tax statements, and float revenue on our customer funds before such funds are remitted to taxing authorities, customer employees, or other third parties. We set annual targets for Cloud ARR and monitor progress toward those targets on a quarterly basis.
Annual Dayforce Revenue Retention Rate
We use annual Dayforce revenue retention rate, a non-GAAP financial measure, to measure the percentage of revenues that we retain from our existing Dayforce customers, which we believe is useful to management and investors as an indicator of customer satisfaction and future revenues. Our annual Dayforce revenue retention rate was above 97% for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022, and 2021. We set annual targets for Dayforce revenue retention rate and monitor progress toward those targets on a quarterly basis by reviewing known and anticipated customer losses. Our Dayforce revenue retention rate may fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including the mix of Dayforce solutions used by customers, the level of customer satisfaction, and changes in the number of employees live on our Dayforce solutions.
Dayforce Recurring Revenue Per Customer
We use Dayforce recurring revenue per customer, a non-GAAP financial measure, as an indicator of the average size of our Dayforce customer, which we believe is also useful to management and investors. We calculate and monitor Dayforce recurring revenue per customer on a quarterly basis. Our Dayforce recurring revenue per customer may fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including the number of live Dayforce customers and the number of customers purchasing the full HCM suite.
*Excluding the 2021 acquisitions of Ascender and ADAM HCM.
32 | 2023 Form 10-K
Constant Currency Revenue
We present percentage change in revenue on a constant currency basis to assess how our underlying business performed, excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. We believe this non-GAAP financial measure is useful to management and investors. We have calculated percentage change in revenue on a constant currency basis by applying the average foreign exchange rate in effect during the comparable prior period. The average U.S. dollar to Canadian dollar foreign exchange rate was $1.35, with a daily range of $1.31 to $1.39 for the twelve months ended December 31, 2023, compared to $1.30, with a daily range of $1.25 to $1.39 for the twelve months ended December 31, 2022. As of December 31, 2023, the U.S. dollar to Canadian dollar foreign exchange rate was $1.33.
Adjusted Operating Profit, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA Margin, and Adjusted Cloud Recurring Gross Margin
We believe that Adjusted operating profit, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, and Adjusted Cloud recurring gross margin, non-GAAP financial measures, are useful to management and investors as supplemental measures to evaluate our overall operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA is a component of our management incentive plan and Adjusted Cloud recurring gross margin is a component of certain performance based equity awards for our named executive officers, and these metrics are used by management to assess performance and to compare our operating performance to our competitors. Management believes that Adjusted operating profit, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, and Adjusted Cloud recurring gross margin are helpful in highlighting management performance trends because these metrics exclude the results of decisions that are outside the normal course of our business operations.
Recent Events
Effective January 31, 2024, Ceridian HCM Holding Inc. changed its corporate name to Dayforce, Inc. Effective February 1, 2024, we ceased trading under the ticker symbol "CDAY" and began trading under our new ticker symbol, "DAY," on the NYSE and the TSX.
On February 1, 2024 we completed the purchase of 100% of the outstanding shares of eloomi A/S, a learning experience platform software provider based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Orlando, Florida.
33 | 2023 Form 10-K
Results of Operations
Year Ended December 31, 2023 Compared with Year Ended December 31, 2022
The following table sets forth our results of operations for the periods presented:
|
|
Year Ended December 31, |
|
|
Increase/(Decrease) |
|
|
Percentage of Revenue |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
|
Amount |
|
|
% |
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
||||||
|
|
(In millions) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
Revenue: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Recurring |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Cloud |
|
$ |
1,211.4 |
|
|
$ |
908.4 |
|
|
$ |
303.0 |
|
|
|
33.4 |
% |
|
|
80.0 |
% |
|
|
72.9 |
% |
Other |
|
|
85.9 |
|
|
|
139.2 |
|
|
|
(53.3 |
) |
|
|
(38.3 |
)% |
|
|
5.7 |
% |
|
|
11.2 |
% |
Total recurring |
|
|
1,297.3 |
|
|
|
1,047.6 |
|
|
|
249.7 |
|
|
|
23.8 |
% |
|
|
85.7 |
% |
|
|
84.1 |
% |
Professional services and other |
|
|
216.4 |
|
|
|
198.6 |
|
|
|
17.8 |
|
|
|
9.0 |
% |
|
|
14.3 |
% |
|
|
15.9 |
% |
Total revenue |
|
|
1,513.7 |
|
|
|
1,246.2 |
|
|
|
267.5 |
|
|
|
21.5 |
% |
|
|
100.0 |
% |
|
|
100.0 |
% |
Cost of revenue: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Recurring |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Cloud |
|
|
278.5 |
|
|
|
254.4 |
|
|
|
24.1 |
|
|
|
9.5 |
% |
|
|
18.4 |
% |
|
|
20.4 |
% |
Other |
|
|
46.4 |
|
|
|
55.0 |
|
|
|
(8.6 |
) |
|
|
(15.6 |
)% |
|
|
3.1 |
% |
|
|
4.4 |
% |
Total recurring |
|
|
324.9 |
|
|
|
309.4 |
|
|
|
15.5 |
|
|
|
5.0 |
% |
|
|
21.5 |
% |
|
|
24.8 |
% |
Professional services and other |
|
|
265.6 |
|
|
|
238.7 |
|
|
|
26.9 |
|
|
|
11.3 |
% |
|
|
17.5 |
% |
|
|
19.2 |
% |
Product development and management |
|
|
209.9 |
|
|
|
169.9 |
|
|
|
40.0 |
|
|
|
23.5 |
% |
|
|
13.9 |
% |
|
|
13.6 |
% |
Depreciation and amortization |
|
|
66.8 |
|
|
|
55.0 |
|
|
|
11.8 |
|
|
|
21.5 |
% |
|
|
4.4 |
% |
|
|
4.4 |
% |
Total cost of revenue |
|
|
867.2 |
|
|
|
773.0 |
|
|
|
94.2 |
|
|
|
12.2 |
% |
|
|
57.3 |
% |
|
|
62.0 |
% |
Gross profit |
|
|
646.5 |
|
|
|
473.2 |
|
|
|
173.3 |
|
|
|
36.6 |
% |
|
|
42.7 |
% |
|
|
38.0 |
% |
Selling and marketing |
|
|
250.2 |
|
|
|
251.5 |
|
|
|
(1.3 |
) |
|
|
(0.5 |
)% |
|
|
16.5 |
% |
|
|
20.2 |
% |
General and administrative |
|
|
263.2 |
|
|
|
247.5 |
|
|
|
15.7 |
|
|
|
6.3 |
% |
|
|
17.4 |
% |
|
|
19.8 |
% |
Operating profit (loss) |
|
|
133.1 |
|
|
|
(25.8 |
) |
|
|
158.9 |
|
|
|
615.9 |
% |
|
|
8.8 |
% |
|
|
(2.1 |
)% |
Interest expense, net |
|
|
36.1 |
|
|
|
28.6 |
|
|
|
7.5 |
|
|
|
26.2 |
% |
|
|
2.4 |
% |
|
|
2.3 |
% |
Other expense, net |
|
|
1.0 |
|
|
|
8.5 |
|
|
|
(7.5 |
) |
|
|
(88.2 |
)% |
|
|
0.1 |
% |
|
|
0.7 |
% |
Income (loss) before income taxes |
|
|
96.0 |
|
|
|
(62.9 |
) |
|
|
158.9 |
|
|
|
252.6 |
% |
|
|
6.3 |
% |
|
|
(5.0 |
)% |
Income tax expense |
|
|
41.2 |
|
|
|
10.5 |
|
|
|
30.7 |
|
|
|
292.4 |
% |
|
|
2.7 |
% |
|
|
0.8 |
% |
Net income (loss) |
|
$ |
54.8 |
|
|
$ |
(73.4 |
) |
|
$ |
128.2 |
|
|
|
174.7 |
% |
|
|
3.6 |
% |
|
|
(5.9 |
)% |
34 | 2023 Form 10-K
Revenue. The following table sets forth certain information regarding our consolidated revenues for the periods presented:
|
|
Year Ended December 31, |
|
|
Percentage change in revenue |
|
|
Impact of |
|
|
Percentage change in revenue on a constant currency basis (a) |
|
||||||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
|
2023 vs. 2022 |
|
|
|
|
|
2023 vs. 2022 |
|
|||||
|
|
(In millions) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
Revenue: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
Recurring revenue: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
Dayforce recurring, excluding float |
|
$ |
962.9 |
|
|
$ |
752.8 |
|
|
|
27.9 |
% |
|
|
(0.8 |
)% |
|
|
28.7 |
% |
Dayforce float |
|
|
148.2 |
|
|
|
62.4 |
|
|
|
137.5 |
% |
|
|
(2.1 |
)% |
|
|
139.6 |
% |
Total Dayforce recurring |
|
|
1,111.1 |
|
|
|
815.2 |
|
|
|
36.3 |
% |
|
|
(0.9 |
)% |
|
|
37.2 |
% |
Powerpay recurring, excluding float |
|
|
81.9 |
|
|
|
80.7 |
|
|
|
1.5 |
% |
|
|
(3.7 |
)% |
|
|
5.2 |
% |
Powerpay float |
|
|
18.4 |
|
|
|
12.5 |
|
|
|
47.2 |
% |
|
|
(5.6 |
)% |
|
|
52.8 |
% |
Total Powerpay recurring |
|
|
100.3 |
|
|
|
93.2 |
|
|
|
7.6 |
% |
|
|
(4.0 |
)% |
|
|
11.6 |
% |
Total Cloud recurring |
|
|
1,211.4 |
|
|
|
908.4 |
|
|
|
33.4 |
% |
|
|
(1.2 |
)% |
|
|
34.6 |
% |
Other recurring (b) |
|
|
85.9 |
|
|
|
139.2 |
|
|
|
(38.3 |
)% |
|
|
(2.0 |
)% |
|
|
(36.3 |
)% |
Total recurring revenue |
|
|
1,297.3 |
|
|
|
1,047.6 |
|
|
|
23.8 |
% |
|
|
(1.4 |
)% |
|
|
25.2 |
% |
Professional services and other (c) |
|
|
216.4 |
|
|
|
198.6 |
|
|
|
9.0 |
% |
|
|
(1.1 |
)% |
|
|
10.1 |
% |
Total revenue |
|
$ |
1,513.7 |
|
|
$ |
1,246.2 |
|
|
|
21.5 |
% |
|
|
(1.3 |
)% |
|
|
22.8 |
% |
Total revenue increased $267.5 million, or 21.5%, to $1,513.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $1,246.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was primarily driven by an increase in live Dayforce customers, the increase in Dayforce recurring revenue per customer, and the increase in float revenue. The number of live Dayforce customers increased 6.7% to 6,393 at December 31, 2023 from 5,993 at December 31, 2022, representing approximately 6.84 million global employees*. Additionally for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2023, Dayforce recurring revenue per customer grew to $146,771 compared to $121,425 for the comparable period in 2022.
The increase in Dayforce recurring revenue per customer is driven by our growing average customer size, as we have been expanding within the enterprise segment, as well as more customers purchasing the comprehensive suite of Dayforce functionality. At the end of 2023, enterprise businesses, major businesses, and small businesses accounted for 59%, 36% and 5% of the total number of global employees, respectively, as compared to the end of 2022, when enterprise businesses, major businesses, and small businesses accounted for 51%, 41% and 8% of the total number of global employees, respectively.*
Tax migration from legacy infrastructure to the same platform as Dayforce contributed approximately 490 basis points of growth for the year ended December 31, 2023 to Dayforce recurring revenue, excluding float.
The increase in float revenue is driven by the 3.0% increase in average float balance for our customer funds for the year ended December 31, 2023, which increased to $4.50 billion, compared to $4.37 billion for the year ended December 31, 2022, in addition to an increase in average yield of 192 basis points compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.
Cost of revenue. Total cost of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023, was $867.2 million, an increase of $94.2 million, or 12.2%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.
*Excluding the 2021 acquisitions of Ascender and ADAM HCM.
35 | 2023 Form 10-K
Recurring cost of revenue increased by $15.5 million, or 5.0%, for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, primarily due to additional labor-related costs incurred to support the growing Dayforce customer base globally, partially offset by a reduction in severance and restructuring costs related to the integration of acquisitions and re-balancing of resources across our global footprint during the year ended December 31, 2022.
Professional services and other cost of revenue increased $26.9 million, or 11.3%, for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, primarily due to increased labor-related costs incurred to take new customers live and increased share-based compensation expense.
Product development and management expense increased $40.0 million, or 23.5%, for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase reflects additional personnel costs, including share-based compensation. For the years ended December 31, 2023, and 2022, our investment in software development was $198.5 million and $162.2 million, respectively, consisting of $112.0 million and $92.3 million of research and development expense, and $86.5 million and $69.9 million of capitalized software development, respectively. Please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 2, “Summary of Significant Accounting Policies,” for further discussion of our accounting policy for capitalizing internally developed software costs.
Depreciation and amortization expense associated with cost of revenue increased by $11.8 million, or 21.5%, for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, as we continue to capitalize Dayforce related and other development costs and subsequently amortize those costs.
Gross profit and gross margin. The following table presents total gross margin and solution gross margins for the periods presented:
|
|
Year Ended December 31, |
|
|||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
Total gross margin |
|
|
42.7 |
% |
|
|
38.0 |
% |
Gross margin by solution: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
Cloud recurring |
|
|
77.0 |
% |
|
|
72.0 |
% |
Other recurring |
|
|
46.0 |
% |
|
|
60.5 |
% |
Professional services and other |
|
|
(22.7 |
)% |
|
|
(20.2 |
)% |
Total gross margin is defined as total gross profit as a percentage of total revenue, which is inclusive of product development and management costs, as well as depreciation and amortization associated with cost of revenue. Gross margin for each solution in the table above is defined as total revenue less cost of revenue for the applicable solution as a percentage of total revenue for that related solution, which is exclusive of any product development and management or depreciation and amortization cost allocations.
Total gross margin for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased 470 basis points compared to December 31, 2022, and gross profit increased by $173.3 million, or 36.6%, for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase in gross margin and gross profit was primarily due to the increase in revenue, including float revenue, which outpaced the increase in cost of revenue.
Cloud recurring gross margin was 77.0% for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to 72.0% for the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase in Cloud recurring gross margin was primarily due to the increase in float revenue and reduction in severance expense associated with the re-balancing of resources across our global footprint in 2022. The increase is also due to the growth of the proportion of Dayforce customers live for more than two years, which increased from 82% as of December 31, 2022 to 85% as of December 31, 2023.
Professional services and other gross margin was (22.7)% for the year ended December 31, 2023, declining from (20.2)% for the year ended December 31, 2022, reflecting additional costs incurred to take new customers live, expansion of our capabilities to serve international customers, and increased share-based compensation.
Selling and marketing expense. Selling and marketing expense decreased $1.3 million, or 0.5%, for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. The reduction in selling and marketing expense is primarily driven by a reduction in commission expense due to increasing the expected period of benefit of our deferred sales commissions from five years to ten years, partially offset by an increase in investment in our sales force in order to support our growth initiatives.
36 | 2023 Form 10-K
General and administrative expense. General and administrative expense increased $15.7 million, or 6.3%, for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase in general and administrative expense is driven by increases in amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets and employee-related costs, partially offset by a reduction in share-based compensation related to specific individual awards becoming fully vested or forfeited during 2023. In the third quarter of 2023, our Board of Directors approved plans to transition our Company’s name and branding from Ceridian HCM Holding Inc. to Dayforce, Inc. Given the significance of this transition, we assessed the impact on the carrying amount of $167.2 million related to our Ceridian trade name intangible asset. The Ceridian trade name was deemed to have a finite life of two years and began being amortized in the third quarter of 2023, leading to an increase in amortization expense for the year ended December 31, 2023.
Operating profit (loss). Operating profit for the year ended December 31, 2023, was $133.1 million, compared to operating loss of $25.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. The $158.9 million change was primarily due to the increase in revenue, including float revenue, gross margin expansion, reductions in severance and restructuring expenses, and the reduction in commission expense, partially offset by an increase in amortization expense.
Interest expense, net. Interest expense, net for the year ended December 31, 2023, was $36.1 million, compared to $28.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase was primarily due to an increase in applicable reference rates on our Term Debt, partially offset by an increase in interest income.
Other expense, net. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, other expense, net of $1.0 million and $8.5 million, respectively, was comprised of foreign currency translation (gains) losses and net periodic pension expense.
Income tax expense. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, we had income tax expense of $41.2 million and $10.5 million, respectively. The $30.7 million increase in tax expense was primarily due to increases of $33.4 million attributed to current operations, $11.4 million attributed to valuation allowances, $5.0 million attributed to state taxes, and other tax expense of $6.2 million, offset by decreases of $15.1 million attributed to U.S. Global Intangible Low Tax Income regime, $5.7 million attributed to tax credits, and $4.5 million attributed to share-based compensation. We record a valuation allowance to reduce our deferred tax assets to reflect the net deferred tax assets that we believe will be realized. As of December 31, 2023, we will continue to record a valuation allowance against certain deferred tax assets including state net operating loss carryovers and tax basis intangibles.
Net income (loss). Net income was $54.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to net loss of $73.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase in net income was primarily due to an increase in revenue, including float revenue, gross margin expansion, and reductions in severance, restructuring and commission expenses, partially offset by increases in amortization expense and income tax expense.
37 | 2023 Form 10-K
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Our primary sources of liquidity are our existing cash and equivalents, cash provided by operating activities, availability under our Revolving Credit Facility, and proceeds from debt issuance and equity offerings. Our primary liquidity needs are related to funding of general business requirements, including the payment of interest and principal on our debt, capital expenditures, fulfilling our contractual commitments, product development, and funding Dayforce Wallet on-demand pay requests on behalf of our customers. From time to time, we have made investments in businesses or acquisitions of companies. As of December 31, 2023, we had cash and equivalents of $570.3 million and our total debt balance was $1,226.6 million. Please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 9, “Debt,” to our consolidated financial statements and “Our Indebtedness” section below for further information on our debt.
We believe that our cash flow from operations, available cash and equivalents, and availability under our Revolving Credit Facility will be sufficient to meet our liquidity needs for the next twelve months and for the foreseeable future. Dayforce Wallet on-demand pay requests are currently funded from our operating cash balances, until it is reimbursed by our customers through their normal payroll funding cycles. We evaluate the creditworthiness of each customer for the Dayforce Wallet feature. We anticipate that to the extent that we require additional liquidity, it will be funded through the issuance of equity, the incurrence of additional indebtedness, or a combination thereof. We cannot provide assurance that we will be able to obtain this additional liquidity on reasonable terms, or at all. Additionally, our liquidity and our ability to meet our obligations and to fund our capital requirements and Dayforce Wallet on-demand pay requests are also dependent on our future financial performance, which is subject to general economic, financial, and other factors that are beyond our control. Accordingly, we cannot provide assurance that our business will generate sufficient cash flow from operations or that future borrowings will be available from additional indebtedness or otherwise to meet our liquidity needs. If we decide to pursue one or more significant acquisitions, we may incur additional debt or sell additional equity to finance such acquisitions, which would result in additional expenses and/or dilution.
Our customer funds are held and invested with the primary objectives being to protect the principal balance and to ensure adequate liquidity to meet cash flow requirements. The customer assets are held in segregated accounts intended for the specific purpose of satisfying customer funding obligations and therefore are not freely available for our general business use. Please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 4, "Customer Funds," for further discussion of these funds.
Statements of Cash Flows
Changes in cash flows due to purchases of customer fund marketable securities and proceeds from the sale or maturity of customer fund marketable securities, as well as the carrying value of customer fund accounts as of period end dates can vary significantly due to several factors, including the specific day of the week the period ends, which impacts the timing of funds collected from customers and payments made to satisfy customer obligations to employees, taxing authorities, and others. The customer funds are fully segregated from our operating cash accounts and are evaluated and tracked separately by management. The table below summarizes the activity within the consolidated statements of cash flows:
|
|
Year Ended December 31, |
|
|||||
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2022 |
|
||
|
|
(In millions) |
|
|||||
Net cash provided by operating activities |
|
$ |
219.5 |
|
|
$ |
132.6 |
|
Net cash used in investing activities |
|
|
(202.8 |
) |
|
|
(342.5 |
) |
Net cash provided by financing activities |
|
|
242.0 |
|
|
|
764.6 |
|
Effect of exchange rate changes on cash, restricted cash, and equivalents |
|
|
11.5 |
|
|
|
(46.8 |
) |
Net increase in cash, restricted cash, and equivalents |
|
|
270.2 |
|
|
|
507.9 |
|
Cash, restricted cash, and equivalents at beginning of period |
|
|
3,151.2 |
|
|
|
2,643.3 |
|
Cash, restricted cash, and equivalents at end of period |
|
|
3,421.4 |
|
|
|
3,151.2 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
Cash and equivalents |
|
|
570.3 |
|
|
|
431.9 |
|
Restricted cash and equivalents |
|
|
2,851.1 |
|
|
|
2,719.3 |
|
Total cash, restricted cash, and equivalents |
|
$ |
3,421.4 |
|
|
$ |
3,151.2 |
|
38 | 2023 Form 10-K
Operating Activities
Net cash provided by operating activities was $219.5 million during the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $132.6 million during the year ended December 31, 2022. For both periods, cash inflows from operating activities are primarily generated from the subscriptions of our solutions. Cash outflows from operating activities for both periods are primarily comprised of personnel-related expenditures that are integral to our business operations. The net positive cash inflow in both periods is primarily due to our growing revenue, partially offset by our operating costs, mainly, investment in our sales force to support our growth initiatives and our product development and management costs which are not eligible for capitalization.
Investing Activities
During the year ended December 31, 2023, net cash used in investing activities was $202.8 million, primarily consisting of purchases of customer funds marketable securities of $528.1 million, capital expenditures of $114.4 million, and purchases of marketable securities of $6.8 million, partially offset by proceeds from the sale and maturity of customer funds marketable securities of $445.5 million, and proceeds from the sale and maturity of marketable securities of $2.0 million. Our capital expenditures included $95.4 million for software and technology and $19.0 million for property, plant and equipment.
During the year ended December 31, 2022, net cash used in investing activities was $342.5 million, consisting of purchases of customer funds marketable securities of $652.8 million and capital expenditures of $94.5 million, partially offset by proceeds from the sale and maturity of customer funds marketable securities of $404.8 million. Our capital expenditures included $74.3 million for software and technology and $20.2 million for property, plant and equipment.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities was $242.0 million during the year ended December 31, 2023. This cash inflow was primarily attributable to the net increase in our customer funds obligations of $200.9 million and proceeds from the issuance of common stock under our share-based compensation plans of $49.0 million, partially offset by payments on our long-term debt obligations of $7.9 million.
Net cash provided by financing activities was $764.6 million during the year ended December 31, 2022. This cash inflow was primarily attributable to the net increase in our customer funds obligations of $734.6 million and proceeds from the issuance of common stock under our share-based compensation plans of $38.4 million, partially offset by payments on our long-term debt obligations of $8.4 million.
Backlog and Seasonality
Backlog is equivalent to our remaining performance obligations, which represents contracted revenue for recurring and fixed price professional services, primarily implementation services, that has not yet been recognized, including deferred revenue and unbilled amounts that will be recognized as revenue in future periods. As of December 31, 2023, approximately $1.22 billion of revenue is expected to be recognized over the next three years from remaining performance obligations.
For a discussion of seasonality, please refer to Part 1, Item I, “Business” of this Form 10-K.
Our Indebtedness
Our primary liquidity needs are related to funding of general business requirements, including the payment of interest and principal on our debt, capital expenditures, fulfilling our contractual commitments, product development, and funding Dayforce Wallet on-demand pay requests on behalf of our customers. From time to time, we have made investments in businesses or acquisitions of companies, which are also liquidity needs. We believe our current sources of liquidity will be sufficient to meet our liquidity needs for the foreseeable future. We anticipate that to the extent that we require additional liquidity, it will be funded through the issuance of equity, the incurrence of additional indebtedness, or a combination thereof.
Senior Secured Credit Facility
On April 30, 2018, we entered into a credit agreement pursuant to which the lenders agreed to provide Senior Secured Credit Facility, consisting of the Term Debt in the original principal amount of $680.0 million and a $300.0 million Revolving Credit Facility. The Revolving Credit Facility may, at our option, be made available in U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euros and/or Pounds Sterling; up to $70.0 million may, at our option, be made available for letters of credit and $100.0 million may, at our option, be made available for swingline loans (denominated in Canadian Dollars and/or U.S. Dollars).
39 | 2023 Form 10-K
The Term Debt and Revolving Credit Facility will mature on April 30, 2025 and January 29, 2025, respectively. We are required to make annual amortization payments in respect of the Term Debt in an amount equal to 1.00% of the original principal amount thereof, payable in equal quarterly installments of 0.25% of the original principal amount of the first lien term debt. On August 1, 2023, we completed the third amendment to our Senior Secured Credit Facility, which replaced LIBOR with Secured Overnight Financing Rate ("SOFR"). As of December 31, 2023, our floating rate on the Term Debt interest was SOFR plus 2.5% and the applicable Term SOFR Adjustment ranged from approximately 0.1% to 0.4%, depending on term. The Revolving Credit Facility does not require amortization payments.
Convertible Senior Notes
In March 2021, we issued $575.0 million in aggregate principal amount of 0.25% Convertible Senior Notes due 2026. The total net proceeds from the offering, after deducting initial purchase discounts and issuance costs, were $561.8 million. In connection with the Convertible Senior Notes, we entered into capped call transactions which are expected to reduce the potential dilution of our common stock upon any conversion of the Convertible Senior Notes and/or offset any cash payments we could be required to make in excess of the principal amount of converted Notes. We used an aggregate amount of $45.0 million of the net proceeds of the Convertible Senior Notes to purchase the Capped Calls. We used the remainder of the net proceeds from the offering (i) to repay $295.0 million principal amount under the Revolving Credit Facility and pay related accrued interest and (ii) for general corporate purposes.
For an additional description of the Senior Secured Credit Facility and the Senior Convertible Notes, please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 9, “Debt,” to our consolidated financial statements.
Contractual Obligations
Our future contractual obligations generally consist of long-term debt, leases, retirement plans, and vendor payments. Our long-term debt obligations are described in Part II, Item 8, Note 9, “Debt,” to our consolidated financial statements, and the “Our Indebtedness” section above.
As of December 31, 2023, all of our facilities are leased. Most of these leases contain renewal options and require payments for taxes, insurance, and maintenance. We also lease equipment for use in our business. We ceased use of certain leased facilities during 2021 and recognized lease abandonment charges within general and administrative on our consolidated statements of operations; however, we are still required to make future payments under the existing lease terms. Refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 6, "Leases," to our consolidated financial statements for additional discussion of our leases.
Payments of retirement plan obligations include employer commitments to fund our defined benefit and postretirement plans and do not include estimated future benefit payments to participants expected to be made from liquidation of the assets in our defined benefit plan trusts. As of December 31, 2023, our defined benefit pension plans had a projected benefit obligation that exceeded the fair value of the plans’ assets by $21.5 million and our postretirement benefit plan had a projected benefit obligation that exceeded the fair value of the plans’ assets by $8.5 million. We expect to satisfy these remaining obligations through investment income from and appreciation in the fair value of plan assets and from future employer contributions. Refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 10, "Employee Benefit Plans," to our consolidated financial statements for additional discussion of our employee benefit plans.
The amount of our future contractual obligation to vendors as of December 31, 2023 was not material.
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
Our discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations is based upon our consolidated financial statements and related notes, which have been prepared in accordance with GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements and related notes requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, and expenses. Certain of our accounting policies require the application of significant judgment by management in selecting the appropriate assumptions for calculating financial estimates. By their nature, these judgments are subject to an inherent degree of uncertainty. These judgments are based on our historical experience, terms of existing contracts, our evaluation of trends in the industry, information provided by our customers, and information available from other outside sources, as appropriate. We evaluate our estimates and judgments on an on-going basis. Our actual results may differ from these estimates. We believe the following is our critical accounting estimate:
40 | 2023 Form 10-K
Revenue Recognition
Description: We recognize revenue for professional services and Cloud subscription services performance obligations based on an allocation of the total transaction price to each performance obligation using the respective stand-alone selling prices (“SSP”). This can result in revenue being recognized in an amount that exceeds the amount we are contractually allowed to bill our customer as of a certain point in time, resulting in the recognition of a contract asset up until the period at which billings are equal to or exceed revenue recognition. We recognized $202.6 million of Cloud professional services revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023, and the related contract assets were $89.0 million as of December 31, 2023.
Judgments and Uncertainties: The determination of our stand-alone selling price for the performance obligations requires us to make assumptions based on market conditions and observable inputs, as well as an estimate of the total professional service hours expected to be incurred in connection with each customer implementation.
Sensitivity of Estimate to Change: The consideration allocated to professional services performed to activate a new customer is recognized as professional services revenues based on the proportion of total work performed to date compared to an estimation of total work expected to complete the implementation project for that customer account. To the extent this consideration exceeds the customer billings, a contract asset would be recognized, as professional services revenue related to implementation activities is generally recognized at the beginning of the contract.
Please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 2, “Summary of Significant Accounting Policies,” for a description of our revenue recognition policy and our significant accounting policies.
Recently Issued Accounting Pronouncements
Please refer to Part II, Item 8, Note 2, “Summary of Significant Accounting Policies,” for a full discussion of recent accounting pronouncements.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
We use certain non-GAAP financial measures in this document including:
Non-GAAP Financial Measure |
|
GAAP Financial Measure |
EBITDA |
|
Net income (loss) |
Adjusted EBITDA |
|
Net income (loss) |
Adjusted EBITDA margin |
|
Net profit margin |
Adjusted Cloud recurring gross margin |
|
Cloud recurring gross margin |
Adjusted operating profit |
|
Operating profit (loss) |
Adjusted operating profit margin |
|
Operating profit (loss) margin |
Adjusted net income |
|
Net income (loss) |
Adjusted net profit margin |
|
Net profit margin |
Adjusted diluted net income per share |
|
Diluted net income (loss) per share |
Percentage change in revenue, including total revenue and revenue by solution, on a constant currency basis |
|
Percentage change in revenue, including total revenue and revenue by solution |
Cloud ARR |
|
No directly comparable GAAP measure |
Dayforce revenue retention rate |
|
No directly comparable GAAP measure |
Dayforce recurring revenue per customer |
|
No directly comparable GAAP measure |
We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures are useful to management and investors as supplemental measures to evaluate our overall operating performance including comparison across periods and with competitors. Our management team uses these non-GAAP financial measures to assess operating performance because these financial measures exclude the results of decisions that are outside the normal course of our business operations, and are used for internal budgeting and forecasting purposes both for short- and long-term operating plans. Additionally, Adjusted EBITDA is a component of our management incentive plan and Adjusted Cloud recurring gross margin is a component of certain performance based equity awards for our named executive officers. These non-GAAP financial measures are not required by, defined under, or presented in accordance with, GAAP, and should not be considered as alternatives to our results as reported under GAAP, have important limitations as analytical tools, and our use of these terms may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies in our industry. Our presentation of non-GAAP financial measures should not be construed to imply that our future results will be unaffected by similar items to those eliminated in this presentation.
41 | 2023 Form 10-K
We define our non-GAAP financial measures as follows:
42 | 2023 Form 10-K
The following tables reconcile our reported results to our non-GAAP financial measures:
|
|
Year Ended December 31, 2023 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
As reported |
|
|
As reported margins (a) |
|
|
Share-based |
|
|
Amortization |
|
|
Other (b) |
|
|
As adjusted (b) |
|
|
As adjusted margins (a) |
|
|||||||
|
|
(Dollars in millions, except per share data) |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cost of Cloud recurring revenue |
|
$ |
278.5 |
|
|
|
77.0 |
% |
|
$ |
15.4 |
|
|
$ |
— |
|
|
$ |
— |
|
|
$ |
263.1 |
|
|
|
78.3 |
% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Operating profit |
|
$ |
133.1 |
|
|
|
8.8 |
% |
|
$ |
137.1 |
|
|
$ |
60.5 |
|
|
$ |
9.1 |
|
|
$ |
339.8 |
|
|
|
22.4 |
% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|