Datadog, Inc. (DDOG)
SIC breadcrumb: Services > Business Services > SIC 7372 Services-Prepackaged Software
SEC company page: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1561550. Latest filing source: 0001628280-26-008819.
Informational only - descriptive public-record data, not investment advice.
Selected Fundamentals
| Metric | Value | Unit | FY | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 3,427,158,000 | USD | 2025 | 2026-02-18 |
| Net income | 107,741,000 | USD | 2025 | 2026-02-18 |
| Assets | 6,643,844,000 | USD | 2025 | 2026-02-18 |
Financials
Annual standardized facts from SEC companyfacts as of latest extracted filing date 2026-02-18. Source: https://data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0001561550.json. Derived margins, ratios, and free cash flow are computed from the extracted annual SEC facts.
| Metric | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 100,761,000 | 198,077,000 | 362,780,000 | 603,466,000 | 1,028,784,000 | 1,675,100,000 | 2,128,359,000 | 2,684,275,000 | 3,427,158,000 | |
| Net income | -2,570,000 | -10,762,000 | -16,710,000 | -24,547,000 | -20,745,000 | -50,160,000 | 48,568,000 | 183,746,000 | 107,741,000 | |
| Operating income | -2,956,000 | -11,033,000 | -20,140,000 | -13,773,000 | -19,156,000 | -58,695,000 | -33,464,000 | 54,284,000 | -44,373,000 | |
| Gross profit | 77,347,000 | 151,548,000 | 273,831,000 | 473,269,000 | 794,539,000 | 1,328,357,000 | 1,718,451,000 | 2,168,744,000 | 2,740,201,000 | |
| Diluted EPS | -0.04 | -0.15 | -0.12 | -0.08 | -0.07 | -0.16 | 0.14 | 0.52 | 0.31 | |
| Operating cash flow | 13,832,000 | 10,829,000 | 24,234,000 | 109,091,000 | 286,545,000 | 418,407,000 | 659,954,000 | 870,603,000 | 1,050,135,000 | |
| Capital expenditures | 2,351,000 | 9,662,000 | 13,315,000 | 5,415,000 | 9,956,000 | 35,261,000 | 27,586,000 | 34,719,000 | 49,578,000 | |
| Assets | 179,750,000 | 1,038,041,000 | 1,890,285,000 | 2,380,794,000 | 3,004,852,000 | 3,936,072,000 | 5,785,339,000 | 6,643,844,000 | ||
| Liabilities | 114,986,000 | 255,700,000 | 932,853,000 | 1,339,591,000 | 1,594,347,000 | 1,910,718,000 | 3,070,976,000 | 2,911,638,000 | ||
| Stockholders' equity | -81,691,000 | -75,701,000 | -76,041,000 | 782,341,000 | 957,432,000 | 1,041,203,000 | 1,410,505,000 | 2,025,354,000 | 2,714,363,000 | 3,732,206,000 |
| Cash and cash equivalents | 60,024,000 | 53,639,000 | 597,297,000 | 224,927,000 | 270,973,000 | 338,985,000 | 330,339,000 | 1,246,983,000 | 401,305,000 | |
| Free cash flow | 11,481,000 | 1,167,000 | 10,919,000 | 103,676,000 | 276,589,000 | 383,146,000 | 632,368,000 | 835,884,000 | 1,000,557,000 |
Ratios
| Metric | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net margin | -2.55% | -5.43% | -4.61% | -4.07% | -2.02% | -2.99% | 2.28% | 6.85% | 3.14% | |
| Operating margin | -2.93% | -5.57% | -5.55% | -2.28% | -1.86% | -3.50% | -1.57% | 2.02% | -1.29% | |
| Return on equity | -2.14% | -2.56% | -1.99% | -3.56% | 2.40% | 6.77% | 2.89% | |||
| Return on assets | -5.99% | -1.61% | -1.30% | -0.87% | -1.67% | 1.23% | 3.18% | 1.62% | ||
| Liabilities / equity | 0.33 | 0.97 | 1.29 | 1.13 | 0.94 | 1.13 | 0.78 | |||
| Current ratio | 1.09 | 4.51 | 5.77 | 3.54 | 3.09 | 3.17 | 2.64 | 3.38 |
Financial Charts
Quarterly
Quarterly standardized facts from SEC companyfacts as of latest extracted filing date 2026-05-07. Source: https://data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0001561550.json.
| Quarter | End Date | Revenue | Net Income | Diluted EPS | Method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-Q2 | 2022-06-30 | -0.02 | reported discrete quarter | ||
| 2022-Q3 | 2022-09-30 | -0.08 | reported discrete quarter | ||
| 2023-Q1 | 2023-03-31 | -0.08 | reported discrete quarter | ||
| 2023-Q2 | 2023-06-30 | 509,460,000 | -3,969,000 | -0.01 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2023-Q3 | 2023-09-30 | 547,536,000 | 22,630,000 | 0.06 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2023-Q4 | 2023-12-31 | 589,649,000 | 53,993,000 | derived Q4 = FY annual - nine-month YTD | |
| 2024-Q1 | 2024-03-31 | 611,253,000 | 42,631,000 | 0.12 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2024-Q2 | 2024-06-30 | 645,279,000 | 43,824,000 | 0.12 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2024-Q3 | 2024-09-30 | 690,016,000 | 51,697,000 | 0.14 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2024-Q4 | 2024-12-31 | 737,727,000 | 45,594,000 | derived Q4 = FY annual - nine-month YTD | |
| 2025-Q1 | 2025-03-31 | 761,553,000 | 24,642,000 | 0.07 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2025-Q2 | 2025-06-30 | 826,760,000 | 2,647,000 | 0.01 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2025-Q3 | 2025-09-30 | 885,651,000 | 33,885,000 | 0.10 | reported discrete quarter |
| 2025-Q4 | 2025-12-31 | 953,194,000 | 46,567,000 | derived Q4 = FY annual - nine-month YTD | |
| 2026-Q1 | 2026-03-31 | 1,006,426,000 | 52,574,000 | 0.15 | reported discrete quarter |
Quarterly Charts
Macro Cross-References
- CPIAUCSL - Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average
- UNRATE - Unemployment Rate
- FEDFUNDS - Federal Funds Effective Rate
- CES0500000003 - Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private
- DFEDTARU - Federal Funds Target Range - Upper Limit
- DFEDTARL - Federal Funds Target Range - Lower Limit
- DGS3MO - Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 3-Month Constant Maturity
- DGS2 - Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 2-Year Constant Maturity
- DGS10 - Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 10-Year Constant Maturity
- DGS30 - Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 30-Year Constant Maturity
- T10Y2Y - 10-Year Treasury Constant Maturity Minus 2-Year Treasury Constant Maturity
- CPILFESL - Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items Less Food and Energy
- CPIUFDSL - Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Food
- CPIENGSL - Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Energy
- CUSR0000SAH1 - Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Shelter
- PCEPI - Personal Consumption Expenditures: Chain-type Price Index
- PCEPILFE - Personal Consumption Expenditures Excluding Food and Energy: Chain-type Price Index
- PPIACO - Producer Price Index by Commodity: All Commodities
- T10YIE - 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate
- U6RATE - Total Unemployed, Plus All Marginally Attached Workers Plus Total Employed Part Time for Economic Reasons
- PAYEMS - All Employees, Total Nonfarm
- CIVPART - Labor Force Participation Rate
- EMRATIO - Employment-Population Ratio
- UNEMPLOY - Unemployed
- CE16OV - Employment Level
- ICSA - Initial Claims
- JTSJOL - Job Openings: Total Nonfarm
- JTSQUR - Quits: Total Nonfarm
- GDPC1 - Real Gross Domestic Product
- A191RL1Q225SBEA - Real Gross Domestic Product: Percent Change from Preceding Period
- INDPRO - Industrial Production: Total Index
- TCU - Capacity Utilization: Total Index
- HOUST - New Privately-Owned Housing Units Started: Total Units
- PERMIT - New Privately-Owned Housing Units Authorized in Permit-Issuing Places: Total Units
- RSAFS - Advance Retail Sales: Retail Trade
- PCE - Personal Consumption Expenditures
- DSPIC96 - Real Disposable Personal Income
- PSAVERT - Personal Saving Rate
- M2SL - M2
- BOPGSTB - U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services: Balance
- MSPUS - Median Sales Price of Houses Sold for the United States
- HSN1F - New One Family Houses Sold: United States
- RHORUSQ156N - Homeownership Rate in the United States
- TTLCONS - Total Construction Spending: Total Construction in the United States
- RRVRUSQ156N - Rental Vacancy Rate in the United States
- TOTALSL - Total Consumer Credit Owned and Securitized
- REVOLSL - Revolving Consumer Credit Owned and Securitized
- DRCCLACBS - Delinquency Rate on Credit Card Loans, All Commercial Banks
- GDP - Gross Domestic Product
- GPDI - Gross Private Domestic Investment
- GCE - Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment
- PCEC - Personal Consumption Expenditures
- NETEXP - Net Exports of Goods and Services
- GFDEBTN - Federal Debt: Total Public Debt
- GFDEGDQ188S - Federal Debt: Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product
- FYFSD - Federal Surplus or Deficit
- FGRECPT - Federal Government Current Receipts
- FGEXPND - Federal Government: Current Expenditures
- MANEMP - All Employees, Manufacturing
- USCONS - All Employees, Construction
- USTRADE - All Employees, Retail Trade
- USFIRE - All Employees, Financial Activities
- USGOVT - All Employees, Government
- AWHAETP - Average Weekly Hours of All Employees, Total Private
- DGORDER - Manufacturers' New Orders: Durable Goods
- NEWORDER - Manufacturers' New Orders: Nondefense Capital Goods Excluding Aircraft
- BUSINV - Total Business Inventories
- EXPGS - Exports of Goods and Services
- IMPGS - Imports of Goods and Services
- IR - Import Price Index (End Use): All Commodities
- PPIFIS - Producer Price Index by Commodity: Final Demand
Latest quarter (10-Q)
Latest 10-Q source: 0001628280-26-032328.
ITEM 2. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and our audited consolidated financial statements and the related notes and the discussion under the heading “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, or the Annual Report. This discussion, particularly information with respect to our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described under the heading “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. You should review the disclosure under the heading “Risk Factors” in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for a discussion of important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.
Overview
Datadog is the AI-powered observability and security platform for cloud applications.
Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, user experience monitoring, cloud security, service management, and many other capabilities to provide unified, real-time observability and security for our customers’ entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional containers to monitor, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection and app analytics. Professional services are generally not required for the implementation of our products and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our customers can expand their footprint with us on a self-service basis. Our customers often significantly increase their usage of the products they initially buy from us and expand their usage to other products we offer on our platform. We grow with our customers as they expand their workloads in the public and private cloud.
As of March 31, 2026, we had $426.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and $4.3 billion in marketable securities. We generated revenue of $1,006.4 million and $761.6 million in the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 32%. Substantially all of our revenue is from subscription software sales. While we have continued to make significant expenditures and investments, including in personnel-related costs, sales and marketing, infrastructure and operations, we generated net income of $52.6 million and $24.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025, respectively. Our operating cash flow was $334.6 million and $271.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025, respectively. Our free cash flow was $289.1 million and $244.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025, respectively. See the section titled “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow” below.
Unfavorable conditions in the economy both in the United States and abroad may negatively affect the growth of our business and our results of operations. For example, macroeconomic events including changes in trade policies, such as trade wars, tariffs or other trade restrictions or the threat of such actions, fluctuating inflation and interest rates, and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have led to economic uncertainty. Historically, during periods of economic uncertainty and downturns, businesses may slow spending on information technology, which may impact our business and our customers’ businesses.
Due to our subscription model, the effect of macroeconomic conditions may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. However, if economic uncertainty increases or the global economy worsens, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be harmed. For further discussion of the potential impacts of macroeconomic events on our business, financial condition, and operating results, see “Risk Factors” included in Part II, Item 1A of this report.
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Factors Affecting Our Performance
Acquiring New Customers
We believe there is substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. We intend to drive new customer acquisition by continuing to invest significantly in sales and marketing to engage our prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our platform and products. We also plan to continue to invest in building brand awareness within the development and operations communities. As of March 31, 2026, we had approximately 33,200 customers spanning organizations of a broad range of sizes and industries, compared to approximately 30,500 as of March 31, 2025. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness and pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.
We define the number of customers as the number of accounts with a unique account identifier for which we have an active subscription in the period indicated. Users of our free trials or tier are not included in our customer count. A single organization with multiple divisions, segments or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single customer. However, in some cases where they have separate billing terms, we may count separate divisions, segments or subsidiaries as multiple customers.
Expanding Within Our Existing Customer Base
Our base of customers represents a significant opportunity for further sales expansion. As of March 31, 2026, we had approximately 4,550 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $100,000 or more, representing 90% of our ARR, up from 3,770 customers as of March 31, 2025, representing 88% of our ARR. We monitor our number of customers with ARR of $100,000 or more, and believe it is useful to investors, as an indicator of our ability to grow the number of customers that are exceeding this ARR threshold. We define ARR as the annual run-rate revenue of subscription agreements from all customers at a point in time. We calculate ARR by taking the monthly run-rate revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts, additional usage, usage from subscriptions for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used and monthly subscriptions. ARR and MRR should be viewed independently of revenue, and do not represent our revenue under GAAP on a monthly or annualized basis, as they are operating metrics that can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR and MRR are not intended to be replacements or forecasts of revenue.
A further indication of the propensity of our customer relationships to expand over time is our dollar-based net retention rate, which compares our ARR from the same set of customers in one period, relative to the year-ago period. As of March 31, 2026, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was low-120%'s. As of March 31, 2025, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was high-110%'s. The increase in our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was attributable to increased usage growth from existing customers. We calculate dollar-based net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the ARR from the cohort of all customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the Current Period ARR. Current Period ARR includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months but excludes ARR from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based net retention rate. We then calculate the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time dollar-based net retention rates, to arrive at the trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate.
We believe that our land-and-expand business model allows us to efficiently increase revenue from our existing customer base. Our customers often expand the deployment of our platform across large teams and more broadly within the enterprise as they migrate more workloads to the cloud, find new use cases for our platform, and generally realize the benefits of our platform. We intend to continue to invest in enhancing awareness of our brand and developing more products, features and functionality, which we believe are important factors to achieve widespread adoption of our platform. Our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our solution, competition, pricing and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.
25
Sustaining Innovation and Technology Leadership
Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain our competitive advantage. We believe that we have built a highly differentiated platform that will position us to further extend the adoption of our platform and products. Datadog is frequently deployed across a customer’s entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous. Datadog is a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders. We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our efficient go-to-market model enables us to prioritize significant investment in innovation. We have demonstrated the success of our platform approach, through expansion beyond our initial infrastructure monitoring solution to include over 20 products. Approximately 85% of our customers were using two or more products as of March 31, 2026, up from approximately 83% a year earlier. Additionally, as of March 31, 2026, approximately 56% of our customers were using four or more products, up from approximately 51% a year earlier, approximately 35% of our customers were using six or more products, up from 28% a year earlier, approximately 20% of our customers were using eight or more products, up from 13% a year earlier; and approximately 11% of our customers were using ten or more products, up from 6% a year earlier. We believe these metrics indicate strong expansion of product adoption across our platform.
We intend to continue to invest in building additional products, features and functionality that expand our capabilities and facilitate the extension of our platform to new use cases. We also intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses and technologies to drive product and market expansion. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully d
[Excerpt truncated for page length; source filing is linked above.]
Latest 10-K MD&A
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This discussion, particularly information with respect to our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described under the heading “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should review the disclosure under the heading “Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.
This section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K discusses our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2024. A discussion of our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2023 that are not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, filed on February 20, 2025.
Overview
Datadog is the AI-powered observability and security platform for cloud applications.
46
Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, user experience monitoring, cloud security, service management, and many other capabilities to provide unified, real-time observability and security for our customers’ entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional containers to monitor, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection and app analytics. Professional services are generally not required for the implementation of our products and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our customers can expand their footprint with us on a self-service basis. Our customers often significantly increase their usage of the products they initially buy from us and expand their usage to other products we offer on our platform. We grow with our customers as they expand their workloads in the public and private cloud.
As of December 31, 2025, we had $401.3 million in cash and cash equivalents and $4,073.5 million in marketable securities. We have grown rapidly in recent periods, with revenues for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023 of $3,427.2 million, $2,684.3 million, and $2,128.4 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 28% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 and 26% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024. Substantially all of our revenue is from subscription software sales. We have continued to make significant expenditures and investments, including in personnel-related costs, sales and marketing, infrastructure and operations, and have generated net income of $107.7 million, $183.7 million and $48.6 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Our operating cash flow was $1,050.1 million, $870.6 million and $660.0 million for the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Our free cash flow was $914.7 million, $775.1 million and $597.5 million for the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023, respectively. See the section titled “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow” below.
Unfavorable conditions in the economy both in the United States and abroad may negatively affect the growth of our business and our results of operations. For example, macroeconomic events including changes in trade policies, such as trade wars, tariffs or other trade restrictions or the threat of such actions, fluctuating inflation and interest rates, and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have led to economic uncertainty. Historically, during periods of economic uncertainty and downturns, businesses may slow spending on information technology, which may impact our business and our customers’ businesses.
Due to our subscription model, the effect of macroeconomic conditions may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. However, if economic uncertainty increases or the global economy worsens, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be harmed. For further discussion of the potential impacts of macroeconomic events on our business, financial condition, and operating results, see “Risk Factors” included in Part I, Item 1A of this report.
Factors Affecting Our Performance
Acquiring New Customers
We believe there is substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. We intend to drive new customer acquisition by continuing to invest significantly in sales and marketing to engage our prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our platform and products. We also plan to continue to invest in building brand awareness within the development and operations communities. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 32,700 customers spanning organizations of a broad range of sizes and industries, compared to approximately 30,000 as of December 31, 2024. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness and pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors, and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.
We define the number of customers as the number of accounts with a unique account identifier for which we have an active subscription in the period indicated. Users of our free trials or tier are not included in our customer count. A single organization with multiple divisions, segments or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single customer. However, in some cases where they have separate billing terms, we may count separate divisions, segments or subsidiaries as multiple customers.
47
Expanding Within Our Existing Customer Base
Our base of customers represents a significant opportunity for further sales expansion. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 4,310 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $100,000 or more, representing 90% of our ARR, up from 3,610 as of December 31, 2024, representing 88% of our ARR. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 603 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $1.0 million or more, up from 462 as of December 31, 2024. We monitor our number of customers with ARR of $100,000 or more, and believe it is useful to investors, as an indicator of our ability to grow the number of customers that are exceeding this ARR threshold. We define ARR as the annual run-rate revenue of subscription agreements from all customers at a point in time. We calculate ARR by taking the monthly run-rate revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts, additional usage, usage from subscriptions for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used and monthly subscriptions. ARR and MRR should be viewed independently of revenue, and do not represent our revenue under GAAP on a monthly or annualized basis, as they are operating metrics that can be impacted by contract start and end dates, and renewal rates. ARR and MRR are not intended to be replacements or forecasts of revenue.
A further indication of the propensity of our customer relationships to expand over time is our dollar-based net retention rate, which compares our ARR from the same set of customers in one period, relative to the year-ago period. As of December 31, 2025, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was about 120%. As of December 31, 2024, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was high-110%'s. The increase in our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was attributable to increased usage growth from existing customers. We calculate dollar-based net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the ARR from the cohort of all customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the Current Period ARR. Current Period ARR includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months, but excludes ARR from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based net retention rate. We then calculate the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time dollar-based net retention rates, to arrive at the trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate.
We believe that our land-and-expand business model allows us to efficiently increase revenue from our existing customer base. Our customers often expand the deployment of our platform across large teams and more broadly within the enterprise as they migrate more workloads to the cloud, find new use cases for our platform, and generally realize the benefits of our platform. We intend to continue to invest in enhancing awareness of our brand and developing more products, features and functionality, which we believe are important factors to achieve widespread adoption of our platform. Our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our solution, competition, pricing and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.
Sustaining Innovation and Technology Leadership
Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain our competitive advantage. We believe that we have built a highly differentiated platform that will position us to further extend the adoption of our platform and products. Datadog is frequently deployed across a customer’s entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous. Datadog is a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders. We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our efficient go-to-market model enables us to prioritize significant investment in innovation. We have demonstrated the success of our platform approach, through expansion beyond our initial infrastructure monitoring solution to include over 20 products. Approximately 84% of our customers were using two or more products as of December 31, 2025, consistent with approximately 83% a year earlier. Additionally, as of December 31, 2025, approximately 55% of our customers were using four or more products, up from approximately 50% a year earlier; approximately 33% of our customers were using six or more products, up from approximately 26% a year earlier; approximately 18% of our customers were using eight or more products, up from approximately 13% a year earlier; and approximately 9% of our customers were using ten or more products, up from 5% a year earlier. We believe these metrics indicate strong expansion of product adoption across our platform.
We intend to continue to invest in building additional products, features and functionality that expand our capabilities and facilitate the extension of our platform to new use cases. We also intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses and technologies to drive product and market expansion. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully develop, market and sell existing and new products to both new and existing customers.
Expanding Internationally
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We believe there is a significant opportunity to expand usage of our platform outside of North America. Revenue, as determined based on the billing address of our customers, from regions outside of North America was approximately 29% of our total revenue for each of the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024. In addition, we have made and plan to continue to make significant investments to expand geographically, particularly in EMEA and APAC. Although these investments may adversely affect our operating results in the near term, we believe that they will contribute to our long-term growth. Beyond North America, we now have sales presence internationally, primarily in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly, annual or multi-year, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage. Usage is measured on a per-unit basis, with the unit of measure differing for each product, based on the unit that, in working with customers and design partners, best indicates the value we deliver,
In the case of subscriptions for committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement, generally beginning on the date that our platform is made available to a customer. As a result, much of our revenue is generated from subscriptions entered into during previous periods. Consequently, any decreases in new subscriptions or renewals in any one period may not be immediately reflected as a decrease in revenue for that period, but could negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. This also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through the sale of additional subscriptions in any period, as revenue is recognized over the term of the subscription agreement. In the case of a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the product is used, which may lead to fluctuations in our revenue and results of operations. In addition, historically, we have experienced seasonality in new customer bookings, as we typically enter into a higher percentage of subscription agreements with new customers in the fourth quarter of the year.
Due to ease of implementation of our products, professional services generally are not required and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue primarily consists of expenses related to providing our products to customers, including payments to our third-party cloud infrastructure providers for hosting our software, personnel-related expenses for operations and global support, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, payment processing fees, information technology, depreciation and amortization related to the amortization of acquired intangibles and internal-use software and other overhead costs such as allocated facilities.
We intend to continue to invest additional resources in our platform infrastructure and our customer support and success organizations to expand the capability of our platform and ensure that our customers are realizing the full benefit of our platform and products. The level, timing and relative investment in our infrastructure could affect our cost of revenue in the future.
Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Gross profit represents revenue less cost of revenue. Gross margin is gross profit expressed as a percentage of revenue. Our gross margin may fluctuate from period to period as our revenue fluctuates, and as a result of the timing and amount of investments to expand our products and geographical coverage.
Operating Expenses
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Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel costs are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, stock-based compensation expense and sales commissions. Operating expenses also include overhead costs for facilities and shared IT-related expenses, including depreciation expense.
Research and Development
Research and development expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our engineering, service and design teams. Additionally, research and development expense includes contractor fees, depreciation and amortization and allocated overhead costs. Research and development costs are expensed as incurred, with the exception of certain software development costs which are eligible for capitalization. We expect that our research and development expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows, particularly as we incur additional costs related to continued investments in our platform.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization, costs of general marketing and promotional activities, including the free tier and free introductory trials of our products, travel-related expenses, amortization of acquired customer relationships, and allocated overhead costs. Sales commissions earned by our sales force are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the expected period of benefit, which we have determined to be four years. We expect that our sales and marketing expense will increase in absolute dollars as we expand our sales and marketing efforts.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expense consists primarily of personnel costs for finance, legal, human resources, and other administrative functions. In addition, general and administrative expense includes non-personnel costs, such as legal, accounting and other professional fees, hardware and software costs, certain tax, license and insurance-related expenses and allocated overhead costs. We expect that our general and administrative expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows.
Other Income (Loss), Net
Other income (loss), net consists of interest income, primarily due to income earned on money market funds included in cash and cash equivalents and on marketable securities, partially offset by interest expense due on the Notes and amortization of premiums on our marketable securities.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists of U.S. federal and state income taxes and income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. We recorded a full valuation allowance on our federal and state deferred tax assets as we have concluded that it is not more likely than not that the deferred tax assets will be realized.
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Results of Operations
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 3,427,158 | $ | 2,684,275 | $ | 2,128,359 | ||||
| Cost of revenue (1)(2)(3) | 686,957 | 515,531 | 409,908 | |||||||
| Gross profit | 2,740,201 | 2,168,744 | 1,718,451 | |||||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||||
| Research and development (1)(3) | 1,548,451 | 1,152,703 | 962,447 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing (1)(2)(3) | 956,423 | 756,605 | 609,276 | |||||||
| General and administrative (1)(3)(4) | 279,700 | 205,152 | 180,192 | |||||||
| Total operating expenses | 2,784,574 | 2,114,460 | 1,751,915 | |||||||
| Operating (loss) income | (44,373) | 54,284 | (33,464) | |||||||
| Other income: | ||||||||||
| Interest expense (5) | (11,059) | (7,068) | (6,302) | |||||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 182,453 | 156,724 | 100,001 | |||||||
| Other income, net | 171,394 | 149,656 | 93,699 | |||||||
| Income before provision for income taxes | 127,021 | 203,940 | 60,235 | |||||||
| Provision for income taxes | 19,280 | 20,194 | 11,667 | |||||||
| Net income | $ | 107,741 | $ | 183,746 | $ | 48,568 |
____________________
(1)Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 29,729 | $ | 26,221 | $ | 17,578 | ||||
| Research and development | 469,526 | 363,301 | 313,096 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 156,472 | 122,079 | 101,937 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 94,944 | 58,735 | 49,689 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 750,671 | $ | 570,336 | $ | 482,300 |
____________________
(2)Includes amortization of acquired intangibles expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 5,428 | $ | 5,642 | $ | 8,041 | ||||
| Sales and marketing | 945 | 825 | 825 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 6,373 | $ | 6,467 | $ | 8,866 |
_____________________
(3)Includes employer payroll taxes on employee stock transactions as follows:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 695 | $ | 446 | $ | 364 | ||||
| Research and development | 40,183 | 31,134 | 21,449 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 5,923 | 4,694 | 5,917 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 6,998 | 6,852 | 4,811 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 53,799 | $ | 43,126 | $ | 32,541 |
___________________
(4)Includes M&A transaction costs as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| General and administrative | $ | 1,574 | $ | — | $ | — |
____________________
(5)Includes amortization of issuance costs as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Interest expense | $ | 5,602 | $ | 3,761 | $ | 3,388 |
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||
| (as a percentage of total revenue(1)) | ||||||||
| Revenue | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||
| Cost of revenue | 20 | 19 | 19 | |||||
| Gross profit | 80 | 81 | 81 | |||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||
| Research and development | 45 | 43 | 45 | |||||
| Sales and marketing | 28 | 28 | 29 | |||||
| General and administrative | 8 | 8 | 8 | |||||
| Total operating expenses | 81 | 79 | 82 | |||||
| Operating (loss) income | (1) | 2 | (2) | |||||
| Other income: | ||||||||
| Interest expense | — | — | — | |||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 5 | 6 | 5 | |||||
| Other income, net | 5 | 6 | 4 | |||||
| Income before provision for income taxes | 4 | 8 | 3 | |||||
| Provision for income taxes | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Net income | 3 | % | 7 | % | 2 | % |
_____________________
(1)Certain items may not total due to rounding.
Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2025 and 2024
Revenue
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 3,427,158 | $ | 2,684,275 | $ | 742,883 | 28 | % |
Revenue increased by $742.9 million or 28%, for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to the year ended December 31, 2024. Approximately 75% of the increase in revenue was attributable to growth from existing customers, and the remaining 25% was attributable to growth from new customers.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 686,957 | $ | 515,531 | $ | 171,426 | 33 | % | ||||||
| Gross margin | 80 | % | 81 | % |
Cost of revenue increased by $171.4 million, or 33%, for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to the year ended December 31, 2024. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $149.8 million in third-party cloud infrastructure hosting and software costs and an increase of $18.2 million in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs as a result of increased headcount.
Our gross margin decreased by 1% for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to the year ended December 31, 2024, primarily as the result of increased in third-party cloud infrastructure provider costs.
Research and Development
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Research and development | $ | 1,548,451 | $ | 1,152,703 | $ | 395,748 | 34 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 45 | % | 43 | % |
Research and development expense increased by $395.7 million, or 34%, for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to the year ended December 31, 2024. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $324.4 million in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs for our engineering, product and design teams as a result of increased headcount and an increase of $60.0 million in cloud infrastructure-related investments.
Sales and Marketing
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | $ | 956,423 | $ | 756,605 | $ | 199,818 | 26 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 28 | % | 28 | % |
Sales and marketing expense increased by $199.8 million, or 26%, for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to the year ended December 31, 2024. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $165.4 million in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs for our sales and marketing organization as a result of increased headcount and increased variable compensation for our sales personnel and an increase of $26.3 million in advertising, sales, marketing and promotional activities.
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General and Administrative
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | $ | 279,700 | $ | 205,152 | $ | 74,548 | 36 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 8 | % | 8 | % |
General and administrative expense increased by $74.5 million, or 36%, for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to the year ended December 31, 2024. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $58.2 million in personnel costs and other related costs as a result of increased headcount, and an increase of $10.4 million in legal and other professional services expenses.
Other Income, Net
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Other income, net | $ | 171,394 | $ | 149,656 | $ | 21,738 | 15 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 5 | % | 6 | % |
Other income, net increased by $21.7 million, or 15% for the year ended December 31, 2025 compared to the year ended December 31, 2024. This increase was primarily driven by an increase of $39.1 million in interest income, mainly due to income earned from investments in marketable securities, offset by $14.0 million due to fluctuations related to foreign currency exchange rates.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Our largest source of operating cash is cash collection from sales of subscriptions to our customers. Our primary uses of cash from operating activities are for personnel expenses, hosting expenses, facility expenses, and marketing expenses. We have generated positive cash flows from operations during the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024, and 2023. When assessing sources of liquidity, we also include cash and cash equivalents of $0.4 billion and marketable securities of $4.1 billion as of December 31, 2025. We believe that our existing cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and cash flow from operations will be sufficient to support our cash requirements for the next 12 months and beyond.
Our working capital requirements principally consist of workforce salaries, bonuses, commissions, and benefits and, to a lesser extent, cancellable and non-cancelable licenses and services arrangements that are integral to our business operations, and operating lease obligations. Non-cancelable purchase commitments for business operations and operating lease obligations total $1.4 billion and $375.2 million, respectively, as of December 31, 2025, due primarily over the next five years. Purchase commitments for business operations are primarily related to cloud hosting and other software-based services.
We have also issued long-term debt to finance our business. In December 2024, we issued $1.0 billion aggregate principal amount of the 2029 Notes in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act. The total net proceeds from the sale of the 2029 Notes, after deducting the initial purchasers’ discounts and debt issuance costs, were approximately $979.1 million. The principal and future interest payments related to our 2029 Notes are $1.0 billion. We may from time to time seek to retire or purchase the 2029 Notes, through cash purchases and/or exchanges for equity securities, in open market purchases, privately negotiated transactions or otherwise.
Cash Flows
The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the periods presented:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | |||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||
| Cash provided by operating activities | $ | 1,050,135 | $ | 870,603 | ||
| Cash used in investing activities | (1,334,480) | (736,840) | ||||
| Cash (used in) provided by financing activities | (572,483) | 787,083 |
Operating Activities
Net cash provided by operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased $179.5 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2024, primarily driven by an increase in non-cash charges of $215.4 million, an increase in deferred revenue of $75.7 million, and a increase in accrued expenses and other liabilities of $54.5 million. The increase in non-cash charges related primarily to an increase of $180.3 million in stock-based compensation as we continued to increase headcount to support the growth of the business. The increase in cash provided by operating activities was partially offset by an increase in accounts receivable of $52.9 million and an increase in deferred contract costs of $50.8 million.
Investing Activities
Net cash used in investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by $597.6 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2024, primarily driven by an increase in the purchases of marketable securities of $946.6 million, an increase in cash paid for acquisition of businesses, net of cash acquired of $110.9 million, an increase in capitalized software development costs of $25.1 million, and an increase in purchases of property and equipment of $14.9 million. These increases were partially offset by an increase in proceeds from maturities of marketable securities of $468.8 million and an increase in proceeds from the sale of marketable securities of $30.9 million.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2025 decreased by $1,359.6 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2024, primarily due to the absence of proceeds from the issuance of the 2029 Notes of $979.1 million, higher repayments of the 2025 Notes of $438.8 million, and the absence of proceeds from the termination of Capped Calls related to the 0.125% Convertible Senior Notes 2025 (the "2025 Notes"), together with the 2029 Notes, (the "Notes") of $54.7 million. The decrease in cash provided by financing activities was partially offset by the absence of purchases of Capped Calls related to the 2029 Notes of $100.9 million and proceeds from the issuance of common stock under the employee stock purchase plan of $13.1 million.
Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow
We report our financial results in accordance with U.S. GAAP. To supplement our consolidated financial statements, we provide investors with the amount of free cash flow, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Free cash flow represents net cash provided by operating activities, reduced by capital expenditures and capitalized software development costs, if any. Free cash flow is a measure used by management to understand and evaluate the strength of our liquidity and future ability to generate cash that can be used for strategic opportunities or investing in our business. The reduction of capital expenditures and amounts capitalized for software development facilitates comparisons of our liquidity on a period-to-period basis and excludes items that we do not consider to be indicative of our liquidity. Nevertheless, our use of free cash flow has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our financial results as reported under GAAP. Further, our definition of free cash flow may differ from the definitions used by other companies and therefore comparability may be limited. You should consider free cash flow alongside our other GAAP-based financial performance measures, such as net cash used in operating activities, and our other GAAP financial results.
The following table presents a reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, for each of the periods indicated:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Net cash provided by operating activities | $ | 1,050,135 | $ | 870,603 | $ | 659,954 | ||||
| Less: Purchases of property and equipment | (49,578) | (34,719) | (27,586) | |||||||
| Less: Capitalized software development costs | (85,840) | (60,781) | (34,820) | |||||||
| Free cash flow | $ | 914,717 | $ | 775,103 | $ | 597,548 |
Critical Accounting Estimates
Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and related disclosures. We evaluate our estimates and assumptions on an ongoing basis. Our estimates are based on historical experience and various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Our actual results could differ from these estimates.
The significant accounting policies and methods used in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements are discussed in Note 2, Basis of Presentation and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We believe that the accounting policies described below 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 generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
We account for revenue contracts with customers through the following steps:
(1)identify the contract with a customer;
(2)identify the performance obligations in the contract;
(3)determine the transaction price;
(4)allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract; and
(5)recognize revenue when or as we satisfy a performance obligation.
Our subscriptions are generally non-cancellable. Once we have determined the transaction price, the total transaction price is allocated to each performance obligation in the contract on a relative stand-alone selling price basis, or SSP. The determination of a relative stand-alone SSP for each distinct performance obligation requires judgment. We determine SSP for performance obligations based on overall pricing objectives, which take into consideration market conditions and customer-specific factors. This includes a review of internal discounting tables, the service(s) being sold, and customer demographics.
Revenue is recognized when control of these services is transferred to customers, in an amount that reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to receive in exchange for those services. We determine an output method to be the most appropriate measure of progress because it most faithfully represents when the value of the services is simultaneously received and consumed by the customer, and control is transferred.
For committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement generally beginning on the date that the platform is made available to a customer. For committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the services are rendered.
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Internal-Use Software Development Costs
We capitalize certain costs related to the development of our platform and other software applications for internal-use. In accordance with authoritative guidance, we begin to capitalize our costs to develop software when preliminary development efforts are successfully completed, management with the relevant authority has authorized and committed to funding the project, and it is probable that the project will be completed and the software will be used as intended. We stop capitalizing these costs when the software is substantially complete and ready for its intended use, including the completion of all significant testing. These costs are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful life of the related asset, generally estimated to be three years. In January 2025, the Company completed an assessment of the useful life of its capitalized software development costs, resulting in an increase in the estimated useful life of capitalized software development costs from two to three years. This change in accounting estimate was effective beginning fiscal year 2025. We also capitalize costs related to specific upgrades and enhancements when it is probable the expenditure will result in additional functionality and expense costs incurred for maintenance and minor upgrades and enhancements. Costs incurred prior to meeting these criteria together with costs incurred for training and maintenance are expensed as incurred and recorded within research and development expenses in our consolidated statements of operations.
We exercise judgment in determining the point at which various projects may be capitalized, in assessing the ongoing value of the capitalized costs and in determining the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized. To the extent that we change the manner in which we develop and test new features and functionalities related to our platform, assess the ongoing value of capitalized assets or determine the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized, the amount of internal-use software development costs we capitalize and amortize could change in future periods.
Business Combinations
When we acquire a business, the purchase consideration is allocated to the tangible assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and intangible assets acquired based on their estimated respective fair values. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair values of these identifiable assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Such valuations require us to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Significant estimates in valuing certain intangible assets include, but are not limited to, future expected cash flows from acquired users, acquired technology, and trade names from a market participant perspective, useful lives and discount rates. Our estimates of fair value are based upon assumptions believed to be reasonable, but which are inherently uncertain and unpredictable and, as a result, actual results may differ from estimates. During the measurement period, we may record adjustments to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed, with the corresponding offset to goodwill. Upon the conclusion of the measurement period, any subsequent adjustments are recorded to other income, net in the consolidated statement of operations.
Recently Adopted Accounting Pronouncements
See Note 2, in our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in “Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of recent accounting pronouncements.
MD&A history
Prior-year 10-K MD&A spans are extracted from SEC filings with the same bounded parser used for the latest filing. The latest 10-K appears above; prior years are below.
FY 2024 10-K MD&A
SEC filing source: 0001561550-25-000025.
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This discussion, particularly information with respect to our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described under the heading “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should review the disclosure under the heading “Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.
This section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K discusses our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2023. A discussion of our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2022 that are not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, filed on February 24, 2023.
Overview
Datadog is the observability and security platform for cloud applications.
Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, user experience monitoring, cloud security, and many other capabilities to provide unified, real-time observability
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and security for our customers’ entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional containers to monitor, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection and app analytics. Professional services are generally not required for the implementation of our products and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our customers can expand their footprint with us on a self-service basis. Our customers often significantly increase their usage of the products they initially buy from us and expand their usage to other products we offer on our platform. We grow with our customers as they expand their workloads in the public and private cloud.
As of December 31, 2024, we had $1,247.0 million in cash and cash equivalents and $2,942.1 million in marketable securities. We have grown rapidly in recent periods, with revenues for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022 of $2,684.3 million, $2,128.4 million, and $1,675.1 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 26% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 and 27% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023. Substantially all of our revenue is from subscription software sales. We have continued to make significant expenditures and investments, including in personnel-related costs, sales and marketing, infrastructure and operations, and have incurred net income (losses) of $183.7 million, $48.6 million and $(50.2) million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively. Our operating cash flow was $870.6 million, $660.0 million and $418.4 million for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively. Our free cash flow was $775.1 million, $597.5 million and $353.5 million for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively. See the section titled “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow” below.
Unfavorable conditions in the economy both in the United States and abroad may negatively affect the growth of our business and our results of operations. For example, macroeconomic events including fluctuating inflation and interest rates, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the conflicts in the Middle East have led to economic uncertainty. Historically, during periods of economic uncertainty and downturns, businesses may slow spending on information technology, which may impact our business and our customers’ businesses.
Due to our subscription model, the effect of macroeconomic conditions may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. However, if economic uncertainty increases or the global economy worsens, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be harmed. For further discussion of the potential impacts of macroeconomic events on our business, financial condition, and operating results, see “Risk Factors” included in Part I, Item 1A of this report.
Convertible Senior Notes
In December 2024, we completed a private offering of $1.0 billion aggregate principal amount of the 2029 Notes. The total proceeds from the 2029 Notes offering were approximately $979.1 million, net of $20.9 million of debt issuance costs.
We used a portion of the net proceeds from the offering (i) to pay the $100.9 million cost of the privately negotiated capped call transactions relating to the 2029 Notes, or the Capped Calls and (ii) to repurchase for $196.8 million in privately negotiated transactions approximately $112.0 million in aggregate principal amount of the 2025 Notes, including accrued and unpaid interest.
Refer to Note 8, Convertible Senior Notes, to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further details.
Factors Affecting Our Performance
Acquiring New Customers
We believe there is substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. We intend to drive new customer acquisition by continuing to invest significantly in sales and marketing to engage our prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our platform and products. We also plan to continue to invest in building brand
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awareness within the development and operations communities. As of December 31, 2024, we had approximately 30,000 customers spanning organizations of a broad range of sizes and industries, compared to approximately 27,300 as of December 31, 2023. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness and pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors, and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.
We define the number of customers as the number of accounts with a unique account identifier for which we have an active subscription in the period indicated. Users of our free trials or tier are not included in our customer count. A single organization with multiple divisions, segments or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single customer. However, in some cases where they have separate billing terms, we may count separate divisions, segments or subsidiaries as multiple customers.
Expanding Within Our Existing Customer Base
Our base of customers represents a significant opportunity for further sales expansion. As of December 31, 2024, we had approximately 3,610 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $100,000 or more, representing 88% of our ARR, up from 3,190 as of December 31, 2023, representing 86% of our ARR. As of December 31, 2024, we had approximately 462 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $1.0 million or more, up from 396 as of December 31, 2023. We monitor our number of customers with ARR of $100,000 or more, and believe it is useful to investors, as an indicator of our ability to grow the number of customers that are exceeding this ARR threshold. We define ARR as the annual run-rate revenue of subscription agreements from all customers at a point in time. We calculate ARR by taking the monthly run-rate revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts, additional usage, usage from subscriptions for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used and monthly subscriptions. ARR and MRR should be viewed independently of revenue, and do not represent our revenue under GAAP on a monthly or annualized basis, as they are operating metrics that can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR and MRR are not intended to be replacements or forecasts of revenue.
A further indication of the propensity of our customer relationships to expand over time is our dollar-based net retention rate, which compares our ARR from the same set of customers in one period, relative to the year-ago period. As of December 31, 2024, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was high-110%'s. As of December 31, 2023, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was mid-110%'s. The increase in our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was attributable to increased usage growth from existing customers. We calculate dollar-based net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the ARR from the cohort of all customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the Current Period ARR. Current Period ARR includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months, but excludes ARR from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based net retention rate. We then calculate the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time dollar-based net retention rates, to arrive at the trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate.
We believe that our land-and-expand business model allows us to efficiently increase revenue from our existing customer base. Our customers often expand the deployment of our platform across large teams and more broadly within the enterprise as they migrate more workloads to the cloud, find new use cases for our platform, and generally realize the benefits of our platform. We intend to continue to invest in enhancing awareness of our brand and developing more products, features and functionality, which we believe are important factors to achieve widespread adoption of our platform. Our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our solution, competition, pricing and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.
Sustaining Innovation and Technology Leadership
Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain our competitive advantage. We believe that we have built a highly differentiated platform that will position us to further extend the adoption of our platform and products. Datadog is frequently deployed across a customer’s entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous. Datadog is a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders. We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our efficient go-to-market model enables us to prioritize significant investment in innovation. We have demonstrated the success of our platform approach, through expansion beyond our initial infrastructure monitoring solution to include over 20 products. As of each of the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, approximately 83% of our customers were using more than one product. Additionally, as of December 31, 2024, approximately 50% of our customers were using more than four products, up from approximately 47% a year earlier, and approximately 26% of our customers were using more than six products, up from approximately 22% a year earlier. We believe these metrics indicate strong expansion of product adoption across our platform.
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We intend to continue to invest in building additional products, features and functionality that expand our capabilities and facilitate the extension of our platform to new use cases. We also intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses and technologies to drive product and market expansion. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully develop, market and sell existing and new products to both new and existing customers.
Expanding Internationally
We believe there is a significant opportunity to expand usage of our platform outside of North America. Revenue, as determined based on the billing address of our customers, from regions outside of North America was approximately 30% of our total revenue for each of the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023. In addition, we have made and plan to continue to make significant investments to expand geographically, particularly in EMEA and APAC. Although these investments may adversely affect our operating results in the near term, we believe that they will contribute to our long-term growth. Beyond North America, we now have sales presence internationally, primarily in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly, annual or multi-year, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
Usage is measured primarily by the number of hosts or by the volume of data indexed. A host is generally defined as a server, either in the cloud or on-premise. Our infrastructure monitoring, APM and network performance monitoring products are priced per host, our logs product is priced primarily per log events indexed and secondarily by events ingested. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional container or serverless monitoring, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection, synthetic monitoring and app analytics.
In the case of subscriptions for committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement, generally beginning on the date that our platform is made available to a customer. As a result, much of our revenue is generated from subscriptions entered into during previous periods. Consequently, any decreases in new subscriptions or renewals in any one period may not be immediately reflected as a decrease in revenue for that period, but could negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. This also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through the sale of additional subscriptions in any period, as revenue is recognized over the term of the subscription agreement. In the case of a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the product is used, which may lead to fluctuations in our revenue and results of operations. In addition, historically, we have experienced seasonality in new customer bookings, as we typically enter into a higher percentage of subscription agreements with new customers in the fourth quarter of the year.
Due to ease of implementation of our products, professional services generally are not required and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue primarily consists of expenses related to providing our products to customers, including payments to our third-party cloud infrastructure providers for hosting our software, personnel-related expenses for operations and global support, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, payment processing fees, information technology, depreciation and amortization related to the amortization of acquired intangibles and internal-use software and other overhead costs such as allocated facilities.
We intend to continue to invest additional resources in our platform infrastructure and our customer support and success organizations to expand the capability of our platform and ensure that our customers are realizing the full benefit of our
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platform and products. The level, timing and relative investment in our infrastructure could affect our cost of revenue in the future.
Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Gross profit represents revenue less cost of revenue. Gross margin is gross profit expressed as a percentage of revenue. Our gross margin may fluctuate from period to period as our revenue fluctuates, and as a result of the timing and amount of investments to expand our products and geographical coverage.
Operating Expenses
Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel costs are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, stock-based compensation expense and sales commissions. Operating expenses also include overhead costs for facilities and shared IT-related expenses, including depreciation expense.
Research and Development
Research and development expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our engineering, service and design teams. Additionally, research and development expense includes contractor fees, depreciation and amortization and allocated overhead costs. Research and development costs are expensed as incurred, with the exception of certain software development costs which are eligible for capitalization. We expect that our research and development expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows, particularly as we incur additional costs related to continued investments in our platform.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization, costs of general marketing and promotional activities, including the free tier and free introductory trials of our products, travel-related expenses, amortization of acquired customer relationships, and allocated overhead costs. Sales commissions earned by our sales force are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the expected period of benefit, which we have determined to be four years. We expect that our sales and marketing expense will increase in absolute dollars as we expand our sales and marketing efforts.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expense consists primarily of personnel costs for finance, legal, human resources, and other administrative functions. In addition, general and administrative expense includes non-personnel costs, such as legal, accounting and other professional fees, hardware and software costs, certain tax, license and insurance-related expenses and allocated overhead costs. We expect that our general and administrative expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows.
Other Income (Loss), Net
Other income (loss), net consists of interest income, primarily due to income earned on money market funds included in cash and cash equivalents and on marketable securities, partially offset by interest expense due on the Notes and amortization of premiums on our marketable securities.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists of U.S. federal and state income taxes and income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. We recorded a full valuation allowance on our federal and state deferred tax assets as we have concluded that it is not more likely than not that the deferred tax assets will be realized.
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Results of Operations
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 2,684,275 | $ | 2,128,359 | $ | 1,675,100 | ||||
| Cost of revenue (1)(2)(3) | 515,531 | 409,908 | 346,743 | |||||||
| Gross profit | 2,168,744 | 1,718,451 | 1,328,357 | |||||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||||
| Research and development (1)(3) | 1,152,703 | 962,447 | 752,351 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing (1)(2)(3) | 756,605 | 609,276 | 495,288 | |||||||
| General and administrative (1)(3) | 205,152 | 180,192 | 139,413 | |||||||
| Total operating expenses | 2,114,460 | 1,751,915 | 1,387,052 | |||||||
| Operating income (loss) | 54,284 | (33,464) | (58,695) | |||||||
| Other income: | ||||||||||
| Interest expense (4) | (7,068) | (6,302) | (16,535) | |||||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 156,724 | 100,001 | 37,160 | |||||||
| Other income, net | 149,656 | 93,699 | 20,625 | |||||||
| Income (loss) before provision for income taxes | 203,940 | 60,235 | (38,070) | |||||||
| Provision for income taxes | 20,194 | 11,667 | 12,090 | |||||||
| Net income (loss) | $ | 183,746 | $ | 48,568 | $ | (50,160) |
____________________
(1)Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 26,221 | $ | 17,578 | $ | 10,827 | ||||
| Research and development | 363,301 | 313,096 | 237,120 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 122,079 | 101,937 | 76,735 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 58,735 | 49,689 | 38,472 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 570,336 | $ | 482,300 | $ | 363,154 |
____________________
(2)Includes amortization of acquired intangibles expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 5,642 | $ | 8,041 | $ | 6,750 | ||||
| Sales and marketing | 825 | 825 | 825 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 6,467 | $ | 8,866 | $ | 7,575 |
_____________________
(3)Includes employer payroll taxes on employee stock transactions as follows:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 446 | $ | 364 | $ | 266 | ||||
| Research and development | 31,134 | 21,449 | 10,384 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 4,694 | 5,917 | 2,766 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 6,852 | 4,811 | 830 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 43,126 | $ | 32,541 | $ | 14,246 |
____________________
(4)Includes amortization of issuance costs as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Interest expense | $ | 3,761 | $ | 3,388 | $ | 3,369 |
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | ||||||
| (as a percentage of total revenue(1)) | ||||||||
| Revenue | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||
| Cost of revenue | 19 | 19 | 21 | |||||
| Gross profit | 81 | 81 | 79 | |||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||
| Research and development | 43 | 45 | 45 | |||||
| Sales and marketing | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||||
| General and administrative | 8 | 8 | 8 | |||||
| Total operating expenses | 79 | 82 | 83 | |||||
| Operating income (loss) | 2 | (2) | (4) | |||||
| Other income: | ||||||||
| Interest expense | — | — | (1) | |||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 6 | 5 | 2 | |||||
| Other income, net | 6 | 4 | 1 | |||||
| Income (loss) before provision for income taxes | 8 | 3 | (2) | |||||
| Provision for income taxes | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Net income (loss) | 7 | % | 2 | % | (3) | % |
_____________________
(1)Certain items may not total due to rounding.
Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2024 and 2023
Revenue
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 2,684,275 | $ | 2,128,359 | $ | 555,916 | 26 | % |
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Revenue increased by $555.9 million or 26%, for the year ended December 31, 2024 compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. Approximately 75% of the increase in revenue was attributable to growth from existing customers, and the remaining 25% was attributable to growth from new customers.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 515,531 | $ | 409,908 | $ | 105,623 | 26 | % | ||||||
| Gross margin | 81 | % | 81 | % |
Cost of revenue increased by $105.6 million, or 26%, for the year ended December 31, 2024 compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $78.5 million in third-party cloud infrastructure hosting and software costs and an increase of $19.3 million in personnel costs and other related costs as a result of increased headcount.
Our gross margin remained flat for the year ended December 31, 2024 compared to the year ended December 31, 2023, primarily as the result of revenue growing in proportion to the growth of third-party cloud infrastructure provider costs.
Research and Development
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Research and development | $ | 1,152,703 | $ | 962,447 | $ | 190,256 | 20 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 43 | % | 45 | % |
Research and development expense increased by $190.3 million, or 20%, for the year ended December 31, 2024 compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $158.9 million in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs for our engineering, product and design teams as a result of increased headcount and an increase of $30.4 million in cloud infrastructure-related investments.
Sales and Marketing
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | $ | 756,605 | $ | 609,276 | $ | 147,329 | 24 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 28 | % | 29 | % |
Sales and marketing expense increased by $147.3 million, or 24%, for the year ended December 31, 2024 compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $115.2 million in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs for our sales and marketing organization as a result of increased headcount and increased variable compensation for our sales personnel and an increase of $27.9 million in advertising, sales, marketing and promotional activities.
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General and Administrative
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | $ | 205,152 | $ | 180,192 | $ | 24,960 | 14 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 8 | % | 8 | % |
General and administrative expense increased by $25.0 million, or 14%, for the year ended December 31, 2024 compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $24.3 million in personnel costs and other related costs as a result of increased headcount.
Other Income, Net
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Other income, net | $ | 149,656 | $ | 93,699 | $ | 55,957 | 60 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 6 | % | 4 | % |
Other income, net increased by $56.0 million, or 60% for the year ended December 31, 2024 compared to the year ended December 31, 2023. This increase was primarily driven by an increase of $51.9 million in interest income, mainly due to income earned from investments in marketable securities.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Our largest source of operating cash is cash collection from sales of subscriptions to our customers. Our primary uses of cash from operating activities are for personnel expenses, hosting expenses, facility expenses, and marketing expenses. We have generated positive cash flows from operations during the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023, and 2022. When assessing sources of liquidity, we also include cash and cash equivalents of $1.2 billion and marketable securities of $2.9 billion as of December 31, 2024. We believe that our existing cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and cash flow from operations will be sufficient to support our cash requirements for the next 12 months and beyond.
Our working capital requirements principally consist of workforce salaries, bonuses, commissions, and benefits and, to a lesser extent, cancellable and non-cancelable licenses and services arrangements that are integral to our business operations, and operating lease obligations. Non-cancelable purchase commitments for business operations and operating lease obligations total $1.4 billion and $365.6 million, respectively, as of December 31, 2024, due primarily over the next five years. Purchase commitments for business operations are primarily related to cloud hosting and other software-based services.
We have also issued long-term debt to finance our business. In June 2020 and December 2024, we issued $747.5 million aggregate principal amount of the 2025 Notes and $1.0 billion aggregate principal amount of the 2029 Notes, respectively, in private placements to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act. The total net proceeds from the sale of the 2025 Notes and the 2029 Notes, after deducting the initial purchasers’ discounts and debt issuance costs, were approximately $730.2 million and $979.1 million, respectively. The principal and future interest payments related to our 2025 Notes and 2029 Notes are $635.9 million and $1.0 billion, respectively. We used $196.8 million of the net proceeds from the offering of the 2029 Notes to repurchase approximately $112.0 million in aggregate principal amount of the 2025 Notes, including accrued and unpaid interest, in privately negotiated transactions. In connection with the partial retirement of the 2025 Notes, we entered into a termination agreement relating to a number of options corresponding to the number of 2025 Notes retired. We received approximately $54.7 million in connection with such termination agreements. We may from time to time seek to retire or purchase our 2025 Notes or the 2029 Notes, through cash purchases and/or exchanges for equity securities, in open market purchases, privately negotiated transactions or otherwise.
Cash Flows
The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the periods presented:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | |||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||
| Cash provided by operating activities | $ | 870,603 | $ | 659,954 | ||
| Cash used in investing activities | (736,840) | (731,365) | ||||
| Cash provided by financing activities | 787,083 | 58,279 |
Operating Activities
Net cash provided by operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased $210.6 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2023, primarily driven by an increase in non-cash charges of $106.8 million, an increase in accrued expenses and other liabilities of $38.9 million, and a decrease in accounts receivable of $17.2 million. The increase in non-cash charges related primarily to an increase of $88.0 million in stock-based compensation as we continued to increase headcount to support the growth of the business. The increase in cash provided by operating activities was partially offset by a decrease in deferred revenue of $33.4 million, a decrease in accounts payable of $32.2 million, and an increase in prepaid expenses and other current assets of $13.1 million.
Investing Activities
Net cash used in investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $5.5 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2023, primarily driven by an increase in the purchases of marketable securities of $95.2 million, a decrease in proceeds from the sale of marketable securities of $36.8 million, an increase in the capitalization of software development costs of $26.0 million, partially offset by an increase in proceeds from maturities of marketable securities of $154.3 million.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased by $728.8 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2023, primarily due to proceeds from the issuance of the 2029 Notes of $978.9 million and proceeds from the termination of Capped Calls related to the 2025 Notes of $54.7 million. The increase in cash provided by financing activities was partially offset by repayments of the 2025 Notes of $196.8 million and purchases of Capped Calls related to the 2029 Notes of $100.9 million.
Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow
We report our financial results in accordance with U.S. GAAP. To supplement our consolidated financial statements, we provide investors with the amount of free cash flow, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Free cash flow represents net cash provided by operating activities, reduced by capital expenditures and capitalized software development costs, if any. Free cash flow is a measure used by management to understand and evaluate the strength of our liquidity and future ability to generate cash that can be used for strategic opportunities or investing in our business. The reduction of capital expenditures and amounts capitalized for software development facilitates comparisons of our liquidity on a period-to-period basis and excludes items that we do not consider to be indicative of our liquidity. Nevertheless, our use of free cash flow has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our financial results as reported under GAAP. Further, our definition of free cash flow may differ from the definitions used by other companies and therefore comparability may be limited. You should consider free cash flow alongside our other GAAP-based financial performance measures, such as net cash used in operating activities, and our other GAAP financial results.
The following table presents a reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, for each of the periods indicated:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Net cash provided by operating activities | $ | 870,603 | $ | 659,954 | $ | 418,407 | ||||
| Less: Purchases of property and equipment | (34,719) | (27,586) | (35,261) | |||||||
| Less: Capitalized software development costs | (60,781) | (34,820) | (29,628) | |||||||
| Free cash flow | $ | 775,103 | $ | 597,548 | $ | 353,518 |
Critical Accounting Estimates
Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and related disclosures. We evaluate our estimates and assumptions on an ongoing basis. Our estimates are based on historical experience and various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Our actual results could differ from these estimates.
The significant accounting policies and methods used in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements are discussed in Note 2, Basis of Presentation and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We believe that the accounting policies described below 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 generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
We account for revenue contracts with customers through the following steps:
(1)identify the contract with a customer;
(2)identify the performance obligations in the contract;
(3)determine the transaction price;
(4)allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract; and
(5)recognize revenue when or as we satisfy a performance obligation.
Our subscriptions are generally non-cancellable. Once we have determined the transaction price, the total transaction price is allocated to each performance obligation in the contract on a relative stand-alone selling price basis, or SSP. The determination of a relative stand-alone SSP for each distinct performance obligation requires judgment. We determine SSP for performance obligations based on overall pricing objectives, which take into consideration market conditions and customer-specific factors. This includes a review of internal discounting tables, the service(s) being sold, and customer demographics.
Revenue is recognized when control of these services is transferred to customers, in an amount that reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to receive in exchange for those services. We determine an output method to be the most appropriate measure of progress because it most faithfully represents when the value of the services is simultaneously received and consumed by the customer, and control is transferred.
For committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement generally beginning on the date that the platform is made available to a customer. For committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the services are rendered.
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Internal-Use Software Development Costs
We capitalize certain costs related to the development of our platform and other software applications for internal-use. In accordance with authoritative guidance, we begin to capitalize our costs to develop software when preliminary development efforts are successfully completed, management has authorized and committed project funding, and it is probable that the project will be completed and the software will be used as intended. We stop capitalizing these costs when the software is substantially complete and ready for its intended use, including the completion of all significant testing. These costs are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful life of the related asset, generally estimated to be two years. We also capitalize costs related to specific upgrades and enhancements when it is probable the expenditure will result in additional functionality and expense costs incurred for maintenance and minor upgrades and enhancements. Costs incurred prior to meeting these criteria together with costs incurred for training and maintenance are expensed as incurred and recorded within research and development expenses in our consolidated statements of operations.
We exercise judgment in determining the point at which various projects may be capitalized, in assessing the ongoing value of the capitalized costs and in determining the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized. To the extent that we change the manner in which we develop and test new features and functionalities related to our platform, assess the ongoing value of capitalized assets or determine the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized, the amount of internal-use software development costs we capitalize and amortize could change in future periods.
Business Combinations
When we acquire a business, the purchase consideration is allocated to the tangible assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and intangible assets acquired based on their estimated respective fair values. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair values of these identifiable assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Such valuations require us to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Significant estimates in valuing certain intangible assets include, but are not limited to, future expected cash flows from acquired users, acquired technology, and trade names from a market participant perspective, useful lives and discount rates. Our estimates of fair value are based upon assumptions believed to be reasonable, but which are inherently uncertain and unpredictable and, as a result, actual results may differ from estimates. During the measurement period, we may record adjustments to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed, with the corresponding offset to goodwill. Upon the conclusion of the measurement period, any subsequent adjustments are recorded to other income, net in the consolidated statement of operations.
Recently Adopted Accounting Pronouncements
See Note 2, in our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in “Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of recent accounting pronouncements.
FY 2023 10-K MD&A
SEC filing source: 0001561550-24-000009.
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This discussion, particularly information with respect to our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described under the heading “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should review the disclosure under the heading “Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.
This section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K discusses our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2022. A discussion of our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2021 that are not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022, filed on February 24, 2023.
Overview
Datadog is the observability and security platform for cloud applications.
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Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, user experience monitoring, cloud security, and many other capabilities to provide unified, real-time observability and security for our customers’ entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional containers to monitor, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection and app analytics. Professional services are generally not required for the implementation of our products and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our customers can expand their footprint with us on a self-service basis. Our customers often significantly increase their usage of the products they initially buy from us and expand their usage to other products we offer on our platform. We grow with our customers as they expand their workloads in the public and private cloud.
As of December 31, 2023, we had $330.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash and $2,252.6 million in marketable securities. We have grown rapidly in recent periods, with revenues for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021 of $2,128.4 million, $1,675.1 million, and $1,028.8 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 27% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 and 63% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022. Substantially all of our revenue is from subscription software sales. We have continued to make significant expenditures and investments, including in personnel-related costs, sales and marketing, infrastructure and operations, and have incurred net income (losses) of $48.6 million, $(50.2) million and $(20.7) million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively. Our operating cash flow was $660.0 million, $418.4 million and $286.5 million for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively. Our free cash flow was $597.5 million, $353.5 million and $250.5 million for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively. See the section titled “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow” below.
Unfavorable conditions in the economy both in the United States and abroad may negatively affect the growth of our business and our results of operations. For example, macroeconomic events including rising inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve raising interest rates, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East and the COVID-19 pandemic have led to economic uncertainty. Historically, during periods of economic uncertainty and downturns, businesses may slow spending on information technology, which may impact our business and our customers’ businesses. In recent quarters, we have seen slower usage growth from existing customers, which may be related to the uncertain macroeconomic environment.
Due to our subscription model, the effect of macroeconomic conditions may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. However, if economic uncertainty increases or the global economy worsens, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be harmed. For further discussion of the potential impacts of macroeconomic events on our business, financial condition, and operating results, see “Risk Factors” included in Part I, Item 1A of this report.
Factors Affecting Our Performance
Acquiring New Customers
We believe there is substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. We intend to drive new customer acquisition by continuing to invest significantly in sales and marketing to engage our prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our platform and products. We also plan to continue to invest in building brand awareness within the development and operations communities. As of December 31, 2023, we had approximately 27,300 customers spanning organizations of a broad range of sizes and industries, compared to approximately 23,200 as of December 31, 2022. Customers as of December 31, 2022 exclude customers from a then-recent acquisition, which did not contribute meaningful revenue during the fiscal year. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness and pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors, and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.
We define the number of customers as the number of accounts with a unique account identifier for which we have an active subscription in the period indicated. Users of our free trials or tier are not included in our customer count. A single organization with multiple divisions, segments or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single customer. However, in some cases where they have separate billing terms, we may count separate divisions, segments or subsidiaries as multiple customers.
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Expanding Within Our Existing Customer Base
Our base of customers represents a significant opportunity for further sales expansion. As of December 31, 2023, we had approximately 3,190 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $100,000 or more, representing 86% of our ARR, up from 2,780 as of December 31, 2022, representing 85% of our ARR. We monitor our number of customers with ARR of $100,000 or more, and believe it is useful to investors, as an indicator of our ability to grow the number of customers that are exceeding this ARR threshold. We define ARR as the annual run-rate revenue of subscription agreements from all customers at a point in time. We calculate ARR by taking the monthly run-rate revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts, additional usage, usage from subscriptions for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used and monthly subscriptions. ARR and MRR should be viewed independently of revenue, and do not represent our revenue under GAAP on a monthly or annualized basis, as they are operating metrics that can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR and MRR are not intended to be replacements or forecasts of revenue.
A further indication of the propensity of our customer relationships to expand over time is our dollar-based net retention rate, which compares our ARR from the same set of customers in one period, relative to the year-ago period. As of December 31, 2023, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was mid-110%'s. As of December 31, 2022, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was mid-140%'s. The decline in our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate was primarily attributable to slower usage growth from existing customers, which may be related to the uncertain macroeconomic environment. We calculate dollar-based net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the ARR from the cohort of all customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the Current Period ARR. Current Period ARR includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months, but excludes ARR from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based net retention rate. We then calculate the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time dollar-based net retention rates, to arrive at the trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate. As the growth of our business has decelerated in recent quarters, our trailing 12-month dollar-based net retention rate has declined.
We believe that our land-and-expand business model allows us to efficiently increase revenue from our existing customer base. Our customers often expand the deployment of our platform across large teams and more broadly within the enterprise as they migrate more workloads to the cloud, find new use cases for our platform, and generally realize the benefits of our platform. We intend to continue to invest in enhancing awareness of our brand and developing more products, features and functionality, which we believe are important factors to achieve widespread adoption of our platform. Our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our solution, competition, pricing and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.
Sustaining Innovation and Technology Leadership
Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain our competitive advantage. We believe that we have built a highly differentiated platform that will position us to further extend the adoption of our platform and products. Datadog is frequently deployed across a customer’s entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous. Datadog is a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders. We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our efficient go-to-market model enables us to prioritize significant investment in innovation. We have demonstrated the success of our platform approach, through expansion beyond our initial infrastructure monitoring solution to include over 19 products. As of December 31, 2023, approximately 83% of our customers were using more than one product, up from approximately 81% a year earlier. Additionally, as of December 31, 2023, approximately 47% of our customers were using more than four products, up from approximately 42% a year earlier, and approximately 22% of our customers were using more than six products, up from approximately 18% a year earlier. We believe these metrics indicate strong expansion of product adoption across our platform.
We intend to continue to invest in building additional products, features and functionality that expand our capabilities and facilitate the extension of our platform to new use cases. We also intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses and technologies to drive product and market expansion. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully develop, market and sell existing and new products to both new and existing customers.
Expanding Internationally
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We believe there is a significant opportunity to expand usage of our platform outside of North America. Revenue, as determined based on the billing address of our customers, from regions outside of North America was approximately 30% and 28% of our total revenue for each of the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, respectively. In addition, we have made and plan to continue to make significant investments to expand geographically, particularly in EMEA and APAC. Although these investments may adversely affect our operating results in the near term, we believe that they will contribute to our long-term growth. Beyond North America, we now have sales presence internationally, primarily in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly, annual or multi-year, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
Usage is measured primarily by the number of hosts or by the volume of data indexed. A host is generally defined as a server, either in the cloud or on-premise. Our infrastructure monitoring, APM and network performance monitoring products are priced per host, our logs product is priced primarily per log events indexed and secondarily by events ingested. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional container or serverless monitoring, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection, synthetic monitoring and app analytics.
In the case of subscriptions for committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement, generally beginning on the date that our platform is made available to a customer. As a result, much of our revenue is generated from subscriptions entered into during previous periods. Consequently, any decreases in new subscriptions or renewals in any one period may not be immediately reflected as a decrease in revenue for that period, but could negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. This also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through the sale of additional subscriptions in any period, as revenue is recognized over the term of the subscription agreement. In the case of a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the product is used, which may lead to fluctuations in our revenue and results of operations. In addition, historically, we have experienced seasonality in new customer bookings, as we typically enter into a higher percentage of subscription agreements with new customers in the fourth quarter of the year.
Due to ease of implementation of our products, professional services generally are not required and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue primarily consists of expenses related to providing our products to customers, including payments to our third-party cloud infrastructure providers for hosting our software, personnel-related expenses for operations and global support, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, payment processing fees, information technology, depreciation and amortization related to the amortization of acquired intangibles and internal-use software and other overhead costs such as allocated facilities.
We intend to continue to invest additional resources in our platform infrastructure and our customer support and success organizations to expand the capability of our platform and ensure that our customers are realizing the full benefit of our platform and products. The level, timing and relative investment in our infrastructure could affect our cost of revenue in the future.
Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Gross profit represents revenue less cost of revenue. Gross margin is gross profit expressed as a percentage of revenue. Our gross margin may fluctuate from period to period as our revenue fluctuates, and as a result of the timing and amount of investments to expand our products and geographical coverage.
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Operating Expenses
Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel costs are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, stock-based compensation expense and sales commissions. Operating expenses also include overhead costs for facilities and shared IT-related expenses, including depreciation expense.
Research and Development
Research and development expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our engineering, service and design teams. Additionally, research and development expense includes contractor fees, depreciation and amortization and allocated overhead costs. Research and development costs are expensed as incurred. We expect that our research and development expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows, particularly as we incur additional costs related to continued investments in our platform.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization, costs of general marketing and promotional activities, including the free tier and free introductory trials of our products, travel-related expenses, amortization of acquired customer relationships, and allocated overhead costs. Sales commissions earned by our sales force are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the expected period of benefit, which we have determined to be four years. We expect that our sales and marketing expense will increase in absolute dollars as we expand our sales and marketing efforts.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expense consists primarily of personnel costs and contractor fees for finance, legal, human resources, information technology and other administrative functions. In addition, general and administrative expense includes non-personnel costs, such as legal, accounting and other professional fees, hardware and software costs, certain tax, license and insurance-related expenses and allocated overhead costs.
We have incurred, and expect to continue to incur, additional expenses as a result of operating as a public company, including costs to comply with the rules and regulations applicable to companies listed on a national securities exchange, costs related to compliance and reporting obligations, and increased expenses for insurance, investor relations and professional services. We expect that our general and administrative expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows.
Other Income (Loss), Net
Other income (loss), net consists of interest income, primarily due to income earned on money market funds included in cash and cash equivalents and on marketable securities, partially offset by interest expense due on the 2025 Notes and amortization of premiums on our marketable securities.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists of U.S. federal and state income taxes and income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. We recorded a full valuation allowance on our federal and state deferred tax assets as we have concluded that it is not more likely than not that the deferred tax assets will be realized.
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Results of Operations
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 2,128,359 | $ | 1,675,100 | $ | 1,028,784 | ||||
| Cost of revenue (1)(2)(3) | 409,908 | 346,743 | 234,245 | |||||||
| Gross profit | 1,718,451 | 1,328,357 | 794,539 | |||||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||||
| Research and development (1)(3) | 962,447 | 752,351 | 419,769 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing (1)(2)(3) | 609,276 | 495,288 | 299,497 | |||||||
| General and administrative (1)(3) | 180,192 | 139,413 | 94,429 | |||||||
| Total operating expenses | 1,751,915 | 1,387,052 | 813,695 | |||||||
| Operating loss | (33,464) | (58,695) | (19,156) | |||||||
| Other income: | ||||||||||
| Interest expense (4) | (6,302) | (16,535) | (21,052) | |||||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 100,001 | 37,160 | 21,786 | |||||||
| Other income, net | 93,699 | 20,625 | 734 | |||||||
| Income (loss) before provision for income taxes | 60,235 | (38,070) | (18,422) | |||||||
| Provision for income taxes | 11,667 | 12,090 | 2,323 | |||||||
| Net income (loss) | $ | 48,568 | $ | (50,160) | $ | (20,745) |
____________________
(1)Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 17,578 | $ | 10,827 | $ | 4,565 | ||||
| Research and development | 313,096 | 237,120 | 101,942 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 101,937 | 76,735 | 35,035 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 49,689 | 38,472 | 22,195 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 482,300 | $ | 363,154 | $ | 163,737 |
____________________
(2)Includes amortization of acquired intangibles expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 8,041 | $ | 6,750 | $ | 3,792 | ||||
| Sales and marketing | 825 | 825 | 600 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 8,866 | $ | 7,575 | $ | 4,392 |
_____________________
(3)Includes employer payroll taxes on employee stock transactions as follows:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 364 | $ | 266 | $ | 345 | ||||
| Research and development | 21,449 | 10,384 | 8,143 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 5,917 | 2,766 | 6,349 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 4,811 | 830 | 1,248 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 32,541 | $ | 14,246 | $ | 16,085 |
____________________
(4)Includes amortization of debt discount and issuance costs as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Interest expense | $ | 3,388 | $ | 3,369 | $ | 3,349 |
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||
| (as a percentage of total revenue(1)) | ||||||||
| Revenue | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||
| Cost of revenue | 19 | 21 | 23 | |||||
| Gross profit | 81 | 79 | 77 | |||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||
| Research and development | 45 | 45 | 41 | |||||
| Sales and marketing | 29 | 30 | 29 | |||||
| General and administrative | 8 | 8 | 9 | |||||
| Total operating expenses | 82 | 83 | 79 | |||||
| Operating loss | (2) | (4) | (2) | |||||
| Other income: | ||||||||
| Interest expense | — | (1) | (2) | |||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 5 | 2 | 2 | |||||
| Other income, net | 4 | 1 | — | |||||
| Income (loss) before provision for income taxes | 3 | (2) | (2) | |||||
| Provision for income taxes | 1 | 1 | 0 | |||||
| Net income (loss) | 2 | % | (3) | % | (2) | % |
_____________________
(1)Certain items may not total due to rounding.
Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2023 and 2022
Revenue
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 2,128,359 | $ | 1,675,100 | $ | 453,259 | 27 | % |
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Revenue increased by $453.3 million or 27%, for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. Approximately 65% of the increase in revenue was attributable to growth from existing customers, and the remaining 35% was attributable to growth from new customers.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 409,908 | $ | 346,743 | $ | 63,165 | 18 | % | ||||||
| Gross margin | 81 | % | 79 | % | 2 | % |
Cost of revenue increased by $63.2 million, or 18%, for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $36.8 million in third-party cloud infrastructure hosting and software costs, an increase of $16.2 million in personnel expenses as a result of increased headcount, and an increase of $6.2 million in depreciation and amortization expense.
Our gross margin increased by 2% for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, primarily as the result of revenue growth exceeding the growth of third-party cloud infrastructure provider costs due to cost savings.
Research and Development
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Research and development | $ | 962,447 | $ | 752,351 | $ | 210,096 | 28 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 45 | % | 45 | % |
Research and development expense increased by $210.1 million, or 28%, for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $194.5 million in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs for our engineering, product and design teams as a result of increased headcount and an increase of $14.1 million in cloud infrastructure-related investments.
Sales and Marketing
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | $ | 609,276 | $ | 495,288 | $ | 113,988 | 23 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 29 | % | 30 | % |
Sales and marketing expense increased by $114.0 million, or 23%, for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $107.5 million in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs for our sales and marketing organization as a result of increased headcount and increased variable compensation for our sales personnel and an increase of $5.4 million in advertising, sales, marketing and promotional activities.
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General and Administrative
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | $ | 180,192 | $ | 139,413 | $ | 40,779 | 29 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 8 | % | 8 | % |
General and administrative expense increased by $40.8 million, or 29%, for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was primarily due to an increase in personnel costs including allocated overhead costs as a result of increased headcount, legal expenses, and other professional services.
Other Income, Net
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Other income, net | $ | 93,699 | $ | 20,625 | $ | 73,074 | 354 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 4 | % | 1 | % |
Other income, net increased by $73.1 million, or 354% for the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This increase was primarily driven by an increase of $68.5 million in interest income, mainly due to income earned from investments in marketable securities.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Our largest source of operating cash is cash collection from sales of subscriptions to our customers. Our primary uses of cash from operating activities are for personnel expenses, hosting expenses, facility expenses, and marketing expenses. We have generated positive cash flows from operations during the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022, and 2021. When assessing sources of liquidity, we also include cash and cash equivalents of $330.3 million and marketable securities of $2.3 billion as of December 31, 2023. We believe that our existing cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and cash flow from operations will be sufficient to support our cash requirements for the next 12 months and beyond.
Our working capital requirements principally consist of workforce salaries, bonuses, commissions, and benefits and, to a lesser extent, cancellable and non-cancelable licenses and services arrangements that are integral to our business operations, and operating lease obligations. Non-cancelable purchase commitments for business operations and operating lease obligations total $485.0 million and $347.1 million, respectively, as of December 31, 2023, due primarily over the next five years. Purchase commitments for business operations are primarily related to cloud hosting and other software-based services.
We have also issued long-term debt to finance our business. In June 2020, we issued $747.5 million aggregate principal amount of the 2025 Notes in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act. The total net proceeds from the sale of the 2025 Notes, after deducting the initial purchasers’ discounts and debt issuance costs, were approximately $730.2 million. The principal and future interest payments related to our 2025 Notes are $749.0 million.
Cash Flows
The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the periods presented:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | |||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||
| Cash provided by operating activities | $ | 659,954 | $ | 418,407 | ||
| Cash used in investing activities | (731,365) | (384,670) | ||||
| Cash provided by financing activities | 58,279 | 36,023 |
Operating Activities
Net cash provided by operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased $241.5 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, primarily driven by an increase in non-cash charges of $104.6 million, an increase in deferred revenue of $62.3 million, and an increase in accounts payable of $59.1 million. The increase in non-cash charges related primarily to an increase of $119.1 million in stock-based compensation as we continued to increase headcount to support the growth of the business. The increase in cash provided by operating activities was partially offset by a decrease in accrued expenses and other liabilities of $78.1 million.
Investing Activities
Net cash used in investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $346.7 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, primarily driven by a increase in the investment in marketable securities of $1,144.3 million, partially offset by an increase in proceeds from maturities of marketable securities of $726.8 million.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $22.3 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, primarily due to an increase in proceeds from the issuance of Class A common stock under the ESPP of $11.3 million and an increase in proceeds from the exercise of stock options of $10.9 million.
Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow
We report our financial results in accordance with U.S. GAAP. To supplement our consolidated financial statements, we provide investors with the amount of free cash flow, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Free cash flow represents net cash provided by operating activities, reduced by capital expenditures and capitalized software development costs, if any. Free cash flow is a measure used by management to understand and evaluate our liquidity and to generate future operating plans. The reduction of capital expenditures and amounts capitalized for software development facilitates comparisons of our liquidity on a period-to-period basis and excludes items that we do not consider to be indicative of our liquidity. We believe that free cash flow is a measure of liquidity that provides useful information to our management, board of directors, investors and others in understanding and evaluating the strength of our liquidity and future ability to generate cash that can be used for strategic opportunities or investing in our business. Nevertheless, our use of free cash flow has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our financial results as reported under GAAP. Further, our definition of free cash flow may differ from the definitions used by other companies and therefore comparability may be limited. You should consider free cash flow alongside our other GAAP-based financial performance measures, such as net cash used in operating activities, and our other GAAP financial results.
The following table presents a reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, for each of the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Net cash provided by operating activities | $ | 659,954 | $ | 418,407 | $ | 286,545 | ||||
| Less: Purchases of property and equipment | (27,586) | (35,261) | (9,956) | |||||||
| Less: Capitalized software development costs | (34,820) | (29,628) | (26,069) | |||||||
| Free cash flow | $ | 597,548 | $ | 353,518 | $ | 250,520 |
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Critical Accounting Estimates
Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and related disclosures. We evaluate our estimates and assumptions on an ongoing basis. Our estimates are based on historical experience and various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Our actual results could differ from these estimates.
The significant accounting policies and methods used in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements are discussed in Note 2, Basis of Presentation and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We believe that the accounting policies described below 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 generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
We account for revenue contracts with customers through the following steps:
(1)identify the contract with a customer;
(2)identify the performance obligations in the contract;
(3)determine the transaction price;
(4)allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract; and
(5)recognize revenue when or as we satisfy a performance obligation.
Our subscriptions are generally non-cancellable. Once we have determined the transaction price, the total transaction price is allocated to each performance obligation in the contract on a relative stand-alone selling price basis, or SSP. The determination of a relative stand-alone SSP for each distinct performance obligation requires judgment. We determine SSP for performance obligations based on overall pricing objectives, which take into consideration market conditions and customer-specific factors. This includes a review of internal discounting tables, the service(s) being sold, and customer demographics.
Revenue is recognized when control of these services is transferred to customers, in an amount that reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to receive in exchange for those services. We determine an output method to be the most appropriate measure of progress because it most faithfully represents when the value of the services is simultaneously received and consumed by the customer, and control is transferred.
For committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement generally beginning on the date that the platform is made available to a customer. For committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the services are rendered.
Internal-Use Software Development Costs
We capitalize certain costs related to the development of our platform and other software applications for internal-use. In accordance with authoritative guidance, we begin to capitalize our costs to develop software when preliminary development efforts are successfully completed, management has authorized and committed project funding, and it is probable that the project will be completed and the software will be used as intended. We stop capitalizing these costs when the software is substantially complete and ready for its intended use, including the completion of all significant testing. These costs are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful life of the related asset, generally estimated to be two years. We also capitalize costs related to specific upgrades and enhancements when it is probable the expenditure will result in additional
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functionality and expense costs incurred for maintenance and minor upgrades and enhancements. Costs incurred prior to meeting these criteria together with costs incurred for training and maintenance are expensed as incurred and recorded within research and development expenses in our consolidated statements of operations.
We exercise judgment in determining the point at which various projects may be capitalized, in assessing the ongoing value of the capitalized costs and in determining the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized. To the extent that we change the manner in which we develop and test new features and functionalities related to our platform, assess the ongoing value of capitalized assets or determine the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized, the amount of internal-use software development costs we capitalize and amortize could change in future periods.
Business Combinations
When we acquire a business, the purchase consideration is allocated to the tangible assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and intangible assets acquired based on their estimated respective fair values. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair values of these identifiable assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Such valuations require us to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Significant estimates in valuing certain intangible assets include, but are not limited to, future expected cash flows from acquired users, acquired technology, and trade names from a market participant perspective, useful lives and discount rates. Our estimates of fair value are based upon assumptions believed to be reasonable, but which are inherently uncertain and unpredictable and, as a result, actual results may differ from estimates. During the measurement period, we may record adjustments to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed, with the corresponding offset to goodwill. Upon the conclusion of the measurement period, any subsequent adjustments are recorded to other income, net in the consolidated statement of operations.
Recently Adopted Accounting Pronouncements
See Note 2, in our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in “Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of recent accounting pronouncements.
FY 2022 10-K MD&A
SEC filing source: 0001561550-23-000006.
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This discussion, particularly information with respect to our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described under the heading “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should review the disclosure under the heading “Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.
This section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K discusses our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2021. A discussion of our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2020 that are not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, filed on February 25, 2022.
Overview
Datadog is the observability and security platform for cloud applications.
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Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, real-user monitoring, and many other capabilities to provide unified, real-time observability and security for our customers’ entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional containers to monitor, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection and app analytics. Professional services are generally not required for the implementation of our products and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our customers can expand their footprint with us on a self-service basis. Our customers often significantly increase their usage of the products they initially buy from us and expand their usage to other products we offer on our platform. We grow with our customers as they expand their workloads in the public and private cloud.
As of December 31, 2022, we had $342.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash and $1,545.3 million in marketable securities. We have grown rapidly in recent periods, with revenues for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020 of $1,675.1 million, $1,028.8 million, and $603.5 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 63% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 and 70% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. Substantially all of our revenue is from subscription software sales. We have continued to make significant expenditures and investments, including in personnel-related costs, sales and marketing, infrastructure and operations, and have incurred net losses of $50.2 million, $20.7 million and $24.5 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Our operating cash flow was $418.4 million, $286.5 million and $109.1 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Our free cash flow was $353.5 million, $250.5 million and $83.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021 and 2020, respectively. See the section titled “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow” below.
Unfavorable conditions in the economy both in the United States and abroad may negatively affect the growth of our business and our results of operations. For example, macroeconomic events including the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve raising interest rates and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have led to economic uncertainty. Historically, during periods of economic uncertainty and downturns, businesses may slow spending on information technology, which may impact our business and our customers’ businesses. In recent quarters, we have seen slower usage growth from some existing customers, which may be related to the uncertain macroeconomic environment.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to the extent possible, we conducted business as usual, with necessary or advisable modifications to employee travel and employee work locations and canceling or holding virtually Datadog marketing events. Since the end of the quarter ended March 31, 2022, we have continued to increase our office activity, such as in-person meetings, events, and travel in compliance with applicable government orders and guidelines. As we continue to increase office activity globally, increase travel, participate in and hold more in-person meetings and events, continue hiring and increase capital expenditures for additional office space, our costs and expenses may increase and our margins may decrease in future quarters.
Due to our subscription model, the effect of macroeconomic conditions may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. However, if economic uncertainty increases or the global economy worsens, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be harmed. For further discussion of the potential impacts of macroeconomic events on our business, financial condition, and operating results, see "Risk Factors" included in Part I, Item 1A of this report.
Factors Affecting Our Performance
Acquiring New Customers
We believe there is substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. We intend to drive new customer acquisition by continuing to invest significantly in sales and marketing to engage our prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our platform and products. We also plan to continue to invest in building brand awareness within the development and operations communities. As of December 31, 2022, we had approximately 23,200 customers spanning organizations of a broad range of sizes and industries, compared to approximately 18,800 as of December 31, 2021. Customers as of December 31, 2022 exclude customers from a recent acquisition, which did not contribute
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meaningful revenue during the fiscal year. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness and pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors, and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.
We define the number of customers as the number of accounts with a unique account identifier for which we have an active subscription in the period indicated. Users of our free trials or tier are not included in our customer count. A single organization with multiple divisions, segments or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single customer. However, in some cases where they have separate billing terms, we may count separate divisions, segments or subsidiaries as multiple customers.
Expanding Within Our Existing Customer Base
Our base of customers represents a significant opportunity for further sales expansion. As of December 31, 2022, we had approximately 2,780 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $100,000 or more, representing 85% of our ARR, up from 2,010 as of December 31, 2021, representing 83% of our ARR. We monitor our number of customers with ARR of $100,000 or more, and believe it is useful to investors, as an indicator of our ability to grow the number of customers that are exceeding this ARR threshold. We define ARR as the annual run-rate revenue of subscription agreements from all customers at a point in time. We calculate ARR by taking the monthly run-rate revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts, additional usage, usage from subscriptions for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used and monthly subscriptions. We updated the definition of MRR as of the quarter ended September 30, 2021 to capture usage from subscriptions with committed contractual amounts and applied this change retrospectively. ARR and MRR should be viewed independently of revenue, and do not represent our revenue under GAAP on a monthly or annualized basis, as they are operating metrics that can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR and MRR are not intended to be replacements or forecasts of revenue.
A further indication of the propensity of our customer relationships to expand over time is our dollar-based net retention rate, which compares our ARR from the same set of customers in one period, relative to the year-ago period. As of each of December 31, 2022 and 2021, our dollar-based net retention rate was above 130%. We calculate dollar-based net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the ARR from the cohort of all customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the Current Period ARR. Current Period ARR includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months, but excludes ARR from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based net retention rate. We then calculate the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time dollar-based net retention rates, to arrive at the dollar-based net retention rate.
We believe that our land-and-expand business model allows us to efficiently increase revenue from our existing customer base. Our customers often expand the deployment of our platform across large teams and more broadly within the enterprise as they migrate more workloads to the cloud, find new use cases for our platform, and generally realize the benefits of our platform. We intend to continue to invest in enhancing awareness of our brand and developing more products, features and functionality, which we believe are important factors to achieve widespread adoption of our platform. Our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our solution, competition, pricing and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.
Sustaining Innovation and Technology Leadership
Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain our competitive advantage. We believe that we have built a highly differentiated platform that will position us to further extend the adoption of our platform and products. Datadog is frequently deployed across a customer’s entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous. Datadog is a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders. We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our efficient go-to-market model enables us to prioritize significant investment in innovation. We have demonstrated the success of our platform approach, through expansion beyond our initial infrastructure monitoring solution to include over 17 products. As of December 31, 2022, approximately 81% of our customers were using more than one product, up from approximately 78% a year earlier. Additionally, as of December 31, 2022, approximately 42% of our customers were using more than four products, up from approximately 33% a year earlier, and approximately 18% of our customers were using more than six products, up from approximately 10% a year earlier. We believe these metrics indicate strong momentum in the uptake of our newer platform products.
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We intend to continue to invest in building additional products, features and functionality that expand our capabilities and facilitate the extension of our platform to new use cases. We also intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses and technologies to drive product and market expansion. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully develop, market and sell existing and new products to both new and existing customers.
Expanding Internationally
We believe there is a significant opportunity to expand usage of our platform outside of North America. Revenue, as determined based on the billing address of our customers, from regions outside of North America was approximately 28% of our total revenue for each of the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021. In addition, we have made and plan to continue to make significant investments to expand geographically, particularly in EMEA and APAC. Although these investments may adversely affect our operating results in the near term, we believe that they will contribute to our long-term growth. Beyond North America, we now have sales presence internationally, including in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly, annual or multi-year, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
Usage is measured primarily by the number of hosts or by the volume of data indexed. A host is generally defined as a server, either in the cloud or on-premise. Our infrastructure monitoring, APM and network performance monitoring products are priced per host, our logs product is priced primarily per log events indexed and secondarily by events ingested. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional container or serverless monitoring, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection, synthetic monitoring and app analytics.
In the case of subscriptions for committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement, generally beginning on the date that our platform is made available to a customer. As a result, much of our revenue is generated from subscriptions entered into during previous periods. Consequently, any decreases in new subscriptions or renewals in any one period may not be immediately reflected as a decrease in revenue for that period, but could negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. This also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through the sale of additional subscriptions in any period, as revenue is recognized over the term of the subscription agreement. In the case of a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the product is used, which may lead to fluctuations in our revenue and results of operations. In addition, historically, we have experienced seasonality in new customer bookings, as we typically enter into a higher percentage of subscription agreements with new customers in the fourth quarter of the year.
Due to ease of implementation of our products, professional services generally are not required and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue primarily consists of expenses related to providing our products to customers, including payments to our third-party cloud infrastructure providers for hosting our software, personnel-related expenses for operations and global support, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, payment processing fees, information technology, depreciation and amortization related to the amortization of acquired intangibles and internal-use software and other overhead costs such as allocated facilities.
We intend to continue to invest additional resources in our platform infrastructure and our customer support and success organizations to expand the capability of our platform and ensure that our customers are realizing the full benefit of our
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platform and products. The level, timing and relative investment in our infrastructure could affect our cost of revenue in the future.
Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Gross profit represents revenue less cost of revenue. Gross margin is gross profit expressed as a percentage of revenue. Our gross margin may fluctuate from period to period as our revenue fluctuates, and as a result of the timing and amount of investments to expand our products and geographical coverage.
Operating Expenses
Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel costs are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, stock-based compensation expense and sales commissions. Operating expenses also include overhead costs for facilities and shared IT-related expenses, including depreciation expense.
Research and Development
Research and development expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our engineering, service and design teams. Additionally, research and development expense includes contractor fees, depreciation and amortization and allocated overhead costs. Research and development costs are expensed as incurred. We expect that our research and development expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows, particularly as we incur additional costs related to continued investments in our platform.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization, costs of general marketing and promotional activities, including the free tier and free introductory trials of our products, travel-related expenses, amortization of acquired customer relationships, and allocated overhead costs. Sales commissions earned by our sales force are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the expected period of benefit, which we have determined to be four years. We expect that our sales and marketing expense will increase in absolute dollars as we expand our sales and marketing efforts.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expense consists primarily of personnel costs and contractor fees for finance, legal, human resources, information technology and other administrative functions. In addition, general and administrative expense includes non-personnel costs, such as legal, accounting and other professional fees, hardware and software costs, certain tax, license and insurance-related expenses and allocated overhead costs.
We have incurred, and expect to continue to incur, additional expenses as a result of operating as a public company, including costs to comply with the rules and regulations applicable to companies listed on a national securities exchange, costs related to compliance and reporting obligations, and increased expenses for insurance, investor relations and professional services. We expect that our general and administrative expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows.
Other Income (Loss), Net
Other income (loss), net consists of interest income, primarily due to income earned on money market funds included in cash and cash equivalents and on marketable securities, partially offset by interest expense due on the 2025 Notes and amortization of premiums on our marketable securities.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists of U.S. federal and state income taxes and income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. We recorded a full valuation allowance on our federal and state deferred tax assets as we have concluded that it is not more likely than not that the deferred tax assets will be realized.
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Results of Operations
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 1,675,100 | $ | 1,028,784 | $ | 603,466 | ||||
| Cost of revenue (1)(2)(4) | 346,743 | 234,245 | 130,197 | |||||||
| Gross profit | 1,328,357 | 794,539 | 473,269 | |||||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||||
| Research and development (1)(3)(4) | 752,351 | 419,769 | 210,626 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing (1)(2)(3)(4) | 495,288 | 299,497 | 213,660 | |||||||
| General and administrative (1)(3)(4) | 139,413 | 94,429 | 62,756 | |||||||
| Total operating expenses | 1,387,052 | 813,695 | 487,042 | |||||||
| Operating loss | (58,695) | (19,156) | (13,773) | |||||||
| Other income (loss): | ||||||||||
| Interest expense (5) | (16,535) | (21,052) | (30,434) | |||||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 37,160 | 21,786 | 21,985 | |||||||
| Other income (loss), net | 20,625 | 734 | (8,449) | |||||||
| Loss before provision for income taxes | (38,070) | (18,422) | (22,222) | |||||||
| Provision for income taxes | (12,090) | (2,323) | (2,325) | |||||||
| Net loss | $ | (50,160) | $ | (20,745) | $ | (24,547) |
____________________
(1)Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 10,827 | $ | 4,565 | $ | 1,794 | ||||
| Research and development | 237,120 | 101,942 | 38,008 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 76,735 | 35,035 | 20,467 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 38,472 | 22,195 | 14,105 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 363,154 | $ | 163,737 | $ | 74,374 |
____________________
(2)Includes amortization of acquired intangibles expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 6,750 | $ | 3,792 | $ | 943 | ||||
| Sales and marketing | 825 | 600 | — | |||||||
| Total | $ | 7,575 | $ | 4,392 | $ | 943 |
(3)Includes non-cash benefit related to tax adjustment as follows:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Research and development | $ | — | $ | — | $ | (2,729) | ||||
| Sales and marketing | — | — | (449) | |||||||
| General and administrative | — | — | (2,383) | |||||||
| Total | $ | — | $ | — | $ | (5,561) |
_____________________
(4)Includes employer payroll taxes on employee stock transactions as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 266 | $ | 345 | $ | 187 | ||||
| Research and development | 10,384 | 8,143 | 2,836 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 2,766 | 6,349 | 3,756 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 830 | 1,248 | 839 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 14,246 | $ | 16,085 | $ | 7,618 |
____________________
(5)Includes amortization of debt discount and issuance costs as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Interest expense | $ | 3,369 | $ | 3,349 | $ | 18,727 |
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||
| (as a percentage of total revenue(1)) | ||||||||
| Revenue | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||
| Cost of revenue | 21 | 23 | 22 | |||||
| Gross profit | 79 | 77 | 78 | |||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||
| Research and development | 45 | 41 | 35 | |||||
| Sales and marketing | 30 | 29 | 35 | |||||
| General and administrative | 8 | 9 | 10 | |||||
| Total operating expenses | 83 | 79 | 81 | |||||
| Operating loss | (4) | (2) | (2) | |||||
| Other income (loss): | ||||||||
| Interest expense | (1) | (2) | (5) | |||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 2 | 2 | 4 | |||||
| Other income (loss), net | 1 | 0 | (1) | |||||
| Loss before provision for income taxes | (2) | (2) | (4) | |||||
| Provision for income taxes | (1) | 0 | 0 | |||||
| Net loss | (3) | % | (2) | % | (4) | % |
_____________________
(1)Certain items may not total due to rounding.
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Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2022 and 2021
Revenue
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 1,675,100 | $ | 1,028,784 | $ | 646,316 | 63 | % |
Revenue increased by $646.3 million or 63%, for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. Approximately 75% of the increase in revenue was attributable to growth from existing customers, and the remaining 25% was attributable to growth from new customers.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 346,743 | $ | 234,245 | $ | 112,498 | 48 | % | ||||||
| Gross margin | 79 | % | 77 | % | 2 | % |
Cost of revenue increased by $112.5 million, or 48%, for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $82.1 million in third-party cloud infrastructure hosting and software costs, an increase of $16.6 million in personnel expenses as a result of increased headcount, and an increase of $7.2 million in depreciation and amortization expense.
Our gross margin increased by 2% for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021, primarily as the result of revenue growth exceeding the growth of third-party cloud infrastructure provider costs due to cost savings.
Research and Development
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Research and development | $ | 752,351 | $ | 419,769 | $ | 332,582 | 79 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 45 | % | 41 | % |
Research and development expense increased by $332.6 million, or 79%, for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $273.6 million in personnel costs for our engineering, product and design teams as a result of increased headcount, an increase of $40.3 million in cloud infrastructure-related investments, and an increase of $15.0 million in allocated overhead costs as a result of an increase in overall costs necessary to support the growth of the business and related infrastructure.
Sales and Marketing
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | $ | 495,288 | $ | 299,497 | $ | 195,791 | 65 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 30 | % | 29 | % |
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Sales and marketing expense increased by $195.8 million, or 65%, for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $154.2 million in personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization as a result of increased headcount and increased variable compensation for our sales personnel, an increase of $22.4 million in marketing and promotional activities, and an increase of $15.1 million in allocated overhead costs as a result of an increase in overall costs necessary to support the growth of the business and related infrastructure.
General and Administrative
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | $ | 139,413 | $ | 94,429 | $ | 44,984 | 48 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 8 | % | 9 | % |
General and administrative expense increased by $45.0 million, or 48%, for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $39.2 million in personnel expenses as a result of increased headcount and an increase of $2.9 million related to bad debt expense.
Other Income, Net
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Other income, net | $ | 20,625 | $ | 734 | $ | 19,891 | 2,710 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 1 | % | 0 | % |
Other income, net increased by $19.9 million, or 2,710% for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. This increase was primarily driven by an increase of $13.5 million in interest income, mainly due to income earned from investments in marketable securities, and a decrease of $4.5 million in amortization of premiums on our marketable securities.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Our largest source of operating cash is cash collection from sales of subscriptions to our customers. Our primary uses of cash from operating activities are for personnel expenses, hosting expenses, facility expenses, and marketing expenses. We have generated positive cash flows from operations during the years ended December 31, 2022, 2021, and 2020. When assessing sources of liquidity, we also include cash and cash equivalents of $339.0 million and marketable securities of $1.5 billion as of December 31, 2022. We believe that our existing cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and cash flow from operations will be sufficient to support our cash requirements for the next 12 months and beyond.
Our working capital requirements are principally comprised of workforce salaries, bonuses, commissions, and benefits and, to a lesser extent, cancellable and non-cancelable licenses and services arrangements that are integral to our business operations, and operating lease obligations. Non-cancelable purchase commitments for business operations and operating lease obligations total $721.5 million and $326.6 million, respectively, as of December 31, 2022, due primarily over the next five years. Purchase commitments for business operations are primarily related to cloud hosting and other software-based services.
We have also issued long-term debt to finance our business. In June 2020, we issued $747.5 million aggregate principal amount of the 2025 Notes in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act. The total net proceeds from the sale of the 2025 Notes, after deducting the initial purchasers’ discounts and debt issuance costs, were approximately $730.2 million. The principal and future interest payments related to our 2025 Notes are $749.9 million.
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Cash Flows
The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the periods presented:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | |||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||
| Cash provided by operating activities | $ | 418,407 | $ | 286,545 | ||
| Cash used in investing activities | (384,670) | (273,740) | ||||
| Cash provided by financing activities | 36,023 | 34,940 |
Operating Activities
Net cash provided by operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased $131.9 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2021, primarily driven by an increase in non-cash charges of $218.3 million. The increase in non-cash charges related primarily to an increase of $199.4 million in stock-based compensation as we continued to increase headcount to support the growth of the business. The increase in cash provided by operating activities was partially offset by an increase in accounts receivable of $28.6 million due to an increase in sales, an increase in deferred contract costs of $8.3 million, a decrease in deferred revenue of $7.6 million, and an increase in prepaid expenses and other current assets of $5.8 million.
Investing Activities
Net cash used in investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $110.9 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2021, primarily driven by a increase in the investment in marketable securities of $288.2 million, a decrease in proceeds from the sale of marketable securities of $65.7 million, and an increase in purchases of property and equipment of $25.3 million. The increase in cash used in investing activities was partially offset by a decrease in cash paid for the acquisition of businesses net of cash acquired of $180.6 million and an increase in proceeds from maturities of marketable securities of $91.2 million.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $1.1 million compared to the year ended December 31, 2021, primarily due to an increase in proceeds from the issuance of Class A common stock under the ESPP of $5.7 million and was partially offset by a decrease in proceeds from the exercise of stock options of $4.9 million.
Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow
We report our financial results in accordance with U.S. GAAP. To supplement our consolidated financial statements, we provide investors with the amount of free cash flow, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Free cash flow represents net cash provided by operating activities, reduced by capital expenditures and capitalized software development costs, if any. Free cash flow is a measure used by management to understand and evaluate our liquidity and to generate future operating plans. The reduction of capital expenditures and amounts capitalized for software development facilitates comparisons of our liquidity on a period-to-period basis and excludes items that we do not consider to be indicative of our liquidity. We believe that free cash flow is a measure of liquidity that provides useful information to our management, board of directors, investors and others in understanding and evaluating the strength of our liquidity and future ability to generate cash that can be used for strategic opportunities or investing in our business. Nevertheless, our use of free cash flow has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our financial results as reported under GAAP. Further, our definition of free cash flow may differ from the definitions used by other companies and therefore comparability may be limited. You should consider free cash flow alongside our other GAAP-based financial performance measures, such as net cash used in operating activities, and our other GAAP financial results.
The following table presents a reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, for each of the periods indicated:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Net cash provided by operating activities | $ | 418,407 | $ | 286,545 | $ | 109,091 | ||||
| Less: Purchases of property and equipment | (35,261) | (9,956) | (5,415) | |||||||
| Less: Capitalized software development costs | (29,628) | (26,069) | (20,468) | |||||||
| Free cash flow | $ | 353,518 | $ | 250,520 | $ | 83,208 |
Critical Accounting Estimates
Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and related disclosures. We evaluate our estimates and assumptions on an ongoing basis. Our estimates are based on historical experience and various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Our actual results could differ from these estimates.
The significant accounting policies and methods used in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements are discussed in Note 2, Basis of Presentation and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We believe that the accounting policies described below 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 generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
We account for revenue contracts with customers through the following steps:
(1)identify the contract with a customer;
(2)identify the performance obligations in the contract;
(3)determine the transaction price;
(4)allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract; and
(5)recognize revenue when or as we satisfy a performance obligation.
Our subscriptions are generally non-cancellable. Once we have determined the transaction price, the total transaction price is allocated to each performance obligation in the contract on a relative stand-alone selling price basis, or SSP. The determination of a relative stand-alone SSP for each distinct performance obligation requires judgment. We determine SSP for performance obligations based on overall pricing objectives, which take into consideration market conditions and customer-specific factors. This includes a review of internal discounting tables, the service(s) being sold, and customer demographics.
Revenue is recognized when control of these services is transferred to customers, in an amount that reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to receive in exchange for those services. We determine an output method to be the most appropriate measure of progress because it most faithfully represents when the value of the services is simultaneously received and consumed by the customer, and control is transferred.
For committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement generally beginning on the date that the platform is made available to a customer. For committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the services are rendered.
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Internal-Use Software Development Costs
We capitalize certain costs related to the development of our platform and other software applications for internal-use. In accordance with authoritative guidance, we begin to capitalize our costs to develop software when preliminary development efforts are successfully completed, management has authorized and committed project funding, and it is probable that the project will be completed and the software will be used as intended. We stop capitalizing these costs when the software is substantially complete and ready for its intended use, including the completion of all significant testing. These costs are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful life of the related asset, generally estimated to be two years. We also capitalize costs related to specific upgrades and enhancements when it is probable the expenditure will result in additional functionality and expense costs incurred for maintenance and minor upgrades and enhancements. Costs incurred prior to meeting these criteria together with costs incurred for training and maintenance are expensed as incurred and recorded within research and development expenses in our consolidated statements of operations.
We exercise judgment in determining the point at which various projects may be capitalized, in assessing the ongoing value of the capitalized costs and in determining the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized. To the extent that we change the manner in which we develop and test new features and functionalities related to our platform, assess the ongoing value of capitalized assets or determine the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized, the amount of internal-use software development costs we capitalize and amortize could change in future periods.
Business Combinations
When we acquire a business, the purchase consideration is allocated to the tangible assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and intangible assets acquired based on their estimated respective fair values. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair values of these identifiable assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Such valuations require us to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Significant estimates in valuing certain intangible assets include, but are not limited to, future expected cash flows from acquired users, acquired technology, and trade names from a market participant perspective, useful lives and discount rates. Our estimates of fair value are based upon assumptions believed to be reasonable, but which are inherently uncertain and unpredictable and, as a result, actual results may differ from estimates. During the measurement period, we may record adjustments to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed, with the corresponding offset to goodwill. Upon the conclusion of the measurement period, any subsequent adjustments are recorded to other income, net in the consolidated statement of operations.
Recently Adopted Accounting Pronouncements
See Note 2, in our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in “Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of recent accounting pronouncements.
FY 2021 10-K MD&A
SEC filing source: 0001561550-22-000009.
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This discussion, particularly information with respect to our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as described under the heading “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. You should review the disclosure under the heading “Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.
This section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K discusses our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2020. A discussion of our financial condition and results of operations for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019 and year-to-year comparisons between fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019 that are not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Part II, Item 7 of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, filed on March 1, 2021.
Overview
Datadog is the monitoring and security platform for cloud applications.
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Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring and log management to provide unified, real-time observability of our customers’ entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional containers to monitor, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection and app analytics. Professional services are generally not required for the implementation of our products and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our customers can expand their footprint with us on a self-service basis. Our customers often significantly increase their usage of the products they initially buy from us and expand their usage to other products we offer on our platform. We grow with our customers as they expand their workloads in the public and private cloud.
As of December 31, 2021, we had $274.5 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash and $1,283.5 million in marketable securities. We have grown rapidly in recent periods, with revenues for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019 of $1,028.8 million, $603.5 million, and $362.8 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 70% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 and 66% from the fiscal year ended December 31, 2019 to the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020. Substantially all of our revenue is from subscription software sales. We have continued to make significant expenditures and investments, including in personnel-related costs, sales and marketing, infrastructure and operations, and have incurred net losses of $20.7 million, $24.5 million and $16.7 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Our operating cash flow was $286.5 million, $109.1 million and $24.2 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. Our free cash flow was $250.5 million, $83.2 million and $0.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. See the section titled “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow” below.
Since December 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus, which we refer to, together with other related strains of coronavirus, as “COVID-19”, has spread across the world, including to the United States and other countries in which we and our customers, partners, suppliers, vendors and other parties with whom we do business operate. The extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operational and financial performance depends on certain developments, including the duration and spread of the outbreak, especially in light of the emergence of new variant strains of COVID-19, its impact on industry events, and its effect on our customers, partners, suppliers and vendors and other parties with whom we do business, and the availability, distribution and acceptance of vaccines, all of which are uncertain and cannot be predicted at this time. To the extent possible, we are conducting business as usual, with necessary or advisable modifications to employee travel and employee work locations and cancelling or holding virtually Datadog marketing events. We are continuing to actively monitor the rapidly evolving situation related to COVID-19 and may take further actions that alter our business operations, including those that may be required by federal, state or local authorities, or that we determine are in the best interests of our employees, customers, partners, suppliers, vendors and stockholders. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic may impact our results of operations and financial condition remains uncertain. In addition, due to our subscription model, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods.
Factors Affecting Our Performance
Acquiring New Customers
We believe there is substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. We intend to drive new customer acquisition by continuing to invest significantly in sales and marketing to engage our prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our platform and products. We also plan to continue to invest in building brand awareness within the development and operations communities. As of December 31, 2021, we had approximately 18,800 customers spanning organizations of a broad range of sizes and industries, compared to approximately 14,170 as of December 31, 2020. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness and pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors, and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.
We define the number of customers as the number of accounts with a unique account identifier for which we have an active subscription in the period indicated. Users of our free trials or tier are not included in our customer count. A single organization with multiple divisions, segments or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single customer. However, in some cases where they have separate billing terms, we may count separate divisions, segments or subsidiaries as multiple customers.
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Expanding Within Our Existing Customer Base
Our base of customers represents a significant opportunity for further sales expansion. As of December 31, 2021, we had approximately 2,010 customers with annual run-rate revenue, or ARR, of $100,000 or more, representing 83% of our ARR, up from 1,228 as of December 31, 2020, representing 78% of our ARR. We monitor our number of customers with ARR of $100,000 or more, and believe it is useful to investors, as an indicator of our ability to grow the number of customers that are exceeding this ARR threshold. We define ARR as the annual run-rate revenue of subscription agreements from all customers at a point in time. We calculate ARR by taking the monthly run-rate revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts, additional usage, usage from subscriptions for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used and monthly subscriptions. We updated the definition of MRR as of the quarter ended September 30, 2021 to capture usage from subscriptions with committed contractual amounts and applied this change retrospectively. ARR and MRR should be viewed independently of revenue, and do not represent our revenue under GAAP on a monthly or annualized basis, as they are operating metrics that can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR and MRR are not intended to be replacements or forecasts of revenue.
A further indication of the propensity of our customer relationships to expand over time is our dollar-based net retention rate, which compares our ARR from the same set of customers in one period, relative to the year-ago period. As of each of December 31, 2021 and 2020, our dollar-based net retention rate was above 130%. We calculate dollar-based net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the ARR from the cohort of all customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the Current Period ARR. Current Period ARR includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months, but excludes ARR from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based net retention rate. We then calculate the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time dollar-based net retention rates, to arrive at the dollar-based net retention rate.
We believe that our land-and-expand business model allows us to efficiently increase revenue from our existing customer base. Our customers often expand the deployment of our platform across large teams and more broadly within the enterprise as they migrate more workloads to the cloud, find new use cases for our platform, and generally realize the benefits of our platform. We intend to continue to invest in enhancing awareness of our brand and developing more products, features and functionality, which we believe are important factors to achieve widespread adoption of our platform. Our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our solution, competition, pricing and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.
Sustaining Innovation and Technology Leadership
Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain our competitive advantage. We believe that we have built a highly differentiated platform that will position us to further extend the adoption of our platform and products. Datadog is frequently deployed across a customer’s entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous. Datadog is a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders. We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our efficient go-to-market model enables us to prioritize significant investment in innovation. We have proven initial success of our platform approach, through expansion beyond our initial infrastructure monitoring solution, to include APM in 2017, logs in 2018, user experience and network performance monitoring in 2019 and security monitoring in 2020. As of December 31, 2021, approximately 78% of our customers were using more than one product, up from approximately 72% a year earlier. We believe these metrics indicate strong momentum in the uptake of our newer platform products.
We intend to continue to invest in building additional products, features and functionality that expand our capabilities and facilitate the extension of our platform to new use cases. We also intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses and technologies to drive product and market expansion. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully develop, market and sell existing and new products to both new and existing customers.
Expanding Internationally
We believe there is a significant opportunity to expand usage of our platform outside of North America. Revenue, as determined based on the billing address of our customers, from regions outside of North America was approximately 28% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021, compared to 25% for the year ended December 31, 2020. In addition, we have made and plan to continue to make significant investments to expand geographically, particularly in EMEA and
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APAC. Although these investments may adversely affect our operating results in the near term, we believe that they will contribute to our long-term growth. Beyond North America, we now have sales presence internationally, including in Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Paris, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
Components of Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly, annual or multi-year, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
Usage is measured primarily by the number of hosts or by the volume of data indexed. A host is generally defined as a server, either in the cloud or on-premise. Our infrastructure monitoring, APM and network performance monitoring products are priced per host, our logs product is priced primarily per log events indexed and secondarily by events ingested. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional container or serverless monitoring, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection, synthetic monitoring and app analytics.
In the case of subscriptions for committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement, generally beginning on the date that our platform is made available to a customer. As a result, much of our revenue is generated from subscriptions entered into during previous periods. Consequently, any decreases in new subscriptions or renewals in any one period may not be immediately reflected as a decrease in revenue for that period, but could negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. This also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through the sale of additional subscriptions in any period, as revenue is recognized over the term of the subscription agreement. In the case of a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the product is used, which may lead to fluctuations in our revenue and results of operations. In addition, historically, we have experienced seasonality in new customer bookings, as we typically enter into a higher percentage of subscription agreements with new customers in the fourth quarter of the year.
Due to ease of implementation of our products, professional services generally are not required and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue primarily consists of expenses related to providing our products to customers, including payments to our third-party cloud infrastructure providers for hosting our software, personnel-related expenses for operations and global support, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, payment processing fees, information technology, depreciation and amortization related to the amortization of acquired intangibles and internal-use software and other overhead costs such as allocated facilities.
We intend to continue to invest additional resources in our platform infrastructure and our customer support and success organizations to expand the capability of our platform and ensure that our customers are realizing the full benefit of our platform and products. The level, timing and relative investment in our infrastructure could affect our cost of revenue in the future.
Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Gross profit represents revenue less cost of revenue. Gross margin is gross profit expressed as a percentage of revenue. Our gross margin may fluctuate from period to period as our revenue fluctuates, and as a result of the timing and amount of investments to expand our products and geographical coverage.
Operating Expenses
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Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel costs are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, stock-based compensation expense and sales commissions. Operating expenses also include overhead costs for facilities and shared IT-related expenses, including depreciation expense.
Research and Development
Research and development expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our engineering, service and design teams. Additionally, research and development expense includes contractor fees, depreciation and amortization and allocated overhead costs. Research and development costs are expensed as incurred. We expect that our research and development expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows, particularly as we incur additional costs related to continued investments in our platform.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization, costs of general marketing and promotional activities, including the free tier and free introductory trials of our products, travel-related expenses, amortization of acquired customer relationships, and allocated overhead costs. Sales commissions earned by our sales force are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the expected period of benefit, which we have determined to be four years. We expect that our sales and marketing expense will increase in absolute dollars as we expand our sales and marketing efforts.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expense consists primarily of personnel costs and contractor fees for finance, legal, human resources, information technology and other administrative functions. In addition, general and administrative expense includes non-personnel costs, such as legal, accounting and other professional fees, hardware and software costs, certain tax, license and insurance-related expenses and allocated overhead costs.
We have incurred, and expect to continue to incur, additional expenses as a result of operating as a public company, including costs to comply with the rules and regulations applicable to companies listed on a national securities exchange, costs related to compliance and reporting obligations, and increased expenses for insurance, investor relations and professional services. We expect that our general and administrative expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows.
Other Income (Loss), Net
Other income (loss), net consists of interest income, primarily due to income earned on money market funds included in cash and cash equivalents and on marketable securities, partially offset by interest expense due on the 2025 Notes and amortization of premiums on our marketable securities.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists of U.S. federal and state income taxes and income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. We recorded a full valuation allowance on our federal and state deferred tax assets as we have concluded that it is not more likely than not that the deferred tax assets will be realized.
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Results of Operations
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 1,028,784 | $ | 603,466 | $ | 362,780 | ||||
| Cost of revenue (1)(2)(4) | 234,245 | 130,197 | 88,949 | |||||||
| Gross profit | 794,539 | 473,269 | 273,831 | |||||||
| Operating expenses | ||||||||||
| Research and development (1)(3)(4) | 419,769 | 210,626 | 111,425 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing (1)(2)(3)(4) | 299,497 | 213,660 | 146,657 | |||||||
| General and administrative (1)(3)(4) | 94,429 | 62,756 | 35,889 | |||||||
| Total operating expenses | 813,695 | 487,042 | 293,971 | |||||||
| Operating loss | (19,156) | (13,773) | (20,140) | |||||||
| Other income (loss): | ||||||||||
| Interest expense (5) | (21,052) | (30,434) | (32) | |||||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 21,786 | 21,985 | 4,196 | |||||||
| Other income (loss), net | 734 | (8,449) | 4,164 | |||||||
| Loss before provision for income taxes | (18,422) | (22,222) | (15,976) | |||||||
| Provision for income taxes | (2,323) | (2,325) | (734) | |||||||
| Net loss | $ | (20,745) | $ | (24,547) | $ | (16,710) |
____________________
(1)Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 4,565 | $ | 1,794 | $ | 582 | ||||
| Research and development | 101,942 | 38,008 | 7,972 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 35,035 | 20,467 | 5,538 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 22,195 | 14,105 | 4,942 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 163,737 | $ | 74,374 | $ | 19,034 |
____________________
(2)Includes amortization of acquired intangibles expense as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 3,792 | $ | 943 | $ | 752 | ||||
| Sales and marketing | 600 | — | — | |||||||
| Total | $ | 4,392 | $ | 943 | $ | 752 |
(3)Includes non-cash benefit related to tax adjustment as follows:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Research and development | $ | — | $ | (2,729) | $ | (2,344) | ||||
| Sales and marketing | — | (449) | (397) | |||||||
| General and administrative | — | (2,383) | (2,266) | |||||||
| Total | $ | — | $ | (5,561) | $ | (5,007) |
_____________________
(4)Includes employer payroll taxes on employee stock transactions as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 345 | $ | 187 | $ | — | ||||
| Research and development | 8,143 | 2,836 | 1,157 | |||||||
| Sales and marketing | 6,349 | 3,756 | 284 | |||||||
| General and administrative | 1,248 | 839 | 19 | |||||||
| Total | $ | 16,085 | $ | 7,618 | $ | 1,460 |
____________________
(5)Includes amortization of debt discount and issuance costs as follows:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Interest expense | $ | 3,349 | $ | 18,727 | $ | — |
The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for the periods indicated:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||
| (as a percentage of total revenue(1)) | ||||||||
| Revenue | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||
| Cost of revenue | 23 | 22 | 25 | |||||
| Gross profit | 77 | 78 | 75 | |||||
| Operating expenses | ||||||||
| Research and development | 41 | 35 | 31 | |||||
| Sales and marketing | 29 | 35 | 40 | |||||
| General and administrative | 9 | 10 | 10 | |||||
| Total operating expenses | 79 | 81 | 81 | |||||
| Operating loss | (2) | (2) | (6) | |||||
| Other income (loss): | ||||||||
| Interest expense | (2) | (5) | 0 | |||||
| Interest income and other income, net | 2 | 4 | 1 | |||||
| Other income (loss), net | 0 | (1) | 1 | |||||
| Loss before provision for income taxes | (2) | (4) | (5) | |||||
| Provision for income taxes | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| Net loss | (2) | % | (4) | % | (5) | % |
_____________________
(1)Certain items may not total due to rounding.
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Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2021 and 2020
Revenue
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 1,028,784 | $ | 603,466 | $ | 425,318 | 70 | % |
Revenue increased by $425.3 million or 70%, for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to the year ended December 31, 2020. Approximately 71% of the increase in revenue was attributable to growth from existing customers, and the remaining 29% was attributable to growth from new customers.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Cost of revenue | $ | 234,245 | $ | 130,197 | $ | 104,048 | 80 | % | ||||||
| Gross margin | 77 | % | 78 | % | (1) | % |
Cost of revenue increased by $104.0 million, or 80%, for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to the year ended December 31, 2020. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $88.3 million in third-party cloud infrastructure hosting and software costs, an increase of $7.9 million in personnel expenses as a result of increased headcount, an increase of $4.4 million of depreciation and amortization expense, an increase of $3.0 million in credit card processing fees and other fees, and an increase of $0.4 million in allocated overhead costs as a result of an increase in overall costs necessary to support the growth of the business and related infrastructure.
Our gross margin decreased by 1% for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to the year ended December 31, 2020, primarily as the result of the timing and amount of our investments to expand the capacity of our third-party cloud infrastructure providers.
Research and Development
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Research and development | $ | 419,769 | $ | 210,626 | $ | 209,143 | 99 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 41 | % | 35 | % |
Research and development expense increased by $209.1 million, or 99%, for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to the year ended December 31, 2020. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $152.8 million in personnel costs for our engineering, product and design teams as a result of increased headcount, and an increase of $49.5 million in cloud infrastructure related investments.
Sales and Marketing
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Sales and marketing | $ | 299,497 | $ | 213,660 | $ | 85,837 | 40 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 29 | % | 35 | % |
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Sales and marketing expense increased by $85.8 million, or 40%, for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to the year ended December 31, 2020. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $72.2 million in personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization as a result of increased headcount and increased variable compensation for our sales personnel, an increase of $7.1 million in allocated overhead costs as a result of an increase in overall costs necessary to support the growth of the business and related infrastructure, and an increase of $3.4 million in marketing and promotional activities.
General and Administrative
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | $ | 94,429 | $ | 62,756 | $ | 31,673 | 50 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | 9 | % | 10 | % |
General and administrative expense increased by $31.7 million, or 50%, for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to the year ended December 31, 2020. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $22.8 million in personnel expenses as a result of increased headcount, an increase of $2.9 million related to charitable donations, an increase of $2.7 million related to outside professional fees primarily related to finance and legal fees, and an increase of $0.3 million in allocated overhead expenses related to an increase in overall costs necessary to support the growth of the business and related infrastructure.
Other Income (Loss), Net
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | Change | % Change | |||||||||||
| (dollars in thousands) | ||||||||||||||
| Other income (loss), net | $ | 734 | $ | (8,449) | $ | 9,183 | 109 | % | ||||||
| Percentage of revenue | — | % | (1) | % |
Other income (loss), net increased by $9.2 million, or 109% for the year ended December 31, 2021 compared to the year ended December 31, 2020. This increase was primarily due to the early option of ASU No. 2020-06, Accounting for Convertible Instruments and Contracts in an Entity's Own Equity. As a result of the adoption, the debt discount on our 2025 Notes is no longer amortized into income as interest expense over the life of the instrument, which led to a decrease in the interest expense incurred during the twelve months ended December 31, 2021.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Our largest source of operating cash is cash collection from sales of subscriptions to our customers. Our primary uses of cash from operating activities are for personnel expenses, hosting expenses, facility expenses, and marketing expenses. We have generated positive cash flows from operations during the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, and have supplemented working capital requirements through net proceeds from the sale of debt and equity securities. When assessing sources of liquidity, we also include cash and cash equivalents of $271.0 million and marketable securities of $1.3 billion as of December 31, 2021. We believe that our existing cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities and cash flow from operations will be sufficient to support our cash requirements for the next 12 months and beyond.
Our working capital requirements are principally comprised of workforce salaries, bonuses, commissions, and benefits and, to a lesser extent, cancellable and non-cancelable licenses and services arrangements that are integral to our business operations, and operating lease obligations. Non-cancelable purchase commitments for business operations and operating lease obligations total $688.4 million and $97.0 million, respectively, as of December 31, 2021, due primarily over the next five years. Purchase commitments for business operations are primarily related to cloud hosting and other software-based services.
We have also issued long-term debt to finance our business. In June 2020, we issued $747.5 million aggregate principal amount of the 2025 Notes in a private placement to qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A under the
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Securities Act. The total net proceeds from the sale of the 2025 Notes, after deducting the initial purchasers’ discounts and debt issuance costs, were approximately $730.2 million. The principal and future interest payments related to our 2025 Notes is $750.8 million.
Cash Flows
The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the periods presented:
| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | |||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||
| Cash provided by operating activities | $ | 286,545 | $ | 109,091 | ||
| Cash used in investing activities | (273,740) | (1,152,624) | ||||
| Cash provided by financing activities | 34,940 | 670,276 |
Operating Activities
Net cash provided by operating activities increased $177.5 million from the year ended December 31, 2020 to $286.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, primarily driven by an increase in deferred revenue of $106.5 million and non-cash charges of $97.8 million. The increase in deferred revenue resulted primarily from increased billings for subscriptions. Further, the increase in non-cash charges related primarily to an increase of $89.3 million in stock-based compensation as we continued to increase headcount to support the growth of the business.
Investing Activities
Net cash used in investing activities decreased by $878.9 million from the year ended December 31, 2020 to $273.7 million, primarily driven by a decrease in the investment in marketable securities of $669.0 million, an increase in proceeds of $540.0 million from maturities of marketable securities and an increase in capitalized software development costs of $5.6 million. The decrease in cash used by investing activities was offset by an increase in cash paid for acquisition of businesses net of cash acquired of $224.1 million, a decrease in the proceeds from sale of marketable securities of $95.9 million and an increase in purchases of property and equipment of $4.5 million.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities decreased by $635.3 million from the year ended December 31, 2020 to $34.9 million, primarily due to the receipt of proceeds from the issuance of the 2025 Notes of $730.2 million, net of issuance costs, in 2020. Further, the purchase of the capped call in connection with the 2025 Notes for $89.6 million offset the decrease in cash provided by financing activities as there were no additional purchases in 2021.
Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow
We report our financial results in accordance with U.S. GAAP. To supplement our consolidated financial statements, we provide investors with the amount of free cash flow, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Free cash flow represents net cash used in operating activities, reduced by capital expenditures and capitalized software development costs, if any. Free cash flow is a measure used by management to understand and evaluate our liquidity and to generate future operating plans. The reduction of capital expenditures and amounts capitalized for software development facilitates comparisons of our liquidity on a period-to-period basis and excludes items that we do not consider to be indicative of our liquidity. We believe that free cash flow is a measure of liquidity that provides useful information to our management, board of directors, investors and others in understanding and evaluating the strength of our liquidity and future ability to generate cash that can be used for strategic opportunities or investing in our business. Nevertheless, our use of free cash flow has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our financial results as reported under GAAP. Further, our definition of free cash flow may differ from the definitions used by other companies and therefore comparability may be limited. You should consider free cash flow alongside our other GAAP-based financial performance measures, such as net cash used in operating activities, and our other GAAP financial results.
The following table presents a reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities, the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, for each of the periods indicated:
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| Year Ended December 31, | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | ||||||||
| (in thousands) | ||||||||||
| Net cash provided by operating activities | $ | 286,545 | $ | 109,091 | $ | 24,234 | ||||
| Less: Purchases of property and equipment | (9,956) | (5,415) | (13,315) | |||||||
| Less: Capitalized software development costs | (26,069) | (20,468) | (10,128) | |||||||
| Free cash flow | $ | 250,520 | $ | 83,208 | $ | 791 |
Critical Accounting Estimates
Our financial statements are prepared in accordance with GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and related disclosures. We evaluate our estimates and assumptions on an ongoing basis. Our estimates are based on historical experience and various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances. Our actual results could differ from these estimates.
We believe that the accounting policies described below 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 generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.
We account for revenue contracts with customers through the following steps:
(1)identify the contract with a customer;
(2)identify the performance obligations in the contract;
(3)determine the transaction price;
(4)allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract; and
(5)recognize revenue when or as we satisfy a performance obligation.
Our subscriptions are generally non-cancellable. Once we have determined the transaction price, the total transaction price is allocated to each performance obligation in the contract on a relative stand-alone selling price basis, or SSP. The determination of a relative stand-alone SSP for each distinct performance obligation requires judgment. We determine SSP for performance obligations based on overall pricing objectives, which take into consideration market conditions and customer-specific factors. This includes a review of internal discounting tables, the service(s) being sold, and customer demographics.
Revenue is recognized when control of these services is transferred to customers, in an amount that reflects the consideration we expect to be entitled to receive in exchange for those services. We determine an output method to be the most appropriate measure of progress because it most faithfully represents when the value of the services is simultaneously received and consumed by the customer, and control is transferred.
For committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement generally beginning on the date that the platform is made available to a customer. For committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the services are rendered.
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Stock-Based Compensation
We account for stock-based compensation expense related to stock-based awards based on the estimated fair value of the award on the grant date. We historically issued options to purchase shares of our common stock under our 2012 equity incentive plan, or the 2012 Plan. Following the IPO, we ceased granting awards under the 2012 Plan, and all shares that remained available for issuance under the 2012 Plan at that time were transferred to our 2019 equity incentive plan, or the 2019 Plan. Under the 2019 Plan, we may grant stock options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock awards, restricted stock units, or RSUs, and performance-based and other awards, each valued or based on our Class A common stock, to our employees, directors, consultants, and advisors. For further information see Note 13 in our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in “Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Compensation expense related to stock-based transactions, including employee, consultant, and non-employee director stock option awards, is measured and recognized in the consolidated financial statements based on fair value. The fair value of each option award is estimated on the grant date using the Black Scholes option-pricing model. Expense is recognized on a straight-line basis over the vesting period of the award. Forfeitures are accounted for in the period in which the awards are forfeited.
Our option-pricing model requires the input of highly subjective assumptions, including the fair value of the underlying common stock, the expected term of the option, the expected volatility of the price of our common stock, risk-free interest rates, and the expected dividend yield of our common stock. The assumptions used in our option-pricing model represent management’s best estimates. These estimates involve inherent uncertainties and the application of management’s judgment. If factors change and different assumptions are used, our stock-based compensation expense could be materially different in the future.
These assumptions are estimated as follows:
•Fair value. Prior to our IPO, the fair value of common stock underlying the stock options had historically been determined by our Board of Directors, with input from our management. Our Board of Directors previously determined the fair value of the common stock at the time of grant of the options by considering a number of objective and subjective factors, including the results of contemporaneous independent third-party valuations of our common stock, the prices, rights, preferences, and privileges of our redeemable convertible Preferred Stock relative to those of our common stock, the prices of common or convertible preferred stock sold to third-party investors by us and in secondary transactions or repurchased by us in arm’s-length transactions, the lack of marketability of our common stock, actual operating and financial results, current business conditions and projections, the likelihood of achieving a liquidity event, such as an initial public offering or a merger or acquisition of our company given prevailing market conditions. Subsequent to our IPO, the fair value of the underlying common stock is determined by the closing price, on the date of grant, of our Class A common stock, as reported by the Nasdaq.
•Expected volatility. Expected volatility is a measure of the amount by which the stock price is expected to fluctuate. Since we do not have sufficient trading history of our common stock, we estimate the expected volatility of our stock options at the grant date by taking the average historical volatility of a group of comparable publicly traded companies over a period equal to the expected life of the options.
•Expected term. We determine the expected term based on the average period the stock options are expected to remain outstanding using the simplified method, generally calculated as the midpoint of the stock options’ vesting term and contractual expiration period, as we do not have sufficient historical information to develop reasonable expectations about future exercise patterns and post-vesting employment termination behavior.
•Risk-free rate. We use the U.S. Treasury yield for our risk-free interest rate that corresponds with the expected term.
•Expected dividend yield. We utilize a dividend yield of zero, as we do not currently issue dividends, nor do we expect to do so in the future.
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The following assumptions were used to calculate the fair value of stock options granted to employees:
| Year Ended December 31, | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 (1) | 2020 | 2019 | |||||
| Expected dividend yield | n/a | — | % | — | % | ||
| Expected volatility | n/a | 38.9 | % | 38.9% - 39.5% | |||
| Expected term (years) | n/a | 6.1 | 5.2 - 6.3 | ||||
| Risk-free interest rate | n/a | 1.7 | % | 1.4% - 2.6% |
_____________________
1) There were no stock options granted during the year ended December 31, 2021.
Assumptions used in valuing non-employee stock options are generally consistent with those used for employee stock options with the exception that the expected term is over the contractual life, or 10 years.
We will continue to use judgment in evaluating the assumptions related to our stock-based compensation on a prospective basis. As we continue to accumulate additional data related to our common stock, we may have refinements to our estimates, which could materially impact our future stock-based compensation expense.
Internal Use Software Development Costs
We capitalize certain costs related to the development of our platform and other software applications for internal use. In accordance with authoritative guidance, we begin to capitalize our costs to develop software when preliminary development efforts are successfully completed, management has authorized and committed project funding, and it is probable that the project will be completed and the software will be used as intended. We stop capitalizing these costs when the software is substantially complete and ready for its intended use, including the completion of all significant testing. These costs are amortized on a straight-line basis over the estimated useful life of the related asset, generally estimated to be two years. We also capitalize costs related to specific upgrades and enhancements when it is probable the expenditure will result in additional functionality and expense costs incurred for maintenance and minor upgrades and enhancements. Costs incurred prior to meeting these criteria together with costs incurred for training and maintenance are expensed as incurred and recorded within research and development expenses in our consolidated statements of operations.
We exercise judgment in determining the point at which various projects may be capitalized, in assessing the ongoing value of the capitalized costs and in determining the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized. To the extent that we change the manner in which we develop and test new features and functionalities related to our platform, assess the ongoing value of capitalized assets or determine the estimated useful lives over which the costs are amortized, the amount of internal-use software development costs we capitalize and amortize could change in future periods.
Convertible Senior Notes
In accounting for the issuance of the 2025 Notes, the 2025 Notes were separated into liability and equity components through December 31, 2020. The carrying amount of the liability component was calculated by measuring the fair value of similar liabilities that do not have associated convertible features. 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 respective 2025 Notes. This difference represents the debt discount that is amortized to interest expense over the contractual terms of the 2025 Notes using the effective interest rate method. The carrying amount of the equity component representing the conversion option was $177.2 million. The equity component was recorded in additional paid-in capital and is not remeasured as long as it continues to meet the conditions for equity classification.
In accounting for the debt issuance costs of $17.3 million related to the 2025 Notes, we allocated the total amount incurred to the liability and equity components of the 2025 Notes in the same proportion as the allocation of the proceeds. Issuance costs attributable to the liability component were $13.2 million and will be amortized, along with the debt discount, to interest expense over the contractual term of the 2025 Notes at an effective interest rate of 5.97%. Issuance costs attributable to the equity component were $4.1 million and are netted against the equity component in additional paid-in capital.
On January 1, 2021, we adopted ASU No. 2020-06, Accounting for Convertible Instruments and Contracts in an Entity’s Own Equity. As a result of the adoption, the debt conversion option of $177.2 million and debt issuance costs of $4.1 million previously attributable to the equity component are no longer presented in equity. Similarly, the debt discount, that is equal to the carrying value of the embedded conversion feature upon issuance, is no longer amortized into income as interest
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expense over the life of the instrument. This resulted in a $16.8 million decrease to the opening balance of accumulated deficit, a $173.1 million decrease to the opening balance of additional paid-in capital and a $156.3 million increase to the opening balance of convertible senior notes, net on the consolidated balance sheet.
Business Combinations
When we acquire a business, the purchase consideration is allocated to the tangible assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and intangible assets acquired based on their estimated respective fair values. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair values of these identifiable assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Such valuations require us to make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Significant estimates in valuing certain intangible assets include, but are not limited to, future expected cash flows from acquired users, acquired technology, and trade names from a market participant perspective, useful lives and discount rates. Our estimates of fair value are based upon assumptions believed to be reasonable, but which are inherently uncertain and unpredictable and, as a result, actual results may differ from estimates. During the measurement period, we may record adjustments to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed, with the corresponding offset to goodwill. Upon the conclusion of the measurement period, any subsequent adjustments are recorded to other income, net in the consolidated statement of operations.
Recently Adopted Accounting Pronouncements
See Note 2, in our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in “Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of recent accounting pronouncements.