Description of Business and Basis of Presentation | Description of Business and Basis of Presentation LivePerson, Inc. (the “Company” or “LivePerson”) was incorporated in the State of Delaware in November 1995 and the LivePerson service was introduced in November 1998. In April 2000, the Company completed an initial public offering and is currently traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. LivePerson is headquartered in New York City with U.S. offices in Alpharetta (Georgia), Austin (Texas), Mountain View (California) and Seattle (Washington), and international offices in Amsterdam (Netherlands), Berlin (Germany), London (United Kingdom), Mannheim (Germany), Melbourne (Australia), Milan (Italy), Paris (France), Ra'anana (Israel), Reading (United Kingdom), Sydney (Australia), Tel Aviv (Israel), and Tokyo (Japan). LivePerson makes life easier by transforming how people communicate with brands. During the past decade, consumers have made the mobile device the center of their digital lives, and they have made mobile messaging the center of communication with friends, family and peers. The Company’s technology enables consumers to connect with businesses through these same preferred conversational interfaces, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Google Rich Business Messenger and Alexa. These messaging conversations harness human agents, bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to power convenient, personalized and content-rich journeys across the entire consumer lifecycle, from discovery and research, to sales, service and support, and even marketing and brick and mortar engagements. For example, consumers can look up product info like ratings, images and pricing, search for stores, see products in the store, schedule appointments, apply for credit, approve repairs, make purchases or payments - all without ever leaving the messaging channel. LivePerson calls these AI and human-assisted conversational experiences over messaging Conversational Commerce. LiveEngage, the Company’s enterprise-class, cloud-based platform, was designed for Conversational Commerce, enabling businesses to securely deploy messaging, coupled with bots and AI, at scale for brands with tens of millions of customers and many thousands of customer care agents. LiveEngage powers conversations across each of a brand’s primary digital channels, including mobile apps, mobile and desktop web browsers, short message service (SMS), social media and third-party consumer messaging platforms. Brands can also use LiveEngage to message consumers when they dial a 1-800 number instead of having them navigate interactive voice response systems (IVRs) and wait on hold. The robust, cloud-based suite of rich mobile messaging and real-time chat offerings features intelligent routing and capacity mapping, queue prioritization, customer sentiment, real-time analytics and reporting, content delivery, Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, cobrowsing and a sophisticated proactive targeting engine. With LiveEngage, agents can manage all conversations with consumers through a single console interface, regardless of which disparate messaging endpoints the consumers originate from: i.e., WhatsApp, Line, Apple Business Chat, IVR, or Google Home. An extensible application programming interface (API) stack facilitates a lower cost of ownership by facilitating robust integration into back-end systems, as well as enabling developers to build their own programs and services on top of the platform. More than three dozen APIs are available on LiveEngage. LiveEngage also features Maven, a robust AI engine that was custom designed for Conversational Commerce. Maven, announced in December 2018, puts the power of bot development, training and management into the hands of the contact center and its agents, the teams most familiar with how to structure sales and service conversations to drive successful outcomes. The platform enables what the Company calls “the tango” of humans, AI and bots, whereby human agents act as bot managers, overseeing AI-powered conversations and seamlessly stepping into the flow when a personal touch is needed. Through Maven Assist, agents become ultra-efficient, leveraging the AI engine to serve up relevant content, define next-best actions and take over repetitive transactional work, so that the agent can focus on relationship building. By seamlessly integrating LiveEngage with Maven, as well as third-party bots, the platform provides businesses with a comprehensive view of all AI-based and human-based conversations from a single console. Complementing LiveEngage are teams of technical, solutions and consulting professionals that have developed deep domain expertise in Conversational Commerce across industries and messaging endpoints. The Company is positioned as an authority in Conversational Commerce, publishing a proprietary Conversational Quotient™ Index that measures each customer across multiple key indicators to ascertain the sophistication and breadth of their conversational commerce capabilities. Each business is then benchmarked against industry peers to determine their relative progression. The Company has developed a Transformation Model that is introduced to existing and prospective customers to help guide them on their journeys from legacy and often times inefficient legacy voice, email and chat solutions to modern conversational ones powered by messaging and AI. LivePerson’s products, coupled with our domain knowledge, industry expertise and professional services, have been proven to maximize the effectiveness of Conversational Commerce and deliver measurable return on investment. As a “cloud computing” or software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, LivePerson provides solutions on a hosted basis. This model offers significant benefits over premise-based software, including lower up-front costs, faster implementation, lower total cost of ownership, scalability, cost predictability, and simplified upgrades. Organizations that adopt a fully-hosted, multi-tenant architecture that is maintained by LivePerson eliminate the majority of the time, server infrastructure costs, and IT resources required to implement, maintain, and support traditional on-premise software. The Company's consumer services offering is an online marketplace that connects independent service providers (Experts) who provide information and knowledge for a fee via mobile and online messaging with individual consumers (Users). Users seek assistance and advice in various categories including personal counseling and coaching, computers and programming, education and tutoring, spirituality and religion, and other topics. Basis of Presentation The accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements as of September 30, 2019 and for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2019 and 2018 are unaudited. In the opinion of management, the unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared on the same basis as the annual financial statements and reflect all adjustments, which include only normal recurring adjustments, necessary to present fairly the consolidated financial position of LivePerson as of September 30, 2019 , and the consolidated results of operations, comprehensive loss and cash flows for the interim periods ended September 30, 2019 and 2018 . The financial data and other information disclosed in these notes to the condensed consolidated financial statements related to these periods are unaudited. The results of operations for any interim period are not necessarily indicative of the results of operations for any other future interim period or for a full fiscal year. The condensed consolidated balance sheet at December 31, 2018 has been derived from audited consolidated financial statements at that date. Certain information and note disclosures normally included in financial statements prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“GAAP”) have been condensed or omitted pursuant to the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). These unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements should be read in conjunction with the Company’s audited consolidated financial statements and notes thereto for the year ended December 31, 2018 included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 25, 2019 . Principles of Consolidation The condensed consolidated financial statements include the Company and its wholly-owned subsidiaries. All intercompany balances and transactions have been eliminated. Use of Estimates The preparation of the Company’s condensed consolidated financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the condensed consolidated financial statements and the reported amounts of income and expenses during the reporting period. These estimates are based on information available as of the date of the condensed consolidated financial statements; therefore, actual results could differ from management’s estimates. Recently Issued Accounting Standards In June 2016, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued Accounting Standards Update ("ASU") 2016‑13, “Financial Instruments-Credit Losses: Measurement of Credit Losses on Financial Instruments” , which changes the impairment model for most financial assets. The new model uses a forward‑looking expected loss method, which will generally result in earlier recognition of allowances for losses. In November 2018, the FASB issued ASU 2018‑19, “ Codification Improvements to Topic 326, Financial Instruments- Credit Losses ”, which clarifies that receivables arising from operating leases are not within the scope of Topic 326, Financial Instruments-Credit Losses . Instead, impairment of receivables arising from operating leases should be accounted for in accordance with Topic 842, Leases . In April 2019, the FASB issued ASU 2019-04, "Codification Improvements to Topic 326, Financial Instruments-Credit Losses, Topic 815, Derivatives and Hedging, and Topic 825, Financial Instruments," which clarifies treatment of certain credit losses. In May 2019, the FASB issued ASU 2019-05, " Financial Instruments - Credit Losses (Topic 326): Targeted Transition Relief ", which permits an entity, upon adoption of ASU 2016-13, to irrevocably elect the fair value option (on an instrument-by instrument basis) for eligible financial assets measured at amortized cost basis. These ASUs are effective for annual and interim periods beginning after December 15, 2019, and early adoption is permitted. The Company is evaluating the impact of this guidance on its consolidated financial statements. In August 2018, the FASB issued ASU No. 2018-15, "Customer’s Accounting for Implementation Costs Incurred in a Cloud Computing Arrangement That Is a Service Contract; Disclosures for Implementation Costs Incurred for Internal-Use Software and Cloud Computing Arrangements" (“ASU 2018-15”). This standard aligns the accounting for implementation costs incurred in a hosting arrangement that is a service contract with the accounting for implementation costs incurred to develop or obtain internal-use software under Accounting Standards Codification ("ASC") 350-40, in order to determine which costs to capitalize and recognize as an asset. ASU 2018-15 is effective for annual reporting periods, and interim periods within those years, beginning after December 15, 2019, and can be applied either prospectively to implementation costs incurred after the date of adoption or retrospectively to all arrangements. The Company is currently in the process of evaluating the impact of the adoption of ASU 2018-230 on its consolidated financial statements. In January 2017, FASB issued ASU No. 2017-04, "Intangibles -Goodwill and Other (Topic 350): Simplifying the Test for Goodwill Impairment" (“ASU 2017-04”). This update addresses concerns over the cost and complexity of the two-step goodwill impairment test. The amendments in this update remove the second step of the test. An entity will apply a one-step quantitative test and record the amount of goodwill impairment as the excess of a reporting unit's carrying amount over its fair value, not to exceed the total amount of goodwill allocated to the reporting unit. The new guidance does not amend the optional qualitative assessment of goodwill impairment. ASU 2017-04 is effective for financial statements issued for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2019, and interim periods within those annual periods. The Company does not expect the adoption of ASU 2017-04 will have a material effect on its financial position, results of operations or cash flows. Recently Adopted Accounting Pronouncements In February 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-02, “Leases” (“ASU 2016-02”). ASU 2016-02 requires lessees to recognize the following for all leases (with the exception of short-term leases) at the commencement date: a lease liability, which is a lessee‘s obligation to make lease payments arising from a lease, measured on a discounted basis; and a right-of-use asset, which is an asset that represents the lessee’s right to use, or control the use of, a specified asset for the lease term. Under the new guidance, lessor accounting is largely unchanged. Lessees (for capital and operating leases) and lessors (for sales-type, direct financing, and operating leases) may apply a modified retrospective transition approach for leases existing at, or entered into after, the beginning of the earliest comparative period presented in the financial statements. The modified retrospective approach would not require any transition accounting for leases that expired before the earliest comparative period presented. The Company adopted ASU No. 2016-02, "Leases" (Topic 842), as of January 1, 2019 using the modified transition approach. The modified transition approach provides a method for recording existing leases at adoption. As a result, the Company was not required to adjust its comparative period financial information for effects of the standard or make the new required lease disclosures for periods before the date of adoption (i.e. January 1, 2019). For its long-term operating lease, the Company recognized a right-of-use asset and a lease liability on its balance sheet. The lease liability is determined as the present value of future lease payments using an estimated rate of interest that the Company would have to pay to borrow equivalent funds on a collateralized basis at the lease commencement date. The right-of-use asset is based on the liability adjusted for any prepaid or deferred rent. The lease term at the commencement date is determined by considering whether renewal options and termination options are reasonably assured of exercise. Rent expense for the operating lease is recognized on a straight-line basis over the lease term and is included in operating expenses on the statements of operations. Variable lease payments include lease operating expenses. Adoption of the new standard resulted in the recording of additional net lease assets and lease liabilities of approximately $14.5 million and $18.3 million , respectively, as of September 30, 2019 . The standard did not materially impact the Company's consolidated net earnings and had no impact on cash flows. In June 2018, the FASB issued ASU No. 2018-07, "Compensation -Stock Compensation (Topic 718) - Improvements to Nonemployee Share-Based Payment Accounting" ("ASU 2018-07"). This new standard expands the scope of Topic 718, Compensation-Stock Compensation (which currently only includes share-based payments to employees) to include share-based payments issued to non-employees for goods or services. Consequently, the accounting for share-based payments to non-employees and employees will be substantially aligned. ASU 2018-07 is effective for public companies for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2018, including interim periods within that fiscal year. The standard did not materially impact the Company's consolidated net earnings and had no impact on cash flows. |