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UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
 
 
Form 10-K
 
 
(Mark One)
x
ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2017
OR
¨
TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
For transition period from                     to                     
Commission File Number 001-35680
 
 
Workday, Inc.
(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)
 
 
Delaware
20-2480422
(State or other jurisdiction of
incorporation or organization)
(I.R.S. Employer
Identification Number)
6230 Stoneridge Mall Road
Pleasanton, California
94588
(Address of principal executive offices)
(Zip Code)
(925) 951-9000
(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
Title of each class
Name of each exchange on which registered
Class A Common Stock, par value $0.001
New York Stock Exchange
Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the Act:
None
 
 
Indicate by a check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.    Yes  x    No  ¨
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act.    Yes  ¨    No  x
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.    Yes  x    No  ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted 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 and post such files).    Yes  x   No  ¨
Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of Registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K.  ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer” and “smaller reporting company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer
x
Accelerated filer
¨
Non-accelerated filer
¨  (Do not check if a smaller reporting company)
Smaller reporting company
¨
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).    Yes  ¨    No  x
The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting stock of the Registrant as of July 29, 2016 (based on a closing price of $83.34 per share) held by non-affiliates was approximately $10.2 billion. As of February 28, 2017, there were approximately 203 million shares of the Registrant’s Common Stock outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Information required in response to Part III of Form 10-K (Items 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14) is hereby incorporated by reference to portions of the Registrant’s Proxy Statement for the Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held in 2017. The Proxy Statement will be filed by the Registrant with the Securities and Exchange Commission no later than 120 days after the end of the registrant’s fiscal year ended January 31, 2017.
 


Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS
 
PART I
 
Item 1.
Item 1A.
Item 1B.
Item 2.
Item 3.
Item 4.
 
PART II
 
Item 5.
Item 6.
Item 7.
Item 7A.
Item 8.
Item 9.
Item 9A.
Item 9B.
 
PART III
 
Item 10.
Item 11.
Item 12.
Item 13.
Item 14.
 
PART IV
 
Item 15.

 


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PART I
SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This report contains forward-looking statements. All statements contained in this report other than statements of historical fact, including statements regarding our future results of operations and financial position, our business strategy and plans, and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements. The words “believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect,” “seek,” “plan,” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives, and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those described in the “Risk Factors” section. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the future events and trends discussed in this report may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activities, performance, or achievements. We are under no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this report or to conform these statements to actual results or revised expectations.
As used in this report, the terms “Workday,” “Registrant,” “we,” “us,” and “our” mean Workday, Inc. and its subsidiaries unless the context indicates otherwise.
Our fiscal year ends on January 31. References to fiscal 2017, for example, refer to the year ended January 31, 2017.
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Overview
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. Founded in 2005, Workday delivers financial management, human capital management and analytics applications designed for the world’s largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Organizations headquartered around the globe, ranging from medium-sized businesses to the world's largest enterprises, have selected Workday. We achieved this leadership position through our innovative and adaptable technology, focus on the consumer Internet experience and cloud delivery model.
Organizations today operate in environments that are highly complex and changing at an increasing rate. Managers and employees must quickly synthesize vast amounts of information and react to rapid changes in global business and regulatory environments. To be successful, they need highly functional and flexible software that enables informed decision-making about the enterprise-wide allocation of their resources. Additionally, managers and employees expect to interact with enterprise systems in an open, intuitive and collaborative way, including real-time access through a wide range of mobile and computing devices. We believe that legacy, on-premise systems make those interactions difficult, as their user interfaces are not intuitive and were not originally designed for mobility.
Workday is leading the way in helping organizations better manage their financial and human capital resources. As part of our applications, we provide embedded analytics that capture the content and context of everyday business events, facilitating fast and informed decision-making from wherever users are working. In addition, we provide an intuitive user experience similar to those of leading consumer Internet sites, reducing the time for training on our applications.
Since Workday is delivered in the cloud, organizations can embrace change in their operating environments with support for new regulatory requirements, increased performance and enhancement of the user experience that we deliver through our rapid innovation cycle of frequent functionality-rich feature releases. We deliver innovation regularly, with major feature releases delivered two times per year as part of our customers' subscription agreement. When the new feature releases are delivered, the prior version is fully replaced. As a result, all Workday customers are on the same version at all times. Feature releases are not subject to an additional fee. Workday customers benefit from the most current technologies without the burden of large upgrade costs typically associated with traditional on-premise software.

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We deliver our cloud applications using an innovative technology foundation that leverages the most recent advances in cloud computing and data management and allows us to deliver applications that are highly functional, flexible and fast. Our use of a multi-tenant architecture in which customers are on the same version of our software enables innovations to be deployed quickly. In addition, we use objects to represent real-world entities such as employees, benefits, budgets, charts of accounts and organizations, combining business logic and data in one place and creating actionable analytics that are part of our core transactional systems of record. Our use of in memory data management allows rapid and efficient delivery of embedded business intelligence. Workday leverages advanced data science and machine learning in our applications to help customers make smarter financial and workforce decisions. We also provide open, standards-based web-services application programming interfaces and pre-built packaged integrations and connectors. This approach substantially reduces the need for our customers to buy and support a broad range of IT infrastructure, significantly reducing costs and complexity.
Our Applications
Workday Financial Management
Workday Financial Management is a comprehensive, unified application built on a single, global core with a full range of financial capabilities, relevant analytics and metrics, and fully auditable process management built to help manage financial processes for global organizations.
Workday Financial Management provides the core finance functions of general ledger, global accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, asset management, employee expense management, revenue management, projects, procurement, inventory, and grants management. It also supports built-in financial, operational, and management reporting and analysis in real time without the use of complex and expensive bolt-on business intelligence systems.
Workday Human Capital Management
Designed for the largest organizations in the world, Workday Human Capital Management ("HCM") allows an organization to staff, pay, organize, and develop its global workforce. This unified application includes global human resources management (workforce lifecycle management, organization management, compensation, absence, and employee benefits administration) and global talent management (goal management, performance management, succession planning, and career and development planning). 
Other Applications
Workday offers a variety of other applications that complement and are unified with Workday Financial Management and Workday HCM.
Workday Payroll is designed to address the full spectrum of enterprise payroll needs and provides control, accuracy and flexibility, with native payroll offerings in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and France as well as a global payroll cloud partner program to support additional customer needs.
Workday Time Tracking, our time and attendance application, is designed to automate workforce management processes and thereby reduce costs and compliance risks.
Workday Recruiting is an end-to-end application that supports the needs of candidates, hiring managers, the interview team, and recruiters.
Workday Learning combines the capabilities of an enterprise-grade learning system with modern social content sharing and curation in one platform.
Workday Planning offers the ability to create, collaborate, and take action on financial and workforce plans in a single, intuitive, and secure system.
Workday Professional Services Automation supports the complete billable projects lifecycle, including project and resource management, time and expense tracking, project billing, revenue recognition, financial reporting, and analytics within a single, unified solution.
Workday Student is an end-to-end student and faculty lifecycle information system to help colleges and universities advance their institutions and enable student success. The Workday Student application suite includes: Academic Foundation, Student Recruiting, Student Admissions, Curriculum Management, Student Records, Academic Advising, Financial Aid, Student Financials, and Student Recruiting.

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Customers
We currently have more than 1,500 customers, with a focus on medium-sized and large, global organizations. We define a customer as a separate and distinct buying entity, such as a company, an educational or government institution, or a distinct business unit of a large organization, which has entered into a master subscription agreement with us to access our cloud applications, including customers that are in the process of deploying our applications. While a single customer may have multiple organizations, operating segments or locations, we only include the customer once for this metric. We exclude from our customer count small- to medium-sized business customers who have contracted for our subscription services through a former reseller partner.
Our current customer base spans numerous industry categories, including technology, financial services, business and professional services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, retail and hospitality, education, government and non-profit. No individual customer represented more than 10% of our revenues during fiscal 2017.
We have built a company culture centered around our customers’ success and satisfaction. We have developed several programs designed to provide customers with service options to enhance their experience with our applications. These services include 24x7 support; a professional services ecosystem that consists of our Workday consulting teams and system integrators that are trained on our applications; a Customer Success Management group to assist customers in production; and an online community to facilitate collaboration among customers and with the Workday application development teams.
Employees
As of January 31, 2017, we had approximately 6,600 employees. We also engage contractors and consultants. None of our employees are represented by a labor union. We have not experienced any work stoppages, and we consider our relations with our employees to be very good.
Sales and Marketing
We sell the Workday Service through our direct sales organization, that is comprised of field sales and field sales support personnel. Workday’s field sales team is aligned by geography and prospect size.
We generate customer leads, accelerate sales opportunities, and build brand awareness through our marketing programs and through our strategic relationships. Our marketing programs target senior business leaders, including finance, HR, and IT executives.
As a core part of our strategy, we have developed an ecosystem of partners to both broaden and complement our application offerings and to provide services that are outside of Workday’s areas of focus. These relationships include software and technology partners, consulting and implementation services providers, and business process outsourcing partners, and enable Workday to address the finance and HR-related challenges our customers face while maintaining focus on executing against our strategy.
Product Development
Our ability to compete depends in large part on our continuous commitment to product development and our ability to rapidly introduce new applications, technologies, features, and functionality. Our product development organization is responsible for the design, development, testing, and certification of our applications. We focus our efforts on developing new applications and core technologies and further enhancing the usability, functionality, reliability, performance, and flexibility of existing applications.
Product development expenses were $681 million, $470 million and $317 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively.

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Competition
The overall market for enterprise application software is rapidly evolving, highly competitive, and subject to changing technology, shifting customer needs and frequent introductions of new applications. We currently compete with large, well-established, enterprise application software vendors, such as SAP SE ("SAP") and Oracle Corporation ("Oracle"). SAP and Oracle are established enterprise software companies that have greater name recognition, much longer operating histories and significantly greater financial, technical, sales, marketing, and other resources than we have and are able to provide a broader scope of business applications than our current suite of applications. We also face competition from other enterprise software vendors and from vendors of specific applications, some of which offer cloud-based solutions. These vendors include The Ultimate Software Group, Inc., Automated Data Processing, Inc., and Infor Global Solutions, among others. We also face competition from cloud-based vendors including providers of applications for HCM and payroll services such as Ceridian, Inc. and providers of financial management applications such as NetSuite, Inc., which was recently acquired by Oracle. We may also face competition from a variety of vendors of cloud-based and on-premise software applications that address only one or a portion of our applications. In addition, other cloud companies that provide services in different markets may develop solutions in our target markets, and some potential customers may elect to develop their own internal solutions. However, the domain expertise that is required for a successful solution in the areas of financial management, HCM and analytics may inhibit new entrants that are unable to invest the necessary capital to accurately reflect global requirements and regulations. We expect continued consolidation in our industry that could lead to significantly increased competition.
We believe the principal competitive factors in our market include the following:
level of customer satisfaction;
ease of deployment and use of applications;
breadth and depth of application functionality;
total cost of ownership;
brand awareness and reputation;
adaptive technology platform;
capability for configuration, integration, security, scalability and reliability of applications;
operational excellence to ensure system availability, scalability, and performance;
ability to innovate and respond to customer needs rapidly;
domain expertise on financial, HR, and payroll regulations;
size of customer base and level of user adoption;
customer confidence in financial stability and future viability; and
ability to integrate with legacy enterprise infrastructures and third-party applications.
We believe that we compete favorably on the basis of these factors. Our ability to remain competitive will largely depend on our ongoing performance in the areas of application development and customer support.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of trade secrets, patents, copyrights, and trademarks, as well as contractual protections, to establish and protect our intellectual property rights. We require our employees, contractors, consultants and other third parties to enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements and control access to software, documentation, and other proprietary information. Although we rely on intellectual property rights, including trade secrets, patents, copyrights and trademarks, as well as contractual protections to establish and protect our proprietary rights, we believe that factors such as the technological and creative skills of our personnel, creation of new modules, features and functionality, and frequent enhancements to our applications are more essential to establishing and maintaining our technology leadership position. Our patents begin to expire in 2017.
Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary technology and our intellectual property rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or obtain and use our technology to develop applications with the same functionality as our application. Policing unauthorized use of our technology and intellectual property rights is difficult.
We expect that software and other applications in our industry may be subject to third-party infringement claims as the number of competitors grows and the functionality of applications in different industry segments overlaps. Any of these third parties might make a claim of infringement against us at any time.

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Corporate Information
We were incorporated in March 2005 in Nevada, and in June 2012 we reincorporated in Delaware. Our principal executive offices are located at 6230 Stoneridge Mall Road, Pleasanton, California 94588, and our telephone number is (877) WORKDAY. Our website address is www.workday.com. The information on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not part of this report. Workday is our registered trademark in the United States, the European Community, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Australia, and the Workday logo, our Built for the Future tagline, and all of our product names are our trademarks. Other trademarks, service marks, or trade names appearing in this report are the property of their respective owners.
Available Information
We file annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy and information statements and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a), 14 and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The public may obtain these filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC")’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549 or by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC also maintains a website at http://www.sec.gov that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding Workday and other companies that file materials with the SEC electronically. Copies of Workday’s reports on Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q and Forms 8-K, may be obtained, free of charge, electronically through our internet website, http://www.workday.com/company/investor_relations/sec_filings.php.
Workday intends to use its blogs.workday.com website as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD.
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. You should consider carefully the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this report, including the consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this report, before making an investment decision. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of, or that we currently believe are not material, may also become important factors that materially and adversely affect our business. If any of the following risks actually occurs, our business operations, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects could be materially and adversely affected. The market price of our securities could decline due to the materialization of these or any other risks, and you could lose part or all of your investment.
Risk Factors Related to Our Business
If our security measures are breached or unauthorized access to customer data is otherwise obtained, our applications may be perceived as not being secure, customers may reduce the use of or stop using our applications and we may incur significant liabilities.
Our applications involve the storage and transmission of our customers’ sensitive and proprietary information, including personal or identifying information regarding their employees, customers and suppliers, as well as their finance and payroll data. As a result, unauthorized access or use of this data could result in the loss or destruction of information, litigation, indemnity obligations and other liabilities. While we have security measures in place designed to protect the integrity of customer information and prevent data loss, misappropriation and other security breaches, if these measures are compromised as a result of third-party action, including intentional misconduct by computer hackers, employee error, malfeasance or otherwise, and someone obtains unauthorized access to or use of our customers’ data, our reputation could be damaged, our business may suffer and we could incur significant liabilities. Cyber security challenges, including threats to our own IT infrastructure or those of our customers or third-party providers, are often targeted at companies such as ours, and may take a variety of forms ranging from individual and groups of hackers to sophisticated organizations. Key cyber security risks range from viruses, worms and other malicious software programs to "mega breaches" targeted against cloud services and other hosted software, any of which can result in disclosure of confidential information and intellectual property, defective products, production downtimes, supply shortages and compromised data. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not identified until they are launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Any or all of these issues could negatively affect our ability to attract new customers, cause existing customers to elect to terminate or not renew their subscriptions, result in reputational damage, cause us to pay remediation costs and/or issue service credits or refunds to customers for prepaid and unused subscription services, or result in lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liabilities, which could adversely affect our operating results.

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We depend on data centers and computing infrastructure operated by third parties and any disruption in these operations could adversely affect our business.
We host our applications and serve our customers from data centers located in Ashburn, Virginia; Atlanta, Georgia; Portland, Oregon; Dublin, Ireland; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 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. The owners of our data center facilities have no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. If we are unable to renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms, or if one of our data center operators is acquired or ceases business, we may be required to transfer our servers and other infrastructure to new data center facilities, and we may incur significant costs and possible service interruption in connection with doing so.
In addition, we rely upon third parties, which we refer to as our hosted infrastructure partners, to operate certain aspects of our services, such as environments for development testing, training and sales demonstrations, as well as others. For example, Amazon Web Services ("AWS") provides a distributed computing infrastructure platform for business operations and we have announced our intention to make certain of our service offerings available through AWS. Given this, any disruption of or interference at our hosted infrastructure partners would impact our operations and our business could be adversely impacted.
Problems faced by our third-party data center operations or hosted infrastructure partners, with the telecommunications network providers with whom we or they contract, or with the systems by which our telecommunications providers allocate capacity among their customers, including us, could adversely affect the experience of our customers. Our third-party data center operators or hosted infrastructure partners could decide to close their facilities without adequate notice. In addition, any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy, faced by our third-party data center operators, our hosted infrastructure partners or any of the other service providers with whom we or they contract may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. Additionally, if our data centers or hosted infrastructure partners are unable to keep up with our needs for capacity, this could have an adverse effect on our business. Any changes in third-party service levels at our data centers or at our hosted infrastructure partners or any errors, defects, disruptions, or other performance problems with our applications or the hosted infrastructure on which they run could adversely affect our reputation and may damage our customers’ stored files or result in lengthy interruptions in our services. Interruptions in our services might adversely affect our reputation and operating results, cause us to issue refunds or service credits to customers for prepaid and unused subscription services, subject us to potential liabilities, result in contract terminations, or adversely affect our renewal rates.
Furthermore, our financial management application is essential to Workday's and our customers’ financial projections, reporting and compliance programs, particularly customers who are public reporting companies. Any interruption in our service may affect the availability, accuracy or timeliness of such projections, reporting and compliance programs and as a result could damage our reputation, cause our customers to terminate their use of our applications, require us to issue refunds for prepaid and unused subscription services, require us to indemnify our customers against certain losses and prevent us from gaining additional business from current or future customers, as well as impact our ability to accurately and timely meet our reporting and other compliance obligations.
If we fail to manage our technical operations infrastructure, or experience service outages or delays in the deployment of our applications, we may be subject to liabilities and our reputation and operating results may be adversely affected.
We have experienced significant growth in the number of users, transactions and data that our operations infrastructure supports. We seek to maintain sufficient excess capacity in our operations infrastructure to meet the needs of all of our customers, as well as our own needs, and to ensure that our services and solutions are accessible within an acceptable load time. We also seek to maintain excess capacity to facilitate the rapid provision of new customer deployments and the expansion of existing customer deployments. In addition, we need to properly manage our technological operations infrastructure in order to support version control, changes in hardware and software parameters, updates, the evolution of our applications and to reduce infrastructure latency associated with dispersed geographic locations. However, the provision of new hosting infrastructure requires significant lead time. If we do not accurately predict our infrastructure requirements, our existing customers may experience service outages. If our operations infrastructure fails to scale, customers may experience delays as we seek to obtain additional capacity.
We have experienced, and may in the future experience, system 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 (internal and external), fraud, spikes in customer usage and denial of service issues. In some instances, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. Our customer agreements typically provide service level commitments on a monthly basis. If we are unable to meet the stated service level commitments or suffer extended periods of unavailability for our applications, we may be contractually obligated to issue service credits or refunds to customers for prepaid and unused subscription services, or we could face contract terminations. Any extended service outages could result in customer losses, and adversely affect our reputation, revenues and operating results.

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Privacy concerns and laws or other domestic or foreign regulations may reduce the effectiveness of our applications and adversely affect our business.
Our customers can use our applications to collect, use and store personal or identifying information regarding their employees, customers and suppliers. National and local governments and agencies in the countries in which our customers operate have adopted, are considering adopting, or may adopt laws and regulations regarding the collection, use, storage, processing and disclosure of personal information obtained from consumers and individuals, which could impact our ability to offer our services in certain jurisdictions or our customers' ability to deploy our solutions globally. Privacy-related laws are particularly stringent in Europe. The costs of compliance with and other burdens imposed by privacy-related laws, regulations and standards may limit the use and adoption of our services, reduce overall demand for our services, lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities for noncompliance, or slow the pace at which we close sales transactions, any of which could harm our business. Moreover, if Workday employees fail to adhere to adequate data protection practices around the usage of our customers' personal data, it may damage our reputation and brand.
Additionally, we expect that existing laws, regulations and standards may be interpreted in new and differing manners in the future, and may be inconsistent among jurisdictions. Future laws, regulations, standards and other obligations, and changes in the interpretation of existing laws, regulations, standards and other obligations could result in increased regulation, cost of compliance and limitations on data collection, use, disclosure and transfer for Workday and our customers. The European Union and United States recently agreed to a framework for data transferred from the European Union to the United States, called the Privacy Shield, but this new framework has been challenged by private parties and may face additional challenges by national regulators or additional private parties. In addition, the other bases on which we and our customers rely for the transfer of data, such as model contracts, continue to be subjected to regulatory and judicial scrutiny. If we or our customers are unable to transfer data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, it could decrease demand for our applications, require us to restrict our business operations, and impair our ability to maintain and grow our customer base and increase our revenue.
The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, privacy laws and regulations that are applicable to the businesses of our customers may adversely affect our customers’ ability and willingness to process, handle, store, use and transmit demographic and personal information of their employees, customers and suppliers, which could limit the use, effectiveness and adoption of our applications and reduce overall demand. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit the adoption, effectiveness or use of our applications.
In addition to government activity, privacy advocacy groups and the technology and other industries have established or may establish various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. Our customers may expect us to meet voluntary certifications or adhere to other standards established by third parties. If we are unable to maintain these certifications or meet these standards, it could reduce demand for our applications and adversely affect our business.
We have experienced rapid growth. If we fail to manage our growth effectively, we may be unable to execute our business plan, maintain high levels of service and operational controls or adequately address competitive challenges.
We have experienced, and are continuing to experience, a period of rapid growth in our customers, headcount and operations. In particular, we grew from approximately 1,550 employees at the time of our initial public offering in October 2012 to approximately 6,600 employees as of January 31, 2017, and have also significantly increased the size of our customer base. We anticipate that we will continue to expand our operations and headcount in the near term, and to expand our customer base. This growth has placed, and future growth will place, a significant strain on our management, general and administrative resources and operational infrastructure. Our success will depend in part on our ability to manage this growth effectively and to scale our operations. To manage the expected growth of our operations and personnel, we will need to continue to improve our operational, financial and management controls and our reporting systems and procedures. As we continue to grow, we also need to ensure that our policies and procedures evolve to reflect our current operations and are appropriately communicated to and observed by employees, and that we appropriately manage our corporate information assets, including confidential and proprietary information. Failure to effectively manage growth could result in difficulty or delays in deploying customers, declines in quality or customer satisfaction, increases in costs, difficulties in introducing new features or other operational difficulties, and any of these difficulties could adversely impact our business performance and results of operations.
We depend on our senior management team and the loss of one or more key employees could adversely affect our business.
Our success depends largely upon the continued services of our executive officers. We also rely on our leadership team in the areas of product development, marketing, sales, services, and general and administrative functions and on mission-critical individual contributors in product development. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. We do not have employment agreements with our executive officers or other key personnel that require them to continue to work for us for any specified period and they could terminate their employment with us at any time. The loss of one or more of our executive officers or key employees and any failure to develop an appropriate succession plan for these persons could have a serious adverse effect on our business.

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An inability to attract and retain highly skilled employees could adversely affect our business and our future growth prospects.
To execute our growth plan, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel, and our managers must be successful in hiring employees who are a good cultural fit and have the competencies to succeed at Workday. Competition for these personnel is intense, especially for engineers with high levels of experience in designing and developing software and Internet-related services, and for senior sales executives. From time to time, we have experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications, and may not be able to fill positions in desired geographic areas or at all.
Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have and some of these companies may offer greater compensation packages. Particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, job candidates and existing employees carefully consider the value of the equity awards they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived value of our equity awards declines, or if the mix of equity and cash compensation that we offer is unattractive, it may adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain highly skilled employees. Job candidates may also be threatened with legal action under agreements with their existing employers if we attempt to hire them, which could have a chilling effect on hiring and result in a diversion of our time and resources. Additionally, laws and regulations, such as restrictive immigration laws, may limit our ability to recruit internationally. We must also continue to retain and motivate existing employees through our compensation practices, company culture and career development opportunities. If we fail to attract new personnel or to retain our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects could be adversely affected.
If we cannot maintain our corporate culture, we could lose the innovation, teamwork and passion that we believe contribute to our success, and our business may be harmed.
We believe that a critical component of our success has been our corporate culture, as reflected in our core values: employees, customer service, innovation, integrity, fun and profitability. We have invested substantial time and resources in building our team. As we continue to grow, both organically and through acquisitions of employee teams, and develop the infrastructure associated with being a more mature public company, we will need to maintain our corporate culture among a larger number of employees dispersed in various geographic regions. Any failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our future success, including our ability to retain and recruit personnel and to effectively focus on and pursue our corporate objectives.
The markets in which we participate are intensely competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our operating results could be adversely affected.
The markets for financial management and HCM applications are highly competitive, with relatively low barriers to entry for some applications or services. Our primary competitors are SAP and Oracle, well-established providers of financial management and HCM applications, which have long-standing relationships with many customers. Some customers may be hesitant to switch vendors or to adopt cloud applications such as ours, and prefer to maintain their existing relationships with competitors. SAP and Oracle are larger and have greater name recognition, much longer operating histories, larger marketing budgets and significantly greater resources than we do. These vendors, as well as other competitors, could offer financial management and HCM applications on a standalone basis at a low price or bundled as part of a larger product sale. In order to take advantage of customer demand for cloud applications, legacy vendors are expanding their cloud applications through acquisitions, strategic alliances and organic development. Legacy vendors may also seek to partner with other leading cloud providers, such as the alliance between Oracle and Salesforce.com. We also face competition from custom-built software vendors and from vendors of specific applications, some of which offer cloud-based solutions. These vendors include, without limitation: The Ultimate Software Group, Inc., Automatic Data Processing and Infor Global Solutions. We also face competition from cloud-based vendors including providers of applications for HCM and payroll services such as Ceridian, Inc. and providers of financial management applications such as NetSuite, Inc., which was recently acquired by Oracle. We may also face competition from a variety of vendors of cloud-based and on-premise software applications that address only one or a portion of our applications. In addition, other companies that provide cloud applications in different target markets may develop applications or acquire companies that operate in our target markets, and some potential customers may elect to develop their own internal applications. With the introduction of new technologies and market entrants, we expect this competition to intensify in the future.

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Many of our competitors are able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products and services. Furthermore, our current or potential competitors may be acquired by third parties with greater available resources and the ability to initiate or 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 may also establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties that may further enhance their product offerings or resources. If our competitors’ products, services or technologies become more accepted than our applications, 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, then our revenues could be adversely affected. In addition, some of our competitors may offer their products and services at a lower price. If we are unable to achieve our target pricing levels, our operating results would be negatively affected. Pricing pressures and increased competition could result in reduced sales, reduced margins, losses or a failure to maintain or improve our competitive market position, any of which could adversely affect our business.
If the market for enterprise cloud computing grows more slowly than in recent years, our business could be adversely affected.
Our success will depend to a substantial extent on the continued growth of cloud computing in general, and of financial management and HCM services in particular. Many enterprises have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to integrate traditional enterprise software into their businesses, and therefore may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate to cloud computing. It is difficult to predict customer adoption rates and demand for our applications, the future growth rate and size of the cloud computing market or the entry of competitive applications. The continued expansion of the cloud computing market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with cloud computing, as well as the ability of cloud computing companies to address security and privacy concerns. Further, the cloud computing market is less developed in many jurisdictions outside of the United States. If we or other cloud computing providers experience security incidents, loss of customer data, disruptions in delivery or other problems, the market for cloud computing applications as a whole, including our applications, may be negatively affected. If there is a reduction in demand for cloud computing caused by a lack of customer acceptance, technological challenges, weakening economic conditions, security or privacy concerns, competing technologies and products, decreases in corporate spending or otherwise, it could result in decreased revenues or growth rates and our business could be adversely affected.
If we are not able to provide successful enhancements, new features and modifications, our business could be adversely affected.
If we are unable to provide enhancements and new features for our existing applications or new applications that achieve market acceptance or that keep pace with rapid technological developments, our business could be adversely affected. For example, we are focused on enhancing the features and functionality of our applications to enhance their utility to larger customers with complex, dynamic and global operations. The success of enhancements, new features and applications depends on several factors, including the timely completion, introduction and market acceptance of the enhancements or new features or applications. Failure in this regard may significantly impair our revenue growth. In addition, because our applications are designed to operate on a variety of systems, we will need to continuously modify and enhance our applications to keep pace with changes in Internet-related hardware, iOS, Android and other mobile-related technologies and other software, communication, browser and database technologies. We may not be successful in either developing these modifications and enhancements or in bringing them to market in a timely fashion. We must also appropriately balance the product capability demands of our current customers with the capabilities required to address the broader market. Furthermore, uncertainties about the timing and nature of new network platforms or technologies, or modifications to existing platforms or technologies, could increase our product development expenses. Any failure of our applications to operate effectively with future network platforms and technologies could reduce the demand for our applications, result in customer dissatisfaction and adversely affect our business.
Our applications must integrate with a variety of third-party technologies, and if we are unable to ensure that our solutions interoperate with such technologies, demand for our applications and our operating results could be adversely affected.
Our applications must integrate with a variety of technologies and we must continuously modify and enhance our applications to adapt to changes in operating systems, hardware, software, communication, browser and database technologies. Any failure of our solutions to operate effectively with future technologies or our failure to respond to changes in a timely and effective manner could reduce the demand for our applications, result in customer dissatisfaction and harm our operating results and business.
If our applications fail to perform properly, our reputation could be adversely affected, our market share could decline and we could be subject to liability claims.
Our applications are inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors. Any defects in functionality or that cause interruptions in the availability of our applications could result in:
loss or delayed market acceptance and sales;
breach of warranty claims;
issuance of refunds or service credits to customers for prepaid and unused subscription services;
loss of customers;

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diversion of development and customer service resources; and
injury to our reputation.
The costs incurred in correcting any material defects or errors might be substantial and could adversely affect our operating results.
Because of the large amount of data that we collect and process, it is possible that hardware failures or errors in our systems could result in data loss or corruption, or cause the information that we collect to be incomplete or contain inaccuracies that our customers regard as significant. Furthermore, the availability or performance of our applications could be adversely affected by a number of factors, including customers’ inability to access the Internet, the failure of our network or software systems, security breaches or variability in user traffic for our services. For example, our customers access our applications through their Internet service providers. If a service provider fails to provide sufficient capacity to support our applications or otherwise experiences service outages, such failure could interrupt our customers’ access to our applications, which could adversely affect their perception of our applications’ reliability and our revenues. We may be required to issue credits or refunds for prepaid amounts related to unused services or otherwise be liable to our customers for damages they may incur resulting from certain of these events. In addition to potential liability, if we experience interruptions in the availability of our applications, our reputation could be adversely affected and we could lose customers.
Our errors and omissions insurance may be inadequate or may not be available in the future on acceptable terms, or at all. In addition, our policy may not cover all claims made against us and defending a suit, regardless of its merit, could be costly and divert management’s attention.
Catastrophic events may disrupt our business.
Our corporate headquarters are located in Pleasanton, California and we have data centers located in Ashburn, Virginia; Atlanta, Georgia; Portland, Oregon; Sacramento, California; Dublin, Ireland; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We also rely on AWS’s distributed computing infrastructure platform. The west coast of the United States contains active earthquake zones and the southeast is subject to seasonal hurricanes. Additionally, we rely on our network and third-party infrastructure and enterprise applications, internal technology systems and our website for our development, marketing, operational support, hosted services and sales activities. In the event of a major earthquake, hurricane or catastrophic event such as fire, power loss, telecommunications failure, cyber-attack, war or terrorist attack, 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, all of which could have an adverse effect on our operating results.
Because we sell applications to manage complex operating environments of large customers, we encounter long sales cycles, which could adversely affect our operating results in a given period.
Our ability to increase revenues and achieve and maintain profitability depends, in large part, on widespread acceptance of our applications by large businesses and other organizations. Sales efforts targeted at these large customers involve greater costs, longer sales cycles and less predictability in completing some of our sales. Our customers’ deployment timeframes vary based on many factors including the number and type of applications being deployed, the complexity and scale of the customers’ businesses, the configuration requirements, the number of integrations with other systems and other factors, many of which are beyond our control. In the large enterprise market, the customer’s decision to use our applications may be an enterprise-wide decision and, therefore, these types of sales require us to provide greater levels of education regarding the use and benefits of our applications. In addition, our target customers may prefer to purchase applications that are critical to their business from one of our larger, more established competitors. Our typical sales cycles are six to twelve months, and we expect that this lengthy sales cycle may continue or expand as customers increasingly adopt our applications beyond HCM. Longer sales cycles could cause our operating and financial results to suffer in a given period.
The loss of one or more of our key customers, or a failure to renew our subscription agreements with one or more of our key customers, could negatively affect our ability to market our applications.
We rely on our reputation and recommendations from key customers in order to promote subscriptions to our applications. The loss of, or failure to renew by, any of our key customers could have a significant impact on our revenues, reputation and our ability to obtain new customers. In addition, acquisitions of our customers could lead to cancellation of our contracts with those customers or by the acquiring companies, thereby reducing the number of our existing and potential customers.

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Our business could be adversely affected if our customers are not satisfied with the deployment services provided by us or our partners.
Our business depends on our ability to satisfy our customers, both with respect to our application offerings and the professional services that are performed to help our customers use features and functions that address their business needs. Professional services may be performed by our own staff, by a third party, or by a combination of the two. Our strategy is to work with third parties to increase the breadth of capability and depth of capacity for delivery of these services to our customers, and third parties provide a majority of our deployment services. If customers are not satisfied with the quality of work performed by us or a third party or with the type of professional services or applications delivered, then we could incur additional costs to address the situation, the revenue recognition of the contract could be impacted, and the dissatisfaction with our services could damage our ability to expand the applications subscribed to by our customers. We must also align our product development and professional services operations in order to ensure that customers’ evolving needs are met. Negative publicity related to our customer relationships, regardless of its accuracy, may further damage our business by affecting our ability to compete for new business with current and prospective customers.
Any failure to offer high-quality technical support services may adversely affect our relationships with our customers and our financial results.
Our customers depend on our support organization to provision the environments used by our customers and to resolve technical issues relating to our applications. We may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate short-term increases in customer demand for support services. We also may be unable to modify the format of our 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 adversely affect our operating results. 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, our ability to sell our applications to existing and prospective customers, and our business, operating results and financial position.
Sales to customers outside the United States or with international operations expose us to risks inherent in international sales and operations.
A key element of our growth strategy is to expand our international operations and develop a worldwide customer base. Operating in international markets requires significant resources and management attention and will subject us to regulatory, economic and political risks that are different from those in the United States. Our international expansion efforts may not be successful in creating demand for our applications outside of the United States or in effectively selling subscriptions to our applications in all of the international markets we enter. In addition, we will face risks in doing business internationally that could adversely affect our business, including:
the need to localize and adapt our applications for specific countries, including translation into foreign languages, localization of contracts for different legal jurisdictions and associated expenses;
the need for a go-to-market strategy that aligns product management efforts and the development of supporting infrastructure;
stricter data privacy laws including requirements that customer data be stored and processed in a designated territory and obligations on us as a data processor;
difficulties in appropriately staffing and managing foreign operations and providing appropriate compensation for local markets;
difficulties in leveraging executive presence and company culture globally;
different pricing environments, longer sales cycles and longer accounts receivable payment cycles, and collections issues;
new and different sources of competition;
potentially weaker protection for intellectual property and other legal rights than in the United States and practical difficulties in enforcing intellectual property and other rights;
laws, customs and business practices favoring local competitors;
restrictive governmental actions focused on cross-border trade, such as duties, quotas and tariffs;
compliance challenges related to the complexity of multiple, conflicting and changing governmental laws and regulations, including employment, tax, privacy and data protection laws and regulations;
increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities;
restrictions on the transfer of funds;
ensuring compliance with anti-corruption laws including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act;
the effects of currency fluctuations on our revenues and customer demand for our services;
adverse tax consequences and tax rulings; and
unstable economic and political conditions.

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Any of the above factors may negatively impact our ability to sell our products and offer services internationally, reduce our competitive position in foreign markets, increase our costs of international operations and reduce demand for our products from international customers. Additionally, the majority of our international costs are denominated in local currencies and we anticipate that over time, an increasing portion of our international sales contracts may be denominated in local currencies. Therefore, fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies may impact our operating results when translated into U.S. dollars. We have a hedging program but we cannot ensure that this hedging program will be effective and we will continue to have risk of exchange rate fluctuations.
We have acquired, and may in the future acquire, other companies, employee teams or technologies, which could divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders and otherwise disrupt our operations and adversely affect our operating results.
We have acquired, and may in the future acquire, other companies, employee teams or technologies to complement or expand our applications, enhance our technical capabilities, obtain personnel or otherwise offer growth opportunities. The pursuit of 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.
We have limited experience in acquisitions. We may not be able to integrate acquired personnel, operations and technologies successfully or effectively manage the combined operations following the acquisition. We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits from the acquisitions due to a number of factors, including:
inability to integrate or benefit from acquisitions in a profitable manner;
incurrence of acquisition-related costs or liabilities, some of which may be unanticipated;
difficulty integrating the intellectual property and operations of the acquired business;
difficulty integrating and retaining the personnel of the acquired business;
difficulties and additional expenses associated with supporting legacy products and hosting infrastructure of the acquired business;
difficulty terminating or converting the customers of the acquired business onto our applications and contract terms;
diversion of management’s attention from other business concerns;
adverse effects on our existing business relationships with business partners and customers as a result of the acquisition;
use of resources that are needed in other parts of our business; and
use of substantial portions of our available cash to consummate the acquisition.
In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to acquired 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 take charges to our operating results based on this impairment assessment process, which could adversely affect our results of operations.
Acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities or the incurrence of debt, which could adversely affect our operating results. In addition, if an acquired business fails to meet our expectations, our operating results, business and financial position may suffer.
We have a history of cumulative losses and we do not expect to be profitable on a GAAP basis for the foreseeable future.
We have incurred significant losses in each period since our inception in 2005. These losses and our accumulated deficit reflect the substantial investments we made to acquire new customers and develop our applications. We expect our operating expenses to increase in the future due to anticipated increases in sales and marketing expenses, product development expenses, operations costs, and general and administrative costs, and therefore we expect our losses on a GAAP basis to continue for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, to the extent we are successful in increasing our customer base, we will also incur increased losses in the acquisition period because costs associated with acquiring customers are generally incurred up front, while subscription services revenues are generally recognized ratably over the terms of the agreements, which are typically three years or more. You should not consider our recent growth in revenues as indicative of our future performance. We cannot assure you that we will achieve GAAP profitability in the future, nor that, if we do become profitable, we will sustain profitability.
We may not receive significant revenues from our current development efforts for several years, if at all.
Developing software applications is expensive and the investment in product development often involves a long return on investment cycle. We have made and expect to continue to make significant investments in development and related product opportunities. Accelerated product introductions and short product life cycles require high levels of expenditures that could adversely affect our operating results if not offset by revenue increases. We believe that we must continue to dedicate a significant amount of resources to our development efforts to maintain our competitive position. However, we may not receive significant revenues from these investments for several years, if at all.

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If we experience significant fluctuations in our rate of anticipated growth and fail to balance our expenses with our revenue forecasts, our results could be harmed.
Our ability to forecast our future rate of growth is limited and subject to a number of uncertainties, including general economic and market conditions. We plan our expense levels and investment on estimates of future revenue and future anticipated rates of growth. We may not be able to adjust our spending quickly enough if our growth rates fall short of our expectations.
Moreover, we have encountered and will encounter risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, such as the risks and uncertainties described herein. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties (which we use to plan our business) are incorrect or change due to changes in our markets, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could differ materially from our expectations and our business could suffer.
We may not be able to sustain our revenue growth rates in the future.
You should not consider our historical revenue growth rates as indicative of our future performance. Our revenue growth rates have declined, and may decline in future periods, as the size of our customer base increases and as we achieve higher market penetration rates. Other factors may also contribute to declines in our growth rates, including slowing demand for our services, increasing competition, a decrease in the growth of our overall market, our failure to continue to capitalize on growth opportunities, and the maturation of our business, among others. As our growth rates decline, investors’ perceptions of our business and the trading price of our securities could be adversely affected.
Our quarterly results may 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, operating margin, profitability, cash flow and unearned revenue, may vary significantly in the future and period-to-period comparisons of our operating results 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. Fluctuation in quarterly results may negatively impact the value of our securities. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our quarterly financial results include, without limitation, those listed below:
our ability to attract new customers;
the addition or loss of large customers, including through acquisitions or consolidations;
the timing of operating expenses and recognition of revenues;
the amount and timing of operating expenses related to the maintenance and expansion of our business, operations and infrastructure;
network outages or security breaches;
general economic and market conditions;
customer renewal rates;
increases or decreases in the number of elements of our services or pricing changes upon any renewals of customer agreements;
changes in our pricing policies or those of our competitors;
the mix of applications sold during a period;
seasonal variations in sales of our applications, which have historically been highest in our fiscal fourth quarter;
the timing and success of new application and service introductions by us or our competitors;
changes in the competitive dynamics of our industry, including consolidation among competitors, customers or strategic partners;
changes in laws and regulations that impact our business; and
the timing of expenses related to acquisitions and potential future charges for impairment of goodwill.

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Because we recognize subscription services revenues over the term of the contract, downturns or upturns in new sales will not be immediately reflected in our operating results and may be difficult to discern.
We generally recognize subscription services revenues from customers ratably over the terms of their contracts, which are typically three years or more. As a result, most of the subscription services revenues we report in each quarter are derived from the recognition of unearned revenue relating to subscriptions entered into during previous quarters. Consequently, a decline in new or renewed subscription contracts in any single quarter will likely have a minor impact on our revenue results for that quarter. However, such a decline will negatively affect our revenues in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our applications, and potential changes in our pricing policies or rate of renewals, may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. We may be unable to adjust our cost structure to reflect the changes in revenues. In addition, a significant majority of our costs are expensed as incurred, while revenues are recognized over the life of the customer agreement. As a result, increased growth in the number of our customers could result in our recognition of more costs than revenues in the earlier periods of the terms of our agreements. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenues through additional sales in any period, as subscription revenues from new customers generally are recognized over the applicable subscription term.
Our ability to predict the rate of customer subscription renewals or adoptions, and the impact these renewals and adoptions will have on our revenues or operating results, is limited.
As the markets for our applications mature, or as new competitors introduce new products or services that compete with ours, we may be unable to attract new customers at the same price or based on the same pricing model as we have used historically. Moreover, large customers, which are the focus of our sales efforts, may demand greater price concessions. As a result, in the future we may be required to reduce our prices, which could adversely affect our revenues, gross margin, profitability, financial position and cash flow.
In addition, our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our applications after the expiration of the initial subscription period. Our customers may renew for fewer elements of our applications or on different pricing terms. Our customers’ renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including their level of satisfaction with our pricing or our applications and their ability to continue their operations and spending levels. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions for our applications on similar pricing terms, our revenues may decline and our business could suffer. In addition, over time the average term of our contracts could change based on renewal rates or for other reasons.
Our future success also depends in part on our ability to sell additional features or enhanced elements of our applications to our current customers. This may require increasingly costly sales efforts that are targeted at senior management. If these efforts are not successful, our business may suffer.
Failure to adequately expand and optimize our direct sales force will impede our growth.
We will need to continue to expand and optimize our sales infrastructure, both domestically and internationally, in order to grow our customer base and our business. Identifying and recruiting qualified personnel and training them in the use of our software requires significant time, expense and attention. It can take significant time before our sales representatives are fully trained and productive. Our business may be adversely affected if our efforts to expand and train our direct sales force do not generate a corresponding increase in revenues. In particular, if we are unable to hire, develop and retain talented sales personnel or if new direct sales personnel are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time, we may not be able to realize the expected benefits of this investment or increase our revenues.
If we fail to develop widespread brand awareness cost-effectively, our business may suffer.
We believe that developing and maintaining widespread positive awareness of our brand is critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our applications, attracting new customers and hiring and retaining employees. Brand promotion activities may not generate customer awareness or increase revenues, and even if they do, any increase in revenues may not offset the expenses we incur in building our brand. If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our brand, or incur substantial expenses, we may fail to attract or retain customers necessary to realize a sufficient return on our brand-building efforts, or to achieve the widespread brand awareness that is critical for broad customer adoption of our applications. In addition, if our brand is negatively impacted, it may be more difficult to hire and retain employees.

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Our growth depends in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties.
In order to grow our business, we anticipate that we will continue to depend on relationships with third parties, such as deployment partners, technology and content providers and other key suppliers. Identifying partners, and negotiating and documenting relationships with them, requires significant time and resources. Our competitors may be effective in providing incentives to third parties to favor their products or services or to prevent or reduce subscriptions to our services, or in negotiating better rates or terms with key suppliers. In addition, acquisitions of our partners by our competitors could result in a decrease in the number of our current and potential customers, as our partners may no longer facilitate the adoption of our applications by potential customers.
If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with third parties, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenues could be impaired and our operating results may suffer. Even if we are successful, we cannot assure you that these relationships will result in increased customer usage of our applications or increased revenues.
Adverse economic conditions may negatively impact our business.
Our business depends on the overall demand for enterprise software and on the economic health of our current and prospective customers. Any significant weakening of the economy in the United States or Europe and of the global economy, more limited availability of credit, a reduction in business confidence and activity, decreased government spending, economic uncertainty and other difficulties, such as rising interest rates and increased inflation, may affect one or more of the sectors or countries in which we sell our applications.
The vote of the United Kingdom ("UK") to leave the European Union ("EU"), known as Brexit, has created substantial economic and political uncertainty, the impact of which depends on the terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU, which may not be determined for several years or more. This uncertainty may cause some of our customers or potential customers to curtail spending, and may ultimately result in new regulatory and cost challenges to our UK and other international operations. In addition, a strong dollar could reduce demand for our products in countries with relatively weaker currencies. Brexit has had an effect on global markets and currencies, including a decline in the value of the British pound as compared to the U.S. dollar. These adverse conditions could result in reductions in sales of our applications, longer sales cycles, reductions in subscription duration and value, slower adoption of new technologies and increased price competition. Any of these events would likely have an adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial position.
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 rely on patent, 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 inadequate.
We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time-consuming and distracting to management 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, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could seriously adversely affect our brand and our business.
We may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights.
There is considerable patent and other intellectual property development activity in our industry. Our competitors, as well as a number of other entities and individuals, may own or claim to own intellectual property relating to our industry. From time to time, third parties may claim that we are infringing upon their intellectual property rights, and we may be found to be infringing upon such rights. In the future, they may claim that our applications and underlying technology infringe or violate their intellectual property rights, even if we are unaware of the intellectual property rights that others may claim cover some or all of our technology or services. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our services, or require that we comply with other unfavorable terms. We may also be obligated to indemnify our customers or business partners or pay substantial settlement costs, including royalty payments, in connection with any such claim or litigation and to obtain licenses, modify applications, or refund fees, which could be costly. Even if we were to prevail in such a dispute, any litigation regarding our intellectual property could be costly and time-consuming and divert the attention of our management and key personnel from our business operations.

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Some of our applications utilize open source software, and any failure to comply with the terms of one or more of these open source licenses could negatively affect our business.
Some of our applications include software covered by open source licenses, which may include, by way of example, GNU General Public License and the Apache License. The terms of various open source licenses have not been interpreted by United States 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 impacted by an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code, re-engineer all or a portion of our technologies, or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our technologies, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and services. 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 negatively affect our business.
We employ third-party licensed software for use in or with our applications, and the inability to maintain these licenses or errors in the software we license could result in increased costs, or reduced service levels, which would adversely affect our business.
Our applications incorporate certain third-party software obtained under licenses from other companies. We anticipate that we will continue to rely on such third-party software and development tools from third parties in the future. Although we believe that there are commercially reasonable alternatives to the third-party software we currently license, this may not always be the case, or it may be difficult or costly to replace. Our use of additional or alternative third-party software would require us to enter into license agreements with third parties. In addition, integration of the software used in our applications with new third-party software may require significant work and require substantial investment of our time and resources. 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, result in a failure of our applications and injure our reputation.
Changes in laws and regulations related to the Internet or changes in the Internet infrastructure itself may diminish the demand for our applications, and could have a negative impact on our business.
Federal, state or foreign government bodies or agencies have in the past adopted, and may in the future adopt, laws or regulations relating to Internet usage. Changes in these laws or regulations could require us to modify our applications in order to comply with these laws or regulations. 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, or negatively impact demand for Internet-based applications such as ours.
In addition, businesses could be adversely affected due to delays in the development or adoption of new standards and protocols to handle increased demands of Internet activity, security, reliability, cost, ease of use, accessibility, and quality of service. Businesses have been adversely affected by “viruses,” “worms” and similar malicious programs and have experienced a variety of outages and other delays as a result of damage to Internet infrastructure. These issues could negatively impact demand for our cloud-based applications.
We may discover weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting, which may adversely affect investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and consequently the market price of our securities.
As a public company, we are required to design and maintain proper and effective internal controls over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in such internal controls. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires that we evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting and provide a management report on the internal controls over financial reporting, which must be attested to by our independent registered public accounting firm. If we have a material weakness in our internal controls over financial reporting, we may not detect errors on a timely basis and our financial statements may be materially misstated.

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The process of compiling the system and processing documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404 is challenging and costly. In the future, we may not be able to complete our evaluation, testing and any required remediation in a timely fashion. If we identify material weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting, if we are unable to comply with the requirements of Section 404 in a timely manner, if we are unable to assert that our internal controls over financial reporting are effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our securities could be negatively affected, and we could become subject to investigations by the New York Stock Exchange, the SEC, or other regulatory authorities, which could require additional financial and management resources. In addition, because we use Workday's financial management application, any problems that we experience with financial reporting and compliance could be negatively perceived by prospective or current customers, and negatively impact demand for our applications.
We may not be able to utilize a portion of our net operating loss or research tax credit carryforwards, which could adversely affect our profitability.
As of January 31, 2017, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards due to prior period losses, which if not utilized will begin to expire in fiscal 2025 and 2018 for federal and state purposes, respectively. We also have federal research tax credit carryforwards, which if not utilized will begin to expire in fiscal 2026. These net operating loss and research tax credit carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to reduce future income tax liabilities, which could adversely affect our profitability. In addition, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, our ability to utilize net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes, such as research tax credits, 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. It is possible that an ownership change, or any future ownership change, could have a material effect on the use of our net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes, which could adversely affect our profitability.
Adverse tax laws or regulations could be enacted or existing laws could be applied to us or our customers, which could increase the costs of our services and adversely impact our business.
We operate and are subject to taxes in the United States and numerous foreign jurisdictions throughout the world. Changes to federal, state, local or international tax laws on income, sales, use, indirect or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances on multinational corporations are currently being considered by the United States and other countries where we do business. These contemplated legislative initiatives include, but not limited to, changes to transfer pricing policies and definitional changes to permanent establishment could be applied solely or disproportionately to services provided over the Internet. These contemplated tax initiatives, if finalized and adopted by countries, may ultimately impact our effective tax rate and could adversely affect our sales activity resulting in a negative impact on our operating results and cash flows.
In addition, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be interpreted, changed, modified or applied adversely to us (possibly with retroactive effect), which could require us to pay additional tax amounts, and fines or penalties and interest for past amounts. Existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could also be interpreted, changed, modified or applied adversely to our customers (possibly with retroactive effect), which could require our customers to pay additional tax amounts with respect to services we have provided, and fines or penalties and interest for past amounts. If we are unsuccessful in collecting such taxes from our customers, we could be held liable for such costs, thereby adversely impacting our operating results and cash flows. If our customers must pay additional fines or penalties, it could adversely affect demand for our services.
Our reported financial results may be adversely affected by changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States.
Generally accepted accounting principles in the United States are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB"), the SEC, and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported financial results, and may even affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement or effectiveness of a change.
We have broad discretion in the use of our cash balances and may not use them effectively.
We have broad discretion in the use of our cash balances and may not use them effectively. The failure by our management to apply these funds effectively could adversely affect our business and financial condition. Pending their use, we may invest our cash balances in a manner that does not produce income or that loses value. Our investments may not yield a favorable return to our investors and may negatively impact the price of our securities.

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Risks Related to Our Class A Common Stock
Our Chairman and CEO have control over key decision making as a result of their control of a majority of our voting stock.
As of January 31, 2017, our co-founder and Chairman David Duffield, together with his affiliates, held voting rights with respect to 64 million shares of Class B common stock. In addition, Mr. Duffield holds 0.1 million RSUs, which will be settled in an equivalent number of shares of Class A common stock. As of January 31, 2017, our co-founder and CEO Aneel Bhusri, together with his affiliates, held voting rights with respect to 7 million shares of Class B common stock and 0.1 million shares of Class A common stock. In addition, Mr. Bhusri holds exercisable options to acquire 3 million shares of Class B common stock, 1 million shares of Class B restricted stock and 0.2 million RSUs, which will be settled in an equivalent number of shares of Class A common stock. Further, Messrs. Duffield and Bhusri have entered into a voting agreement under which each has granted a voting proxy with respect to certain Class B common stock beneficially owned by him effective upon his death or incapacity as described in our registration statement on Form S-1 filed in connection with our initial public offering. Messrs. Duffield and Bhusri have each initially designated the other as their respective proxies. Accordingly, upon the death or incapacity of either Mr. Duffield or Mr. Bhusri, the other would individually continue to control the voting of shares subject to the voting proxy. Collectively, the shares described above represent a substantial majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. As a result, Messrs. Duffield and Bhusri have the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. In addition, they have the ability to control the management and affairs of our company as a result of their positions as our Chairman and CEO, respectively, and their ability to control the election of our directors. Mr. Duffield, in his capacity as a board member, and Mr. Bhusri, in his capacity as a board member and officer, each owe a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner they reasonably believe to be in the best interests of our stockholders. As stockholders, even as controlling stockholders, they are entitled to vote their shares in their own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our stockholders generally.
The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control with our Chairman and CEO, and also with other executive officers, directors and affiliates; this will limit or preclude the ability of non-affiliates to influence corporate matters.
Our Class B common stock has ten votes per share and our Class A common stock, which is the stock that is publicly traded, has one vote per share. Stockholders who hold shares of Class B common stock, including our executive officers, directors and other affiliates, together hold a substantial majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock as of January 31, 2017. Because of the ten-to-one voting ratio between our Class B and Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock collectively will continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore be able to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval until the conversion of all shares of all Class A and Class B shares to a single class of common stock on the date that is the first to occur of (i) October 11, 2032, (ii) such time as the shares of Class B common stock represent less than 9% of the outstanding Class A and Class B common stock, (iii) nine months following the death of both Mr. Duffield and Mr. Bhusri, or (iv) the date on which the holders of a majority of the shares of Class B common stock elect to convert all shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock into a single class of common stock. This concentrated control will limit or preclude the ability of non-affiliates to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future.
Future transfers by holders of Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting to Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as certain transfers effected for estate planning purposes. The conversion of Class B common stock to Class A common stock will have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of Class B common stock who retain their shares in the long term. If, for example, our Chairman and CEO retain a significant portion of their holdings of Class B common stock for an extended period of time, they could, in the future, continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock.
Our stock price has been volatile in the past and may be subject to volatility in the future.
The trading price of our Class A common stock has been volatile historically, and could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors described below. These factors, as well as the volatility of our Class A common stock, could also impact the price of our convertible senior notes. The factors that may affect the trading price of our securities, some of which are beyond our control, include: 
overall performance of the equity markets;
fluctuations in the valuation of companies perceived by investors to be comparable to us, such as high-growth or cloud companies, or in valuation metrics, such as our price to revenues ratio;
guidance as to our operating results that we provide to the public, differences between our guidance and market expectations, our failure to meet our guidance or changes in recommendations by securities analysts that follow our securities;
announcements of technological innovations, new applications or enhancements to services, acquisitions, strategic alliances or significant agreements by us or by our competitors;
disruptions in our services due to computer hardware, software or network problems;

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announcements of customer additions and customer cancellations or delays in customer purchases;
recruitment or departure of key personnel;
the economy as a whole, market conditions in our industry, and the industries of our customers;
trading activity by directors, executive officers and significant stockholders, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell their shares;
the exercise of rights held by certain of our stockholders, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or our stockholders;
the size of our market float and significant option exercises;
any future issuances of securities;
sales and purchases of any Class A common stock issued upon conversion of our convertible senior notes or in connection with the convertible note hedge and warrant transactions related to such convertible senior notes;
our operating performance and the performance of other similar companies; and
the sale or availability for sale of a large number of shares of our Class A common stock in the public market.
Additionally, the stock markets have at times experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and may in the future affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. These fluctuations have, in some cases, been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of these companies. Further, the trading prices of publicly traded shares of companies in our industry have been particularly volatile and may be very volatile in the future.
In the past, some companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, which could harm our business.
We have indebtedness in the form of convertible senior notes.
In June 2013, we completed an offering of $350 million of 0.75% convertible senior notes due July 15, 2018 ("2018 Notes"), and we concurrently issued an additional $250 million of 1.50% convertible senior notes due July 15, 2020 ("2020 Notes").
As a result of these convertible notes offerings, we incurred $350 million principal amount of indebtedness, which we may be required to pay at maturity in 2018, and $250 million principal amount of indebtedness, which we may be required to pay at maturity in 2020, or upon the occurrence of a fundamental change (as defined in the applicable indenture). There can be no assurance that we will be able to repay this indebtedness when due, or that we will be able to refinance this indebtedness on acceptable terms or at all. In addition, this indebtedness could, among other things:
make it difficult for us to pay other obligations;
make it difficult to obtain favorable terms for any necessary future financing for working capital, capital expenditures, debt service requirements or other purposes;
require us to dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to service and repay the indebtedness, reducing the amount of cash flow available for other purposes; and
limit our flexibility in planning for and reacting to changes in our business.
Exercise of the warrants associated with our 2018 Notes or our 2020 Notes may affect the price of our Class A common stock.
In connection with our offering of the 2018 Notes, we sold warrants to acquire up to approximately 4.2 million shares of our Class A common stock at an initial strike price of $107.96, which become exercisable beginning on October 15, 2018. In connection with our offering of the 2020 Notes, we sold warrants to acquire up to approximately 3.1 million shares of our Class A common stock at an initial strike price of $107.96, which become exercisable beginning on October 15, 2020. The warrants may be settled in shares or in cash. The exercise of the warrants could have a dilutive effect if the market price per share of our Class A common stock exceeds the strike price of the warrants. The counterparties to the warrant transactions and note hedge transactions relating to the 2018 Notes and the 2020 Notes are likely to enter into or unwind various derivative instruments with respect to our Class A common stock or purchase or sell shares of our Class A common stock or other securities linked to or referencing our Class A common stock in secondary market transactions prior to the respective maturity of the 2018 Notes and the 2020 Notes. These activities could adversely affect the trading price of our Class A common stock.
Delaware law and provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws could make a merger, tender offer, or proxy contest difficult, thereby depressing the market price of our Class A common stock.
Our status as a Delaware corporation and the anti-takeover provisions of the Delaware General Corporation Law may discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control by prohibiting us from engaging in a business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years after the person becomes an interested stockholder, even if a change of control would be beneficial to our existing stockholders. In addition, our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws contain provisions that may make the acquisition of our company more difficult, including the following:

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any transaction that would result in a change in control of our company requires the approval of a majority of our outstanding Class B common stock voting as a separate class;
our dual class common stock structure, which provides our chairman and CEO with the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring stockholder approval, even if they own significantly less than a majority of the shares of our outstanding Class A and Class B common stock;
our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors with staggered three-year terms and directors are only able to be removed from office for cause;
when the outstanding shares of our Class B common stock represent less than a majority of the combined voting power of common stock:
certain amendments to our restated certificate of incorporation or restated bylaws will require the approval of two-thirds of the combined vote of our then-outstanding shares of Class A and Class B common stock;
our stockholders will only be able to take action at a meeting of stockholders and not by written consent; and
vacancies on our board of directors will be able to be filled only by our board of directors and not by stockholders;
only our chairman of the board, chief executive officer, either co-president, or a majority of our board of directors are authorized to call a special meeting of stockholders;
certain litigation against us can only be brought in Delaware;
we will have two classes of common stock until the date that is the first to occur of (i) October 11, 2032, (ii) such time as the shares of Class B common stock represent less than 9% of the outstanding Class A and Class B common stock, (iii) nine months following the death of both Mr. Duffield and Mr. Bhusri, or (iv) the date on which the holders of a majority of the shares of Class B common stock elect to convert all shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock into a single class of common stock;
our restated certificate of incorporation authorizes undesignated preferred stock, the terms of which may be established, and shares of which may be issued, without the approval of the holders of Class A common stock; and
advance notice procedures apply for stockholders to nominate candidates for election as directors or to bring matters before an annual meeting of stockholders.
These anti-takeover defenses could discourage, delay or prevent a transaction involving a change in control of our company. These provisions could also discourage proxy contests and make it more difficult for stockholders to elect directors of their choosing and to cause us to take other corporate actions they desire, any of which, under certain circumstances, could depress the market price of our securities.
If securities or industry analysts publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, or discontinue publishing research about our business, the price and trading volume of our securities could decline.
The trading market for our securities will depend in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our Class A common stock or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, the price of our securities would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our securities could decrease, which might cause the price and trading volume of our securities to decline.
We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.
We have never declared nor paid cash dividends on our capital 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 pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Consequently, stockholders must rely on sales of their common stock after price appreciation as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment.
ITEM 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
None.
ITEM 2. PROPERTIES
Our corporate headquarters, which includes operations and product development facilities, is located in Pleasanton, California. It consists of approximately 631,000 square feet of leased facilities, 267,000 square feet of owned facilities, and a 6.9 acre parcel of leased land. The land lease will expire in 2108.
324,000 square feet of our leased facilities in Pleasanton, California are owned by an affiliate of our Chairman, Mr. Duffield. We expect to continue to lease additional space from the affiliate in the coming year and beyond. We have and will continue to seek independent evaluations of current market rates at the time of lease negotiations with the goal of leasing at a rate comparable to the current market price.

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In addition, we lease office space in various locations throughout North America, Europe and Asia totaling approximately 643,000 square feet. We also lease data centers throughout North America and Europe.
We expect to expand our facilities capacity at our corporate headquarters and in certain field locations during fiscal 2018 to support our continued growth. We believe that we will be able to obtain additional space at commercially reasonable terms.
ITEM 3. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
From time to time, we are or may be involved in various legal proceedings arising from the normal course of business including matters related to alleged infringement of third-party patents and other intellectual property rights, commercial, employment and other claims. We are not presently a party to any litigation the outcome of which we believe, if determined adversely to us, would individually or taken together have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, cash flows or financial condition. Defending such proceedings is costly and can impose a significant burden on management and employees, we may receive unfavorable preliminary or interim rulings in the course of litigation, and there can be no assurances that favorable final outcomes will be obtained. The resolution of legal matters could prevent us from offering one or more of our products, services or features to others, could require us to change our technology or business practices, pay monetary damages or enter into short- or long-term royalty or licensing agreements, or could otherwise be material to our financial condition or cash flows, or both, or adversely affect our operating results.
ITEM 4. MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES
Not applicable.

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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 Class A common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “WDAY.”
The following table sets forth for the indicated periods the high and low intra-day sales prices of our Class A common stock as reported by the New York Stock Exchange.
 
High
 
Low
Year ended January 31, 2017
 
 
 
First quarter
$
80.00

 
$
47.32

Second quarter
85.00

 
69.00

Third quarter
93.35

 
78.34

Fourth quarter
87.26

 
65.79

Year ended January 31, 2016
 
 
 
First quarter
$
95.17

 
$
78.40

Second quarter
93.62

 
74.26

Third quarter
84.84

 
65.33

Fourth quarter
85.67

 
60.17

Our Class B common stock is not listed or traded on any stock exchange.
Dividend Policy
We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings for use in the operation of our business and do not intend to declare or pay any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Any further determination to pay dividends on our capital stock will be at the discretion of our board of directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors considers relevant.
Stockholders
As of January 31, 2017, there were 29 stockholders of record of our Class A common stock, including The Depository Trust Company, which holds shares of our common stock on behalf of an indeterminate number of beneficial owners, as well as 198 stockholders of record of our Class B common stock.
Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans
The information concerning our equity compensation plans is incorporated by reference herein to the section of the Proxy Statement entitled “Equity Compensation Plan Information.”
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 of 1933, as amended, except to the extent we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing.

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This chart compares the cumulative total return on our common stock with that of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 1500 Application Software Index. The chart assumes $100 was invested at the close of market on October 12, 2012, in the Class A common stock of Workday, Inc., the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 1500 Application Software Index, and assumes the reinvestment of any dividends. The stock price performance on the following graph is not necessarily indicative of future stock price performance.
wday-013120_chartx32183a01.jpg
 
Base
Period
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Company/Index
10/12/2012
 
1/31/2013
 
1/31/2014
 
1/31/2015
 
1/31/2016
 
1/31/2017
Workday, Inc.
$
100.00

 
$
109.71

 
$
183.90

 
$
163.20

 
$
129.41

 
$
170.65

S&P 500 Index
100.00

 
105.57

 
128.26

 
146.50

 
145.51

 
174.65

S&P 1500 Application Software Index
100.00

 
110.49

 
138.28

 
151.34

 
171.74

 
218.13

ITEM 6. SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA
The consolidated statements of operations data and the consolidated balance sheets data are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements and should be read together with “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”, our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this filing. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of our results in any future period.
 

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Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
 
2014
 
2013
 
(in thousands, except per share data)
Consolidated Statements of Operations Data:
 
 
 
Revenues:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Subscription services
$
1,287,104

 
$
929,234

 
$
613,328

 
$
354,169

 
$
190,320

Professional services
282,303

 
233,112

 
174,532

 
114,769

 
83,337

Total revenues
1,569,407

 
1,162,346

 
787,860

 
468,938

 
273,657

Costs and expenses(1):
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Costs of subscription services
213,389

 
149,869

 
102,476

 
69,195

 
39,251

Costs of professional services
270,156

 
224,558

 
162,327

 
107,615

 
77,284

Product development
680,531

 
469,944

 
316,868

 
182,116

 
102,665

Sales and marketing
583,874

 
434,056

 
315,840

 
197,373

 
123,440

General and administrative
198,122

 
148,578

 
106,051

 
65,921

 
48,880

Total costs and expenses
1,946,072

 
1,427,005

 
1,003,562

 
622,220

 
391,520

Operating loss
(376,665
)
 
(264,659
)
 
(215,702
)
 
(153,282
)
 
(117,863
)
Other expense, net
(32,427
)
 
(24,242
)
 
(30,270
)
 
(17,549
)
 
(1,203
)
Loss before provision for (benefit from) income taxes
(409,092
)
 
(288,901
)
 
(245,972
)
 
(170,831
)
 
(119,066
)
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes
(814
)
 
1,017

 
2,010

 
1,678

 
124

Net loss
(408,278
)
 
(289,918
)
 
(247,982
)
 
(172,509
)
 
(119,190
)
Accretion of redeemable convertible preferred stock

 

 

 

 
(568
)
Net loss attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders
$
(408,278
)
 
$
(289,918
)
 
$
(247,982
)
 
$
(172,509
)
 
$
(119,758
)
Net loss per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders, basic and diluted
$
(2.06
)
 
$
(1.53
)
 
$
(1.35
)
 
$
(1.01
)
 
$
(1.62
)
Weighted-average shares used to compute net loss per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders
198,214

 
190,016

 
183,702

 
171,297

 
74,011

(1) 
Costs and expenses include share-based compensation expenses as follows (in thousands):
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
 
2014
 
2013
Costs of subscription services
$
20,773

 
$
12,060

 
$
6,053

 
$
2,408

 
$
601

Costs of professional services
26,833

 
19,526

 
12,890

 
4,818

 
1,312

Product development
166,529

 
109,362

 
63,938

 
21,644

 
3,528

Sales and marketing
86,229

 
51,617

 
29,875

 
12,131

 
2,717

General and administrative
78,265

 
57,405

 
43,292

 
20,850

 
7,170

 

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As of January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
 
2014
 
2013
 
 
 
(in thousands)
 
 
Consolidated Balance Sheet Data:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Cash and cash equivalents
$
539,923

 
$
300,087

 
$
298,192

 
$
581,326

 
$
84,158

Marketable securities
1,456,822

 
1,669,372

 
1,559,517

 
1,305,253

 
706,181

Working capital
1,200,078

 
1,439,629

 
1,467,122

 
1,601,768

 
629,528

Property and equipment, net
365,877

 
214,158

 
140,136

 
77,664

 
44,585

Total assets
3,166,424

 
2,730,094

 
2,350,090

 
2,165,640

 
959,080

Total unearned revenue
1,233,387

 
899,729

 
632,744

 
413,565

 
285,260

Convertible senior notes, net
534,423

 
507,476

 
481,958

 
457,787

 

Total liabilities
2,003,518

 
1,593,937

 
1,224,115

 
978,423

 
366,797

Total stockholders’ equity
1,162,906

 
1,136,157

 
1,125,975

 
1,187,217

 
592,283

 
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
 
2014
 
2013
 
(in thousands)
Cash Flow Data:
 
 
 
 
 
Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities
$
348,655

 
$
258,637

 
$
102,003

 
$
46,263

 
$
11,214

Free cash flows(2)
227,842

 
124,970

 
(1,643
)
 
(29,577
)
 
(23,401
)
(2) 
Free cash flows, a non-GAAP financial measure, is defined as net cash provided by (used in) operating activities minus capital expenditures (excluding owned real estate projects). Adjusting items are separately presented on our consolidated statements of cash flows. See Item 7 of Part II, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Non-GAAP Financial Measures” for further information.

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ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
You should read the following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included elsewhere in this report. The following discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates and beliefs. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this report, particularly in “Risk Factors.”
Overview
Workday provides financial management, human capital management, and analytics applications designed for the world's largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. We offer innovative and adaptable technology focused on the consumer Internet experience and cloud delivery model. Our applications are designed for global enterprises to manage complex and dynamic operating environments. We provide our customers highly adaptable, accessible and reliable applications to manage critical business functions that enable them to optimize their financial and human capital resources.
We were founded in 2005 to deliver cloud applications to global enterprises. Our applications are designed around the way people work today – in an environment that is global, collaborative, fast-paced and mobile. Our cycle of frequent updates has facilitated rapid innovation and the introduction of new applications throughout our history. We began offering our Human Capital Management application in 2006, and our Financial Management application in 2007. Since then we have continued to invest in innovation and have consistently introduced new services to our customers.
We offer Workday applications to our customers on an enterprise-wide subscription basis, typically with three-year terms and with subscription fees largely based on the size of the customer’s workforce. We generally recognize revenues from subscription fees ratably over the term of the contract. We currently derive a substantial majority of our subscription services revenues from subscriptions to our HCM application. We market our applications through our direct sales force.
We have achieved significant growth in a relatively short period of time. Our diverse customer base includes medium-sized and large, global companies, and our direct sales force generally targets organizations with more than 1,000 workers. A substantial amount of our growth comes from new customers. Our current financial focus is on growing our revenues and expanding our customer base. While we are incurring losses today, we strive to invest in a disciplined manner across all of our functional areas to sustain continued near-term revenue growth and support our long-term initiatives. Our operating expenses have increased significantly in absolute dollars in recent periods, primarily due to the significant growth of our employee population. We had approximately 6,600 and approximately 5,200 employees as of January 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively.
We intend to continue investing for long-term growth. We have invested, and expect to continue to invest, heavily in our application development efforts to deliver additional compelling applications and to address customers’ evolving needs. In addition, we plan to continue to expand our ability to sell our applications globally, particularly in Europe and Asia, by investing in product development and customer support to address the business needs of local markets, increasing our sales and marketing organizations, acquiring, building and/or leasing additional office space, and expanding our ecosystem of services partners to support local deployments. We expect to make further significant investments in our data center infrastructure as we plan for future growth. We are also investing in personnel to service our growing customer base. These investments will increase our costs on an absolute basis in the near-term. Many of these investments will occur in advance of experiencing any direct benefit from them and will make it difficult to determine if we are allocating our resources efficiently. We expect our product development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses as a percentage of total revenues to decrease over time as we grow our revenues, and we anticipate that we will gain economies of scale by increasing our customer base without direct incremental development costs and by utilizing more of the capacity of our data centers.
Since inception, we have invested heavily in our professional services organization to help ensure that customers successfully deploy and adopt our applications. Additionally, we continue to expand our professional services partner ecosystem to further support our customers. We believe our investment in professional services, as well as partners building consulting practices around Workday, will drive additional customer subscriptions and continued growth in revenues. Due to the expanding partner ecosystem, we expect that the rate of professional services revenue growth will decline over time and continue to be lower than subscription revenue growth.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenues
We primarily derive our revenues from subscription services fees and professional services fees. Subscription services revenues primarily consist of fees that give our customers access to our cloud applications, which include routine customer support. Professional services fees include deployment services, optimization services, and training.

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Subscription services revenues accounted for 82% of our total revenues during fiscal 2017 and represented 97% of our total unearned revenue as of January 31, 2017. Subscription services revenues are driven primarily by the number of customers, the number of workers at each customer, the specific applications subscribed to by each customer, and the price of our applications.
The mix of the applications to which a customer subscribes can affect our financial performance due to price differentials in our applications. Pricing for our applications varies based on many factors, including the maturity of the product and its acceptance in the marketplace. New products or services offerings by competitors in the future could also impact the mix and pricing of our offerings.
Subscription services fees are generally recognized ratably as revenues over the contract term beginning on the date the application is made available to the customer, which is generally within one to two weeks of contract signature. Our subscription contracts typically have a term of three years or more and are non-cancelable. We generally invoice our customers in advance, in annual installments. Amounts that have been invoiced are initially recorded as unearned revenue. Amounts that have not yet been invoiced represent backlog and are not reflected in our consolidated financial statements.
The majority of our consulting engagements are billed on a time and materials basis, and revenues are typically recognized as the services are performed. We offer a number of training options intended to support our customers in configuring, using and administering our services. In some cases, we supplement our consulting teams by subcontracting resources from our service partners and deploying them on customer engagements. As Workday’s professional services organization and the Workday-related consulting practices of our partner firms continue to develop, we expect the partners to increasingly contract directly with our subscription customers. As a result of this trend, and the increase of our subscription services revenues, we expect professional services revenues as a percentage of total revenues to decline over time.
Costs and Expenses
Costs of subscription services revenues. Costs of subscription services revenues consist primarily of employee-related expenses related to hosting our applications and providing customer support, the costs of data center capacity, and depreciation of computer equipment and software.
Costs of professional services revenues. Costs of professional services revenues consist primarily of employee-related expenses associated with these services, the cost of subcontractors and travel. The percentage of total revenues derived from professional services was 18% in fiscal 2017. The cost of providing professional services is significantly higher as a percentage of the related revenues than for our subscription services.
Product development. Product development expenses consist primarily of employee-related costs. We continue to focus our product development efforts on adding new features and applications, increasing the functionality and enhancing the ease of use of our cloud applications.
Sales and marketing. Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of employee-related costs, sales commissions, marketing programs and travel. Marketing programs consist of advertising, events, corporate communications, brand building and product marketing activities. Commissions earned by our sales force that can be associated specifically with a non-cancelable subscription contract are generally deferred and amortized over the same period that revenues are recognized for the related non-cancelable contract.
General and administrative. General and administrative expenses consist of employee-related costs for finance and accounting, legal, human resources and management information systems personnel, professional fees and other corporate expenses.
Results of Operations
Revenues
Our total revenues for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015 were as follows:
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
 
2016 to 2017
% Change
 
2015 to 2016
% Change
 
(in thousands, except percentages)
Subscription services
$
1,287,104

 
$
929,234

 
$
613,328

 
39
%
 
52
%
Professional services
282,303

 
233,112

 
174,532

 
21
%
 
34
%
Total revenues
$
1,569,407

 
$
1,162,346

 
$
787,860

 
35
%
 
48
%

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Total revenues were $1.6 billion for fiscal 2017, compared to $1.2 billion for fiscal 2016, an increase of $407 million, or 35%. Subscription services revenues were $1.3 billion for fiscal 2017, compared to $929 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $358 million, or 39%. The increase in subscription revenues was due primarily to an increased number of customer contracts as compared to the prior year. Professional services revenues were $282 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $233 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $49 million, or 21%. The increase in professional services revenues was due primarily to our delivery of services to a greater number of customers.
Total revenues were $1.2 billion for fiscal 2016, compared to $788 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $374 million, or 48%. Subscription services revenues were $929 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $613 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $316 million, or 52%. The increase in subscription revenues was due primarily to an increased number of customer contracts as compared to the prior year. Professional services revenues were $233 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $175 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $58 million, or 34%. The increase in professional services revenues was due primarily to our delivery of services to a greater number of customers.
Operating Expenses
GAAP operating expenses were $1.9 billion for fiscal 2017, compared to $1.4 billion for fiscal 2016, an increase of $0.5 billion, or 36%. The increases were primarily due to an increase of $0.4 billion in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount and $0.1 billion in expenses related to facilities, IT, depreciation, amortization and service contracts to expand data center capacity.
GAAP operating expenses were $1.4 billion for fiscal 2016, compared to $1.0 billion for fiscal 2015, an increase of $0.4 billion, or 42%. The increases were primarily due to an increase of $0.3 billion in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount and $0.1 billion in expenses related to facilities, IT, depreciation and amortization.
We use the non-GAAP financial measure of non-GAAP operating expenses to understand and compare operating results across accounting periods, for internal budgeting and forecasting purposes, for short- and long-term operating plans, and to evaluate our financial performance and the ability of operations to generate cash. We believe that non-GAAP operating expenses reflect our ongoing business in a manner that allows for meaningful period-to-period comparisons and analysis of trends in our business, as they exclude expenses that are not reflective of ongoing operating results. We also believe that non-GAAP operating expenses provide useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating results and future prospects in the same manner as management and in comparing financial results across accounting periods and to those of peer companies.
Non-GAAP operating expenses are calculated by excluding share-based compensation expenses, and certain other expenses, which consist of employer payroll tax-related items on employee stock transactions and amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets.
Non-GAAP operating expenses were $1.5 billion for fiscal 2017, compared to $1.2 billion for fiscal 2016, an increase of $0.3 billion, or 32%, primarily due to an increase in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount.
Non-GAAP operating expenses were $1.2 billion for fiscal 2016, compared to $0.8 billion for fiscal 2015, an increase of $0.4 billion, or 39%. The increases were primarily due to an increase of $0.2 billion in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount and $0.1 billion in expenses related to facilities, IT, depreciation and amortization.
Reconciliations of our GAAP to non-GAAP operating expenses were as follows (in thousands):
 
Year Ended January 31, 2017
 
GAAP Operating
Expenses
 
Share-Based
Compensation
Expenses
(1)
 
Other
Operating
Expenses
 (2)
 
Non-GAAP Operating
Expenses
(3)
Costs of subscription services
$
213,389

 
$
(20,773
)
 
$
(730
)
 
$
191,886

Costs of professional services
270,156

 
(26,833
)
 
(1,199
)
 
242,124

Product development
680,531

 
(166,529
)
 
(18,533
)
 
495,469

Sales and marketing
583,874

 
(86,229
)
 
(3,316
)
 
494,329

General and administrative
198,122

 
(78,265
)
 
(3,302
)
 
116,555

Total costs and expenses
$
1,946,072

 
$
(378,629
)
 
$
(27,080
)
 
$
1,540,363


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Year Ended January 31, 2016
 
GAAP Operating
Expenses
 
Share-Based
Compensation
Expenses
(1)
 
Other
Operating
Expenses
 (2)
 
Non-GAAP Operating
Expenses
(3)
Costs of subscription services
$
149,869

 
$
(12,060
)
 
$
(414
)
 
$
137,395

Costs of professional services
224,558

 
(19,526
)
 
(768
)
 
204,264

Product development
469,944

 
(109,362
)
 
(7,201
)
 
353,381

Sales and marketing
434,056

 
(51,617
)
 
(1,482
)
 
380,957

General and administrative
148,578

 
(57,405
)
 
(2,095
)
 
89,078

Total costs and expenses
$
1,427,005

 
$
(249,970
)
 
$
(11,960
)
 
$
1,165,075

 
Year Ended January 31, 2015
 
GAAP Operating
Expenses
 
Share-Based
Compensation
Expenses
(1)
 
Other
Operating
Expenses
 (2)
 
Non-GAAP Operating
Expenses
(3)
Costs of subscription services
$
102,476

 
$
(6,053
)
 
$
(204
)
 
$
96,219

Costs of professional services
162,327

 
(12,890
)
 
(451
)
 
148,986

Product development
316,868

 
(63,938
)
 
(3,221
)
 
249,709

Sales and marketing
315,840

 
(29,875
)
 
(1,420
)
 
284,545

General and administrative
106,051

 
(43,292
)
 
(1,202
)
 
61,557

Total costs and expenses
$
1,003,562

 
$
(156,048
)
 
$
(6,498
)
 
$
841,016

(1) 
Share-based compensation expenses were $379 million, $250 million and $156 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. The increase in share-based compensation expenses was primarily due to grants of RSUs to existing and new employees. During fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, the realized excess tax benefits related to share-based compensation were immaterial.
(2) 
Other operating expenses include employer payroll tax-related items on employee stock transactions of $14 million, $9 million and $5 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. In addition, other operating expenses include amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets of $13 million, $3 million and $1 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. Amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets is recorded as part of product development expenses and sales and marketing expenses.
(3) 
See “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” below for further information.
Costs of Subscription Services
GAAP operating expenses in costs of subscription services were $213 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $150 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $63 million, or 42%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $30 million in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount, $12 million in service contracts expense to expand data center capacity, $12 million in depreciation expense related to our data centers and $6 million in facility and IT-related expenses.
GAAP operating expenses in costs of subscription services were $150 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $102 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $48 million, or 47%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $20 million in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount, $12 million in depreciation expense related to our data centers, $7 million in service contracts expense to expand data center capacity and $6 million in facility and IT-related expenses.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in costs of subscription services were $192 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $137 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $55 million, or 40%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $21 million in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount, $12 million in service contracts expense to expand data center capacity, and $12 million in depreciation expense related to our data centers and $6 million in facility and IT-related expenses.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in costs of subscription services were $137 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $96 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $41 million, or 43%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $13 million in employee-related costs driven by higher headcount, $12 million in depreciation expense related to our data centers, $7 million in service contracts expense to expand data center capacity and $6 million in facility and IT-related expenses.
We expect that GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses in costs of subscription services will continue to increase in absolute dollars as we improve and expand our data center capacity and operations.

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Costs of Professional Services
GAAP operating expenses in costs of professional services were $270 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $225 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $45 million, or 20%. This increase was primarily due to increases of $45 million to staff our deployment and integration engagements.
GAAP operating expenses in costs of professional services were $225 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $162 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $63 million, or 39%. This increase was primarily due to increases of $51 million to staff our deployment and integration engagements and $6 million in facility and IT-related expenses.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in costs of professional services were $242 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $204 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $38 million, or 19%. This increase was primarily due to increases of $38 million to staff our deployment and integration engagements.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in costs of professional services were $204 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $149 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $55 million, or 37%. This increase was primarily due to increases of $37 million to staff our deployment and integration engagements and $6 million in facility and IT-related expenses.
Going forward, we expect GAAP and non-GAAP costs of professional services as a percentage of total revenues to continue to decline as we increasingly rely on our service partners to deploy our applications and as the number of our customers continues to grow. For fiscal 2018, we anticipate GAAP and non-GAAP professional services margins to be lower than fiscal 2017 as we invest in programs to ensure ongoing customer success.
Product Development
GAAP operating expenses in product development were $681 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $470 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $211 million, or 45%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $166 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount, $24 million in facility and IT-related expenses, $10 million in amortization expense for our acquisition-related intangible assets and $6 million in third party costs for hardware maintenance and data center capacity.
GAAP operating expenses in product development were $470 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $317 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $153 million, or 48%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $129 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount, $20 million in facility and IT-related expenses and $4 million in third party costs for hardware maintenance and data center capacity.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in product development were $495 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $353 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $142 million, or 40%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $108 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount, $24 million in facility and IT-related expenses and $6 million in third party costs for hardware maintenance and data center capacity.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in product development were $353 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $250 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $103 million, or 41%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $73 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount, $20 million in facility and IT-related expenses and $4 million in third party costs for hardware maintenance and data center capacity.
We expect that GAAP and non-GAAP product development expenses will continue to increase in absolute dollars as we improve and extend our applications and develop new technologies.
Sales and Marketing
GAAP operating expenses in sales and marketing were $584 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $434 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $150 million, or 35%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $119 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount and higher commissionable sales volume, $12 million in advertising, marketing and event costs, $10 million in facility and IT-related expenses and $7 million in travel.
GAAP operating expenses in sales and marketing were $434 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $316 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $118 million, or 37%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $87 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount and higher commissionable sales volume, $15 million in advertising, marketing and event costs, $10 million in facility and IT-related expenses and $6 million in travel.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in sales and marketing were $494 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $381 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $113 million, or 30%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $83 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount and higher commissionable sales volume, $12 million in advertising, marketing and event costs, $10 million in facility and IT-related expenses and $7 million in travel.

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Non-GAAP operating expenses in sales and marketing were $381 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $285 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $96 million, or 34%. The increase was primarily due to increases of $60 million in employee-related costs due to higher headcount and higher commissionable sales volume, $15 million in advertising, marketing and event costs, $10 million in facility and IT-related expenses and $6 million in travel.
We expect that GAAP and non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses will continue to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to invest in the expansion of our domestic and international selling and marketing activities to build brand awareness and attract new customers.
General and Administrative
GAAP operating expenses in general and administrative were $198 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $149 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $49 million, or 33%. The increase was primarily due to $41 million in higher employee-related costs due to higher headcount and $8 million in higher professional services costs including consulting, legal and audit.
GAAP operating expenses in general and administrative were $149 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $106 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $43 million, or 41%. The increase was primarily due to $23 million in higher employee-related costs due to higher headcount and $10 million in higher professional services costs including consulting, legal and audit.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in general and administrative were $117 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $89 million for fiscal 2016, an increase of $28 million, or 31%. The increase was primarily due to $20 million in higher employee-related costs due to higher headcount and $8 million in higher professional services costs including consulting, legal and audit.
Non-GAAP operating expenses in general and administrative were $89 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $62 million for fiscal 2015, an increase of $27 million, or 44%. The increase was primarily due to $13 million in higher employee-related costs due to higher headcount and $10 million in higher professional services costs including consulting, legal and audit.
We expect GAAP and non-GAAP general and administrative expenses will continue to increase in absolute dollars as we further invest in our infrastructure and support our global expansion.
Operating Margins
GAAP operating margins declined from (22.8)% for fiscal 2016 to (24.0)% for fiscal 2017. The reductions in our GAAP operating margins were primarily due to higher share-based compensation and other operating expenses, including a one-time acquisition expense, offset by higher revenues.
GAAP operating margins improved from (27.4)% for fiscal 2015 to (22.8)% for fiscal 2016. The improvements in our GAAP operating margin was primarily due to higher subscription services revenues, higher professional services revenues and improvements in operating leverage.
We use non-GAAP operating margins to understand and compare operating results across accounting periods, for internal budgeting and forecasting purposes, for short- and long-term operating plans, and to evaluate our financial performance and the ability of operations to generate cash. We believe that non-GAAP operating margins reflect our ongoing business in a manner that allows for meaningful period-to-period comparisons and analysis of trends in our business, as they exclude expenses that are not reflective of ongoing operating results. We also believe that non-GAAP operating margins provide useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating results and future prospects in the same manner as management and in comparing financial results across accounting periods and to those of peer companies.
Non-GAAP operating margins are calculated using GAAP revenues and non-GAAP operating expenses. See “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” below for further information.

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Non-GAAP operating margins improved from (0.2)% for fiscal 2016 to 1.9% for fiscal 2017. The improvements in our non-GAAP operating margin was primarily due to higher subscription services revenues, higher professional services revenues and improvements in operating leverage.
Non-GAAP operating margins improved from (6.7)% for fiscal 2015 to (0.2)% for fiscal 2016. The improvements in our non-GAAP operating margin was primarily due to higher subscription services revenues, higher professional services revenues and improvements in operating leverage.
Reconciliations of our GAAP to non-GAAP operating margins were as follows:
 
Year ended January 31, 2017
 
GAAP
Operating
Expenses
 
Share-Based
Compensation
Expenses
 
Other
Operating
Expenses
 
Non-GAAP
Operating
Expenses (1)
Operating margin
(24.0
)%
 
24.1
%
 
1.8
%
 
1.9
%
 
Year ended January 31, 2016
 
GAAP
Operating
Expenses
 
Share-Based
Compensation
Expenses
 
Other
Operating
Expenses
 
Non-GAAP
Operating
Expenses (1)
Operating margin
(22.8
)%
 
21.6
%
 
1.0
%
 
(0.2
)%
 
Year ended January 31, 2015
 
GAAP
Operating
Expenses
 
Share-Based
Compensation
Expenses
 
Other
Operating
Expenses
 
Non-GAAP
Operating
Expenses (1)
Operating margin
(27.4
)%
 
19.8
%
 
0.9
%
 
(6.7
)%
(1) 
See “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” below for further information.
Other Expense, Net
Other expense, net, was $32 million, $24 million, and $30 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. The increase in other expense, net for fiscal 2017 compared to fiscal 2016 was primarily due to the impairment of a cost method investment in fiscal 2017 of $15 million offset by an increase in interest income of $6 million. The decrease in other expense, net for fiscal 2016 compared to fiscal 2015 was primarily due to the gain on sale of a cost method investment in fiscal 2016 of $3 million.
The contractual cash interest expense related to the convertible senior notes was $6 million per year for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015. The associated non-cash interest expense related to amortization of the debt discount and amortization of debt issuance costs was $27 million, $26 million and $24 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
As of January 31, 2017, our principal sources of liquidity were cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaling $2.0 billion, which were held for working capital purposes. Our cash equivalents and marketable securities are composed primarily of U.S. agency obligations, U.S. treasury securities, corporate bonds, commercial paper, and money market funds.
We have financed our operations primarily through sales of equity securities, customer payments, and issuance of debt. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including our customer growth rate, subscription renewal activity, the timing of construction of facilities in Pleasanton, California and acquisition of additional facilities, the timing and extent of development efforts, the expansion of sales and marketing activities, the introduction of new and enhanced services offerings, the continuing market acceptance of our services, and acquisition activities. We may enter into arrangements to acquire or invest in complementary businesses, services and technologies or intellectual property rights in the future. We also may choose to seek additional equity or debt financing.

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Our cash flows for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015 were as follows:
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
 
(in thousands)
Net cash provided by (used in):
 
 
 
 
 
Operating activities
$
348,655

 
$
258,637

 
$
102,003

Investing activities
(168,885
)
 
(300,147
)
 
(404,167
)
Financing activities
59,681

 
44,109

 
19,455

Effect of exchange rate changes
385

 
(704
)
 
(425
)
Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents
$
239,836

 
$
1,895

 
$
(283,134
)
Operating Activities
Cash provided by operating activities was $349 million, $259 million and $102 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively. The improvements in cash flows provided by operating activities in both fiscal 2017 and 2016 compared to prior fiscal years resulted primarily from increased cash collections driven by growth in our customer sales contracts, partially offset by increases in our headcount related and other operational expenses.
Investing Activities
Cash used in investing activities for fiscal 2017 was $169 million, which was primarily the result of timing of purchase and maturities of marketable securities, a net cash outflow of $148 million related to acquisitions, $73 million spent on acquisition of and renovations to office buildings and land in Pleasanton, California, capital expenditures for the development center of $34 million and capital expenditures for data center and office space projects of $121 million. These payments were partially offset by proceeds of $133 million from the sale of available-for-sale securities and $5 million from the maturity of a cost method investment.
Cash used in investing activities for fiscal 2016 was $300 million, which was primarily the result of timing of purchase and maturities of marketable securities, a net cash outflow of $31 million related to acquisitions, capital expenditures for data center and office space projects of $134 million and cash paid to purchase cost method investments of $17 million. These payments were offset by proceeds of $103 million from the sale of available-for-sale securities and $4 million from the sale of a cost method investment.
Cash used in investing activities for fiscal 2015 was $404 million, which was primarily the result of timing of purchase and maturities of marketable securities, a net cash outflow of $26 million related to acquisitions, capital expenditures for data center and office space projects of $104 million and cash paid to purchase cost method investments of $10 million. These payments were offset by proceeds of $53 million from the sale of available-for-sale securities.
We expect capital expenditures, excluding owned real estate projects, will be approximately $160 million for fiscal 2018. We expect that these capital outlays will largely be used to expand the infrastructure of our data centers and to build out additional office space to support our growth. We began construction of our development center, consisting of approximately 410,000 square feet of office space in Pleasanton, California, during fiscal 2017. We expect capital expenditures related to owned real estate projects will be approximately $175 million for fiscal 2018.
Financing Activities
For fiscal 2017, cash provided by financing activities was $60 million, primarily as a result of $58 million of proceeds from the issuance of common stock from employee equity plans.
For fiscal 2016, cash provided by financing activities was $44 million, primarily as a result of $46 million of proceeds from the issuance of common stock from employee equity plans, partially offset by $3 million in principal payments on our capital lease obligations.
For fiscal 2015, cash provided by financing activities was $19 million, primarily as a result of $36 million of proceeds from the issuance of common stock from employee equity plans, partially offset by $10 million in principal payments on our capital lease obligations and $8 million of Class A common share repurchases for tax withholdings on vesting of restricted stock.

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Free Cash Flows
In evaluating our performance internally, we focus on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flows. We define free cash flows, a non-GAAP financial measure, as net cash provided by (used in) operating activities minus capital expenditures (excluding owned real estate projects). See “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” below for further information.
Free cash flows improved by $103 million to $228 million for fiscal 2017, compared to $125 million for fiscal 2016. The improvement was primarily due to increases in sales and the related cash collections, partially offset by higher operating expenses driven by increased headcount.
Free cash flows improved by $127 million to $125 million for fiscal 2016, compared to $(2) million for fiscal 2015. The improvement was primarily due to increases in sales and the related cash collections, partially offset by increases in capital expenditures (excluding owned real estate projects) and higher operating expenses driven by increased headcount.
Reconciliations of Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities to free cash flows were as follows (in thousands):
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities
$
348,655

 
$
258,637

 
$
102,003

Capital expenditures, excluding owned real estate projects
(120,813
)
 
(133,667
)
 
(103,646
)
Free cash flows
$
227,842

 
$
124,970

 
$
(1,643
)
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
Regulation S-K Item 10(e), “Use of non-GAAP financial measures in Commission filings,” defines and prescribes the conditions for use of non-GAAP financial information. Our measures of non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP operating margin and free cash flows each meet the definition of a non-GAAP financial measure.
Non-GAAP Operating Expenses and non-GAAP Operating Margins
We define non-GAAP operating expenses as our total operating expenses excluding the following components, which we believe are not reflective of our ongoing operational expenses. Similarly, the same components are also excluded from the calculation of non-GAAP operating margins. In each case, for the reasons set forth below, management believes that excluding the component provides useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating results and future prospects in the same manner as management, in comparing financial results across accounting periods and to those of peer companies and to better understand the long-term performance of our core business.
Share-Based Compensation Expenses. Although share-based compensation is an important aspect of the compensation of our employees and executives, management believes it is useful to exclude share-based compensation expenses in order to better understand the long-term performance of our core business and to facilitate comparison of our results to those of peer companies. For restricted stock unit awards, the amount of share-based compensation expenses is not reflective of the value ultimately received by the grant recipients. Moreover, determining the fair value of certain of the share-based instruments we utilize involves a high degree of judgment and estimation and the expense recorded may bear little resemblance to the actual value realized upon the vesting or future exercise of the related share-based awards. Unlike cash compensation, the value of stock options and shares offered under the ESPP, which are elements of our ongoing share-based compensation expenses, is determined using a complex formula that incorporates factors, such as market volatility and forfeiture rates, that are beyond our control.
Other Operating Expenses. Other operating expenses consist of employer payroll tax-related items on employee stock transactions and amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets. The amount of employer payroll tax-related items on employee stock transactions is dependent on our stock price and other factors that are beyond our control and do not correlate to the operation of the business. For business combinations, we generally allocate a portion of the purchase price to intangible assets. The amount of the allocation is based on estimates and assumptions made by management and is subject to amortization. The amount of purchase price allocated to intangible assets and the term of its related amortization can vary significantly and are unique to each acquisition and thus we do not believe it is reflective of our ongoing operations.

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Free Cash Flows
We define free cash flows as net cash provided by (used in) operating activities minus capital expenditures (excluding owned real estate projects). Capital expenditures deducted from cash flows from operations do not include purchases of land and buildings, and construction costs of our new development center and of other owned buildings. We exclude these owned real estate projects as they are infrequent, non-recurring in nature and distinctly separate from our ongoing business operations. We use free cash flows as a measure of financial progress in our business, as it balances operating results, cash management and capital efficiency. We believe information regarding free cash flows provides investors and others with an important perspective on the cash available to make strategic acquisitions and investments, to fund ongoing operations and to fund other capital expenditures.
Limitations on the Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures
A limitation of our non-GAAP financial measures of non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP operating margin and free cash flows is that they do not have uniform definitions. Our definitions will likely differ from the definitions used by other companies, including peer companies, and therefore comparability may be limited. Thus, our non-GAAP financial measures of non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP operating margin and free cash flows should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, or in isolation from, measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. Additionally, in the case of share-based compensation, if we did not pay out a portion of compensation in the form of share-based compensation and related employer payroll tax-related items, the cash salary expense included in costs of revenues and operating expenses would be higher, which would affect our cash position. Further, the non-GAAP financial measure of non-GAAP operating expenses has certain limitations because it does not reflect all items of expense that affect our operations and are reflected in the GAAP financial measure of total operating expenses.
We compensate for these limitations by reconciling GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures and reviewing these measures in conjunction with GAAP financial information. We encourage investors and others to review our financial information in its entirety, not to rely on any single financial measure and to view our non-GAAP financial measures in conjunction with the most comparable GAAP financial measures.
See Results of Operations—Operating Expenses and Results of Operations—Operating Margins for reconciliations from the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, GAAP operating expenses and GAAP operating margins, to the non-GAAP financial measures, non-GAAP operating expenses and non-GAAP operating margins, for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015.
See Liquidity and Capital Resources—Free Cash Flows for a reconciliation from the most comparable GAAP financial measure, Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities, to the non-GAAP financial measure, free cash flow, for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015.
Backlog
We generally sign multiple-year subscription contracts for our applications. The timing of our invoices to each customer is a negotiated term and varies among our subscription contracts. For multiple-year agreements, it is common to invoice an initial amount at contract signing followed by subsequent annual invoices. At any point in the contract term, there can be amounts that we have not yet been contractually able to invoice. Until such time as these amounts are invoiced, they are not recorded in revenues, unearned revenue or elsewhere in our consolidated financial statements. To the extent future invoicing is determined to be certain, we consider those future subscription invoices to be non-cancelable backlog. Future invoicing is determined to be certain when we have a fully executed non-cancelable contract and invoicing is not dependent on a future event such as customer funding or the delivery of a specific product or feature. The amount of non-cancelable subscription contract backlog was $2.5 billion and $1.6 billion as of January 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively.
We expect that the amount of backlog relative to the total value of our contracts will change from year to year due to several factors, including the amount invoiced early in the contract term, the timing and duration of customer subscription agreements, varying invoicing cycles of subscription agreements, the timing of customer renewals, changes in customer financial circumstances and foreign currency fluctuations. Accordingly, we believe that fluctuations in backlog are not always a reliable indicator of future revenues and we do not utilize backlog as a key management metric internally.

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Contractual Obligations
The following table summarizes our consolidated principal contractual cash obligations as of January 31, 2017 (in thousands):
 
Payments Due by Period
 
Total
 
Less than
1 Year
 
1-3
Years
 
3-5
Years
 
More than
5 Years
0.75% Convertible Senior Notes due 2018(1)
$
350,000

 
$

 
$
350,000

 
$

 
$

1.50% Convertible Senior Notes due 2020(1)
250,000

 

 

 
250,000

 

Aggregate interest obligation(2)
16,779

 
6,375

 
8,696

 
1,708

 

Operating lease obligations:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Facilities space, not including related party(3)
155,188

 
42,686

 
52,148

 
28,671

 
31,683

Facilities space with related party
72,234

 
8,489

 
19,128

 
19,906

 
24,711

Computing infrastructure platform obligations
97,500

 
6,000

 
17,000

 
25,000

 
49,500

Other contractual obligations
7,252

 
7,252

 

 

 

Total
$
948,953

 
$
70,802

 
$
446,972

 
$
325,285

 
$
105,894

(1) 
Represents aggregate principal amount of the Notes, without the effect of associated discounts.
(2) 
Represents estimated aggregate interest obligations for our outstanding Notes that are payable in cash.
(3) 
For the 95-year lease we entered in January 2014, the cash obligations exclude the potential annual rental increases based on the increases to the Consumer Price Index ("CPI"). We believe it is likely we will make higher rent payments over the lease term due to future changes in the CPI.
Our contractual obligations primarily consist of our convertible senior notes due in 2018 and 2020, as well as obligations under leases for office space, co-location facilities for data center capacity and computing infrastructure platforms for business operations. For fiscal 2018, we anticipate leasing additional office space near our headquarters and in various other locations around the world to support our growth. In addition, our existing lease agreements often provide us with an option to renew. We expect our future operating lease obligations will increase as we expand our operations.
We are not required to make principal payments under the Notes prior to maturity. If the Notes are not converted to Class A common stock prior to their maturity dates, we are required to repay $350 million in principal on July 15, 2018 and $250 million in principal on July 15, 2020. We are also required to make interest payments on a semi-annual basis at the interest rates described in Note 10 of the notes to the consolidated financial statements.
In January 2014, we entered into a 95-year lease for a 6.9 acre parcel of land in Pleasanton, California, under which we paid $2 million for base rent from commencement through December 31, 2020. Annual rent payments of $0.2 million plus increases based on increases in the consumer price index begin on January 1, 2021 and continue through the end of the lease. During the first quarter of fiscal 2017 we started construction of our new development center, consisting of approximately 410,000 square feet of office space, on this property. The agreement with the contractor for the construction of the development center is not included in the table above because it allows for termination without significant penalty.
Purchase orders are not included in the table above. Our purchase orders represent authorizations to purchase rather than binding agreements. The contractual obligation amounts in the table above are associated with agreements that are enforceable and legally binding and that specify all significant terms, including fixed or minimum services to be used, fixed, minimum or variable price provisions, and the approximate timing of the transaction. Obligations under contracts that we can cancel without a significant penalty are not included in the table above.
Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements
Through January 31, 2017, we did not have any relationships with unconsolidated organizations or financial partnerships, such as structured finance or special purpose entities that would have been established for the purpose of facilitating off-balance sheet arrangements or other contractually narrow or limited purposes.

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Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States. The preparation of these consolidated financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenues, costs and expenses, and related disclosures. On an ongoing basis, we evaluate our estimates and assumptions. Our actual results may differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions.
We believe that of our significant accounting policies, which are described in Note 2 of the notes to the consolidated financial statements, the following accounting policies involve a greater degree of judgment and complexity. Accordingly, these are the policies we believe are the most critical to aid in fully understanding and evaluating our consolidated financial condition and results of operations.
Revenue Recognition
We derive our revenues primarily from subscription services fees and from professional services fees, including training. We sell subscriptions to our cloud applications through contracts that are generally three years or more in length. Our arrangements are generally non-cancelable. Our subscription contracts do not provide customers with the right to take possession of the software supporting the applications and, as a result, are accounted for as service contracts.
We commence revenue recognition for our cloud applications and professional services when all of the following criteria are met:
There is persuasive evidence of an arrangement;
The service has been or is being provided to the customer;
Collection of the fees is reasonably assured; and
The amount of fees to be paid by the customer is fixed or determinable.
Subscription Services Revenues
Subscription services revenues are generally recognized ratably over the contractual term of the arrangement beginning on the date that our service is made available to the customer, assuming all revenue recognition criteria have been met.
Professional Services Revenues
Professional services revenues are generally recognized as the services are rendered for time and materials contracts, or on a proportional performance basis for fixed price contracts. The majority of our professional services contracts are on a time and materials basis. Training revenues are recognized as the services are rendered.
Multiple Deliverable Arrangements
For arrangements with multiple deliverables, we evaluate whether the individual deliverables qualify as separate units of accounting. In order to treat deliverables in a multiple deliverable arrangement as separate units of accounting, the deliverables must have standalone value upon delivery. If the deliverables have standalone value upon delivery, we account for each deliverable separately and revenue is recognized for the respective deliverables as they are delivered.
Subscription contracts have standalone value as we sell the subscriptions separately. All of our professional services have standalone value and can be accounted for separately from subscription services, given the availability of the professional services from other vendors, the nature of our professional services and ongoing sales of our applications to new customers without professional services.
When multiple deliverables included in an arrangement are separable into different units of accounting, the arrangement consideration is allocated to the identified separate units of accounting based on their relative selling price. Multiple deliverable arrangement accounting guidance provides a hierarchy when determining the relative selling price for each unit of accounting. Vendor-specific objective evidence ("VSOE") of selling price, based on the price at which the item is regularly sold by the vendor on a standalone basis, should be used if it exists. If VSOE of selling price is not available, third-party evidence ("TPE") of selling price is used to establish the selling price if it exists. If neither VSOE nor TPE exist for a deliverable, arrangements with multiple deliverables can be separated into discrete units of accounting based on our best estimate of selling price. The amount of arrangement fee allocated is limited by contingent revenues, if any.

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We determine the best estimate of selling price for our deliverables based on our overall pricing objectives, taking into consideration market conditions and entity-specific factors. We evaluate our best estimate of selling price by reviewing historical data related to sales of our deliverables, including comparing the percentages of our contract prices to our list prices. We also consider several other data points in our evaluation, including the size of our arrangements, the cloud applications sold, customer demographics, and the numbers and types of users within our arrangements.
Deferred Commissions
Sales commissions earned by our sales force are considered to be direct sales commissions when they can be associated specifically with a non-cancelable subscription contract. Direct sales commissions are deferred when earned and amortized over the same period that revenues are recognized for the related non-cancelable subscription contract. The commission payments are paid in full after the customer has paid for its first year of service. During fiscal 2017, we deferred $44 million of commissions and we amortized $25 million to sales and marketing expenses in the accompanying consolidated statements of operations. During fiscal 2016, we deferred $32 million of commission expenditures and we amortized $20 million to sales and marketing expenses in the accompanying consolidated statements of operations. Deferred commissions on our consolidated balance sheets totaled $70 million and $51 million at January 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively.
Convertible Senior Notes
In accounting for the issuance of the Notes, we separated the Notes into liability and equity components. The carrying amount of the liability component was calculated by measuring the fair value of a similar liability that does not have an associated convertible feature. The carrying amount of the equity component representing the conversion option was determined by deducting the fair value of the liability component from the par value of the Notes as a whole. This difference represents a debt discount that is amortized to interest expense over the terms of the Notes. The equity component is not remeasured as long as it continues to meet the conditions for equity classification. In accounting for the issuance costs related to the Notes, we allocated the total amount incurred to the liability and equity components. Issuance costs attributable to the liability components are being amortized to expense over the respective terms of the Notes, and issuance costs attributable to the equity components were netted with the respective equity component in additional paid-in capital.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements
Refer to Note 2 of the notes to consolidated financial statements for a full description of recent accounting pronouncements.

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ITEM 7A. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK
Foreign Currency Exchange Risk
 We transact business globally in multiple currencies. As a result, our results of operations and cash flows are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. As of January 31, 2017 and 2016, our most significant currency exposures were the Euro, British pound and Canadian dollar.
We have a hedging program designed to identify material foreign currency exposures, manage these exposures and reduce the potential effects of currency fluctuations through the purchase of foreign currency exchange contracts. For further information, see Note 9 of the notes to consolidated financial statements.
Interest Rate Sensitivity
We had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaling $2.0 billion as of January 31, 2017 and 2016. Cash equivalents and marketable securities were invested primarily in U.S. agency obligations, U.S. treasury securities, corporate bonds, commercial paper, and money market funds. The cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities are held for working capital purposes. Our investments are made for capital preservation purposes. We do not enter into investments for trading or speculative purposes.
Our cash equivalents and our portfolio of marketable securities are subject to market risk due to changes in interest rates. Fixed rate securities may have their market value adversely affected due to a rise in interest rates, while floating rate securities may produce less income than expected if interest rates fall. Due in part to these factors, our future investment income may fluctuate due to changes in interest rates or we may suffer losses in principal if we are forced to sell securities that decline in market value due to changes in interest rates. However, because we classify our marketable securities as “available for sale,” no gains or losses are recognized due to changes in interest rates unless such securities are sold prior to maturity or declines in fair value are determined to be other-than-temporary.
An immediate increase of 100-basis points in interest rates would have resulted in a $9 million and $8 million market value reduction in our investment portfolio as of January 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. The majority of our investments earn less than 100-basis points and as a result, an immediate decrease of 100-basis points in interest rates would have increased the market value by $8 million and $5 million as of January 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. This estimate is based on a sensitivity model that measures market value changes when changes in interest rates occur. Fluctuations in the value of our investment securities caused by a change in interest rates (gains or losses on the carrying value) are recorded in other comprehensive income, and are realized only if we sell the underlying securities.
Market Risk and Market Interest Risk
In June 2013, we issued $350 million of 2018 Notes and $250 million of 2020 Notes. Holders may convert the Notes prior to maturity upon the occurrence of certain circumstances. Upon conversion, holders of the 2018 Notes and 2020 Notes will receive cash, shares of Class A common stock or a combination of cash and shares of Class A common stock, at our election.
Concurrently with the issuance of the Notes, we entered into separate note hedge and warrant transactions. These separate transactions were completed to reduce the potential economic dilution from the conversion of the Notes.
Our Notes have fixed annual interest rates at 0.75% and 1.50% and, therefore, we do not have economic interest rate exposure on our Notes. However, the values of the Notes are exposed to interest rate risk. Generally, the fair market value of our fixed interest rate Notes will increase as interest rates fall and decrease as interest rates rise. In addition, the fair values of the 2018 Notes and the 2020 Notes are affected by our stock price. The carrying values of our 2018 Notes and 2020 Notes were $324 million and $211 million, respectively, as of January 31, 2017. These represent the liability component of the principal balance of our Notes as of January 31, 2017. The total estimated fair values of the 2018 Notes and 2020 Notes at January 31, 2017 were $402 million and $310 million, respectively, and the fair value was determined based on the quoted bid price of the Notes in an over-the-counter market as of the last day of trading for fiscal 2017, which were $114.93 and $124.19, respectively. For further information, see Note 10 of the notes to consolidated financial statements.

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ITEM 8. CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DATA
WORKDAY, INC.
INDEX TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

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Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm

The Board of Directors and Stockholders of Workday, Inc. 

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Workday, Inc. as of January 31, 2017 and 2016, and the related consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive loss, cash flows, and stockholders' equity for each of the three years in the period ended January 31, 2017. These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company's management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these financial statements based on our audits.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States). Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement. An audit includes examining, on a test basis, evidence supporting the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. An audit also includes assessing the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall financial statement presentation. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the consolidated financial position of Workday, Inc. at January 31, 2017 and 2016, and the consolidated results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended January 31, 2017, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States), Workday, Inc.’s internal control over financial reporting as of January 31, 2017, based on criteria established in Internal Control-Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (2013 framework) and our report dated March 20, 2017 expressed an unqualified opinion thereon.

/s/ Ernst & Young LLP
 

San Jose, California
March 20, 2017

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Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm 

The Board of Directors and Stockholders of Workday, Inc.

We have audited Workday, Inc.’s internal control over financial reporting as of January 31, 2017, based on criteria established in Internal Control-Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (2013 framework) (the COSO criteria). Workday, Inc.’s management is responsible for maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting, and for its assessment of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting included in the accompanying Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the company’s internal control over financial reporting based on our audit.

We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States). Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether effective internal control over financial reporting was maintained in all material respects. Our audit included obtaining an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, assessing the risk that a material weakness exists, testing and evaluating the design and operating effectiveness of internal control based on the assessed risk, and performing such other procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.

A company’s internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A company’s internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the company; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the company; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of the company’s assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.

Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.

In our opinion, Workday, Inc. maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of January 31, 2017, based on the COSO criteria.

We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States), the fiscal 2017 consolidated financial statements of Workday, Inc. and our report dated March 20, 2017 expressed an unqualified opinion thereon. 

/s/ Ernst & Young LLP
 

San Jose, California
March 20, 2017


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WORKDAY, INC.
CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS
(in thousands, except share and per share data) 
 
January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
Assets
 
 
 
Current assets:
 
 
 
Cash and cash equivalents
$
539,923

 
$
300,087

Marketable securities
1,456,822

 
1,669,372

Accounts receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of $2,102 and $1,592
383,908

 
293,407

Deferred costs
27,537

 
21,817

Prepaid expenses and other current assets
88,336

 
77,625

Total current assets
2,496,526

 
2,362,308

Property and equipment, net
365,877

 
214,158

Deferred costs, noncurrent
43,310

 
30,074

Acquisition-related intangible assets, net
48,787

 
15,491

Goodwill
158,354

 
50,325

Other assets
53,570

 
57,738

Total assets
$
3,166,424

 
$
2,730,094

Liabilities and stockholders’ equity
 
 
 
Current liabilities:
 
 
 
Accounts payable
$
26,824

 
$
19,605

Accrued expenses and other current liabilities
61,582

 
43,122

Accrued compensation
110,625

 
91,211

Unearned revenue
1,097,417

 
768,741

Total current liabilities
1,296,448

 
922,679

Convertible senior notes, net
534,423

 
507,476

Unearned revenue, noncurrent
135,970

 
130,988

Other liabilities
36,677

 
32,794

Total liabilities
2,003,518

 
1,593,937

Commitments and contingencies (Note 11)

 

Stockholders’ equity:
 
 
 
Preferred stock, $0.001 par value; 10 million shares authorized as of January 31, 2017 and 2016; no shares issued and outstanding as of January 31, 2017 and 2016

 

Class A common stock, $0.001 par value; 750 million shares authorized as of January 31, 2017 and 2016; 127 million and 116 million shares issued and outstanding as of January 31, 2017 and 2016
127

 
115

Class B common stock, $0.001 par value; 240 million shares authorized as of January 31, 2017 and 2016; 76 million and 79 million shares issued and outstanding as of January 31, 2017 and 2016 (including 0.1 million and 1 million shares subject to repurchase, legally issued and outstanding as of January 31, 2017 and 2016)
75

 
78

Additional paid-in capital
2,681,200

 
2,247,454

Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)
2,071

 
799

Accumulated deficit
(1,520,567
)
 
(1,112,289
)
Total stockholders’ equity
1,162,906

 
1,136,157

Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity
$
3,166,424

 
$
2,730,094


See Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
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WORKDAY, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
(in thousands, except per share data) 
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
Revenues:
 
 
 
 
 
Subscription services
$
1,287,104

 
$
929,234

 
$
613,328

Professional services
282,303

 
233,112

 
174,532

Total revenues
1,569,407

 
1,162,346

 
787,860

Costs and expenses(1):
 
 
 
 
 
Costs of subscription services
213,389

 
149,869

 
102,476

Costs of professional services
270,156

 
224,558

 
162,327

Product development
680,531

 
469,944

 
316,868

Sales and marketing
583,874

 
434,056

 
315,840

General and administrative
198,122

 
148,578

 
106,051

Total costs and expenses
1,946,072

 
1,427,005

 
1,003,562

Operating loss
(376,665
)
 
(264,659
)
 
(215,702
)
Other expense, net
(32,427
)
 
(24,242
)
 
(30,270
)
Loss before provision for (benefit from) income taxes
(409,092
)
 
(288,901
)
 
(245,972
)
Provision for (benefit from) income taxes
(814
)
 
1,017

 
2,010

Net loss
(408,278
)
 
(289,918
)
 
(247,982
)
Net loss attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders
$
(408,278
)
 
$
(289,918
)
 
$
(247,982
)
Net loss per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders, basic and diluted
$
(2.06
)
 
$
(1.53
)
 
$
(1.35
)
Weighted-average shares used to compute net loss per share attributable to Class A and Class B common stockholders
198,214

 
190,016

 
183,702

 
(1) 
Costs and expenses include share-based compensation expenses as follows:
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
Costs of subscription services
$
20,773

 
$
12,060

 
$
6,053

Costs of professional services
26,833

 
19,526

 
12,890

Product development
166,529

 
109,362

 
63,938

Sales and marketing
86,229

 
51,617

 
29,875

General and administrative
78,265

 
57,405

 
43,292


See Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
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WORKDAY, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE LOSS
(in thousands) 
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
Net loss
$
(408,278
)
 
$
(289,918
)
 
$
(247,982
)
Other comprehensive income (loss), net of tax:
 
 
 
 
 
Net change in foreign currency translation adjustment
150

 
(3,158
)
 
(525
)
Net change in unrealized gains (losses) on available-for-sale investments
(388
)
 
(842
)
 
116

Net change in market value of effective foreign currency forward exchange contracts
1,510

 
4,939

 

Other comprehensive income (loss), net of tax:
1,272

 
939

 
(409
)
Comprehensive loss
$
(407,006
)
 
$
(288,979
)
 
$
(248,391
)

































See Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
45

Table of Contents

WORKDAY, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS
(in thousands)
 
Year Ended January 31,
 
2017
 
2016
 
2015
Cash flows from operating activities
 
 
 
 
 
Net loss
$
(408,278
)
 
$
(289,918
)
 
$
(247,982
)
Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash provided by (used in) operating activities:
 
 
 
 
 
Depreciation and amortization
115,885

 
85,939

 
59,205

Share-based compensation expenses
372,272

 
249,970

 
156,048

Amortization of deferred costs
25,577

 
23,477

 
19,288

Amortization of debt discount and issuance costs
26,947

 
25,518

 
24,171

Gain on sale of cost method investment
(65
)
 
(3,220
)
 

Impairment of cost method investment
15,000

 

 

Other
(1,982
)
 
1,047

 
2,924

Changes in operating assets and liabilities, net of business combinations:
 
 
 
 
 
Accounts receivable
(88,639
)
 
(105,264
)
 
(96,876
)
Deferred costs
(44,533
)
 
(33,899
)
 
(23,514
)
Prepaid expenses and other assets
(20,847
)
 
(28,366
)
 
(15,524
)
Accounts payable
6,336

 
6,824

 
1,120

Accrued expense and other liabilities
23,367

 
59,724

 
3,964

Unearned revenue
327,615

 
266,805

 
219,179

Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities
348,655

 
258,637

 
102,003

Cash flows from investing activities
 
 
 
 
 
Purchases of marketable securities
(1,917,238
)
 
(2,125,841
)
 
(1,737,840
)
Maturities of marketable securities
1,986,031

 
1,901,858

 
1,419,454

Sales of available-for-sale securities
133,292

 
102,711

 
53,182

Business combinations, net of cash acquired
(147,879
)
 
(31,436
)
 
(26,317
)
Owned real estate projects
(106,997
)
 

 

Capital expenditures, excluding owned real estate projects
(120,813
)
 
(133,667
)
 
(103,646
)
Purchases of cost method investments
(300
)
 
(16,550
)
 
(10,000
)
Sales and maturities of cost method investments
5,315

 
3,538

 

Other
(296
)
 
(760
)
 
1,000

Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities
(168,885
)
 
(300,147
)
 
(404,167
)
Cash flows from financing activities
 
 
 
 
 
Proceeds from issuance of common stock from employee equity plans
58,079

 
45,656

 
36,239

Principal payments on capital lease obligations

 
(3,193
)
 
(9,759
)
Shares repurchased for tax withholdings on vesting of restricted stock

 

 
(8,291
)
Other
1,602

 
1,646

 
1,266

Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities
59,681

 
44,109

 
19,455

Effect of exchange rate changes
385

 
(704
)
 
(425
)
Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents
239,836

 
1,895

 
(283,134
)
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of period
300,087

 
298,192

 
581,326

Cash and cash equivalents at the end of period
$
539,923

 
$
300,087

 
$
298,192

Supplemental cash flow data
 
 
 
 
 
Cash paid for interest
$
6,484

 
$
6,456

 
$
6,869

Cash paid for taxes
5,315

 
2,124

 
943

Non-cash investing and financing activities:
 
 
 
 
 
Vesting of early exercised stock options
$
1,803

 
$
1,887

 
$
1,887

Purchases of property and equipment, accrued but not paid
27,696

 
14,052

 
8,776

Non-cash additions to property and equipment
2,094

 
7,256

 


See Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements
46

Table of Contents

WORKDAY, INC.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY
(in thousands, except share data)
 
Common Stock
Shares
 
Amount
 
Additional
Paid-In
Capital
 
Accumulated
Other
Comprehensive
Income (Loss)
 
Accumulated
Deficit
 
Total
Stockholders’
Equity
Balances as of January 31, 2014
183,406,031

 
$
181

 
$
1,761,156

 
$
269

 
$
(574,389
)
 
$
1,187,217

Issuance of common stock under employee equity plans
3,952,173

 
4

 
36,235

 

 

 
36,239

Vesting of early exercised stock options

 

 
1,887

 

 

 
1,887

Vested restricted stock units, net
1,057,851

 
1

 

 

 

 
1

Shares withheld for tax withholding on vesting of restricted stock

 

 
(8,292
)
 

 

 
(8,292
)
Share-based compensation

 

 
156,048

 

 

 
156,048

Excess tax benefits from share-based compensation

 

 
1,175

 

 

 
1,175

Other

 

 
91

 

 

 
91

Other comprehensive income (loss)

 

 

 
(409
)
 

 
(409
)
Net loss

 

 

 

 
(247,982
)
 
(247,982
)
Balances as of January 31, 2015
188,416,055

 
$
186

 
$
1,948,300

 
$
(140
)
 
$
(822,371
)
 
$
1,125,975

Issuance of common stock under employee equity plans
4,103,433

 
5

 
45,651

 

 

 
45,656

Vesting of early exercised stock options

 

 
1,887

 

 

 
1,887

Vested restricted stock units, net
1,959,862

 
2

 
(2
)
 

 

 

Share-based compensation

 

 
249,970

 

 

 
249,970

Excess tax benefits from share-based compensation

 

 
1,646

 

 

 
1,646

Other

 

 
2

 

 

 
2

Other comprehensive income (loss)

 

 

 
939

 

 
939

Net loss

 

 

 

 
(289,918
)
 
(289,918
)
Balances as of January 31, 2016
194,479,350

 
$
193

 
$