As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 8, 2021.

Registration No. 333-250204

 

 

 

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

 

 

AMENDMENT NO. 2

TO

FORM S-1

REGISTRATION STATEMENT

UNDER

THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933

 

 

Roblox Corporation

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

 

Delaware		7372		20-0991664
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)		(Primary Standard Industrial Classification Code Number)		(I.R.S. Employer Identification Number)

Roblox Corporation

970 Park Place, San Mateo, California 94403

(888) 858-2569

(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrant’s principal executive offices)

 

 

David Baszucki

Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer

970 Park Place, San Mateo, California 94403

(888) 858-2569

(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of agent for service)

 

 

Copies to:

 

Tony Jeffries Michael Coke Lianna Whittleton Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. 650 Page Mill Road Palo Alto, California 94304 (650) 493-9300		Mark Reinstra Adele Freedman Roblox Corporation 970 Park Place San Mateo, California 94403 (888) 858-2569		Kevin P. Kennedy Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP 2475 Hanover St Palo Alto, California 94304 (650) 251-5000

 

 

Approximate date of commencement of proposed sale to the public: As soon as practicable after this registration statement becomes effective.

If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act of 1933 check the following box.  ☒

If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, please check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

 

Large accelerated filer		☐		Accelerated filer		☐
Non-accelerated filer		☒		Smaller reporting company		☐
				Emerging growth company		☒

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act.  ☐

 

 

CALCULATION OF REGISTRATION FEE

 

Title of Each Class of Securities to be Registered		Amount to to be Registered		Proposed Maximum Offering Price Per Share		Proposed Maximum Aggregate Offering Price(1)		Amount of Registration Fee(2)
Class A common stock, $0.0001 par value per share		196,711,321		Not Applicable		$149,500,603.96		$16,310.52

(1)

Estimated solely for the purpose of calculating the registration fee in accordance with Rule 457(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Given that there is no proposed maximum offering price per share of Class A common stock, the registrant calculates the proposed maximum aggregate offering price, by analogy to Rule 457(f)(2), based on the book value of the Class A common stock the registrant registers, or $0.76 per share, which was calculated from its unaudited pro forma balance sheet as of September 30, 2020. Given that the registrant’s shares of Class A common stock are not traded on an exchange or over-the-counter, the registrant did not use the market prices of its Class A common stock in accordance with Rule 457(c).

(2)	The registrant previously paid the registration fee with a prior filing of this registration statement.

 

 

The registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the registrant will file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement will thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or until the registration statement will become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.

 

 

 

The information in this preliminary prospectus is not complete and may be changed. These securities may not be sold until the registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This preliminary prospectus is not an offer to sell nor does it seek an offer to buy these securities in any jurisdiction where the offer or sale is not permitted.

 

Subject to Completion, Dated January 8, 2021.

                     Shares

 

Class A Common Stock

 

 

This prospectus relates to registration of the resale of up to 196,711,321 shares of our Class A common stock by our stockholders identified in this prospectus, referred to as the registered stockholders. Unlike an initial public offering, the resale by the registered stockholders is not being underwritten by any investment bank. The registered stockholders may, or may not, elect to sell their shares of Class A common stock covered by this prospectus, as and to the extent they may determine. Such sales, if any, will be made through brokerage transactions on the New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE. See the section titled “Plan of Distribution.” If the registered stockholders choose to sell their shares of Class A common stock, we will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of Class A common stock by the registered stockholders.

We have two classes of authorized common stock, Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The rights of the holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock are identical, except with respect to voting and conversion. Each share of Class A common stock is entitled to one vote per share. Each share of Class B common stock is entitled to twenty votes per share and is convertible at any time into one share of Class A common stock. Entities affiliated with David Baszucki, our Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of our board of directors will hold all outstanding shares of our Class B common stock representing approximately 70.7% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. As a result, Mr. Baszucki will be able to significantly influence any action requiring the approval of our stockholders, including the election of our board of directors, the adoption of amendments to our certificate of incorporation and bylaws and the approval of any merger, consolidation, sale of all or substantially all of our assets or other major corporate transaction. Also as a result, we believe we are eligible for, but do not intend to take advantage of, the “controlled company” exemption to the corporate governance rules for NYSE-listed companies.

No public market for our Class A common stock currently exists. Our shares of Class A common stock (on an as-converted basis) have an extremely limited history of trading in private transactions. The low and high sales price per share of our Class A common stock (on an as-converted basis) for such private transactions during the year ended December 31, 2018 was $2.10 and $4.53, respectively; we are not aware of any sales in the year ended December 31, 2019; and the sale price per share of Class A common stock (on an as-converted basis) during the period from January 1, 2020 through September 30, 2020 was $6.34. For more information, see the section titled “Sale Price History of Our Class A Common Stock.” Our recent trading prices in private transactions may have little or no relation to the opening public price of our shares of Class A common stock on the NYSE or the subsequent trading price of our shares of Class A common stock on the NYSE. Further, the listing of our Class A common stock on the NYSE without underwriters is a novel method for commencing public trading in shares of our Class A common stock, and consequently, the trading volume and price of shares of our Class A common stock may be more volatile than if shares of our Class A common stock were initially listed in connection with an underwritten initial public offering.

Based on information provided by the NYSE, the opening public price of our common stock on the NYSE will be determined by buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from broker-dealers. Based on such orders, the designated market maker will determine an opening price for our Class A common stock in consultation with our financial advisors pursuant to applicable NYSE rules. For more information, see the section titled “Plan of Distribution.”

We have been approved to list our Class A common stock on the NYSE under the symbol “RBLX.” We expect our Class A common stock to begin trading on or about February     , 2021.

We are an “emerging growth company” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 and, as such, we have elected to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for this prospectus and may elect to do so in future filings.

 

 

See the section titled “Risk Factors” beginning on page 15 to read about factors you should consider before buying shares of our Class A common stock.

 

 

Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any other regulatory body has approved or disapproved of these securities or passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of this prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.

 

 

Prospectus dated                     , 2021

ROBLOX

“As a developer on Roblox, I’ve learned that games aren’t always about winning, some are sort of challenging and some are about creating experiences you wish to share with others.” “I like Roblox because there are so ~ many different games, and it helps kids have fun and be creative.” “Roblox brings the creativity out of every individual. I’m so grateful to be part of a community that pushes each other to succeed.” “The best part about Roblox is chatting online with all my friends from around the world.”

“The limitless possibilities Roblox has unlocked for me have changed my life - for the better. The tools, community, and experience Roblox has given me turned my passion into a career.” “I enjoy playing Roblox because it’s super engaging and the developers are passionate about their games.” “I’ve grown a lot as a developer by using the platform. Roblox helped me grow my passion for game creation while enabling me to be creative.” “Roblox has enabled me to grow both personally and professionally. It’s been a rewarding opportunity creating amazing experiences that touch the lives of millions of players worldwide with my team at Shark Fin Studios.”

31.1M DAILY ACTIVE USERS 22.2B HOURS ENGAGED $589M REVENUE $1.2B BOOKINGS $345M OPERATING CASH FLOW $ 203.2M NET LOSS *all metrics for the nine months ended 9/30/20

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

ABOUT THIS PROSPECTUS			1
PROSPECTUS SUMMARY			2
RISK FACTORS			15
SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS			67
INDUSTRY, MARKET AND OTHER DATA			69
USE OF PROCEEDS			70
DIVIDEND POLICY			71
CAPITALIZATION			72
SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL AND OTHER DATA			74
MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS			79
LETTER FROM OUR FOUNDER, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER			112
BUSINESS			114
MANAGEMENT			135
EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION			144
CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS			161
PRINCIPAL AND REGISTERED STOCKHOLDERS			167
DESCRIPTION OF CAPITAL STOCK			171
SHARES ELIGIBLE FOR FUTURE SALE			178
SALE PRICE HISTORY OF OUR CLASS A COMMON STOCK			180
MATERIAL U.S. FEDERAL INCOME TAX CONSEQUENCES TO NON-U.S. HOLDERS OF OUR CLASS A COMMON STOCK			181
PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION			186
LEGAL MATTERS			189
EXPERTS			189
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION			189
INDEX TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS			F-1

Neither we nor any of the registered stockholders have authorized anyone to provide any information or to make any representations other than those contained in this prospectus or in any free writing prospectuses we have prepared. Neither we nor any of the registered stockholders take responsibility for, and can provide no assurance as to the reliability of, any other information that others may give you. The registered stockholders are offering to sell and seeking offers to buy, shares of their Class A common stock but only under circumstances and in jurisdictions where it is lawful to do so. The information contained in this prospectus is current only as of its date, regardless of the time of delivery of this prospectus or of any sale of our Class A common stock.

For investors outside the United States: Neither we nor any of the registered stockholders have done anything that would permit the use of or possession or distribution of this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. Persons outside the United States who come into possession of this prospectus must inform themselves about, and observe any restrictions relating to, the offering of the shares of our Class A common stock by the registered stockholders and the distribution of this prospectus outside the United States.

ABOUT THIS PROSPECTUS

This prospectus is a part of a registration statement on Form S-1 that we filed with the SEC using a “shelf” registration or continuous offering process. Under this process, the registered stockholders may, from time to time, sell the Class A common stock covered by this prospectus in the manner described in the section titled “Plan of Distribution.” Additionally, we may provide a prospectus supplement to add information to, or update or change information contained in, this prospectus, including the section titled “Plan of Distribution.” You may obtain this information without charge by following the instructions under the section titled “Where You Can Find Additional Information” appearing elsewhere in this prospectus. You should read this prospectus and any prospectus supplement before deciding to invest in our Class A common stock.

We have evaluated various liquidity opportunities from time to time for us and our stockholders, including over the last six months as we contemplated pursuing an initial public offering via a direct listing as described in this prospectus or through an underwritten offering of shares of Class A common stock sold by us and certain selling stockholders. With assistance from an underwriting syndicate, we initially confidentially submitted this prospectus in draft form on October 9, 2020, and subsequently publicly filed via EDGAR on November 19, 2020, and amended such filing via EDGAR on December 1, 2020. Due to market volatility and the performance of other recent underwritten initial public offerings, we have elected to file this prospectus as an amendment to the registration statement and pursue a direct listing to permit determination of the opening public price of our Class A common stock on the NYSE by buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from broker-dealers. Based on such orders, a designated market maker, or DMM, will determine an opening price for our Class A common stock in consultation with Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC as our financial advisors pursuant to applicable NYSE rules. We expect our Class A common stock to begin trading on the NYSE on or about February     , 2021. See the section titled “Plan of Distribution.”

 

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RISK FACTORS

Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks described below, as well as the other information in this prospectus, including our consolidated financial statements and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” before deciding whether to invest in our Class A common stock. The occurrence of any of the events or developments described below could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects. In such an event, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you may lose all or part of your investment. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe are not material may also impair our business, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects.

Risks Related to Our Business Generally

We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods, and our recent growth rates may not be indicative of our future growth or the growth of our market.

We have experienced rapid growth in the three months ended June 30, 2020, September 30, 2020 and for a portion of the three months ended March 31, 2020, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic given our users have been online more as a result of global COVID-19 shelter-in-place policies. For example, our bookings increased 171% from the nine-months ended September 30, 2019 to the nine months ended September 30, 2020. We do not expect these activity levels to be sustained, and in future periods we expect growth rates for our revenue to decline, and we may not experience any growth in bookings or our user base during periods where we are comparing against COVID-19 impacted periods (i.e. the three months ended March 31, 2020, June 30, 2020, and September 30, 2020). Our historical revenue, bookings and user base growth should not be considered indicative of our future performance. We believe our overall acceptance, revenue growth and increases in bookings depend on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, our ability to:

 

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enhance the tools we make available to developers for use in developing content;

 

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expand the number of developers, creators, and users on our platform;

 

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expand the types of experiences that our developers can build for users;

 

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continue to provide, and be viewed as being able to provide, a safe and civil environment for all users;

 

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maintain the security and reliability of our platform;

 

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provide access to our platform for users in areas where access to the internet is challenged;

 

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comply with country and region-specific regulatory environments with respect to privacy, data protection, intellectual property, child protection and other requirements;

 

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attract highly qualified talent, and train, motivate and manage our highly-qualified personnel;

 

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manage growth of our business, headcount and operations effectively;

 

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provide excellent customer experience and customer support for our developers, creators, and users;

 

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successfully compete against established companies and new market entrants offering a multitude of interactive entertainment offerings; and

 

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increase global awareness of our brand.

 

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If we are unable to accomplish these tasks, our platform will not be attractive to developers, creators, and users and they may no longer seek new experiences in our platform, which would result in fewer bookings and lower revenue and could harm our operations.

We have a history of net losses and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future.

We have incurred net losses since our inception, and we expect to continue to incur net losses in the near future. We incurred net losses of $97.2 million, $86.0 million, and $213.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, respectively. As of September 30, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $494.1 million. We also expect our operating expenses to increase significantly in future periods, and if our DAU growth does not increase to offset these anticipated increases in our operating expenses, our business, results of operations, and financial condition will be harmed, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability. We expect our costs and expenses to increase in future periods as we intend to continue to make significant investments to grow our business. These efforts may be more costly than we expect and may not result in increased revenue or growth of our business. In addition to the expected costs to grow our business, we also expect to incur significant additional legal, accounting, and other expenses as a newly public company. If we fail to increase our revenue to sufficiently offset the increases in our operating expenses, we will not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future.

Our financial condition and results of operations will fluctuate from quarter to quarter, which makes them difficult to predict and they may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business.

Our quarterly results of operations have fluctuated in the past and will fluctuate in the future, both based on the seasonality of our business as well as external factors impacting the global economy, our industry and our company. Additionally, the current scale of our business makes it difficult to forecast our future results. As a result, you should not rely on our past quarterly results of operations as indicators of future performance. You should take into account the risks and uncertainties frequently encountered by companies in rapidly evolving market segments. Our financial condition and results of operations in any given quarter can be influenced by numerous factors, many of which we are unable to predict or are outside of our control, including:

 

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our ability to maintain and grow our user base and user engagement;

 

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our ability to retain and grow our developer base and encourage them to continue developing experiences on our platform;

 

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the level of demand for our platform;

 

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the development and introduction of new or redesigned features on our platform or our competitors’ platforms;

 

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seasonal fluctuations in user engagement on our platform;

 

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our pricing model;

 

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increases in marketing, sales, and other operating expenses that we may incur to grow and expand our operations and to remain competitive;

 

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our ability to successfully expand internationally and penetrate key demographics;

 

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our ability to maintain operating margins, cash used in operating activities, and free cash flow;

 

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system failures or actual or perceived breaches of security or privacy, and the costs associated with such failures, breaches and remediations;

 

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inaccessibility of our platform, or certain features within our platform, due to third-party actions;

 

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increase in stock-based compensation expense;

 

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our ability to effectively incentivize our workforce and developers;

 

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adverse litigation judgments, settlements, or other litigation and dispute-related costs;

 

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changes in the legislative or regulatory environment, including with respect to privacy and data protection, consumer protection, and user-uploaded content, or enforcement by government regulators, including fines, orders, or consent decrees;

 

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fluctuations in currency exchange rates and changes in the proportion of our revenue, bookings and expenses denominated in foreign currencies;

 

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fluctuations in the market values of our portfolio investments and interest rates or impairments of any assets on our balance sheet;

 

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changes in our effective tax rate;

 

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changes in accounting standards, policies, guidance, interpretations, or principles; and

 

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changes in domestic and global business or macroeconomic conditions.

Our business is affected by seasonal demands, and our quarterly operations results fluctuate as a result.

Historically our business has been highly seasonal, with the highest percentage of our sales occurring in the fourth quarter when holidays permit our users to spend increased time on our platform, and we expect this trend to continue. We may also experience fluctuations due to factors that may be outside of our control that affect user or developer and creator engagement with our platform. For example, we have also seen an increase in activity on our platform as a result of shelter-in-place policies instituted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we do not expect these activity levels to be sustained. Additionally, activity levels may further decrease, including below historic levels as the full impacts of the pandemic, including the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine on society and the global economy, become clearer. We also seek to further develop the live experiences available on our platform, such as virtual concerts, classrooms, meetings, and conferences, and to offer commercial partners with branding opportunities in conjunction with key events, such as a product launch. These episodic experiences may also contribute to fluctuations in our quarterly results of operations. As our business matures, other seasonal trends may develop or these existing seasonal trends may become more extreme.

The recent global COVID-19 outbreak has significantly affected our business and operations.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease that it causes has evolved into a global pandemic. In light of the uncertain and rapidly evolving situation relating to the spread of COVID-19, we have taken precautionary measures intended to minimize the risk of the virus to our employees and the communities in which we operate, including temporarily closing our offices worldwide and virtualizing, postponing, or canceling user, developer, creator, employee, or industry events, which may negatively impact our business.

The full extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic and the various responses to it impact our business, operations, and financial results will depend on numerous evolving factors that we may not be able to accurately predict, including:

 

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the duration and scope of the pandemic, including any potential future waves of the pandemic;

 

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governmental, business, and individuals’ actions that have been and continue to be taken in response to the pandemic;

 

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the availability of and cost to access the capital markets;

 

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the effect of the pandemic on our developers, creators, and users;

 

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disruptions or restrictions on our employees’ ability to work and travel; and

 

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interruptions related to our infrastructure and partners.

While substantially all of our business operations can be performed remotely, many of our employees are balancing additional work-related and personal challenges, including preparing for a prolonged duration of remote working environments, adjusting communication and work practices to collaborate remotely with work colleagues and business partners, managing technical and communication challenges of working from home on a daily basis, looking after children as a result of school closures and remote-learning, making plans for childcare as children prepare to return to schools, and caring for themselves, family members or other dependents who are or may become ill.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting social distancing, shelter-in-place and similar restrictions led to increased developer and creator and user engagement on our platform relative to our quarterly forecast and historic trends. These increases in user activity are almost certainly not indicative of our financial and operating results in future periods. The long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on society and developer, creator and user engagement are highly uncertain and there is no assurance that developer, creator and user engagement will not decrease, including below historic levels, as the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on society and the global economy become clearer.

We depend on effectively operating with mobile operating systems, hardware, and networks that we do not control; changes to any of these or our platform may significantly harm our user retention, growth, engagement, and monetization, or require us to change our data collection and privacy practices, business models, operations, practices, advertising activities, or application content, which could restrict our ability to maintain our platform through these systems, hardware and networks and would adversely impact our business.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, 34% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Apple App Store and 18% of our revenue was attributable to Robux sales through the Google Play Store, and during the same period 68% of our engagement hours on the platform were from users who signed up through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Because of the significant use of our platform on mobile devices, our application must remain interoperable with these and other popular mobile app stores and platforms, and related hardware. Further, we are subject to the standard policies and terms of service of these operating systems, as well as policies and terms of service of the various application stores that make our application and experiences available to our developers, creators, and users. These policies and terms of service govern the availability, promotion, distribution, content, and operation generally of applications and experiences on such operating systems and stores. As a result, we may not successfully cultivate relationships with key industry participants or develop products that operate effectively with these technologies, systems, networks, regulations, or standards. If it becomes more difficult for our users to access and engage with our platform on their mobile devices, if our users choose not to access or use our platform application on their mobile devices, or if our users choose to use mobile products that do not offer access to our platform, our business and user retention, growth, and engagement could be significantly harmed.

The owners and operators of these mobile application platforms, primarily Apple and Google, each have approval authority over our platform’s deployment on their systems and offer consumers products that compete with ours. Additionally, mobile devices are manufactured by a wide array of companies. Those companies have no obligation to test the interoperability of new mobile devices with our platform application and may produce new products that are incompatible with or not optimal for

 

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our platform. We have no control over these operating systems, application stores, or hardware, and any changes to these systems or hardware that degrade our platform’s functionality, or give preferential treatment to competitive products, could significantly harm our platform usage on mobile devices. An operating system provider or application store could also limit or discontinue our access to its operating system or store if it establishes more favorable relationships with one or more of our competitors, launches a competing product itself, or it otherwise determines that it is in its business interests to do so. Our competitors that control the operating systems and related hardware our application runs on could make interoperability of our platform with those mobile operating systems more difficult or display their competitive offerings more prominently than ours. Additionally, our competitors that control the standards for the application stores for their operating systems could make our platform application, or certain features of our platform, inaccessible for a potentially significant period of time. We plan to continue to introduce new technologies on our platform regularly and have experienced that it takes time to optimize such technologies to function with these operating systems, hardware, and standards, impacting the popularity of our new technologies and features, and we expect this trend to continue.

Moreover, our platform requires high-bandwidth data capabilities. If the costs of data usage increase or access to cellular networks is limited, our user retention, growth, and engagement may be significantly harmed. Additionally, to deliver high-quality video and other content over mobile cellular networks, our platform must work well with a range of mobile technologies, systems, networks, regulations, and standards that we do not control. In particular, any future changes to the iOS or Android operating systems or application stores may impact the accessibility, speed, functionality, and other performance aspects of our platform, and result in issues in the future from time to time. In addition, the proposal or adoption of any laws, regulations, or initiatives that adversely affect the growth, popularity, or use of the internet, including laws governing internet neutrality, could decrease the demand for our platform and increase our cost of doing business.

For our experiences accessed through mobile platforms such as the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, we are required to share a portion of the proceeds from in-game sales with the platform providers. For operations through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, we are obligated to pay 30% of any money paid by users to purchase Robux to Apple and Google and this amount could be increased. These costs are expected to remain a significant operating expense for the foreseeable future. If the amount these platform providers charge increases, it could have a material impact on our ability to pay developers and our results of operations. The providers of an operating system or application store may also change its fee structure, add fees associated with access to and use of its operating system, alter how its customers are able to advertise on their operating system, change how the personal or other information of its users is made available to application developers on their operating system, limit the use of personal information for advertising purposes or restrict how end-users can share information on their operating system or across other platforms.

Restrictions on our ability to collect, process, and use data as desired could negatively impact our ability to leverage data about the experiences our developers create. This in turn could impact our resource planning and feature development planning for our platform. Similarly, at any time, these operating system providers or application stores can change their policies on how we operate on their operating system or in their application stores by, for example, applying content moderation for applications and advertising or imposing technical or code requirements. Actions by operating system providers or application stores such as the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store may affect the manner in which we collect, process and use data from end-user devices. Accordingly, future changes implemented by Apple or Google could adversely impact our revenue. In addition, these operating systems and application stores could change their business models and could, for example, increase application store fees, which could have an adverse impact on our business. There are currently

 

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litigation and governmental inquiries over the application store fees, and Apple or Google could modify their platform in response to litigation and inquiries in a manner that may harm us.

Each provider of these operating systems and stores has broad discretion to change and interpret its terms of service and policies with respect to our platform and those changes may be unfavorable to us and our developers’, creators’, and users’ use of our platform. If we were to violate, or an operating system provider or application store believes that we have violated, its terms of service or policies, that operating system provider or application store could limit or discontinue our access to its operating system or store. In some cases these requirements may not be clear or our interpretation of the requirements may not align with the interpretation of the operating system provider or application store, which could lead to inconsistent enforcement of these terms of service or policies against us, and could also result in the operating system provider or application store limiting or discontinuing access to its operating system or store. Any limitation on or discontinuation of our access to any third-party platform or application store could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Because we recognize revenue from bookings over the estimated user lifetime of our paying users, changes in new business may not be immediately reflected in our operating results.

We generally recognize revenue from users ratably over the average lifetime of a paying user, which for the years ending December 31, 2018 and 2019 was 23 months. Therefore, much of the revenue we report in each quarter is the result of purchases of Robux during previous periods. Consequently, a decline in purchases of Robux in any one quarter will not be fully reflected in our revenue and operating results for that quarter. Any such decline, however, will negatively impact our revenue and operating results in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant near-term downturns in purchases of Robux for a variety of reasons may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods.

If our business becomes constrained by changing legal and regulatory requirements, our operating results will suffer.

Our future success will depend in part on market acceptance and widespread adoption across demographics and geographies of our platform over other interactive entertainment offerings. The widespread availability of content generated by our developers and creators on our platform is a newer development and the regulatory framework for broad dissemination of this content is new and evolving. We provide our developers and creators with the ability to publish their content throughout the world, and each country is developing regulations and policies to regulate this new space, including with respect to privacy, gambling, intellectual property, childhood protection, consumer protection, ratings, and taxes. If we are unable to allow developers and creators to comply with potentially conflicting regulations throughout the world, our ability to execute on our business model would be severely impacted, and our ability to grow our business could be harmed. Changes to these laws, regulations, standards, or obligations could require us to change our business model, take on more onerous obligations, and impact the functionality of our platform. If we are obligated to fundamentally change our business activities and practices or modify our platform, we may be unable to make these required changes and modifications in a commercially reasonable manner, or at all, and our ability to further develop and enhance our platform may be limited. The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, these laws, regulations, standards and obligations, or any inability to adequately address these, may limit the use of our platform or reduce overall demand for our platform, which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

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The success of our business model is contingent upon our ability to provide a safe online environment for children to experience and if we are not able to continue to provide a safe environment, our business will suffer dramatically.

Our platform hosts a number of experiences intended for audiences of varying ages, a significant percentage of which are designed to be experienced by children. As a user generated content platform, it is relatively easy for developers, creators, and users to upload content that can be viewed broadly. We have made significant efforts to provide a safe and enjoyable experience for users of all ages. We invest significant technical and human resources to prevent inappropriate content on the platform by reviewing all images, audio, video, and 3D models at the time of upload in order to block inappropriate content before users have a chance to encounter it on the platform. Notwithstanding our efforts, from time to time inappropriate content is successfully uploaded onto our platform and can be viewed by others prior to being identified and removed by us. This content could cause harm to our audience and to our reputation of providing a safe environment for children to play online. If we are unable to prevent, or are perceived as not being able to sufficiently prevent, all or substantially all inappropriate content from appearing on our platform, parents and children will lose their trust in the safety of our platform, which would harm our overall acceptance by these audiences and would likely result in significantly reduced revenue, bookings, profitability, and ultimately, our ability to continue to successfully operate our platform.

In addition to generally blocking inappropriate content, we have statutory obligations under U.S. federal law to block or remove child pornography and report offenses to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. While we have dedicated technology and trained human moderator staff that can detect and remove sexual content involving children, there have been instances where such content has been uploaded, and any future non-compliance by us or allegations of non-compliance by us with respect to U.S. federal laws on child pornography or the sexual exploitation of children could significantly harm our reputation, create criminal liability, and could be costly and time consuming to address or defend. We may also be subject to additional criminal liability related to child pornography or child sexual exploitation under other domestic and international laws and regulations.

Further, we have faced allegations that our platform has been used by criminal offenders to identify and communicate with children and to possibly entice them to interact off-platform, outside of the restrictions of our chat, content blockers, and other on-platform safety measures. While we devote considerable resources to prevent this from occurring, we are unable to prevent all such interactions from taking place. Any criminal incidents involving Roblox, whether or not we are directly responsible, could adversely affect our reputation as a safe place for children and hurt our business.

In addition, various local, national, and foreign laws and regulations apply to our operations, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, in the U.S. and Article 8 of the European Union’s, or EU’s, General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. COPPA imposes strict requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, 54% of our users were under the age of 13. COPPA requires companies to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children under the age of 13. Both the U.S. federal government and the states can enforce COPPA and violations of COPPA can lead to significant fines. No assurances can be given that our compliance efforts will be sufficient to avoid allegations of COPPA violations, and any non-compliance or allegations of non-compliance could expose us to significant liability, penalties and loss of revenue, significantly harm our reputation, and could be costly and time consuming to address or defend.

 

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Our reputation as a safe and civil environment for children is very important to our success and if we fail to protect users or we are perceived to be failing to protect users, our business will suffer and our results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

We have received and may continue to receive a high degree of media coverage. Unfavorable publicity regarding, for example, our privacy or data protection practices, terms of service, product changes, product quality, litigation or regulatory activity, the actions of our users, the actions of our developers or creators whose products are integrated with our platform, the use of our platform for illicit or objectionable ends (including the use of our platform to possibly entice children to interact off-platform), actual or perceived incidents or misuses of user data or other privacy or security incidents, the substance or enforcement of our community standards, the quality and integrity of content shared on our platform, or the actions of other companies that provide similar services to ours, has in the past, and could in the future, adversely affect our reputation. For example, we have experienced negative media publicity related to content that developers produce for, or the conduct of users on, our platform that may be deemed illicit, explicit, profane, or otherwise objectionable. Although such activities are in violation of our terms and policies and we attempt to block objectionable material, we are unable to prevent all such violations from occurring. In addition, we have faced allegations that our platform has been used by criminal offenders to identify and communicate with children and to possibly entice them to interact off-platform, outside of the restrictions of our chat, content blockers and other on-platform safety measures. While we devote considerable resources to prevent this from occurring, any negative publicity could create the perception that we do not provide a safe online environment and may have an adverse effect on the size, engagement, and loyalty of our developer, creator and user community, which would adversely affect our business and financial results.

Our business depends on a strong brand and if events occur that damage our reputation and brand, we may be unable to maintain and grow the number of developers, creators, and users on our platform.

We believe that maintaining, protecting and enhancing our reputation and brand is critical to grow the number of developers, creators, and users on our platform, especially given the safe and civil atmosphere that we strive to achieve for our users, many of whom are children. Maintaining, protecting and enhancing our brand will depend largely on our ability to continue to provide high-quality, engaging and shared experiences on our platform. If users, developers, or creators do not perceive our platform to be of high quality, the value of our brand could diminish, thereby decreasing the attractiveness of our platform to users.

Our reputation and brand could also be negatively affected by the actions of users that are hostile, inappropriate or illegal, whether on or off our platform. In addition, users, developers or creators may become dissatisfied with our billing or payment policies, our handling of personal data or other aspects of our platform. If we fail to adequately address these or other user, developer, or creator complaints, negative publicity about us or our platform could diminish confidence in and the use of our platform. Maintaining, protecting, and enhancing our reputation and brand may require us to make substantial investments, and these investments may not be successful. Our reputation and brand are also important to attracting and retaining highly qualified employees. If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our reputation and brand or if we incur significant expenses in this effort, our business and financial results may be adversely affected.

The lack of encryption for communications on our platform may increase the impact of a data security incident.

Communications on our platform are not encrypted at this time. As such, any data security incident that involves unauthorized access, acquisition, disclosure, or use may be more impactful to

 

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our business. We may experience greater incident response forensics, data recovery, legal fees, and costs of notification related to any such potential incident, and we may face an increased risk of reputational harm, regulatory enforcement, and consumer litigation, which could further harm our business, financial condition, results of operations, and future business opportunities.

We depend on our developers to create digital content that our users find compelling, and our business will suffer if we are unable to entertain our users, improve the experience of our users, or properly incentivize our developers and creators to develop content.

Our platform enables our developers to create experiences and virtual items, which we refer to as user generated content. Our platform relies on our developers to create experiences and virtual items on our platform for our users to acquire and/or use. Our users interact with these experiences, which are largely free to engage with. These users can also elect to purchase virtual items through our Avatar Marketplace and in experiences that enhance their enjoyment. We believe the interactions between and within the developer, creator, and user communities on our platform create a thriving and organic ecosystem, and this network effect drives our growth. To facilitate and incentivize the creation of the experiences and virtual items by developers, our platform offers developers an opportunity to earn Robux, a virtual currency on our platform, in connection with their development work on our platform. When virtual items are purchased on our platform, the originating developer or creator earns a portion of the Robux paid for the item. Developers are able to exchange their accumulated earned Robux for real-world currency under certain conditions outlined in our Developer Exchange Program. If we fail to provide a sufficient return to developers, they may elect to develop user-generated content on other platforms, which would result in a loss of revenue. If we do not provide the right technologies or financial incentives to our developers, they may develop fewer experiences or virtual items, and our users may elect to not participate in the experiences or purchase the virtual items, and, thus, our platform, revenue, and bookings could be adversely affected.

If we experience outages, constraints, disruptions or degradations in our services, platform support and/or technological infrastructure, our ability to provide sufficiently reliable services to our customers and maintain the performance of our platform could be negatively impacted, which could harm our relationships with our developers, creators, and users, and consequently, our business.

Our users expect fast, reliable, and resilient systems to enhance their experience and support their play as they quickly traverse between and within experiences and acquire virtual items for their avatars or to enhance their experiences, which depends on the continuing operation and availability of our information technology systems from our global network of data centers controlled and operated by us and those of our external service providers, including third-party “cloud” computing services. We also provide services to our developer and creator community through our platform, including, a developer and creator hub for tutorials, hosting, customer service, regulatory compliance, and translation, among many others. The experiences and technologies on our platform are complex software products and maintaining the sophisticated internal and external technological infrastructure required to reliably deliver these experiences and technologies are expensive and complex. The reliable delivery and stability of our platform has been, and could in the future be, adversely impacted by outages, disruptions, failures or degradations in our network and related infrastructure. For example, since our inception we have had approximately one outage each year when the platform is unavailable for all users, developers, and creators. Although these outages were typically associated with a move to a new technology, the temporary unavailability of our platform, particularly if it should become more frequent, could cause our users to seek other entertainment options, including those provided by our competitors. In addition, the reliability and stability of our platform has also been affected by events outside of our control, such as the migration of data among data centers and to third-party hosted environments, the demand on our platform exceeding the capabilities of our

 

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technological infrastructure, and issues relating to our reliance on third parties to host our platform in areas where we do not operate our own data centers or regional points of presence.

Our data centers are vulnerable to damage or interruption from a variety of sources, including earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, system failures, computer viruses, physical or electronic break-ins, human error or interference (including by disgruntled employees, former employees or consultants), and other catastrophic events. Our data centers may also be subject to local administrative actions, changes to legal or permitting requirements and litigation that could stop, limit or delay operations. Despite a reliability program focused on anticipating and solving issues that may impact the availability of our platform and precautions taken at our data centers, such as disaster recovery and business continuity arrangements, the occurrence of spikes in usage volume, the occurrence of a natural disaster, hacking event or act of terrorism, a decision to close the facilities without adequate notice or other unanticipated problems at our data centers could result in interruptions or delays on our platform, impede our ability to scale our operations or have other adverse impacts upon our business and adversely impact our ability to serve our developers, creators, and users.

Our developers or users may suffer a variety of outages or disruptions in accessing our platform for a variety of reasons, including issues with their technology providers. If we experience outages and our platform is unavailable or if our developers, creators, and users are unable to access our platform within a reasonable amount of time or at all, as a result of any such events, our reputation and brand may be harmed, developer, creator and user engagement with our platform may be reduced, and our revenue, bookings and profitability could be negatively impacted. We do not have full redundancy for all of our systems and our disaster recovery planning may not be sufficient to address all aspects of any unanticipated consequence or incident or allow us to maintain business continuity at profitable levels or at all. Further, in the event of damage or service interruption, our business interruption insurance policies will not adequately compensate us for any losses that we may incur. These factors in turn could further reduce our revenues, subject us to liability, or otherwise harm our business, financial condition, or results of operations.

Customer support personnel and technologies are critical to resolve issues and to allow developers, creators, and users to realize the full benefits that our platform provides. High-quality support is important for the retention of our existing developers, creators, and users and to encourage the expansion of their use of our platform. We must continue to invest in the infrastructure required to support our platform. If we do not help our developers, creators, and users quickly resolve issues and provide effective ongoing support, our ability to maintain and expand our platform to existing and new developers, creators, and users could suffer. In addition, if we do not make sufficient investments in servers, software or personnel in support of our infrastructure, to scale effectively and accommodate increased demands placed on our infrastructure, the reliability of our underlying infrastructure will be harmed and our ability to provide a quality experience for our developers, creators, and users will be significantly harmed. This would lead to a reduction in the number of developers, creators, and users on our platform, a reduction in our revenues, bookings, and ability to compete, and our reputation with existing or potential developers, creators or users could suffer.

Our future growth depends on our ability to continue innovating our platform to offer attractive features for our developers and safe and civil experiences for our developers, creators, and users.

We spend substantial amounts of time and money to research, develop, and enhance versions of our platform to incorporate additional features, improve functionality or other enhancements and prioritize user safety and security in order to meet the rapidly evolving demands of our developers, creators, and users. Maintaining adequate research and development resources, such as the

 

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appropriate personnel and development technology, to meet the demands of the market is essential. Developments and innovations on our platform may rely on new or evolving technologies which are still in development or may never be fully developed. If we fail to anticipate developers’ and creators’ needs, the quality of the content they create may not attract users to engage with our experiences and result in a decline of users on our platform. When we develop new or enhanced features for our platform, we typically incur expenses and expend resources upfront to develop, market, promote, and sell new features. Therefore, when we develop and introduce new or enhanced features, they must achieve high levels of developer, creator, and user acceptance in order to justify the investment in developing and bringing them to market. In the past, it has been difficult to remove features we have introduced that have not achieved acceptance, and as such, we still maintain them at some cost. Further, we have made and may in the future make changes to our platform or added features that our users, developers or creators do not like or find useful. Such changes and new features may be difficult to remove from the platform and expensive to maintain.

The Roblox Cloud may be relied upon in the future for increasingly complex decision-making as it integrates hardware, accelerated machine learning and artificial intelligence for a broad range of compute tasks, including control of non-player characters, improved personalization, synthetic content generation, and automation of the player experience. It is possible that at some point the Roblox Cloud may make decisions unpredictably or autonomously, which can raise new or exacerbate existing ethical, technological, legal, and other challenges, and may negatively affect the performance of the Roblox Platform and the user, developer, and creator experience.

New features or enhancements and changes to the existing features of our platform could fail to attain sufficient market acceptance for many reasons, including:

 

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failure to predict market demand accurately in terms of functionality and to supply features that meet this demand in a timely fashion;

 

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defects, errors, or failures;

 

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negative publicity about performance or effectiveness;

 

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delays in releasing new features or enhancements on our platform; and

 

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introduction or anticipated introduction of competing products by competitors.

The failure to obtain market acceptance will negatively affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and brand.

We have seen the growth rate of our users fluctuate and expect it to continue to change over time. If we fail to retain current users or add new users, or if our users decrease their level of engagement with our platform, revenue, bookings, and operating results will be harmed.

During the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we averaged 31.1 million daily active users, or DAUs. We view DAUs as a critical measure of our user engagement, and adding, maintaining, and engaging users has been and will continue to be necessary to our continued growth. Our DAU growth rate has fluctuated in the past and may slow in the future due to various factors, including the end of COVID-19 related shelter-in-place orders in some areas, as the number of users increase and we achieve higher market penetration rates, as we face continued competition for our users and their time from a variety of entertainment sources, or if there are performance issues with our platform. For example, while our DAUs have grown sequentially on a quarterly basis for the last several years, there have been months where they have not or have grown at a slower pace, often due to seasonal factors. Such seasonal factors may have recently been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and we expect that seasonality could again cause user activity to decrease, including below historical levels as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine on society and the global economy, become clearer. In addition, our strategy seeks to expand the age groups that make up our

 

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users, and if and when we achieve maximum market penetration rates among any particular user cohort overall and in particular geographic markets, future growth in DAUs will need to come from other age or geographic cohorts in other markets, which may be difficult, costly or time consuming for us to achieve. Accessibility to the internet and bandwidth or connectivity limitations as well as regulatory requirements, may also affect our ability to further expand our user base in a variety of geographies. If our DAU growth rate slows or becomes stagnant, or we have a decline in DAUs, our financial performance will increasingly depend on our ability to elevate user activity or increase the monetization of our users.

Our business plan assumes that the demand for interactive entertainment offerings, specifically, the adoption of a metaverse with users interacting together by playing, communicating, connecting, making friends, learning, or simply hanging out, all in 3D environments, will increase for the foreseeable future. However, if this market shrinks or grows more slowly than anticipated, if the metaverse does not gain widespread adoption as a forum for experiences, social interaction and creative expression for our users, or if demand for our platform does not grow as quickly as we anticipate, whether as a result of competition, product obsolescence, budgetary constraints of our developers, creators, and users, technological changes, unfavorable economic conditions, uncertain geopolitical environments or other factors, we may not be able to increase our revenue and bookings sufficiently to ever achieve profitability and our stock price would decline.

The multitude of other entertainment options, online gaming, and other interactive experiences is high, making it difficult to retain users who are dissatisfied with our platform and seek other entertainment options. Moreover, the majority of our users are under the age of 13. This demographic may be less brand loyal and more likely to follow trends, including viral trends, than other demographics. These and other factors may lead users to switch to another entertainment option rapidly, which can interfere with our ability to forecast usage or DAUs and would negatively affect our user retention, growth, and engagement. We also may not be able to penetrate other demographics in a meaningful manner to compensate for the loss of DAUs in this age group. Falling user retention, growth, or engagement rates could seriously harm our business.

The loss of David Baszucki, our Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer or one or more of our senior management team or key personnel, or our failure to attract new or replacement members of our senior management team or other key personnel in the future, could significantly harm our business.

We depend on the continued services and performance of our Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, David Baszucki, members of our senior management team and other key personnel. David Baszucki has been responsible for our strategic vision, and should he stop working for us for any reason, it is unlikely that we would be able to immediately find a suitable replacement. We do not maintain key man life insurance for David Baszucki, and do not believe any amount of key man insurance would allow us to recover from the harm to our business if David Baszucki were to leave the Company for any reason. Similarly, members of our senior management team and key employees are highly sought after and others may attempt to encourage these executives to leave the Company. The loss of one or more of the members of the senior management team or other key personnel for any reason could disrupt our operations, create uncertainty among investors, adversely impact employee retention and morale, and significantly harm our business.

An inability to attract and retain highly qualified employees, including as a result to restrictive changes to immigration laws or the varying application of immigration laws, may hamper our growth and cause our revenues or bookings to decline, adversely affecting our business.

To execute our growth plan, we must hire a very large number of employees over the next few years. In addition we need to retain our highly qualified employees. Competition for these recruits and

 

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employees is intense from other internet and high growth publicly-traded and private companies, especially with respect to engineers with high levels of experience in our industry, in particular in the San Francisco Bay Area where our headquarters are located.

We have, from time to time, experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with the appropriate level of qualifications. Many of the companies with which we compete for qualified employees have greater resources than we have and may offer compensation packages that are perceived to be better than ours. For example, we offer equity awards to a substantial majority of our job candidates and existing employees as part of their overall compensation package. If the perceived value of our equity awards declines, including as a result of volatility or declines in the market price of our Class A common stock or changes in perception about our future prospects, it may adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain highly qualified employees. Additionally, changes in our compensation structure may be negatively received by employees and result in attrition or cause difficulty in the recruiting process. If we fail to attract new employees or fail to retain and motivate our current employees, our business and future growth prospects could be adversely affected. Changes in immigration laws or varying applications of immigration laws to limit the availability of certain work visas or increase visa fees in the U.S. may impact our ability to hire the engineering and other talent that we need to continue to enhance our platform, which could have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. For example, the U.S. President’s Proclamation Suspending Entry of Aliens Who Present a Risk to the U.S. Labor Market Following the COVID-19 pandemic, which was issued in June 2020, may adversely affect our ability to hire or to retain highly qualified personnel who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents. It is difficult to predict the political and economic events that could affect immigration laws, or the restrictive impact they could have on obtaining or renewing work visas for our technology professionals.

Our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we could lose the innovative approach, creativity, and teamwork fostered by our culture and our business could be harmed.

We believe that a critical component of our success has been our culture. We have invested substantial time and resources in building out our team with an emphasis on shared values and a commitment to diversity and inclusion. As we continue to grow and develop the infrastructure associated with being a public company, we will need to expend significant efforts to maintain our culture among a larger number of employees dispersed in various geographic regions. Additionally, with our employees currently working remotely, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be more difficult to maintain or enhance our culture. Any failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our future success, including our ability to retain and recruit personnel and to effectively focus on and pursue our mission to build a human co-experience platform that supports shared experiences among billions of users.

If we are unable to successfully grow our user base, compete effectively with other platforms, and further monetize our platform, our business will suffer.

We have made, and are continuing to make, investments to enable our developers to design and build compelling content and deliver it to our users on our platform. Existing and prospective developers may not be successful in creating content that leads to and maintains user engagement (including maintaining the quality of experiences) or they may fail to expand the types of experiences that our developers can build for users, and other global entertainment companies, online content platforms, and social platforms may entice our users and potential users away from, or to spend less time with, our platform, each of which could adversely affect users’ interest in our platform and lead to a loss of revenue opportunities and harm our results of operations.

 

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Additionally, we may not succeed in further monetizing our platform and user base. As a result, our user growth, user engagement, financial performance and ability to grow revenue could be significantly harmed if:

 

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we fail to increase or maintain DAUs;

 

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our user growth outpaces our ability to monetize our users, including if our user growth occurs in markets that are not as profitable;

 

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we fail to establish an international base of our developers, creators, and users;

 

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we fail to increase or maintain the amount of time spent on our platform, the number of experiences that our users share and explore with friends, or the usage of our technology for our developers;

 

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we do not develop and establish the social features of our platform, allowing it to more broadly serve the entertainment, education, and business markets;

 

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we fail to increase penetration and engagement across all age demographics;

 

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developers do not create engaging or new experiences for users;

 

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users reduce their purchases of Robux on our platform; or

 

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the experiences on our platform do not maintain or gain popularity.

If we are able to continue to grow, we will need to manage our growth effectively, which could require expanding our internal IT systems, technological operations infrastructure, financial infrastructure, and operating and administrative systems and controls. In addition, we have expended in the past and may in the future expend significant resources to launch new features and changes on our platform that we are unable to monetize, which may significantly harm our business. Any future growth would add complexity to our organization and require effective coordination across our organization, and an inability to do so would adversely affect our business, financial conditions and results of operations.

We are increasingly introducing our users to offerings for Robux that are subscription-based. While we intend for these efforts to generate increased recurring revenues from our existing user base, they may cause users to decrease their purchases of Robux and decrease these users’ overall spend on our platform. Our ability to continue to attract and retain users of our paid subscription services will depend in part on our ability to consistently provide our subscribers with a quality experience. If our users do not perceive these offerings to be of value, or if we introduce new or adjust existing features or pricing in a manner that is not favorably received by them, we may not be able to attract and retain subscribers or be able to convince users to become subscribers of such additional service offerings, and we may not be able to increase the amount of recurring revenue from our user base. Subscribers may cancel their subscription to our service for many reasons, including a perception that they do not use the service sufficiently, the need to reduce household expenses, competitive services that provide a better value or experience or as a result of changes in pricing. If our efforts to attract and retain subscribers are not successful, our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely impacted.

We rely on a very small percentage of our total users for a significant majority of our revenue and bookings that we derive from our platform.

We generate substantially all of our revenue through the sales of our virtual currency, “Robux,” which players can use to purchase virtual items sold by our developer and creator community on the platform. Only a small portion of our users regularly purchase Robux through subscriptions and pay for

 

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experiences and virtual items compared to all users who use our platform in any period. We rely on our developers to develop engaging content where users elect to purchase digital items to enhance their enjoyment. If users fail to purchase digital items at rates similar to or greater than they have historically and if we fail to attract new paying users, or if our paying users fail to continue interacting with the platform and purchasing digital items as they increase in age, our revenue will suffer.

Our user metrics and other estimates are subject to inherent challenges in measurement, and real or perceived inaccuracies in those metrics may significantly harm and negatively affect our reputation and our business.

We regularly review metrics, including our DAUs, hours engaged, and average bookings per DAU, or ABPDAU, to evaluate growth trends, measure our performance, and make strategic decisions. These metrics are calculated using internal data gathered on an analytics platform that we developed and operate and have not been validated by an independent third party. Our metrics and estimates may also differ from estimates published by third parties or from similarly titled metrics of our competitors due to differences in methodology or the assumptions on which we rely. If our estimates are inaccurate, then investors will have less confidence in our company and our prospects, which could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline, our reputation and brand could be harmed.

While these metrics are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our platform is used and as a result, the metrics may overstate the number of DAUs, hours engaged, and ABPDAU. For example, there are users who have multiple accounts, fake user accounts, or fraudulent accounts created by bots to inflate user activity for a particular developer or creator on our platform, thus making the developer or creator’s experience or other content appear more popular than it really is. We strive to detect and minimize fraud and unauthorized access to our platform, and these practices are prohibited in our terms of service and we implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior. Some of our demographic data may be incomplete or inaccurate. For example, because users self-report their dates of birth, our age demographic data may differ from our users’ actual ages. If our users provide us with incorrect or incomplete information regarding their age or other attributes, then our estimates may prove inaccurate.

Errors or inaccuracies in our metrics or data could also result in incorrect business decisions and inefficiencies. For instance, if a significant understatement or overstatement of active users were to occur, we may expend resources to implement unnecessary business measures or fail to take required actions to attract a sufficient number of users to satisfy our growth strategies. If our developers do not perceive our user, geographic, or other demographic metrics to be accurate representations of our user base, or if we discover material inaccuracies in our user, geographic, or other demographic metrics, our reputation may be seriously harmed. Our developers, creators and partners may also be less willing to allocate their budgets or resources to our platform, which could seriously harm our business.

Some developers, creators, and users on our platform may make unauthorized, fraudulent, or illegal use of Robux and other digital goods on our platform, including through unauthorized third-party websites or “cheating” programs.

Robux and digital goods on our platform have no monetary value outside of our platform, but users have made and may in the future make unauthorized, fraudulent, or illegal sales and/or purchases of Robux and other digital goods on or off of our platform, including through unauthorized third-party websites in exchange for real-world currency. For example, some users have made fraudulent use of credit cards owned by others on our platform to purchase Robux and offer the

 

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purchased Robux for sale at a discount on a third-party website. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, total chargeback expense to us from this fraud was approximately 5% of bookings.

While we regularly monitor and screen usage of our platform with the aim of identifying and preventing these activities, and regularly monitor third-party websites for fraudulent Robux or digital goods offers as well as regularly send cease-and-desist letters to operators of these third-party websites, we are unable to control or stop all unauthorized, fraudulent, or illegal transactions in Robux or other digital goods that occurs on or off of our platform. Although we are not directly responsible for such unauthorized, fraudulent, and/or illegal activities conducted by these third parties, our user experience may be adversely affected, and users and/or developers may choose to leave our platform if these activities are pervasive. These activities may also result in negative publicity, disputes, or even legal claims, and measures we take in response may be expensive, time consuming, and disruptive to our operations.

In addition, unauthorized, fraudulent, and/or illegal purchases and/or sales of Robux or other digital goods on or off of our platform, including through third-party websites, bots, fake accounts, or “cheating” programs that enable users to exploit vulnerabilities in the experiences on our platform, could reduce our revenue and bookings by, among other things, decreasing revenue from authorized and legitimate transactions, increasing chargebacks from unauthorized credit card transactions, causing us to lose revenue and bookings from dissatisfied users who stop engaging with the experiences on our platform, or increasing costs we incur to develop technological measures to curtail unauthorized transactions.

Under our community rules for our platform, which developers, creators and users are obligated to comply with, we reserve the right to temporarily or permanently ban individuals for breaching our terms of use by violating applicable law or Roblox policies which include engaging in illegal activity on the platform. We have banned individuals as a result of unauthorized, fraudulent, or illegal use of Robux or other digital goods on our platform. We have also employed technological measures to help detect unauthorized Robux transactions and continue to develop additional methods and processes through which we can identify unauthorized transactions and block such transactions. However, there can be no assurance that our efforts to prevent or minimize these unauthorized, fraudulent, or illegal transactions will be successful.

Our business is highly competitive and subject to rapid changes. We face significant competition to attract and retain our users, developers, and creators that we anticipate will continue to intensify. Should we fail to attract and retain users, developers, and creators, our business and results of operations may suffer.

We compete for both users and developers and creators. We compete to attract and retain our users’ attention on the basis of our content and user experiences. We compete for users and their engagement hours with global technology leaders such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Tencent, global entertainment companies such as Comcast, Disney, and ViacomCBS, global gaming companies such as Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Valve, Unity, and Zynga, online content platforms including Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube, as well as social platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Snap.

We rely on developers to create the content that leads to and maintains user engagement (including maintaining the quality of experiences). We compete to attract and retain developers by providing developers the tools to easily build, publish, operate, and monetize content. We compete for developers and engineering talent with gaming platforms such as Epic Games, Unity, and Valve Corporation, which also give developers the ability to create or distribute interactive content.

 

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We do not have any agreements with our developers that require them to continue to use the Roblox Platform for any time period. Some of our developers have developed attractive businesses in developing content, including games, on our platform. In the future, if we are unable to continue to provide value to these developers and they have alternative methods to publish and commercialize their offerings, they may not continue to provide content to our platform. Should we fail to provide compelling advantages to continued use of our ecosystem to developers, they may elect to develop content on competing interactive entertainment platforms. If a significant number of our developers no longer provide content, we may experience an overall reduction in the quality of our experiences, which could adversely affect users’ interest in our platform and lead to a loss of revenue opportunities and harm our results of operations.

Many of our existing competitors have, and some of our potential competitors could have, substantial competitive advantages, such as:

 

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larger sales and marketing budgets and resources;

 

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broader and more established relationships with users, developers, and creators;

 

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greater resources to make acquisitions and enter into strategic partnerships;

 

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lower labor and research and development costs;

 

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larger and more mature intellectual property portfolios; and

 

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substantially greater financial, technical, and other resources.

We expect competition to continue to increase in the future. Conditions in our market could change rapidly and significantly as a result of technological advancements, the emergence of new entrants into the market, partnering or acquisitions by our competitors, continuing market consolidation, or changing developer, creator and user preferences, which can be difficult to predict or prepare for. Our competitors vary in size, and some may have substantially broader and more diverse offerings or may be able to adopt more lucrative payment policies or structures for developers. Failure to adequately identify and adapt to these competitive pricing pressures could negatively impact our business.

We focus our business on our developers, creators, and users, and acting in their interests in the long-term may conflict with the short-term expectations of analysts and investors.

A significant part of our business strategy and culture is to focus on long-term growth and developer, creator, and user experience over short-term financial results. We expect our expenses to continue to increase in the future as we broaden our developer, creator, and user community, as developers, creators, and users increase the amount and types of experiences and virtual items they make available on our platform and the content they consume, and as we develop and further enhance our platform, expand our technical infrastructure and data centers, and hire additional employees to support our expanding operations. As a result, in the near- and medium-term, we may continue to operate at a loss, or our near- and medium-term profitability may be lower than it would be if our strategy were to maximize near- and medium-term profitability. We expect to continue making significant expenditures to grow our platform and develop new features, integrations, capabilities, and enhancements to our platform for the benefit of our developers, creators, and users. Such expenditures may not result in improved business results or profitability over the long-term. If we are ultimately unable to achieve or improve profitability at the level or during the time frame anticipated by securities or industry analysts, investors and our stockholders, the trading price of our Class A common stock may decline.

 

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We rely on third-party distribution channels to facilitate Robux purchases by platform users. If we are unable to maintain a good relationship with such providers, if their terms and conditions change, or fail to process or ensure the safety of users’ payments, our business will suffer.

Purchases of Robux and other products (e.g., e-gift cards) on our platform are facilitated through third-party online distribution channels. We utilize these distribution channels, such as Amazon, Apple, Blackhawk, ePay, Google, Incomm, PayPal, Vantiv, and Xsolla, to receive cash proceeds from sales of our Robux through direct purchases on our platform. Any scheduled or unscheduled interruption in the ability of our users to transact with these distribution channels could adversely affect our payment collection and, in turn, our revenue and bookings.

Our business will suffer if we are unable to maintain a good relationship with these distribution channels or develop relationships with new and emerging channels, if their terms and conditions or fee structure changes to our detriment, if we violate, or if a channel believes that we have violated, their terms and conditions, or if any of these distribution channels loses market share or falls out of favor or is unavailable for a prolonged period of time. Any changes that affect our use of these distribution channels may decrease the visibility or availability of our platform, limit our distribution capabilities, prevent access to our platform, or result in the exclusion or limitation of our platform on those distribution channels.

We do not directly process purchases of Robux on our platform, and, thus, any information on those purchases (e.g., debit and credit card numbers and expiration dates, personal information, and billing addresses) is disclosed to the third-party online platform and service providers facilitating Robux purchases by users. We do not have control over the security measures of those providers, and their security measures may not be adequate. We could be exposed to litigation and possible liability if our users’ transaction information involving Robux purchases is compromised, which could harm our reputation and our ability to attract users and may materially adversely affect our business.

We also rely on the stability of such distribution channels and their payment transmissions to ensure the continued payment services provided to our users. If any of these providers fail to process or ensure the security of users’ payments for any reason, our reputation may be damaged and we may lose our paying users, and users may be discouraged from purchasing Robux in the future, which, in turn, would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and prospects.

In addition, from time to time, we encounter fraudulent use of payment methods, which could impact our results of operations and if not adequately controlled and managed could create negative consumer perceptions of our service. If we are unable to maintain our fraud and chargeback rate at acceptable levels, card networks may impose fines, our card approval rate may be impacted and we may be subject to additional card authentication requirements. The termination of our ability to process payments on any major payment method would significantly impair our ability to operate our business.

We may require additional capital to meet our financial obligations and support business growth, and this capital might not be available on acceptable terms or at all.

We intend to continue to make significant investments to support our business growth and may require additional funds to respond to business challenges, including the need for developers and creators to develop new experiences and virtual items, enhance our existing experiences, improve our operating infrastructure or acquire complementary businesses, personnel and technologies. Accordingly, we may need to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. If we raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges superior to those of our Class A common stock. Any debt financing that we

 

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secure in the future could involve offering additional security interests and undertaking restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support our business growth and to respond to business challenges could be significantly impaired, and our business, financial condition or results of operations may be harmed.

Our results of operations may be harmed if we are required to collect sales, value added, or other similar taxes for the purchase of our virtual currency.

Although we, either directly or through our third-party distribution channels, collect and remit taxes from users in certain countries and regions, there are some jurisdictions in which we operate where we do not currently collect taxes from users. One or more states or countries may seek to impose past, incremental or new sales, value added, or other tax collection obligations on us. A successful assertion by a state, country, or other jurisdiction that we should have been or should be collecting additional sales, value added, or other taxes could, among other things, result in substantial tax payments, create significant administrative burdens for us, discourage potential users, developers or creators from subscribing to our platform due to the incremental cost of any such sales or other similar taxes, or otherwise harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

If we are unable to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, the accuracy and timeliness of our financial reporting may be adversely affected.

As a public company, we will be subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the rules and regulations of the listing standards of the NYSE. We expect that the requirements of these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting, and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time-consuming, and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems, and resources. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. We are continuing to develop and refine our disclosure controls and other procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC, is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms and that information required to be disclosed in reports under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our principal executive and financial officers. We are also continuing to improve our internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting, we have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources, including accounting-related costs and significant management oversight.

Our current controls and any new controls that we develop may become inadequate because of changes in conditions in our business. Further, we have identified in the past, and may identify in the future, deficiencies in our controls. Any failure to develop or maintain effective controls or any difficulties encountered in their implementation or improvement could harm our results of operations or cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations and may result in a restatement of our financial statements for prior periods. Any failure to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting also could adversely affect the results of periodic management evaluations and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports. Ineffective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting could also cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial and other information, which could have a negative effect on the

 

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trading price of our Class A common stock. In addition, if we are unable to continue to meet these requirements, we may not be able to remain listed on the NYSE. We are not currently required to comply with the SEC rules that implement Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and are therefore not required to make a formal assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting for that purpose. As a public company, we will be required to provide an annual management report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting commencing with our second Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Our independent registered public accounting firm is not required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting until after we are no longer an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act. At such time, our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our internal control over financial reporting is documented, designed, or operating. Any failure to maintain effective disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting could have a material and adverse effect on our business and results of operations and could cause a decline in the price of our Class A common stock.

The popularity of our Lua scripting language for customization of and creation of virtual worlds and virtual goods and services is a key driver of content creation and engagement with our platform. If other programming languages or platforms become more popular with our developers, it may affect engagement with and content creation for our platform and our business may be harmed.

Roblox experiences are programmed using Lua scripting language on the Roblox Platform. In order to enhance the attractiveness of our platform to potential developers, we have made the Lua scripting language available without charge. The Lua scripting language permits developers on the Roblox Platform to develop customized add-on features for their own or others’ use, and we have trained our developers on how to write add-on programs using Lua scripting language. As part of this strategy, we have encouraged the development of an active community of Lua programmers similar to those which have emerged for other software platforms. The widespread use and popularity of our Lua scripting language is critical to creating engaging content on and demand for our platform. If developers do not find the Lua scripting language or our platform simple and attractive for developing content, or determine that our Lua scripting language or other features of our platform are undesirable or inferior to other scripting languages or platforms, or Lua scripting language becomes unavailable for use by the developers for any reason, they may shift their resources to developing content on other platforms and our business may be harmed.

We rely on Amazon Web Services for a portion of our cloud infrastructure in certain areas, and as a result any disruption of AWS would negatively affect our operations and significantly harm our business.

We rely on Amazon Web Services, or AWS, a third-party provider for a portion of our backend services, including for some of our high-speed databases, scalable object storage, and message queuing services. In addition, when additional compute resources are required, the Roblox Cloud can leverage Amazon EC2. For location-based support areas, we outsource certain aspects of the infrastructure relating to our cloud-native platform. As a result, our operations depend, in part, on AWS’ ability to protect their services against damage or interruption due to a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, natural disasters, power or telecommunications failures, criminal acts, capacity constraints and similar events. Our developers, creators, and users need to be able to access our platform at any time, without interruption or degradation of performance. Our platform depends, in part, on the virtual cloud infrastructure hosted in AWS. Although we have disaster recovery plans that utilize multiple AWS availability zones to support our requirements, any

 

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incident affecting their infrastructure that may be caused by fire, flood, severe storm, earthquake or other natural disasters, power loss, telecommunications failures, cyber-attacks, terrorist or other attacks, and other similar events beyond our control, could adversely affect our cloud-native platform. Any disruption of or interference with our use of AWS could impair our ability to deliver our platform reliably to our developers, creators, and users.

Additionally, threats or attacks from computer malware, ransomware, viruses, social engineering (including phishing attacks), denial of service or other attacks, employee theft or misuse and general hacking have occurred and are becoming more prevalent in our industry, particularly against cloud-native services and vendors of security solutions. If AWS were to experience any of these security incidents, it could result in unauthorized access to, damage to, disablement or encryption of, use or misuse of, disclosure of, modification of, destruction of, or loss of our data or our developers’, creators’, and users’ data or disrupt our ability to provide our platform or service. A prolonged AWS service disruption affecting our cloud-native platform for any of the foregoing reasons would adversely impact our ability to serve our users, developers, and creators and could damage our reputation with current and potential users, developers, and creators, expose us to liability, result in substantial costs for remediation, cause us to lose users, developers, and creators, or otherwise harm our business, financial condition, or results of operations. and users. We may also incur significant costs for using alternative hosting cloud infrastructure services or taking other actions in preparation for, or in reaction to, events that damage or interfere with the AWS services we use.

Our commercial agreement with AWS will remain in effect until November 2021. Neither party may terminate the commercial agreement for convenience during its term. In the event that our AWS service agreements are terminated, or there is a lapse of service, elimination of AWS services or features that we utilize, we could experience interruptions in access to our platform as well as significant delays and additional expense in arranging for or creating new facilities or re-architecting our platform for deployment on a different cloud infrastructure service provider, which would adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

If the security of our platform is compromised, it could compromise our and our developers’, creators’, and users’ proprietary information, disrupt our internal operations and harm public perception of our platform, which could cause our business and reputation to suffer.

We collect and store personal data and certain other sensitive and proprietary information in the operation of our business, including developer, creator and user information, and other confidential data. While we have implemented measures designed to prevent unauthorized access to or loss of our confidential data, mobile malware, viruses, hacking, social engineering, spam and phishing attacks have occurred and may occur on our systems in the future. Because of the popularity of our platform, we believe that we are an attractive target for these sorts of attacks.

Further, the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to, or to sabotage, systems or networks, are constantly evolving and generally are not recognized until launched against a target. Consequently, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques, react in a timely manner, or implement preventive measures, which could result in delays in our detection or remediation of, or other responses to, security breaches and other security-related incidents. The wide availability of open source software used in our solutions could also expose us to security vulnerabilities.

If any unauthorized access to our network, systems or data, including our sensitive and proprietary information, personal data from our users, developers or creators, or other data, or any other security breach occurs, or is believed to have occurred, whether as a result of third-party action, employee negligence, error or malfeasance, defects, social engineering techniques, or otherwise, our reputation, brand and competitive position could be damaged, our and our users’, developers’, and

 

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creators’ data and intellectual property could potentially be lost or compromised, and we could be required to spend capital and other resources to alleviate problems caused by such actual or perceived breaches and remediate our systems, we could be exposed to a risk of loss, litigation or regulatory action and possible liability, and our ability to operate our business may be impaired. In the past, we have experienced social engineering attacks, and if similar attacks occur and are successful, this could have a negative impact on our business or result in unfavorable publicity. Additionally, we contract with certain third parties to store and process certain data for us, including our distribution channels, and these third parties face similar risks of actual and potential security breaches, which could present similar risks to our business, reputation, financial condition, and results of operations.

The economic costs to us to reduce or alleviate cyber or other security problems such as spammers, errors, bugs, flaws, “cheating” programs, defects or corrupted data, could be significant and may be difficult to anticipate or measure. These issues may cause developers, creators, and users to use our platform less or stop using it altogether, and the costs could divert our attention and resources, any of which could result in claims, demands, and legal liability to us, regulatory investigations and other proceedings, and otherwise harm our business, reputation, financial condition or results of operations. There could also be regulatory fines imposed for certain data breaches that take place around the world. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, also allows for a private right of action for certain data breaches that relate to a specified set of personal information.

Although we maintain cyber, privacy, and network security liability insurance, subject to applicable deductibles and policy limits, such coverage may not extend to all types of privacy and cybersecurity incidents, and it may be insufficient to cover all costs and expenses associated with such incidents.

Operating as a public company will require us to incur substantial costs and will require substantial management attention.

As a public company, we will incur substantial legal, accounting, and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company. For example, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the rules and regulations of the SEC, and the listing standards of the NYSE. The Exchange Act requires, among other things, we file annual, quarterly, and current reports with respect to our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Compliance with these rules and regulations will increase our legal and financial compliance costs, and increase demand on our systems, particularly after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” In addition, as a public company, we may be subject to stockholder activism, which can lead to additional substantial costs, distract management, and impact the manner in which we operate our business in ways we cannot currently anticipate. As a result of disclosure of information in this prospectus and in filings required of a public company, our business and financial condition will become more visible, which may result in threatened or actual litigation, including by competitors.

This management team, as a group, has no experience managing a publicly traded company, and certain members joined us more recently. As such, our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage our transition to being a public company subject to significant regulatory oversight and reporting obligations under the federal securities laws and the continuous scrutiny of securities analysts and investors. These new obligations and constituents will require significant attention from our senior management and could divert their attention away from the day-to-day management of our business, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

 

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We anticipate that our ongoing efforts related to privacy, data protection, safety, security, and content review will identify additional instances of misuse of user data or other undesirable activity by third parties on our platform.

In addition to our efforts to mitigate cybersecurity risks, we have made and are continuing to make investments in privacy, data protection, safety, security, and content review efforts to combat misuse of our services and user data by third parties, including investigations of individuals we have determined to have attempted to access user data without authorization. Our internal teams also continually monitor and address any unauthorized attempts to access data stored on servers that we own or control or data available to our third-party customer service providers. As a result of these efforts we have discovered and announced, and anticipate that we will continue to discover and announce, additional incidents of misuse of or unauthorized access of user data or other undesirable activity by third parties. We have taken steps to protect the data that we have access to, but despite these efforts, our security measures or those of our third-party service providers could be insufficient or breached as a result of third-party action, malfeasance, employee errors, service provider errors, technological limitations, defects or vulnerabilities in our platform or otherwise. Additionally, with our employees and third-party service providers who have access to some of our user data currently working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are exposed to increased risks of security breaches or incidents. We may not discover all such incidents or activity or be able to respond to or otherwise address them, promptly or at all. Such incidents and activities have in the past, and may in the future, include the use of user data or our systems in a manner inconsistent with our terms, contracts or policies, the existence of false or undesirable user accounts, theft of in-game currency or virtual items in valid user accounts, and activities that threaten people’s safety on- or offline. We may also be unsuccessful in our efforts to enforce our policies or otherwise remediate any such incidents. Any of the foregoing developments, whether actual or perceived, may negatively affect user trust and engagement, harm our reputation and brands, require us to change our business practices in a manner adverse to our business, and adversely affect our business and financial results. Any such developments may also subject us to future litigation and regulatory inquiries, investigations, and proceedings, including from data protection authorities in countries where we offer services and/or have users, which could subject us to monetary penalties and damages, divert management’s time and attention, and lead to enhanced regulatory oversight.

The expansion of our platform outside the United States exposes us to risks inherent in international operations.

We operate our platform throughout the world and are subject to risks and challenges associated with international business. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we had users in over 180 countries and developers in over 170 countries. During this period, approximately 67% of our DAUs and 32% of our bookings were derived from outside the U.S. and Canada region. We intend to continue to expand internationally, and this expansion is a critical element of our future business strategy. While we have a number of developers, creators, and users outside of the U.S., we have limited offices located outside of the U.S. and Canada, and there is no guarantee that our international efforts will be successful. The risks and challenges associated expanding our international presence, having developers, creators, and users outside the U.S. and those that can affect international operations generally and negatively impact our business and results of operations, include:

 

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greater difficulty in enforcing contracts and managing collections in countries where our recourse may be more limited, as well as longer collection periods;

 

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higher costs of doing business internationally, including costs incurred in complying with local regulations related to privacy, data protection, content monitoring, preclusion, and removal, and online entertainment offerings, particularly as these rules apply to interactions with children, and establishing and maintaining office space for our international operations;

 

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double taxation of our international earnings and potentially adverse tax consequences due to changes in the tax laws of the U.S. or the foreign jurisdictions in which we operate;

 

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expenses related to monitoring and complying with differing labor regulations, especially in jurisdictions where labor laws may be more favorable to employees than in the U.S.;

 

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challenges inherent to efficiently recruiting and retaining talented and capable employees in foreign countries and maintaining our company culture and employee programs across all of our offices;

 

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management communication and integration problems resulting from language or cultural differences and geographic dispersion;

 

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the uncertainty of protection for intellectual property rights in some countries;

 

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increased exposure to fluctuations in exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies in markets where we do business;

 

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foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned outside the U.S.;

 

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risks associated with trade restrictions and foreign legal requirements, and greater risk of unexpected changes in regulatory requirements, tariffs and tax laws, trade laws, and export and other trade restrictions;

 

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risks relating to the implementation of exchange controls, including restrictions promulgated by the Office of Foreign Asset Control, and other similar trade protection regulations and measures;

 

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exposure to regional or global public health issues, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and to travel restrictions and other measures undertaken by governments in response to such issues;

 

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general economic and political conditions in these foreign markets, including political and economic instability in some countries;

 

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localization of our services, including translation into foreign languages and associated expenses;

 

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the ability to monitor our platform in new and evolving markets and in different languages to confirm that we maintain standards consistent with our brand and reputation;

 

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compliance with multiple, ambiguous, or evolving governmental laws and regulations, including those relating to employment, tax, content regulation, privacy, data protection, anti-corruption, import/export, customs, anti-boycott, sanctions and embargoes, antitrust, data transfer, storage and protection, content monitoring, preclusion, and removal, and industry-specific laws and regulations;

 

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regulatory frameworks or business practices favoring local competitors;

 

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changes in the public perception of our platform by governments in the regions where we operate or plan to operate;

 

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uncertainty regarding the imposition of and changes in the U.S.’ and other governments’ trade regulations, trade wars, tariffs, other restrictions or other geopolitical events, and without limitation, including the evolving relations between the U.S. and China;

 

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uncertainty regarding regulation, currency, tax, and operations resulting from the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU, or Brexit, on January 31, 2020 and possible disruptions in trade, the sale of our services and commerce, and movement of our people between the United Kingdom, EU, and other locations;

 

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natural disasters, acts of war, and terrorism, and resulting changes to laws and regulations, including changes oriented to protecting local businesses;

 

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difficulties in hiring highly qualified employees internationally and managing foreign operations; and

 

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regional economic and political conditions.

These and other factors could harm our ability to generate revenue and bookings outside of the U.S. and, consequently, adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. We may not be able to expand our business and attract users in international markets and doing so will require considerable management attention and resources. International expansion is subject to the particular challenges of supporting a business in an environment of multiple languages, cultures, customs, legal systems, alternative dispute systems, regulatory systems and commercial infrastructures. We may not be able to offer our platform in certain countries, and expanding our international focus may subject us to risks that we have not faced before or increase risks that we currently face.

We may not realize the benefits expected through our China joint venture and the joint venture could have adverse effects on our business.

In February 2019, we entered into a joint venture agreement with Songhua River Investment Limited, referred to as Songhua, an affiliate of Tencent Holdings Ltd., or Tencent Holdings, a leading internet company in China and one of the world’s largest gaming companies. Under the joint venture agreement, we created Roblox China Holding Corp., referred to as the China JV, of which we own a 51% ownership interest. Through a wholly-owned subsidiary based in Shenzhen named Roblox (Shenzhen) Digital Science and Technology Co., Ltd and branded “Luobu,” the China JV is engaged in the development, localization and licensing to creators of a Chinese version of the Roblox Studio and also develops and oversees relations with local Chinese developers. Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems Co. Ltd, or Tencent, currently intends to publish and operate a localized version of the Roblox Platform as a game in China under the name “Luobulesi.” In December 2020, Tencent received a required publishing license from the National Press and Publication Administration of the Chinese government. The license was issued following a review of the content of Luobulesi to confirm that such content is not in contravention with the requirements of Chinese law. Luobu’s focus is on creating opportunities for local Chinese developers to learn Roblox Studio for building and publishing experiences and content.

Because our continued business operations in China are part of our current and future user growth plans, further adverse changes in the economic and political policies relating to China could have a material adverse effect on our business. An escalation of recent trade tensions between the U.S. and China has resulted in trade restrictions that could harm our ability to participate in Chinese markets and numerous additional such restrictions have been threatened by both countries. The U.S. government, for example, has recently barred or threatened to bar U.S. companies from doing business with certain Chinese technology companies. The Chinese government has, in turn, threatened to restrict the investment or trade privileges of companies that stop doing business with Chinese companies as a result of this or other similar rules. We may find it impossible to comply with these or other conflicting regulations in the U.S. and China, which could make it difficult or impossible to achieve our business objectives in China or realize a return on our investment in this market. Sustained uncertainty about, or worsening of, current global economic conditions and further escalation of trade tensions between the U.S. and its trading partners, especially China, could result in a global economic slowdown and long-term changes to global trade, including retaliatory trade restrictions that could further restrict our ability to operate in China.

 

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The Chinese economic, legal, and political landscape also differs from other countries in many respects, including the level of government involvement and regulation, control of foreign exchange and allocation of resources and uncertainty regarding the enforceability and scope of protection for intellectual property rights. The laws, regulations and legal requirements in China are also subject to frequent changes and the exact obligations under and enforcement of laws and regulations are often subject to unpublished internal government interpretations and policies which makes it challenging to ascertain compliance with such laws. For example, the publishing license granted to Tencent in December 2020 could be withdrawn, which could significantly impair or eliminate the ability to publish and operate Luobulesi in China. Any actions and policies adopted by the Chinese government, particularly with regard to intellectual property rights and internet restrictions for non-Chinese businesses, or any prolonged slowdown in China’s economy, could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

The relationship between China and the U.S. is subject to periodic tension. Relations may also be compromised if the U.S. pressures the Chinese government regarding its monetary, economic, or social policies. Changes in political conditions in China and changes in the state of China-U.S. relations are difficult to predict and could adversely affect the operations or financial condition of the China JV. In addition, because of our proposed involvement in the Chinese market, any deterioration in political or trade relations might cause a public perception in the U.S. or elsewhere that might cause our products to become less attractive. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. has continued to apply a more stringent review of certain foreign investment in U.S. companies, including investment by Chinese entities, and has made inquiries to us with respect to Tencent Holding’s equity investment in us and involvement in the China JV. We cannot predict what effect any further inquiry by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. into our relationship with Tencent and Tencent Holdings or changes in China-U.S. relations overall may have on our ability to effectively support the China JV or on the operations or success of the China JV.

In addition to market and regulatory factors, any future success of the China JV will require a collaborative effort with Tencent to build and operate Luobu and Luobulesi as together, they will form the exclusive basis for growing our penetration in the China market. In addition, upon the occurrence of certain events, such as a termination of certain of the contractual relationships applicable to Luobu, a change of control of us, or the acquisition of 20% of our outstanding securities by certain specified Chinese industry participants, we may be required to purchase Songhua’s interest in the China JV at a fair market value determined at the time of such purchase. Any future requirement to purchase the interest in China JV from Songhua may have a material adverse effect upon our liquidity, financial condition, and results of operations both as a result of the purchase of such interests and the fact that we would need to identify and partner with an alternative Chinese partner in order for operations to continue in the China market.

Our results of operations, which are reported in U.S. dollars, could be adversely affected if currency exchange rates fluctuate substantially in the future.

As we continue to expand our international operations, we become more exposed to the effects of fluctuations in currency exchange rates. We generally collect revenue from our international markets in the local currency. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we had users in over 180 countries and approximately 67% of our DAUs and 32% of our bookings were derived from outside the U.S. and Canada region. While we periodically adjust the price of Robux to account for the relative value of this local currency to the U.S. dollar these adjustments are not immediate nor do they typically exactly track the underlying currency fluctuations. As a result, rapid appreciation of the U.S. dollar against these foreign currencies can harm our reported results and cause the revenue derived from our foreign users to decrease. In addition, even if we do adjust the cost of our Robux in foreign markets to track appreciation in the U.S. dollar, such appreciation could increase the costs of purchasing Robux to our users outside of the U.S., adversely affecting our business, results of operations and financial condition.

 

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We also incur expenses for employee compensation and other operating expenses at our non-U.S. locations in the local currency. Fluctuations in the exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and other currencies could result in the dollar equivalent of our expenses being higher which may not be offset by additional revenue earned in the local currency. This could have a negative impact on our reported results of operations. To date, we have not engaged in any hedging strategies and any such strategies, such as forward contracts, options and foreign exchange swaps related to transaction exposures that we may implement in the future to mitigate this risk may not eliminate our exposure to foreign exchange fluctuations. Moreover, the use of hedging instruments may introduce additional risks if we are unable to structure effective hedges with such instruments.

We plan to continue to make acquisitions and investments in other companies, which could require significant management attention, disrupt our business, dilute our stockholders, and significantly harm our business.

As part of our business strategy, we have made and intend to make acquisitions to add specialized employees and complementary companies, features, and technologies. For example, in 2020 we acquired Ceebr Limited, a company that operated a platform that teaches children age 6-13 to design, program, and play their own games and LoomAi Inc., a company that specializes in real-time facial animation technology for 3D avatars. Our ability to acquire and successfully integrate larger or more complex companies, features, and technologies is unproven. In the future, we may not be able to find other suitable acquisition or investment candidates, and we may not be able to complete acquisitions or investments on favorable terms, if at all. The pursuit of potential acquisitions may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur significant expenses related to identifying, investigating and pursuing suitable acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated. Our previous and future acquisitions may not achieve our goals, and any future acquisitions we complete could be viewed negatively by users, developers, creators, partners, or investors. In addition, if we fail to successfully close transactions or integrate new teams into our corporate culture, or integrate the features and technologies associated with these acquisitions, our business could be significantly harmed. Any integration process may require significant time and resources, and we may not be able to manage the process successfully. We may not successfully evaluate or use the acquired products, technology, and personnel, or accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition, including accounting charges which could be recognized as a current period expense. We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits of synergies from the acquired business, may encounter challenges with incorporating the acquired features and technologies into our platform while maintaining quality and security standards consistent with our brand, or may fail to identify security vulnerabilities in acquired technology prior to integration with our technology and platform. We may also incur unanticipated liabilities that we assume as a result of acquiring companies, including claims related to the acquired company, its offerings or technologies or potential violations of applicable law or industry rules and regulations arising from prior or ongoing acts or omissions by the acquired business that were not discovered during diligence. We will pay cash, incur debt, or issue equity securities to pay for any acquisitions, any of which could significantly harm our business. Selling equity to finance any such acquisition would also dilute our stockholders. Incurring debt would increase our fixed obligations and could also include covenants or other restrictions that would impede our ability to manage our operations.

In addition, it generally takes several months after the closing of an acquisition to finalize the purchase price allocation. Therefore, it is possible that our valuation of an acquisition may change and result in unanticipated write-offs or charges, impairment of our goodwill, or a material change to the fair value of the assets and liabilities associated with a particular acquisition, any of which could significantly harm our business.

 

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Our acquisition strategy may not succeed if we are unable to remain attractive to target companies or expeditiously close transactions. If we develop a reputation for being a difficult acquirer or having an unfavorable work environment, or target companies view our Class A common stock unfavorably, we may be unable to consummate key acquisition transactions essential to our corporate strategy and our business may be significantly harmed.

Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited, each of which could significantly harm our business.

As of December 31, 2019, we had federal and state net operating loss carryforwards of $162.0 million and $54.3 million, respectively. If not utilized, these will begin to expire in 2024 and 2027, respectively. Utilization of our net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes, such as research and development tax credits, may be subject to annual limitations, or could be subject to other limitations on utilization or benefit due to the ownership change limitations provided by Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, and other similar provisions. Further, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or the Tax Act, as modified by the Coronavirus Aid Relief, and Economic Security Act, or the CARES Act, changed the federal rules governing net operating loss carryforwards. Of the $162.0 million of our federal net operating loss, $88.8 million is carried forward indefinitely but is limited to 80% of taxable income. Further, carryback of net operating losses is generally prohibited for tax years beginning after December 1, 2020. Our net operating loss carryforwards may also be subject to limitations under state law. For example, California recently enacted legislation suspending the use of net operating loss carryforwards for taxable years 2020, 2021, and 2022 for many taxpayers. Net operating loss carryforwards generated before January 1, 2018 will not be subject to the Tax Act’s taxable income limitation and will continue to have a twenty-year carryforward period. If our net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes expire before utilization or are subject to limitations, our business and financial results could be harmed.

Changes in existing financial accounting standards or practices may harm our results of operations.

Changes in existing accounting rules or practices, new accounting pronouncements rules, or varying interpretations of current accounting pronouncements practice could harm our results of operations or the manner in which we conduct our business. Further, such changes could potentially affect our reporting of transactions completed before such changes are effective. GAAP is subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, the SEC and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported financial results, and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement of a change. In particular, in February 2016, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Codification, or ASC, 842, which supersedes the lease accounting guidance in ASC 840, Leases. The core principle of ASC 842 requires lessees to apply a dual approach, classifying leases as either finance or operating leases based on the principle of whether or not the lease is effectively a financed purchase by the lessee. This classification will determine whether lease expense is recognized based on an effective interest method or on a straight-line basis over the term of the lease. A lessee is also required to record a right-of-use asset and a lease liability for all leases with a term of greater than 12 months regardless of their classification. As an “emerging growth company,” we are allowed under the JOBS Act to delay adoption of new or revised accounting pronouncements applicable to public companies until such pronouncements are made applicable to private companies. We have elected to take advantage of this extended transition period under the JOBS Act with respect to ASC 842, which will result in ASC 842 becoming effective for us beginning on January 1, 2022 unless we choose to adopt it earlier. Any difficulties in implementing these pronouncements could cause us to fail to meet our financial reporting obligations, which could result in regulatory discipline and harm investors’ confidence in us.

 

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We are evaluating the impact of the adoption of ASC 842 and currently believe the most significant impact upon adoption will be the recognition of material right-of-use assets and lease liabilities on our consolidated balance sheets associated with operating leases. We do not believe this standard will have a material impact on our consolidated statements of operations.

Our credit agreement provides our lender with a first-priority lien against substantially all of our assets and contains restrictive covenants which could limit our operational flexibility and otherwise adversely affect our financial condition.

Our credit agreement allows us to borrow up to $50.0 million. As of September 30, 2020, we have not borrowed any amounts under this agreement. In the event we borrow amounts under our credit agreement, we will become subject to a number of covenants that may limit our ability to, among other things, transfer or dispose of assets, pay dividends or make distributions, incur additional indebtedness, create liens, make investments, loans and acquisitions, engage in transactions with affiliates, merge or consolidate with other companies, and sell substantially all of our assets. Our credit agreement is secured by substantially all of our assets. The terms of our credit agreement may restrict our current and future operations and could adversely affect our ability to finance our future operations or capital needs, execute preferred business strategies, make it more difficult for us to successfully execute our business strategy, and compete against companies who are not subject to such restrictions. Additionally, any obligations to repay principal and interest on our indebtedness make us vulnerable to economic or market downturns.

Our failure to comply with the covenants or payment requirements, or other events specified in our credit agreement, could result in an event of default and our lender may accelerate our obligations under our credit agreement and foreclose upon the collateral, or we may be forced to sell assets, restructure our indebtedness, or seek additional equity capital, which would dilute our stockholders’ interests. Our failure to comply with any covenant could result in an event of default under the agreement and the lender could make the entire debt immediately due and payable. If this occurs, we might not be able to repay our debt or borrow sufficient funds to refinance it. Even if new financing is available, it may not be on terms that are acceptable to us. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our business, financial condition, or results of operations.

Our estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies may be based on assumptions that change or prove to be incorrect, which could cause our results of operations to fall below expectations of securities analysts and investors, resulting in a decline in the market price of our common stock.

The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in our financial statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, as described in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” The results of these estimates form the basis for making judgments about the recognition and measurement of certain assets and liabilities and revenue and expenses that is not readily apparent from other sources. Our accounting policies that involve judgment include those related to revenue recognition, assumptions used for estimating the fair value of common stock to calculate stock-based compensation, capitalization of internal-use software costs, valuation of goodwill and intangible assets, certain accrued liabilities, and valuation allowances associated with income taxes. If our assumptions change or if actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, our results of operations could be adversely affected, which could cause our results of operations to fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors, resulting in a decline in the market price of our common stock.

 

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Any legal proceedings or claims against us could be costly and time-consuming to defend and could harm our reputation regardless of the outcome.

We are and/or may in the future become subject to legal proceedings and claims that arise in the ordinary course of business, including intellectual property, data privacy, product liability, employment, class action, whistleblower and other litigation claims, and governmental and other regulatory investigations and proceedings. Such matters can be time-consuming, divert management’s attention and resources, cause us to incur significant expenses or liability, or require us to change our business practices. In addition, the expense of litigation and the timing of this expense from period to period are difficult to estimate, subject to change, and could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations. Because of the potential risks, expenses, and uncertainties of litigation, we may, from time to time, settle disputes, even where we have meritorious claims or defenses, by agreeing to settlement agreements. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Catastrophic events may disrupt our business.

Natural disasters or other catastrophic events may cause damage or disruption to our operations, international commerce, and the global economy, and thus could harm our business. We have our headquarters and a large employee presence in San Mateo, California, an area which in recent years has been increasingly susceptible to fires and power outages, either of which could disrupt our operations, and which contains active earthquake zones. In the event of a major earthquake, hurricane, or catastrophic event such as fire, power loss, rolling blackouts, telecommunications failure, pandemic, cyber-attack, war, or terrorist attack, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, delays in our platform development, lengthy interruptions in our platform, breaches of security, and loss of critical data, all of which would harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Acts of terrorism and similar events would also cause disruptions to the internet or the economy as a whole. In addition, the insurance we maintain would likely not be adequate to cover our losses resulting from disasters or other business interruptions. Our disaster recovery plan may not be sufficient to address all aspects of any unanticipated consequence or incident, we may not be able to maintain business continuity at profitable levels or at all, and our insurance may not be sufficient to compensate us for the losses that could occur.

If we are determined to be an “investment company,” it will significantly affect our operational flexibility and our operating results.

If the SEC determines that we are required to register as an “investment company” it would result in the imposition of additional corporate governance and operational requirements through the application of the federal Investment Company Act of 1940. Any such burdens could be material. Among the particular repercussions for us as an “investment company” under the Investment Company Act of 1940, could be a short or long-term affect to liquidity and an increase our cost of capital and operational expenses, all of which would adversely affect our operating results. It is possible that such an outcome could threaten the viability of our business.

Risks Related to Government Regulations

We are subject to various governmental export control, trade sanctions, and import laws and regulations that require our compliance and may subject us to liability if we violate these controls.

We are subject to laws and regulations that could limit our ability to offer access or full access to our platform and experiences to certain persons and in certain countries or territories. For example,

 

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certain U.S. laws and regulations administered and enforced by U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, referred to as OFAC, may limit our ability to give users, developers, and creators access to certain aspects of our platform and experiences, or collectively with other applicable export control and economic sanctions laws and regulations, the Trade Control Laws and Regulations. Trade Control Laws and Regulations are complex and dynamic, and monitoring and ensuring compliance can be challenging. In addition, we rely on our payment processors for compliance with certain of these Trade Control Laws and Regulations, including the fact that our payment processors will not allow any paid activity by users, developers, and creators that attempt to access our platform from various jurisdictions specified by OFAC such as the Crimea region, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Users, developers, and creators from certain of these countries and territories have access to our platform and experiences and there can be no guarantee we will be found to have been in full compliance with Trade Control Laws and Regulations during all relevant periods. Any failure by us or our payment processors to comply with the Trade Control Laws and Regulations may lead to violations of the Trade Control Laws and Regulations that could expose us to liability. Any failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations also could have negative consequences for us, including reputational harm, government investigations, and monetary penalties.

In addition, various foreign governments may also impose controls, export license requirements, and/or restrictions. Compliance with such applicable regulatory requirements may create delays in the introduction of our platform in some international markets or prevent our international users from accessing our platform.

Governmental agencies may restrict access to platforms, our website, mobile applications or the internet generally, which could lead to the loss or slower growth of our user base.

Governmental agencies in any of the countries in which we, our users, developers, or creators are located could block access to or require a license for our platform, our website, operating system platforms, application stores or the internet generally for a number of reasons, including security, privacy, data protection, confidentiality, or regulatory concerns which may include, among other things, governmental restrictions on certain content in a particular country and a requirement that user information be stored on servers in a country within which we operate. For example, the publishing license granted to Tencent in December 2020 from the National Press and Publication Administration of the Chinese government could be withdrawn, which could significantly impair or eliminate the ability to publish and operate Luobulesi in China. Governmental agencies could issue fines or penalties if there are instances where we are found not to have been in compliance with regulations in any of these areas. Users generally need to access the internet, including in geographically diverse areas, and also mobile platforms such as the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, to engage with experiences on our platform. If governmental or other entities block, limit or otherwise restrict developers, creators, and users from accessing our platform, or users from engaging with experiences on our platform, our business could be negatively impacted, we could be subject to additional fines and penalties, our developers, creators, and users could decline or grow more slowly, and our results of operations could be adversely affected.

Because we store, process, and use data, some of which contains personal information, we are subject to complex and evolving federal, state, and international laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection, security, content, and other matters. Many of these laws and regulations are subject to change and uncertain interpretation, and could result in investigations, claims, changes to our business practices, increased cost of operations, and declines in user growth, retention, or engagement, any of which could significantly harm our business.

We are subject to a variety of laws and regulations in the U.S. and other countries that involve matters central to our business, including user privacy, data protection, security, rights of publicity, content, intellectual property, distribution, electronic contracts and other communications, competition, protection of minors, consumer protection, taxation, and online-payment services.

 

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The regulatory framework for privacy, data protection, and data transfers worldwide is rapidly evolving and is likely to remain uncertain for the foreseeable future.

Certain laws and regulations, such as the GDPR, which went into effect in May 2018, has placed and will continue to place significant data protection obligations and restrictions on organizations such as ours and may require us to continue to change our policies and procedures. The GDPR imposed more stringent data protection requirements and provides greater penalties for noncompliance than previous data protection laws, including potential penalties of up to €20 million or 4% of annual global revenues. If we are found not to be compliant with GDPR requirements, we may be subject to significant fines, the risk of civil litigation, and reputational damage, and our business may be seriously harmed.

Recently, the European Court of Justice struck down the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework, which provided companies with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the EU to the U.S. To the extent that any of our service providers, or consultants have been relying on the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, they cannot do so in the future, which could increase our costs and may limit our ability to process personal data from the EU. The same decision also cast doubt on the ability to use one of the primary alternatives to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework, namely, the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, to lawfully transfer personal data from Europe to the U.S. and most other countries. At present, there are few, if any, viable alternatives to the Privacy Shield Frameworks and the Standard Contractual Clauses for the foregoing purposes.

Following a referendum in June 2016 in which voters in the United Kingdom approved an exit from the EU, the United Kingdom government has initiated a process to leave the EU, known as Brexit. Brexit has created uncertainty with regard to the regulation of data protection in the United Kingdom. In particular, while the Data Protection Act of 2018, which implements and complements the GDPR achieved Royal Assent on May 23, 2018 and is now effective in the United Kingdom, it is still unclear whether transfer of data from the European Economic Area to the United Kingdom will remain lawful under the GDPR. During the period of “transition” (i.e., until December 31, 2020), EU law will continue to apply in the United Kingdom, including the GDPR, after which it is expected that the Data Protection Act will substantially convert the requirements of the GDPR into United Kingdom law. However, we cannot fully predict how the Data Protection Act and other United Kingdom data protection laws or regulations may develop in the medium to longer term, affecting how data transfers to and from the United Kingdom will be regulated. We continue to monitor and review the impact of any resulting changes to EU or United Kingdom law that could affect our operations. Beginning in 2021, the United Kingdom will be a “third country” under the GDPR. We may incur liabilities, expenses, costs, and other operational losses under the GDPR and laws and regulations of applicable EU Member States and the United Kingdom relating to privacy and data protection in connection with any measures we take to comply with them.

Law no. 13.709/2018 of Brazil, the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais, or LGPD, entered into effect on September 18, 2020, authorizing a private right of action for violations. Administrative enforcement is anticipated to begin August 1, 2021, and may include fines of up to 2% of the organization’s annual global revenue or 50M reais (approximately $9.3 million U.S. dollars). The LGPD applies to businesses (both inside and outside Brazil) that process the personal data of users who are located in Brazil. The LGPD provides users with the similar rights as the GDPR regarding their data. A Brazilian Data Protection Authority, Brazilian National Data Protection Authority (Autoridade Nacional de Proteção de Dados, or ANPD) has been established to provide forthcoming rules and guidance on how to interpret and implement the LGPD’s requirements, including regarding notice of processing, data transfer requirements, and other compliance obligations, such as security measures, recordkeeping, training, and governance. Pending such developments from the ANPD and any

 

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emerging caselaw, the Company’s LGPD approach may be subject to further change, our compliance measures when implemented may not be fully adequate, we may expend significant time and cost in developing a privacy governance program and data transfer mechanisms to comply with the LGPD and any implementing regulations or guidance, and we may potentially face litigation prior to the implementation of regulations and guidance regarding the LGPD or before we have had a reasonable opportunity to fully implement measures designed to comply with such regulations and guidance.

In addition, the CCPA, went into effect in January 2020 and established a new privacy framework for covered businesses such as ours, requiring us to modify our data processing practices and policies and incur compliance related costs and expenses. The CCPA also provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for data breaches, which may increase the likelihood and cost of data breach litigation. If a ballot initiative to amend the CCPA passes in the upcoming California general election, the CCPA may be revised to place more restrictions on companies’ use of user data and potentially increase regulatory enforcement, and it remains unclear how various provisions of the CCPA will be interpreted and enforced. Additionally, a new privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act, or CPRA, recently was certified by the California Secretary of State to appear on the ballot for the November 3, 2020 election. If this initiative is approved by California voters, the CPRA would significantly modify the CCPA, potentially resulting in further uncertainty and requiring us to incur additional costs and expenses in an effort to comply. The enactment of the CCPA is prompting similar legislative developments in other states in the U.S., which could create the potential for a patchwork of overlapping but different state laws. Some countries also are considering or have passed legislation requiring local storage and processing of data, or similar requirements, which could increase the cost and complexity of operating our products and services and other aspects of our business. The potential effects of this legislation are far-reaching and may require us to modify data processing practices and policies, incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply, or restrict our operations.

We take reasonable efforts to comply with all applicable laws, policies, legal obligations and certain industry codes of conduct relating to privacy and data protection, and security. However, it is possible that the obligations imposed on us by applicable data privacy laws and regulations may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other rules or our practices in other jurisdictions. Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with our privacy policies, our privacy-related obligations to users or other third parties, or our other policies or obligations relating to privacy, data protection, or security, or any actual or perceived compromise of security, including any such compromise that results in the unauthorized release or transfer of personally identifiable information or other user, developer or creator data, may result in governmental investigations and enforcement actions, litigation, claims or public statements against us by consumer advocacy groups or others and could cause our developers, creators, and users to lose trust in us, any or all of which could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.

United States or international rules that permit ISPs to limit internet data consumption by users, including unreasonable discrimination in the provision of broadband internet access services, could harm our business.

In January 2018, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, released an order that repealed the “open internet rules,” often known as “net neutrality,” which prohibit mobile providers in the U.S. from impeding access to most content, or otherwise unfairly discriminating against content providers like us and also prohibit mobile providers from entering into arrangements with specific content providers for faster or better access over their data networks. The FCC order repealing the open internet rules went into effect in June 2018. In response to this decision California and a number of states implemented their own net neutrality rules which largely mirrored the repealed federal regulations. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit to bar implementation of these state laws

 

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and their application remains uncertain. We cannot predict the outcome of this litigation or whether the FCC order or state initiatives regulating providers will be modified, overturned, or vacated by other legal action, federal legislation, or the FCC, or the degree to which this repeal would adversely affect our business, if at all. Similarly, the EU requires equal access to internet content, but as part of its Digital Single Market initiative, the EU may impose network security, and disability access, which could increase our costs. If the FCC’s repeal of the open internet rules is maintained, state initiatives are modified, overturned, or vacated, or the EU modifies its open internet rules, mobile and internet providers may be able to limit our users’ ability to access our platform or make our platform a less attractive alternative to our competitors’ applications. Were that to happen, our ability to retain existing users or attract new users may be impaired, or costs could increase, and our business would be significantly harmed.

We are subject to laws and regulations worldwide, many of which are unsettled and still developing which could increase our costs or adversely affect our business.

We are subject to a variety of laws in the U.S. and abroad that affect our business. As a global platform with users in over 180 countries, we are subject to a myriad of regulations and laws regarding consumer protection, including the use of gift cards, advertising, electronic marketing, protection of minors, data protection and privacy, data localization requirements, online services, data protection, anti-competition, freedom of speech, labor, real estate, taxation, intellectual property ownership and infringement, tax, export and national security, tariffs, anti-corruption and telecommunications, all of which are continuously evolving and developing. The scope and interpretation of the laws that are or may be applicable to us are often uncertain and may be conflicting, particularly laws outside the U.S., and compliance with laws, regulations and similar requirements may be burdensome and expensive. Laws and regulations may be inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, which may increase the cost of compliance and doing business and expose us to possible litigation, penalties or fines. Any such costs, which may rise in the future as a result of changes in these laws and regulations or in their interpretation, could make our platform less attractive to our users, developers or creators or cause us to change or limit our ability to sell our platform. We have policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, but we cannot assure you that we will not experience violations of such laws and regulations or our policies and procedures.

We are potentially subject to a number of foreign and domestic laws and regulations that affect the offering of certain types of content, such as that which depicts violence, many of which are ambiguous, still evolving and could be interpreted in ways that could harm our business or expose us to liability. Foreign governments, may censor our platform in their countries, restrict access to our platform from their countries entirely, impose other restrictions that may affect their citizens’ ability to access our platform for an extended period of time or even indefinitely, require data localization, or impose other laws or regulations that we cannot comply with, would be difficult for us to comply with, or would require us to rebuild our platform or the infrastructure for our platform. Numerous countries, including Germany, have regulations relating to this area and they may impose significant fines for failure to comply with certain content removal and disclosure obligations. Other countries, including Singapore, India, Turkey, Mexico, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have implemented or are considering similar legislation imposing penalties for failure to remove certain types of content. On the other hand, some users, developers, and creators may choose not to use our platform if we actively police content.

In addition, there are ongoing academic, political, and regulatory discussions in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and other jurisdictions regarding whether certain mechanisms that may be included in the experiences on our platform, such as features commonly referred to as “loot boxes,” and certain genres of experiences, such as social casino, that may reward gambling, should be subject to a higher level or different type of regulation than other genres of experiences to protect consumers, in particular

 

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minors and persons susceptible to addiction, and, if so, what such regulation should include. New regulation by the U.S. federal government and its agencies, such as the FTC, state agencies or foreign jurisdictions, which may vary significantly, could require that certain content in the experiences on our platform be modified or removed, increase the costs of operating or monitoring the experiences on our platform, impact user engagement and thus the functionality and effectiveness of our platform or otherwise harm our business performance. It is difficult to predict how existing or new laws may be applied. If we become liable, directly or indirectly, under these laws or regulations, we could be harmed, and we may be forced to implement new measures to reduce our exposure to this liability. This may require us to expend substantial resources or to modify our platform, which would harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. In addition, the increased attention focused upon liability issues as a result of lawsuits and legislative proposals could harm our reputation or otherwise impact the growth of our business. Any costs incurred as a result of this potential liability could harm our business, financial condition, or results of operations.

It is also possible that a number of laws and regulations may be adopted or construed to apply to us or our users or our developers in the U.S. and elsewhere that could restrict the online and mobile industries, including developer, creator and user privacy, data protection, advertising, user acquisition practices, taxation, content suitability, copyright, distribution and antitrust, and our platform, experiences or components thereof may be deemed or perceived illegal or unfair practices. Furthermore, the growth and development of electronic commerce and virtual items may prompt calls for more stringent consumer protection laws that may impose additional burdens on companies such as us and developers, creators, and users conducting business through the internet and mobile devices. We anticipate that scrutiny and regulation of our industry will increase and we will be required to devote legal and other resources to addressing such regulation. For example, existing laws or new laws regarding the marketing of in-app purchases, labeling of our free experiences or regulation of currency, banking institutions, unclaimed property, or money transmission may be interpreted to cover experiences made with our technologies and the revenue and bookings that we receive from our platform. If that were to occur, we may be required to maintain certain records and seek licenses, authorizations or approvals from relevant regulators, the granting of which may be dependent on us meeting certain capital and other requirements and we may be subject to additional regulation and oversight and other operational requirements, all of which could significantly increase our operating costs. Changes in current laws or regulations or the imposition of new laws and regulations in the U.S. or elsewhere, or any withdrawal by us from certain countries because of such actions, would adversely affect our DAUs, including by giving our competitors an opportunity to penetrate geographic markets that we cannot access. As a result, our user growth, retention, and engagement may be significantly harmed.

Legal and regulatory restrictions on virtual currencies like Robux may adversely affect our platform, experiences, and virtual items on our platform, which may negatively impact our revenue, bookings, business, and reputation.

Users can purchase and use Robux to enrich their experience in various ways on our platform. For example, Robux are often used to purchase virtual clothes for users’ avatars. The regulations that apply to virtual currencies in the jurisdictions in which we operate are subject to change. It is possible that regulators in the U.S. or elsewhere may take regulatory actions in the future that restrict our ability to make Robux, allow users to acquire or use other digital goods available on our platform, or that prohibit developers or creators on our platform from earning Robux. We also make e-gift cards available for sale internationally that may be used to redeem Robux, and regulators may impose restrictions or bans on the sale of such e-gift cards. Any such restrictions or prohibitions may adversely affect our platform, business, revenue, and bookings. In the United States, the SEC, its staff, and similar state regulators have deemed certain virtual currencies to be securities subject to regulation under the federal and state securities laws. While we do not consider Robux to be a security, if Robux

 

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were subject to the federal or state securities laws of the U.S., we may be required to redesign our platform considerably, in a manner that would be disruptive to operations and costly to implement, which may threaten the viability of the platform. We may also be subject to enforcement or other regulatory actions by federal or state regulators, as well as private litigation, which could be costly to resolve.

The increased use of interactive entertainment offerings like ours by consumers, including younger consumers, may prompt calls for more stringent consumer protection laws and regulations that may impose additional burdens on companies such as ours making virtual currencies like Robux available for sale. Any such changes would require us to devote legal and other resources to address such regulation. For example, some existing laws regarding the regulation of currency, money transmitters and other financial institutions, and unclaimed property have been interpreted to cover virtual currencies, like Robux.

Although we have structured Robux, as well as our sales of other digital goods and e-gift cards on our platform, with applicable laws and regulations in mind, including applicable laws relating to money laundering and money transmission services, and believe we are in compliance with all applicable laws, it is possible that a relevant regulator may disagree, which could expose us to penalties. If a relevant regulator disagreed with our analysis of and compliance with applicable laws, we may be required to seek licenses, authorizations, or approvals from those regulators, which may be dependent on us meeting certain capital and other requirements and may subject us to additional regulation and oversight, all of which could significantly increase our operating costs.

Changes in current laws or regulations or the imposition of new laws and regulations in the U.S. or elsewhere that prohibit us from making Robux available on our platform would require us to make significant changes to our platform, which would materially impair our business, financial condition, and operating results.

We are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and similar anti-corruption, anti-bribery, and anti-money laundering, and non-compliance with such laws can subject us to criminal or civil liability and harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, U.S. domestic bribery laws, the UK Bribery Act and other anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws in the countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws have been enforced aggressively in recent years and are interpreted broadly to generally prohibit companies, their employees, agents, representatives, business partners and third-party intermediaries from authorizing, offering or providing, directly or indirectly, improper payments or benefits to recipients in the public or private sector in order to influence official action, direct business to any person, gain any improper advantage, or obtain or retain business. As we increase our international business, our risks under these laws may increase.

As we increase our international business, we may engage with business partners and third-party intermediaries to market our solutions and obtain necessary permits, licenses and other regulatory approvals. In addition, we or our employees, agents, representatives, business partners or third-party intermediaries may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities. We can be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of our employees, agents, representatives, business partners or third-party intermediaries, even if we do not authorize such activities.

These laws also require that we keep accurate books and records and maintain internal controls and compliance procedures designed to prevent any such actions. While we have policies, training and procedures to address compliance with such laws, we cannot assure you that none of our employees,

 

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agents, representatives, business partners or third-party intermediaries will take actions in violation of our policies and applicable law, for which we may be ultimately held responsible.

Detecting, investigating, and resolving actual or alleged violations of anti-corruption laws can require a significant diversion of time, resources, and attention from senior management, as well as significant defense costs and other professional fees. In addition, noncompliance with anti-corruption, anti-bribery, or anti-money laundering laws could subject us to whistleblower complaints, investigations, sanctions, settlements, prosecution, enforcement actions, fines, damages, other civil or criminal penalties or injunctions against us, our officers, or our employees, disgorgement of profits, suspension or debarment from contracting with the U.S. government or other persons, reputational harm, adverse media coverage, and other collateral consequences. If any subpoenas or investigations are launched, or governmental or other sanctions are imposed, or if we do not prevail in any possible civil or criminal proceeding, our reputation, business, financial condition, prospects and results of operations and the price of our Class A common stock could be harmed.

We may incur liability as a result of content published using our platform or as a result of claims related to content generated by our developers, creators, and users, including copyright infringement, and legislation regulating content on our platform may require us to change our platform or business practices.

Our success relies in part on the ability of developers and creators to drive engagement with content that is challenging, engaging, fun, interesting, and novel. Developers and creators are responsible for clearing the rights to all of the content they upload to our service, but some developers or creators may upload content that infringes the rights of third parties in violation of our terms of service. We rely upon legal protections in various jurisdictions to protect us from claims of monetary damages for content that is uploaded to and stored on our system at the direction of our users but those protections may change or disappear over time, increasing our exposure for claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement. If we should lose or fail to qualify for statutory or other legal protections that immunize us from monetary damages for intellectual property infringement, the damages could be significant and have a material impact on our business. While we have implemented measures to limit our exposure to claims of intellectual property infringement, intellectual property owners may allege that we failed to take appropriate measures, to prevent infringing activities on our systems, that we turned a blind eye to infringement, or that we facilitated, induced or contributed to infringement.

Even though we are not required to monitor uploaded content for copyright infringement in the U.S., we have chosen to do so through the services of a third-party audio monitoring service. We now monitor all uploaded sound recordings to exclude recordings owned or controlled by the major record labels. These record labels register certain of their content with our service provider. When audio is uploaded to our platform, we check the service provider’s system to exclude recordings owned or controlled by these record labels from being published on our platform. If our monitoring proves ineffective or we cease to rely upon a third-party monitoring service to exclude certain content from our platform, our risk of liability may increase. Certain record companies and music publishers, either directly or through their authorized representatives, also maintain that we are subject to liability for infringing content that was previously uploaded to our platform and have stated that they may seek damages for such infringement. We vigorously dispute the claims of infringement but could be subject to an adverse judgment in any litigation if a lawsuit were filed against us or be forced to settle any claims for an as-yet undetermined amounts. Depending on how such claims are resolved, the impact on us could be material.

The EU enacted a law that came into effect on June 6, 2019 that will require us to use best efforts in accordance with the high industry standards of professional diligence to exclude infringing content from our platform that may be uploaded by our users. Member states of the EU have until June 6, 2021

 

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to pass legislation to implement the law in their respective countries. To comply with this new law, we will likely have to devote significant time and resources to develop technologies to prevent infringing content from being uploaded to our platform and, to the extent infringing content makes it onto our platform, to expeditiously remove such content and implement measures to prevent re-uploads of such content. Although the EU law does not mandate monitoring, there may be no practical way for us to comply with the law’s stringent new requirements without adopting some form of robust content identification systems.

We may also be required to enter into license agreements with various licensors, including record labels, music publishers, performing rights organizations, and collective management organizations, to obtain licenses that authorize the storage and use of content uploaded by our users. We may not be able to develop technological solutions to comply with these laws on economically reasonable terms and there is no guarantee that we will be able to enter into agreements with all relevant rights holders on terms that we deem reasonable. Compliance may therefore negatively impact our financial prospects.

Risks Related to Intellectual Property

Claims by others that we infringe their proprietary technology or other rights, the activities of our users or the content of the experiences on our platform could subject us to liability and harm our business.

We have been and may in the future become subject to intellectual property disputes, and may become subject to liability, costs, and awards of damages and/or injunctive relief as a result of these disputes. Our success depends, in part, on our ability to develop and commercialize our platform without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual property rights of third parties. However, there is no assurance that our technologies or platform will not be found to infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate the intellectual property rights of third parties. We also have agreements with third parties to manufacture and distribute merchandise based on user content on our platform, and there is a possibility that such content could be found to be infringing. Lawsuits are time-consuming and expensive to resolve and they divert management’s time and attention. Further, because of the substantial amount of discovery required in connection with intellectual property litigation, we risk compromising our confidential information during this type of litigation. Companies in the internet, technology, and gaming industries own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks, domain names, and trade secrets and frequently enter into litigation based on allegations of infringement, misappropriation, or other violations of intellectual property or other rights. As we face increasing competition and gain a higher profile, the possibility of intellectual property rights and other claims against us grows. Our technologies may not be able to withstand any third-party claims against their use. In addition, many companies have the capability to dedicate substantially greater resources to enforce their intellectual property rights and to defend claims that may be brought against them.

We have a number of issued patents. We have also filed a number of additional U.S. and foreign patent applications but these applications may not successfully result in issued patents. Any patent litigation against us may involve patent holding companies or other adverse patent owners that have no relevant product revenue, and therefore, our patents and patent applications may provide little or no deterrence as we would not be able to reach meaningful damages if we assert them against such entities or individuals. If a third party is able to obtain an injunction preventing us from accessing such third-party intellectual property rights, or if we cannot license or develop alternative technology for any infringing aspect of our business, we would be forced to limit or cease access to our platform or cease business activities related to such intellectual property. In addition, we may need to settle litigation and disputes on terms that are unfavorable to us. We may be required to make substantial payments for legal fees, settlement fees, damages, royalties, or other fees in connection with a claimant securing a

 

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judgment against us. Although we carry general liability insurance, our insurance may not cover potential claims of this type or may not be adequate to cover all liability that may be imposed. We cannot predict the outcome of lawsuits and cannot ensure that the results of any such actions will not have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations. Any intellectual property claim asserted against us, or for which we are required to provide indemnification, may require us to do one or more of the following:

 

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cease selling or using or recall products that incorporate the intellectual property rights that we allegedly infringe, misappropriate, or violate;

 

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make substantial payments for legal fees, settlement payments, or other costs or damages;

 

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obtain a license, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all, to sell or use the relevant technology; or

 

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redesign or rebrand the allegedly infringing products to avoid infringement, misappropriation, or violation, which could be costly, time-consuming, or impossible.

Furthermore, certain federal statutes in the U.S. may apply to us with respect to various activities of our users, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the DMCA, which provides immunity from monetary damages for online service providers such as us for, among other things, infringing content uploaded to our platform by our users provided we comply with certain statutory requirements, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, or the CDA, which addresses blocking and screening of content on the internet and provides immunity to platforms that censor communications that they deem to be inappropriate. For example, we filter communications to eliminate speech we determine to be offensive based on our objective of creating a civil and safe place for all users. President Trump recently issued an executive order directing the FCC to redefine Section 230 of the CDA in such a way as to remove certain social media companies from its protection. If Section 230 of the CDA were so amended or repealed, we could potentially be subject to liability if we continue to censor speech, even if that speech were offensive to our users.

While we rely on a variety of statutory and common-law frameworks and defenses, including those provided by the DMCA, the CDA, the fair-use doctrine in the U.S. and the E-Commerce Directive in the EU, differences between statutes, limitations on immunity, requirements to maintain immunity, and moderation efforts in the many jurisdictions in which we operate may affect our ability to rely on these frameworks and defenses, or create uncertainty regarding liability for information or content uploaded by developers, creators, or users or otherwise contributed by third parties to our platform. As an example, Article 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market was passed in the EU, which affords copyright owners some enforcement rights that may conflict with U.S. safe harbor protections afforded to us under the DMCA. Member states in the EU are in the process of determining how Article 17 will be implemented in their particular country. In addition, the EU is also reportedly reviewing the regulation of digital services, and it has been reported that the EU plans to introduce the Digital Services Act, a package of legislation intended to update the liability and safety rules for digital platforms, products, and services, which could negatively impact the scope of the limited immunity provided to us by the E-Commerce Directive. In countries in Asia and Latin America, generally there are not similar statutes to the CDA or E-Commerce Directive. The laws of countries in Asia and Latin America generally provide for direct liability if a platform is involved in creating such content or has actual knowledge of the content without taking action to take it down. Further, laws in some Asian countries also provide for primary or secondary liability, which can include criminal liability, if a platform failed to take sufficient steps to prevent such content from being uploaded. Although these and other similar legal provisions provide limited protections from liability for platforms like ours, if we are found not to be protected by the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA, CDA or other similar laws, or if we are deemed subject to laws in other countries that may not have the same protections or that may impose more onerous obligations on us, including Article 17, we may owe substantial damages and our brand, reputation, and financial results may be harmed.

 

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Even if the claims do not result in litigation or are resolved in our favor, these claims, and the time and resources necessary to resolve them, could divert the resources of our management and harm our business and operating results. Moreover, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our Class A common stock. We expect that the occurrence of infringement claims is likely to grow as the market for our platform grows. Accordingly, our exposure to damages resulting from infringement claims could increase, and this could further exhaust our financial and management resources.

Indemnity provisions in various agreements potentially expose us to substantial liability for intellectual property infringement and other losses.

Our agreements with third parties generally include indemnification provisions under which we agree to indemnify these third parties for losses suffered or incurred as a result of claims of intellectual property infringement, or other liabilities relating to or arising from our software, services, platform or other contractual obligations. Large indemnity payments could harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Although we normally contractually limit our liability with respect to such indemnity obligations, those limitations may not be fully enforceable in all situations, and we may still incur substantial liability under those agreements. Any dispute with a third-party with respect to such obligations could have adverse effects on our relationship with such party and harm our business and results of operations.

Failure to protect or enforce our intellectual property rights or the costs involved in such enforcement would harm our business.

Our success depends to a significant degree on our ability to obtain, maintain, protect, and enforce our intellectual property rights, including our proprietary software technology, know-how, and our brand. We rely on a combination of trademarks, trade secret laws, patents, copyrights, service marks, contractual restrictions, and other intellectual property laws and confidentiality procedures to establish and protect our proprietary rights. However, the steps we take to obtain, maintain, protect, and enforce our intellectual property rights may be inadequate. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property rights if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property rights. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, or fail to continuously innovate and advance our technology, our competitors could gain access to our proprietary technology and develop and commercialize substantially identical products, services or technologies. In addition, defending our intellectual property rights might entail significant expense and may not ultimately be successful.

Further, any patents, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights that we have or may obtain may be challenged or circumvented by others or invalidated or held unenforceable through administrative processes, including re-examination, inter partes review, interference and derivation proceedings and equivalent proceedings in foreign jurisdictions, such as opposition proceedings, or litigation. In addition, despite our pending patent applications, we cannot assure you that our patent applications will result in issued patents. Even if we continue to seek patent protection in the future, we may be unable to obtain or maintain patent protection for our technology. In addition, any patents issued from pending or future patent applications or licensed to us in the future may not provide us with competitive advantages, or may be successfully challenged by third parties. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability, and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy our platform and use information that we regard as proprietary to create products that compete with ours. Patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret protection may not be available to us in every country in which our products are available. The value of our intellectual property could diminish if others assert

 

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rights in or ownership of our trademarks and other intellectual property rights, or trademarks that are similar to our trademarks. We may be unable to successfully resolve these types of conflicts to our satisfaction. In some cases, litigation or other actions may be necessary to protect or enforce our trademarks and other intellectual property rights. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the U.S., and mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be inadequate. As we expand our global activities, our exposure to unauthorized copying and use of our platform and proprietary information will likely increase. Moreover, policing unauthorized use of our technologies, trade secrets, and intellectual property may be difficult, expensive and time-consuming. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may be unable to prevent third parties from infringing upon, misappropriating or otherwise violating our intellectual property rights.

We rely, in part, on trade secrets, proprietary know-how, and other confidential information to maintain our competitive position. While we enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with other third parties, including suppliers and other partners, we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that has or may have had access to our proprietary information, know-how and trade secrets or that has or may have developed intellectual property in connection with their engagement with us. Moreover, we cannot assure you that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to, distribution, use, misuse, misappropriation, reverse engineering, or disclosure of our proprietary information, know-how, and trade secrets. Further, these agreements may not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our platform. These agreements may be breached, and we may not be able to detect any such breach and may not have adequate remedies for any such breach even if we know about it.

We use open source software on our platform and in connection with certain experiences on our platform, which may pose particular intellectual property risks to and could have a negative impact on our business.

We have in the past and may in the future continue to use open source software in our codebase and our platform. Some open source software licenses require users who make available open source software as part of their proprietary software to publicly disclose all or part of the source code to such proprietary software or make available any derivative works of such software free of charge, under open source licensing terms. The terms of various open source licenses have not been interpreted by courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our use of the open source software. Enforcement activity for open source licenses can also be unpredictable. Were it determined that our use was not in compliance with a particular license, we may be required to release our proprietary source code, defend claims, pay damages for breach of contract or copyright infringement, grant licenses to our patents, re-engineer our games or products, discontinue distribution in the event re-engineering cannot be accomplished on a timely basis, or take other remedial action that may divert resources away from our game development efforts, any of which could negatively impact our business. Open source compliance problems can also result in damage to reputation and challenges in recruitment or retention of engineering personnel.

 

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Risks Related to Ownership of our Class A Common Stock

Our listing differs significantly from an underwritten initial public offering.

This is not an underwritten initial public offering of our Class A common stock. This listing of our Class A common stock on the NYSE differs from an underwritten initial public offering in several significant ways, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

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There are no underwriters. Consequently, prior to the opening of trading on the NYSE, there will be no book building process and no price at which underwriters initially sell shares to the public to help inform efficient and sufficient price discovery with respect to the opening trades on the NYSE. Therefore, buy and sell orders submitted prior to and at the opening of trading of our Class A common stock on the NYSE will not have the benefit of being informed by a published price range or a price at which the underwriters initially sell shares to the public, as would be the case in an underwritten initial public offering. Moreover, there will be no underwriters assuming risk in connection with the initial resale of shares of our Class A common stock. Unlike the case in a traditional underwritten offering, this registration statement does not provide for an over-allotment option of the underwriters to purchase additional shares from us. Moreover, we will not engage in, and have not and will not, directly or indirectly, request the financial advisors to engage in, any special selling efforts or stabilization or price support activities in connection with any sales made pursuant to this registration statement. In an underwritten initial public offering, the underwriters may engage in “covered” short sales in an amount of shares representing the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares. To close a covered short position, the underwriters purchase shares in the open market or exercise the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares. In determining the source of shares to close the covered short position, the underwriters typically consider, among other things, the price of shares available for purchase in the open market as compared to the price at which they may purchase shares through the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares. Purchases in the open market to cover short positions, as well as other purchases underwriters may undertake for their own accounts, may have the effect of preventing a decline in the trading price of shares. Given that there will be no underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares and no underwriters engaging in stabilizing transactions, there could be greater volatility in the public price of our Class A common stock during the period immediately following the listing. See the section titled “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Ownership of our Class A Common Stock—The public trading price of our Class A common stock may be volatile, and could, upon listing on the NYSE, decline significantly and rapidly” below.

 

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There is not a fixed or determined number of shares of our Class A common stock available for sale in connection with the registration and the listing. Therefore, there can be no assurance that any registered stockholders or other existing stockholders will sell any of their shares of our Class A common stock and there may initially be a lack of supply of, or demand for, shares of our Class A common stock on the NYSE. Alternatively, we may have a large number of registered stockholders or other existing stockholders who choose to sell their shares of our Class A common stock in the near term, resulting in potential excess supply of our Class A common stock, which could adversely impact the public price of our Class A common stock once listed on the NYSE and thereafter.

 

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None of our registered stockholders or other existing stockholders have entered into contractual lock-up agreements or other restrictions on transfer. In an underwritten initial public offering, it is customary for an issuer’s officers, directors, and most or all of its other stockholders to enter into a contractual lock-up arrangement with the underwriters to help promote orderly trading immediately after such initial public offering. Consequently, any of our stockholders, including our directors and officers who own our Class A common stock or Class B common stock and other significant stockholders, may sell any or all of their shares at

 

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any time (subject to any restrictions under applicable law, and in the case of shares of Class B common stock, upon conversion of any shares of Class B common stock into Class A common stock at the time of sale), including immediately upon listing. If such sales were to occur in a significant volume in a short period of time following the listing, it may result in an oversupply of our Class A common stock in the market, which could adversely impact the trading price of our Class A common stock. See the section titled “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Ownership of our Class A Common Stock—None of our stockholders are party to any contractual lock-up agreement or other contractual restrictions on transfer. Following our listing, sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets, or the perception that sales might occur, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline.”

 

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We will not conduct a traditional “roadshow” with underwriters prior to the opening of trading of our Class A common stock on the NYSE. Instead, we intend to host one investor day and engage in additional investor education meetings. In advance of the investor day, we will announce the date for such day over financial news outlets in a manner consistent with typical corporate outreach to investors. We intend to prepare an electronic presentation for this investor day, which will have content similar to a traditional roadshow presentation, and to make the presentation publicly available, without restrictions, on our website. There can be no guarantee that the investor day and other investor education meetings will have the same impact on investor education as a traditional “roadshow” conducted in connection with an underwritten initial public offering. As a result, there may not be efficient or sufficient price discovery with respect to our Class A common stock or sufficient demand among potential investors immediately after our listing, which could result in a more volatile public trading price of our Class A common stock.

Such differences from an underwritten initial public offering could result in a volatile trading price for our Class A common stock and uncertain trading volume, which may adversely affect your ability to sell any shares of our Class A common stock that you may purchase.

The public trading price of our Class A common stock may be volatile, and could, upon listing on the NYSE, decline significantly and rapidly.

The listing of our Class A common stock and the registration of the registered stockholders’ shares of Class A common stock is a process that is not an underwritten initial public offering. We have engaged Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC as our financial advisors. There will be no book building process and no price at which underwriters initially sold shares to the public to help inform efficient and sufficient price discovery with respect to the opening trades on the NYSE. As there has not been a recent sustained history of trading in our Class A common stock in a private placement market prior to listing, NYSE listing rules require that a designated market maker, or DMM, consult with a financial advisor in order to effect a fair and orderly opening of our Class A common stock without coordination with us, consistent with the applicable securities laws in connection with our listing on the NYSE. Accordingly, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC will be available to consult with the DMM who will be setting the opening public trading price of our Class A common stock on the NYSE. In addition, the DMM may also consult with our other financial advisors, also without coordination with us, in connection with our listing. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC are expected to provide input to the DMM regarding its understanding of the ownership of our outstanding Class A common stock and pre-listing selling and buying interest in our Class A common stock that it becomes aware of from potential investors and holders of our Class A common stock, including after consultation with certain institutional investors (which may include certain of the registered stockholders), in each case, without coordination with us. We will endeavor, and it is our understanding that the financial advisors and any affiliated persons each will endeavor, to conduct our and their activities specifically in compliance with Regulation M (to the extent that Regulation M applies to such activities). The DMM, in consultation with Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

 

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and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, is also expected to consider the information in the section titled “Sale Price History of Our Class A Common Stock.” Based on information provided to the NYSE, the opening public trading price of our Class A common stock on the NYSE will be determined by buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from broker-dealers, and the NYSE is where buy orders can be matched with sell orders at a single price. Based on such orders, the DMM will determine an opening price for our Class A common stock pursuant to NYSE rules. However, because our financial advisors will not have engaged in a book building process, they will not be able to provide input to the DMM that is based on or informed by that process. For more information, see the section titled “Plan of Distribution.”

Moreover, prior to the opening trade, there will not be a price at which underwriters initially sold shares of our Class A common stock to the public as there would be in an underwritten initial public offering. The absence of a predetermined initial public offering price could impact the range of buy and sell orders collected by the NYSE from various broker-dealers. Consequently, upon listing on the NYSE, the public trading price of our Class A common stock may be more volatile than in an underwritten initial public offering and could decline significantly and rapidly.

Further, because of our listing process, individual investors may have greater influence in setting the opening public trading price and subsequent public trading prices of our Class A common stock on the NYSE and may participate more in our initial and subsequent trading, leading to an increased amount of smaller orders at numerous prices, for example, than is typical for an underwritten initial public offering with more institutional investor influence. These factors could result in more volatility in the public trading price of our Class A common stock and an unsustainable trading price if the price of our Class A common stock significantly rises upon listing and institutional investors believe our Class A common stock is worth less than retail investors, in which case the price of our Class A common stock may decline over time. Further, if the public trading price of our Class A common stock is above the level that investors determine is reasonable for our Class A common stock, some investors may attempt to short our Class A common stock after trading begins, which would create additional downward pressure on the public trading price of our Class A common stock. There will likely be more ability for investors to short our Class A common stock in early trading than is typical for an underwritten public offering given increased availability of our Class A common stock on the trading markets in part due to the lack of contractual lock-up agreements or other restrictions on transfer. To the extent that there is a lack of awareness among retail investors, such lack of awareness could reduce the value of our Class A common stock and cause volatility in the public trading price of our Class A common stock.

The public trading price of our Class A common stock following the listing could be subject to fluctuations in response to various factors, including those listed in this prospectus, some of which are beyond our control. These fluctuations could cause you to lose all or part of your investment in our Class A common stock since you might be unable to sell your shares at or above the price you paid. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the public trading price of our Class A common stock include the following:

 

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the number of shares of our Class A common stock made available for trading;

 

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sales or expectations with respect to sales of shares of our Class A common stock by holders of our Class A common stock;

 

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price and volume fluctuations in the overall stock market from time to time;

 

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volatility in the trading prices and trading volumes of technology stocks;

 

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changes in operating performance and stock market valuations of other technology companies generally, or those in our industry in particular;

 

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•

failure of securities analysts to maintain coverage of us, changes in financial estimates by securities analysts who follow us or our failure to meet these estimates or the expectations of investors;

 

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any plans we may have to provide or not provide financial guidance or projections, which may increase the probability that our financial results are perceived as not in line with analysts’ expectations;

 

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if we do provide financial guidance or projections, any changes in those projections or our failure to meet those projections;

 

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announcements by us or our competitors of new services or platform features;

 

•

the public’s reaction to our press releases, other public announcements and filings with the SEC;

 

•

rumors and market speculation involving us or other companies in our industry;

 

•

actual or anticipated changes in our results of operations or fluctuations in our results of operations;

 

•

actual or anticipated developments in our business, our competitors’ businesses or the competitive landscape generally;

 

•

litigation involving us, our industry or both, or investigations by regulators into our operations or those of our competitors;

 

•

actual or perceived privacy or security breaches or other incidents;

 

•

developments or disputes concerning our intellectual property or other proprietary rights;

 

•

announced or completed acquisitions of businesses, services or technologies by us or our competitors;

 

•

new laws or regulations or new interpretations of existing laws or regulations applicable to our business;

 

•

changes in accounting standards, policies, guidelines, interpretations, or principles;

 

•

any significant change in our management;

 

•

other events or factors, including those resulting from war, incidents of terrorism, pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires or power outages or responses to these events; and

 

•

general economic conditions and slow or negative growth of our markets.

In addition, stock markets, and the market for technology companies in particular, have experienced price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. Stock prices of many companies, including technology companies, have fluctuated in a manner often unrelated to the operating performance of those companies. In the past, following periods of volatility in the overall market and the market price of a particular company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been instituted against these companies. This litigation, if instituted against us, could result in substantial costs and a diversion of our management’s attention and resources.

The trading price of our Class A common stock, upon listing on the NYSE, may have little or no relationship to the historical sales prices of our Class A common stock in private transactions.

Prior to the listing of our Class A common stock on the NYSE, our shares have not been listed on any stock exchange or other public trading market and have an extremely limited history of trading in

 

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private transactions. In the section titled “Sale Price History of Our Class A Common Stock,” we have provided the historical sales prices of our capital stock in private transactions. However, this information may have little or no relation to broader market demand for our Class A common stock and thus the public trading price of our Class A common stock on the NYSE once trading begins. As a result, you should not place undue reliance on these historical sales prices as they may differ materially from the opening public trading prices and subsequent public trading prices of our Class A common stock on the NYSE. For more information about how the initial listing price on the NYSE will be determined, see the section titled “Plan of Distribution.”

An active, liquid, and orderly market for our Class A common stock may not develop or be sustained. You may be unable to sell your shares of Class A common stock at or above the price you bought them for.

We currently expect our Class A common stock to be listed and traded on the NYSE. Prior to listing on the NYSE, there has been no public market for our Class A common stock. Moreover, consistent with Regulation M and other federal securities laws applicable to our listing, we have not consulted with registered stockholders or other existing stockholders regarding their desire or plans to sell shares in the public market following the listing or discussed with potential investors their intentions to buy our Class A common stock in the open market following the listing. While our Class A common stock may be sold after our listing on the NYSE by the registered stockholders pursuant to this prospectus or by our other existing stockholders in accordance with Rule 144 of the Securities Act, unlike an underwritten initial public offering, there can be no assurance that any registered stockholders or other existing stockholders will sell any of their shares of Class A common stock and there may initially be a lack of supply of, or demand for, our Class A common stock on the NYSE. Conversely, there can be no assurance that the registered stockholders and other existing stockholders will not sell all of their shares of Class A common stock, resulting in excess supply of our Class A common stock on the NYSE.

In the case of a lack of supply of our Class A common stock, the trading price of our Class A common stock may rise to an unsustainable level. Further, institutional investors may be discouraged from purchasing our Class A common stock if they are unable to purchase a block of our Class A common stock in the open market due to a potential unwillingness of our existing stockholders to sell a sufficient amount of Class A common stock at the price offered by such institutional investors and the greater influence individual investors have in setting the trading price. If institutional investors are unable to purchase our Class A common stock, the market for our Class A common stock may be more volatile without the influence of long-term institutional investors holding significant amounts of our Class A common stock. In the case of a lack of demand for our Class A common stock, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline significantly and rapidly after our listing. Therefore, an active, liquid, and orderly trading market for our Class A common stock may not initially develop or be sustained, which could significantly depress the public trading price of our Class A common stock and result in significant volatility, which could affect your ability to sell your shares of Class A common stock.

None of our stockholders are party to any contractual lock-up agreement or other contractual restrictions on transfer. Following our listing, sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets, or the perception that sales might occur, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline.

In addition to the supply and demand and volatility factors discussed above, sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock into the public market, particularly sales by our founders, directors, executive officers, and principal stockholders, or the perception that these sales might occur in large quantities, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline.

 

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None of our securityholders are subject to any contractual lock-up or other restriction on the transfer or sale of their shares.

As of September 30, 2020, after giving effect to the conversion of all outstanding shares of our preferred stock to shares of Class A common stock upon the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, we had 477,532,658 shares of Class A common stock outstanding and 57,287,302 shares of Class B common stock outstanding, all of which are “restricted securities” (as defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act). Approximately                 million of these shares of Class A common stock may be immediately sold either by the registered stockholders pursuant to this prospectus or by our other existing stockholders under Rule 144 since such shares held by such other stockholders will have been beneficially owned by non-affiliates for at least one year. Moreover, once we have been a reporting company subject to the reporting requirements of Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Exchange Act for 90 days and assuming the availability of certain public information about us, (i) non-affiliates who have beneficially owned our common stock for at least six months may rely on Rule 144 to sell their shares of common stock, and (ii) our directors, executive officers, and other affiliates who have beneficially owned our common stock for at least six months, including certain of the shares of Class A common stock covered by this prospectus to the extent not sold hereunder, will be entitled to sell their shares of our Class A common stock subject to volume limitations under Rule 144.

In addition, following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, we intend to file a registration statement on Form S-8 under the Securities Act to register all shares subject to options and RSUs outstanding or reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans. As of September 30, 2020, we had 101,340,752 options outstanding that, if fully exercised, would result in the issuance of shares of Class A common stock, as well as options to purchase shares of Class A common stock and Class A common stock subject to RSU awards granted after September 30, 2020. Accordingly, these shares will be able to be freely sold in the public market upon issuance, subject to applicable vesting requirements and compliance by affiliates with Rule 144.

Following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, the holders of up to 428,496,907 shares of our Class A common stock and 57,287,302 shares of our Class B common stock will have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements for the public resale of the Class A common stock issuable upon conversion of such shares or to include such shares in registration statements that we may file for us or other stockholders. Any registration statement we file to register additional shares, whether as a result of registration rights or otherwise, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline or be volatile.

Our executive officers, directors, and holders of 5% or more of our Class A common stock collectively beneficially own approximately 66.9% of the outstanding shares of our Class A common stock and 100% of the outstanding shares of our Class B common stock and continue to have substantial control over us, which may limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions, including a change in control.

Our directors, executive officers, and other principal stockholders who own 5% or more of our outstanding Class A common stock and their affiliates beneficially own, in the aggregate, approximately 66.9% of the outstanding shares of our Class A common stock and 100% of the outstanding shares of our Class B common stock as of September 30, 2020. As a result, these stockholders, if acting together, are able to exercise significant influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets. They may also have interests that differ from yours and may vote in a way with which you disagree which may be adverse to your interests. This concentration of ownership could limit your ability to influence corporate matters and may have the effect of delaying, preventing or

 

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deterring a third party from acquiring control over our company, could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their Class A common stock as part of a sale of our company and might ultimately affect the market price of our Class A common stock.

The dual class stock structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control in our founder, which limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters, including the election of directors and the approval of any change of control transaction.

Our Class B common stock has 20 votes per share, and our Class A common stock, registered in this listing, has one vote per share. Our Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and largest stockholder, David Baszucki and his affiliates, beneficially own 100% of our outstanding Class B common stock, together as a single class, representing 70.7% of the voting power of our capital stock. David Baszucki and his affiliates could exert substantial influence over matters requiring approval by our stockholders. This concentration of ownership may limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future, including the election of directors, amendments of our organizational documents, and any merger, consolidation, sale of all or substantially all of our assets, or other major corporate transaction requiring stockholder approval. In addition, this may prevent or discourage unsolicited acquisition proposals or offers for our capital stock that you may believe are in your best interest as one of our stockholders. We believe we are eligible for, but do not intend to take advantage of, the “controlled company” exemption to the corporate governance rules for NYSE-listed companies. The dual class stock structure of our common stock which permits Mr. Baszucki and his affiliates to exert this influence will remain in place until the earlier of (i) the date that is specified by the affirmative vote of the holders of two-thirds of the then-outstanding shares of Class B common stock, (ii) the date on which less than 30% of the Class B common stock that was outstanding on the date of effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part continues to remain outstanding, (iii) the date that is 15 years from the first day of trading shares of capital stock of the Company on the NYSE, (iv) nine months after the death or permanent disability of Mr. Baszucki, or (v) nine months after the date that Mr. Baszucki no longer serves as our Chief Executive Officer or as a member of our board of directors. Future transfers of Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting to Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions. See the section titled “Description of Capital Stock” for additional information on the dual class stock structure of our common stock.

We cannot predict the effect our dual class structure may have on the trading price of our Class A common stock.

We cannot predict whether our dual class structure will result in a lower or more volatile trading price of our Class A common stock, in adverse publicity, or other adverse consequences. For example, certain index providers have announced restrictions on including companies with multiple-class share structures in certain of their indices. In July 2017, FTSE Russell announced that it plans to require new constituents of its indices to have greater than 5% of a company’s voting rights in the hands of public stockholders, and S&P Dow Jones announced that it will no longer admit companies with multiple-class share structures to certain of its indices. Affected indices include the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600, which together make up the S&P Composite 1500. Also in 2017, MSCI, a leading stock index provider, opened public consultations on their treatment of no-vote and multi-class structures and temporarily barred new multi-class listings from certain of its indices; however, in October 2018, MSCI announced its decision to include equity securities “with unequal voting structures” in its indices and to launch a new index that specifically includes voting rights in its eligibility criteria. Under such announced policies, the dual class structure of our common stock would make us ineligible for inclusion in certain indices and, as a result, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and other investment vehicles that attempt to passively track those indices would not invest in our Class A common stock. These policies are relatively new and it is unclear what effect, if any, they will have on the valuations of publicly-traded companies excluded from such indices, but it is

 

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possible that they may depress valuations as compared to similar companies that are included. Because of the dual class structure of our common stock, we will likely be excluded from certain indices, and we cannot assure you that other stock indices will not take similar actions. Given the sustained flow of investment funds into passive strategies that seek to track certain indices, exclusion from certain stock indices would likely preclude investment by many of these funds and would make our Class A common stock less attractive to other investors. As a result, the trading price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected.

We are an “emerging growth company” and we cannot be certain if the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our Class A common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, and have the option to utilize certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We may take advantage of these reporting exemptions until we are no longer an emerging growth company. We will remain an emerging growth company until the earlier of (i) the last day of the fiscal year (A) following the fifth anniversary of this offering, (B) in which we have total annual revenue of at least $1.07 billion, or (C) in which we are deemed to be a large accelerated filer, with at least $700 million of equity securities held by non-affiliates as of the prior June 30th, and (ii) the date on which we have issued more than $1 billion in non-convertible debt during the prior three-year period.

Under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies can also delay adopting new or revised accounting standards until such time as those standards apply to private companies. We have elected to use this extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards that have different effective dates for public and private companies until the earlier of the date we (i) are no longer an emerging growth company or (ii) affirmatively and irrevocably opt out of the extended transition period provided in the JOBS Act. As a result, our financial statements may not be comparable to companies that comply with new or revised accounting pronouncements as of public company effective dates. Further, we may take advantage of some of the other reduced regulatory and reporting requirements that will be available to us so long as we qualify as an “emerging growth company.”

Among other things, this means that our independent registered public accounting firm will not be required to provide an attestation report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting so long as we qualify as an emerging growth company, which may increase the risk that weaknesses or deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting go undetected. Likewise, so long as we qualify as an emerging growth company, we may elect not to provide you with certain information, including certain financial information and certain information regarding compensation of our executive officers, that we would otherwise have been required to provide in filings we make with the SEC, which may make it more difficult for investors and securities analysts to evaluate our company. As a result, investor confidence in our company and the market price of our Class A common stock may be adversely affected. Further, we cannot predict if investors will find our Class A common stock less attractive because we will rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our Class A common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our Class A common stock and our stock price may be more volatile.

 

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Delaware law and provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws could make a merger, tender offer or proxy contest difficult, thereby depressing the market price of our Class A common stock.

Our status as a Delaware corporation and the anti-takeover provisions of the Delaware General Corporation Law may discourage, delay or prevent a change in control by prohibiting us from engaging in a business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years after the date of the transaction in which the person became an interested stockholder, even if a change of control would be beneficial to our existing stockholders. In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws will contain provisions that may make the acquisition of our company more difficult, including the following:

 

•

any amendments to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws will require the approval of at least 662⁄3% of our then-outstanding voting power;

 

•

our board of directors is classified into three classes of directors with staggered three-year terms and stockholders will only be able to remove directors from office for cause;

 

•

upon the conversion of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock into a single class of common stock, our stockholders will only be able to take action at a meeting of stockholders and will not be able to take action by written consent for any matter;

 

•

our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will not provide for cumulative voting;

 

•

vacancies on our board of directors will be able to be filled only by our board of directors and not by stockholders;

 

•

a special meeting of our stockholders may only be called by the chairperson of our board of directors, our Chief Executive Officer, our President or a majority of our board of directors;

 

•

certain litigation against us can only be brought in Delaware;

 

•

our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will authorize 100 million undesignated preferred stock, the terms of which may be established and shares of which may be issued without further action by our stockholders; and

 

•

advance notice procedures apply for stockholders to nominate candidates for election as directors or to bring matters before an annual meeting of stockholders.

These provisions, alone or together, could discourage, delay or prevent a transaction involving a change in control of our company. These provisions could also discourage proxy contests and make it more difficult for stockholders to elect directors of their choosing and to cause us to take other corporate actions they desire, any of which, under certain circumstances, could limit the opportunity for our stockholders to receive a premium for their shares of our Class A common stock, and could also affect the price that some investors are willing to pay for our Class A common stock.

Our amended and restated bylaws provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware and the federal district courts of the United States will be the exclusive forums for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or employees.

Our amended and restated bylaws provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (or, if the Court of Chancery does not have jurisdiction, another State court in Delaware or the federal district court for the District of Delaware) is the exclusive forum for the following (except for any claim as to which such court determines that there is an indispensable party not subject to the jurisdiction of such court (and the indispensable party does not consent to the personal jurisdiction of such court

 

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within ten days following such determination), which is vested in the exclusive jurisdiction of a court or forum other than such court or for which such court does not have subject matter jurisdiction):

 

•

any derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of us;

 

•

any action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty;

 

•

any action asserting a claim against us arising under the Delaware General Corporation Law, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws (as either may be amended from time to time); and

 

•

any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine.

This provision would not apply to suits brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Exchange Act, or any other claim for which the U.S. federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction.

Our amended and restated bylaws further provide that the federal district courts of the U.S. will be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act.

These exclusive-forum provisions may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers and other employees. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in any of our securities shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to these provisions. There is uncertainty as to whether a court would enforce such provisions, and the enforceability of similar choice of forum provisions in other companies’ charter documents has been challenged in legal proceedings. We also note that stockholders cannot waive compliance (or consent to noncompliance) with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. It is possible that a court could find these types of provisions to be inapplicable or unenforceable, and if a court were to find either exclusive-forum provision in our amended and restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving the dispute in other jurisdictions, which could significantly harm our business.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about us, our business or our market, or if they change their recommendation regarding our Class A common stock adversely, the market price and trading volume of our Class A common stock could decline.

The market price and trading volume for our Class A common stock will depend in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us, our business, our market or our competitors. The analysts’ estimates are based upon their own opinions and are often different from our estimates or expectations. If any of the analysts who cover us change their recommendation regarding our Class A common stock adversely, provide more favorable relative recommendations about our competitors or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, the price of our securities would likely decline. If few securities analysts commence coverage of us, or if one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the financial markets and demand for our securities could decrease, which could cause the price and trading volume of our Class A common stock to decline.

Additional issuances of our stock could result in significant dilution to our stockholders.

Additional issuances of our stock will result in dilution to existing holders of our capital stock. Also, to the extent outstanding additional shares subject to options and warrants to purchase our capital stock are authorized and exercised, there will be further dilution. The amount of dilution could be

 

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substantial depending upon the size of the issuance or exercise. As part of our business strategy, we may acquire or make investments in companies, products or technologies and issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition or investment. Any such issuances of additional capital stock may cause stockholders to experience significant dilution of their ownership interests and the per share value of our common stock to decline.

We do not expect to pay dividends in the foreseeable future.

We have never declared nor paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business, and we do not anticipate declaring or paying any dividends to holders of our capital stock in the foreseeable future. In addition, our credit agreement contains restrictions on our ability to pay dividends. Consequently, you may need to rely on sales of our Class A common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on your investment.

 

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SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This prospectus contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “could,” “would,” “intend,” “target,” “project,” “contemplate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” or “continue” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans, or intentions. Forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus include, but are not limited to, statements about:

 

•

our expectations regarding future financial performance, including but not limited to our expectations regarding revenue, cost of revenue, operating expenses, and our key metrics, and our ability to achieve and maintain future profitability;

 

•

our ability to successfully execute our business and growth strategy, including our potential to scale and grow our international users, developers, and creators;

 

•

the sufficiency of our cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities to meet our liquidity needs;

 

•

the demand for our platform in general;

 

•

our ability to increase our number of users, developers, and creators;

 

•

our ability to develop enhancements to our platform, and bring them to market in a timely manner;

 

•

our beliefs about and objectives for future operations;

 

•

our ability to attract and retain employees and key personnel;

 

•

future acquisitions or investments;

 

•

the ability for developers to build, launch, scale, and monetize experiences for users;

 

•

our expectations regarding our ability to generate revenue from our users;

 

•

our ability to convert users into developers and creators;

 

•

our expectations regarding new target demographics;

 

•

the functionality and economics of our platform on mobile operating systems;

 

•

our ability to continue to provide a safe and civil online environment, particularly for children;

 

•

our ability to develop and protect our brand;

 

•

our ability to maintain the security and availability of our platform;

 

•

our business model and expectations and management of future growth, including expansion in international markets and expenditures associated with such growth;

 

•

our ability to compete with existing and new competitors;

 

•

our expectations regarding outstanding litigation and legal and regulatory matters;

 

•

our expectations regarding the effects of existing and developing laws and regulations, including with respect to privacy, data protection, online safety, and the regulation of Robux as a security, both in the U.S. and internationally, including how such laws and regulations may interfere with user, developer, and creator access to our platform and experiences;

 

•

Tencent’s ability to successfully publish and operate Luobolesi in China;

 

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•

our expectations surrounding Robux as an attractive virtual currency and incentives to reinvest Robux in the platform;

 

•

the impact of foreign currency exchange rates on results of operations;

 

•

economic, seasonal, and industry trends;

 

•

the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including on our users’, developers’, and creators’ usage and spending habits, and any associated economic downturn on our business and results of operations; and

 

•

the increased expenses associated with being a public company.

We caution you that the foregoing list may not contain all of the forward-looking statements made in this prospectus.

You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We have based the forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, including those described in the section titled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus. We cannot assure you that the results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

Neither we nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. Moreover, the forward-looking statements made in this prospectus relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this prospectus to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this prospectus or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures or investments we may make.

In addition, statements that “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this prospectus, and while we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely upon these statements.

 

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INDUSTRY, MARKET AND OTHER DATA

Unless otherwise indicated, estimates and information contained in this prospectus concerning our industry and the market in which we operate, including our general expectations, market position, and market opportunity, are based on industry publications and reports generated by third-party providers, other publicly available studies and our internal sources and estimates. This information involves a number of assumptions and limitations, and you are cautioned not to give undue weight to such estimates. Although we are responsible for all of the disclosure contained in this prospectus and we believe the information from the industry publications and other third-party sources included in this prospectus is reliable, we have not independently verified the accuracy or completeness of the data contained in such sources. Similarly, while we believe our management estimates to be reasonable, they have not been verified by any independent sources. Forecasts and other forward-looking information with respect to industry are subject to the same qualifications and additional uncertainties regarding the other forward-looking statements in this prospectus. See the section titled “Special Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements.”

The industry in which we operate is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and risk due to a variety of factors, including those described in the section titled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. These and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the estimates made by the independent parties and by us.

 

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USE OF PROCEEDS

Registered stockholders may, or may not, elect to sell shares of our Class A common stock covered by this prospectus. To the extent any registered stockholder chooses to sell shares of our Class A common stock covered by this prospectus, we will not receive any proceeds from any such sales of our Class A common stock. See the section titled “Principal and Registered Stockholders.”

 

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DIVIDEND POLICY

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings and do not expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Any future determination to declare cash dividends will be made at the discretion of our board of directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on a number of factors, including our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements, contractual restrictions, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant. In addition, the terms of our credit facility contain restrictions on our ability to declare and pay cash dividends on our capital stock, even if no amounts are currently outstanding.

 

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CAPITALIZATION

The following table sets forth cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as well as our capitalization, as of September 30, 2020 as follows:

 

•

on an actual basis;

 

•

on a pro forma basis, giving effect to (i) the issuance of 11,555,553 shares of our Series H convertible preferred stock and related gross proceeds of $520.0 million subsequent to September 30, 2020, (ii) the automatic conversion of all outstanding shares of our convertible preferred stock into an aggregate of 349,522,440 shares of our Class A common stock, as if such conversion had occurred on September 30, 2020 and (iii) the filing and effectiveness of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation.

You should read this table together with our consolidated financial statements and related notes, and the sections titled “Selected Consolidated Financial and Other Data” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” that are included elsewhere in this prospectus.

 

		As of September 30, 2020
		Actual				Pro Forma
		(in thousands, except per share amounts)
Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities		$	801,646			$	1,321,646
Convertible preferred stock, $0.0001 par value per share: 349,522,440 shares authorized, issued and outstanding, actual; no shares authorized, no shares issued or outstanding, pro forma.		$	345,085			$	—
Stockholders’ equity (deficit):
Preferred stock, $0.0001 par value per share: no shares authorized, issued and outstanding, actual; 100,000,000 shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma.			—				—
Common stock, $0.0001 par value per share: 675,000,000 shares authorized, 185,297,520 issued and outstanding, actual; no shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma.			19				—
Class A common stock, $0.0001 par value per share: no shares authorized, issued and outstanding, actual; 675,000,000 shares authorized, 489,088,211 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma.			—				49
Class B common stock, $0.0001 par value per share: no shares authorized, issued and outstanding, actual; 65,000,000 shares authorized, 57,287,302 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma			—				6
Additional paid-in capital			174,287				1,039,336
Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)			45				45
Accumulated deficit			(494,102	)			(494,102	)
Total Roblox Corporation stockholders’ equity (deficit)			(319,751	)			545,334
Noncontrolling interests			21,745				21,745
Total stockholders’ equity (deficit)			(298,006	)			567,079
Total capitalization		$	47,079			$	567,079

The pro forma column in the table above is based on 477,532,658 shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of September 30, 2020 (including shares of our convertible preferred stock on an as-converted basis) and 57,287,302 shares of our Class B common stock outstanding as of September 30, 2020, and excludes the following:

 

•

101,340,752 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock that were outstanding as of September 30, 2020, under our 2017 Plan and 2004 Plan, with a weighted-average exercise price of $2.55 per share;

 

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•

260,000 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of warrants to purchase Class A common stock outstanding as of September 30, 2020, with an exercise price of $3.41 per share;

 

•

1,400,575 shares of our Class A common stock issued or to be issued in connection with our acquisitions of privately-held companies after September 30, 2020;

 

•

64,000 additional shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of one of the outstanding warrants after September 30, 2020 pursuant to the terms of such warrant, at an exercise price of $3.41 per share;

 

•

3,061,237 RSUs covering shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon satisfaction of both service-based and liquidity event-based vesting conditions that were granted after September 30, 2020, under our 2017 Plan; and

 

•

81,448,094 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans, consisting of:

 

•

60,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock to be reserved for future issuance under our 2020 Plan, which will become effective in connection with the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part;

 

•

15,448,094 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2017 Plan, which number of shares will be added to the shares of our Class A common stock to be reserved for future issuance under our 2020 Plan upon its effectiveness, at which time we will cease granting awards under our 2017 Plan; and

 

•

6,000,000 shares of our Class A common stock to be reserved for future issuance under our ESPP, which will become effective in connection with the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part.

Our 2020 Plan and ESPP each provide for annual automatic increases in the number of shares of our Class A common stock reserved thereunder, and our 2020 Plan also provides for increases to the number of shares that may be granted thereunder based on shares under our 2017 Plan and 2004 Plan that expire, are tendered to or withheld by us for payment of an exercise price or for satisfying tax withholding obligations or are forfeited or otherwise repurchased by us, as more fully described in the section titled “Executive Compensation—Employee Benefit and Stock Plans.”

 

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SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL AND OTHER DATA

The following tables set forth our selected consolidated financial and other data. The selected consolidated statements of operations data for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data (except the pro forma share and net loss per share information) as of December 31, 2018 and 2019 have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. The selected consolidated statements of operations data for the nine months ended September 30, 2019 and 2020 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of September 30, 2020 have been derived from our unaudited interim consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. The unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared on the same basis as the annual consolidated financial statements, and in the opinion of management, reflect all adjustments, which include only normal recurring adjustments, necessary to present fairly our financial position and results of operations. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected in the future, and our results for the nine months ended September 30, 2020 are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for the full year or for any other period. You should read the following selected consolidated financial data below in conjunction with the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. The selected consolidated financial data in this section are not intended to replace, and are qualified in their entirety by, the consolidated financial statements and related notes.

Consolidated Statements of Operations Data

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2018				2019				2019				2020
		(dollars in thousands, except per share data)
Revenue		$	312,773			$	488,223			$	349,888			$	588,675
Cost and expenses:
Cost of revenue(1)			69,896				117,227				82,330				154,912
Developer exchange fees			71,887				111,976				72,216				215,026
Infrastructure and trust & safety(2)			105,590				156,699				111,684				185,878
Research and development(2)			87,051				107,095				74,398				141,366
General and administrative(2)			34,460				41,945				28,913				65,433
Sales and marketing(2)			40,542				44,737				31,243				42,423
Total cost and expenses			409,426				579,679				400,784				805,038
Loss from operations			(96,653	)			(91,456	)			(50,896	)			(216,363	)
Interest income			3,759				6,546				5,085				1,758
Other expense			(4,279	)			(1,211	)			(494	)			(1,357	)
Loss before provision for income taxes			(97,173	)			(86,121	)			(46,305	)			(215,962	)
Provision for income taxes			3				9				8				25
Consolidated net loss			(97,176	)			(86,130	)			(46,313	)			(215,987	)
Net loss attributable to the noncontrolling interest(3)			—				(146	)			25				(2,641	)
Net loss attributable to common stockholders		$	(97,176	)		$	(85,984	)		$	(46,338	)		$	(213,346	)
Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted		$	(0.66	)		$	(0.53	)		$	(0.29	)		$	(1.20	)
Weighted-average shares used in computing net loss per share attributable to common stockholders—basic and diluted(4)			147,278				163,051				162,009				177,771
Pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders—basic and diluted (unaudited)(4)						$	(0.17	)						$	(0.40	)
Weighted-average shares used in computing pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders—basic and diluted (unaudited)(4)							489,003								522,617

 

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		Year Ended December 31,								Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2018				2019				2019				2020
		(in thousands, except hours engaged and ABPDAU data)
Non-GAAP and selected financial and operating data:
Bookings(5)		$	499,038			$	694,262			$	457,959			$	1,240,232
Loss from operations (GAAP)		$	(96,653	)		$	(91,456	)		$	(50,896	)		$	(216,363	)
Depreciation and amortization (GAAP)		$	11,941			$	27,664			$	19,179			$	30,232
Stock based compensation (GAAP)		$	36,310			$	17,634			$	11,696			$	62,962
Change in deferred revenue (GAAP)		$	187,244			$	208,086			$	109,373			$	656,071
Change in deferred cost of revenue (GAAP)		$	(45,747	)		$	(53,463	)		$	(28,854	)		$	(162,166	)
Net cash provided by operating activites (GAAP)		$	101,038			$	99,185			$	62,637			$	345,336
Free cash flow(5)		$	34,966			$	14,456			$	5,961			$	292,623
Daily active users (DAUs)(6)			12,017				17,623				17,121				31,064
Hours engaged (millions)(6)			9,429				13,652				9,951				22,172
Average Bookings per DAU (ABPDAU)(6)		$	41.53			$	39.40			$	26.75			$	39.93

 

(1)	Depreciation of servers and infrastructure equipment included in infrastructure and trust & safety.

(2)	Includes stock-based compensation as follows:

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2018				2019				2019				2020
		(dollars in thousands)
Infrastructure and trust & safety		$	3,046			$	2,085			$	1,324			$	5,342
Research and development			25,691				9,695				6,320				29,195
General and administrative			4,426				3,347				2,359				22,741
Sales and marketing			3,147				2,507				1,693				5,684
Total stock-based compensation		$	36,310			$	17,634			$	11,696			$	62,962

During the year ended December 31, 2018 and nine months ended September 30, 2020, we recorded compensation expense of $25.2 million and $35.2 million, respectively, related to a tender offer conducted by the purchasers of Series F and Series G convertible preferred stock to acquire shares from employees, former employees, and other existing investors. This expense was recorded because the purchasers were our affiliates and the tender was completed at above the then-fair market value. In connection with the tender offer, the Company waived any rights of first refusal or transfer restrictions applicable to such shares.

 

(3)	Our consolidated financial statements include our majority-owned subsidiary Roblox China Holding Corp. The ownership interest of minority investor, Songhua, is recorded as a noncontrolling interest.

(4)

See Note 12 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for an explanation of the method used to calculate our basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders and the weighted-average number of shares used in the computation of the per share amounts.

(5)	See the section titled “Selected Consolidated Financial and Other Data” for a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP.

(6)	See the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Key Metrics—Operating Metrics” for more information.

 

		As of December 31,								As of September 30,
		2018				2019				2020
		(dollars in thousands)
Consolidated Balance Sheet Data:
Cash and cash equivalents		$	227,647			$	301,493			$	801,646
Working capital			45,188				45,261				187,550
Total assets			550,349				773,350				1,489,541
Total deferred revenue			435,787				643,872				1,299,946
Accumulated Deficit			(194,772	)			(280,756	)			(494,102	)
Total stockholders’ equity (deficit)			(139,893	)			(154,669	)			(298,006	)

 

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Operating Metrics

We manage our business by tracking several operating metrics, including the following: daily active users, or DAUs, hours engaged, and average bookings per DAU, or ABPDAU. We believe each of these operating metrics provide useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our results in the same manner as management. See the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Key Metrics—Operating Metrics” for more information.

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2018				2019				2019				2020
Operating Metrics:
Daily Active Users (DAUs) (in thousands)			12,017				17,623				17,121				31,064
Hours Engaged (in millions)			9,429				13,652				9,951				22,172
Average Bookings per DAU (ABPDAU)		$	41.53			$	39.40			$	26.75			$	39.93

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

In addition to our results determined in accordance with GAAP, we believe the below non-GAAP measures are useful in evaluating our performance. We use the below non-GAAP financial information to evaluate our ongoing operations and for internal planning and forecasting purposes. We believe that this non-GAAP financial information may be helpful to investors because it provides consistency and comparability with past financial performance. However, non-GAAP financial measures have limitations in their usefulness to investors because they have no standardized meaning prescribed by GAAP and are not prepared under any comprehensive set of accounting rules or principles. In addition, other companies, including companies in our industry, may calculate similarly-titled non-GAAP financial measures differently or may use other measures to evaluate their performance, all of which could reduce the usefulness of our non-GAAP financial information as a tool for comparison. As a result, our non-GAAP financial information is presented for supplemental informational purposes only and should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, financial information presented in accordance with GAAP.

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2018				2019				2019				2020
		(dollars in thousands)
Bookings		$	499,038			$	694,262			$	457,959			$	1,240,232
Net cash provided by operating activities (GAAP)		$	101,038			$	99,185			$	62,637			$	345,336
Free cash flow		$	34,966			$	14,456			$	5,961			$	292,623

A reconciliation is provided below for each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable financial measure stated in accordance with GAAP. Investors are encouraged to review the related GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures.

Bookings

Bookings represent the sales activity in a given period without giving effect to certain non-cash adjustments. Substantially all of our bookings are generated from sales of our virtual currency which we record as deferred revenue and then recognize that revenue over the estimated average lifetime of a paying user. See the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates—Revenue Recognition” for

 

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more information, including the methodology for the average lifetime of a paying user estimate. Bookings also include a minimal dollar amount from advertising and licensing arrangements.

We believe bookings provide a timelier indication of trends in our operating results that are not necessarily reflected in our revenue as a result of the fact that we recognize revenue ratably over the average lifetime of a paying user. The change in deferred revenue constitutes the vast majority of the reconciling difference from revenue to bookings. By removing these non-cash adjustments, we are able to measure and monitor our business performance based on the timing of actual transactions with our users and the cash that is generated from these transactions. Over the long-term, the factors impacting our revenue and bookings trends are the same. However, in the short-term, there are factors that may cause revenue and bookings trends to differ in any period.

The following table presents a reconciliation of revenue, the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, to bookings, for each of the periods presented:

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2018				2019				2019				2020
		(dollars in thousands)
Reconciliation of revenue to bookings:
Revenue		$	312,773			$	488,223			$	349,888			$	588,675
Add (deduct):
Change in deferred revenue			187,244				208,086				109,373				656,071
Other			(979	)			(2,047	)			(1,302	)			(4,514	)
Bookings		$	499,038			$	694,262			$	457,959			$	1,240,232

We also break out bookings by geography to understand our performance in certain markets. Bookings by geography is apportioned to each region based on our determination of the geographic location in which the user made a purchase.

 

		Year Ended December 31,																Nine Months Ended September 30,
		2018								2019								2019								2020
		Amount				Percentage				Amount				Percentage				Amount				Percentage				Amount				Percentage
		(in thousands, except percentages)
Bookings:
United States and Canada		$	362,439				73	%		$	483,165				70	%		$	321,061				70	%		$	847,032				68	%
Europe			78,320				16				122,883				18				79,898				17				235,232				19
Asia-Pacific, including Australia and New Zealand			35,279				7				55,131				8				35,720				8				92,475				8
Rest of the world			23,000				4				33,083				4				21,280				5				65,493				5
Total		$	499,038				100	%		$	694,262				100	%		$	457,959				100	%		$	1,240,232				100	%

Free Cash Flow

We define free cash flow as net cash provided by operating activities less purchases of property and equipment.

We believe that free cash flow is a useful indicator of liquidity that provides information to management and investors about the amount of cash generated from our core operations that, after

 

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