Frequently Used Terms
As used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, (this “Annual Report”), references to:
:
“amended and restated memorandum and articles of association”merger agreement” are to ourthe agreement and plan of merger, dated as of April 14, 2022,by and among Tuatara, Merger Sub and Legacy SpringBig, as amended and restated by Amendment No. 1, dated as of May 4, 2022;
“amended and restated registration rights agreement” are to the Amended and Restated MemorandumRegistration Rights Agreement entered into, by and Articles of Association;
among Tuatara, Sponsor, Legacy SpringBig, and the other signatories thereto;
“Class A ordinary shares”business combination” are to our Class A ordinarythe transactions contemplated by the merger agreement;
“Canadian CRTC” are to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission;
“Cannabis Act” are to the Cannabis Act (Canada);
“Cantor” or “Holder” are to CF Principal Investments LLC;
“Cantor Equity Facility” are to the Common Stock Purchase Agreement and Cantor Registration Rights Agreement, related to a committed equity facility by which SpringBig has the right to sell to CF Principal Investments LLC up to $50,000,000 of newly issued common stock;
“Cantor Registration Rights Agreement” are to the registration rights agreement, dated as of April 29, 2022, by and between Tuatara and Cantor;
“Code” are to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended;
“Common Shares,” “Common Stock” or “Shares” are to the shares of common stock of SpringBig Holdings, Inc., par value $0.0001 per share;
share;
“Class B ordinary shares” are to our Class B ordinary shares, par value $0.0001 per share;
“Company,” “SpringBig,” “we,” “us,” “our” and similar terms are to SpringBig Holdings, Inc., a Delaware corporation, and its consolidated subsidiaries;
“COVID-19” are to SARS-Cov-2 or COVID-19, and any evolutions thereof or related or associated epidemics, pandemics or disease outbreaks;
“CSA” are to the U.S. Controlled Substances Act of 1970, as amended;
“DGCL” are to the Delaware General Corporation Law, (2020 Revision)as amended;
“effective time” are to the effective time of the Cayman Islandscertificate of merger effecting the merger contemplated by the amended and restated merger agreement;
“Exchange Act” are to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended;
“FCC” are to the United States Federal Communications Commission;
“GAAP” are to United States generally accepted accounting principles;
“Legacy SpringBig” are to SpringBig, Inc., a Delaware corporation, prior to the business combination, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of SpringBig following the business combination;
“merger” are to the merger evidenced by a certificate of merger between Merger Sub and Legacy SpringBig pursuant to which Merger Sub merged with and into Legacy SpringBig, with Legacy SpringBig continuing as the same may besurviving entity and a subsidiary of SpringBig;
“merger agreement” are to the original merger agreement and the amended and restated merger agreement, collectively, as amended or modified from time to time;
time, by and among Tuatara, Merger Sub and Legacy SpringBig;
“directors”Merger Sub” are to our current directors
HighJump Merger Sub, Inc., a Delaware corporation and a wholly owned direct subsidiary of Tuatara;
“founder shares”Nasdaq” are to our Class B ordinary shares initially purchasedThe Nasdaq Stock Market LLC;
“Notes and Warrants Purchase Agreement” are to that certain securities purchase agreement, dated April 29, 2022, as amended by our sponsorthe Amendment to Purchase Agreement, dated December 1, 2022, and Amendment No. 2 to the Purchase Agreement, dated December 28, 2022, between the Company and L1 Capital Global Opportunities Master Fund (the “Investor”), pursuant to which the Company agreed to sell up to (i) a total of up to $16 million of 6% Senior Secured Original Issue Discount Convertible Notes due 2024 (the “L1 Notes”) and (ii) a number of warrants equal to one-half of the principal of the Notes actually issued, divided by the volume weighted average price (“VWAP”) on the trading day prior to such Note issuance date (the “Investor Warrants”), in a private placement prior to our initial public offering and the Class A ordinary shares that will be issued upon the automatic conversion of the Class B ordinary shares at the time of our initial business combination (for the avoidance of doubt, such Class A ordinary shares will not be “public shares”);
placement.
“initial shareholders” are to our sponsor and other holders of our founder shares prior to our initial public offering;
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“public shares” are to our Class A ordinary shares sold as part of the units in our initial public offering (whether they were purchased in our initial public offering or thereafter in the open market);
“SaaS” are to software-as-a-service;
“Securities Act” are to the extent our sponsor, officers or directors purchase public shares, provided their statusSecurities Act of 1933, as a “public shareholder” shall only exist with respect to such public shares;
amended;
“sponsor” or “Sponsor”Sponsor” are to TCAC Sponsor, LLC a Delaware limited liability company, an affiliatecompany;
“TCPA” are to the United States Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, as amended;
“transfer agent” are to Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, as transfer agent;
“Tuatara,” “we,” “our” or “us” are to Tuatara Capital L.P. (“Tuatara Capital”);
“$,” “US$” and “U.S. dollar” each refer to the United States dollar.
This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are forward looking statements. Forward looking statements include our current expectations and projections relating to our financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business. You can identify forward looking statements by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. These statements may include words such as "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "project," "plan," "intend," "believe," "may," "will," "should," "can have," "likely" and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with any discussion of the timing or nature of future cash flows, operating or financial performance or other events. These forward looking statements are not historical facts, and are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry and Company, management’s beliefs and certain assumptions made by management, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and beyond our control. Accordingly, readers are cautioned that any such forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward looking statements are reasonable as of the date made, results may prove to be materially different. Unless otherwise required by law, we disclaim any obligation to update our view of any such risks or uncertainties or to announce publicly the result of any revisions to the forward-looking statements made in this report.
A number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results reflected in these forward-looking statements are identified in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and in our periodic filings with the SEC. Our SEC filings are available publicly on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K completely and with the understanding that our actual future results, levels of activity and performance as well as other events and circumstances may be materially different from what we expect. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.
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Risk Factor Summary
We are providing the following summary of the risk factors contained in this Annual Report may constitute “forward-looking statements” for purposes of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding us or our management team’s expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions, or strategies regarding the future, including, without limitation, those relating to the Merger (as defined herein). In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts, or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “possible,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “would,” and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Forward-looking statements in this Annual Report may include, for example and without limitation, statements about: (1) trends in the cannabis industry; (2) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to the termination of the Merger Agreement; (3) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against TCAC, SpringBig, the combined company or others following the announcement of the Business Combination; (4) the inability to complete the Business Combination due to the failure to obtain approval of the shareholders of TCAC or to satisfy other conditions to closing, including the satisfaction of the minimum trust account amount following any redemptions; (5) changes to the proposed structure of the Business Combination that may be required or appropriate as a result of applicable laws or regulations or as a condition to obtaining regulatory approval of the Business Combination; (6) the ability to meet stock exchange listing standards at or following the consummation of the Business Combination; (7) the risk that the Business Combination disrupts current plans and operations of SpringBig as a result of the announcement and consummation of the Business Combination; (8) the ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the Business Combination, which may be affected by, among other things, competition, the ability of the combined company to grow and manage growth profitably, maintain relationships with customers and suppliers and retain its management and key employees; (9) costs related to the Business Combination; (10) changes in applicable laws or regulations; (11) the possibility that SpringBig or the combined company may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; (12) the limited operating history of SpringBig; (13) the SpringBig business is subject to significant governmental regulation; (14) the SpringBig business may not successfully expand into other markets; and (15) other risks and uncertainties set forth in the sections entitled “Risk Factors” herein and which are set forth in a Registration Statement on Form S-4 previously filed by TCAC with10-K to enhance the SEC in connection withreadability and accessibility of our risk factor disclosures. We encourage you to carefully review the Business Combination.
•We have a relatively short operating history in a rapidly evolving industry, which makes it difficult to evaluate our future prospects and may increase the risk that we will not be successful. As our costs increase, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to become profitable or maintain profitability in the future.
•If we do not successfully develop and deploy new software, platform features or services to address the needs of our clients, if we fail to retain our existing clients or acquire new clients, and/or if we fail to expand effectively into new markets, our revenue may decrease and our business may be harmed.
•We have a significant working capital deficiency and a history of losses, may need to raise additional funds to meet our obligations and sustain our operations, and may not achieve profitability in the future. There is substantial doubt as to our ability to continue as a going concern.
•Federal law enforcement may deem our clients to be in violation of U.S. federal law, and, in particular the CSA. A change in U.S. federal policy on cannabis enforcement and strict enforcement of federal cannabis laws against our clients would undermine our business model and materially affect our business and operations.
•Some of our clients currently and in the future may not be in compliance with licensing and related requirements under applicable laws and regulations. We further cannot ensure that our clients will conduct their business in a way that complies with all laws. Allowing unlicensed or noncompliant businesses to access our platform and services, or allowing businesses to use our solutions in a noncompliant manner, may subject us to legal or regulatory enforcement and negative publicity, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, brand and reputation.
•Our business is dependent on U.S. state laws and regulations and Canadian federal and provincial laws and regulations pertaining to the heading “Risk Factors.” Should onecannabis industry, its continued legalization, and the rapid changes in applicable laws and regulations may increase the risk that we will not be successful. We are subject to various standards, laws and regulations and any actual or moreperceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business.
•Our business is dependent on the market acceptance of these riskscannabis consumers and negative trends could adversely affect our business operations.
•Our business is highly dependent upon our brand recognition and reputation, and any erosion or uncertainties materialize,degradation of our brand recognition or reputation would likely adversely affect our business and operating results.
•We currently face intense competition in marketing and advertising services available to our clients, and we expect competition to further intensify as the cannabis industry continues to evolve.
•If we fail to predict and/or manage our growth effectively, our brand, business and operating results could be harmed.
•If we are unable to recruit, train, retain and motivate key personnel, we may not achieve our business objectives.
•If our current marketing model is not effective in attracting new clients, we may need to employ higher-cost sales and marketing methods to attract and retain clients, which could adversely affect our profitability.
•We may be unable to scale and adapt our existing technology and network infrastructure in a timely or effective manner to ensure that our platform is accessible, which would harm our reputation, business and operating results.
•Real or perceived errors, failures, or bugs in our platform or cyber security breaches, unauthorized access or other events could adversely affect our operating results and growth prospects and/or subject us to significant liability.
•The impact of global, regional or local economic and market conditions or events may adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
•Investors should anynot rely on outdated financial projections.
•We may improve our products and solutions in ways that forego short-term gains.
•Future investments in our growth strategy, including acquisitions, could disrupt our business and adversely affect our operating results, financial condition and cash flows.
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•We may need to raise additional capital, which may not be available on favorable terms, if at all, causing dilution to our stockholders, restricting our operations or adversely affecting our ability to operate our business. Further, we may be unable to obtain such financing.
•Our obligations to the holder of the Company’s assumptions prove incorrect, actual resultsL1 Notes are secured by a security interest in substantially all of our assets, so if we default on those obligations, the noteholders could foreclose on, liquidate and/or take possession of our assets. If that were to happen, we could be forced to curtail, or even to cease, our operations. The L1 Notes also restricts our ability obtain additional debt and equity financing, which may varyrestrict our ability to grow and finance our operations.
•We may be subject to potential adverse tax consequences.
•Changes in material respects from those projectedaccounting standards or other factors could negatively impact our future effective tax rate.
•Cannabis remains illegal under federal law, and therefore, strict enforcement of federal laws regarding cannabis would likely result in these forward-looking statements. Someour inability to execute our business plan.
•Our business and our clients are subject to a variety of these risksU.S. and uncertaintiesforeign laws regarding financial transactions related to cannabis, which could subject our clients to legal claims or otherwise adversely affect our business.
•We are dependent on our banking relations, and we may have difficulty accessing or consistently maintaining banking or other financial services due to our connection with the cannabis industry.
•Due to our involvement in the cannabis industry, we may have a difficult time obtaining the various insurances that are desired to operate our business and/or in enforcing certain of our commercial contracts, which may expose us to additional risk and financial liability.
•We may in the future be, amplifiedsubject to disputes and assertions by third parties with respect to alleged violations of intellectual property rights. These disputes could be costly to defend and could harm our business and operating results.
•Some of our solutions contain open source software, which may pose particular risks to our proprietary software and solutions.
•The success of our business heavily depends on our ability to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights.
•If we fail to meet all applicable requirements of the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (“Nasdaq”), and Nasdaq determines to delist our common stock, the delisting could adversely affect the market liquidity of our common stock and the market price of our common stock could decrease.
•We do not intend to pay cash dividends for the foreseeable future.
•We may be subject to securities litigation, which is expensive and could divert management attention.
•A significant portion of our total outstanding shares may be issued and/or sold into the market in the near future. This would result in dilution to existing shareholders and could cause the market price of our shares of common stock to drop significantly, even if our business is doing well.
•We may amend the terms of our public and private warrants in a manner that may be adverse to holders with the approval by the COVID-19 outbreakholders of at least 65% of then outstanding public warrants. As a result, the exercise price of your warrants could be increased, the exercise period could be shortened and there maythe number of common stock purchasable upon exercise of a warrant could be additional risks that we consider immaterial or which are unknown. It is not possibledecreased, all without the approval of all security holders.
•We have and will continue to predict or identify all such risks. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whetherincur increased costs as a result of operating as a public company and our management has and will continue to devote a substantial amount of time to new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.
compliance initiatives.
PART I
Item 1. Business |
Our Mission
We provide our clients with an easy-to-use loyalty, digital communications platform that drives their consumers to action. SpringBig empowers our clients to effectively communicate with, increase the loyalty of, and expand their consumer population through the provision of an integrated technology platform supported by robust analytics. Our goal is to become the leading SaaS software platform to cannabis retailers and brands, providing data-driven loyalty, marketing and consumer buying experience solutions throughout the U.S. and Canada, and ultimately expanding internationally and into other regulated markets.
Summary of Our Business
SpringBig is a market-leading software platform providing customer loyalty and marketing automation solutions to retailers and brands. SpringBig believes that it is a market leader in its product categories for a number of factors including, among others, (i) the number of SpringBig customers and consumers enrolled on SpringBig’s platform (and the percentage of known licensed cannabis retailers enrolled in SpringBig’s product service); (ii) scale (SpringBig has operations and clients in all states that have legalized cannabis); (iii) the comprehensive services offered by SpringBig; (iv) the technology offered by SpringBig that, among other things, connects the three categories of participants in the cannabis ecosystem (customers, retailers, and brands) and provides effective communications and marketing to end-consumers; (v) SpringBig’s expertise in loyalty programs and marketing automation; (vi) the quality of SpringBig’s client services; and (vii) SpringBig’s ability to provide data analytics.
Since our inception in 2016, we have leveraged our deep expertise in loyalty marketing to develop solutions that address the key challenges faced by retailers and brands, including those in the cannabis industry. Stringent, complex, and rapidly evolving regulations have resulted in restricted access to traditional marketing channels for cannabis retailers and brands, preventing them from utilizing many traditional methods for effectively accessing and engaging with consumers. In addition, the lack of industry-specific data and market intelligence solutions limit cannabis retailers’ and brands’ ability to efficiently market their products, thereby hindering their growth. Our platform enables our clients to increase brand awareness, engage customers, improve retention, and access actionable consumer feedback data to improve marketing. Our clients can use our loyalty marketing, digital communications, and text/email marketing solutions drive new customer acquisition, customer spend and retail foot traffic. Our proven business-to-business-to-customer (“B2B2C”) software platform creates powerful network effects between retailers and brands and provides an ability for both to connect directly with consumers. As retailers and brand scale, a virtuous cycle is created, ultimately expanding SpringBig’s reach, strengthening our value proposition:
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Today, we serve approximately 1,300 brand and retailer clients across approximately 3,000 distinct retail locations in North America. Our clients distribute in excess of 2 billion messages annually, and in the last year more than $7.5 billion of gross merchandise value (“GMV”) was accounted for by our clients utilizing our platform. SpringBig has successfully grown its revenue at a rapid pace, from $5.7 million in 2019 to $26.6 million in 2022. We have an excellent track record of securing and retaining our clients with our value proposition, which we measure by our “net revenue retention rate.” When evaluating our retention rates and calculating our net revenue retention rate, SpringBig calculates the average recurring monthly revenue from retail clients, adjusted for losses, increases and decreases in monthly subscriptions during the prior twelve months divided by the average recurring monthly subscription revenue over the same trailing twelve-month period. To determine the average recurring monthly revenue, SpringBig calculates monthly subscription revenue (derived from the monthly recurring subscription fees paid by retail clients, excluding the initial monthly contract amount of any new client subscriptions) from all retail clients, averaged over the previous twelve month period. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations - Key Operating and Financial Metrics” for a further discussion of net revenue retention rate.
We believe SpringBig is well positioned to become the leading software platform for cannabis retailers and brands by providing data-driven loyalty and marketing solutions to enhance a frictionless consumer buying experience.
What SpringBig Does
We have developed and commercialized a comprehensive suite of Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) solutions for our retailer and brand clients (who we refer to as “clients” and their end-user customers as “customers” or “consumers”).
Through their subscriptions, our retail clients have access to in-depth campaign data, robust analytics, and actionable feedback and summaries to help inform their business decisions and maximize customer engagement and retention. When a client subscribes to our platform, we charge affordable initial set-up fees and the majority of our revenue is derived from a monthly recurring subscription fee. Typically, our subscription agreements extend for twelve months, and unless terminated in accordance with their terms, generally renew for subsequent and recurring 12-month periods. Our client subscriptions cover access to our platform as well as messaging services.
Within the terms of a subscription, a client receives a pre-determined quantum of communication credits per month, and we invoice the client additional amounts if the pre-determined credit volume is exceeded in any month (though the subscription agreements do not stipulate the volume of messages the client must cause to be sent during a month). The fees for such excess use are set forth in the client’s subscription agreement. In some cases, a client has separate subscriptions relating to the use of the software platform and the communications and, in other cases, these are bundled into a single subscription.
The monthly subscription fee charged to SpringBig’s clients is set forth in such client’s subscription agreement and is based on the scope of the subscription, which is determined based on (1) the number of customers on a client’s database (e.g., use of the SpringBig platform) and/or (2) the pre-determined quantum of communication credits that such client may use per month. As noted above, if this pre-determined credit volume is exceeded in any month, SpringBig will invoice the client for such excess use by the client. Excess use revenue has historically accounted for up to 30% of revenue. We expect excess use revenue as a percentage of recurring subscription revenue to decrease as customers scale and progress to higher subscription tiers over their lifetime. SpringBig’s revenue is not based on the success or effectiveness of any marketing campaign communications.
We also generate revenue by empowering brands with direct access to consumers via our brands platform. Our recently introduced brands platform allows brands to advertise and engage cannabis consumers, drive brand awareness, acquire VIP customers with high lifetime value, and access detailed reporting insights into essential campaign attribution metrics. Pricing for the brands platform is either structured on a bulk-pay basis or as a monthly subscription.
Industry Overview
We operate within the large and expanding cannabis retail market in the United States and Canada. Cannabis is one of the fastest emerging consumer end markets in the U.S, and it is expected to grow from $20 billion in 2020 to in excess of $40 billion by 2025, representing a compound annual growth in excess of 15%. Currently, 37 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized medical cannabis, and 21 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use cannabis. While there is generally a lag period between the time a market adopts legislation permitting either medical or adult cannabis use and significant revenue generation by SpringBig, states that have recently enacted legalization measures, such as New York and New Jersey, are expected to contribute significant additional sales growth to the market by 2025 when they are expected to be fully operational. Further momentum from the legislative and regulatory changes is expected to drive expansion of the total addressable market as more states continue to legalize cannabis for adult-use and medical use. We operate in all states that have legalized cannabis in some form (be it adult-use or medical), and we plan to be a first-mover in future new markets. Additional tailwinds such as a decrease in raw material costs, intensifying competition amongst cannabis retailers and brands, and
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increased marketing spends by clients are also expected to contribute to the expansion of our total addressable market as customer engagement and retention will become ever more critical for cannabis retailers and brands to succeed.
Current technology offerings to cannabis retailers and brands are rudimentary, and the technology landscape offers a highly fragmented environment with lots of competition within a pool of small players. We believe that SpringBig is the leading loyalty and marketing software platform of scale to the cannabis industry and that we are best positioned to capture the significant uptick expected in marketing spend. There are only a few cannabis-specific companies that provide products similar to our offering, and SpringBig currently does not face competition from traditional loyalty marketing providers due to legal restrictions for cannabis at the federal level; however, as described in “Key Challenges,” below, SpringBig believes it is well-positioned to provide differentiated value as the competitive landscape evolves.
Key Challenges
The stringent and evolving regulations, which also vary state-by-state, restrict retailers’ and brands’ abilities to engage with customers, currently present significant challenges to their marketing efforts. In addition, these retailers and brands lack access to actionable data and analytics tools to market their products to customers efficiently.
Customer Engagement Needs
The cannabis industry is a highly fragmented and competitive industry where price and promotions are key drivers of sales. Further, traditional marketing channels restrict cannabis marketing, preventing businesses from marketing their products and reaching consumers. Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms serve as an outlet for businesses to market their products in most other industries, but they restrict cannabis companies from operating on their platforms. Some SMS providers also restrict licensed cannabis businesses from accessing networks, and these barriers currently make it challenging for cannabis retailers and brands to drive customer acquisition, retention, engagement, and loyalty. Furthermore, the continued penetration by cannabis focused e-commerce providers have increased competition and decreased customer loyalty for bricks and mortar cannabis retailers.
SpringBig has developed and commercialized a comprehensive suite of SaaS solutions to address the challenges that cannabis retailers and brands face in this industry. Further, while cannabis clients do not currently have access to certain traditional marketing channels, including social media platforms, we believe that our platform’s products and services, in particular our data and analytics capabilities, position us well to provide significant value to cannabis retailers and brands whenever these social media platforms become available, by enabling these businesses to determine the effective targeting and focus of their marketing solutions and loyalty programs.
As state-by-state legalization continues, we expect cannabis retailers and brands to look to expand and seek new ways to reach and engage customers efficiently.
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Data and Analytics Needs
In our experience, many cannabis retailers and brands lack access to customer feedback data that is essential to reach customers and build relationships with them efficiently. Additionally, we have found that cannabis retailers and brands do not currently have the technological infrastructure and analytical tools necessary to process the data they collect from customers into actionable data for marketing purposes. Unlike most other industries, the cannabis sector requires market intelligence and data solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of individual retailers, brands and consumers considering the current restrictive and evolving regulatory and legal environment. The current federal regulatory status of cannabis poses barriers of entry for large communication and data solution providers, representing a significant unmet need.
How SpringBig Addresses These Challenges
Our solutions are designed to address the key challenges faced by cannabis retailers and brands. Today’s industry participants lack sufficient visibility into customer behavior and need a solution that bridges communication between consumers, retailers and brands. We believe our solutions foster valuable connections and interactions that improve clarity, trust and satisfaction between these stakeholders.
Although carrier-imposed restrictions limit the use of blatant cannabis content being sent directly via SMS, SpringBig has developed a proprietary solution, compliant with TCPA, FCC, and Canadian CRTC, that helps cannabis retailers and brands communicate directly with their consumers, offering a direct communication and engagement channel, using text, images and other forms of media.
We believe our platform empowers our clients to improve and analyze customer acquisition, retention, basket spend and retail foot traffic. Retailers and brands can use SpringBig’s platform to connect with consumers, thus driving improvements in customer engagement and retention and increasing brand exposure. Once customers are engaged, the SpringBig platform enables businesses to amplify consumer spend through differentiated marketing solutions which target the consumer directly in an industry where doing so has been challenging in the past. While brand loyalty in the cannabis market has historically proven challenging, our offerings effectively connect the consumer with brands and drive loyalty.
We provide retailers with the analytics infrastructure to make data actionable. Our data solutions are purpose-built for the cannabis industry and enable our clients to leverage data to more effectively market their products to consumers. Through our integrations with 19 point of sale (“POS”) providers, 4 major cannabis e-commerce providers and other data providers, our platform offers robust consumer purchasing and marketing feedback data to allow our customers to take direct marketing and promotional actions. These commercial relationships take varying forms, depending on the relationship, including licensing and referral arrangements.
Furthermore, our proprietary auto-connect module supports further automation of marketing campaigns based on data. We also offer marketing automation solutions that provide for consistency of customer communication, which retailers and brands can use to drive customer retention and retail foot traffic. Our platform offers functionality to help build brand loyalty through loyalty programs that offer various rewards and offers. Our reporting and analytics offerings deliver valuable insights that our clients utilize to better understand their customer base, purchasing habits and trends. Consumer actions become measurable, thus providing our clients with data that can be leveraged to make better informed business decisions and more targeted marketing campaigns.
In the cannabis industry, the retailer maintains the relationship with the consumer, and it is challenging in the current regulatory environment for brands to directly interact with those consumers. The SpringBig brands platform enables brands to directly interact with consumers in a manner that is otherwise not feasible, short of such brand independently compiling and maintaining a separate consumer database.
Through SMS marketing, emails, customer feedback system and loyalty programs, we believe our solutions are crucial in managing customer relationships in this emerging industry. In time, as legislation permits, our product offerings will likely be enhanced to incorporate other aspects of the customer experience, including further enhanced data analytics and, when legally permissible, online ordering and payments.
Our Retail Offering
We serve in excess of 1,300 retailers in approximately 3,000 distinct locations providing them with a comprehensive suite of tools needed to attract customers, market products, and analyze key data. We are entrenched with most of the leading multi-state operators which allows us to capture the “enterprise” customer base, while also being equally suited to the smaller cannabis retail operators.
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The anticipated growth of the cannabis retail market presents an opportunity to reach additional retailers as cannabis becomes more widely used and states continue to legalize. The tools that we provide allow retailers to engage and better communicate with their consumers. Further, SpringBig offers retailers robust reporting and analytics tools, which help them understand product and sales trends, track consumer activity, and gain insights that can be leveraged to drive sales.
On the consumer side, we offer a suite of elegant consumer-facing products. The enrollment process is streamlined and designed to provide for compliance and clarity. Once enrolled, consumers can develop their profile, will receive appropriate messages and offers and access their retailer’s specific rewards wallet application, where multiple images, videos, and links can be added for the consumer to explore.
An important component of our platform is text message marketing, which allows clients to send promotions to existing customers. Our text messaging platform offers a variety of features, including multiple customer segmentations, which automatically groups customers into segments based on their preferences and purchase behavior. Retailers also have access to the “autoconnects” feature, which allows them to easily leverage customer data and send messages directly to consumers based on certain actions and also includes functionality to help clients avoid missed opportunities to send text messages. We also provide an e-signature app, designed to accommodate a proper ‘double opt-in’ procedure, through both implied and expressed consent, to facilitate compliance with the TCPA, FCC, and Canadian CRTC. Finally, campaign performance analytics provide transparency on deliverability and message opening rates. We utilize proprietary technology to filter out fake phone numbers, burner phones, and landlines. In an environment where communication with cannabis consumers is constrained, text messaging is extremely effective in influencing purchase behavior, while also driving foot traffic and continuing to reach new customers and target markets.
Retailers compile highly-targeted marketing campaigns based on the consumer profiles and preferences and are provided with detailed campaign metrics that enable further refinement and enhanced targeting of future campaigns. The consumer application (wallet) itself can easily be customized with a distinct icon, name, layout, and color scheme, thus allowing for brand consistency and a higher-quality and frictionless customer experience. Here, customers can access and check their points, redeem rewards, and view upcoming offers. The wallet fully integrates with cannabis e-commerce providers, allowing customers to place orders directly from their wallet. The features and ease of use that comes with the SpringBig rewards wallet creates customer loyalty and establishes a relationship between the client and the consumer. Customer relationships are a crucial component in retail that has been restricted as a result of the complexities of the cannabis industry. Nonetheless, we have designed our platform to make this connection easy.
The SpringBig platform also provides support for consumer feedback with robust dashboards that track key survey performance indicators that allow clients to measure customer satisfaction. The “Feedback by SpringBig” offering allows businesses to survey customers post-purchase, track and analyze feedback, and then take action based on this information. From the initial online search to in-store purchase, clients possess the ability to track the entire customer experience. Comprehensive reports give clients the tools to better understand customer trends, and allows the retailer to analyze specific operational, product, and promotional opportunities. By identifying key trends, our users are able to improve customer loyalty and increase retention.
SpringBig offers retailers powerful insight dashboards that provide comprehensive data that can be used to make informed business decisions. Our platform also allows retailers to create marketing campaigns, ensuring that consumers receive all relevant promotions. Once a campaign launches, retailers are able to analyze in-depth data in order to measure campaign success. ERP-level customer data management and analysis also allow retailers to organize their sales funnel and provide a personalized, targeted approach to marketing campaigns.
Our platform integrates with many of the leading POS systems in the cannabis industry, which allows retailers to simplify workstreams by automatically collecting a plethora of data on consumers. Integrating our marketing automation software with the retailer’s POS system makes for more efficient management of customer relationships and facilitates using specific POS data in design and implementation of marketing campaigns. With integrations, in real-time retailers can review performance results and the return on investment (“ROI”) for each marketing campaign. Additionally, the SpringBig clients are also able to ascertain which cannabis brands and products perform the best, thus allowing retailers to customize meaningful messaging and offers for their customer base.
Our Brand Marketing Platform
Our brand marketing platform offers a leading direct-to-consumer marketing automation platform in the cannabis industry. The data-rich direct-to-consumer marketing engine allows brands to target and measure the complete transaction cycle from initial engagement through point of sale.
We provide cannabis brands with the opportunity to provide content that, in turn, our retail clients can utilize in their targeted consumer marketing campaigns. This provides the brand with differentiated access to the consumer and that can be effectively leveraged through the brand and retailer cooperating in a promotional campaign on our platform.
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Brands aim to materially increase their brand awareness, expand retail partnerships and acquire and retain new customers. The SpringBig brands platform provides brand clients with access to detailed reports that offer valuable insights into essential campaign attribution metrics. There are approximately 5,000 existing cannabis brands in the U.S., and this early-stage initiative represents a significant future growth opportunity for us. Our marketing database with over 40 million consumers is a highly-differentiated SpringBig asset that powers cannabis brands in driving brand recognition and promoting awareness.
Our Platform and Data Assets
We have created a distinct B2B2C platform supported by a wealth of data assets to effectively monetize our large and growing base of cannabis consumers. Currently, the cannabis industry falls significantly short of market intelligence and data solutions that would typically be found in other industries: retailers lack analytics infrastructure to make data actionable for marketing, and lack of feedback data poses challenges for brands to reach and establish relationships with consumers directly. Our leading messaging, loyalty, and customer experience platform recognizes powerful network effects among brands, retailers, and cannabis consumers to enable our clients to make better business decisions. We retain retailers as paying SaaS subscription customers, who then acquire consumers. Brands target retailers that successfully acquire loyal consumers, which drives increased retailer interest and recurring revenue.
The SpringBig platform is also supported by large data assets created by our fully integrated cannabis technology ecosystem. We partner with industry leading data analytics, e-commerce, and POS providers to monetize our base of over 40 million consumers and generate revenue for our clients.
We intend to continue to invest in our platform to enhance its functionality and the value of our data assets so that both we and our clients can continue to grow. We anticipate building on our existing platform infrastructure so that we are well positioned to benefit from the further emergence of the burgeoning cannabis and cannabis-tech markets.
Certain Regulatory Considerations and How We Adapt to Changing Regulatory Landscape
SpringBig helps drive regulatory compliance. We pride ourselves on being ahead of the curve when it comes to changes to regulations to both SMS and to the overall cannabis landscape.
The TCPA prohibits autodialed text messages, unless made with the prior express, written consent of the receiving party, to any telephone number assigned to a cell phone. Additionally, mobile carriers act as gatekeepers between businesses and consumers. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (“CTIA”), a trade organization for mobile carriers (including SpringBig’s messaging distributors), periodically issues industry best practice guidance which currently includes prohibiting messaging content that contains or promotes sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, or tobacco (referred to as “SHAFT”), and interpretation of this guidance includes cannabis within the tobacco category. SpringBig’s platform (including, in particular, its text message marketing) is designed to ensure compliance with TCPA, SHAFT guidelines, and other applicable CTIA guidance; SpringBig proactively monitors and, as necessary, adapts its platform and services to comply with these guidelines and standards. Further, as part of its proactive monitoring of mobile carriers’ guidelines, SpringBig endeavors to maintain close relationships with our messaging distributors, and as such, have been made well aware of any carrier-implemented restrictions that may impact the way cannabis retailers and brands communicate with their consumers via SMS. These relationships have allowed us to continue servicing our customers in a rapidly changing environment, with no disruption of service or restrictions from sending messages from major carriers.
SpringBig’s customers can utilize the platform consent interface or other means to obtain the consumer’s consent that is required to receive messages, and, as an integral part of its services, SpringBig creates templates for its retail customers that are in compliance with SHAFT guidelines to use in promotional messaging. The approved templates do not explicitly discuss or promote cannabis, but rather provide general information about the retailer, the consumer’s reward status and can also incorporate a link that directs opted-in consumers to additional promotional material created by the retailer customers.
As a third-party provider of a software platform, state cannabis regulatory marketing rules generally do not apply to SpringBig. SpringBig’s retail customers are responsible for ensuring that their marketing materials comply with state law.
Additionally, SpringBig has instituted policies and procedures to verify the licensing status of our clients (which are utilized in on-boarding both retail and brand clients in addition to other client diligence) and to conduct periodic screening to confirm the continued licensing status of our clients. Further, SpringBig is constantly monitoring proposed and pending legislative changes on the state and federal level. We have an emerging markets-focused sales team that is designed to ensure SpringBig is developing relationships with retailers, brands, and partners in emerging markets, so when the legalization status changes, those retailers, brands and potential partners already have a deep partnership formed with SpringBig. One of the primary ways we do this is through our “Greenhouse” program. This program allows licensed retailers who have not yet opened their doors to build their potential consumer list, design their loyalty program, and meet our extensive partnership network to
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help inform their tech stack decisions as they move towards being fully operational. We have found that this program has helped us make headway in the emerging cannabis markets and sets up the foundation for a strong partnership in the future.
Our Competitive Strengths
We believe that we are a leading provider of customer loyalty and marketing automation solutions to cannabis retailers and brands, and our key competitive strengths are the following:
We are a leading direct-to-consumer marketing and customer loyalty platform in the cannabis industry. We are the largest loyalty & marketing automation provider in the cannabis space with over 40 million consumers enrolled in our platform, and over 1,300 retailer and brand customers with approximately 3,000 discrete retail locations. We started serving the cannabis market in 2016 and were a pioneer in providing SMS marketing solutions to cannabis retailers. As we expanded our customer base, platform and solutions, we now serve approximately one-third of all retail locations in the United States. We partner with the majority of the leading multi-state-operators (“MSOs”). We believe that our differentiated suite of solutions and deep understanding of customer needs will enable us to expand our leadership position as we grow into existing and new markets and expand our offering.
We have a diverse geographic footprint, with operations in all states that have legalized cannabis in some form. We believe that our broader geographic footprint, scope of operations, and established position in the industry all support our efforts to be a first mover in future new markets and also may make it more difficult, time-intensive and costly for competitors to replicate.
We provide critical value to our customers demonstrated by leading net retention. Loyalty and messaging are critical for cannabis retailers and brands to directly engage, connect, and retain their customer base. Our suite of solutions is designed to enable our customers to engage with their consumers in an efficient way, sustainably driving customer retention, acquisition, spend and foot-traffic. On average, our clients are able to recover the cost of their monthly subscription for the SpringBig platform within a couple of days of utilizing our offerings each month. In addition, we have successfully integrated with 19 of the industry’s leading POS systems, which enables us to collect and analyze consumer data and feedback, providing our clients with actionable insights for marketing purposes, and we have also completed our initial POS system integration outside of the cannabis industry. Our ability to expand our relationships with customers, and their satisfaction in our product offerings and client service, are demonstrated by our category leading net revenue retention rate being consistently above 100% and having averaged in excess of 110% over the past three years. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations - Key Operating and Financial Metrics” for a further discussion of net revenue retention rate.
In addition to the value provided through our platform, we believe that the quality of our client service and our responsiveness to clients provides us with a competitive advantage. Management believes that our established presence in the industry and personal one-on-one service philosophy enhances our ability to compete favorably in attracting and retaining clients.
We have a deep expertise of marketing regulation in the cannabis industry and the challenges faced by our clients. We entered the cannabis market in 2016 and have leveraged our management’s expertise in loyalty programs and marketing automation from other sectors to solve the challenges faced by cannabis retailers and brands to engage with their customers and increase retention. We have designed specific campaign and communication solutions that comply with cannabis regulation and are rapidly implementable by our clients as they expand in the high growth and highly competitive cannabis industry. We are highly differentiated from our competitors in several ways. We have integrations with 19 POS providers in the cannabis market, and these integrations allow our clients to offer their consumers a seamless experience for points redemption and loyalty program enrollment. Additionally, we have invested, and continue to invest significantly in ensuring we have a robust, scalable business, with a particular emphasis on client success and engineering. While SpringBig does not obtain customers on behalf of our clients, our client success organization services each client from contract signing throughout their life with SpringBig, providing onboarding services, and on-going education and support. This team is also responsible for guiding our clients through the ever-changing regulatory environment. Our engineering team, primarily based in the U.S., makes up the largest percentage of our staff. The team is constantly working to enhance the platform with the addition of new features and functionality at a regular cadence to ensure we remain significantly ahead of our competitors in this regard. Additionally, after completing the onboarding process, SpringBig customers are assigned a dedicated client success manager who is responsible for overall account management, including monitoring campaign deliverability and providing information on strategic campaign and auto-connect usage. Our client support team is available for all inbound requests from 8am-8pm ET and services all North American time zones.
We are the highly regarded platform of choice to consolidate the highly fragmented cannabis technology ecosystem. As a leading provider of customer loyalty and marketing automation solutions to cannabis retailer and brands, we are well positioned to be a consolidator of a highly fragmented technology ecosystem. Our growth strategy is informed by our clients’ needs, and we have meaningful visibility into such needs as a result of the wealth of data our platform provides. We plan to
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create significant value by leveraging consumer purchasing and feedback data across multiple new vertical software offerings across loyalty, data analytics, and, when legally permissible, online ordering and payments.
We assembled a highly experienced senior management team to execute on our strategy. Our Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Jeffrey Harris, has over 35 years of deep industry experience and has successfully founded loyalty marketing businesses in the past. Our Chief Financial Officer, Paul Sykes, has over 20 years of experience as CFO of high-growth SaaS businesses in a public company environment. Our Chief Technology Officer, Navin Anand, has over 10 years of experience in leading large technology groups in SaaS and telecom organizations.
Our Growth Strategies
Our goal is to become the leading SaaS software platform to cannabis retailers and brands, providing data-driven loyalty, marketing and consumer buying experience solutions. In order to achieve our goal, we plan to implement the following organic and M&A growth strategies along with expanding in keeping with the changing regulatory landscape in the U.S.
Expansion Within Existing Retailers and Brand Customers
As of today, we service approximately 1,300 retailer and brand clients with approximately 3,000 retail locations, which is comprised of most of the largest multi-state cannabis companies and a significant number of single-state operators. Our excellent reputation in the cannabis market and comprehensive solutions offering provide us with the opportunity to expand our footprint and grow these accounts via up-selling and cross-selling. We grow alongside our clients via a “flywheel” effect as we benefit from the growth of their businesses and expansion of their customer base, which is, in turn, enabled by their use of our platform. We have a track record of using our comprehensive product offerings and results-driven proposition to grow our relationships with clients and drive revenue.
We also plan to grow our business by expanding accounts with existing clients that may not have initially leveraged our platform for all of their locations. Our clients realize significant returns on investment and increased customer engagement, which has historically driven the success of our land and expand strategy. In addition, we expect to further our penetration with existing clients as they enter new markets, as our platform will touch more end-customers and gather more actionable data.
Further Penetrate Existing Markets
We plan to leverage and expand our existing sales force and marketing strategy to acquire additional cannabis retailers and brands as new clients. We have a successful track record of consistently adding new clients. As existing markets in legalized states expand and cannabis becomes more widely used, we believe our existing presence positions us to continue to gain market share. We believe that the continued growth of the cannabis market and evolution of regulation, both in terms of legalizing recreational and medical use cannabis (as described below) as well as regarding communications and advertisements, will drive further adoption of our platform.
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New Medical and Recreational Markets
As an increasing number of states in the U.S. legalize medical cannabis use or transition from medical to recreational cannabis use, a significant growth opportunity presents itself as the number of retailers, the consumer base and total spend all increase. We have historically been responsive as a first-mover into new medical and adult-use markets as they become legal, which gives us a significant competitive advantage to grow as state by state legalization evolves. We believe our deep understanding of the space coupled with our experienced sales force will enable us to quickly enter and execute in new markets and capture new business, which we can sustain via our exceptional product offerings. SpringBig entered the Canadian market in February 2021 through acquiring a Canadian business and we now provide full-servicing of our Canadian clients through our Toronto office. Although the revenues derived from the Canadian market in 2022 were immaterial, we are experiencing significant growth in the number of clients as the market continues to develop in Canada.
New Features and Functionality
We intend to continue investing in and developing our technology capabilities to offer our clients more advanced and comprehensive solutions. This will help enable us to extend our platform beyond our core offering which presents significant upsell opportunities. Some of these future offerings may include e-commerce, data and analytics, programmatic advertising, budtender education, payments (when legally permissible), product referral automation, and commerce automation (in-store kiosks).
Monetization of GMV
Approximately $7.5 billion of GMV is currently processed by the retailers that are on our platform. Through our entrenched position with retailers delivering mission critical messaging and loyalty solutions, we believe we are well-positioned to monetize a portion of GMV through payments and reward points. We plan to capture a portion of this spend through the SpringBig rewards wallet solution that our current clients utilize to manage their rewards program. Additionally, with over 40 million consumers and 19 POS integrations, we have access to a wealth of data that drive our proprietary insights. While these integrations assist in our ability to offer feedback to our customers, these commercial relationships do not represent a material amount of SpringBig’s revenues, constitute a material amount of shared revenue, or constitute a material distribution source for SpringBig. However, we believe there is a path to monetize this data and create new revenue opportunities.
Brands
We expect brand revenue to drive a significant part of our growth going forward, and we are focused on capturing a portion of the over 5,000 brands that are in the cannabis space today. We rolled out the SpringBig brands offering in 2020, which has allowed us to grow spend across our client base. As the cannabis industry matures, we believe the continued proliferation of branded products will meaningfully drive their sales and marketing spend to the cannabis industry, with a trajectory that will surpass that of retailers in the future. As brands grow in scale and become nationally recognizable, we are well positioned to capture a significant share of the communication, engagement and loyalty dollars spent by brands and therefore Brands clients will start to represent a more significant proportion of SpringBig’s total revenue.
M&A
As a leading provider of customer loyalty and marketing automation solutions to cannabis retailer and brands, we have differentiated insights into the critical needs of the cannabis industry. Our M&A strategy is informed by our client feedback, and we have identified the following needs that guide our M&A strategic focus:
•Cannabis retailers and brands lack actionable data and need better insight and recommendation technology.
•Purpose-built marketing technology and targeting is necessary to improve consumer acquisition and retention.
•The cannabis industry lacks robust fintech solutions, including processing of payments and consumer credit.
The cannabis technology space is highly fragmented, and we believe that we are well positioned to be a leading consolidator. We intend to explore M&A opportunities in adjacencies that address our client’s critical needs, and enable us to expand our product and service offerings, expand our geographic reach, increase our scale and realize material revenue and cost synergies. We are well positioned to consolidate the technology ecosystem with clear strategic rationale and value creation across loyalty, data analytics, online ordering, and, when legally permissible, POS/payment opportunities.
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Sales
Our sales team is primarily based out of our Boca Raton, Florida headquarters with additional team members in our Canadian office in Toronto, Ontario and client services support staff at both these locations and in Seattle, Washington to assist new and existing clients. As of December 31, 2022, of the 126 people we employed, 64 individuals focused exclusively on selling and client service. Our sales force is well versed in our offerings, including consumer facing, retailer platform, and brand platform products.
As we continue to scale, we expect to continue to recognize significant efficiencies with our sales effort. Currently, our primary focus revolves around converting inbound leads, as cannabis retailers and brands look to join our platform upon beginning their operations. We also utilize state cannabis regulators’ lists of licensees to internally generate client leads.
Marketing
Similar to our sales efforts, we expect to continue to achieve marketing efficiency as we scale our business. We believe our platform’s scale and strong customer loyalty market themselves, however we still intend to implement a variety of marketing efforts to attract additional retailers and brands not yet on our platform. Marketing efforts include multiple strategies designed to attract and retain both retail and brands subscribers.
Technology
We invested significantly to create a fully integrated technology stack that connects the three categories of participants in the cannabis ecosystem, namely the customers, retailers, and brands. By partnering with other industry leaders through various data analytics, e-commerce and POS platforms, we help to enhance engagement, analytics, and create a truly omni-channel experience for our clients and their customers.
Our suite of SaaS-based solutions provides cutting-edge technologies, and we continue to be the database of record for over a thousand cannabis businesses, with customer profiles being created first through our loyalty platform, and through integration of our platform with POS systems, where we can collect crucial data points through POS transactions. Below is a summary of how our technology supports our clients:
•Powerful POS Integration Sync: Powerful POS integrations allow us to provide real-time redemptions for both loyalty rewards and promotional offers, real-time campaign analytics, and deep transaction data.
•Customizable Permission Settings: Our platform enables clients to establish their own levels of user permissions for their retail and marketing staff to ensure the correct people have the correct access to data and marketing tools.
•Datahub: The robust data warehouse provides clients with access to all of their data and allows them to create their own insights.
•Insight Data Dashboards: Our customizable dashboards help clients conveniently visualize the most meaningful data and organize it for easy review.
•Budz: Our customer referral engine, allows retailers’ best customers to become brand ambassadors by referring new customers to their favorite stores.
•Feedback by SpringBig: Our customer feedback tool allows retailers to capture post-transaction feedback about their store, products, and staff.
•Autoconnect: Allow retailers to reach their consumers at critical stages during the consumer buying journey including win-back, abandon cart, and purchase behavior messaging.
Revenue Concentration
We have a diversified client base of approximately 1,300 clients with approximately 3,000 retail locations. No single client accounted for more than 11% of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2022, and 11% of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021. Our top 10 clients accounted for 27% and 24% of total revenue over the same periods. In addition, our revenue is well-diversified across the U.S. and Canada. No single state or province generated more than 15% our revenue for the years ended December 31, 2022 and December 31, 2021. We do not currently generate a material amount of revenue in Canada.
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Research & Development
We conduct concerted product development efforts focused on implementing new, value-add features to our platform, as well as developing new solutions that increase functionality, data-driven actionable insights and enhance ease of use throughout the customer journey. We expect our research and development expenses to remain consistent as a percentage of total revenue with increased growth continuing to support product enhancements.
Seasonality
We have not experienced a significant impact on our results due to seasonality. However, our clients may experience seasonality in their businesses that, in turn, can impact the revenue generated from them. Our business may become more seasonal in the future and historical patterns in our business may not be a reliable indicator of future performance.
Competition
Our direct competitors for various elements of our offerings and services include businesses both within and outside of the cannabis industry that are specifically focused on marketing and customer engagement, commerce and POS solutions or SaaS software, as well as companies focused on technology solutions focused on the cannabis industry.
We believe that the principal competitive factors in our market include: the scale of our operations in all states that have legalized cannabis in some form and the ability to be a first mover in future new markets, the ability to offer comprehensive services across customer relationship management (“CRM”) and marketing software, the ability to support client promotions and the building of loyalty with end-consumers and increase retention, the ability to collect and analyze consumer data and feedback (and providing clients with actionable insights for marketing purposes), and effective communications and marketing to end-customers. We believe we compete favorably based on these factors.
For additional information about the risks to our business related to competition, see the section captioned “Risk Factors—Risks Related to SpringBig’s Business and Industry—We currently face intense competition in marketing and advertising services available to our clients, and we expect competition to further intensify as the cannabis industry continues to evolve.”
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property and proprietary rights are valuable assets that are important to our business. In our efforts to safeguard our copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks and other intellectual property rights worldwide, we rely on a combination of federal, state, common law and international rights in the jurisdictions in which we operate.
We have an ongoing trademark and service mark registration program pursuant to which we register our brand names in the United States. As of December 31, 2022, we have been issued trademark registrations in the United States, covering among other marks, “SpringBig.”
We also rely on non-disclosure agreements, invention assignment agreements, intellectual property assignment agreements, or license agreements with employees, independent contractors, consumers, software providers and other third parties, which protect and limit access to and use of our proprietary intellectual property.
Though we rely, in part, upon these legal and contractual protections, we believe that factors such as the skills and ingenuity of our employees, as well as the functionality and frequent enhancements to our platform are larger contributors to our success in the marketplace.
Circumstances outside our control could pose a threat to our intellectual property rights. For more information, see the section entitled “Risk Factors—Risks Related to SpringBig’s Intellectual Property.”
Employees and Human Capital Resources
As of December 31, 2022, we had 126 full-time employees, including employees focused on engineering, client success, corporate development, brands, digital message and general and administrative and professional services. We also engage independent contractors to supplement our permanent workforce. 114 employees are located in the United States and 12 employees are located in Canada.
We believe that being able to attract and retain top talent is both a strategic advantage for SpringBig and necessary to realize our objectives for our business. We consider our relations with our employees to be good. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or covered by collective bargaining agreements, and we have not experienced any work stoppages.
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Corporate Information
We were originally formed on January 24, 2020 under the name “Tuatara Capital Acquisition Corporation,” as a blank check company incorporated as a Cayman Islands exempted company, and formedincorporated for the purpose of effecting a merger, amalgamation, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses, which we refer to throughout this Annual Report as our initial business combination.
Our principal executive office is located at 621 NW 53rd Street, Suite 260, Boca Raton, Florida 33487. Our telephone number is (800) 772-9172. Our website address is www.springbig.com. Information contained on our website is not a tax exemption undertaking frompart of this prospectus, and the Cayman Islands government that, in accordance with Section 6 of the Tax Concessions Law (2018 Revision) of the Cayman Islands, for a period of 20 years from the date of the undertaking, no law which is enacted in the Cayman Islands imposing any tax to be levied on profits, income, gains or appreciations shall apply to us or our operations and, in addition, that no tax to be levied on profits, income, gains or appreciations or which is in the nature of estate duty or inheritance tax shall be payable (1) on or in respectinclusion of our shares, debentures or other obligations or (2) by way of the withholdingwebsite address in whole or in part of a payment of dividend or other distribution of income or capital by us to our shareholders or a payment of principal or interest or other sums due under a debenture or other obligation of us..
Item 1A. Risk Factors |
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
We have a relatively short operating history in a rapidly evolving industry, which makes it difficult to evaluate our future prospects and may increase the risk that we will not be successful. As our costs increase, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to maintain profitability in the future.
We have a relatively short operating history in a quickly evolving industry that may not develop as we anticipate, if at all. Both our relatively short operating history and the pace of dramatic change in the cannabis industry, and the complex, multiple and sometimes conflicting regulatory regimes applicable to it, makes it difficult to assess our future prospects, and you should evaluate our business in light of the risks and difficulties we may encounter as the industry continues to evolve. While our revenue has grown in recent periods, this growth may not be sustainable due to a number of factors, including the maturation of our business, increased competition and the eventual decline in the number of new major geographic markets in which the sale of cannabis is permitted and to which we have not already expanded. We may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to achieve and sustain profitability. Additionally, we expect our costs to increase in future periods as we expend substantial financial and other resources on, among other things:
•sales and marketing, including continued investment in our current marketing efforts and future marketing initiatives;
•successfully compete with existing and future providers of other forms of marketing and customer engagement;
•managing complex, disparate and rapidly evolving regulatory regimes imposed by U.S. and Canadian federal, state and provincial, local and other non-U.S. governments around the world applicable to cannabis and cannabis-related businesses;
•executing our growth strategy;
•hiring, integrating and retaining talented sales and other personnel;
•expansion domestically and internationally in an effort to increase our client usage, client base, retail locations we serve, and our sales to our clients;
•development of new products and services, and increased investment in the ongoing development of our existing products and services;
•continuing to invest in our securities. If any of the following events occur,scaling our business, financial conditionparticularly around client success and operating resultsengineering;
•avoiding interruptions or disruptions in our platform or services; and
•general administration, including a significant increase in legal and accounting expenses related to public company compliance, continued compliance with various regulations applicable to cannabis industry businesses and other work arising from the growth and maturity of our company.
These expenditures may be materially adversely affected. In that event,not result in additional revenue or the tradinggrowth of our business. If we fail to continue to grow revenue or to sustain profitability, the market price of our securities could decline, and youour business, operating results and financial condition could be adversely affected.
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If we do not successfully develop and deploy new software, platform features or services to address the needs of our clients, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could suffer.
Our success has been based on our ability to design software, platform features and services that address the needs of our clients. We spend substantial amounts of time and money researching and developing new technologies and enhanced versions of existing platform features, as well as new features, to meet our clients’ rapidly evolving needs. As consumers and clients demand comprehensive data analysis from platforms such as us, in conjunction with their point-of-sale providers, our ability to integrate with a client’s POS system and other third party technology integrations may become increasingly important. If we are unable to arrange or complete new integrations, or improve our existing integrations, we may lose allmarket share to competitors. There is no assurance that enhancements to our software, platform features or part of your investment. See also the Risk Factors thatnew services or capabilities will be set forthcompelling to our clients or gain market acceptance. If our research and development investments do not accurately anticipate market demand or if we fail to develop our software, platform features or services in a manner that satisfies client preferences in a timely and cost-effective manner, we may fail to retain our existing clients or increase demand for our services.
The introduction of new products and services by competitors or the development of entirely new technologies to replace existing service offerings could make our platforms obsolete or adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. We may experience difficulties with software development, design, or marketing that delay or prevent our development, introduction or implementation of new platforms, platform features or capabilities, or cause errors to arise with our existing software. We have in the past experienced delays in our preliminary prospectus/proxy statementinternally planned release dates of new features and capabilities, and there can be no assurance that new platforms, platform features, or capabilities will be released according to be includedschedule. Any delays or other disruptions could result in a Registration Statement on Form S-4 that we filed on February 10, 2022 withadverse publicity, loss of revenue or market acceptance, or claims by consumers or suppliers brought against us, any of which could harm our business. Moreover, the SEC relatingdesign and development of new platforms or new platform features and capabilities to our proposed business combination with SpringBig.
If we fail to retain our existing clients and consumers or to acquire new clients and consumers in a cost-effective manner, our revenue may decrease and our business may be harmed.
We compete in a dynamic, innovative, and fairly new market, which we expect will continue to evolve rapidly. We believe that our success is dependent on our ability to continue identifying and anticipating the needs of our clients and, in turn, their consumers, and retaining our existing clients and adding new clients. While we have historically been able to grow and retain our client base, we may grow more slowly than we expect or than we have grown in the past. Our ability to retain clients depends in part on our ability to create and maintain high levels of client satisfaction, which we may not always be capable of providing, including for reasons outside of our control. Any decrease in client satisfaction or other change negatively affecting our ability to retain clients could result in a rapid, concentrated impact to our results going forward. Therefore, our failure to retain existing clients, even if such losses are offset by an increase in revenue resulting from the acquisition of new clients, could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
If we fail to expand effectively into new markets, our revenue and business will be adversely affected.
While a key part of our business strategy is to add clients in our existing geographic markets, we intend to expand our operations into new markets if and as cannabis continues to be legalized in new markets. Any such expansion places us in competitive markets with which we may be unfamiliar, requires us to analyze the Business Combination pursuantpotential applicability of new and potentially complicated regulations regarding the usage, sale and marketing of cannabis, and involves various risks, including the need to invest significant time and resources and the possibility that returns on such investments will not be achieved for several years, if at all. As a result of such expansion, we may incur losses or otherwise fail to enter new markets successfully. In attempting to establish a presence in new markets, we expect to incur significant expenses and face various other challenges, such as expanding our compliance efforts to cover those new markets. These efforts may prove more expensive than we currently anticipate, and we may not succeed in increasing our revenues sufficiently to offset these expenses. Our current and any future expansion plans will require significant resources and management attention.
We have a significant working capital deficiency and a history of losses, may need to raise additional funds to meet our obligations and sustain our operations and may not achieve profitability in the future. There is substantial doubt as to our ability to continue as a going concern.
SpringBig is an early-stage company with a history of losses. We incurred net losses of $13.1 million and $5.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2022 and December 31, 2021, respectively. In addition, as of December 31, 2022, we had a working capital deficiency of $1.5 million and we may need to raise additional funds to meet our obligations and sustain our
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operations. In their report for the year ended December 31, 2022, our auditors have expressed substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern. In addition, based on the factors described under “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations – Liquidity & Capital Resources,” as of December 31, 2022, we concluded that there was substantial doubt about our ability to continue to operate as a going concern for the 12 months following the issuance of the financial statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. SpringBig may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We may continue to incur net losses in the future, and such losses may fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter. We will need to generate and sustain higher revenue for our business generally, and achieve greater scale and generate greater operating cash flows in future periods in order to achieve and maintain profitability.
Our efforts to grow our business may be more costly than we expect, and we may not be able to increase our revenue sufficiently to offset our higher operating expenses. We may continue to incur significant losses, and we may not achieve or maintain future profitability, due to a number of reasons, including the risks described in this report, unforeseen expenses, difficulties, complications and delays, and other unknown events. Furthermore, if our future growth and operating performance fail to meet investor or analyst expectations, or if we have future negative cash flow or losses resulting from our investment in acquiring customers or expanding our operations, this could make it difficult for you to evaluate our current business and our future prospects and may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Federal law enforcement may deem our clients to be in violation of U.S. federal law, and, in particular the CSA. A change in U.S. federal policy on cannabis enforcement and strict enforcement of federal cannabis laws against our clients would undermine our business model and materially affect our business and operations.
U.S. federal law, and more specifically the CSA, proscribes the cultivation, processing, distribution, sale, advertisement and possession of cannabis. As a result, U.S. federal law enforcement authorities, in their attempt to regulate the illegal or unauthorized production, distribution, promotion, sale, possession, or use of cannabis, may seek to bring criminal actions against our clients under the CSA. If our clients are found to be violating U.S. federal law relating to cannabis, they may be subject not only to criminal charges and convictions, but also to forfeiture of property, significant fines and penalties, disgorgement of profits, administrative sanctions, cessation of business activities, or civil liabilities arising from proceedings initiated by either the U.S. government or private citizens. Any of these actions or consequences on our clients could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results or financial condition, or could force us to cease operations, and as a result, our investors could lose their entire investment.
Further, to the Merger Agreement.extent any law enforcement actions require us to respond to subpoenas, or undergo search warrants, for client records, cannabis businesses could elect to cease using our products and services. Until the U.S. federal government changes the laws with respect to cannabis, and particularly if the U.S. Congress does not extend the omnibus spending bill’s protection of state medical cannabis programs, described below under the caption “Cannabis remains illegal under federal law, and therefore, strict enforcement of federal laws regarding cannabis would likely result in our inability to execute our business plan,” to apply to all state cannabis programs, U.S. federal authorities could more strictly enforce current federal prohibitions and restrictions. An increase in federal enforcement against companies licensed under state cannabis laws could negatively impact the state cannabis industries and, in turn, our business, operating results, financial condition, brand and reputation.
Some of our clients currently and in the future may not be in compliance with licensing and related requirements under applicable laws and regulations. Allowing unlicensed or noncompliant businesses to access our platform and services, or allowing businesses to use our solutions in a noncompliant manner, may subject us to legal or regulatory enforcement and negative publicity, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, brand and reputation. In addition, allowing businesses that engage in false or deceptive advertising practices to use our solutions may subject us to negative publicity, which could have similar adverse impacts on us.
While we have instituted policies and procedures in connection with the verification and periodic screening of the licensing status of our clients operating cannabis retail businesses (and our contracts with clients generally provide for client representations relating to compliance, termination of services in the case of client noncompliance, and client indemnification obligations), some of our clients currently and in the future may not be in compliance with licensing and related requirements under applicable state laws and regulations. There could be legal enforcement actions against unlicensed or insufficiently licensed entities selling cannabis, which could negatively impact us.
Any legal or regulatory enforcement against us based on our platform, the content provided by clients, the marketing campaigns created by clients on our platform or noncompliance by our clients with licensing and other legal requirements, could subject us to various risks, including monetary penalties and/or required changes to our platform or business model, and would likely cause us to experience negative publicity. Any of these developments could materially and adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, brand, and reputation.
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We generally do not, and cannot, ensure that our clients will conduct their business activities in a manner compliant with the complex, disparate and constantly evolving regulations and requirements affecting the legal cannabis industry. As a result, federal, state, provincial or local government authorities may seek to bring criminal, administrative or regulatory enforcement actions against our clients, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results or financial conditions, or could force us to cease operations.
While our solutions provide features to support our clients’ compliance with certain regulations and other legal requirements applicable to the cannabis industry, and we have policies and procedures regarding the verification and periodic screening of the licensing status of our clients, we generally do not, and cannot, ensure that at all times our clients will conduct their business activities in a manner compliant with such regulations and requirements, in whole or in part. Their legal noncompliance could result in regulatory and even criminal actions against them, which could lead to a material adverse impact on our business and operating results or financial condition, and as a result, our investors could lose their entire investment. For additional information, see the other risk factors in this section, including “Some of our clients currently and in the future may not be in compliance with licensing and related requirements under applicable laws and regulations. Allowing unlicensed or noncompliant businesses to access our platform and services, or allowing businesses to use our solutions in a noncompliant manner, may subject us to legal or regulatory enforcement and negative publicity, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, financial condition, brand and reputation. In addition, allowing businesses that engage in false or deceptive advertising practices to use our solutions may subject us to negative publicity, which could have similar adverse impacts on us.”
Our business is dependent on U.S. state laws and regulations and Canadian federal and provincial laws and regulations pertaining to the cannabis industry.
Although the federal CSA classifies cannabis as a Schedule I controlled substance, many U.S. states have legalized cannabis to varying degrees. In addition, the enactment of the Cannabis Act legalized the commercial cultivation and processing of cannabis for medical and adult-use purposes in Canada and created a federal legal framework for controlling the production, distribution, promotion, sale and possession of cannabis. The Cannabis Act also provides the provinces and territories of Canada with the authority to regulate other aspects of adult-use cannabis, such as distribution, sale, minimum age requirements (subject to the minimum set forth in the Cannabis Act), places where cannabis can be consumed, and a range of other matters. The governments of every Canadian province and territory have implemented regulatory regimes for the distribution and sale of cannabis for recreational purposes. In addition, subsection 23(1) of the Cannabis Act provides that it is prohibited to publish, broadcast or otherwise disseminate, on behalf of another person, with or without consideration, any promotion that is prohibited by a number of sections of the Cannabis Act. The Cannabis Act therefore includes provisions that could apply to certain aspects of our business, both directly to the solutions we provide and indirectly on account of any noncompliance by those who use our offerings. However, as the Cannabis Act has been recently enacted, there is a lack of available interpretation, application and enforcement of the provisions that may be relevant to digital platforms such as ours, and as a result, it is difficult to assess our potential exposure under the Cannabis Act.
Laws and regulations affecting the cannabis industry in U.S. states and Canada are continually changing. Any change or even the speed of changes could require us to incur substantial costs associated with compliance or alter our business plan, and could detrimentally affect our operations, revenue, and profitability. The commercial cannabis industry is still a young industry, and we cannot predict the impact of the compliance regime to which it may be subject. We will incur ongoing costs and obligations related to regulatory compliance, and such costs may prove to be material. Failure to comply with regulations may result in additional costs for corrective measures, penalties or restrictions on our operations. In addition, changes in regulations, more vigorous enforcement thereof, or other unanticipated events could require extensive changes to our operations or increased compliance costs or give rise to material liabilities, which could have a material adverse effect on us.
Given the concentration of our revenue from the sale of access to our platforms and services, any increase in the stringency of any applicable laws, including U.S. state, or Canadian federal, provincial or territorial, laws and regulations relating to cannabis, or any escalation in the enforcement of such existing laws and regulations against the current or putative cannabis industry within any jurisdiction, could negatively impact the profitability or viability of cannabis businesses in such affected jurisdictions, which in turn could materially adversely affect our business and operating results.
In addition, although we have not yet been required to obtain any cannabis license as a result of existing cannabis regulations, it is possible that cannabis regulations may be enacted in the future that will require us to obtain such a cannabis license or otherwise seek to substantially regulate our business. U.S. and Canadian federal, state, provincial, local and other non-U.S. jurisdictions’ cannabis laws and regulations are broad in scope and subject to evolving interpretations, which could require us to incur substantial costs associated with compliance or alter our business plan. Our failure to adequately manage the risk associated with future regulations and adequately manage future compliance requirements may adversely affect our business, our status as a reporting company and our public listing. Further, any adverse pronouncements from political leaders or regulators about businesses related to the legal cannabis industry could adversely affect the price of our securities.
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Because our business is dependent, in part, upon continued market acceptance of cannabis by consumers, any negative trends in the market could adversely affect our business operations.
We are dependent on public support, continued market acceptance and the proliferation of consumers in the state-level and Canadian legal cannabis markets. While we believe that the market and opportunities in the space will continue to grow, we cannot predict the future growth rate or size of the market. Any downturns in, or negative outlooks on, the cannabis industry may adversely affect our business and financial condition.
Expansion of our business is dependent on the continued legalization of cannabis.
Expansion of our business is, in part, dependent upon continued legislative authorization, including by voter initiatives and referenda, of cannabis in various jurisdictions worldwide, including the legalization of recreational and medical use cannabis. Any number of factors could slow, halt, or even reverse progress in this area. Progress for the industry, while encouraging, is not assured. While there may be ample public support for legislative action in a particular jurisdiction, numerous factors could impact the legislative process, including lobbying efforts by opposing stakeholders as well as legislators’ disagreements about how to legalize cannabis as well as the interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of applicable laws or regulations.
Any one of these factors could slow or halt the legalization of cannabis, which would negatively impact our ability to expand our business. Additionally, the expansion of our business also depends on jurisdictions in which cannabis is currently legalized not narrowing, limiting or repealing existing laws legalizing and regulating cannabis, or altering the regulatory landscape in a way that diminishes the viability of cannabis businesses in those jurisdictions.
Our business is highly dependent upon our brand recognition and reputation, and any erosion or degradation of our brand recognition or reputation would likely adversely affect our business and operating results.
We believe that our business is highly dependent on the SpringBig brand identity and our reputation, which is critical to our ability to attract and retain clients and consumers. We also believe that the importance of our brand recognition and reputation will continue to increase as competition in the markets in which we operate continues to develop. Our success in this area will depend on a wide range of factors, some of which are within our control and some of which are not. The factors affecting our brand recognition and reputation that are within our control include the following:
•the efficacy of our marketing efforts;
•our ability to maintain a high-quality, innovative, and error- and bug-free platform and similarly high quality client service;
•our ability to maintain high satisfaction among clients (and our clients’ consumers);
•the quality and perceived value of our platforms and services;
•successfully implementing and developing new features and revenue streams;
•our ability to obtain, maintain and enforce trademarks and other indicia of origin that are valuable to our brand;
•our ability to successfully differentiate our platforms and services from competitors’ offerings;
•our ability to continue to integrate with POS systems;
•our ability to provide our clients with accurate and actionable insights from the consumer data and feedback collected through our platform;
•our compliance with laws and regulations;
•our ability to address any environmental, social, and governance expectations of our various stakeholders;
•our ability to provide client support; and
•any actual or perceived data breach or data loss, or misuse or perceived misuse of our platforms.
In addition, our brand recognition and reputation may be affected by factors that are outside our control, such as:
•actions of competitors or other third parties;
•consumers’ experiences with retailers or brands using our platform;
•public perception of cannabis and cannabis-related businesses;
•positive or negative publicity, including with respect to events or activities attributed to us, our employees, partners or others associated with any of these parties;
•interruptions, delays or attacks on our platforms; and
•litigation or regulatory developments.
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Damage to our reputation and loss of brand equity from one or more of the factors listed above may reduce demand for our platform and have an adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. Moreover, any attempts to rebuild our reputation and restore the value of our brand may be costly and time-consuming, and such efforts may not ultimately be successful.
We currently face intense competition in marketing and advertising services available to our clients, and we expect competition to further intensify as the cannabis industry continues to evolve.
The cannabis marketing and software services market is rapidly evolving and is currently characterized by intense competition, due in part to relatively low barriers to entry. We expect competition to further intensify in the future as cannabis continues to be legalized and regulated, new technologies are developed and new participants enter the cannabis CRM and marketing solutions market. Competitors for individual components of our service platforms include businesses both within and outside of the cannabis industry. These include businesses focused on marketing and customer engagement, commerce and POS solutions, and SaaS or other technology solutions for brands and retailers. In addition, if legal market for cannabis becomes more accepted and/or the regulatory regime for cannabis evolves, it may eliminate existing barriers preventing our clients from using traditional marketing and advertising channels. This could result in increased competition in our industry from both products and solutions offered by internet search engines and advertising networks, like Google, social media platforms, like Instagram and Facebook, various other newspaper, television, media companies, outdoor billboard advertising, and online merchant platforms, as well as new participants entering into the cannabis CRM and marketing services market. Such potential competitors may have substantially greater financial, technical, and other resources than existing market participants. Additionally, as consumers and cannabis industry clients demand richer data, integrations with other cannabis industry participants such as point-of-sale providers may become increasingly important. If we are unable to do so,complete such new integrations as quickly as our competitors, or improve our existing integrations based on legacy systems, we may lose market share to such competitors. Our current and future competitors may also enjoy other competitive advantages, such as greater name recognition, more varied or more focused offerings, better market acceptance, and larger marketing budgets.
Additionally, as the legalization of cannabis continues, cannabis cultivators, product manufacturers and distributors could experience consolidation as existing cannabis businesses seek to obtain greater market share and purchasing power and new entrants seek to establish a significant market presence. Consolidation of the cannabis markets could reduce the size of our potential client base and give remaining clients greater bargaining or purchasing power. This may in turn erode the prices for access to our services and platform and result in decreased margins. Further, heightened competition between cannabis businesses could ultimately have a negative impact on the viability of individual market participants, which could reduce or eliminate their ability to purchase our services and solutions.
If we are unable to compete effectively for any of these reasons, we may be unable to maintain our operations or develop our products and solutions, and as a result our business and operating results may be adversely affected.
If we fail to manage our growth effectively, our brand, business and operating results could be harmed.
We have experienced rapid organic growth in our operations, which places substantial demands on management and our operational infrastructure. To manage the expected growth of our operations and personnel, we expect we will be required to improve existing, and implement new systems, procedures and controls including, among others, financial and operational systems. We will also be required to expand our finance, administrative and operations staff. We intend to continue making substantial investments in our sales, service and marketing workforce. As we continue to grow, we must effectively integrate, develop and motivate a significant number of new employees, while maintaining the beneficial aspects of our existing corporate culture, which we believe fosters innovation, teamwork and a passion for our products and clients. In addition, our revenue may not grow at the same rate as the expansion of our business. There can be no assurance that our current and planned personnel, systems, procedures and controls will be adequate to support our future operations or that management will be able to hire, train, retrain, motivate and manage required personnel. If we are unable to manage our growth effectively, the quality of our platform, efficiency of our operations, and management of our expenses could suffer, which could negatively impact our brand, business, profitability and operating results.
The growth of our business depends on our ability to accurately predict consumer trends, successfully offer new services, improve existing services and expand into new markets.
Our growth depends, in part, on our ability to successfully offer new platforms, products and services and improve and reposition our existing platforms and services to meet the requirements of our clients and their customers. This, in turn, depends on our ability to predict and respond to evolving consumer trends, demands and preferences. Our strategy is based on certain key trends and the projected growth of our key markets. However, historical trends may not be indicative of future trends and
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forecasts or estimated growth rates may not be accurate, in whole or part, or ever materialize. Further, underlying markets could decline, overall growth rates in our product categories could be slower than anticipated.
The offering of innovative new platforms, products and services and expansion into new offerings involves considerable costs. Any new platform, product or service offering may not generate sufficient consumer interest and sales to become profitable or to cover the costs of its development and promotion and, as a result, may reduce our operating income. In addition, any such unsuccessful effort may adversely affect our brand and reputation. If we are unable to anticipate, identify, develop or market new offerings, that respond to changes in consumer requirements and preferences, or if our new offerings fail to gain consumer acceptance, we may be unable to grow our business as anticipated, our sales may decline and our margins and profitability may decline or not improve. As a result, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.
If we are unable to recruit, train, retain and motivate key personnel, we may not achieve our business objectives.
Our future success depends on our ability to recruit, train, retain and motivate key personnel, including our CEO, Jeffrey Harris, our CFO, Paul Sykes, our CTO, Navin Anand, and certain other key members of management. Competition for qualified personnel in the technology industry is intense. Additionally, we face challenges in attracting, retaining and motivating highly qualified personnel due to our relationship to the cannabis industry, which is rapidly evolving and has varying levels of social acceptance. Any failure to attract, train, retain and motivate qualified personnel could materially harm our operating results and growth prospects.
If our current marketing model is not effective in attracting new clients, we may need to employ higher-cost sales and marketing methods to attract and retain clients, which could adversely affect our profitability.
We use our sales team to build relationships with our client base. Our sales team builds and maintains relationships with clients primarily through phone, email and other virtual contact, which is typically designed to allow us to cost-effectively service a large number of clients. We may need to employ more resource-intensive sales methods, such as increasing sales teams, to continue to attract and retain clients, particularly as we increase the number of our clients and our client base employs more sophisticated marketing operations, strategies and processes.
We have experience increased spending in connection with growing our sales, service and marketing operation and we expect to incur substantial costs associated with withdrawing from the transaction,higher sales and marketing expenses, which could adversely affect our business and operating results.
We may be unable to scale and adapt our existing technology and network infrastructure in a timely or effective manner to ensure that our platform is accessible, which would harm our reputation, business and operating results.
It is critical to our success that clients and consumers within our geographic markets be able to access our platform at all times. We may experience service disruptions, outages or other performance problems due to a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, capacity constraints, and distributed denial of service, or “DdoS,” fraud or security attacks. In some instances, we may not be able to findidentify the cause or causes of these performance problems within an acceptable period of time. It may become increasingly difficult to maintain and improve the availability of our platform, especially during peak usage times and as our products become more complex or dependent on integration with third parties, or as usage or traffic increases. If our platform is unavailable when our clients (or their consumers) attempt to access it or it does not load as quickly as they expect, they may seek other solutions and may seek to cancel and not renew subscriptions for our services. We expect to continue to make significant investments to maintain and improve the availability of our platform and to enable rapid releases of new features and products. To the extent that we do not effectively address capacity constraints, respond adequately to service disruptions, upgrade our systems as needed or continually develop our technology and network architecture to accommodate actual and anticipated changes in technology, our business and operating results would be harmed.
We expect to continue making significant investments in the functionality, performance, reliability, design, security and scalability of our platform. We may experience difficulties with the development of our platform that could delay or prevent the implementation of new solutions and enhancements. Software development involves a significant amount of time and resources for our product development team, and we may not be able to continue making those investments in the future.
To the extent we are not able to continue successfully improving and enhancing our platform, our business could be adversely affected.
Real or perceived errors, failures, or bugs in our platform could adversely affect our operating results and growth prospects.
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We update our platform on a frequent basis. Despite efforts to test our updates, errors, failures or bugs may not be found in our platform until after it is deployed to our clients. We have discovered and expect we will continue to discover errors, failures and bugs in our platform and anticipate that certain of these errors, failures and bugs will only be discovered and remediated after deployment to clients. Real or perceived errors, failures or bugs in our platform could result in negative publicity, security incidents, such as data breaches, government inquiries, loss of or delay in market acceptance of our platform, loss of competitive position, or claims by clients for losses sustained by them. In such an event, we may be required, or may choose, for client relations or other reasons, to expend additional sourcesresources in order to help correct the problem.
We implement bug fixes and upgrades as part of our regular system maintenance, which may lead to system downtime. Even if we are able to implement the bug fixes and upgrades in a timely manner, any history of inaccuracies in the data we collect for our clients, or unauthorized access or damage to, or the loss, acquisition, or inadvertent release or exposure of confidential or other sensitive data could cause our reputation to be harmed and result in claims against us, and cannabis businesses may elect not to purchase our products or, in the case of existing clients, renew their agreements with us or we may incur increased insurance costs. The costs associated with any material defects or errors in our software or other performance problems may be substantial and could harm our operating results and growth prospects.
A distributed denial of service attack, ransomware attack, security breach or unauthorized data access could impair or incapacitate our information technology systems and delay or interrupt service to our clients and consumers, harm our reputation, or subject us to significant liability.
We may become subject to DdoS attacks, a technique used by hackers to take an internet service offline by overloading its servers. In addition, ransomware attacks against businesses of all sizes are becoming increasingly common. Further, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we may face increased cybersecurity risks due to our reliance on internet technology and the number of our employees who are working remotely, which may create additional opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities. Our platform may be subject to DdoS, ransomware or other cybersecurity attacks in the future and we cannot guarantee that applicable recovery systems, security protocols, network protection mechanisms and other procedures are or will be adequate to prevent network and service interruption, system failure or data loss. Moreover, our platform could be breached if vulnerabilities in our platform are exploited by unauthorized third parties or others. Techniques used to obtain unauthorized access change frequently, and the size of DdoS attacks and the number and types of ransomware attacks are increasing. As a result, we may be unable to implement adequate preventative measures or stop such attacks while they are occurring. A DdoS attack, ransomware attack or security breach could delay or interrupt service to our clients and consumers and may deter the utilization of our platform.
We also use information technology and security systems to maintain the physical security of our facilities and to protect our proprietary and confidential information, including that of our clients, consumers, and employees. Accidental or willful security breaches or other unauthorized access to our facilities or information systems, or viruses, loggers, malware, ransomware, or other malfeasant code in our data or software, could compromise this information or render our systems and data unusable. Additionally, we rely on third-party “cloud-based” providers and we are therefore dependent on the security systems of these providers. Any security breaches or other unauthorized access to our service providers’ facilities or systems, or viruses, loggers, malware, ransomware or other malfeasant code in their data or software, could expose us to information loss, and misappropriation of confidential information, and other security breaches. In addition, our employees, contractors, or other third parties with whom we do business may attempt to circumvent security measures in order to misappropriate personal information, confidential information or other data, or may inadvertently release or compromise such data. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to or sabotage security systems, or to obtain unauthorized access to data we or our contractors maintain, change frequently and are often not recognized until after an attack, we and our service providers may be unable to anticipate the techniques or implement adequate preventative measures.
Any actual or perceived DdoS attack, ransomware attack, security breach or other unauthorized access could damage our reputation and brand, result in decreased utilization of our platform, expose us to fines and penalties, government investigations, and a risk of litigation and possible liability, require us to expend significant capital and other resources to alleviate any resulting problems and otherwise to remediate the incident, and require us to expend increased cybersecurity protection costs. We expect to incur significant costs in an effort to detect and prevent security breaches and other security-related incidents. Numerous state, federal and foreign laws and regulations require companies to notify individuals and/or regulatory authorities of data security breaches involving certain types of personal data. Any disclosures of security breaches, pursuant to these laws or regulations or otherwise, could lead to regulatory investigations and enforcement and negative publicity, and may cause our clients and consumers to lose confidence in the effectiveness of our data security measures.
Additionally, our discovery of any security breach or other security-related incident, or our provision of any related notice, may be delayed or be perceived to have been delayed. Any of these impacts or circumstances arising from an actual or perceived attack, breach or other unauthorized access could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, reputation and relationships with clients and consumers.
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Furthermore, while our errors and omissions insurance policies include liability coverage for certain of these matters, if we experienced a significant security incident, we could be subject to claims or damages that exceed our insurance coverage. We also cannot be certain that our insurance coverage will be adequate for data handling or data security liabilities actually incurred, that insurance will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms, or at all, or that any insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material and adverse effect on our business, including our financial condition, operating results, and reputation.
We rely upon cloud-based technologies provided by third parties, and technology systems and electronic networks supplied and managed by third parties, to operate our business, and interruptions or performance problems with these systems, technologies and networks may adversely affect our business and operating results.
We rely on technologies and services provided by third parties in order to host our cloud-based infrastructure that operates our business. If any of these services becomes unavailable or otherwise is unable to serve our requirements due to extended outages, interruptions, or facility closure, or because it is no longer available on commercially reasonable terms, our expenses could increase, our ability to manage finances could be interrupted and our operations otherwise could be disrupted or otherwise impacted until appropriate substitute services, if available, are identified, obtained, and implemented.
We do not control, or in some cases have limited control over, the operation of the data center facilities and infrastructure we use, and they are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, cyberattack, terrorism and similar other events. They may also be subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism and similar misconduct, to adverse events caused by operator error, and to interruptions, data loss or corruption, and other performance problems due to various factors, including introductions of new capabilities, technology errors, infrastructure changes, DdoS attacks, or other security-related incidents. Changes in law or regulations applicable to data centers in various jurisdictions could also cause a disruption in service. Despite precautions taken at these facilities, the occurrence of a natural disaster, an act of terrorism or other act of malfeasance, a decision to close the facilities without adequate notice or other unanticipated problems at these facilities could result in lengthy interruptions in our platform operations and the loss, corruption of, unauthorized access to or acquisition of client or consumer data.
Our platform also depends on our ability to communicate through the public internet and electronic networks that are owned and operated by third parties. In addition, in order to provide our solutions on-demand and promptly, our computer equipment and network servers must be functional 24 hours per day, which requires access to telecommunications facilities managed by third parties and the availability of electricity, which we do not control. A severe disruption of one or more of these networks or facilities, including as a result of utility or third-party system interruptions, could impair our ability to process information and provide our solutions to our clients and consumers.
Any unavailability of, or failure to meet our requirements by, third-party data centers or other third-party technologies or services, or any disruption of the internet, utilities or the third-party networks or facilities that we rely upon, could impede our ability to make our platform accessible, harm our reputation, result in reduced traffic from consumers, cause us to issue refunds or credits to our clients, and subject us to potential liabilities. Any of these circumstances could adversely affect our business, reputation and operating results.
The impact of global, regional or local economic and market conditions may adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.
Our performance is subject to global economic conditions and economic conditions in one or more of our key markets, which impact spending by our clients and consumers. A majority of our clients’ access to capital, liquidity and other financial resources is constrained due to the regulatory restrictions applicable to cannabis businesses. As a result, these clients may be disproportionately affected by economic downturns. Clients may choose to allocate their spending to items other than our platform, especially during economic downturns.
Economic conditions may also adversely impact retail sales of cannabis. Declining retail sales of cannabis could result in our clients going out of business or deciding, to stop using our platform to conserve financial resources or move to different marketing solutions. Negative economic conditions may also affect third parties with whom we have entered into relationships and upon whom we depend in order to grow our business.
Furthermore, economic downturns could also lead to limitations on our ability to obtain debt or equity financing on favorable terms or at all, reduced liquidity, decreases in the market price of SpringBig’s securities, decreases in the fair market
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value of our financial or other assets, and write-downs of and increased credit and collectability risk on our trade receivables, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results or financial condition.
Negative economic conditions may be created or exacerbated by catastrophic events or health crises, including, among others, re-occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic or similar wide-spread public health crises.
Catastrophic events may disrupt our business and impair our ability to cover those costs.provide our platform to clients and consumers, resulting in costs for remediation, client and consumer dissatisfaction, and other business or financial losses.
Our operations depend, in part, on our ability to protect our operations against damage or interruption from natural disasters, power or telecommunications failures, criminal acts and similar events. Despite precautions taken at our facilities, the occurrence of a natural disaster, an act of terrorism, vandalism or sabotage, spikes in usage volume or other unanticipated problems could result in lengthy interruptions in the availability of our platform. Even with current and planned disaster recovery arrangements, our business could be harmed. Also, in the event of damage or interruption, our insurance policies may not adequately compensate us for any losses that we may incur. These factors in turn could further reduce revenue, subject us to liability and lead to decreased usage of our platform and decrease sales of our marketing services, any of which could harm our business.
SpringBig’s operations and employees face risks related to health crises, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, that could adversely affect SpringBig’s financial condition and operating results. These widespread public health events such as a pandemic could materially affect SpringBig’s operations, including at SpringBig’s headquarters or anywhere else SpringBig operates, and the business or operations of SpringBig’s clients, consumers, partners or other third parties with whom SpringBig conducts business.
In connection with the Merger Agreement,recent COVID-19 pandemic, governments have, at various times, implemented significant measures intended to control the spread of the virus, including closures, quarantines, travel restrictions, health mandates and social distancing directives, and fiscal stimulus, and legislation designed to deliver monetary aid and other relief. In response to the risks posed by events like the COVID-19 pandemic and to comply with applicable governmental orders, SpringBig has taken active measures to promote the health and safety of our employees. These and other operational changes SpringBig has implemented or may implement in the future may negatively impact productivity and disrupt SpringBig’s business.
To the extent that these restrictions are reinstated and/or remain in place, additional prevention and mitigation measures are implemented in the future, or there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of these or any other measures to contain or treat COVID-19 or other human public health contagions or hazards, there is likely to be an adverse impact on global economic conditions and consumer confidence and spending, which could materially and adversely affect SpringBig’s operations as well as SpringBig’s relationships with clients and consumers.
Reinstating shelter-in-place orders and similar regulations promulgated in response to pandemics or other public health crises could impact the ability of SpringBig’s clients to operate their businesses. Such events have in the past caused, and may in the future cause, a temporary closure or disruption of SpringBig’s clients’ businesses, either due to government mandate or voluntary preventative measures. In the event of mandated business operations limitations, clients may not be able to withstand prolonged interruptions to their businesses, and may be forced to go out of business. Even if SpringBig’s clients are able to continue to operate their businesses, many may operate with limited hours and capacity and other limitations. Any limitations on or disruptions or closures of SpringBig’s clients’ businesses could in turn adversely affect SpringBig’s business. Further, we may experience a decrease in new clients due to a lack of financial resources or a decline in new markets as businesses and financial markets deal with the impact of and efforts to curb pandemic events. Further, these conditions may impact our ability to access financial markets to obtain the necessary funding to expand our business as currently contemplated, which may adversely affect our liquidity and working capital.
The extent of COVID-19’s ultimate effects on SpringBig’s operational and financial performance will depend on future developments, including the steps taken to prevent its resurgence or further spread, all of which are still uncertain and difficult to predict considering the rapidly evolving landscape. Given the continuing uncertainty about the pandemic’s continued effects, it is not currently possible to fully ascertain the overall ultimate impact of COVID-19 on SpringBig’s business. However, if the pandemic reemerges and/or persists as a severe worldwide health crisis, the disease may harm SpringBig’s business, and may also have incurred substantial costs researching, planningthe effect of heightening many of the other risks described in this “Risk Factors” section.
Fluctuations in our quarterly and negotiatingannual operating results may adversely affect our business and prospects.
You should consider our business and prospects in light of the transaction. These costs include, butrisks and difficulties we encounter in the uncertain and rapidly evolving market for our solutions. Because the cannabis CRM, marketing services and technology markets are not limitednew and
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evolving, predicting their future growth rate and size is difficult. This reduces our ability to accurately evaluate our future prospects and forecast quarterly or annual performance. In addition to the other risk factors discussed in this section, factors that may contribute to the variability of our quarterly and annual results include:
•our ability to attract new clients and retain existing clients;
•our ability to accurately forecast revenue and appropriately plan our expenses;
•the effects of increased competition on our business;
•our ability to successfully expand in existing markets and successfully enter new markets;
•the impact of global, regional or economic conditions;
•the ability of licensed cannabis markets to successfully grow and outcompete illegal cannabis markets;
•our ability to protect our intellectual property;
•our ability to maintain and effectively manage an adequate rate of growth;
•our ability to maintain and increase traffic to our platform;
•costs associated with securing sourcesdefending claims, including intellectual property infringement claims and related judgments or settlements;
•changes in governmental or other regulation affecting our business;
•interruptions in platform availability and any related impact on our business, reputation or brand;
•the attraction and retention of equityqualified personnel;
•the effects of natural or man-made catastrophic events and/or health crises (including COVID-19); and debt financing, costs associated
•the effectiveness of our internal controls.
Investors should not rely on outdated financial projections.
In connection with employing and retaining third-party advisors who performed the business combination, we disclosed certain projections of SpringBig’s potential financial auditing and legal services required to complete the transaction, and the expenses generated by our officers, executives, managers and employeesperformance in future years. As previously disclosed, in connection with the transaction. If,sale process, certain financial forecasts for whatever reason,fiscal yearsthrough 2024 were prepared by Legacy SpringBig’s management and made available to Tuatara. Also, as previously disclosed, the transactions contemplatedprojections were not prepared with a view toward public disclosure or with a view toward complying with U.S. GAAP, the published guidelines of the SEC or the guidelines established by the Merger AgreementAmerican Institute of Certified Public Accountants for preparation and presentation of prospective financial information. Readers were cautioned not to rely on the prospective financial information because actual results are likely to differ materially from the prospective financial information. We reiterate our prior caution not to rely on the previously published and now outdated financial projections. We have not undertaken any obligation to publish any financial projections.
We may improve our products and solutions in ways that forego short-term gains.
We seek to provide the best experience for the clients who use our platform. Some of our changes may have the effect of reducing our short-term revenue or profitability if we believe that the benefits will ultimately improve our business and financial performance over the long term. Any short-term reductions in revenue or profitability could be greater than planned or the changes mentioned above may not produce the long-term benefits that we expect, in which case our business and operating results could be adversely affected.
We currently have clients across the United States and Canada using our platform. We anticipate growing our business, in part, by continuing to expand our foreign operations. As we continue our expansion, we may enter new foreign markets where we have limited or no experience marketing and deploying our platform. If we fail to close,launch or manage our foreign operations successfully, our business may suffer.
We are subject to industry standards, governmental laws, regulations and other legal obligations, particularly related to privacy, data protection and information security, and any actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business.
We are subject to regulation by various federal, state, provincial, local and foreign governmental authorities, including those responsible for monitoring and enforcing employment and labor laws, anti-bribery laws, lobbying and election laws, securities laws and tax laws. These laws and regulations are subject to change over time and thus we must continue to monitor and dedicate resources to ensure continued compliance.
In addition, our business is subject to regulation by various federal, state, provincial and foreign governmental agencies responsible for monitoring and enforcing privacy and data protection laws and regulations. Numerous foreign, federal and state
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laws and regulations govern collection, dissemination, use and confidentiality of personally identifiable health information, including state privacy and confidentiality laws (including state laws requiring disclosure of breaches); federal and state consumer protection and employment laws; the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA; and European and other foreign data protection laws.
We receive, store, process, and use personal information and other user content. The regulatory framework for privacy issues worldwide, including in the United States, is rapidly evolving and is likely to remain uncertain for the foreseeable future, as many new laws and regulations regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personally identifiable information, or PII, and other data have been adopted or are under consideration and existing laws and regulations may be subject to new and changing interpretations. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission and many state attorneys general are applying federal and state consumer protection laws to impose standards for the online collection, use and dissemination of data. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, or CCPA imposes significant additional requirements with respect to the collection of personal information from California residents. The CCPA, among other things, creates new data privacy obligations for covered companies and provides new privacy rights to California residents, including the right to opt out of certain disclosures of their information. The CCPA also creates a private right of action with statutory damages for certain data breaches, thereby potentially increasing risks associated with a data breach. It remains unclear what, if any, modifications will be made to this legislation or how it will be interpreted. Additionally, a new privacy law, the California Privacy Rights Act, or CPRA, significantly modified the CCPA, which has resulted in further uncertainty and requiring us to incur additional costs and expenses. The CPRA created a new California state agency charged with enforcing state privacy laws, and there is uncertainty about potential enforcement actions that the new agency may take in the future. The effects of the CCPA and the CPRA remain far-reaching, and depending on final regulatory guidance and related developments, may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply.
We are also currently subject to a variety of, and may in the future become subject to additional U.S. federal, state and local laws and regulations on advertising that are continuously evolving and developing, including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or the TCPA, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, or the CAN-SPAM Act, and, at the state level, the CCPA (as described above), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act of 2021, or VCDPA, and the Colorado Privacy Act, or CPA. Many states are discussing potentially adopting similar comprehensive privacy legislation and we expect many of these will be implemented over the course of the next few years. These laws and regulations directly impact our business and require ongoing compliance, monitoring and internal and external audits as they continue to evolve, and may result in ever-increasing public and regulatory scrutiny and escalating levels of enforcement and sanctions. Subsequent changes to data protection and privacy laws and regulations could also impact how we process personal information and, therefore, limit the effectiveness of our product offerings or our ability to operate or expand our business, including limiting strategic relationships that may involve the sharing of personal information.
Many foreign countries and governmental bodies, including Canada and other relevant jurisdictions where we conduct or may, in the future, conduct business, have laws and regulations concerning the collection and use of PII and other data obtained from their residents or by businesses operating within their jurisdiction. These laws and regulations often are more restrictive than those in the United States Laws and regulations in these jurisdictions apply broadly to the collection, use, storage, disclosure and security of data that identifies or may be used to identify or locate an individual, such as names, email addresses and, in some jurisdictions, internet protocol addresses and other types of data. In Canada, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, governs the collection, use and disclosure of PII in many provinces in Canada, and though it is silent with respect to territorial reach, the Federal Court of Canada has found that PIPEDA will apply to businesses established in other jurisdictions if there is a “real and substantial connection” between the organization’s activities and Canada. Provincial privacy commissioners take a similar approach to the interpretation and application of provincial private-sector privacy laws equivalent to PIPEDA. Further, Canada has robust anti-spam legislation. Organizations sending commercial electronic messages to individuals must either have express consent from the individual in the prescribed form or the situation must qualify as an instance of implied consent or other authorization set out in Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, or CASL. The penalties for non-compliance under CASL are significant and the regulator, the Canadian Radio- Television and Telecommunications Commission, is active with respect to enforcement.
Although we are working to comply with those federal, state, provincial and foreign laws and regulations, industry standards, governmental standards, contractual obligations and other legal obligations that apply to us, those laws, regulations, standards and obligations are evolving and may be modified, interpreted and applied in an inconsistent manner from one jurisdiction to another, and may conflict with one another, other requirements or legal obligations, our practices or the features of our applications or platform. Any failure or perceived failure by us or our contractors to comply with federal, state, provincial or foreign laws or regulations, industry standards, contractual obligations or other legal obligations, or any actual or suspected security incident, whether or not resulting in loss of, unauthorized access to, or acquisition, alteration, destruction, release or transfer of PII or other data, may result in governmental enforcement actions and prosecutions, private litigation, fines and penalties or adverse publicity and could cause employees, clients and consumers to lose trust in us, which could have an adverse effect on our reputation and business. Any inability or perceived inability (even if unfounded) on our part to adequately address privacy, data protection, and information security concerns, or comply with applicable laws, regulations,
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policies, industry standards, governmental standards, contractual obligations, or other legal obligations, could result in additional cost and liability to us, damage our reputation, inhibit sales, restrict our ability to utilize collected personal information, and adversely affect our business.
We also expect that there will continue to be new proposed laws, regulations and industry standards concerning privacy, data protection and information security in the United States, Canada and other jurisdictions, and we cannot yet determine the impact such future laws, regulations and standards may have on our business. Future laws, regulations, standards and other obligations, or amendments or changes in the interpretation of existing laws, regulations, standards and other obligations, could impair our or our clients’ ability to collect, use, disclose or otherwise process information relating to employees or consumers, which could decrease demand for our applications, increase our costs and impair our ability to maintain and grow our client and consumer bases and increase revenue. Such laws and regulations may require us to implement privacy and security policies, permit users to access, correct and delete personal information stored or maintained by such companies, inform individuals of security breaches that affect their personal information, and, in some cases, obtain individuals’ consent to use PII or other data for certain purposes. In addition, a foreign government could require that any data collected in a country not be transferred or disseminated outside of that country, or impose restrictions or conditions upon such dissemination, and we may face difficulty in complying with any such requirements for certain geographic regions. Indeed, many privacy laws, such as those in force in Canada, already impose these requirements. If we fail to comply with federal, state, provincial and foreign data privacy laws and regulations, our ability to successfully operate our business and pursue our business goals could be harmed. Furthermore, due to our acceptance of credit cards, we are subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (also known as the “PCI-DSS”), which is designed to protect the information of credit card users.
In the event our determinations are challenged and found to have been incorrect, we may be subject to unfavorable publicity or claims by one or more state attorneys general, federal regulators, or private plaintiffs, any of which could damage our reputation, inhibit sales and adversely affect our business.
Governmental regulation of the internet continues to develop, and unfavorable changes could substantially harm our business and operating results.
We are subject to general business regulations and laws as well as federal, state, provincial and foreign laws specifically governing the internet. Existing and future laws and regulations, narrowing of any existing legal safe harbors, or previous or future court decisions may impede the growth of the internet or online products and solutions, and increase the cost of providing online products and solutions. These laws may govern, among other issues, taxation, tariffs, user privacy, data protection, pricing, content, copyrights, distribution, electronic contracts and other communications, consumer protection, broadband residential internet access and the characteristics and quality of offerings. It is not clear how existing laws governing issues such as property ownership, sales, use and other taxes, libel and personal privacy apply to the internet or online services. There is also a risk that these laws may be interpreted and applied in conflicting ways across jurisdictions, and in a manner that is not consistent with our current practices. Unfavorable resolution of these issues may limit our business activities, expose us to potential legal claims or cause us to spend significant resources on ensuring compliance, any of which could harm our business and operating results.
Future investments in our growth strategy, including acquisitions, could disrupt our business and adversely affect our operating results, financial condition and cash flows.
We are seeking to expand using both organic and M&A growth strategies in keeping with the changing regulatory landscape in the U.S. Expanding accounts with existing clients, adding new clients, entering new markets, adding new features and functionality to our platform and/or acquisitions may involve significant investments of capital, time, resources and managerial attention. There can be no assurance that we will successfully implement any new products or solutions. External factors, such as additional regulatory compliance obligations, may also affect the successful implementation of new products and solutions through our platform.
Additionally, we may make acquisitions that could be responsiblematerial to our business, operating results, financial condition and cash flows. Our ability as an organization to successfully acquire and integrate technologies, services, platforms or businesses is unproven. Acquisitions involve many risks, including the following:
•an acquisition may negatively affect our operating results, financial condition or cash flows because it may require us to incur charges or assume substantial debt or other liabilities, may cause adverse tax consequences or unfavorable accounting treatment, may expose us to claims and disputes by third parties, including intellectual property claims and disputes, or may not generate sufficient financial return to offset additional costs and expenses related to the acquisition;
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•we may encounter difficulties or unforeseen expenditures in integrating the business, technologies, products, personnel or operations of any company that we acquire, particularly if key personnel of the acquired company decide not to work for us, and potentially across different cultures and languages in the event of a foreign acquisition;
•the acquired business may not perform at levels and on the timelines anticipated by our management and/or we may not be able to achieve expected synergies;
•an acquisition may disrupt our ongoing business, divert resources, increase our expenses and distract our management;
•an acquisition may result in a delay or reduction of sales for both us and the company we acquire due to uncertainty about continuity and effectiveness of products or support from either company;
•we may encounter difficulties in, or may be unable to, successfully sell any acquired products or services;
•an acquisition may involve the entry into geographic or business markets in which we have little or no prior experience or where competitors have stronger market positions;
•potential strain on our financial and managerial controls and reporting systems and procedures;
•potential known and unknown liabilities associated with an acquired company;
•if we incur debt to fund such acquisitions, such debt may subject us to material restrictions on our ability to conduct our business as well as financial maintenance covenants;
•the risk of impairment charges related to potential write-downs of acquired assets or goodwill in future acquisitions;
•to the extent that we issue a significant amount of equity or convertible debt securities in connection with future acquisitions, existing equity holders may be diluted and earnings per share may decrease; and
•managing the varying intellectual property protection strategies and other activities of an acquired company.
We may not succeed in addressing these costs, but willor other risks or any other problems encountered in connection with the integration of any acquired business. The inability to integrate successfully the business, technologies, products, personnel or operations of any acquired business, or any significant delay in achieving integration, could have no source of revenue with which to pay them. a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition and cash flows.
We may need to raise additional capital, which may not be available on favorable terms, if at all, causing dilution to our stockholders, restricting our operations or adversely affecting our ability to operate our business.
SpringBig may require additional financing to fund its operations or growth.In addition, we have substantial fixed expenses including rent and monthly principal and interests payments on the L1 Notes. The failure to secure additional financing could have a material adverse effect on the continued development or growth of SpringBig.We may need to raise additional capital and the funding provided by the L1 Notes and potentially available under the Cantor Equity Facility may not be sufficient or available in full.Such additional capital may cause dilution to our stockholders. Further, the likelihood that our warrant holders will exercise their warrants, and therefore the amount of cash proceeds that we would receive, is dependent upon the trading price of our shares of common stock, which is currently below the applicable exercise price. If the trading price for our shares of common stock remains less than the applicable exercise price, we believe the warrant holders will be unlikely to exercise their warrants. If our need is due to unforeseen circumstances or material expenditures or if our operating results are worse than expected, then we cannot be certain that we will be able to obtain additional sourcesfinancing on favorable terms, if at all, and these additional financings could cause further dilution to our stockholders.Any funds we raise may not be sufficient to enable us to continue to implement our long-term business strategy. Further, our ability to raise additional capital may be adversely impacted by potential worsening global economic conditions, increasing interest rates and the recent disruptions to and volatility in the credit and financial markets in the United States. Due to the current legal status of cannabis under U.S. federal law, we have experienced, and may in the future experience, difficulty attracting additional debt or equity financing. In addition, the current legal status of cannabis may increase the cost of capital now and in the future. Debt financing, if available, may involve agreements that include equity conversion rights, covenants limiting or restricting our ability to take specific actions, such as incurring additional debt, expending capital, or declaring dividends, or that impose financial covenants on us that limit our ability to achieve our business objectives. Debt financings may contain provisions, which, if breached, may entitle lenders to accelerate repayment of loans, and there is no assurance that we would be able to repay such loans in ordersuch an event or prevent the foreclosure of security interests granted pursuant to such debt financing. If we need but cannot raise additional capital on acceptable terms, then we may not be able to meet our business objectives and satisfy our financial obligations, our stock price may fall, and you may lose your investment.
Our obligations to the holder of the L1 Notes are secured by a security interest in substantially all of our assets, so if we default on those obligations, the noteholder could foreclose on, liquidate and/or take possession of our assets. If that were to happen, we could be forced to curtail, or even to cease, our operations.
On April 29, 2022, the Company entered into the Notes and Warrants Purchase Agreement with the Investor, pursuant to which the Company, on June 14, 2022, issued the L1 Notes and the Investor Warrants exercisable for shares of Common Stock
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of the Company at an exercise price of $12 per share. Simultaneously, Legacy SpringBig entered into a guaranty agreement to guarantee the Company’s obligations under the L1 Notes and the Company and Legacy SpringBig entered into a security agreement, pursuant to which the Investor was granted a security interest in all of the assets of the Company and Legacy SpringBig to secure repayment of amounts due under the L1 Notes. As a result, if we default on our obligations under the L1 Note, the Investor could foreclose on its security interests and liquidate or take possession of some or all of the assets of the Company, Legacy SpringBig and its subsidiaries, which would harm our business, financial condition and results of operations and could require us to curtail, or even to cease our operations.
Our notes and related agreements restrict our ability to obtain additional debt and equity financing which may restrict our ability to grow and finance our operations and, further, no assurances can be made that we will receive additional cash proceeds from the exercise of the Investor Warrants.
The agreements related to the sale of the L1 Notes and Investor Warrants contain a number of restrictive covenants that may impose significant operating and financial restrictions on us while L1 Notes remain outstanding or unless the restrictions are waived by consent of each noteholder, including restrictions on our ability to incur additional indebtedness and guarantee indebtedness; incur liens or allow mortgages or other encumbrances; prepay, redeem, or repurchase certain other debt; pay dividends or make other distributions or repurchase or redeem our capital stock; sell assets or enter into or effect certain other transactions (including a reorganization, consolidation, dissolution or similar transaction or selling, leasing, licensing, transferring or otherwise disposing of assets of the Company or its subsidiaries); enter into variable rate transactions (exclusive of the Cantor Equity Facility); and adopt certain amendments to our governing documents, among other restrictions. In addition, the terms of the L1 Notes restrict our ability to issue additional equity capital under certain circumstances. A breach of the covenants or restrictions under the agreements governing our indebtedness could result in an event of default under these agreements. As a result of these restrictions, we may be limited in how we conduct our business, unable to raise additional debt or equity financing to operate during general economic or business downturns and/or unable to compete effectively or to take advantage of new business opportunities. The Company may not have the ability to prepay the L1 Notes prior to maturity except to the limited extent of proceeds from the Cantor Equity Facility to the extent available.
Further, while we could potentially receive substantial gross proceeds from the exercise of the Investor Warrants, assuming the exercise in full of all of the Investor Warrants, no assurances can be made that the Investor will elect to exercise any or all of such Investor Warrants and, accordingly, no assurance that we will receive any proceeds from the exercise of the Investor Warrants. We believe the likelihood that the Investor will exercise the Investor Warrants, and therefore the amount of cash proceeds that we would receive, is dependent upon the trading price of our shares of common stock, which is currently substantially below the $12.00 exercise price. If the trading price for our shares of common stock remains less than $12.00 per share (or the adjusted exercise price in the event of dilutive issuances), we believe the Investor will be unlikely to exercise its warrants. Accordingly, we may not receive cash proceeds with respect to the Investor Warrants and we are restricted in our ability to raise additional debt or equity financing.
Changes in laws or regulations, or a failure to comply with any laws and regulations, may adversely affect our business, investments and results of operations.
We are subject to laws, regulations and rules enacted by national, regional and local governments and the Nasdaq stock exchange. In particular, we are required to comply with certain SEC, Nasdaq and other legal or regulatory requirements. Compliance with, and monitoring of, applicable laws, regulations and rules may be difficult, time consuming and costly. Those laws, regulations and rules and their interpretation and application may also change from time to time and those changes could have a material adverse effect on our business, investments and results of operations. In addition, a failure to comply with applicable laws, regulations and rules, as interpreted and applied, could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.
We may be subject to potential adverse tax consequences both domestically and in Canada.
We are a Delaware corporation that is treated as a C-corporation for U.S. federal and most applicable state and local income tax purposes. We are subject to taxes, such as income, payroll, sales, use, value-added, property and goods and services taxes, in both the United States and various foreign jurisdictions. Our domestic and foreign tax liabilities are subject to various jurisdictional rules regarding the timing and allocation of revenue and expenses. Additionally, the amount of income taxes paid is subject to our interpretation of applicable tax laws in the jurisdictions in which we file and to changes in tax laws. Significant judgment is required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities. From time to time, we may be subject to income and non-income tax audits. While we believe we have complied, and will continue to comply, with all applicable income tax laws, there can be no assurance that a governing tax authority will not have a different interpretation of the law and assess us with additional taxes. Should we be assessed with additional taxes, there could be a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. In addition, audits may require ongoing time and attention
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from our management, which could limit their ability to focus on other aspects of our business and impact our business in the future.
The ability of SpringBig to utilize net operating loss and tax credit carryforwards is conditioned upon SpringBig attaining profitability and generating taxable income. SpringBig has incurred significant net losses since inception and it is anticipated that SpringBig will continue to incur significant losses. Additionally, SpringBig’s ability to utilize net operating loss and tax credit carryforwards to offset future taxable income may be limited.
As of December 31, 2022, SpringBig had approximately $26.4 million of U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards available to reduce future taxable income, which can be carried forward indefinitely. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Tax Act”) included a reduction to the maximum deduction allowed for net operating losses generated in tax years after December 31, 2017 and the elimination of carrybacks of net operating losses. In addition, net operating loss carryforwards and certain tax credits may be subject to significant limitations under Section 382 and Section 383 of the Code, respectively, and similar provisions of state law. Under those sections of the Code, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other pre-change attributes, such as research tax credits, to offset its post-change income or tax may be limited. In general, an “ownership change” will occur if there is a cumulative change in ownership by “5% shareholders” that exceeds 50 percentage points over a rolling three-year period. If SpringBig has experienced an ownership change at any time since its incorporation, SpringBig may already be subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its existing net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes to offset taxable income or tax liability. In addition, the business combination, and future changes in SpringBig’s stock ownership, which may be outside of SpringBig’s control, may trigger an ownership change. Similar provisions of state tax law may also apply to limit SpringBig’s use of accumulated state tax attributes. As a result, even if SpringBig earns net taxable income in the future, its ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other tax attributes to offset such taxable income or tax liability may be subject to limitations, which could potentially result in increased future income tax liability to SpringBig.
Changes in accounting standards or other factors could negatively impact our future effective tax rate.
Our future effective tax rate may be affected by such factors as changing interpretation of existing laws or regulations, the impact of accounting for equity-based compensation, the impact of accounting for business combinations, changes in our international organization, and changes in overall levels of income before tax. In addition, in the ordinary course of our global business, there are many intercompany transactions and calculations where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain.
Although we believe that our tax estimates are reasonable, we cannot ensure that the final determination of tax audits or tax disputes will not be different from what is reflected in our historical income tax provisions and accruals.
Changes in tax laws or regulations and compliance in multiple jurisdictions may have a material adverse effect on our business, cash flow, financial condition or operating results.
We are subject to the income tax laws of the United States and Canada. New income, sales, use or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances could be enacted at any time, which could affect the tax treatment of our U.S. and foreign earnings. Any new taxes could adversely affect our domestic and foreign business operations, and our business and financial performance. In addition, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances, such as Section 280E of the Code, discussed below, could be interpreted, changed, modified or applied adversely to us. Furthermore, changes to the taxation of undistributed foreign earnings could change our future intentions regarding reinvestment of such earnings. The foregoing items could have a material adverse effect on our business, cash flow, financial condition or operating results. Requirements as to taxation vary substantially among jurisdictions. Complying with the tax laws of these jurisdictions can be time consuming and expensive and could potentially subject us to penalties and fees in the future if we were to inadvertently fail to comply. If we were to inadvertently fail to comply with applicable tax laws, this could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Certain taxing authorities may successfully assert that SpringBig should have collected or that in the future SpringBig should collect sales and use or similar taxes for certain services which could adversely affect our results of operations.
We do not collect sales and use or similar taxes in the United States or Canada based on our determination that such taxes are not applicable to our platform. Based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair, certain state taxing authorities may assert that SpringBig had economic nexus with their state and was required to collect sales and use or similar taxes with respect to certain past services that SpringBig has provided (or with respect to future services that SpringBig will provide), which could result in tax assessments and penalties and interest. A successful assertion that SpringBig should be collecting additional sales and use or similar taxes or remitting such sales and use or similar taxes directly to states or other jurisdictions could have an adverse effect on SpringBig and its business.
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Additional Risks Related to the Cannabis Industry
Cannabis remains illegal under federal law, and therefore, strict enforcement of federal laws regarding cannabis would likely result in our inability to execute our business plan.
Cannabis, other than hemp (defined by the U.S. government as Cannabis sativa L. with a THC concentration of not more than 0.3% on a dry weight basis), is a Schedule I controlled substance under the CSA. Even in states or territories that have legalized cannabis to some extent, the cultivation, possession, and sale of cannabis all violate the CSA and are punishable by imprisonment, substantial fines and forfeiture. Moreover, individuals and entities may violate federal law if they aid and abet another in violating the CSA, or conspire with another to violate the law, and violating the CSA is a predicate for certain other crimes, including money laundering laws and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government has the authority to regulate and criminalize the sale, possession and use of cannabis, even for individual medical purposes, regardless of whether it is legal under state law. For many years, however, the U.S. government has not prioritized the enforcement of those laws against cannabis companies complying with state law and their vendors. No reversal of that policy of prosecutorial discretion is expected under the Biden administration, although prosecutions against state-legal entities cannot be ruled out.
On January 4, 2018, then U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memorandum for all U.S. Attorneys (the “Sessions Memo”) rescinding certain past DOJ memoranda on cannabis law enforcement, including the Memorandum by former Deputy Attorney General James Michael Cole (the “Cole Memo”) issued on August 29, 2013, under the Obama administration. Describing the criminal enforcement of federal cannabis prohibitions against those complying with state cannabis regulatory systems as an inefficient use of federal investigative and prosecutorial resources, the Cole Memo gave federal prosecutors discretion not to prosecute state law compliant cannabis companies in states that were regulating cannabis, unless one or more of eight federal priorities were implicated, including use of cannabis by minors, violence, or the use of federal lands for cultivation. The Sessions Memo, which remains in effect, states that each U.S. Attorney’s Office should follow established principles that govern all federal prosecutions when deciding which cannabis activities to prosecute. As a result, federal prosecutors could and still can use their prosecutorial discretion to decide to prosecute even state-legal cannabis activities. Since the Sessions Memo was issued nearly three years ago, however, U.S. Attorneys have generally not prioritized the targeting of state law compliant entities.
Attorney General William Barr testified in his confirmation hearing on January 15, 2019, that he would not upset “settled expectations,” “investments,” or other “reliance interest[s]” arising as a result of the Cole Memo, and that he did not intend to devote federal resources to enforce federal cannabis laws in states that have legalized cannabis “to the extent people are complying with the state laws.” He stated: “My approach to this would be not to upset settled expectations and the reliance interests that have arisen as a result of the Cole Memorandum and investments have been made and so there has been reliance on it, so I don’t think it’s appropriate to upset those interests.” He also implied that the CSA’s prohibitions of cannabis may be implicitly nullified in states that have legalized cannabis: “[T]he current situation … is almost like a back-door nullification of federal law.” Industry observers generally have not interpreted Attorney General Barr’s comments to suggest that the DOJ would proceed with cases against participants who entered the state-legal industry after the Cole Memo’s rescission.
As such, we cannot assure that each U.S. Attorney’s Office in each judicial district where we operate will not choose to enforce federal laws governing cannabis sales against state-legal companies like our business clients. The basis for the federal government’s lack of recent enforcement with respect to the cannabis industry extends beyond the strong public sentiment and ongoing prosecutorial discretion. Since 2014, versions of the U.S. omnibus spending bill have included a provision prohibiting the DOJ, which includes the Drug Enforcement Administration, from using appropriated funds to prevent states from implementing their medical-use cannabis laws. In USA vs. McIntosh, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the provision prohibits the DOJ from spending funds to prosecute individuals who engage in conduct permitted by state medical-use cannabis laws and who strictly comply with such laws. The court noted that, if the spending bill provision were not continued, prosecutors could enforce against conduct occurring during the statute of limitations even while the provision was previously in force. Other courts that have considered the issue have ruled similarly, although courts disagree about which party bears the burden of proof of showing compliance or noncompliance with state law. Certain of our clients that are retailers currently (and may in the future) sell adult-use cannabis, if permitted by such state and local laws now or in the future, and therefore may be outside any protections extended to medical-use cannabis under the spending bill provision. This could subject such retailer clients to greater and/or different federal legal and other risks as compared to businesses where cannabis is sold exclusively for medical use, which could in turn materially adversely affect our business. Furthermore, any change in the federal government’s enforcement posture with respect to state-licensed cannabis sales, including the enforcement postures of individual federal prosecutors in judicial districts where we operate, would result in our inability to execute our business plan, and we would likely suffer significant losses with respect to client base, which would adversely affect our operations, cash flow and financial condition.
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On March 11, 2021, Merrick Garland was sworn in as the U.S. Attorney General. During his campaign, President Biden stated a policy goal to decriminalize possession of cannabis at the federal level, but he has not publicly supported the full legalization of cannabis. In response to questions posed by Senator Cory Booker, Merrick Garland stated during February 2021 congressional testimony that he would reinstitute a version of the Cole Memorandum. He reiterated the statement that the Justice Department under his leadership would not pursue cases against Americans “complying with the laws in states that have legalized and are effectively regulating marijuana,” in written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee provided around March 1. It is not yet known whether the Department of Justice under President Biden and Attorney General Garland, will re-adopt the Cole Memorandum or announce a substantive marijuana enforcement policy. Justice Garland indicated at a confirmation hearing before the United States Senate that it did not seem to him to be a useful use of limited resources to pursue prosecutions in states that have legalized and that are regulating the use of marijuana, either medically or otherwise. It is unclear what impact, if any, the current or any new administration will or would have on U.S. federal government enforcement policy on cannabis. Nonetheless, there is no guarantee that the position of the Department of Justice will not change.
Industry observers are hopeful that the current U.S. political environment will increase the chances of federal cannabis policy reform. However, we cannot provide assurances about the content, timing or chances of passage of a bill legalizing cannabis or liberalizing cannabis regulations. Accordingly, we cannot predict the timing of any change in federal law or possible changes in federal enforcement. In the event that the federal government were to reverse its long-standing hands-off approach to the state legal cannabis markets and start more broadly enforcing federal law regarding cannabis, we would likely be unable to execute our business plan, and our business and financial results would be adversely affected.
Our business and our clients are subject to a variety of U.S. and foreign laws regarding financial transactions related to cannabis, which could subject our clients to legal claims or otherwise adversely affect our business.
We and our clients are subject to a variety of laws and regulations in the United States regarding financial transactions. Violations of the U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) laws require proceeds from enumerated criminal activity, which includes trafficking in cannabis in violation of the CSA. Financial institutions that both we and our clients rely on are subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, as amended by Title III of the USA Patriot Act. In Canada, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (Canada), as amended and the rules and regulations thereunder and the Criminal Code (Canada) apply. The penalties for violation of these laws include imprisonment, substantial fines and forfeiture.
In 2014, the DOJ under the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors to exercise restraint in prosecuting AML violations arising in the state legal cannabis programs and to consider the federal enforcement priorities enumerated in the Cole Memo when determining whether to charge institutions or individuals based upon cannabis-related activity. Around the same time, the Treasury Department issued guidance that clarified how financial institutions can provide services to cannabis-related businesses, consistent with financial institutions’ obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act. Then-Attorney General Sessions’s rescission of the DOJ’s guidance on the state cannabis programs in early 2018 increased uncertainty and heightened the risk that federal law enforcement authorities could seek to pursue money laundering charges against entities, or individuals, engaged in supporting the cannabis industry. On January 31, 2018, the Treasury Department issued additional guidance that the 2014 Guidance would remain in place until further notice, despite the rescission of the DOJ’s earlier guidance memoranda.
We are subject to a variety of laws and regulations in the United States, Canada and elsewhere that prohibit money laundering, including the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act (Canada) and the Money Laundering Control Act (U.S.), as amended, and the rules and regulations thereunder and any related or similar rules, regulations or guidelines issued, administered or enforced by governmental authorities in the United States, Canada or any other jurisdiction in which we have business operations or to which we export our offerings. If any of our clients’ business activities, any dividends or distributions therefrom, or any profits or revenue accruing thereby are found to be in violation of money laundering statutes, our clients could be subject to criminal liability and significant penalties and fines. Any violations of these laws, or allegations of such violations, by our clients could disrupt our operations and involve significant management distraction and expenses. As a result, a significant number of our clients facing money laundering charges could materially affect our business, operations and financial condition. Additionally, proceeds from our clients’ business activities, including payments we have received from those clients, could be subject to seizure or forfeiture if they are found to be illegal proceeds of a crime transmitted in violation of anti-money laundering laws, which could have a material adverse effect on our business. Finally, if any of our clients are found to be violating the above statutes, this could have a material adverse effect on their ability to access or maintain financial services, as discussed in detail below, which could, in turn, have a material adverse effect on our business.
We are dependent on our banking relations, and we may have difficulty accessing or consistently maintaining banking or other financial services due to our connection with the cannabis industry.
Although we do not grow or sell cannabis products, our general connection with the cannabis industry may hamper our efforts to do business or establish collaborative relationships with others that may fear disruption or increased regulatory scrutiny of their own activities.
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We are dependent on the banking industry to support the financial functions of our products and solutions. Our business operating functions including payroll for our employees, real estate leases, and other expenses are handled and reliant on traditional banking. We require access to banking services for both us and our clients to receive payments in a timely manner. Lastly, to the extent we rely on any lines of credit, these could be affected by our relationships with financial institutions and could be jeopardized if we lose access to a bank account. Important components of our offerings depend on client accounts and relationships, which in turn depend on banking functions. Most federal and federally-insured state banks currently do not serve businesses that grow and sell cannabis products on the stated ground that growing and selling cannabis is illegal under federal law, even though the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, issued guidelines to banks in February 2014 that clarified how financial institutions can provide services to cannabis-related businesses, consistent with financial institutions’ obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act. While the federal government has generally not initiated financial crimes prosecutions against state-law compliant cannabis companies or their vendors, the government theoretically could, at least against companies in the adult-use markets. The continued uncertainty surrounding financial transactions related to cannabis activities and the subsequent risks this uncertainty presents to financial institutions may result in their discontinuing services to the cannabis industry or limit their ability to provide services to the cannabis industry or ancillary businesses providing services to the cannabis industry.
As a result of federal-level illegality and the risk that providing services to state-licensed cannabis businesses poses to banks, cannabis-related businesses face difficulties accessing banks that will provide services to them. When cannabis businesses are able to find a bank that will provide services, they face extensive client due diligence in light of complex state regulatory requirements and guidance from FinCEN, and these reviews may be time-consuming and costly, potentially creating additional barriers to financial services for, and imposing additional compliance requirements on, us and our clients. FinCEN requires a party in trade or business to file with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, or the IRS, a Form 8300 report within 15 days of receiving a cash payment of over $10,000. While we do not receive cash payments for the products we sell, if we fail to comply with these laws and regulations, the imposition of a substantial penalty could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. We cannot assure that our strategies and techniques for designing our products and solutions for our clients will operate effectively and efficiently and not be adversely impacted by any refusal or reluctance of banks to serve businesses that grow and sell cannabis products. A change in banking regulations or a change in the position of the banking industry that permits banks to serve businesses that grow and sell cannabis products may increase competition for us, facilitate new entrants into the industry offering platforms, products or solutions similar to those that we offer, or otherwise adversely affect our results of operations. Also, the inability of potential clients in our target market to open accounts and otherwise use the services of banks or other financial institutions may make it difficult for us to conduct business, including receiving payments in a timely manner.
We do not sell cannabis, or products that contain cannabis; accordingly, our company is not part of the cannabis industry that would be restricted from using federal and federally insured banks. However, because of the fact that our revenue is generated largely from companies licensed as operators in the cannabis industry, banks have and may continue to consider us to be part of the cannabis industry that is subject to banking restrictions. If we were to lose any of our banking relationships or fail to secure additional banking relationships in the future, we could experience difficulty and incur increased costs in the administration of our business, paying our employees, accepting payments from clients, each of which may adversely affect our reputation or results of operations. Additionally, the closure of many or one of our bank accounts due to a bank’s reluctance to provide services to a business working with state legal cannabis businesses would require significant management attention from SpringBig and could materially adversely affect our business and operations. In addition to banks and financial institutions, merchant processors may take a similar view of the risks of working with SpringBig since we provide services to cannabis businesses, and loss of any of our merchant processor relationships could have similar results. Moreover, Visa reportedly prohibits processing of transactions involving cannabis on its network, and Mastercard has reportedly stated that it is evaluating the inconsistency between U.S. state and federal cannabis law.
We may have difficulty using bankruptcy courts due to our involvement in the regulated cannabis industry.
We currently have no need or plans to seek bankruptcy protection. U.S. courts have held that debtors whose income is derived from cannabis or cannabis assets in violation of the CSA cannot seek federal bankruptcy protections. Although we are not in the business of growing or processing cannabis or selling or even possessing cannabis or cannabis products, a U.S. court could determine that our revenue is derived from cannabis or cannabis assets and prevent us from obtaining bankruptcy protections if necessary.
The conduct of third parties may jeopardize our business.
We cannot guarantee that our systems, protocols, and practices will prevent all unauthorized or illegal activities by our clients. Our success depends in part on our clients’ ability to operate consistently with the regulatory and licensing requirements of each state, local, and regional jurisdiction in which they operate. We have policies and procedures to review cannabis license
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information for operational cannabis retail clients to ensure validity and accuracy of such license information. We cannot ensure that the conduct of our clients, who are third parties, and their actions could expose them to legal sanctions and costs, which would in turn, adversely affect our business and operations.
A failure to comply with laws and regulations regarding our use of telemarketing, including the TCPA, could increase our operating costs and materially and adversely impact our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.
Our technology allows dispensaries to send outbound text communications to their customers. While we believe that it is each dispensary’s responsibility for compliance with state and federal laws regulating outbound communications, we recognize that SpringBig may be named in actions alleging violations of these laws or otherwise have to be involved in demands and actions stemming from alleged violations of these laws (e.g., through subpoenas). There are a number of state and federal laws regulating outbound telephonic communications, including the TCPA and Telemarketing Sales Rule. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC, and the FTC have responsibility for regulating various aspects of these laws. Individual states, like Washington and Florida, also separately regulate outbound telephonic communications. Among other requirements, the TCPA and other laws require the sender of the message to obtain prior express written consent for telemarketing calls and to adhere to state and national “do-not-call” registry requirements and implement various compliance procedures. These laws impact dispensary customers’ ability to communicate with their customers and can impact effectiveness of our marketing programs. These laws also raise the risk that SpringBig could be named directly or involved indirectly in litigation. The TCPA and other similar laws do not distinguish between voice and data communications, and, as such, SMS/MMS messages are also “calls” for the purpose of these outbound telephonic communication statutes.
The TCPA and similar state laws provide for a private right of action under which a plaintiff may bring suit and, oftentimes, allow the recovery of statutory damages. The TCPA, by way of example, imposes statutory damages of between $500 and $1,500 per violation. There is no statutory cap on maximum aggregate exposure (although some courts have applied in TCPA class actions constitutional limits on excessive penalties). An action may be brought by the FCC, a state attorney general, an individual on behalf of the individual or a class of individuals. Like other companies that play an intermediary role between the sender (the dispensary) and the recipient (the dispensary customer) of telephonic communications, we have been sued under the TCPA and have received a number of subpoenas in TCPA cases brought against dispensaries. If in the future we are found to have violated the TCPA or any similar state law, particularly on a class-wide basis, the amount of damages and potential liability could be extensive and materially and adversely impact our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.
We may continue to be subject to constraints on marketing our products.
Certain of the states in which we operate have enacted strict regulations regarding marketing and sales activities on cannabis products, which could affect our cannabis retail clients’ demand for our platform and marketing services. There may be restrictions on sales and marketing activities of cannabis businesses imposed by government regulatory bodies that can hinder the development of our business and operating results because of the restrictions our clients face. If our clients are unable to effectively market our products and compete for market share, or if the costs of compliance with government legislation and regulation cannot be absorbed through increased selling prices for our products for our clients, this could hamper demand for our products and services from licensed cannabis retailers, which could result in a loss of revenue.
Cannabis businesses are subject to unfavorable U.S. tax treatment.
Section 280E of the Code does not allow any deduction or credit for any amount paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on business, other than costs of goods sold, if the business (or the activities which comprise the trade or business) consists of trafficking in controlled substances (within the meaning of Schedules I and II of the CSA). The IRS has applied this provision to cannabis operations, prohibiting them from deducting expenses associated with cannabis businesses beyond costs of goods sold and asserting assessments and penalties for additional taxes owed. Section 280E of the Code may have a lesser impact on cannabis cultivation and manufacturing operations than on sales operations, which directly affects our suppliers, who are cannabis retailers and brands. However, Section 280E of the Code and related IRS enforcement activity have had a significant impact on the operations of all cannabis companies. While Section 280E of the Code does not directly affect SpringBig, it lowers SpringBig’s clients’ profitability, and could result in decreased demand or higher price sensitivity for SpringBig’s listing, marketing, and customer loyalty services. An otherwise profitable cannabis business may operate at a loss after taking into account its U.S. income tax expenses. This affects SpringBig because SpringBig’s sales and operating results could be adversely affected if SpringBig’s clients decrease their marketing budgets and are operating on lower profit margins as a result of unfavorable treatment by the Code.
Service providers to cannabis businesses may also be subject to unfavorable U.S. tax treatment.
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As discussed above, under Section 280E of the Code, no deduction or credit is allowed for any amount paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on business, other than costs of goods sold, if the business (or the activities which comprise the trade or business) consists of trafficking in controlled substances (within the meaning of Schedules I and II of the CSA). The IRS has applied this provision to cannabis operations, prohibiting them from deducting expenses associated with cannabis businesses and asserting assessments and penalties for additional taxes owed. While we do not believe that Section 280E of the Code applies to our business, and, generally, ancillary service providers who work with state-licensed cannabis businesses have not been subject to Section 280E of the Code, because they are providing services or products other than cannabis, if the IRS interprets the section to apply, it would significantly and materially affect our profitability and financial condition.
The MORE Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives in 2020 and reintroduced in the Senate for consideration on September 30, 2021, would remove marijuana from the CSA, which would effectively carve out state-legal cannabis businesses from Section 280E of the Code. However, the MORE Act would impose two new taxes on cannabis businesses: an excise tax measured by the value of certain cannabis products and an occupational tax assessed on the enterprises engaging in cannabis production and sales. Although these novel tax provisions are included in the MORE Act passed by the House of Representatives, it is challenging to predict whether, when and in what form the MORE Act could be enacted into law and how any such legislation would affect the activities of SpringBig. Similarly, the recently introduced States Reform Act would also effectively carve out state-legal cannabis businesses from Section 280E of the Code but at the same time impose a new excise tax on cannabis businesses (albeit at a lower rate than the proposed MORE Act).
Cannabis businesses may be subject to civil asset forfeiture.
Any property owned by participants in the cannabis industry used in the course of conducting such business, or that represents proceeds of such business or is traceable to proceeds of such business, could be subject to seizure by law enforcement and subsequent civil asset forfeiture because of the illegality of the cannabis industry under federal law. Even if the owner of the property is never charged with a crime, the property in question could still be seized and subject to an administrative proceeding by which, with minimal due process, it could be subject to forfeiture. Forfeiture of assets of our cannabis business clients could adversely affect our revenues if it impedes their profitability or operations and our clients’ ability to continue to subscribe to our services.
Due to our involvement in the cannabis industry, we may have a difficult time obtaining the various insurances that are desired to operate our business, which may expose us to additional risk and financial liability.
Insurance that is otherwise readily available, such as general liability and directors’ and officers’ insurance, is more difficult for us to find and is more expensive or contains significant exclusions because our clients are cannabis industry participants. There are no guarantees that we will be able to find such insurance coverage in the future or that the cost will be affordable to us. If we are forced to operate our business without such insurance coverage, it may prevent us from entering into certain business sectors, may inhibit our growth, and may expose us to additional risk and financial liabilities. If we experience an uninsured loss, it may result in loss of anticipated cash flow and could materially adversely affect our results of operations, financial condition, and business.
There may be difficulty enforcing certain of our commercial agreements and contracts.
Courts will not enforce a contract deemed to involve a violation of law or public policy. Because cannabis remains illegal under U.S. federal law, certain parties to contracts involving the state-legal cannabis industry have argued that the agreement was void as federally illegal or against public policy. Some courts have accepted this argument in certain cases, usually against the company trafficking in cannabis. While courts have enforced contracts related to activities by state-legal cannabis companies, and the trend is generally to enforce contracts with state-legal cannabis companies and their vendors, there remains doubt and uncertainty that we will be able to enforce all of our commercial agreements in court for this reason. We cannot be assured that we will have a remedy for breach of contract, which would have a material adverse effect on our business.
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property
We may in the future be, subject to disputes and assertions by third parties with respect to alleged violations of intellectual property rights. These disputes could be costly to defend and could harm our business and operating results.
We may, from time to time in the future, face allegations that we have violated the intellectual property rights of third parties, including patent, trademark, copyright and other intellectual property rights. Even if the claims are without merit, defending these types of claims may result in substantial costs, the diversion of the attention of management, and the disruption of our operations. In particular, patent and other intellectual property litigation may be protracted and expensive, and the results are difficult to predict. We may be required to stop offering certain features, purchase licenses or modify our products and
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features while we develop non-infringing substitutes, or become subject to significant settlement costs. These claims also could subject us to significant liability for damages and could result in our having to stop using or hosting technology, content, branding or business methods found to be in violation of another party’s rights. We do not own any patents and, therefore, may be unable to deter competitors or others from pursuing patent or other intellectual property infringement claims against us through the threat of counter-suit.
Companies in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) vertical in which we operate and other industries may own large numbers of patents, copyrights, and trademarks and may frequently request license agreements, threaten litigation or file suit against us based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. Our platform features third-party brands, which may themselves infringe third party intellectual property rights and could bring us into litigation between the parties. Further, although we contractually seek indemnification protection from our clients, clients may not be solvent or financially able to indemnify us. We may be required or may opt to seek a license of intellectual property rights held by others, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. Even if a license is available, we could be required to pay significant royalties, which would increase our operating expenses. We may also be required to develop alternative non-infringing technology, content, branding, or business methods, which could require significant effort and expense and which we may not be able to secure on the same terms as our existing financingaccomplish efficiently, or at all. If we cannot use, license, or develop technology, content, branding, or business methods for any allegedly infringing aspect of our business, we may be unable to compete effectively. Further, as we face increasing competition and as our business grows, we will face an increasing likelihood of claims of infringement.
The results of litigation and claims to which we may be subject cannot be predicted with certainty. Even if these matters do not result in litigation or are resolved in our favor or without significant cash settlements, these matters, and the time and resources necessary to litigate or resolve them, could harm our business, reputation and operating results.
Some of our solutions contain open source software, which may pose particular risks to our proprietary software and solutions.
We use open source software that we have obtained from third parties or is included in software packages in our solutions and will continue to use open source software in the future. Open source software is generally freely accessible, usable and modifiable, and is made available to the general public on an “as-is” basis under the terms of a non-negotiable license. From time to time, we may face claims from third parties claiming ownership of, or demanding release of, the open source software and/or derivative works that we developed using such software (which could include our proprietary source code), or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of the applicable open source license. These claims could result in litigation and could require us to purchase a costly license or cease offering the implicated solutions unless and until we can re-engineer them to avoid infringement. This re-engineering process could require significant additional research and development resources. In addition to risks related to license requirements, use of certain open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the origin of software. Any of these risks could be difficult to eliminate or manage, and, if not addressed, could have a negative effect on our business and operating results.
The success of our business heavily depends on our ability to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights.
Our business depends on our intellectual property, the protection of which is crucial to the success of our business. We rely on a combination of trademark, trade secret and other intellectual property rights and laws and contractual restrictions to protect our intellectual property. As examples of such restrictions, we attempt to protect our intellectual property, technology and confidential information by entering into confidentiality and inventions assignment agreements and non-competition agreements with employees, contractors, consultants and business partners who develop intellectual property on our behalf, and entering into non-disclosure agreements with our business partners. These agreements may not effectively prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our confidential information, intellectual property or technology and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of unauthorized use or disclosure of our confidential information, intellectual property or technology. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties, as examples, may copy aspects of our website features, software and functionality or obtain and use information that we consider proprietary.
Despite our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights, including trademarks, they may not be recognized in the future, or may be invalidated, circumvented or challenged. For example, we have registered, among numerous other trademarks, “SpringBig” as a trademark in the U.S. Competitors have and may continue to adopt service names similar to ours, thereby harming our ability to build brand identity and possibly leading to consumer confusion. In addition, there could be potential trade name or trademark infringement claims brought by owners of other trademarks that are similar to our trademarks. Litigation or proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or other governmental authorities and administrative bodies in the U.S. and abroad may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights and to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others. Our efforts to enforce or protect our proprietary rights may
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be ineffective and could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources, which could harm our business and operating results.
Further, we may be subject, from time-to-time, to claims that former employees, collaborators or other third parties have an interest in our intellectual property as an inventor or co-inventor. We generally enter into confidentiality and intellectual property assignment agreements with our employees, consultants, and contractors. These agreements generally provide that inventions conceived by the party in the course of rendering services to us will be our exclusive property. However, those agreements may not be honored and may not effectively assign intellectual property rights to us. Moreover, there may be some circumstances, where we are unable to secure new sourcesnegotiate for such ownership rights. If we are subject to a dispute challenging our rights in or to patents or other intellectual property, such a dispute could be expensive and time consuming. If we were unsuccessful, we could lose valuable rights in intellectual property that we regard as our own, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.
Risks Related to Our Securities and Certain Tax Matters
If we fail to meet all applicable requirements of Nasdaq, and Nasdaq determines to delist our common stock, the delisting could adversely affect the market liquidity of our common stock and the market price of our common stock could decrease.
On September 7, 2022, we received a letter from the listing qualifications department staff of Nasdaq (the “Nasdaq Staff”) notifying us that for the last 30 consecutive business days, our minimum Market Value of Listed Securities (“MVLS”) was below the minimum of $50 million required for continued listing on The Nasdaq Global Market pursuant to Nasdaq listing rule 5450(b)(2)(A).The notice had no immediate effect on the listing of our common stock or warrants.In accordance with Nasdaq listing rule 5810(c)(3)(C), the Company has 180 calendar days, or until March 6, 2023, to regain compliance. The notice states that to regain compliance, the Company’s MVLS must close at $50 million or more for a minimum of ten consecutive business days during the compliance period ending March 6, 2023. On March 7, 2023, we received formal notice from the Nasdaq Staff indicating that we continued to be non-compliant with the MVLS requirement and that our common stock and warrants were subject to delisting unless the Company timely requests a hearing before the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the “Panel”). The Company has timely requested a hearing before the Panel, which request will stay any further action by Nasdaq at least pending the issuance of a decision by the Panel and the expiration of any extension that the Panel may grant to the Company following the hearing. If the Company is unable to satisfy the MVLS requirement, the Company may be eligible to transfer the listing of its common stock and warrants to the Nasdaq Capital Market (provided that it then satisfies the requirements for continued listing on that market).
On December 20, 2022, we received a letter from the Nasdaq Staff providing notification that, for the previous 30 consecutive business days, the bid price for the Company’s common stock had closed below the $1.00 per share minimum bid price requirement for continued listing under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5450(a)(1). The notice had no immediate effect on the listing of the Company’s common stock or warrants.In accordance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5810(c)(3)(A) the Company has been provided an initial period of 180 calendar days, or until June 19, 2023 to regain compliance with the minimum bid requirement. To regain compliance, the closing bid price of the Company’s common stock must be $1.00 per share or higher for a minimum of 10 consecutive business days any time before June 19, 2023, unless Nasdaq exercises its discretion to extend this 10-day period pursuant to Nasdaq Listing Rule 5810(c)(3)(H).If the Company does not regain compliance by June 19, 2023, the Company may be eligible for an additional 180 calendar days compliance period. To qualify, the Company would need to transfer the listing of its common stock to the Nasdaq Capital Market, provided that it meets the continued listing requirement for market value of publicly held shares and all other initial listing standards for the Nasdaq Capital Market, with the exception of the minimum bid price requirement, and would need to provide written notice of its intention to cure the deficiency during the second compliance period by effecting a reverse stock split if necessary.
There can be no assurance that we will regain compliance with the requirements for listing our common stock and/or warrants on Nasdaq. If we are unable to satisfy the Nasdaq criteria for continued listing, our common stock and/or warrants would be subject to delisting. A delisting of our common stock could negatively impact us by, among other things, reducing the liquidity and market price of our common stock and/or warrants; reducing the number of investors willing to hold or acquire our common stock and/or warrants, which could negatively impact our ability to raise equity financing; decreasing the amount of news and analyst coverage of us; and limiting our ability to issue additional securities or obtain additional financing in the future. In addition, delisting from Nasdaq may negatively impact our reputation and, consequently, our business.
If our performance does not meet market expectations, the price of our securities may decline and the market for our securities may be volatile.
If our performance does not meet market expectations, the price of our shares of common stock may decline. In addition, even if an active market for our shares of common stock develops and continues, the trading price of our shares of common
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stock could be volatile and subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, some of which are beyond our control. Any of the factors listed below could have a material adverse effect on the price of our shares of common stock.
Factors affecting the trading price of our shares of common stock may include:
•actual or anticipated fluctuations in our quarterly and annual financial results or the quarterly and annual financial results of companies perceived to be similar to us;
•changes in the market’s expectations about operating results;
•operating results failing to meet market expectations in a particular period, which could impact the market price our shares of common stock;
•operating and stock price performance of other companies that investors deem comparable to us;
•changes in laws and regulations affecting our businesses;
•commencement of, or involvement in, litigation involving the Company;
•changes in our capital structure, such as future issuances of securities or the incurrence of debt;
•any significant change in our Board of Directors or management;
•sales of substantial amounts of our shares of common stock by the Company, Cantor, the Investor or our directors, executive officers or significant shareholders or the perception that such sales could occur; and
•general economic and political conditions such as recessions, interest rates, fuel prices, inflation, international currency fluctuations and acts of war or terrorism.
Broad market and industry factors may depress the market price of our shares of common stock irrespective of our operating performance. The stock market in general has experienced price and volume fluctuations that have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of the particular companies affected. The trading prices and valuations of these shares, and of our securities, may not be predictable. A loss of investor confidence in the market for companies engaging in digital payments or the shares of other companies which investors perceive to be similar to us could depress our stock price regardless of our business, prospects, financial conditions or results of operations. A decline in the market price of our shares of common stock also could adversely affect our ability to issue additional securities and our ability to obtain additional financing in the future.
Because there are no current plans to pay cash dividends on our shares of common stock for the foreseeable future, you may not receive any return on investment unless you sell our shares of common stock for a price greater than that which you paid for it; furthermore, there is no guarantee that the value of the shares of common stock will increase to a price greater than that which you paid for it.
We may retain future earnings, if any, for future operations, expansion, and debt repayment and have no current plans to pay any cash dividends for the foreseeable future. Any decision to declare and pay dividends as a public company in the future will be made at the discretion of our Board of Directors and will depend on, among other things, our results of operations, financial condition, cash requirements, contractual restrictions, applicable law and other factors that our Board of Directors may deem relevant. In addition, our ability to pay dividends may be limited by covenants of any existing and future outstanding indebtedness we or our subsidiaries incur. As a result, you may not receive any return on an investment in our shares of common stock unless you sell your shares of for a price greater than that which you paid for them; provided, however, that there is no guarantee that the value of the shares of common stock will increase to a price greater than the price for which such shares were purchased.
We may be subject to securities litigation, which is expensive and could divert management attention.
The market price of our common stock may be volatile and, in the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert management’s attention from other business concerns, which could seriously harm our business.
The issuance of our shares of common stock in connection with the Notes and Warrants Purchase Agreement or that may otherwise be issued and/or sold by the Company or selling securityholders, could cause substantial dilution, which could materially affect the trading price of our shares of common stock.
To the extent that the L1 Notes and/or Investor Warrants are converted into or exercised for shares of common stock, substantial amounts of our shares of common stock will be issued. Under certain default circumstances the L1 Notes and Investor Warrants may become exercisable at prevailing prices or discounts to prevailing prices, and the original $12
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conversion price of the L1 Notes and $12 exercise price of the Investor Warrants will be adjusted in the event that the Company issues additional equity securities under certain issuances below the original conversion/exercise price. In addition, we have the ability under certain circumstances to make payments on the L1 Notes in shares of common stock at then prevailing market prices. We are required to reserve three times the original number of shares obtainable under the L1 Notes and Investor Warrants to provide for these circumstances. Although we cannot predict the number of our shares of common stock that will actually be issued in connection with any such conversions and/or sales, such issuances could result in substantial decreases to our stock price.
Further, substantial amounts of our shares of common stock may also be issued, sold and/or resold under Cantor Equity Facility and pursuant to the Company’s equity incentive plan, which could cause further substantial dilution of our shares of common stock and materially impact the trading price of our shares of common stock.
In addition, the way we account for the L1 Notes and the Investor Warrants may impact our reported or future financial results and the market price of our shares of common stock. For example, we have adopted ASU 2020-06, Accounting for Convertible Instruments and Contracts in an Entity's Own Equity and elected to carry the L1 Notes and Investor Warrants at amortized cost. See the section titled “Effective Accounting Pronouncements” in Note 2 “Summary of Significant Accounting Policies,” and Note 11 “Senior Secured Convertible Notes” in our audited consolidated financial statements included in this report for more information.
A significant portion of our total outstanding shares may be sold into the market in the near future. This could cause the market price of our shares of common stock to drop significantly, even if our business is doing well.
Sales of a substantial number of shares of common stock in the public market could occur at any time as a result of issuances and resales of shares of common stock under the Cantor Equity Facility along with other issuances and resales of shares of common stock including shares subject to the L1 Notes, the Investor Warrants and our other public and private warrants, as well as the resale of shares of common stock by other holders, and pursuant to the Company’s equity incentive plan. These sales, or the perception in the market that the holders of a large number of shares intend to sell shares, could reduce the market price of our shares of common stock.
Sales of our shares of common stock, or the perception of such sales, including by selling securityholders in the public market or otherwise could cause the market price for our shares of common stock to decline the securityholders selling such securities may still receive significant proceeds.
The sale of our shares of common stock in the public market or otherwise, or the perception that such sales could occur, could harm the prevailing market price of our shares of common stock. These sales, or the possibility that these sales may occur, also might make it more difficult for us to sell equity securities in the future at a time and at a price that it deems appropriate (which ability to sell equity securities is also subject to restrictions under the terms of the L1 Notes and related agreements). Institutional investors and our founder that collectively beneficially own in excess of 50% of the Company’s outstanding shares in the aggregate will be able to resell their shares for so long as a registration statement is available for use. Resales of our shares of common stock may cause the market price of our securities to drop significantly, regardless of the performance of our business.
We have filed registration statements relating to the resale of a large number of shares of common stock representing a large percentage of our public float pursuant to the Notes and Warrants Purchase Agreement, the Cantor Equity Facility, and securities held by certain existing shareholders for which such securityholders have registration rights.As such, sales of a substantial number of shares of common stock in the public market could occur at any time. Given the substantial number of shares of common stock being registered for potential resale or the perception in the market that the stockholders of a large number of shares intend to sell shares, could increase the volatility of the market price of our common stock or result in a significant decline in the public trading price of our common stock.Further, certain shares of our common stock that are being registered for resale include shares that were purchased at prices that may be significantly below the trading price of our shares of common stock and the sale of which would result in such selling securityholders realizing a significant gain. Even if our trading price remains low, certain selling securityholders may still have an incentive to sell shares of our common stock because they purchased the shares at prices lower than the public investors or the current trading price of our common stock. Public holders of our shares of common stock may not experience a similar rate of return on their shares.
If securities or industry analysts do not have sufficient funds to meetpublish or cease publishing research or reports about us, our obligations, webusiness, or our market, or if they change their recommendations regarding our common stock adversely, the price and trading volume of our common stock could decline.
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The trading market for our common stock will be forcedinfluenced by the research and reports that industry or securities analysts may publish about us, our business, our market, or our competitors. If any of the analysts who may cover SpringBig change their recommendation regarding our stock adversely, or provide more favorable relative recommendations about our competitors, the price of our common stock would likely decline. If any analyst who may cover SpringBig were to cease operationstheir coverage or fail to regularly publish reports on us, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.
We may amend the terms of our public and liquidate the trust account.
Our public warrants were issued in which case we would cease all operations exceptregistered form under the warrant agreement between Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, as warrant agent, and the Company. The warrant agreement provides that the terms of the warrants may be amended without the consent of any holder for the purpose of winding up and we would redeem our public shares and liquidate.
We are an emerging growth company and a smaller reporting company within the meaning of the Securities Act, and if we take advantage of certain exemptions from disclosure requirements available to emerging growth companies, or smaller reporting companies, this could make our securities less attractive to investors and may make it more difficult to compare our performance with other public companies.
We are an “emergingemerging growth company”company within the meaning of the Securities Act, as modified by the JOBS Act, and we may take advantage of 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 internal controls attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 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 shareholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. As a result, our shareholders may not have access to certain information they may deem important. We could beremain an emerging growth company for up to five years from the date of our IPO, although circumstances could cause us to lose that status earlier, including if the market value of our Class A ordinary shares of common stock held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million$700,000,000 as of any June 30 before that time, in which case we would no longer be an emerging growth company as of the following December 31. We cannot predict whether investors will find our securities less attractive because we will rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our securities less attractive as a result of our reliance on these exemptions, the trading prices of our securities may be lower than they otherwise would be, there may be a less active trading market for our securities and the trading prices of our securities may be more volatile.
Further, Section 102(b)(1) of the JOBS Act exempts emerging growth companies from being required to comply with new or revised financial accounting standards until private companies (that is, those that have not had a Securities Act registration statement declared effective or do not have a class of securities registered under the Exchange Act) are required to comply with the new or revised financial accounting standards. The JOBS Act provides that a company can elect to opt out of the extended transition period and comply with the requirements that apply to non-emerging growth companies but any such an election to opt out is irrevocable. We have elected not to opt out of such extended transition period which means that when a standard is issued or revised and it has different application dates for public or private companies, we, as an emerging growth company, can adopt the new or revised standard at the time private companies adopt the new or revised standard. This may make comparison of our financial statements with another public company which is neither an emerging growth company nor an emerging growth company which has opted out of using the extended transition period difficult or impossible because of the potential differences in accountingaccountant standards used.
As a public company, we have and will continue to incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company, and these expenses may increase even more after we are a “smaller reporting company”no longer an emerging growth company, as defined in Rule 10(f)(1) of Regulation S-K. Smaller reporting companies may take advantage of certain reduced disclosure obligations, including, among other things, providing only two years of audited financial statements. We will remain a smaller reporting company until the last day of any fiscal year for so long as either (1) the market value of our ordinary shares held by non-affiliates did not exceed $250 million asSection 2(a) of the prior June 30, or (2) our annual revenues did not exceed $100 million during such completed fiscal year andSecurities Act. In addition, we expect to record incremental share-based compensation expense in connection with the market value of our ordinary shares held by non-affiliates did not exceed $700 million asconsummation of the prior June 30. To the extentbusiness combination.
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As a public company, we take advantage of such reduced disclosure obligations, it may also make comparison of our financial statements with other public companies difficult or impossible.
Our failure to timely and effectively implement controls and procedures required by Section 404(a) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act could have a business combination withmaterial adverse effect on our business.
As a target.
A “material weakness” is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is more than a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the Company's annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. Management concluded that we did not have accounting personnel with adequate expertise in GAAP to ensure that complex material and/or non-routine transactions are properly reflected in our initial shareholders, directors, officers, advisorsconsolidated financial statements. We also noted that we did not perform adequate independent reviews and maintain effective controls related to the preparation of consolidated financial statements, related notes thereto, account analyses, account summaries and account reconciliations. We have taken and are continuing to take additional steps to remedy this material weakness.
Failure to properly implement internal controls on a timely basis may lead to the identification of one or any of their affiliates may purchase public sharesmore additional material weaknesses or public warrants or a combination thereof in privately negotiated transactions orcontrol deficiencies in the openfuture, which may prevent us from being able to report our financial results accurately on a timely basis or help prevent fraud, and could cause our reported financial results to be materially misstated and result in the loss of investor confidence or delisting and cause the market either prior to or following the completion of our initial business combination, although they are under no obligation or duty to do so. Such a purchase may include a contractual acknowledgement that such shareholder, although still the record holderprice of our shares is no longerof common stock to decline. If we have additional material weaknesses in the beneficial owner thereof and therefore agreesfuture, it could affect the financial results that we report or create a perception that those financial results do not to exercise its redemption rights. Infairly state our financial position or results of operations. Either of those events could have an adverse effect on the eventvalue of our shares of common stock.
Further, even if we conclude that our sponsor, directors, officers, advisorsinternal control over financial reporting provides reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with U.S. GAAP, because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or anydetect fraud or misstatements. Failure to implement required new or improved controls, or difficulties encountered in their implementation, could harm our results of their affiliates purchase shares in privately negotiated transactions from public shareholders who have already elected to exercise their redemption rightsoperations or submitted a proxy to vote against our initial business combination, such selling shareholders would be required to revoke their prior elections to redeem their shares and any proxy to vote against our initial business combination. The price per share paid in any such transaction may be different than the amount per share a public shareholder would receive if it elected to redeem its shares in connection with our initial business combination. Additionally, at any time at or prior to our initial business combination, subject to applicable securities laws (including with respect to material nonpublic information), our initial shareholders, directors, officers, advisors or any of their affiliates may enter into transactions with investors and others to provide them with incentives to acquire public shares, vote their public shares in favor of our initial business combination or not redeem their public shares. The purpose of such purchases could be to vote such shares in favor of our initial business combination and thereby increase the likelihood of obtaining shareholder approval of our initial business combination or to satisfy a closing condition in an agreement with a target that requirescause us to have a minimum net worth or a certain amount of cash at the closing offail to meet our initial business combination, where it appears that such requirement would otherwise not be met. The purpose of any such purchases of public warrants could be to reduce the number of public warrants outstanding or to vote such warrants on any matters submitted to the warrant holders for approval in connection with our initial business combination. This may result in the completion of our initial business combination that may not otherwise have been possible.future reporting obligations.
Changes in laws or regulations, or a failure to comply with any laws and regulations, may adversely affect our business, including our ability to negotiate and complete our initial business combination,investments and results of operations.
We are subject to laws and regulations enacted by national, regional and local governments. In particular, we will be required to comply with certain SEC and other legal requirements. Compliance with, and monitoring of, applicable laws and regulations may be difficult, time consuming and costly. Those laws and regulations and their interpretation and application may also change from time to time and those changes could have a material adverse effect on our business, investments and results of operations. In addition, a failure to comply with applicable laws or regulations, as interpreted and applied, could have a material adverse effect on our business including our ability to negotiate and complete our initial business combination, and results of operations. See “—Risks Relating to the Cannabis Industry” for additional risks we may face in connection with our initial business combination.
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Our amendedcertificate of incorporation and restated memorandum and articles of association willbylaws contain provisions that may discourage unsolicited takeover proposals that shareholders may considercould make it more difficult for a third-party to be in their best interests.acquire us without the consent of our Board of Directors. These provisions include two-year director terms and provide for:
•a classified Board of Directors with staggered three-year terms;
•the ability of our Board of Directors to determine the boardpowers, preferences and rights of directorspreference shares and to designatecause us to issue the terms ofpreference shares without shareholder approval; and issue new series of preferred shares, which
•requiring advance notice for shareholder proposals and nominations and placing limitations on convening shareholder meetings.
These provisions may make more difficult the removal of management and may discourage transactions that otherwise could involve payment of a premium over prevailing market prices for our securities. These provisions could also discourage proxy contests and make it more difficult shareholders to elect directors of their choosing and cause us to take corporate actions other than those shareholders may desire, any of which could harm our share price.
Our warrants will be issued in registered form underlargest shareholders and certain members of our management own a warrant agreement between Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, as warrant agent,significant percentage of our shares of common stock and us. The warrant agreement provides that the termsare able to exert significant control over matters subject to shareholder approval.
Our founder and certain of the warrants may be amended without the consentour largest shareholders hold a significant percentage of any holder to cure any ambiguity or correct any defective provision, but requires the approval by theour shares of common stock. As a result, these holders of at least 65% of the then outstanding public warrants to make any change that adversely affects the interests of the registered holders of public warrants. Accordingly, we may amend the terms of the public warrants in a manner adverse to a holder if holders of at least 65% of the then outstanding public warrants approve of such amendment. Although our ability to amend the terms of the public warrants with the consent of at least 65% of the then outstanding public warrants is unlimited, examples of such amendments could be amendments to, among other things, increase the exercise price of the warrants, shorten the exercise period or decrease the number of Class A ordinary shares purchasable upon exercise of a warrant.
Future sales and issuances of our shares of common stock, including pursuant to our equity incentive and other compensatory plans, will result in additional dilution of the percentage ownership of our shareholders and could cause our share price to fall.
We may need additional capital in the future to continue our planned operations. To the extent we raise additional capital by issuing equity securities, our shareholders may experience substantial dilution. We may sell shares of common stock, convertible securities or other equity securities in one or more transactions at prices and in a manner we determine from time to time. If we sell shares of common stock, convertible securities or other equity securities in more than one transaction, investors may be materially diluted by subsequent sales. In addition, new investors could gain rights superior to our existing shareholders.
Pursuant to SpringBig Holdings, Inc. 2022 Long-Term Incentive Plan (the “Incentive Plan”), we are authorized to grant options and other share-based awards to our employees, directors and consultants. The number of shares of our Class A ordinarycommon stock initially reserved for issuance under the Incentive Plan was 1,525,175, but we may seek shareholder approval to increase this amount from time to time. Shares subject to stock awards granted under the Incentive Plan that expire or terminate without being exercised in full, or that are paid out in cash rather than in shares, determined based on the redemption date and the fair market value of our Class A ordinary shares. Please see “Description of Securities—Warrants—Public Shareholders’ Warrants—Redemption of Warrants When the Price per Class A Ordinary Share Equals or Exceeds $10.00.” The value received upon exercise of the warrants (1) may be less than the value the holders would have received if they had exercised their warrants at a later time where the underlying share price is higher and (2) maywill not compensate the holders for the value of the warrants, including because the number of ordinary shares received is capped at 0.361 Class A ordinary shares per warrant (subject to adjustment) irrespective of the remaining life of the warrants.
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments |
Not applicable.
Item 2. Properties
Our corporate headquarters is located in Boca Raton, Florida pursuant to a lease that expires in November 2024. In addition, SpringBig leases office space in Seattle, Washington and Toronto, Ontario.
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We currently maintainbelieve that our executive offices at 655 Third Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, New York 10017. The cost for the space is included in the upcurrent facilities are adequate to $10,000 monthly feemeet our ongoing needs. However, from time to time we may evaluate additional or substitute office spaces. We believe that we pay our sponsor for office space, administrative and support services. We consider our current office space adequate for our current operations.will be able to obtain additional facilities, as needed, on commercially reasonable terms.
Item 3. Legal Proceedings |
For a description of developments to legal proceedings during the knowledge ofyear ended December 31, 2022, see "Litigation" under Note 17, "Commitments and Contingencies" to our management, there is no material litigation, arbitration or governmental proceeding currently pending against us or any members of our management team in their capacity as such.consolidated financial statements.
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures |
PART II
Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters, and Issuer Purchases Of Equity Securities |
Market Information
Our units, Class A ordinary sharescommon stock and warrants, each exercisable for one share of our common stock at an exercise price of $11.50 per share, are each tradedlisted on theThe Nasdaq Global Market under the symbols “TCACU,” “TCAC”“SBIG” and “TCACW,SBIGW,” respectively. Our units commenced public trading on February 12, 2021. Our Class A ordinary shares and warrants began separate trading on April 5, 2021.
We have not declared or paid any cash dividends on our ordinary sharescommon stock to datedate. We anticipate that we will retain all of our future earnings, if any, for use in the operation and expansion of our business and do not intend to payanticipate paying cash dividends priorin the foreseeable future. Any decision to the completion of our initial business combination. The payment of cashdeclare and pay dividends in the future will be dependent upon our revenues and earnings, if any, capital requirements and general financial condition subsequent to completion of our initial business combination. The payment of any cash dividends subsequent to our initial business combination will be withinmade at the sole discretion of our boardBoard of directorsDirectors and will depend on, among other things, our results of operations, cash requirements, financial condition, contractual restrictions and other factors that our Board of Directors may deem relevant.
Sales of Unregistered Securities
On June 14, 2022, at such time. In addition, our board of directors is not currently contemplatingthe first closing under the Notes and does not anticipate declaring any share dividendsWarrants Purchase Agreement, we issued and sold to the Investor (i) a Note in the foreseeable future. Further, ifprincipal amount of $11,000,000 and (ii) a five-year warrant to purchase 586,980 shares of our common stock at an exercise price of $12.00 per share, for total cash consideration to the Company of $10,000,000
On June 14, 2022, we incur any indebtednessissued 1,310,000 shares of our common stock pursuant to the Subscription Agreements entered into in connection with the PIPE Subscription Financing for aggregate consideration of $13.1 million, plus 31,356 shares paid to certain investors pursuant to the convertible notes with such investors.
On September 9, 2022, we issued 877,193 shares of our common stock (such shares, the “Commitment Fee Shares”) to Cantor. We issued the Commitment Fee Shares as consideration for Cantor’s irrevocable commitment to purchase additional Common Shares at our election in our sole discretion, from time to time upon the terms and subject to the satisfaction of the conditions set forth in the Common Stock Purchase Agreement. The Common Stock Purchase Agreement established a business combination, our abilitycommitted equity facility pursuant to declare dividends may be limited by restrictive covenantswhich we may agreein the future, from time to time, at our election in connection therewith.our sole discretion, upon the terms and subject to the satisfaction of the conditions set forth in the Common Stock Purchase Agreement issue and sell to the Cantor additional shares of our Common Stock.
We issued the foregoing securities in transactions not involving an underwriter and not requiring registration under Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, in reliance on the exemption afforded by Section 4(a)(2) thereof.
Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
None.
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Securities Authorized for Issuance Underunder Equity Compensation PlansPlan
The founder shares will automatically convert into Class A ordinary shares on the first business day following the completion of our initial business combination on a one-for-one basis, subject to certain adjustments. In the case that additional Class A ordinary shares, or equity-linked securities convertible or exercisable for Class A ordinary shares, are issued or deemed issued in excess of the amounts issued in our initial public offering and related to the closing of our initial business combination, the ratio at which founder shares will convert into Class A ordinary sharesinformation required under this Item will be adjusted (subject to waiver by holders of a majority of the Class B ordinary shares then in issue) so that the number of Class A ordinary shares issuable upon conversion of all Class B ordinary shares will equal,contained in the aggregate, on an as-converted basis, 20%definitive Proxy Statement for our 2023 annual meeting of the sum of our ordinary shares issued and outstanding upon the completion of our initial public offering plus the number of Class A ordinary shares and equity-linked securities issued or deemed issued in connection with our initial business combination (net of redemptions)stockholders (the “Proxy Statement”), excluding the representative shares and any Class A ordinary shares or equity-linked securities issued, or to be issued, to any seller in our initial business combination and any private placement warrants issued to our sponsor, an affiliate of our sponsor or any of our officers or directors.incorporated herein by reference.
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
Forward Looking Statements
All statements other than statements of the Company’shistorical facts contained in this report, including statements regarding future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "believe," "may," "will," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "could," "would," "expect," "objective," "plan," "potential," "seek," "grow," "target," "if," and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, and results of operations, should be read in conjunction with our auditedbusiness strategy, short-term and long-term business operations, objectives, and financial statements and the notes related thereto which are included in “Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Certain information contained in the discussion and analysis set forth below includes forward-looking statements.needs. Our actual results maycould differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of manydue to various factors including those set forthdiscussed under “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements,” “Item 1A. Risk“Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Business Overview
SpringBig Holdings, Inc. (the “Company” or “SpringBig”) is a market-leading software platform providing customer loyalty and marketing automation solutions to retailers and brands. We are a blank check company incorporatedhave leveraged our deep expertise in loyalty marketing to develop solutions that address the key challenges faced by retailers and brands, including those in the cannabis industry. Stringent, complex, and rapidly evolving regulations have resulted in restricted access to traditional marketing and advertising channels for cannabis retailers and brands, preventing them from utilizing many traditional methods for effectively accessing and engaging with consumers. In addition, the lack of industry-specific data and market intelligence solutions limit cannabis retailers' and brands' ability to efficiently market their products, thereby hindering their growth. Our platform enables our clients to increase brand awareness, engage customers, improve retention, and access actionable consumer feedback data to improve marketing. Our clients can use our loyalty marketing, digital communications, and text/email marketing solutions to drive new customer acquisition, customer spend and retail foot traffic. Our proven B2B2C software platform creates powerful network effects between retailers and brands and provides an ability for both to connect directly with consumers. As retailers and brand scale, a virtuous cycle amplifies growth, ultimately expanding SpringBig's reach and strengthening our value proposition.
SpringBig serves approximately 1,300 brand and retailer clients across more than 3,000 distinct retail locations in North America. Our clients distribute more than 2.0 billion messages annually, and in the last year more than $7.5 billion of gross merchandise value was accounted for by clients utilizing our platform.
Business Combination and Public Company Cost
On June 14, 2022, SpringBig Holdings, Inc., a Delaware corporation (formerly known as Tuatara Capital Acquisition Corporation (“Tuatara” or “TCAC”)), consummated the previously announced business combination (the “business combination”) of Tuatara and SpringBig, Inc. (“Legacy SpringBig”), a Delaware corporation. Pursuant to the merger agreement, prior to the closing of the business combination, Tuatara changed its jurisdiction of incorporation by deregistering as a Cayman Islands on January 24, 2020 formed forexempted company and continuing and domesticating as a corporation incorporated under the purposelaws of effecting a merger, amalgamation, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similarthe State of Delaware. Prior to the closing date, and in connection with the Closing, Tuatara changed its name to SpringBig Holdings, Inc. Legacy SpringBig was deemed to be the accounting acquirer in the business combination with one or more businesses. We intend to effectuate our Business Combination using cash derived from the proceedsbased on an analysis of the Initial Public Offeringcriteria outlined in Accounting Standards Codification 805. While Tuatara was the legal acquirer in the business combination, because Legacy SpringBig was deemed the accounting acquirer, the historical financial statements of Legacy SpringBig became the historical financial statements of the combined company, upon the Closing.
The business combination was accounted for as a “reverse recapitalization.” A reverse recapitalization does not result in a new basis of accounting, and the salefinancial statements of the Private Placement Warrants, our shares, debtcombined entity represent the continuation of the financial statements of Legacy SpringBig in many respects. Under this method of accounting, Tuatara was treated as the “acquired” company for financial reporting purposes. For accounting purposes, Legacy SpringBig was deemed to be the accounting
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acquirer in the transaction and, consequently, the transaction was treated as a recapitalization of Legacy SpringBig (i.e., a capital transaction involving the issuance of stock by Tuatara for stock of Legacy SpringBig). Accordingly, the consolidated assets, liabilities and results of operations of Legacy SpringBig became the historical financial statements of the combined company, and Tuatara’s assets, liabilities and results of operations were consolidated with Legacy SpringBig beginning on the acquisition date. Operations prior to the business combination are presented as those of Legacy SpringBig. The net assets of Tuatara were recognized at historical cost (which are consistent with carrying value), with no goodwill or other intangible assets recorded.
As a consequence of the business combination, of cash, sharesLegacy SpringBig became the successor to an SEC-registered and debt.
Nasdaq-listed company, which requires us to incur additional expenses and implement procedures and processes to address public company regulatory requirements and customary practices. We have and expect to continue to incur significant costsadditional annual expenses as a public company for, amongst other things, directors’ and officers’ liability insurance, director fees and additional internal and external accounting, legal and administrative resources, including increased audit and legal fees.
Key Operating and Financial Metrics
We monitor the following key financial and operational metrics to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, formulate business plans, and make strategic decisions. The following is our analysis for the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, in thousands:
| Years Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
| 2022 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 26,629 | $ | 23,362 | ||||||||||
| Net loss | (13,076) | (5,750) | ||||||||||||
| Adjusted EBITDA | (12,603) | (5,548) | ||||||||||||
| Number of retail clients | 1,319 | 1,240 | ||||||||||||
| Net revenue retention | 105 | % | 110 | % | ||||||||||
| Number of messages (million) | 2,099 | 1,861 | ||||||||||||
For a reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA see “EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA,” below.
Revenue
We generate revenue from the sale of monthly subscriptions that provide retail clients with access to an integrated platform through which they can manage loyalty programs and communications with their consumers. We also generate additional revenue from these retail clients when the quantum of messages sent to consumers exceeds the amounts in the pursuitsubscription package. The subscriptions generally have twelve-month terms (which typically are not subject to early termination without a cancellation fee payable by the client), are payable monthly, and automatically renew for subsequent and recurring 12-month periods unless notice of cancellation is provided in advance.
The Company's revenue growth is generally achieved through a mix of new clients, clients upgrading their subscriptions (as new clients will frequently enter into a relatively low level of subscription (with respect to the size of such client's database and the number of their customers on such database) and/or the number of pre-determined communication credits), which frequently occurs shortly after such a client initially becomes a client, and the excess use element of revenues.“Excess use” revenues are revenues derived from amounts charged to clients for exceeding the pre-determined credit volume set forth in the applicable client’s subscription agreement. Given this combination, and particularly the tendency for clients to upgrade soon after becoming a client, the Company does not actively monitor revenue split between new and existing clients, preferring to use the split between subscription and excess use in combination with net dollar retention and the number of clients as key metrics, as described below.
Other Key Operating Metrics
The growth in our revenues is a key metric at this stage in our development as a Company and therefore to provide investors with additional information, we have disclosed in the table above the number of our acquisition plans.retail clients, our net revenue retention rate and the number of standardized messages distributed through the SpringBig platform by our clients. We cannot assureregularly review the key operating and financial metrics set forth above to evaluate our business, our growth, assess our performance and
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make decisions regarding our business. We believe these key metrics are useful to investors both because they allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision-making, and they may be helpful in evaluating the state and growth of our business.
Number of Retail Clients. We disclose in the table above the number of discrete SpringBig platforms used by clients of the business at the end of the relevant period. We view this number as an important metric to assess the performance of our business because an increased number of clients drives growth, increases brand awareness and helps contribute to our reach and strengthening our value proposition.
Net Revenue Retention. We believe that the growth in the use of our platform by our clients is an important metric in evaluating our business and growth. We monitor our dollar-based net revenue retention rate on a rolling basis to track the maintenance of revenue and revenue-increasing activity growth. “Net revenue retention rate” (also referred to as “net dollar retention rate”) does not have a standardized meaning and is therefore unlikely to be comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other companies, and further, investors should not consider it in isolation. When evaluating our retention rates and calculating our net revenue retention rate, SpringBig calculates the average recurring monthly revenue from retail clients, adjusted for losses, increases and decreases in monthly subscriptions during the prior twelve months divided by the average recurring monthly subscription revenue over the same trailing twelve-month period.
We view a net revenue retention rate exceeding 100% as positive because this is indicative of increasing subscription revenue without including the impact of the initial recurring revenue from new clients during the month in which they are on-boarded. We believe that we can drive this metric by continuing to focus on existing clients and by revenue-increasing activities, such as client upgrades. Net revenue retention is measured over the twelve-month ending at the reporting date and if the ratio exceeds 100% this is an indication of upgrades from clients exceeding the value of any lost clients and downgrades in subscriptions. The net revenue retention is calculated based on subscription revenues only and does not include the impact of excess use revenue.
Number of Messages Sent. We believe that the volume of messages sent, measured in standardized message size, is important as it indicates the frequency of use and level of engagement of our platform by our clients. Messages are distributed by text, email, and direct push notifications to mobile applications.
EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA
To provide investors with additional information regarding our financial results, we have disclosed EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure that we calculate as net income before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and Adjusted EBITDA, which represents EBITDA adjusted for certain unusual, infrequent items, or non-cash items (such as bad debt expense and stock-based compensation).
We present EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA because they are key measures used by our management and board of directors to evaluate our operating performance, generate future operating plans and make strategic decisions regarding the allocation of investment capacity. Accordingly, we believe that EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA provide useful information to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our operating results in the same manner as our management and board of directors, and is widely used by analysts, investors and competitors to measure a company's operating performance.
EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA have limitations, and you should not consider these in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results as reported under GAAP, including net loss, which we consider to be the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. Some of these limitations are:
•although depreciation and amortization are non-cash charges, the assets being depreciated may have to be replaced in the future, and neither EBITDA nor Adjusted EBITDA reflect cash capital expenditure requirements for such replacements or for new capital expenditure requirements;
•EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA do not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, our working capital needs; and
•EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA do not reflect tax payments that may represent a reduction in cash available.
Because of these limitations, you should consider EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA alongside other financial performance measures, including net loss and our plansother GAAP results.
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A reconciliation of net loss before taxes to completenon-GAAP EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA is as follows (in thousands):
| Years Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||
| 2022 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
| Net loss | $ | (13,076) | $ | (5,750) | ||||||||||
| Interest income | (18) | (3) | ||||||||||||
| Interest expense | 949 | — | ||||||||||||
| Income tax expense | 3 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Depreciation and amortization expense | 259 | 173 | ||||||||||||
| EBITDA | (11,883) | (5,578) | ||||||||||||
| Stock based compensation | 1,226 | 595 | ||||||||||||
| PPP loan forgiveness | — | (781) | ||||||||||||
| Bad debt expense | 1,474 | 216 | ||||||||||||
| Severance payments | 188 | — | ||||||||||||
| Business combination related bonus | 550 | — | ||||||||||||
| Change in fair value of warrants | (4,158) | — | ||||||||||||
| Adjusted EBITDA | $ | (12,603) | $ | (5,548) | ||||||||||
Factors Affecting Our Performance
Overall Economic Trends
The overall economic environment and related changes to consumer behavior have a Business Combinationsignificant impact on our business. Overall, positive conditions in the broader economy promote consumer spending on marketplaces and our customers’ products, while economic weakness, which generally results in reduced consumer spending, may have a negative impact on our customers’ sales, which in turn may impact our revenue.
Growth and Retention of Customers
Our revenue grows primarily through acquiring and retaining customers and expanding relationships with customers over time, increasing the revenue per customer. We have historically been able to attract, retain and grow relationships with customers as a result of the Company’s comprehensive product suite, differentiated loyalty programs, consistent communications with customers, and reliable customer service.
Regulation and Maturation of Cannabis Markets
We believe that we will have significant opportunities for growth as more jurisdictions legalize cannabis for medical and/or adult use and the regulatory environment continues to develop. We intend to explore new expansion opportunities as additional jurisdictions legalize cannabis for medical or adult use and leverage our existing business model to enter new markets. We believe our understanding of the space coupled with our experienced sales force will enable us to quickly enter and execute in new markets and capture new business, which we sustain via our best-in-class product offerings. Further, a change in U.S. federal regulations could result in our ability to engage in additional outlets, including the fintech, payments and e-commerce space.
We expect competition to intensify in the future as the regulatory regime for cannabis becomes more settled and the legal market for cannabis becomes more accepted, which may encourage new participants to enter the market, including established companies with substantially greater financial, technical and other resources than existing market participants.
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We believe that maintaining and enhancing our brand identity and our reputation is critical to maintaining and growing our relationships with customers and to our ability to attract new customers.
We believe our platform’s scale and strong customer loyalty market themselves; however, we implement a variety of marketing efforts to attract the remaining retailers and brands not yet on our platform. Marketing efforts include multiple strategies designed to attract and retain both retail and brands subscribers.
Negative publicity, whether or not justified, relating to events or activities attributed to us, our employees, customers or others associated with any of these parties, may tarnish our reputation and reduce the value of our brand. Given our high visibility, we may be more susceptible to the risk of negative publicity. Damage to our reputation and loss of brand equity may reduce demand for our platform and have an adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. Moreover, any attempts to rebuild our reputation and restore value of our brand may be costly and time consuming, and such efforts may not ultimately be successful.
We also believe that the importance of our brand recognition and reputation will continue to increase as competition in our market continues to develop. If our brand promotion activities are not successful, our operating results and growth may be adversely impacted.
Components of Our Results of Operations
Revenue
SpringBig provides its retail customers with access to an integrated platform that provides all the functions of the Company’s proprietary software, which uses proprietary technology to send text, email, and push messages to the customer’s contacts. This access is provided to customers under a contract, with revenue generated from monthly fixed fees for credits (up to pre-contracted amount) and optional purchases of additional credits.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue consists primarily of amounts payable to distributors of messages on behalf of the Company’s customers across cellular networks and integrations.
Selling, Servicing and Marketing Expenses
Selling, servicing and marketing expenses consist of salaries, benefits, travel expense and incentive compensation for our sales, servicing and marketing employees. In addition, sales, servicing and marketing expenses include business acquisition marketing, events cost, and branding and advertising costs.
Technology and Software Development Expenses
Technology and software development costs consist of salaries and benefits for employees, including engineering and technical teams who are responsible for building new products, as well as maintaining and improving existing products. We capitalize certain costs associated with technology and software development in accordance with ACS 350-40, Intangibles – Goodwill and Other – Internal Use Software, but these are limited in quantum as we are constantly and regularly making enhancements to our technology platform and do not consider appropriate to be capitalized. Capitalized costs are generally amortized over a three-year period commencing on the date that the specific software product is placed in service. We believe that continued investment in our platform is important for our growth.
General and Administrative Expenses
General and administrative expenses consist primarily of payroll and related benefits costs for our employees involved in general corporate functions including finance, human resources and investor relations, as well as costs associated with the use by these functions of software and equipment. All rent, insurance and other occupancy costs are also included in general and administrative expenses as are professional and outside services related to legal, audit and other services, and stock compensation expenses.
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The following tables set forth our results of operations for the periods indicated:
| Years Ended December 31, | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2022 | 2021 | Increase (decrease) | % | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| (in thousands) | (in thousands) | (in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Revenue | $ | 26,629 | $ | 23,362 | $ | 3,267 | 14 | % | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cost of revenues | 6,701 | 6,267 | 434 | 7 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Gross profit | 19,928 | 17,095 | 2,833 | 17 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Operating expenses: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Selling, servicing and marketing | 12,333 | 10,185 | 2,148 | 21 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Technology and software development | 11,353 | 8,410 | 2,943 | 35 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| General and administrative | 12,542 | 5,032 | 7,510 | 149 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Total operating expenses | 36,228 | 23,627 | 12,601 | 53 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Loss from operations | (16,300) | (6,532) | (9,768) | 150 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Interest income | 18 | 3 | 15 | nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Interest expense | (949) | — | (949) | nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Change in fair value of warrants | 4,158 | — | 4,158 | nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Forgiveness of PPP loan | — | 781 | (781) | nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Loss before income tax | (13,073) | (5,748) | (7,325) | 127 | % | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Income tax expense | 3 | 2 | 1 | nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Net loss | $ | (13,076) | $ | (5,750) | $ | (7,326) | 127 | % | ||||||||||||||||||
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Revenues. Revenues increased by $3.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, a 14% increase compared with the year ended December 31, 2021. Our subscription revenue was $20.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared with $14.8 million in for the year ended December 31, 2021, representing 38% year over year growth. The excess use revenue declined by 29% year over year from $8.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2021 to $5.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. This decrease was due in part to the weaker economy and more significantly to the fact that some prior year excess use revenue has now converted into recurring subscription revenues due to clients upgrading their subscriptions. Our revenue from Brands clients increased by 44% year over year and was $940,000 for the year ended December 31, 2022, as compared to $654,000 for the year ended December 31, 2021.
Gross Profit. Gross profit increased to $19.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022 from $17.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, representing a 17% increase. The cost of revenue increased by $0.4 million, representing a 7% increase, for the year ended December 31, 2022. The increase was primarily due to the increasing volume of messages distributed by clients, with a total of approximately 2.1 billion messages during the year ended December 31, 2022, representing an increase of 238 million, or 13.0% higher, than in the same period last year. The percentage increase in cost of revenue is lower than our revenue growth over the same period and therefore our gross margin percentage increased by 1.7% compared with the same period in 2021 to 74.8% for the year ended December 31, 2022.
Operating Expenses. SpringBig continues to prioritize revenue growth while ensuring expenses are managed in an appropriate manner to ensure we are able to handle the growth with appropriate personnel, infrastructure and processes and also ensuring net loss is maintained within an acceptable range.
Our operating expenses increased by $12.6 million, or 53%, for the year ended December 31, 2022 compared with the year ended December 31, 2021.
Selling, servicing and marketing expenses increased by $2.1 million, or 21%, for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. The increase in expenses is primarily due to the full year effect of expanding the size of our operations during the latter half of 2021 in response to growth in the business and increased travel and
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conference activity in the year ended December 31, 2022 after this had been curtailed in the prior year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Technology and software development expenses increased by $2.9 million, or 35%, for year ended December 31, 2022, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021, with the increase being attributable to higher headcount primarily through using offshore contract engineering resources to enable an acceleration in the pace of Contents