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| MCHX > SEC Filings for MCHX > Form 10-Q on 8-Aug-2012 | All Recent SEC Filings |
8-Aug-2012
Quarterly Report
This Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q contains forward-looking statements within
the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and
Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. We use words
such as "believes", "intends", "expects", "anticipates", "plans", "may", "will"
and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. All
forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding
our future operating results, financial position, prospects, acquisitions and
business strategy, expectations regarding our growth and the growth of the
industry in which we operate, and plans and objectives of management for future
operations, are inherently uncertain as they are based on our expectations and
assumptions concerning future events. Any or all of our forward-looking
statements in this report may turn out to be inaccurate. We have based these
forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections
about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our
financial condition, results of operations, business strategy and financial
needs. They may be affected by inaccurate assumptions we might make or by known
or unknown risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to the risks,
uncertainties and assumptions described in this report, in Part II, Item 1A.
under the caption "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in this report and in our Annual
Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2011 and those described
from time to time in our future reports filed with the SEC. In light of these
risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the forward-looking events and
circumstances discussed in this report may not occur as contemplated, and actual
results could differ materially from those anticipated or implied by the
forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements in this report are
made as of the date hereof, based on information available to us as of the date
hereof, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statement.
The following discussion and analysis provides information that we believe is relevant to an assessment and understanding of our results of operation and financial condition. You should read this analysis in conjunction with the attached condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes thereto, and with our audited consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto, included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2011.
Overview
We are a mobile and online advertising company that drives consumers to connect with businesses over the phone and provides in-depth analysis of those connections. Our technology-based products and services facilitate the efficient and cost-effective marketing and selling of goods and services for small and national advertisers who want to market and sell their products through mobile, online and offline; and a proprietary, locally-focused web site network where we help consumers find local information, as well as fulfill our advertiser marketing campaigns:
• Digital Call Advertising Services. We deliver a variety of digital call advertising products and services to national advertisers, advertising agencies and small advertiser reseller partners. These services include pay-for-call through the Digital Call Marketplace, and Marchex Call Analytics, which include phone number and call tracking, call mining, keyword-level tracking, click-to-call, web site proxying, and other call-based products which enable our customers to utilize mobile, online and offline advertising to drive calls as well as clicks into their businesses and to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns. Advertisers pay us a fee for each call they receive from call-based ads we distribute through our sources of call distribution or for each phone number tracked based on a pre-negotiated rate.
• Local Leads. Our Local Leads platform, a white-labeled, full service digital advertising solution for small business resellers, such as Yellow Pages providers and vertical marketing service providers, to sell digital call advertising and/or search marketing and other lead products through their existing sales channels to their small business advertisers, which are then fulfilled by us across our distribution network, including mobile sources, leading search engines and our own proprietary web site traffic sources. By creating a solution for companies who have relationships with small businesses, it is easier for these small businesses to participate in mobile, online, and offline call advertising. The lead services we offer to small business advertisers through our Local Leads platform include products typically available only to national advertisers, including pay-for-call, call tracking, presence management ad creation, keyword selection, geo-targeting, advertising campaign management, reporting, and analytics. The Local Leads platform has the capacity to support hundreds of thousands of advertiser accounts. Reseller partners and publishers generally pay us account fees and agency fees for our products in the form of a percentage of the cost of every click or call delivered to their advertisers. Through our contract with Yellowpages.com LLC d/b/a AT&T Interactive which is a subsidiary of AT&T (collectively, "AT&T"), Our arrangement with AT&T relates to a business unit that is included in a newly formed unit called YP Holdings, LLC ("YP") that AT&T recently sold a majority stake in to a private equity third party. YP is our largest reseller partner and was responsible for 28% of our total revenues for both the three and six months ended June 30, 2012 of which the majority is derived from our local leads platform.
• Proprietary Web Site Traffic. We believe our Proprietary Web Site Traffic is a source of local information online and is a source of calls within the Marchex Digital Call Marketplace. It includes more than 200,000 of our owned and operated web sites focused on helping users make informed decisions about where to get local products and services. It features listings from more than 10 million small business listings in the U.S. and millions of expert and user-generated reviews on small businesses. The more than 200,000 web sites in our network include more than 75,000 U.S. ZIP code sites, including 98102.com and 90210.com, covering ZIP code areas nationwide, as well as tens of thousands of other locally-focused sites such as Yellow.com, OpenList.com and geo-targeted sites. Traffic to our proprietary web sites is primarily monetized with pay-for-call and pay-per-click listings that are relevant to the web sites, as well as other forms of advertising, including banner advertising.
We were incorporated in Delaware on January 17, 2003. Acquisition initiatives have played an important part in our corporate history to date.
We currently have offices in Seattle, Washington; Las Vegas, Nevada; Billerica, Massachusetts, and New York, New York.
Consolidated Statements of Operations
All inter-company transactions and balances within Marchex have been eliminated in consolidation. Our purchase accounting resulted in all assets and liabilities from our acquisitions being recorded at their estimated fair values on the respective acquisition dates. All goodwill, intangible assets and liabilities resulting from the acquisitions have been recorded in our financial statements.
Presentation of Financial Reporting Periods
The comparative periods presented are for the three and six months ended June 30, 2011 and 2012.
Revenue
We currently generate revenue through our digital call advertising services, pay-per-click advertising, and local leads platform which include our digital call and click services, and proprietary web site traffic.
Our primary sources of revenue are the performance-based advertising services, which include digital pay-for-call services, pay-per-click services, and cost-per-action services. These primary sources amounted to greater than 75% of our revenues in all periods presented. Our secondary sources of revenue are our local leads platform which enables partner resellers to sell digital call advertising and/or search marketing products, campaign management services, and natural search optimization services. These secondary sources amounted to less than 25% of our revenues in all periods presented. We have no barter transactions.
We recognize revenue upon the completion of our performance obligation, provided that: (1) evidence of an arrangement exists; (2) the arrangement fee is fixed and determinable; and (3) collection is reasonably assured.
In certain cases, we record revenue based on available and reported preliminary information from third-parties. Collection on the related receivables may vary from reported information based upon third-party refinement of the estimated and reported amounts owing that occurs subsequent to period ends.
Performance-Based Advertising Services
In providing digital call advertising services and pay-per-click advertising, we generate revenue upon our delivery of qualified and reported phone calls or click-throughs to our advertisers or advertising service providers' listings. These advertisers and advertising service providers pay us a designated transaction fee for each phone call or click-through, which occurs when a user makes a phone call or clicks on any of their advertisement listings after it has been placed by us or by our distribution partners. Each phone call or click-through on an advertisement listing represents a completed transaction. The advertisement listings are displayed within our distribution network, which includes mobile and online search engines and applications, directories, destination sites, shopping engines, third party Internet domains or web sites, our portfolio of owned web sites, other targeted Web-based content and offline sources. We also generate revenue from cost-per-action services, which occurs when the online user is redirected from one of our web sites or a third party web site in our distribution network to an advertiser web site and completes the specified action.
We generate revenue from reseller partners and publishers utilizing our local leads platform to sell digital call advertising and/or search marketing products. We are paid account fees and also agency fees for our products in the form of a percentage of the cost of every call or click delivered to advertisers. The reseller partners or publishers engage the advertisers and are the primary obligor, and we, in certain instances, are only financially liable to the publishers in our capacity as a collection agency for the amount collected from the advertisers. We recognize revenue for these fees under the net revenue recognition method. In limited arrangements resellers pay us a fee for fulfilling an advertiser's campaign in our distribution network and we act as the primary obligor. We recognize revenue for these fees under the gross revenue recognition method.
In providing pay-per-click contextual targeting services, advertisers purchase keywords or keyword strings, based on an amount they choose for a targeted placement on vertically-focused web sites or specific pages of a web site that are specific to their products or services and their marketing objectives. The contextual results distributed by our services are prioritized for users by the amount the advertiser is willing to pay each time a user clicks on the merchant's advertisement and the relevance of the merchant's advertisement, which is dictated by historical click-through rates. Advertisers pay us when a click-through occurs on their advertisement.
Search Marketing Services
Advertisers pay us additional fees for services such as campaign management and natural search engine optimization. Advertisers generally pay us on a click-through basis, although in certain cases we receive a fixed fee for delivery of these services. In some cases we also deliver banner campaigns for select advertisers. We may also charge initial set-up, account, service or inclusion fees as part of our services.
Banner advertising revenue may be based on a fixed fee per click and is generated and recognized on click-through activity. In other cases, banner payment terms are volume-based with revenue generated and recognized when impressions are delivered.
Non-refundable account set-up fees are paid by advertisers and are recognized ratably over the longer of the term of the contract or the average expected advertiser relationship period, which generally ranges from twelve months to more than two years. Other account and service fees are recognized in the month or period the account fee or services relate to.
Industry and Market Factors
We enter into agreements with various mobile, online and offline distribution partners to provide distribution for pay-for-call and pay-per-click advertisement listings which contain call tracking numbers and/or URL strings of our advertisers. We generally pay distribution partners based on a percentage of revenue or a fixed amount for each phone call or per click-through on these listings. The level of phone calls and click-throughs contributed by our distribution partners has varied, and we expect it will continue to vary, from quarter to quarter and year to year, sometimes significantly. If we do not add new distribution partners, renew our current distribution partner agreements, replace traffic lost from terminated distribution agreements with other sources or if our distribution partners' search businesses do not grow or are adversely affected, our revenue and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected. Our ability to grow will be impacted by our ability to increase our distribution, which impacts the number of mobile and Internet users who have access to our advertisers' listings and the rate at which our advertisers are able to convert calls and clicks from these mobile and Internet users into completed transactions, such as a purchase or sign up. Our ability to grow also depends on our ability to continue to increase the number of advertisers who use our services and the amount these advertisers spend on our services.
We anticipate that these variables will fluctuate in the future, affecting our ability to grow and our financial results. In particular, it is difficult to project the number of phone calls or click-throughs we will deliver to our advertisers and how much advertisers will spend with us, and it is even more difficult to anticipate the average revenue per phone call or click-through. It is also difficult to anticipate the impact of worldwide economic conditions on advertising budgets, including due to the economic uncertainty resulting from recent disruptions in global financial markets.
In addition, we believe we will experience seasonality. Our quarterly results have fluctuated in the past and may fluctuate in the future due to seasonal fluctuations in levels of Internet usage and seasonal purchasing cycles of many advertisers. It is generally understood that during the spring and summer months, Internet usage is lower than during other times of the year, especially in comparison to the fourth quarter of the calendar year. The extent to which usage may decrease during these off-peak periods is difficult to predict. Prolonged or severe decreases in usage during these periods may adversely affect our growth rate and results. Additionally, the current business environment has generally resulted in advertisers and reseller partners reducing advertising and marketing services budgets or changing such budgets throughout the year, which we expect will impact our quarterly results of operations in addition to the typical seasonality seen in our industry.
Service Costs
Our service costs represent the cost of providing our performance-based advertising services and our search marketing services. The service costs that we have incurred in the periods presented primarily include:
• user acquisition costs;
• amortization of intangible assets;
• license and content fees;
• credit card processing fees;
• network operations;
• serving our search results;
• telecommunication costs, including the use of phone numbers relating to our call products and services;
• maintaining our Web sites;
• domain name registration renewal fees;
• network fees;
• fees paid to outside service providers;
• delivering customer service;
• depreciation of our Web sites, network equipment and internally developed software;
• colocation service charges of our Web site equipment;
• bandwidth and software license fees;
• payroll and related expenses of related personnel; and
• stock-based compensation of related personnel.
User Acquisition Costs
For the periods presented the largest component of our service costs consist of user acquisition costs that relate primarily to payments made to distribution partners for access to their online, mobile, offline, or other user traffic. We enter into agreements of varying durations with distribution partners that integrate our services into their Web sites and indexes. The primary economic structure of the distribution partner agreements is a variable payment based on a specified percentage of revenue. These variable payments are often subject to minimum payment amounts per phone call or click-through. Other payment structures that to a lesser degree exist include:
• fixed payments, based on a guaranteed minimum amount of usage delivered;
• variable payments based on a specified metric, such as number of paid phone calls or click-throughs; and
• a combination arrangement with both fixed and variable amounts that may be paid in advance.
We expense user acquisition costs based on whether the agreement provides for fixed or variable payments. Agreements with fixed payments with minimum guaranteed amounts of usage are expensed as the greater of the pro-rata amount over the term of arrangement or the actual usage delivered to date based on the contractual revenue share. Agreements with variable payments based on a percentage of revenue, number of paid phone calls, click-throughs, or other metrics are expensed as incurred based on the volume of the underlying activity or revenue multiplied by the agreed-upon price or rate.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of:
• payroll and related expenses for personnel engaged in marketing and sales functions;
• advertising and promotional expenditures including online and outside marketing activities;
• cost of systems used to sell to and serve advertisers; and
• stock-based compensation of related personnel.
Product Development
Product development costs consist primarily of expenses incurred in the research and development, creation and enhancement of our web sites and services.
Our research and development expenses include:
• payroll and related expenses for personnel;
• costs of computer hardware and software;
• costs incurred in developing features and functionality of the services we offer; and
• stock-based compensation of related personnel.
For the periods presented, substantially all of our product development expenses are research and development.
Product development costs are expensed as incurred or capitalized into property and equipment in accordance with FASB ASC 350. This statement requires that costs incurred in the preliminary project and post-implementation stages of an internal use software project be expensed as incurred and that certain costs incurred in the application development stage of a project be capitalized.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expenses consist primarily of:
• payroll and related expenses for executive and administrative personnel;
• professional services, including accounting, legal and insurance;
• bad debt provisions;
• facilities costs;
• other general corporate expenses; and
• stock-based compensation of related personnel.
Stock-Based Compensation
We account for stock-based compensation under the fair value method. As a result, stock-based compensation consists of the following:
• all share-based compensation arrangements granted after January 1, 2006 (adoption date of FASB ASC 718) and for any such arrangements that are modified, cancelled, or repurchased after that date, and
• the portion of previous share-based awards for which the requisite service has not been rendered as of January 1, 2006.
Stock-based compensation expense has been included in the same lines as compensation paid to the same employees in the consolidated statement of operations.
Amortization of Intangibles from Acquisitions
Amortization of intangible assets excluding goodwill relates to intangible assets identified in connection with our acquisitions.
The intangible assets have been identified as:
• non-competition agreements;
• trade and Internet domain names;
• distributor relationships;
• customer relationships;
• advertising relationships;
• patents; and
• acquired technology.
These assets are amortized over useful lives ranging from 12 to 84 months.
Provision for Income Taxes
We utilize the asset and liability method of accounting for income taxes. Under this method, deferred tax assets and liabilities are recognized for the future tax consequences attributable to differences between the financial statement carrying amounts of existing assets and liabilities and their respective tax bases and operating loss and tax credit carryforwards. Deferred tax assets and liabilities are measured using enacted tax rates expected to apply to taxable income in the years in which those temporary differences are expected to be recovered or settled. The effect on deferred tax assets and liabilities of a change in tax law is recognized in results of operations in the period that includes the enactment date.
Each reporting period we must assess the likelihood that our deferred tax assets will be recovered from existing deferred tax liabilities or future taxable income, and to the extent that realization is not more likely than not, a valuation allowance must be established. The establishment of a valuation allowance and increases to such an allowance may result in either increases to income tax expense or reduction of income tax benefit in the statement of operations. Although realization is not assured, we believe it is more likely than not, based on operating performance, existing deferred tax liabilities, projections of future taxable income and tax planning strategies, that our net deferred tax assets, excluding certain state, city, and foreign net operating loss carryforwards, will be realized. In determining that it was more likely than not that we would realize the deferred tax assets, factors considered included: historical taxable income, historical trends related to advertiser usage rates, projected revenues and expenses, macroeconomic conditions and issues facing our industry, existing contracts, our ability to project future results and any appreciation of our other assets. The majority of our deferred tax assets are from goodwill and intangible assets recorded in connection with various acquisitions that are tax-deductible over 15 year periods. Based on projections of future taxable income and tax planning strategies, we expect to be able to recover these assets. The amount of the net deferred tax assets considered realizable, however, could be reduced in the near term if our projections of future taxable income are reduced or if we do not perform at the levels we are projecting. This could result in increases to the valuation allowance for deferred tax assets and a corresponding increase to income tax expense of up to the entire net amount of deferred tax assets.
From time to time, various state, federal, and other jurisdictional tax authorities undertake reviews of us and our filings. We believe any adjustments that may ultimately be required as a result of any of these reviews will not be material to the financial statements.
As of June 30, 2012, we have net deferred tax assets of $48.0 million, relating to the impairment of goodwill, amortization of intangibles assets, certain other temporary differences, acquired federal and state net operating loss carryforwards, and research and development credits. Although realization is not assured, we believe it is more likely than not that our net deferred tax assets, excluding certain state, city, and foreign net operating loss carryforwards, will be realized. As of June 30, 2012, based upon both positive and negative evidence available, we have determined it is not more likely than not that certain deferred tax assets primarily relating to net operating loss carryforwards in certain state, city, and foreign jurisdictions will be . . .
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