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SHUTTERSTOCK, INC. - 10-Q - : Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
[November 07, 2014]

SHUTTERSTOCK, INC. - 10-Q - : Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations


(Edgar Glimpses Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Safe Harbor Cautionary Statement The following discussion of our financial condition and results of operations should be read together with our interim consolidated financial statements contained elsewhere in this quarterly report on Form 10-Q and with information contained in our other filings, including the audited consolidated financial statements included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013.



This discussion may contain forward-looking statements based upon current expectations that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those set forth under "Risk Factors" of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and in other parts of this report.

Overview We operate an industry-leading global marketplace for commercial digital imagery and music. Commercial digital imagery consists of licensed photographs, illustrations and videos that companies use in their visual communications, such as websites, digital and print marketing materials, corporate communications, books, publications and video content while music consists of high-quality music tracks which is often used to complement the digital imagery. Demand for commercial digital imagery and music comes primarily from businesses, marketing agencies and media organizations.


Our global online marketplace brings together users of commercial digital imagery and music with creators from around the world. More than one million active, paying users contributed to revenue through September 30, 2014. We have historically benefitted from a high degree of revenue retention from both subscription-based and On Demand customers. For example, in 2013, 2012 and 2011, we experienced year-to-year revenue retention of 99%, 100%, and 102%, respectively. This means that customers that contributed to revenue in 2012 contributed, in the aggregate, 99% as much revenue in 2013 as they did in 2012.

More than 60,000 approved contributors make their images available in our collection, which has grown to more than 40 million images as of September 30, 2014. This makes our collection one of the largest of its kind and, in the twelve months ended December 31, 2013, we delivered more than 100 million paid downloads (including both commercial and editorial images) to our customers. We believe that we delivered the highest volume of commercial image downloads in this period of any single brand in our industry.

† In February 2014, we announced a partnership with the New York based Art Directs Club ("ADC") that will further both organizations' commitment to empowering the creative community. The Company will serve as partner in presenting ADC's highly regarded programs and initiatives including Young Guns, Portfolio Night and the Tomorrow Awards.

† In February 2014, we surpassed contributor payouts of $200 million since our founding in 2003, illustrating our dynamic global marketplace and ability to connect artists to image buyers around the world.

† In March 2014, we acquired certain assets and liabilities of Virtual Moment, LLC (dba WebDAM) ("WebDAM"). WebDAM sells digital asset management software services through its cloud-based platform to marketing and creative enterprise organizations. WebDAM's products help organizations manage, search, distribute and collaborate on creative files in order to grow its brands and reach new audiences.

† In April 2014, we surpassed over 400 million licenses sold since our founding in 2003, highlighting our increasing role in powering business communications worldwide.

† In June 2014, we announced the launch of Shutterstock Music. This new product features thousands of high-quality audio tracks available through our strategic partner and offers simple and affordable license options, making it easier for businesses, marketers, producers and filmmakers to add quality sounds to commercial videos.

† In July 2014, we launched a new image discovery tool called Palette. This latest addition to the Company's Labs Site creates a unique experience for customers searching our collection using color themes.

† In August 2014, we announced that our collection reached 40 million images and in September 2014, we surpassed 2 million video clips in our collection, including 65,000 videos in state-of-the-art 4K.

As an online marketplace, we generate revenue by licensing images, videos and music to our customers. We pay royalties to our contributors for each piece of their content that is downloaded. Approximately half of our revenue and the vast majority of our downloads come from subscription-based customers. These customers can download and use a large number of images in their creative process without concern for the incremental cost of each image download. For 21 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents customers who need fewer images, we offer simple, affordable, On Demand pricing, which is presented as a fixed price across all images, clips and sizes. Since the launch of our On Demand purchase options in 2008, revenue from these purchase options has increased as a percentage of our overall revenue and we expect that this trend will continue.

Each time an image, video clip or music track is downloaded, we record a royalty expense for the amount due to the associated contributor. Royalties are calculated using either a fixed dollar amount or a fixed percentage of revenue as described on our websites. Royalties are typically paid to contributors on a monthly basis subject to withholding taxes and certain payout minimums.

Royalties represent the largest component of our operating expenses and tend to increase proportionally with revenue.

Our cost of revenue is substantially similar as a percentage of revenue for our On Demand and subscription-based purchase options. While contributors earn a fixed amount per download for some of our plans, we have set the per-download amount paid to our contributors for each of our purchase options so that contributors earn more per download from plans where we collect higher revenue per download. In other words, we strive to deliver a similar percentage of revenue to contributors regardless of which purchase option a customer chooses.

Cost of revenue for our On Demand purchase options has been slightly lower than that of our subscription-based options; however, this difference has historically represented less than 5% of revenue. As a result, we expect that shifts in the relative popularity of these two purchase options will not materially impact our cost of revenue.

We manage customer acquisition costs based on the expected blended customer lifetime value across our purchase options so we are able to manage our marketing expenses to achieve certain desired growth targets. As a result, we do not believe that shifts in the mix between On Demand or subscription-based purchase options will materially impact our operating margins. In addition, the repeat revenue characteristics of customers whose first purchase was a subscription-based purchase option are substantially similar to those whose first purchase was an On Demand purchase option.

An important driver of our growth is customer acquisition, which we achieve primarily through online marketing efforts including paid search, organic search, online display advertising, email marketing, affiliate marketing, social media and strategic partnerships. Over the past several years, we increased our investments in marketing as a percentage of revenue. Since we believe the market for commercial digital imagery and music is at an early stage, we plan to continue to invest aggressively in customer acquisition to achieve revenue and market share growth. We believe that another important driver of growth is the quality of the user experience we provide on our websites, especially the efficiency with which our search interfaces and algorithms help customers find the images, videos and music that they need, the degree to which we make use of the large quantity of data we collect about images, videos and music and search patterns, and the degree to which our websites have been localized for international audiences. To this end, we have also invested aggressively in product development and we plan to continue to invest in this area. Finally, the quality and quantity of content that we make available in our collection is another key driver of our growth. The number of approved and licensable images in the Shutterstock collection exceeded 40 million images as of September 30, 2014, making it one of the largest libraries of its kind.

On March 14, 2014, the Company acquired certain assets and liabilities of Virtual Moment, LLC (dba WebDAM) ("WebDAM") pursuant to an asset purchase arrangement. The transaction was accounted for using the acquisition method, and accordingly, the results of the acquired business have been included in the Company's results of operations from the acquisition date. WebDAM sells digital asset management software services through its cloud-based platform to marketing and creative enterprise organizations. WebDAM's products help organizations manage, search, distribute and collaborate on creative digital files in order to grow its brands and reach new audiences. WebDAM's offerings are particularly attractive to large enterprises, which make up a significant portion of their client base. We believe that this acquisition will increase our strategic position with our enterprise customers as well as broaden our product availability to seize market opportunity.

22 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents Key Business Metrics In addition to key financial metrics, we regularly review a number of key operating metrics to evaluate our business, determine the allocation of resources and make decisions regarding business strategies. We believe that these metrics are useful for understanding the underlying trends in our business. The following table summarizes our key operating metrics, which are unaudited, for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2014 and 2013: Three Months Ended Nine Months Ended September 30, September 30, 2014 2013 2014 2013 (in millions, except revenue per download) (in millions, except revenue per download) Paid downloads (during the period) 31.2 25.4 92.4 72.1 Revenue per download (during the period) $ 2.65 $ 2.35 $ 2.54 $ 2.32 Images in collection (end of period) 42.7 29.7 42.7 29.7 Paid Downloads Measuring the number of paid downloads that our customers make in any given period is important because our revenue and contributor royalties are driven by paid download activity. For customers that choose our On Demand purchase options, each incremental download results in incremental recognition of revenue. For customers that choose our subscription purchase options, we do not recognize revenue from each incremental download, but we believe that download activity is an important measure of the value that a customer is getting from a subscription and the likelihood that the customer will renew. We define paid downloads as the number of downloads that our customers make in a given period of our photographs, vectors, illustrations, video clips or music tracks, excluding re-downloads of images, video clips or music tracks that a customer has downloaded in the past (which do not generate incremental revenue or contributor royalty expense) and downloads of our free image of the week (which we make available as a means of acquiring new customers and attracting existing customers to return to our websites more frequently).

Revenue per Download We define revenue per download as the amount of revenue recognized in a given period divided by the number of paid downloads in that period. Revenue per download metric excludes the impact of revenue that is not derived or associated with the download of images, video clips or music tracks. This metric captures both changes in our pricing, if any, as well as the mix of purchase options that our customers choose, some of which generate more revenue per download than others. For example, when a customer pays $49.00 for five On Demand images, we earn more revenue per download ($9.80) than when a customer purchases a one-month subscription for $249.00 and downloads 100 images during the month ($2.49 per download). Over the last three years, revenue from each of our purchase options has grown, however our fastest growing purchase options have been those that generate more revenue per download, most notably our On Demand purchase options. Revenue per download has increased steadily over the last three years, almost entirely due to the change in product mix. During this period, pricing has remained relatively constant.

Images in Collection We define images in our collection as the total number of photographs, vectors and illustrations available to customers on shutterstock.com at any point in time. We record this metric as of the end of a period. Offering a large selection of images allows us to acquire and retain customers and, therefore, we believe that broadening our selection of high-quality images is an important driver of our revenue growth.

23 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents Key Components of Our Results of Operations Revenue The vast majority of our revenue is generated by licensing commercial digital imagery and music. The significant majority of our revenue is generated via either subscription or On Demand purchase options. We generate subscription revenue through the sale of subscriptions varying in length from 30 days to one year. Our most popular subscription offering allows up to 25 image downloads per day for a flat monthly fee. In substantially all cases, we receive the full amount of the subscription payment by credit card at the time of sale; however, subscription revenue is recognized on a straight-line basis over the subscription period. We generate On Demand revenue through the sale of fixed packages of downloads varying in quantity from one image to 25 images, one video clip to 25 video clips or single music tracks. We also generate On Demand revenue through Bigstock via the sale of credits plans (which enable a customer to purchase a fixed number of credits which can then be utilized to download images anytime within one year). We typically receive the full amount of the purchase at the time of sale; however, revenue is recognized as images are downloaded or when the right to download images expires (typically 365 days after purchase). We provide a number of other purchase options which together represented approximately 14% and 10% of our revenue in 2013 and 2012, respectively. These purchase options include custom accounts (for customers that need multi-seat access, invoicing, greater or unlimited indemnification, or a higher volume of images) and video footage (which are sold both individually and in fixed packages). We typically receive the full amount of the purchase at the time of sale; however, revenue is recognized as images, video clips or music tracks are downloaded or when the right to download expires (typically 365 days after purchase). Some of our larger custom accounts are invoiced at or after the time of sale and pay us on credit terms. Some custom accounts pay in quarterly installments over the course of an annual commitment. We also generate revenue through WebDAM which was acquired in March 2014. WebDAM licenses digital asset management software services through its cloud-based platform to marketing and creative enterprise organizations. The product offerings typically have a license contract of one year.

Our deferred revenue consists of paid but unrecognized subscription revenue, On Demand revenue, and other revenue. Deferred revenue is recognized as revenue when images, video clips or music tracks are downloaded (On Demand), through the passage of time (subscriptions) or when credits or the right to download images, video clips or music tracks expire, and when all other revenue recognition criteria have been met.

Costs and Expenses Cost of Revenue. Cost of revenue consists of royalties paid to contributors, credit card processing fees, image and video clip review costs, customer service expenses, the infrastructure costs related to maintaining our websites and associated employee compensation, including non-cash equity-based compensation, bonuses and benefits, allocated facility costs and other supporting overhead costs. We expect that our cost of revenue will increase in absolute dollars in the foreseeable future as our revenue grows.

Sales and Marketing. Sales and marketing expenses include third-party marketing, advertising, branding, public relations and sales expenses. Sales and marketing expenses also include associated employee compensation, including non-cash equity-based compensation, bonuses and benefits, and commissions as well as allocated facility and other supporting overhead costs. We expect sales and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars in the foreseeable future as we continue to invest in new customer acquisition.

Product Development. Product development expenses consist of employee compensation, including non-cash equity-based compensation, benefits and bonuses, and expenses related to contractors engaged in product management, design, development and testing of our websites and products. Product development costs also include allocated facility and other supporting overhead costs. We expense product development expenses as incurred, except for costs that are capitalized for certain software development projects that have demonstrated technological feasibility. We expect product development expenses to increase in absolute dollars in the foreseeable future as we continue to invest in developing new products and enhancing the functionality of our existing products.

General and Administrative. General and administrative expenses include employee compensation, including, non-cash equity-based compensation, bonuses and benefits for executive, finance, business development, accounting, legal, human resources, internal information technology, business intelligence and other administrative personnel. In addition, general and administrative expenses include outside legal and accounting services, insurance, facilities costs and other supporting overhead costs. We expect to incur incremental general and administrative expenses to support our growth and to support operating as a public company.

Income Taxes. Historically, we filed our income tax return as a "pass through" New York limited liability company for federal and state income tax purposes and were subject to taxation on allocable portions of our net income and other taxes based on various methodologies employed by taxing authorities in certain localities. As a limited liability company ("LLC"), we recognized no federal and state income taxes, as the members of the LLC, and not the entity itself, were subject to income tax on their allocated share of our earnings. On October 5, 2012, we reorganized from a limited liability company to a Delaware corporation.

Consequently, our corporate income tax rate has increased significantly now that we are subject to federal, state and additional city income taxes.

As we continue to expand our operations outside of the United States, we will likely become subject to taxation in additional non-U.S. jurisdictions and our effective tax rate could fluctuate accordingly.

Our GAAP income taxes are computed using the asset and liability method, under which deferred tax assets and liabilities are determined based on the difference between the financial statement and tax bases of assets and liabilities using enacted statutory income tax rates in effect for the year in which the differences are expected to affect taxable income. Valuation allowances are established when necessary to reduce net deferred tax assets to the amount expected to be realized.

24 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates We prepare our consolidated financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States, or GAAP. The preparation of the consolidated financial statements in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States requires our management to make a number of estimates and assumptions relating to the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the consolidated financial statements, and the reported amounts of revenue and expenses during the period. We evaluate our significant estimates on an ongoing basis, including, but not limited to, estimates related to allowance for doubtful accounts, goodwill, intangibles, non-cash equity-based compensation, income tax provisions and certain non-income tax accruals. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about carrying value of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. Actual results could differ from those estimates.

We believe that the assumptions and estimates associated with our revenue recognition, allowance for doubtful accounts, non-cash equity-based compensation, accounting for income taxes, goodwill and intangible assets have the greatest potential impact on our financial statements. Therefore, we consider these to be our critical accounting policies and estimates.

A description of our critical accounting policies that involve significant management judgments appears in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013 under "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations-Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates." There have been no material changes to our critical accounting policies and estimates as compared to our critical accounting policies and estimates included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Emerging Growth Company Section 107 of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, or the JOBS Act, provides that an "emerging growth company" can take advantage of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, for complying with new or revised accounting standards. However, we have chosen to opt out of any extended transition period, and as a result we will comply with new or revised accounting standards on the relevant dates on which adoption of such standards is required for non-emerging growth companies.

Section 107 of the JOBS Act provides that our decision to opt out of the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards is irrevocable.

We have chosen to rely on certain reduced reporting requirements provided by the JOBS Act. Specifically, as an "emerging growth company," we are not required to, among other things, (i) provide an auditor's attestation report on our system of internal controls over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404, (ii) provide all of the compensation disclosure that may be required of non-emerging growth public companies under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, (iii) comply with any requirement that may be adopted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or the PCAOB, regarding mandatory audit firm rotation or a supplement to the auditor's report providing additional information about the audit and the financial statements (auditor discussion and analysis), and (iv) disclose certain executive compensation related items such as the correlation between executive compensation and performance and comparisons of the CEO's compensation to median employee compensation. We will remain an emerging growth company for up to five years following our IPO, although, we would cease to be an emerging growth company upon the earliest of (i) the first fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of our IPO, (ii) the first fiscal year after our annual gross revenue is $1 billion or more, (iii) the date on which we have, during the previous three-year period, issued more than $1 billion in non-convertible debt securities, or (iv) the date on which we are deemed to be a "large accelerated filer" as defined in the Exchange Act.

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