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10-K

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)


☒	ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023


☐	TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM TO

Commission File Number 001-31666

First Advantage Corporation

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)


Delaware	84-3884690
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)	(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.)
1 Concourse Parkway NE, Suite 200 Atlanta, GA	30328
(Address of principal executive offices)	(Zip Code)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (888) 314-9761

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

    Title of each class

    Trading
Symbol(s)

    Name of each exchange on which registered

    Common Stock, $0.001 par value per share

    FA

    The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☒ No ☐

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐ No ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ NO ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐

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


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

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes ☐ No ☒

As of June 30, 2023, the aggregate market value of the registrant’s common stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant was $771,746,746 based on the last reported sales price of the common stock as reported on Nasdaq. The number of shares of Common Stock outstanding as of February 23, 2024 was 145,160,557.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the registrant’s definitive Proxy Statement relating to its 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be filed with the SEC within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 are incorporated herein by reference in Part III.

Table of Contents


		Page
PART I
Item 1.	Business	6
Item 1A.	Risk Factors	18
Item 1B.	Unresolved Staff Comments	38
Item 1C.	Cybersecurity	38
Item 2.	Properties	39
Item 3.	Legal Proceedings	39
Item 4.	Mine Safety Disclosures	39

PART II
Item 5.	Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities	40
Item 6.	[Reserved]	41
Item 7.	Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations	42
Item 7A.	Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk	63
Item 8.	Financial Statements and Supplementary Data	64
Item 9.	Changes in and Disagreements With Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure	64
Item 9A.	Controls and Procedures	64
Item 9B.	Other Information	65
Item 9C.	Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections	65

PART III
Item 10.	Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance	66
Item 11.	Executive Compensation	66
Item 12.	Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters	66
Item 13.	Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence	66
Item 14.	Principal Accountant Fees and Services	66

PART IV
Item 15.	Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules	67
Item 16.	Form 10-K Summary	70

Glossary of Selected Terminology

The following terms are used in this Annual Report, unless otherwise noted or indicated by the context:

•

“Americas” in regards to our business, means the United States, Canada, and Latin America;

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“Enterprise customers” means our customers who contribute $500,000 or more to our revenues in a calendar year;

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“First Advantage,” the “Company,” “we,” “us,” and “our” mean the business of First Advantage Corporation and its subsidiaries;

•

“gross retention rate” for the current year is a percentage, where the numerator is prior year revenues less the revenue impact of lost accounts; the denominator is prior year revenues. We calculate the revenue impact of lost accounts as the difference between the customer’s current year and prior year revenues for the months after which they are identified as lost. Therefore, the attrition impact of customers lost in the current year may be partially captured in both the current and following years’ retention rates depending on what point during the year they are lost. Our retention rate does not factor in revenue impact, whether growth or decline, attributable to existing customers or the incremental revenue impact of new customers;

•

“international” in regards to our business, means all geographical regions outside of the United States, Canada, and Latin America; and

•

“Silver Lake” means Silver Lake Group, L.L.C., together with its affiliates, successors, and assignees.

Certain monetary amounts, percentages, and other figures included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (“Annual Report”) have been subject to rounding adjustments. Percentage amounts included in this Annual Report have not in all cases been calculated on the basis of such rounded figures, but on the basis of such amounts prior to rounding. For this reason, percentage amounts in this Annual Report may vary from those obtained by performing the same calculations using the figures in our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report. Certain other amounts that appear in this Annual Report may not sum due to rounding.

Cautionary Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This Annual Report contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to, among other things, our operations and financial performance. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements are included throughout this Annual Report and relate to matters such as our industry, business strategy, goals and expectations concerning our market position, future operations, margins, profitability, capital expenditures, liquidity and capital resources and other financial and operating information. In some cases, you can identify these forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “anticipate,” “assume,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “future,” “will,” “seek,” “foreseeable,” the negative version of these words, or similar terms and phrases.

These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, assumptions or changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict or quantify. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with the other cautionary statements that are included in this Annual Report. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures, investments or other strategic transactions we may make.

For additional information on these and other factors that could cause First Advantage’s actual results to differ materially from expected results, please see “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A. in this Annual Report, as such factors may be updated from time to time in our periodic filings with the SEC, which are accessible on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. The forward-looking statements included in this Annual Report speak only as of the date of this Annual Report, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Summary Risk Factors

Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those described in Part I, Item 1A. “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report. You should carefully consider these risks and uncertainties when investing in our common stock. The principal risks and uncertainties affecting our business include the following:

•

Macroeconomic factors beyond our control, including the state of the economy, could impact demand and the fulfillment costs for our products and solutions.

•

We operate in a highly regulated industry and are subject to numerous and evolving laws and regulations.

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Continued scrutiny of collection, use, and processing of personal data and data security could lead to increased restrictions, loss of revenue opportunity, greater costs of compliance, and lost efficiency.

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We may not be able to identify and successfully implement our growth strategies on a timely basis or at all.

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Social, ethical, and legal issues relating to the use of new and evolving technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, in our offerings may result in reputational harm and liability.

•

Any damage to our reputation or our brand could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

•

To the extent our customers reduce their operations, downsize their screening programs, or otherwise demand fewer of our products and solutions, our business could be adversely impacted.

•

We operate in a penetrated and competitive market.

•

We rely on third-party data and service providers. If they are unable to deliver or perform as expected, our ability to operate effectively may be impaired, and our business may be materially and adversely affected.

•

Due to the sensitive and privacy-driven nature of our products and solutions, we could face liability and legal or regulatory proceedings, which could be costly and time-consuming to defend and may not be fully covered by insurance.

•

Our business, brand, and reputation may be harmed as a result of security breaches, cyber-attacks, employee or other internal misconduct, computer viruses, or the mishandling of personal data.

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Our international business exposes us to a number of risks.

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Real or perceived errors, failures, or bugs in our products could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and growth prospects.

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The failure to complete our acquisition of Sterling Check Corp. may adversely affect our business and our stock price.

•

Failure to realize the benefits expected from the Acquisition (as defined below) could adversely affect the value of our common stock.

•

We may not be able to identify attractive acquisition targets and strategic partnerships or successfully complete such transactions.

•

We cannot guarantee that our stock repurchase program will be fully implemented or that it will enhance long-term stockholder value.

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Failure to comply with anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions, and anti-money laundering laws and regulations could have an adverse effect on our business.

•

Disruptions at our Global Operating Center and other operational sites could adversely impact our business.

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We are not guaranteed exclusivity or volumes in our contracts with our customers and our customers may experience major business changes that impact our current or future revenue streams.

•

Disruptions with our technology and network infrastructure, including our data centers, servers, and third-party cloud and internet providers, and our migration to the cloud, could have an adverse impact on our business.

•

If we fail to continue to integrate our platforms and solutions with that of human resource software providers or if our relationships with human resource software providers deteriorate, our business could be adversely affected.

•

We are subject to risks relating to public opinion, which may be magnified by incidents or adverse publicity concerning our industry or operations.

•

We rely on third-party vendors to carry out certain portions of our operations. If they cannot deliver or perform as expected or if our relationships with them are terminated or otherwise change, our business operations and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

•

Our continued success depends in large part on the service of our key executives and our ability to find and retain qualified employees.

•

If we are unable to obtain, maintain, protect and enforce our intellectual property and other proprietary information, or if we infringe, misappropriate or violate the intellectual property rights of others, the value of our brands and other intangible assets may be diminished, and our business may be adversely affected.

•

If we are unable to maintain, protect and enforce the confidentiality of our trade secrets, our business and competitive position would be harmed.

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The use of open-source software in our applications may expose us to additional risks and harm our intellectual property rights.

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Seasonality may cause our operating results to fluctuate from quarter to quarter.

•

Our failure to comply with the agreements relating to our outstanding indebtedness, including as a result of events beyond our control, could result in an event of default that could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

•

Silver Lake controls us and its interests may conflict with yours in the future.

•

Our stock price may be highly volatile or may decline regardless of our operating performance, and you may not be able to resell shares of our common stock at or above the price you paid or at all, and you could lose all or part of your investment as a result.

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We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

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The interpretation of tax laws may have a material adverse effect on our business.

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Our implementation cycles can be lengthy and variable, depend upon factors outside our control, and could cause us unexpected delays in generating revenues or result in lower than anticipated revenues.

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Our indebtedness could adversely affect our ability to raise additional capital to fund our operations, limit our ability to react to changes in the economy or our industry, and prevent us from meeting our obligations.

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We will require a significant amount of cash to service our debt, and our ability to generate cash depends on many factors beyond our control, and any failure to meet our debt service obligations could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

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Our debt instruments restrict our current and future operations, particularly our ability to respond to changes or take certain actions.

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First Advantage Corporation is a holding company with no operations of its own and, as such, it depends on its subsidiaries for cash to fund all of its operations and expenses, including future dividend payments, if any.

Trademarks, Service Marks, and Tradenames

We own a number of registered and common law trademarks and pending applications for trademark registrations in the United States and other countries, including, for example: First Advantage, Profile Advantage, Enterprise Advantage, Insight Advantage, Verified!, HEAL, RoadReady, and Corporate Screening, among others. Unless otherwise indicated, all trademarks, tradenames, and service marks appearing in this Annual Report are proprietary to us, our affiliates, and/or licensors. This Annual Report also contains trademarks, tradenames, and service marks of other companies, which are the property of their respective owners. Solely for convenience, the trademarks, tradenames, and service marks referred to in this Annual Report may appear without the ® and TM symbols, but such references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights or the rights of the applicable licensors to these trademarks, tradenames, and service marks. We do not intend our use or display of other parties’ trademarks, tradenames, or service marks to imply, and such use or display should not be construed to imply, a relationship with, or endorsement or sponsorship of us by, these other parties.

PART I

Item 1. Business.

Our Company

First Advantage is a leading provider of employment background screening, identity, and verification solutions. We deliver innovative services and insights that help our customers manage risk and hire the best talent. Enabled by our proprietary technology, we help companies protect their brands and provide safer environments for their customers and their most important resources: employees, contractors, contingent workers, tenants, and drivers.

We manage one of the earliest and most important interactions between an applicant and our customer. Most applicants view their screening experience as a reflection of the hiring organization and its onboarding process. Our comprehensive product suite includes criminal background checks, drug / health screening, extended workforce screening, biometrics and identity, education / work verifications, resident screening, fleet / driver compliance, executive screening, data analytics, continuous monitoring, social media monitoring, and hiring tax incentives. We derive a substantial majority of our revenues from pre-onboarding screening and perform screens in over 200 countries and territories, enabling us to serve as a one-stop-shop provider to both multinational companies and growth companies. In 2023, we performed approximately 100 million screens on behalf of more than 30,000 customers spanning the globe and all major industry verticals. We often have multiple stakeholders within our customers, including Executive Management, Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, Compliance, Risk, Legal, Safety, and Vendor Management, who rely on our products and solutions.

We seek to grow market share by focusing on high volume hiring industries and companies, increasing our share with existing customers, upselling and cross-selling new products and solutions, and winning new customers.

Our verticalized go-to-market strategy delivers highly relevant solutions for targeted industry sectors. This approach enables us to build a diversified customer portfolio and effectively serve many of the largest, most sophisticated, and fastest-growing companies in the world. We have built a powerful and efficient customer-centric sales model fueled by frequent engagement with our customers and deep subject matter expertise in industry-specific compliance and regulatory requirements, which allows us to create tailored solutions and drive consistent upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Our sales engine is powered by dedicated Sales and Solutions Engineering professionals working alongside Customer Success team members who have successfully maintained high customer satisfaction, retention, and growth, as evidenced by our industry-leading net promoter score (“NPS”), average 12-year tenure of our top 100 customers, and gross retention rate of approximately 97% as of December 31, 2023. Our go-to-market strategy continues to drive particular strength with Enterprise customers in sectors with attractive secular trends such as e-commerce, retail, transportation, warehousing, healthcare, and staffing.

We have designed our technology to be highly configurable, scalable, and extensible. Our platform is embedded in our customers’ core enterprise workflows and interfaces with more than 75 third-party Human Capital Management (“HCM”) software platforms, including Applicant Tracking Systems (“ATS”), providing us with real-time visibility and input into our customers’ human resources processes. We leverage our proprietary internal databases—which include over 765 million criminal, education, and work history observations as of December 31, 2023—and an extensive and highly curated network of more than 3,900 automated and/or integrated third-party data providers and robotic process automation (“RPA”) bots. Third-party data providers include federal, state, and local government entities; court runners; drug and health testing labs and collection sites; credit bureaus; and education and work history data providers. Our platform efficiently and intelligently integrates data from these proprietary internal databases as well as external data sources using automation, APIs, and machine learning. Our investments in RPA further enables rapid turnaround times. For example, in 2023 alone, approximately 90% of our criminal searches in the United States were completed within one day. Our platform prioritizes data privacy and compliance and is powered by robust compliance functionality. This enables us to address each customer’s unique requirements in an efficient and automated manner while also ensuring compliance with complex data usage guidelines and regulatory requirements across global jurisdictions and industry-specific regulatory frameworks.

Our focus on innovative products and technologies has been critical to our growth. Using agile software development methodologies, we have consistently enhanced existing products and been early to market with new and innovative products, including offerings for biometrics and identity, continuous criminal monitoring, extended workforce screening, and instant oral drug testing. In addition, we continue to expand our proprietary internal databases that extend our competitive advantage, enhance turnaround times for customers, and offer potential future monetization upside opportunities. Our hundreds of millions of criminal, education, and work history records in our proprietary internal databases, amassed and curated over many years, accelerate screening turnaround times and reduce costs by using internal data sources before accessing third-party data sources or performing a manual verification.

Pending Acquisition of Sterling Check Corp.

On February 28, 2024, we entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger (the “Merger Agreement”), by and among First Advantage, Sterling Check Corp., a Delaware corporation (“Sterling”), and Starter Merger Sub, Inc., a Delaware corporation and an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of First Advantage (“Merger Sub”). The Merger Agreement provides that, upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth therein, Merger Sub will be merged with and into Sterling, with Sterling continuing as the surviving corporation in such merger and becoming an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of First Advantage. The cash-and-stock transaction (the “Acquisition”) values Sterling at approximately $2.2 billion.

In connection with the execution of the Merger Agreement, First Advantage Holdings, LLC, a subsidiary of the Company (the “Borrower”), entered into a commitment letter with certain financial institutions that committed to provide, subject to the terms and conditions of the commitment letter, an incremental term loan in an aggregate principal amount of $1.820 billion and incremental revolving commitments in an aggregate principal amount of $150 million, in each case, under the Borrower’s existing credit agreement. Such financial institutions also agreed to extend the maturity date of the Borrower’s revolving credit facility from July 31, 2026 to the date that is the fifth anniversary of the closing date of the Acquisition.

The Acquisition is subject to satisfaction or waiver of customary closing conditions, including, among others, adoption of the Merger Agreement by Sterling stockholders, the expiration or termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act of 1976 (the “HSR Act”) and clearance under the antitrust or foreign direct investment laws of certain other jurisdictions, and the effectiveness of a registration statement on Form S-4 to be filed by First Advantage in connection with the Acquisition.

Our Market Opportunity

The importance of human capital and its associated risks to brand, reputation, safety, and compliance are ever-increasing in today’s interconnected, fast-paced world. Along with broader environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) considerations, these issues increasingly have become priorities at the highest executive and oversight levels of our customers worldwide. Key constituents, including C-Suite executives, boards of directors, external auditors, business owners, property managers, educators, volunteer organizations, and franchisors all face a heightened level of public scrutiny and accountability. Significant technological and societal trends include fraud and cyber-attacks; sexual harassment and workplace violence; and the prevalence of social media impacting companies’ brands. These have driven a significant increase in the need for screening, verifications, and ongoing monitoring. Our products and solutions are critical tools that companies depend on to provide safer environments for their customers and workers, maintain regulatory compliance, and protect their property, reputation, and brands.

We believe several key trends are generating significant growth opportunities in our markets and increasing demand for our products and solutions:

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Increased Workforce Mobility and Job Turnover: Millennials and Gen-Z represent a large, growing portion of the U.S. workforce and are more likely to change jobs than other generations in pursuit of earning higher wages, faster career development, and better workplace culture fit. Over the last few years, many companies have moved to a remote or hybrid work environment, reducing the barriers to job entry. Additionally, during this time period, the economy has experienced an economic trend in which more employees are voluntarily resigning from their jobs and applying for new jobs, leading to more frequent job switching and an increase in employee churn. We expect these trends to continue. In addition, as the economy evolves and resource needs differ significantly by sector, geography, and skill set, this is driving dynamism in the hiring environment.

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Increasing Use of Contingent and Flexible Workforces: Contingent workers including freelancers, independent contractors, consultants, or other outsourced and non-permanent workers, comprise a significant portion of the U.S. workforce as corporations continue to increase their use of a flexible workforce. Companies continue to face greater demand for employees than available talent, leading companies to increase their use of this contingent workforce. When independent contractors, external consultants, and temporary workers have access to sensitive information, company facilities, or directly interact with customers, it is important for companies to screen, verify, and monitor such flexible workforce personnel diligently.

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C-Suite Focus on Safety and Reputational Risks: Screening, verifications, and compliance are mission-critical and are becoming boardroom priorities for many companies due to the brand risks and potential legal liability of hiring high-risk workers. A number of high-profile human capital-related issues have led to significant brand damage, diversion of management attention, litigation, and negative news and social media coverage for enterprises in recent years. These events reinforced the importance of our products and solutions. Companies are increasingly focusing on products and solutions that help manage their potential risks and improve safety. By directly enhancing workplace safety and helping companies manage risk, we help address important social factors affecting our customers.

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Heightened Regulatory and Compliance Scrutiny: Businesses today are under intense scrutiny to comply with an ever-expanding and evolving set of global regulatory requirements that can vary by geography, industry vertical, and use case. Examples include the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), the United Kingdom Bribery Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, the “CCPA”), EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (“U.K. GDPR”), and Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“IBIPA”), in addition to other anti-corruption requirements with respect to anti-money laundering and politically exposed persons. These requirements are driving many companies to perform more extensive and exhaustive checks and to partner with screening providers that have the scale, scope, heightened compliance standards, and auditability that they require. Our products and solutions help strengthen companies’ corporate governance through bolstering their compliance and risk management practices.

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Development of International Markets: Background screening penetration remains low in many international geographies, with a large portion of screens conducted by unsophisticated, local providers. Multinational companies are increasingly focused on systematizing and elevating their human resources policies, screening procedures, and providers globally, driving greater demand and a shift towards technology-driven, high-quality, compliant, and global screening providers. In addition, many international-based companies are initiating screening programs for the first time and are seeking reliable, compliant, and high-quality providers.

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Growth in Post-Onboarding Monitoring: Companies are increasingly expanding their screening programs beyond a “one-and-done” pre-onboarding measure, which has historically been the norm in markets like the U.S. and U.K. We have invested in and continue to innovate our post-onboarding products and solutions and believe we are well-positioned to capture share in this growing market.

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Investment in Enterprise Software: Companies are increasingly investing in enterprise software to manage their businesses, including next-generation software-as-a-service solutions for HCM. As companies implement these systems, we believe there will be an increase in demand for screening, verification, and compliance solutions that can interface with these systems in an automated fashion to provide a seamless applicant and user experience and insights based on data analytics which we are able to provide through our product suite.

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Proliferation of Relevant Data Sources: U.S. government agencies, third-party vendors, and professional organizations are increasingly tracking and improving the quality and digitization of data in areas such as criminal, education, income history, healthcare credentials, and motor vehicle records (“MVRs”). In many other countries with limited quality and availability of reliable data, the collection and organization of higher quality datasets has been increasing. This increasing availability of data is driving customers to rely on large-scale, sophisticated providers that can efficiently access and create insights from data sourced, aggregated, and integrated from myriad disparate sources such as First Advantage.

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Advances in Analytics to Increase Value of Data: The increasing accessibility of robust datasets supplemented by machine learning technologies is driving heightened focus on integrating screening insights and dashboards with human resources, compliance, and security workflows. Customers often lack internal resources to develop such analytical and visualization tools, increasing demand for providers like First Advantage that offer these cutting-edge integrated data analytics capabilities.

Our Growth Strategy

We intend to continue to grow our business profitably by pursuing the following strategies:

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Continue to Win New Customers. We are focused on winning new customers across industry verticals, particularly those high-volume, high velocity hirers, with attractive, long-term hiring outlooks such as e-commerce, essential retail, and transportation and home delivery, and sectors that are increasingly requiring deeper, more frequent checks with high compliance standards such as healthcare. We are also prioritizing new verticals that align with positive secular macroeconomic trends. We primarily focus on Enterprise customers, which we believe are well-positioned for durable, long-term growth, have complex and diverse global operations, and, as a result, have the highest demand for our products and solutions. We believe our innovative and differentiated solutions, high-performing Sales and Customer Success teams, operational excellence, and industry-leading reputation and brand will enable us to expand our customer base successfully.

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Growth within Our Existing Customer Base through Upselling and Cross-selling. Our customers frequently begin their relationship with us by implementing a few core products and subsequently expanding their usage of our solutions platform over time to build a more comprehensive approach to screening and risk management. We drive upsell as customers extend our products and solutions to new divisions and geographies, perform more extensive screens, and purchase additional complementary pre- and post-onboarding products. We also cross-sell additional risk mitigation and compliance solutions such as hiring tax credits and fleet solutions. Our Sales and Customer Success teams frequently engage with our existing customers and identify areas where we can provide additional value and products. Our deeply entrenched, verticalized Customer Success teams work closely with our customers to develop robust and rigorous compliance and risk management programs within their organizations. We believe that our total revenue opportunity with current customers can substantially increase the size of our current revenue base when taking into account cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Revenues from cross-sell and upsell added approximately five, four, and four percentage points to our revenue growth rate in 2023, 2022, and 2021. We will continue to focus our sales and marketing efforts to increase product penetration within our existing customer base.

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Continue to Innovate Our Product Offerings. We plan to continue to expand our data solutions and adjacent product revenues. For example, we continue to invest in criminal and verifications data products and identity services. In addition, we are developing innovative solutions, utilizing machine learning technologies, that align with our capabilities in areas such as biometric verification, fraud mitigation, and remote drug testing. We will continue to invest significantly in our technology to sustain and advance our product leadership.

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Grow Internationally. We believe we are well-positioned to continue to grow internationally. As multinational corporations increasingly systematize and elevate their human resources policies and screening providers across the globe, while at the same time dealing with a growing set of local requirements, we believe we are uniquely positioned to address their global risk management and compliance requirements. The majority of Enterprise customers do not currently have a single, global provider but are actively evaluating opportunities to consolidate their screening programs. We will continue to invest internationally to win these expansion opportunities and drive broader industry adoption.

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Selectively Pursue Complementary Acquisitions and Strategic Partnerships. Our acquisition and partnership strategy centers on delivering additional value to our customers through expanded product capabilities and industry or geographic expertise and scale. Over the last three years, we completed five acquisitions, each of which either strategically expanded First Advantage’s international presence or strengthened specific industry or product offerings. We expect our acquisition of Sterling, if and when completed, to diversify our revenue across customer segments, industries, and geographies, reducing seasonality and improving resource planning and operational efficiency. We intend to augment our organic growth by continuing to take a disciplined approach in identifying and evaluating potential strategic acquisition, investment, and partnership opportunities that complement our market positions, enhance our product offerings, strengthen our technology and/or data capabilities, and/or allow us to enter new markets.

The First Advantage Product Suite

Our comprehensive product suite enables our customers across all industry sectors to perform pre-onboarding screening and post-onboarding monitoring of employees, contractors, contingent workers, tenants, and drivers. We generally classify our products and solutions into three categories: pre-onboarding, post-onboarding, and adjacent products, each of which is enabled by our technology, proprietary internal databases, and data analytics capabilities. Historically, we have derived a substantial majority of our revenues from pre-onboarding products and solutions.

Pre-Onboarding

We offer an extensive array of products and solutions that customers utilize to enhance their applicant evaluation process, ensure compliance from the time applicant information is initially requested and submitted to an applicant’s successful onboarding, and enhance workplace safety. Our technology is flexibly tailored to each customer’s requirements, which could include a wide array of search categories such as Social Security number verification, education and employment verification, federal criminal checks, statewide criminal checks, country criminal checks, sex offender registry, and global sanctions. Our pre-onboarding products include:

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Criminal background checks: Utilizes our proprietary National Criminal Records File database, along with court and other public records, to help identify relevant matching and reportable criminal record histories.

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Drug / Health screening: Offers various drug screening products, including saliva, urine, hair, and blood testing options, physical exams, and instant oral drug screening products performed by mouth swab collection.

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Extended workforce screening: Enables our customers to efficiently screen large numbers of contingent, contract, and temporary workers across various search types.

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FBI channeling: As an approved Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) channeler, handles submissions of fingerprints to the FBI National Criminal Records database and returns Criminal Record Information from the FBI to authorized recipients, including through a secure connection to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”), and the Nationwide Multi-state Licensing System (NMLS).

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Identity checks and biometric fraud mitigation tools: Includes government ID validation, liveness detection techniques, digital fingerprint collection, and identity and fraud mitigation tools.

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Education / Work history verification: Verifies work history and education of applicants, leveraging our proprietary Verified! Database and SmartHub technology fueled by AI, internal fulfillment, or through relationships with other data providers.

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Driver records and compliance: Collection and storage of driver qualification files, as well as drug screening and background checks to assist with compliance with the requirements of the U.S. Department of Transportation (“DOT”), Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (“FMCSA”), Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”), International Fuel Tax Agreement (“IFTA”), and other regulatory agencies across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

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Healthcare credentials: Through our extensive Healthcare Exclusions Actions and Licensures (“HEAL”) product, verifies and documents the educational background, training, experience, and other credentials of healthcare employees, contractors, volunteers, and vendors, including identifying exclusions and sanctions by medical boards, Medicaid and Medicare, the Office of Inspector General, and the General Services Administration.

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Executive screening: Provides in-depth investigative reports to confirm various aspects of credentials not typically covered by most background checks, such as civil litigation and bankruptcies, negative media searches, controversies and inconsistencies in business dealings, corporate and regulatory history, and potential conflicts of interest.

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Others: Includes screening products such as global sanctions, professional licenses and credentials verification, and social media checks.

Post-Onboarding

Companies face a heightened responsibility to ensure safety and comply with laws, regulations, and licensing requirements after the initial screening and onboarding of an applicant. To assist those needs, we provide our customers with continuous monitoring and re-screening solutions that are important tools to help keep their end customers, workforces, and other stakeholders safe, productive, and compliant. Continuous monitoring solutions allow customers to be proactively alerted as soon as relevant information, which may require immediate attention and action, becomes available. Our post-onboarding solutions include:

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Criminal records monitoring: Enables our customers to receive ongoing notification of any reportable criminal records of their employees, contractors, contingent workers, and drivers.

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I-9 verification: Enables our customers to simplify and manage the process of onboarding new hires by streamlining employment eligibility verification through the convenience of digital workflows.

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Healthcare sanctions: Our HEAL product provides ongoing healthcare-related compliance monitoring, which helps our customers to comply with their obligations as employers of doctors, nurses, other employees, and vendors, verifying that they have valid licenses and no exclusions, sanctions, or board actions against them.

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Motor vehicle records: Provides customers with a streamlined process to establish an initial driver file and enroll drivers into the continuous monitoring program, which reports any new violations and driver records changes.

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Global sanctions and licenses: Continuously monitors more than 2,000 source lists and searches a broad range of individual watchlists and key sanctions sources.

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Social media: Offers continuous social media screening tailored to a customers’ specific criteria.

Adjacent Products

We also offer adjacent products that complement our pre-onboarding and post-onboarding products and solutions:

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Fleet / Vehicle compliance: Comprehensive solutions for fleet managers to support compliance with various state and federal requirements, including licenses, titles, registrations, and gas taxes.

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Hiring tax credits and incentives: Identifies and processes U.S. employment tax credits and economic incentive programs, including the Federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit (“WOTC”) program and other federal, state, and local incentives. Uses data collected from applicants during their background screen to increase quality and efficiency.

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Resident / Tenant screening: Enables property managers, landlords, owners, and leasing agents to screen prospective tenants.

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Investigative research: Provides in-depth investigative reports, similar to our Executive Screening products, used in performing due diligence of alternative investment managers and senior executives before a major investment commitment or M&A transaction.

Our suite of products is available individually or through packaged solutions configured and tailored according to our customers’ needs. For example, through our RoadReady solution, we provide comprehensive driver and fleet solutions to assist with compliance and asset management. Our driver compliance products include pre-onboarding background checks, MVRs, drug tests, driver files, and post-onboarding monitoring. Our asset management products related to vehicle compliance include title management, registration, fuel and gas tax, permits, transponder management, and ongoing data analytics.

Analytics Through Insight Advantage

In addition to the products described above, we provide customers with actionable, data-driven analytics and insights that help inform decisions related to human capital more generally, as well as optimize their screening programs. We deliver these insights and analytics through Insight Advantage. This powerful and dynamic tool enables customers to analyze their program’s performance and benchmark it against industry data, such as hiring volumes by geography, as well as evaluate their screening program against industry best practices. Our customers can also identify the scope of the pool of qualified applicants in a specified geography, which informs their decision as to whether to expand operations in such geography. In addition, our customers can dynamically adjust the stringency of their screening criteria to view and assess the expected impact on hire rates, turnaround times, and screening costs. Insight Advantage’s dashboard reports and real-time queries help customers quickly identify opportunities to remedy potential issues before they may impact their screening and onboarding process. We believe our ability to provide these data-driven insights, enabled by our sophisticated and differentiated technology, sets us apart from our competitors.

Our Differentiated Technology

Background screening involves complex workflows, disparate internal and external data sources, and numerous integrations with third-party software providers. We believe our differentiated technology provides us with a strong competitive advantage. Our front-end technology, including our powerful UI/UX design, creates a superior applicant and customer experience, leveraging artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning to optimize workflows and minimize applicant data capture errors and missing information. Our back-end technology and processing engine seamlessly integrate interactions with customer HCM platforms and other software, government, and third-party data sources, as well as internal Operations and Customer Care teams. We have been, and will continue to be, pioneers in using automation and intelligent routing technologies to optimize turnaround times, quality, and touchless end-to-end screening. Our compliance functionality governs all aspects of our technology and is designed to meet ever-changing global regulatory and compliance requirements.

Our customers and their applicants access our technology through intuitive, easy-to-use user interfaces – Profile Advantage, Enterprise Advantage, and Insight Advantage.

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Profile Advantage: Our applicant-facing technology, available in 19 languages, offers intuitive design with chatbot and AI support, liveness detection techniques, and ID verification for a streamlined applicant experience. Profile Advantage provides a modern, easy-to-use experience, which is critical to accelerating time to hire. It is often the first and one of the most important early interactions between an applicant and our customers. Profile Advantage can be accessed through a computer, tablet, or mobile device and is built for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (“WCAG”) 2.1 to be easily accessed by everyone. We believe that applicants view this experience as an important reflection of the customer. As such, customers can extend their branding to Profile Advantage to help improve applicant engagement. With its embedded AI, machine learning, and powerful features such as auto-fill, Profile Advantage drives significant time savings for both applicants and customers and enables fast time-to-hire.

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Enterprise Advantage: Our core, proprietary, global end-to-end customer ordering and processing technology, Enterprise Advantage, enables our customers to order any of our products and solutions at scale. It has an average of 99.9% uptime due to our robust architecture design and it seamlessly integrates with our customers’ business processes and workflows, third-party enterprise software systems such as HCM and ATS platforms, and third-party data sources. Through Enterprise Advantage, our customers can easily manage their screening programs, either through centralized processes or by region or division, create customized screening packages, manage screening criteria, and administer adverse action letters.

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Insight Advantage: Our innovative, dynamic data visualization tool offers our customers data analytics, dashboards, and near real-time reporting to assess their screening programs’ underlying drivers and make data-driven decisions. We leverage the customer’s unique applicant and screening data collected through Profile Advantage and Enterprise Advantage to create insights presented in dynamic dashboards. Customers have the ability to customize their dashboards and perform scenario analysis with our intuitive and flexible tools. Customers can also overlay key metrics from industry peer groups to discover and benchmark best-practices so that they may optimize their screening programs to deliver best-in-class performance.

We have designed our technology architecture for extensibility. We receive data directly from the applicant through Profile Advantage and from our customers through their third-party HCM and ATS software platforms. This data is supplemented by our proprietary internal databases and external data sources as we perform screenings and verifications. Our proprietary internal databases of over 765 million records include our National Criminal Records File, which includes approximately 655 million criminal records with thousands of new records added daily, and Verified!, our repository of nearly 110 million prior education and work history records. These proprietary internal databases allow us to complete our processes quickly and cost-effectively, which accelerates the onboarding process for our customers and improves the applicant experience. We also obtain data directly from federal, state, and local government entities, laboratories and collection sites, credit bureaus, and education and work history verification providers, as well as from third-party, independent compilers of public records. Our API integrations, either through our Standard API or our REST API, allow for real-time, bidirectional, and secure data flows between us and our customers’ software platforms and external data sources, creating a seamless and integrated screening process. Our technology interfaces with more than 75 third-party HCM and ATS software platforms and more than 3,900 automated and/or integrated external data providers and RPA tools to deliver results to our customers with high speed and consistency.

Background screening and verification requirements vary from customer to customer, depending on the size and geographic footprint of the business as well as the industry vertical in which the customer operates. For example, customers in the transportation, logistics, and home delivery industry may have screening requirements relating to transportation regulatory bodies, including the DOT, FMCSA, FAA, and IFTA, that customers in other industries do not require. In addition, the laws and regulations on the use of certain information vary significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and are constantly evolving. We have designed our technology to be highly configurable, allowing us to provide our customers with tailored solutions that meet their specific needs.

Our flexible, scalable, and highly integrated technology, enhanced by our investments in automation and AI, has driven significant operational efficiencies and enabled us to achieve one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings among our competitors for quality, accuracy, and turnaround times. We will continue to innovate using agile software development methodologies, focusing on user-centered design, to bring leading products and solutions to the market.

Sales and Marketing

We believe we have a differentiated, verticalized sales, customer success, and marketing approach that sets us apart from our competitors and positions us to capture additional market share. Our Sales team is vertically aligned and organized into groups that target new accounts and additional opportunities within existing accounts. We train and educate our sales professionals to ensure they are highly knowledgeable in the industry-specific screening requirements and can deliver value-added, industry-targeted solutions to existing and new customers.

Our Sales team is augmented by Customer Success professionals, who are similarly organized to deliver solutions specific to existing customers within each industry vertical. Our Customer Success team members are located across geographies to foster deep relationships with customers and build local expertise in compliance and screening standards. Our Customer Success teams maintain ongoing interactions with key customer users and program owners and hold regular formal customer account reviews to ensure high performance, satisfaction, and retention. They also organize our customer advisory boards and events to uncover product insights, drive product innovation, and share screening and compliance best practices with our customers. This further drives our industry-leading customer satisfaction scores and high customer retention rates and helps us identify and execute additional opportunities with existing customers.

We believe the extensive coordination between our Sales, Customer Success, and Product teams is a driving force behind our continued expansion. These teams also enhance our value proposition by working closely with our Compliance, Marketing, Solutions Engineering, and Business Development teams.

Our relationships with HCM software providers are an important aspect of our Sales and Marketing strategy. Our technology is tightly integrated with major HCM and ATS platforms, which offers greater speed and efficiency and enhances the value of our solutions to our customers. Maintaining a strong relationship with these third-party software providers is critical in generating new sales leads and providing market validation to our offerings.

We also market our products and solutions through indirect channels, including traditional and online marketing activities designed to provide sales leads, increase market awareness, and enhance the perception of our brand and offerings. We leverage referral partners, channel partnerships, digital advertising, search engine optimization, webinars, social media, thought leadership, and various event-based marketing. We participate in industry conferences and are published frequently in the industry press. Additionally, our annual customer conference, Collaborate has featured presentations by subject matter experts and our customers on a wide range of industry topics. Collaborate facilitates discussions and serves as a great resource on industry best practices. We believe we are able to capitalize on the network effects as we build goodwill through customer reviews and testimonials, word-of-mouth referrals, and references from other industry participants.

Customers

We serve a diversified customer base with more than 30,000 customers globally in 2023. Our customer base ranges from small businesses with fewer than 100 employees to multinational corporations with workforces numbering in the hundreds of thousands. We have executed a concerted go-to-market strategy to target customers with large, complex workforces and have built a leading customer portfolio in this area as a result. While our customers operate in diverse industries across almost all facets of the global economy, we have strength in sectors with favorable secular trends such as e-commerce, retail, transportation, warehousing, and healthcare. We have maintained a gross retention rate of approximately 97% in 2023 and achieved an average tenure of 12 years amongst our top 100 customers.

For the year ended December 31, 2023, we had one customer that accounted for approximately 12% of our revenues. No other customer accounted for 10% or more of our total revenues for such period. As of December 31, 2023, we performed screens in over 200 countries and territories, with a major presence in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. Approximately 87% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023 were derived from our Americas business.

Competition

The global background screening and verifications industry is fragmented and competitive. There are many local, single-country companies but few multinational companies that operate with scale and reach. Our competitors vary based on customer size, industry vertical, geography, and product focus.

We compete with large players with broad capabilities and product suites, vertical-focused specialist firms that target customers operating in select industries, mid-size players and competitors that serve small and medium-sized business (“SMB”) customers. Some competitors are aligned to a specific product in certain pre- and post-onboarding product lines, such as drug / health screening and executive screening. In our adjacent products market, we compete with certain companies specializing in fleet / vehicle compliance, hiring tax credits and incentives, resident / tenant screening, employment eligibility, and investigative research.

The market for our products and solutions is subject to constant change, sources of competition are numerous, and new competitors frequently arise.

The principal competitive factors affecting our markets include:

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reliability of screening results;

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turnaround time of screening results;

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product, package, and solution pricing;

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applicant and enterprise user experience, ease of use, level of functionality, scalability, and efficiency;

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breadth and depth of screening solutions;

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geographical reach;

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sales and marketing relationship history with the key decision-makers;

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compliance and regulation;

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industry vertical support that meets the needs of a customers’ specific requirements;

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technical and systems performance, including the ability to integrate with customer and third-party systems and applications; and

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cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection.

We believe we compete favorably based on these factors. However, our ability to remain competitive will depend on our continued ability to perform in the areas listed above. For additional information, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Business—We operate in a penetrated and competitive market.”

Government Regulations

Due to the nature of our business, we are subject to significant and extensive U.S. federal, state, local, and foreign laws and regulations. These laws and regulations include national, international, state, and local cybersecurity, privacy and data protection, health, taxation, anti-corruption and anti-money laundering, antitrust / competition, enterprise credit reporting agencies and environmental, health and safety protection. Taking commercially reasonable steps to comply with such laws and regulations is an important priority for us.

Regulators worldwide have adopted or proposed national, international, state, and local laws that regulate consumer protection, cybersecurity, privacy, data protection, and/or business credit reporting. These laws impact, among other things, the collection, use, disclosure, sale, transfer, receipt, storage, transmission, destruction, and other processing of personal data (collectively, “Processing”). The principal laws and regulations that impact our business include, but are not limited to:

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FCRA, which regulates the use of consumer report information and governs the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of such information;

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Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank Act”), which prohibits unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices with respect to consumer financial services practices;

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Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which regulates the use of non-public personal financial information held by financial institutions;

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Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which restricts the public disclosure of patient information and applies indirectly to companies that provide services to healthcare-related businesses;

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Drivers’ Privacy Protection Act, which restricts the public disclosure, use, and resale of personal data contained in state department of motor vehicle records;

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U.K. Digital Identity & Attributes Trust Framework, which provides for a set of rules and standards for digital identity products;

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Various U.S. federal, state, and local data protection and consumer reporting agency laws at the state level, state data breach laws, and state privacy laws, such as the CCPA and the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act;

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International data protection, data localization, and similar laws and regulations impacting our services and data suppliers, such as the U.K. and EU GDPR; and

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Oversight by regulatory authorities for engaging in consumer reporting, including the FTC and CFPB in the United States.

These laws and regulations, which are generally designed to protect individuals’ privacy and prevent the misuse of personal data or unauthorized access to data, are complex, subject to ongoing changes in regulations and amendments, and inconsistent between jurisdictions. We proactively manage our compliance with laws and regulations through the use of a number of resources, including our in-house legal and compliance department, external law firms, trade associations, and local suppliers and partners to understand the legal and regulatory requirements and practices that may impact the delivery of our products and solutions as well as our customers’ use of the same in light of employment, privacy and other laws and regulations. Our General Counsel leads our legal department with a Chief Global Compliance Officer reporting to the General Counsel. The compliance team consists of four regional compliance officers globally, with local compliance officers reporting through that hierarchy. Through the legal and compliance functions, we train our team members with respect to compliance with our policies and procedures, monitor changes to relevant material laws and regulations, and meet with regulators and legislators, as necessary and appropriate, to establish transparency of our operations and build trust.

Public concern is high with respect to the processing of personal data, including Social Security numbers, financial information, and medical information. In the future, additional legislative or regulatory efforts in the United States and internationally could further regulate the processing of personal data that we process in the conduct of our business. For additional information, see the section titled “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Business—If regulatory regimes continue to heighten their scrutiny over personal data and data security, it could lead to increased restrictions, loss of revenue opportunity, greater costs of compliance, and lost efficiency” and “— Any damage to our reputation or our brand could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”

Intellectual Property

Our success depends, in part, on developing, maintaining, protecting and enforcing our proprietary technology and intellectual property rights. We own and control various intellectual property rights, such as confidential information, trade secrets, trademarks, service marks, trade names, domain names, copyrights, patents, and U.S. and foreign registrations and applications in the foregoing. We are licensed to use certain technology and other intellectual property rights owned and controlled by others, and certain third parties are licensed to use certain technology and other intellectual property rights owned and controlled by us.

Obtaining, maintaining, protecting and enforcing our intellectual property and proprietary rights is an important aspect of our business. We rely on a combination of statutory (e.g., copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent), contract, and liability safeguards (e.g., confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and contractors and nondisclosure agreements with our vendors) to protect our intellectual property in the United States, and other jurisdictions. We currently have patent and trademark applications pending in several jurisdictions. Filing these applications does not guarantee patents will be issued or that our trademark applications will proceed to registration without challenge, but may provide us with legal defense and allow us to pursue the protection of our intellectual property to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost-effective.

While we believe that our intellectual property, in the aggregate, is generally important to our business and operations, we do not regard any aspect of our business as being dependent upon any single patent, group of patents or other intellectual property right. However, the First Advantage name and related trade names, marks, and logos are of material importance to our business, and their loss could have a significant negative impact on us.

See the section titled “Risk Factors” for a more comprehensive description of risks related to our intellectual property and proprietary rights.

Seasonality

We experience seasonality with respect to certain industries due to fluctuations in hiring volumes and other economic activity. For example, pre-onboarding revenues generated from our customers in the retail and transportation industries are historically highest during the months of October and November, leading up to the U.S. holiday season and lowest in December and at the beginning of the new year, following the U.S. holiday hiring season. Certain customers across various industries also historically increase their hiring throughout the second quarter of the year as winter concludes, commercial activity tied to outdoor activities increases, and the school year ends, giving rise to student and graduate hiring. We expect that further growth in e-commerce, the continued digital transformation of the economy, and other economic forces may impact future seasonality, but we are unable to predict these potential shifts and how our business may be impacted.

Human Capital

Central to our strategy is attracting, developing and retaining the best talent globally with the right skills to drive our success. The capabilities of the Company’s workforce have continued to evolve along with its business and strategy. Key focus areas of the Company’s human capital management strategy are described below, and additional information can be found in its Sustainability Report, available on the Company’s website (which is not incorporated by reference herein).

As of December 31, 2023, we had approximately 5,000 employees in 17 countries. Our workforce also engages third-party contractors as an ongoing part of our business where appropriate. None of our employees are subject to a collective bargaining agreement, and no work stoppages have been experienced. We consider our relationship with our employees to be good.

Global Code of Conduct and Ethics

The quality of our products and operations affects our reputation, productivity, profitability, and market position. Our objective is to create a work environment that allows and encourages all employees to perform their duties in an efficient, effective manner. We have established a Global Code of Conduct and Ethics (“Code”). Compliance with the provisions of the Code is a basic condition of employment at First Advantage.

Equal Employment

We strive for all of our employees to work in an environment where we are treated with dignity and respect. We are an equal opportunity employment employer and are committed to providing a workplace that is free of discrimination of all types from abusive, offensive, or harassing behavior. We are committed to creating such an environment because it brings out the full potential in each of our employees, which, in turn, contributes directly to our business success.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The success of our Company and the value we can provide to our customers lies in the strength of our global inclusive workforce. We are committed to enhancing diversity among our workforce and demonstrating that commitment to our employees, customers, and community. We maintain active, dynamic diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DE&I”) programs that continue to promote an environment that celebrates each individual and aims to provide for equitable opportunity. Our efforts to promote DE&I include, among other things, our (1) talent attraction programs and practices to provide equal employment opportunities for all applicants and employees, such as implementing strategies to build diverse candidate pools and pipelines and promoting equitable recruitment and hiring practices, (2) employee development and training and (3) efforts building an inclusive business culture, through mentoring and inclusivity programs.

We promote diversity by developing policies, programs, and procedures that foster a work environment where differences are respected and all employees are treated fairly. We act on, and believe that, promoting diversity plays an important role in attracting the most expansive pool of qualified applicants, fostering greater innovation and creativity, and enhancing our communication and relationships with all of our stakeholders. Our goal is to attract, develop, and retain the best and brightest from all walks of life and backgrounds. This requires an organization to have a culture of inclusion where all individuals feel respected, are treated fairly, and are provided work-life balance and an opportunity to excel in their chosen careers.

Supplier Diversity

We are committed to developing mutually beneficial relationships with small, minority-owned, women-owned, disadvantaged, veteran-owned, HUBZONE, LGBTQIA, and local business enterprises. Our supplier diversity policy reflects our desire to create an opportunity for suppliers to market their products to the Company. When all business considerations are determined to be equal among competitive suppliers, the Company will award contracts to such businesses.

Additional Information

First Advantage Corporation, a Delaware corporation, was incorporated in November 2019. We completed our initial public offering (“IPO”) of our common stock in June 2021.

We use our websites (https://fadv.com/ and https://investors.fadv.com/) to distribute company information. We make available free of charge a variety of information for investors, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to those reports, as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file that material with or furnish it to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). The information we post on our websites may be deemed material. Accordingly, investors should monitor our websites, in addition to following our press releases, filings with the SEC, and public conference calls and webcasts. In addition, you may opt in to automatically receive email alerts and other information about First Advantage when you enroll your email address by visiting the “Email Alerts” section of our investor website at https://investors.fadv.com/. The contents of our websites and social media channels are not, however, a part of this Annual Report.

Item 1A. Risk Factors.

You should carefully consider the following risk factors and all of the information contained in this Annual Report. If any of the following risks occur, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

Risks Related to Our Business

Macroeconomic factors beyond our control, including the state of the economy, could impact demand and the fulfillment costs for our products and solutions.

Macroeconomic developments such as the global or regional economic effects resulting from inflation and related economic curtailment initiatives, interest rate volatility, foreign exchange rate fluctuations, geopolitical developments, wars in Europe and the Middle East, evolving trade policies between the U.S. and international trade partners, or the occurrence of similar events in other countries that lead to uncertainty or instability in economic, political, or market conditions could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and outlook.

In addition, international, regional, or domestic political unrest and the related potential impact on global stability, terrorist attacks, and the potential for other hostilities in various parts of the world, public health crises, and natural disasters continue to contribute to a climate of economic and political uncertainty that could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition, including our revenue growth and profitability.

Global credit and capital markets have experienced significant volatility and disruption due to the above factors. A substantial majority of our revenues are derived from pre-onboarding screening products, which is heavily influenced by hiring volumes. The businesses of some of our largest customers and their decision to hire depend in part on favorable macroeconomic conditions, including consumer spending, the general availability of credit, the level and volatility of interest rates, and inflation levels. To the extent these macroeconomic factors are at suboptimal levels, our existing and potential customers could delay or defer onboarding new or replacement workers, reduce the size of their workforce, or seek to decrease spending on their screening programs. As a result, our products could face reduced demand and our business, results of operations, and financial condition could slow or decline. Similarly, demand for our tenant screening products is subject to trends in real estate rental markets, which may be affected by macroeconomic factors beyond our control, including housing markets, stock market volatility, recession, job losses and unemployment levels, debt levels, and uncertainty about the future.

We operate in a highly regulated industry and are subject to numerous and evolving laws and regulations.

As a provider of technology solutions for screening and verifications, we are subject to numerous and evolving international, federal, state, and local laws and regulations, including, without limitation, in the areas of consumer protection, privacy, and data protection. See “Business—Government Regulations” and “—Continued scrutiny of collection, use, and processing of personal data and data security could lead to increased restrictions, loss of revenue opportunity, greater costs of compliance, and lost efficiency.” We expect that these laws and regulations will continue to evolve, change, and expand and, in most instances, become more stringent and complex with time. Compliance with these laws and regulations requires significant expense and resources, which could increase significantly as these laws and regulations evolve. Further, regulations are often the product of administrative interpretation and judicial construction, which could result in inconsistent implementation across jurisdictions. We must reconcile the many potential differences between the laws and regulations among the various domestic and international jurisdictions that may be involved in the provision of our solutions. A failure to identify, comply, and reconcile the many laws and regulations we are subject to could result in the imposition of penalties and fines, restrictions on our operations, breach of contract or indemnification claims against us, loss of revenues, and could otherwise adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Further, we acquired a company in 2013 that was subject to multiple FTC consent decrees that had been imposed on it in the years prior to our acquisition and to which we now remain subject. The consent decrees require us to comply with the FCRA and to maintain a comprehensive information security program to be audited biennially. Under these circumstances, failure to comply with the decrees and/or relevant law or regulations may subject us to increased risk.

Changes in laws, regulations, and the interpretation of such laws and regulations on both the state and federal level could also affect certain of our businesses and result in restrictions on our ability to offer certain products and solutions. For example, several states and smaller local jurisdictions have implemented “fair chance” hiring laws or ordinances that limit or restrict employers from inquiring or using an applicant’s criminal history to make employment decisions. In addition, under the FCRA in the United States, both our customers and we are required to comply with many requirements under the FCRA as well as state-level laws regarding the use and delivery of consumer reports. The enactment of new restrictive legislation and the requirements, restrictions, and limitations imposed by changing interpretations and court decisions on such laws and regulations could prevent our customers from using the full functionality of our products, which may reduce demand for our products and solutions. We could also be required to adapt our products to meet these evolving and complex requirements, such as adding or changing disclosures, authorizations, or forms provided to applicants. In addition, we believe it is critical for us to keep abreast of evolving laws and interpretations in applicable jurisdictions and inform our customers of changes to their ability to use our products and solutions and their and our obligations. These efforts require time, expense, and resources, and in some instances, reliance on third parties such as law firms and trade associations.

Our products and solutions are subject to various complex laws and regulations governing cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection on the federal, state, and local levels, and in foreign jurisdictions. The regulatory framework for privacy issues is rapidly evolving and is likely to remain uncertain and inconsistently enforced for the foreseeable future. Many federal, state, and foreign governmental bodies and agencies have adopted or are considering adopting laws and regulations regarding collecting, processing, handling, maintenance, storage, use, disclosure, sale, and transmission of personal and other sensitive information, including mandatory consumer notification should the unauthorized access of consumer information occur, and further expansion of requirements is possible. It is possible that these restrictions could limit our current or future service offerings, reduce our profitability, or otherwise materially and adversely affect our ability to conduct our business or to do so economically. Further, if our practices or products are perceived to violate applicable laws or regulations, we may be subject to increased scrutiny and public criticism, litigation, investigation, fines, and reputational harm, which could disrupt our business and expose us to liability. Given the nature of our business and the volume data processed in the ordinary course of our operations, it is possible for breaches to occur, whether intentionally from hackers or other third parties, or unintentionally, for example, if we inadvertently send or otherwise make available information to an unauthorized recipient.

In the United States, we are subject to numerous federal and state laws governing the collection, processing, use, transmission, disclosure, and sale of personal data (which may also be referred to as personal information, personally identifiable information, and/or non-public personal information). For example, in California, the CCPA, provides for enhanced consumer protections for California residents, a private right of action for data breaches of certain personal information and statutory fines and damages for such data breaches or other CCPA violations, as well as a requirement of “reasonable” cybersecurity. In addition, in November 2020, California voters passed the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020, which amends and expands the California Consumer Privacy Act with additional data privacy compliance requirements and establishes a regulatory agency dedicated to enforcing those requirements. Other states also have or are in the process of imposing similar privacy obligations. In addition, laws such as the Biometric Information Privacy Act in Illinois have also restricted the use of biometric information. These and other laws and regulations require us to continuously review our data processing practices and policies, may cause us to incur substantial costs with respect to compliance, and could require us to adapt our products and solutions, which may reduce their utility to our customers.

Outside of the United States, we are subject to foreign rules and regulations. For example, we are subject to enhanced compliance and operational requirements under the GDPR, which expanded the scope of data protection in the European Union (“EU”) to foreign companies who process the personal data of EU residents, imposed a strict data protection compliance regime with stringent penalties for noncompliance and included new rights for data subjects such as the “portability” of personal data. In particular, under the GDPR, fines of up to 20 million euros, or up to 4% of the annual global revenue of the noncompliant company, whichever is greater, could be imposed for violations of certain of the GDPR’s requirements. If we were found to be in breach of the GDPR, the potential penalties we might face could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows. Compliance with the GDPR requires time and expense and may require us to make changes to our business operations.

While the GDPR applies uniformly across the EU, each EU member state is permitted to issue nation-specific data protection legislation, which has created inconsistencies on a country-by-country basis. The decision by the U.K. to leave the EU (“Brexit”) has resulted in a new U.K. data privacy and protection law that essentially tracks the GDPR but is applicable in the U.K. which is no longer a part of the EU. The European Commission has adopted an adequacy decision for the U.K., allowing for transfer of most personal data from the European Economic Area (“EEA”) to the U.K, subject to a “sunset clause,” which limits the duration of adequacy to four years. However, there will likely be increasing scope for divergence in application, interpretation and enforcement of the data protection law as between the U.K. and EEA.

The effects of U.S. state, U.S. federal, local, and international laws and regulations that are currently in effect or that may go into effect in the future are significant and may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies, cease offering certain products and solutions, and incur substantial costs and potential liability in an effort to comply with such laws and regulations. Any actual or perceived failure to comply with these and other cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection laws and regulations could result in regulatory scrutiny or investigation and increased exposure to the risk of litigation or the imposition of consent orders, resolution agreements, requirements to take particular actions with respect to training, policies or other activities, and civil and criminal penalties, including fines, which could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Moreover, allegations of non-compliance, whether or not true, could be costly, time-consuming, and distracting to management and cause reputational harm.

We may not be able to identify and successfully implement our growth strategies on a timely basis or at all.

We cannot guarantee that we will succeed in appropriately identifying and successfully executing our strategic plans to grow our businesses, and our inability to do so may be the result of external factors beyond our control. Our ability to grow our business will depend, in large part, on our ability to further penetrate our existing markets, attract new customers, and identify and effectively invest in growing industry verticals. The success of any enhancement of our current products and solutions or any new product or solution depends on several factors, including the timely completion, introduction, and market acceptance of enhanced or new products and solutions, adaptation to new industry standards and technological changes, the ability to maintain and to develop relationships with third parties, and the ability to attract, retain, and effectively train sales and marketing personnel. Our growth could be limited if we fail to innovate or adapt to market trends and product innovations adequately. Any new products and solutions we develop or acquire may not be introduced in a timely or cost-effective manner and may not achieve the market acceptance necessary to generate significant revenues, and any new markets in which we attempt to sell our products and solutions, including new countries or regions, may not be receptive or implementation may be delayed. Our future growth will be adversely affected if we do not identify and invest in faster-growing industry verticals. In addition, any expansion into new markets will require an investment in the continuous monitoring of local laws and regulations, which increases our costs and the risk of the products or service failing to comply with such local laws or regulations. We may also incur costs associated with such plans that are above anticipated amounts.

To successfully manage our growth, we will also need to maintain appropriate staffing levels and update our operating, financial and other systems, procedures, and controls accordingly. Our efforts to grow our business and execute our business strategy may place significant demands on and strain our personnel and organizational structure, including our management, staff, and information systems. If we fail to effectively manage our growth, our business, results of operations, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

A quickly evolving legal and regulatory environment may cause us to incur increased research and development costs, or divert resources from other development efforts, to address social, ethical, and legal issues related to artificial intelligence and machine learning. We are increasingly building artificial intelligence and machine learning into many of our offerings and utilize data gathered from various sources in our services to train our machine-learning models.

As with many cutting-edge innovations, artificial intelligence and machine learning present new risks and challenges, and existing laws and regulations may apply to us in new ways, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict. The continuous development, maintenance and operation of our machine-learning models is expensive and complex, and may involve unforeseen difficulties including material performance problems, and undetected defects or errors with new machine-learning or other artificial intelligence capabilities. Some of those difficulties could arise from undetected or uncorrected inaccuracies or unrepresentative tendencies in the data. We may encounter technical obstacles, and it is possible that we may discover additional problems that prevent our machine-learning models from operating properly. If our machine-learning models do not function reliably, we may incorrectly process background checks or suffer extended processing times and other failures of our services, which could result in customer dissatisfaction. The risks and challenges presented by artificial intelligence and machine learning could undermine public confidence in artificial intelligence and machine learning which could slow its adoption and affect our business.

Generally, machine-learning models use data about past decisions in a particular situation to create algorithms that make a new decision in a similar situation. If the past decisions on which our machine-learning models are based were affected by a disparate impact based on any legally prohibited classification (such as race or sex), then decisions made by our machine-learning models could have a similarly disparate impact. Consistently making decisions that result in disparate impact could subject us or our customers to legal or regulatory liability. In light of these risks and evolving concerns about the fairness of the effects of use of artificial intelligence, we expect there to be an increased focus on laws and regulations related to our business, because of the growing policy concerns with regard to the collection, use, accuracy, correction and sharing of personal information, and the use of algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning in business processes. Failure to adequately address these ethical, social, and legal issues that may arise with such use cases could negatively affect the adoption of our solutions and subject us to reputational harm, regulatory action, or legal liability, which may harm our financial condition and operating results.

Any damage to our reputation or our brand could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Developing, protecting, and maintaining our strong reputation among customers, applicants, and third-party partners and vendors is critical to our success. The importance of our brand may increase if competitors offer more products similar to ours or if more competitors enter the market. Our brand may suffer if our service quality declines or if our customer initiatives are not successful. Additionally, the successful protection and maintenance of our brand will depend on our ability to obtain, maintain, protect, and enforce trademark and other intellectual property protection for our brand. If we fail to successfully promote, protect, and maintain our brand, we may lose our existing customers to our competitors or be unable to attract new customers.

The value of our intellectual property and other proprietary rights associated with our brand could diminish if others assert rights in or ownership of trademarks or service marks that are similar to our trademarks or service marks. Our registered or unregistered trademarks or trade names may be challenged, infringed, circumvented or declared generic or determined to be infringing on other marks. Opposition or cancellation proceedings may be filed against our trademarks, which may not survive such proceedings. We may be unable to prevent competitors or other third parties from acquiring or using trademarks or service marks that are similar to, infringe upon, misappropriate, dilute, or otherwise violate or diminish the value of our trademarks and service marks, thereby impeding our ability to build brand identity and possibly leading to market confusion. Damage to our reputation or our brand or loss of confidence in our products and solutions could result in decreased demand for our products and solutions, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially adversely affected.

To the extent our customers reduce their operations, downsize their screening programs, or otherwise demand fewer of our products and solutions, our business could be adversely impacted.

Demand for our products and solutions is subject to our customers’ continual evaluation of their need for our products and solutions and is impacted by several factors, including their budget availability, hiring and workforce needs, and a changing regulatory landscape. Demand for our offerings is also dependent on the size of our customers’ operations. Our customers could reduce their operations for a variety of reasons, including general economic slowdown, divestitures and spin-offs, business model disruption, poor financial performance, or as a result of increasing workforce automation. Demand for drug screenings may decline as a result of evolving U.S. drug laws. For example, the legalization of cannabis in several U.S. states has led to a decrease in orders for marijuana screenings. Our revenues may be significantly reduced should our customers decide to downsize their screening programs or take such programs in-house.

We operate in a penetrated and competitive market.

The global market for our screening, verifications, and adjacent products is fragmented and competitive. Our competitors vary based on their targeted customer size, industry vertical, geography, and product focus. We compete with large players with broad capabilities and product suites, vertical-focused specialist firms that target customers operating in select industries, mid-size players and competitors that serve SMB customers. Some competitors are aligned to a specific product in certain pre-onboarding product lines, such as drug / health screening and executive screening. In our adjacent products market, we compete with certain companies specializing in fleet / vehicle compliance, hiring tax credits and incentives, resident / tenant screening, employment eligibility, and investigative research.

New entrants to the market have in the past emerged, both as start-ups as well as participants in adjacent sectors such as applicant tracking systems and payroll processing companies that seek to integrate background screening into their onboarding products and solutions, and may emerge in the future, which would further increase competition. Additionally, our customers may also decide to insource work that has been traditionally outsourced to us.

In our competitive market environment, we primarily compete on the basis of brand and awareness, accuracy, compliance, turnaround time, and price. We must continue to innovate and ensure market acceptance of our products and solutions in order to maintain and grow our business and market share. We are continually subject to the risk that our competitors may develop products and technologies that are superior to ours or achieve greater market acceptance than ours. Continuing strong competition could result in increased pricing pressure, increased sales and marketing expenses, loss of customers, and greater investments in research and development, each of which could negatively impact our results of operations. The revenues of our competitors and the resources they have available vary depending on size, specialty, and geographic footprint. Some competitors may be able to allocate resources more efficiently than we can or anticipate and respond to existing and emerging market trends, customer preferences, and technologies due to their size and resources. If we fail to compete successfully, our business, financial position, and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

We rely extensively on data, information, and services provided by or derived from a variety of external sources, including our suppliers, customers, strategic partners, various public filings, credit bureaus, publicly available information, and government authorities. Our suppliers could at any point decline to continue providing data or provide untimely or inaccurate data. These data sources have in the past increased the costs for their services, and we expect they will continue to do so from time to time. It may not be possible for us to recover any or all of the costs of any increases in fees by passing such costs along to our customers. If we try to do so, it could have a negative impact on customer relationships. In addition, the increase in such costs could cause our customers to choose to forgo certain services, thereby reducing demand for our products and solutions. Our suppliers could also request or require us to enter into minimum order contracts with clawback enforcement provisions. Some suppliers, such as certain criminal data suppliers and drug testing laboratories and collection sites we use, are also owned or may in the future be acquired by one or more of our competitors, which could make us especially vulnerable to unforeseen price increases or outright declinations to continue our relationships. Because our agreements with third-party data providers are generally non-exclusive, we are subject to the risk they may choose to enter into an exclusive arrangement with one of our competitors or maintain an exclusive proprietary database that is not shared with us. These risks could be exacerbated if our customers request we engage with a particular provider for their orders. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to identify and engage replacement providers on acceptable terms or obtain data from alternative sources in the event our suppliers are no longer able or are unwilling to provide us with certain data or services. If we were to lose access to external data or if our access or use were restricted or were to become less economical or desirable, our ability to timely complete requested services and products at a level of quality acceptable to our customers could be negatively impacted, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Data collection and verification by screening providers is dependent on access to databases run by government and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, state, and federal courthouses, and records systems. If we were to lose or face diminished access to one or more of these data sources, or if government personnel were unable or unwilling to access these data sources on our behalf, our operations could be negatively impacted, and our sales could suffer. Such interruptions could result from government shutdowns or slowdowns, changing laws and regulations, or natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or floods. The inability to access or a delay in accessing essential information could result in lengthened and unsatisfactory turnaround times or our inability to offer certain of our products and solutions.

The nature of the products and solutions we provide and the information and data collected, processed, transmitted, disclosed, used, and reported by us (including personal information, confidential information, and other sensitive and/or regulated information) subjects us to potential liability from customers, consumers, data subjects, third parties, and government authorities relating to claims of legal or regulatory non-compliance, defamation, invasion of privacy, false light, negligence, intellectual property infringement, misappropriation or other violation and/or other related causes of action. Such liability may depend on actions or events beyond our control, such as how our customers use the information we provide or the veracity of the data we are provided by third parties. For example, we may from time to time be subject to legal claims by applicants for allegedly failing to comply with the FCRA in relation to issues regarding the accuracy of our reports. Likewise, our customers may seek indemnification for losses allegedly caused by negligent hiring or retention by asserting our reports failed to disclose information that would have resulted in an adverse employment decision had it been reported or if we improperly interpret a customer’s custom processing instructions. Such lawsuits and other proceedings could divert resources from our management and potentially subject us to equitable remedies. In addition, punitive damages are available as a remedy under the FCRA, which we are subject to and are generally not covered by insurance. We may also face adverse publicity in connection with such incidents, which could have a negative effect on our reputation and business.

Our business, brand, and reputation may be harmed as a result of security breaches, cyber-attacks, employee or other internal misconduct, computer viruses, or the mishandling of personal data.

Our products entail the collection, use, processing, disclosure, storage, and transmission of personal information, confidential information, and other sensitive and/or regulated information of individuals, including personal data.

In general, we utilize encryption and other technologies designed to provide system security for the transmission of confidential or personal data. There is no assurance that our use of applications and other technologies designed for data security, or that of our third-party vendors and service providers, will effectively counter security risks from hackers, computer viruses, and/or other intrusions or incidents. If one of more of our or our vendors’ facilities, computer networks, or databases were to experience a security breach, we could face a risk of loss of, or unauthorized access to and use of, personal data, confidential information, and other sensitive and/or regulated data, which could harm our business and reputation and result in a loss of customers or the imposition of fines or other penalties by governmental agencies, in addition to potential legal claims by our customers and their applicants and employees. Although we have put in place a number of controls and automated redundancies, our protocols and processes can also be violated due to human error, including as a result of phishing and other attempts by others to fraudulently induce the improper disclosure of sensitive information.

The techniques utilized and planned by hackers, bad actors, and other unauthorized entrants are varied and constantly evolving and may not be detected until a breach has occurred. As a result, despite our efforts, it may be difficult or impossible for us to implement measures that fully prevent such attacks or react in a timely manner. Unauthorized parties may in the future attempt to gain access to our systems or facilities through various means, including, among others, hacking into our or our consumers’ systems or facilities, or attempting to fraudulently induce our employees, consumers or others into disclosing usernames, passwords, or other sensitive information, which may, in turn, be used to access our information technology systems and gain access to our data or other confidential, proprietary, or sensitive information. Such efforts may be state-sponsored and supported by significant financial and technological resources, making them even more difficult to detect and prevent.

Further, certain of our employees have access to sensitive information about the applicants whom we perform background screenings and verifications on. In addition, certain of our third-party service providers and vendors have access to limited portions of our IT systems and may also be subject to such attempts, which then can be used to attempt to infiltrate our systems. Because we cannot control our vendors or the processing of data by our vendors, other than through our contractual relationships, our ability to monitor our vendors’ data security may be very limited such that we cannot ensure the integrity or security of measures they take to protect and prevent the loss of our or our consumers’ data. As a result, we are subject to the risk that cyber-attacks on, or other security incidents affecting, our vendors may adversely affect our business even if an attack or breach does not directly impact our systems. It is also possible that security breaches sustained by, or other security incidents affecting, our competitors could result in negative publicity for our entire industry that indirectly harms our reputation and diminishes demand for our products and solutions.

Furthermore, international, federal and state regulators and many international, federal and state laws and regulations require notice of certain data security breaches that involve personal information, which, if applicable, could lead to widespread negative publicity, which may cause our customers to lose confidence in the effectiveness of our data security measures. In addition, we may incur significant costs and operational consequences in connection with investigating, mitigating, remediating, eliminating, and putting in place additional measures designed to prevent future actual or perceived security incidents, as well as in connection with complying with any notification or other obligations resulting from any security incidents.

Our insurance policies may not be adequate to reimburse us for losses caused by security breaches, and we may not be able to collect fully, if at all, under these insurance policies. 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 adversely affect our business. Furthermore, we cannot be certain that insurance coverage will continue to be available on acceptable terms or at all, or that the insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim.

If we are unable to fully protect the security and privacy of our data and electronic transactions, or if we or our third-party service providers are unable to prevent any data security breach, incident, unauthorized access, and/or misuse of our information by our customers, employees, vendors, or hackers, it could result in significant liability (including litigation and regulatory actions and fines), cause lasting harm to our brand and reputation, and cause us to lose existing customers and fail to win new customers.

Our international business exposes us to a number of risks.

We perform screenings and verifications internationally, including helping businesses screen their applicants with backgrounds that include international jurisdictions outside of the business’ domestic base of operations. In 2023, we performed screens for our customers on individuals from over 200 countries and territories, and we seek to continue to expand our international operations. The laws and regulations governing our international operations are numerous, varied, and evolving. It may be difficult to correctly identify, interpret, and ensure compliance with these laws and regulations, and we cannot be certain we will avoid liability for noncompliance or improper compliance with such laws and regulations. Any such cost or liability could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. See “—We operate in a highly regulated industry and are subject to numerous and evolving laws and regulations” and “—If regulatory regimes continue to heighten their scrutiny over personal data and data security, it could lead to increased restrictions, loss of revenue opportunity, greater costs of compliance, and lost efficiency.”

Because we generate a portion of our revenues and operating income outside of the United States, we are exposed to market risk from changes in foreign currency exchange rates that could impact our results of operations, financial position, and cash flows. Such fluctuations could have a negative or positive impact on our revenues and results of operations in any given period, which may make it difficult to compare our operating results across different periods. Foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations may also adversely impact third-party vendors we rely on for services, which may be passed along to us in the form of price increases.

In addition, as a result of our international footprint, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be subject to factors beyond our control, including, but not limited to:

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our ability to oversee and staff our international operations;

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foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash to the United States;

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fluctuations in currency exchange rates and related impacts on customer demand and our operating results;

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unfavorable foreign tax rules;

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language and cultural differences;

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trade relations, political and economic instability, and international conflicts;

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non-compliance with applicable currency exchange control regulations, transfer pricing regulations, or other similar regulations;

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violations of the FCPA or similar anti-corruption laws by acts of agents and other intermediaries whom we have limited or no ability to control; and

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sanction laws and regulations such as those by the U.S. Department of The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, that restrict our dealings with certain sanctioned countries, territories, individuals and entities; these laws and regulations are complex, frequently changing, and increasing in number, and may impose additional prohibitions or compliance obligations on our dealings in certain countries and territories, including sanctions imposed on Russia and certain Ukraine territories.

Real or perceived errors, failures, or bugs in our products could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and growth prospects.

Our products are complex, and therefore undetected errors, failures, bugs, or defects may be present in our products or occur in the future in our products, our technology, or our software, or technology or software we license in from third parties, including open source software, especially when updates or new products are released. Such software and technology are used in IT environments with different operating systems, system management software, devices, databases, servers, storage, middleware, custom, and third-party applications and equipment and networking configurations, which may cause errors, failures, bugs, or defects in the IT environment into which such software and technology are deployed. This diversity increases the likelihood of errors, failures, bugs, or defects in those IT environments. Despite testing by us, real or perceived errors, failures, bugs, or defects may not be found until our customers use our products. Real or perceived errors, failures, bugs or defects in our products could result in negative publicity, loss of or delay in market acceptance of our products and harm to our brand, weakening of our competitive position, claims by customers for losses sustained by them or failure to meet the stated service level commitments in our customer agreements. In such an event, we may be required, or may choose, for customer relations or other reasons, to expend significant additional resources in order to help correct the problem. Any real or perceived errors, failures, bugs, or defects in our products could also impair our ability to attract new customers, retain existing customers or expand their use of our products, which would adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Additionally, if customers fail to adequately deploy protection measures or update our products, customers and the public may erroneously believe that our products are especially susceptible to cyber-attacks. Real or perceived security breaches against our products could cause disruption or damage to our customers’ networks or other negative consequences and could result in negative publicity to us, damage to our reputation, lead to other customer relations issues and adversely affect our revenue and results of operations. We may also be subject to liability claims for damages related to real or perceived errors, failures, bugs, or defects in our products. A material liability claim or other occurrence that harms our reputation or decreases market acceptance of our products may harm our business and results of operations. Finally, since some of our customers use our products for compliance reasons, any errors, failures, bugs, defects, disruptions in service, or other performance problems with our products may damage our customers’ business and could hurt our reputation.

The failure to complete our acquisition of Sterling Check Corp. may adversely affect our business and our stock price.

Consummation of the Acquisition is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of customary closing conditions, including, among others, (i) adoption of the Merger Agreement by Sterling stockholders, (ii) the expiration or termination of the waiting period under the HSR Act and clearance under the antitrust and foreign direct investment laws of certain other jurisdictions, (iii) and the effectiveness of a registration statement on Form S-4 to be filed by First Advantage in connection with the Acquisition. There can be no assurance that these or other closing conditions will be satisfied in a timely manner or at all. Any delay in completing the Acquisition could cause us not to realize some or all of the anticipated benefits when expected, if at all. If the Acquisition is not completed, our stock price could decline to the extent that such stock price reflects an assumption that we will complete the Acquisition and derive benefits therefrom. Furthermore, if the Acquisition is not completed, we may suffer other consequences that could adversely affect our business, results of operations and stock price, including incurring significant acquisition costs that we would be unable to recover, negative publicity and a negative impression of us in the investment community.

Failure to realize the benefits expected from the Acquisition could adversely affect the value of our common stock.

Although we expect significant benefits to result from the Acquisition, there can be no assurance that we will actually realize any of them, or realize them within the anticipated timeframe. Achieving these benefits will depend, in part, on our ability to integrate Sterling’s business successfully and efficiently. The challenges involved in this integration, which will be complex and time consuming, include the following:

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preserving client and other important relationships of Sterling and attracting new business and operational relationships;

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integrating financial forecasting and controls, procedures and reporting cycles;

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consolidating and integrating corporate, information technology, finance and administrative infrastructures;

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coordinating sales and marketing efforts to effectively position our capabilities;

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coordinating and integrating operations in countries in which we have not previously operated; and

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integrating employees and related human resource systems and benefits, maintaining employee morale and retaining key employees.

If we do not successfully manage these risks and the other challenges inherent in integrating an acquired business, then we may not achieve the anticipated benefits of the Acquisition on our anticipated timeframe or at all and our revenue, expenses, operating results, financial condition and stock price could be materially adversely affected. The successful integration of the Sterling business will require significant management attention both before and after the completion of the Acquisition, and may divert the attention of management from our business and operational issues.

We may not be able to identify attractive acquisition targets and strategic partnerships or successfully complete such transactions.

Part of our strategy is to selectively pursue complementary acquisitions and strategic partnerships. Opportunities to grow our business through acquisitions, joint ventures, and other alliances may not be available to us in the future. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to identify attractive targets that are a strategic fit with our business or that we will be able to agree upon acceptable terms. Our ability to successfully identify and complete future acquisitions with reasonable valuations may also be affected by factors out of our control, including general market conditions, volatility in the capital and debt markets, and other macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. Furthermore, a number of our competitors expand and diversify through acquisitions, and we likely will experience competition in our effort to execute our acquisition strategy. As a result, we may be unable to continue to make acquisitions or may be forced to pay more for the companies we are able to acquire.

We may not be able to integrate or manage acquired businesses, including the digital identity and biometric solutions company we acquired in September 2023 and Sterling, if the Acquisition is completed, and strategic partnerships so as to produce returns that justify the investment. Integrating acquisitions or other business relationships, including the Acquisition, may result in unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures, disrupt our ongoing business, divert our resources, and require significant management attention that would otherwise be available for the ongoing development of our business. In particular, it may prove difficult to integrate the personnel, operations, intellectual property, and/or technology systems of any acquired organizations, and to maintain uniform standards, policies, and procedures across multiple platforms and locations, including for those located outside of the United States. This may result in a greater than anticipated increase in the transaction, remediation, and integration costs and could discourage us from entering into acquisitions where the potential for such costs outweigh the perceived benefit. Further, although we conduct due diligence with respect to the business and operations of each of the companies we acquire, we may not have identified all material facts concerning these companies, including Sterling, which could result in unanticipated events or liabilities. We cannot guarantee that any acquisitions we seek to enter into will be carried out on favorable terms or that the anticipated benefits of any acquisition, investment, or business relationship, including the Acquisition, will materialize as intended or that no unanticipated liabilities will arise.

Failure to comply with anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions, and anti-money laundering laws and regulations could have an adverse effect on our business.

We are subject to evolving anti-corruption laws, economic and trade sanctions, and anti-money laundering rules in several jurisdictions in which we operate, including the U.S. FCPA and the U.K. Bribery Act. The evolution of this regulatory regime has generally brought about more aggressive investigations and enforcement, which, if targeted towards us, could materially adversely impact our business. We have policies and procedures in place to assist us with monitoring the evolution of these laws and ensuring our ongoing compliance. We are continuously in the process of reviewing, upgrading, and enhancing these protocols. However, we cannot guarantee that our employees, consultants, or agents will not take actions that amount to a violation of these laws and regulations for which we may be ultimately responsible or that our policies and procedures will be adequate in protecting us from liability. Further, our services agreements with several customers contain contractual provisions mandating our ongoing compliance with applicable anti-corruption, economic, and trade sanctions or anti-money laundering laws or regulations. If we are deemed to be in violation of any such rules, our business activities could be restricted or terminated. In addition, we could face civil and criminal penalties, including fines, which could damage our reputation and customer relationships and materially impact our results of operations or financial condition.

Disruptions at our Global Operating Center and other operational sites could adversely impact our business.

Our Global Operating Center in Bangalore, India provides critical support for our operations by processing screening requests, undertaking a manual review of records and verifications work, handling certain customer calls and interactions, and completing certain internal shared service support functions. We also have other important operational sites, including Fishers, Indiana; Atlanta, Georgia; Manila, Philippines; and Mumbai, India. If our operations at our Global Operating Center or such other sites are disrupted, even for a brief period of time, whether due to malevolent acts, defects, computer viruses, climate change, natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, hurricanes or floods, power or telecommunications failures, or other external events beyond our control, it could result in interruptions in service to our customers, damage to our reputation, harm to our customer relationships, and reduced revenues and profitability. In addition, strikes, wars, terrorism, and other geopolitical unrest could cause disruptions in our business and lead to interruptions, delays, or loss of critical data. We may not have sufficient protection or recovery plans in certain circumstances, such as a significant natural disaster, and our business interruption insurance may be insufficient to compensate us for losses that occur. In the case of such an event, customers could elect to terminate our relationship, delay or withhold payment to us, or even make claims against us.

We are not guaranteed exclusivity or volumes in our contracts with our customers and our customers may experience major business changes that impact our current or future revenue streams.

We enjoy long-standing relationships with many of our customers, but our customer contracts and services agreements do not typically require our customers to use our products exclusively or commit to minimum engagement or order volumes. As a result, we rely on our customers’ continuing demand for our products and solutions, our technology, our value proposition, and our brand and reputation to compete. Our customers can stop doing business with us for any reason at any time with minimal notice and without penalty, which they may leverage to renegotiate our arrangements on terms less favorable to us. The loss of a significant customer or any reduced demand for our products and solutions by our customers, especially our large customers, would have a negative impact on our business. For the year ended December 31, 2023, we had one customer who accounted for approximately 12% of our revenues. We cannot guarantee that we will maintain relationships with any of our customers on acceptable terms or at all or retain, renew or expand upon our existing agreements. The failure to do so could negatively affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Our operating model depends on the efficient and unimpeded operation of our global technology and data processing systems. We currently operate data centers and servers around the world and rely on our third-party cloud providers to host certain of our websites, databases, and web-based services. Our property and business interruption insurance coverage may not be adequate to fully compensate us for losses that may occur. Severe impairment or total destruction of our data centers could occur, and recovery could be difficult and may not be possible at all. In the event of an accessibility outage or other incident at our data centers or with respect to our third-party cloud providers, our operations could be disrupted, data could be lost, our systems or the quality of our products and solutions could be compromised, and we could suffer financial loss, reputation damage, potential liability, or customer loss, any of which could have an adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Such outages may be impossible to predict, plan for, or avoid.

Because we rely on such third-party cloud providers, we are subject to risks that we can neither control nor mitigate, including their vulnerability to damage from climate change, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, acts of terrorism, power loss, telecommunications and other service failures, break-ins, human error, and similar events. Our current or future third-party cloud providers could decide to close their facilities without adequate notice or otherwise cease doing business with us. We cannot guarantee that our current or future third-party cloud providers will keep up with our increasing capacity needs or customer demand. In addition, our users depend on internet service providers, online service providers, and other website operators for access to our systems. These providers could experience outages, delays, and other difficulties due to system failures unrelated to our systems, events which are beyond our control, or mitigation. Any changes in service levels by our current or future third-party cloud providers could result in loss or damage to our stored information and result in operational delays. Any of these events could seriously harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We are currently transitioning towards hosting certain of our software and systems on cloud-based technology. This transition is complex and will require significant changes to our platforms. Scaling and adapting our technology will require a significant lead time and investment in financial and human capital. We cannot guarantee that this transition will be without operational interruptions or other forms of disruption, including loss of information, delayed turnaround times, and deficiencies in our design, implementation, or maintenance of the system. If we experience outages or interruptions in the products and solutions we provide for extended periods of time, our customers could face accessibility issues which would have an adverse impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We engage and integrate with many third-party human resource software providers, including applicant tracking systems and human capital management systems, to ensure that customers benefit from an integrated solution that allows them to easily perform both human resource functions and screenings and verifications through a core platform. This depends on our ability to seamlessly integrate our platforms and systems with those of the human resource software providers. If our engagement or arrangements with such providers are terminated for any reason, we risk losing the opportunity for continued integration with the software applications of these companies, which could jeopardize our ability to provide a seamless interface for our customers, result in service disruptions, increase costs and reduce the quality of our products, and ultimately put us at a competitive disadvantage in maintaining our customer relationships and obtaining new ones. Further, if a provider updates its products without providing sufficient notice to us, there could be disruptions to the integration, which could result in errors, delays, and interruptions.

In addition, these third-party human resource software providers are often sources of positive references when a customer is looking to make a purchase or contract renewal decision and may also be a source of new business referrals. If our relationships with these third parties were to deteriorate or if our arrangements with them were to expire, our business and our ability to win new customers and retain existing customers may be adversely affected.

We are subject to risks relating to public opinion, which may be magnified by incidents or adverse publicity concerning our industry or operations.

We operate in an industry that involves the risk of negative publicity, especially relating to cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection, and adverse developments with respect to our industry may also, by association, negatively impact our reputation. For example, when information services companies are involved in high-profile events involving data theft, these events could result in increased legal and regulatory scrutiny, adverse publicity, and potential litigation concerning the commercial use of such information for our industry in general. If there is a perception that the practices of our business or our industry constitute an invasion of privacy, our business and results of operations may be negatively impacted. There have been and may continue to be perception issues, social stigmas, and negative media attention regarding the collection, use, accuracy, correction, and sharing of personal data, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our ability to deliver products to our customers effectively requires us to work with certain third-party vendors and service providers. For example, we engage third-party vendors to maintain and upgrade portions of our software and technology. In addition, from time to time and in certain geographic locations, we engage third-party support service providers depending on demand requirements on our operations and customer service call centers. Our business, therefore, depends on such third parties meeting our expectations and the expectations of our customers in timeliness, quality, and volume. We cannot guarantee our third-party providers will be able to do so on a cost-effective basis or at all due to a number of factors. Some of the third-party vendors that we rely on conduct operations outside of the United States, which subjects us to the risk that economic, political, and military events in foreign jurisdictions might cause an interruption to our operations. We may not be able to ensure that our third-party vendors perform in accordance with agreed-upon, regulated, and expected standards. We could be held accountable for their failure to do so, which may subject us to fines or other sanctions. If our third-party vendors do not meet our expectations and those of our customers, it could negatively affect our reputation, harm our relationships with existing customers, and hamper our ability to win new customers.

While we have entered into agreements with some of these third-party service providers, they have no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms or at all. If any one of our third-party service provider’s ability to perform their obligations was impaired, we may not be able to find an alternative supplier in a timely manner or on acceptable financial terms, which could result in operational interruptions.

In addition, any shift in business strategy, corporate reorganization, or financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy faced by our third-party providers, may have negative effects on our ability to implement our business strategy.

Any termination of our agreements with, or disruption in the performance of, one or more of these third-party providers could result in operational disruptions and delayed turnaround times. This could adversely impact our relationships with our existing customers, reduce our ability to attract new customers, impact our ability to innovate and introduce new products and solutions, and result in an inability to meet our obligations or require us to seek alternative service providers on less favorable terms, any of which can adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Our continued success depends in large part on the service of our key executives and our ability to find and retain qualified employees.

We depend to a large degree on the personal efforts, abilities, and performance of the members of our senior leadership team and other key personnel. Over the past several years, our management team has driven strategic and transformational initiatives across operations, product, engineering, and sales to accelerate growth and product development. Although we maintain employment contracts with certain of our officers, the possibility remains they may terminate their employment relationship with us at any time. If any of our key personnel were unable or unwilling to continue in their present positions, it may be difficult to replace them, and their departure could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Our ability to grow our business and provide our customers with the products and solutions they have grown to expect from us is also dependent on our ability to attract and retain highly motivated and qualified people. Competition for skilled employees in our industry is intense and, if we are unable to attract and retain an able workforce, our business, results of operations, and financial condition may suffer. Any unplanned turnover or sustained labor shortage, or failure to attract, develop, and maintain a highly skilled and diverse workforce, including key capabilities such as product development, sales, customer success, and operations, can deplete our institutional knowledge base, erode our competitive advantage or result in increased costs due to increased competition for employees, higher employee turnover or increased employee benefit costs.

Our intellectual property rights and other proprietary rights are important to our business, and our ability to compete and our success depend, in part, on obtaining, maintaining, protecting, and enforcing such rights. In particular, the technology solutions we have created to deliver screening solutions, automate and integrate our platforms with third-party human capital management and applicant tracking systems, and gather and process information from various data sources and suppliers are critical to the success of our business. We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret laws, as well as licensing agreements, intellectual property assignment agreements, third-party nondisclosure agreements, and other confidentiality agreements with our employees, customers, vendors, partners, and others to protect our intellectual property rights. These protections may not be adequate to prevent our competitors from copying our products and solutions or otherwise infringing on, misappropriating, or violating our intellectual property rights, and we may need to devote significant additional resources and time to ensure our intellectual property rights are adequately protected, including by bringing litigation against third parties to enforce our intellectual property rights. We cannot guarantee that we will be successful in prevailing in any such matters, regardless of our expenditures and efforts. Our efforts to enforce our intellectual property and other proprietary rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims, and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property and other proprietary rights, and if such defenses, counterclaims, or countersuits are successful, it could diminish or we could otherwise lose valuable intellectual property and other proprietary rights. In addition, some of the laws in foreign markets in which we operate do not protect intellectual property and other proprietary rights to the same level of protection as do the laws of the United States, and the mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property and other proprietary rights in such countries may be inadequate.

In addition, our competitors and other third parties may also design around or independently develop similar technology or otherwise duplicate or mimic our products such that we would not be able to successfully assert our intellectual property or other proprietary rights against them. We cannot assure that any future patent, trademark, or service mark registrations will be issued for our pending or future applications or that any of our current or future patents, copyrights, trademarks, or service marks (whether registered or unregistered) will be valid, enforceable, sufficiently broad in scope, provide adequate protection of our intellectual property or other proprietary rights, or provide us with any competitive advantage.

Furthermore, we may also be subject to claims of intellectual property infringement, misappropriation, or violation by third parties, including our competitors. Even if we are unaware of such rights, we may be found by courts to be infringing upon, misappropriating, or violating them. If successfully asserted against us or if we decide to settle such matters, we could be required to pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, obtain licenses, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, modify our products and solutions (including our applications), or discontinue certain products. We may also be obligated to indemnify applicants, customers, vendors, or partners in connection with any such claim or litigation. Even if we prevail in a dispute, any litigation regarding intellectual property could be costly, time-consuming, and require the deployment of significant resources, and could result in lasting harm being done to our brand and reputation, results of operations or financial condition, or have other adverse consequences.

If we are unable to maintain, protect and enforce the confidentiality of our trade secrets, our business and competitive position would be harmed.

In order to safeguard our innovations and competitive advantages, we partially rely on trade secrets. We cannot guarantee that we will be successful in maintaining, protecting, or enforcing the confidentiality of our trade secrets or that our non-disclosure agreements will provide sufficient protection of our trade secrets, know-how, or other proprietary information in the event of any unauthorized use, misappropriation, or other disclosure. Although we have taken steps to protect our trade secrets, including entering into confidentiality agreements with third parties and confidential information and inventions agreements with employees, consultants, and advisors, we cannot provide any assurances that any of these parties may not breach the agreements and disclose our proprietary information, including our trade secrets. For example, if a party to one of our non-disclosure agreements were to breach said agreement, we cannot guarantee that adequate remedies will be available to rectify any subsequent damages or losses of confidential and proprietary information. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or misappropriated a trade secret is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, some courts inside and outside of the United States are less willing or unwilling to protect trade secrets. It is also possible that our trade secrets will become known by some other mechanism or independently developed by our competitors, and we would have no right to prevent them from using that technology or information to compete with us. For example, a significant portion of our proprietary databases is assembled from publicly available information sources, and third parties, including our competitors, could compile similar or competing databases by accessing the same publicly available information sources.

The use of open-source software in our applications may expose us to additional risks and harm our intellectual property rights.

We have in the past incorporated, and may in the future continue to incorporate, certain “open-source” software into our codebase and our products and solutions. Open-source software is generally licensed by its authors or other third parties under open-source licenses, which typically do not provide any representations, warranties, or indemnity coverage by the licensor. Some of these licenses provide that combinations of open source software with a licensee’s proprietary software are subject to the open source license and require that the combination be made available to third parties in source code form, at no cost, or subject to other unfavorable conditions. Some open-source licenses may also require the licensee to grant licenses under certain of its own intellectual property to third parties. From time to time, there have been claims challenging the ownership of open-source software against companies that incorporate such software into their products or applications. The terms of various open-source licenses have not been interpreted by courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our use of open-source software or our proprietary rights. In addition, if we were to combine our applications with open-source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain of the open-source licenses, be required to publicly release or license, at no cost, our products that incorporate the open-source software or the affected portions of our source code, which could allow our competitors or other third parties to create similar products and solutions with lower development effort, time, and costs, and could ultimately result in a loss of transaction volume for us. If we inappropriately use open-source software, we may be required to redesign our applications, seek licenses from third parties in order to continue offering our products, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, discontinue the sale of our products or solutions, or take other remedial actions, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and could adversely impact our business, operating results, or financial condition.

We cannot ensure that we have not incorporated open-source software in our software in a manner that is inconsistent with the terms of the applicable license or our current policies, and we may inadvertently use open source in a manner that we do not intend, or that could expose us to claims for breach of contract or intellectual property infringement, misappropriation, or other violation. If we fail to comply, or are alleged to have failed to comply, with the terms and conditions of our open-source licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending such allegations, be subject to significant damages, be enjoined from the sale of our products and solutions, and be required to comply with onerous conditions or restrictions on our products and solutions, any of which could be materially disruptive to our business. Litigation could be costly for us to defend, have a negative effect on our operating results and financial condition, or require us to devote additional development resources to change our applications.

Seasonality may cause our operating results to fluctuate from quarter to quarter.

We experience seasonality with respect to certain industries we service due to fluctuations in hiring volumes and other economic activity. For example, pre-onboarding revenues generated from our customers in the retail and transportation industries are historically highest during the months of October and November leading up to the U.S. holiday season and lowest in December and at the beginning of the first quarter following the U.S. holiday hiring season. Certain customers across various industries also historically increase their hiring throughout the second quarter of the year as winter concludes, commercial activity tied to outdoor activities increases, and the school year ends, giving rise to student and graduate hiring.

In addition, customers may elect to complete post-onboarding screening such as workforce re-screens and other products at different periods and intervals during any given year. It is not always possible to accurately forecast the timing and magnitude of these programs.

Further, digital transformation, growth in e-commerce, and other economic, demographic, and labor market shifts can impact seasonality trends, making it difficult for us to predict how our seasonality may evolve in the future. As a result, it may be difficult to forecast our results of operations accurately, and there can be no assurance that the results of any particular quarter or other period will serve as an indication of our future performance.

The interpretation of tax laws may have a material adverse effect on our business.

Tax laws and related interpretations with respect to income taxation are frequently reviewed and amended by governmental bodies, officials, and regulatory agencies in the United States and other jurisdictions in which we do business. In 2023, we fully utilized our remaining U.S. Federal income tax net operating loss carryforward. As a result, income taxes have become a material use of funds. Our provision for income taxes and liquidity may therefore be adversely affected by changes to our operating model, changes in the mix of income and expenses in countries with differing tax rates, changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities, or changes in tax laws, regulations, or administrative interpretations. For example, there are several proposals to change the current tax law, including changes in global intangible low-taxed income (“GILTI”). Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act was enacted on August 16, 2022, and includes a new 15% minimum tax on “adjusted financial statement income” beginning with the Company’s fiscal year 2024, and a new 1% excise tax on stock repurchases after December 31, 2022. While these tax law changes and proposals had no immediate material effect, if any or all of these (or similar) proposals are ultimately enacted into law, in whole or in part, they could have a negative impact on our effective tax rate. It cannot be predicted whether or when tax laws, regulations, and rulings may be enacted, issued, or amended that could materially and adversely impact our financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.

Unexpected delays and difficulties can occur as customers implement and test our products and solutions. Implementation typically involves integration with our customers’ and third-party systems and internal processes, as well as adding customer and third-party data to our platforms. This can be complex and time-consuming for our customers and can result in delays. We provide our customers with upfront estimates regarding the duration and resources associated with the implementation of our products and solutions. However, delays may occur due to discoveries made during the implementation process, such as unique or unusual customer requirements or our internal limitations. If we are unable to resolve these issues and we fail to meet the upfront estimates and the expectations of our customers, it could result in customer dissatisfaction, loss of customers, delays in generating revenues, or negative brand perception about us and our products and solutions. Our implementation cycles could also be disrupted by factors outside of our control, such as deficiencies in the platform of our customers or third-party ATS or HCM systems, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

Risks Related to Our Indebtedness

If there were an event of default under any of the agreements relating to our outstanding debt, the holders of the defaulted debt could cause all amounts outstanding with respect to that debt to be due and payable immediately. Our assets or cash flow may not be sufficient to fully repay borrowing under our outstanding debt instruments if accelerated upon an event of default. Further, if we are unable to repay, refinance or restructure our secured debt, the holders of such debt could proceed against the collateral securing such debt. In addition, any event of default or declaration of acceleration under one debt instrument could also result in an event of default under one or more of our other debt instruments. As a result, any default by us on our debt could have a materially adverse effect on our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We have a significant amount of indebtedness. As of December 31, 2023, we had $564.7 million of total debt outstanding. We expect to incur approximately $1.820 billion of indebtedness to finance the Acquisition.

Our indebtedness increases the risk that we may be unable to generate cash sufficient to pay amounts due in respect of our indebtedness. Our indebtedness could have other important consequences to us, including:

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increase our vulnerability to adverse changes in the general economy, industry, and competitive conditions;

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require us to dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to make payments on our indebtedness, thereby reducing the availability of our cash flow to fund working capital, capital expenditures, and other general corporate purposes;

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limit our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, changes in our business and the industry in which we operate;

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require us to repatriate cash from our foreign subsidiaries to accommodate debt service payments;

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expose us to the risk of increased interest rates as certain of our borrowings, including borrowings under our term loan facility, are at variable rates, and we may not be able to enter into interest rate swaps, and any swaps we enter into may not fully mitigate our interest rate risk;

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restrict us from capitalizing on business opportunities;

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make it more difficult to satisfy our financial obligations, including payments on our indebtedness;

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place us at a competitive disadvantage compared to our competitors that have less debt; and

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limit our ability to borrow additional funds for working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions, debt service requirements, execution of our business strategy, or other general corporate purposes.

In addition, the credit agreement governing our term loan facility and revolving credit facility contains, and the agreements governing future indebtedness may contain, restrictive covenants that limit our ability to engage in activities that may be in our long-term best interests. Our failure to comply with those covenants could result in an event of default that, if not cured or waived, could result in the acceleration of all of our indebtedness.

We may incur significant additional indebtedness in the future. Although the credit agreement governing our term loan facility and revolving credit facility contain restrictions on the incurrence of additional indebtedness by us, such restrictions are subject to a number of qualifications and exceptions, and the indebtedness incurred in compliance with these restrictions could be substantial. Also, these restrictions do not prohibit us from incurring obligations that do not constitute indebtedness as defined therein. To the extent that we incur additional indebtedness or such other obligations, the risk associated with our indebtedness described above will increase. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Long-Term Debt.”

Our ability to make payments on and to refinance our indebtedness and to fund working capital needs and planned capital expenditures will depend on our ability to generate cash in the future. This, to a certain extent, is subject to general economic, financial, competitive, business, legislative, regulatory, and other factors that are beyond our control.

If our business does not generate sufficient cash flow from operations or if future borrowings are not available to us in an amount sufficient to enable us to pay our indebtedness or to fund our other liquidity needs, we may need to refinance all or a portion of our indebtedness on or before the maturity thereof, sell assets, reduce or delay capital investments or seek to raise additional capital, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our operations. In addition, we may not be able to effect any of these actions, if necessary, on commercially reasonable terms or at all. Our ability to restructure or refinance our indebtedness will depend on the condition of the capital markets and our financial condition at such time. Any refinancing of our debt could be at higher interest rates and may require us to comply with more onerous covenants, which could further restrict our business operations. The terms of existing or future debt instruments, including the credit agreement governing our term loan facility and revolving credit facility, may limit or prevent us from taking any of these actions. In addition, any failure to make scheduled payments of interest and principal on our outstanding indebtedness would likely result in a reduction of our credit rating, which could harm our ability to incur additional indebtedness on commercially reasonable terms or at all. Our inability to generate sufficient cash flow to satisfy our debt service obligations, or to refinance or restructure our obligations on commercially reasonable terms or at all, would have an adverse effect, which could be material, on our business, results of operations, and financial condition, as well as on our ability to satisfy our obligations in respect of our term loan facility and revolving credit facility.

Our debt instruments restrict our current and future operations, particularly our ability to respond to changes or take certain actions.

The credit agreement governing our term loan facility and revolving credit facility impose significant operating and financial restrictions and limit our ability to:

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incur additional indebtedness and guarantee indebtedness;

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pay dividends or make other distributions in respect of, or repurchase or redeem, capital stock;

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prepay, redeem or repurchase certain debt;

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make acquisitions, investments, loans, and advances;

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sell or otherwise dispose of assets;

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incur liens;

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enter into transactions with affiliates;

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enter into agreements restricting our subsidiaries’ ability to pay dividends;

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consolidate, merge or sell all or substantially all of our assets; and

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engage in certain fundamental changes, including changes in the nature of our business.

As a result of these covenants and restrictions, we are and will be limited in how we conduct our business, and we may be unable to raise additional debt or equity financing to compete effectively or to take advantage of new business opportunities. In addition, we are required to maintain specified financial ratios and satisfy other financial condition tests. The terms of any future indebtedness we may incur could include more restrictive covenants. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to maintain compliance with these covenants in the future and, if we fail to do so, that we will be able to obtain waivers from the lenders and/or amend the covenants.

Our failure to comply with the restrictive covenants described above as well as others contained in our future debt instruments from time to time could result in an event of default, which, if not cured or waived, could result in our being required to repay these borrowings before their due date. If we are forced to refinance these borrowings on less favorable terms, our results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected.

Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock

We cannot guarantee that our stock repurchase program will be fully implemented or that it will enhance long-term stockholder value.

In 2022, our Board of Directors approved our share repurchase program (“Repurchase Program”) totaling $150.0 million which expired on December 31, 2023. In 2023, our Board of Directors further increased the total available amount under the Repurchase Program to $200.0 million and extended the authorization through December 31, 2024. We are not obligated to repurchase any specific number of shares, and the timing, manner, value, and actual number of shares repurchased will depend on a variety of factors, including the Company’s stock price and liquidity requirements, other business considerations and general market and economic conditions. Our Repurchase Program may be modified, suspended or terminated at any time and, even if fully implemented, may not enhance long-term stockholder value. In connection with the execution of the Merger Agreement, the Company will be suspending purchases under its Repurchase Program.

Silver Lake controls us and its interests may conflict with yours in the future.

Silver Lake beneficially owned 61.7% of our outstanding common stock as of December 31, 2023. As a result, Silver Lake is able to control the election and removal of our directors and thereby determine our corporate and management policies, including potential mergers or acquisitions, payment of dividends, asset sales, amendment of our certificate of incorporation or bylaws and other significant corporate transactions for so long as Silver Lake and its affiliates retain significant ownership of us. This concentration of our ownership may delay or deter possible changes in control of the Company, which may reduce the value of an investment in our common stock. So long as Silver Lake continues to own a significant amount of our combined voting power, even if such amount is less than 50%, Silver Lake will continue to be able to strongly influence or effectively control our decisions and, so long as Silver Lake and its affiliates collectively own at least 5% of all outstanding shares of our stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors, Silver Lake will be able to nominate individuals to our Board of Directors under our stockholders’ agreement. In addition, the stockholders’ agreement grants to Silver Lake and its affiliates and certain of their transferees certain governance rights for as long as Silver Lake and its affiliates and certain of their transferees maintain ownership of at least 25% of our outstanding common stock, including rights of approval over the entry into joint ventures or similar business alliances having a fair market value of more than $100 million, incurrence of debt for borrowed money in excess of $100 million, the increase or reduction in the size of our Board of Directors, initiation of any liquidation, dissolution, bankruptcy or other insolvency proceeding, the appointment or termination of our chief executive officer, or any material change in the nature of our business. The interests of Silver Lake may not coincide with the interests of other holders of our common stock.

In the ordinary course of their business activities, Silver Lake and its affiliates may engage in activities where their interests conflict with our interests or those of our stockholders. Our certificate of incorporation provides that Silver Lake, any of its affiliates or any director who is not employed by us (including any non-employee director who serves as one of our officers in both his or her director and officer capacities) or his or her affiliates will not have any duty to refrain from engaging, directly or indirectly, in the same business activities or similar business activities or lines of business in which we operate. Silver Lake also may pursue acquisition opportunities that may be complementary to our business and, as a result, those acquisition opportunities may not be available to us. In addition, Silver Lake may have an interest in pursuing acquisitions, divestitures and other transactions that, in their judgment, could enhance its investment, even though such transactions might involve risks to you.

In addition, Silver Lake and its affiliates are able to determine the outcome of all matters requiring stockholder approval and are able to cause or prevent a change of control of the Company or a change in the composition of our Board of Directors and could preclude any acquisition of the Company. Further, under the stockholders’ agreement, so long as Silver Lake and its affiliates and certain of their transferees maintain ownership of at least 25% of our outstanding common stock, they will have approval rights of any change of control transaction, which could preclude any unsolicited acquisition of our shares. This concentration of voting control could deprive you of an opportunity to receive a premium for your shares of common stock as part of a sale of the Company and ultimately might affect the market price of our common stock.

The trading price of our common stock may be highly volatile and may be adversely affected due to a number of factors, most of which we cannot control, including those listed elsewhere under this “Risk Factors” section, and the following:

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results of operations that vary from the expectations of securities analysts and investors;

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results of operations that vary from those of our competitors;

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changes in expectations as to our future financial performance, including financial estimates and investment recommendations by securities analysts and investors;

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changes in economic conditions for companies in our industry;

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changes in market valuations of, or earnings and other announcements by, companies in our industry;

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declines in the market prices of stocks generally;

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additions or departures of key management personnel;

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strategic actions by us or our competitors;

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announcements by us, our competitors, our suppliers or our distributors of significant contracts, price reductions, new products or technologies, acquisitions, dispositions, joint marketing relationships, joint ventures, other strategic relationships or capital commitments;

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changes in preference of our customers and our market share;

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changes in general economic or market conditions or trends in our industry or the economy as a whole;

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changes in business or regulatory conditions;

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future sales of our common stock or other securities;

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investor perceptions of the investment opportunity associated with our common stock relative to other investment alternatives;

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the public’s response to press releases or other public announcements by us or third parties, including our filings with the SEC;

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changes or proposed changes in laws or regulations or differing interpretations or enforcement thereof affecting our business;

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announcements relating to litigation or governmental investigations;

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guidance, if any, that we provide to the public, any changes in this guidance or our failure to meet this guidance;

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the development and sustainability of an active trading market for our stock;

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changes in accounting principles; and

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other events or factors, including those resulting from informational technology system failures and disruptions, natural disasters, war, acts of terrorism or responses to these events.

Furthermore, the stock market may experience extreme volatility that, in some cases, may be unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of particular companies. These broad market and industry fluctuations may adversely affect the market price of our common stock, regardless of our actual operating performance. In addition, price volatility may be greater if the public float and trading volume of our common stock is low.

In the past, following periods of market volatility, stockholders have instituted securities class action litigation. If we were to become involved in securities litigation, it could have a substantial cost and divert resources and the attention of executive management from our business regardless of the outcome of such litigation.

We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

We currently intend to retain any future earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business and we do not expect to declare or pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. The Company’s payment of a one-time special cash dividend of $1.50 per share in August 2023 should not be regarded as any indication of an intention to pay dividends in future. The declaration, amount and payment of any future dividends will be at the sole discretion of our Board of Directors, and will depend on, among other things, general and economic conditions, our results of operations and financial condition, our available cash and current and anticipated cash needs, capital requirements, contractual, legal, tax and regulatory restrictions and implications on the payment of dividends by us to our stockholders or by our subsidiaries to us, including restrictions under our credit agreement and other indebtedness we may incur, and such other factors as our Board of Directors may deem relevant. See “Dividend Policy.”

As a result, you may not receive any return on an investment in our common stock unless you sell our common stock for a price greater than your purchase price.

Our operations are conducted entirely through our subsidiaries and our ability to generate cash to meet our debt service obligations or to make future dividend payments, if any, is highly dependent on the earnings and the receipt of funds from our subsidiaries via dividends or intercompany loans. We currently do not intend to pay dividends on our common stock; however, to the extent that we determine in the future to pay dividends on our common stock, the agreements governing our indebtedness may restrict the ability of our subsidiaries to pay dividends or otherwise transfer assets to us. In addition, Delaware law may impose requirements that may restrict our ability to pay dividends to holders of our common stock.

We qualify as a “controlled company” within the meaning of Nasdaq rules and the rules of the SEC and, as a result, qualify for exemptions from certain corporate governance requirements.

Silver Lake controls a majority of the voting power of our outstanding common stock. As a result, we qualify as a “controlled company” within the meaning of the corporate governance standards of Nasdaq. Under these rules, a company of which more than 50% of the voting power is held by an individual, group, or another company is a “controlled company” and may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance requirements, including the requirement that:

•

a majority of our Board of Directors consist of “independent directors” as defined under the Nasdaq rules;

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our director nominees be selected, or recommended for our Board of Directors’ selection by a nominating/governance committee comprised solely of independent directors; and

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the compensation of our executive officers be determined, or recommended to our Board of Directors for determination, by a compensation committee comprised solely of independent directors.

Although we are not relying on the exemptions from these corporate governance requirements, if we do rely on such exemptions in the future, you will not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the corporate governance requirements of Nasdaq.

You may be diluted by the future issuance of additional common stock in connection with our incentive plans, acquisitions or otherwise.

As of December 31, 2023, we had approximately 854,925,198 shares of authorized but unissued common stock. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation authorizes us to issue these shares of common stock and securities relating to common stock for the consideration and on the terms and conditions established by our Board of Directors in its sole discretion, whether in connection with acquisitions (including the Acquisition) or otherwise. We have reserved shares for issuance under the 2021 Equity Plan and the ESPP. Any common stock that we issue, including under the 2021 Equity Plan or the ESPP or other equity incentive plans that we may adopt in the future, would dilute the percentage ownership held by the investors who purchase common stock. In the future, we may also issue our securities in connection with investments or acquisitions. The amount of shares of our common stock issued in connection with an investment or acquisition could constitute a material portion of our then-outstanding shares of our common stock. Any issuance of additional securities in connection with investments or acquisitions may result in additional dilution to you.

Future sales, or the perception of future sales, of our common stock, by us or our existing stockholders in the public market could cause the market price for our common stock to decline.

The sale of substantial amounts of shares of our common stock in the public market, or the perception that such sales could occur, including sales by Silver Lake, could harm the prevailing market price of shares of our 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 we deem appropriate.

Shares held by Silver Lake and certain of our directors, officers and employees are eligible for resale, subject to volume, manner of sale and other limitations under Rule 144, and subject to transfer restrictions applicable to certain members of our management and Silver Lake who are party to our stockholders’ agreement. In addition, pursuant to our stockholders’ agreement, Silver Lake has the right, subject to certain conditions, to require us to register the sale of their shares of our common stock under the Securities Act of 1933 (as amended, the “Securities Act”). Certain of our stockholders will also have “piggyback” registration rights with respect to future registered offerings of our common stock.

If such registration rights are exercised, the market price of our shares of common stock could drop significantly. This could also make it more difficult for us to raise additional funds through future offerings of our shares of common stock or other securities.

Anti-takeover provisions in our organizational documents could delay or prevent a change of control.

Certain provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may have an anti-takeover effect and may delay, defer or prevent a merger, acquisition, tender offer, takeover attempt, or other change of control transaction that a stockholder might consider in its best interest, including those attempts that might result in a premium over the market price for the shares held by our stockholders.

These provisions provide for, among other things:

•

a classified board of directors, as a result of which our Board of Directors is divided into three classes, with each class serving for staggered three-year terms;

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the ability of our Board of Directors to issue one or more series of preferred stock;

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advance notice requirements for nominations of directors by stockholders and for stockholders to include matters to be considered at our annual meetings;

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certain limitations on convening special stockholder meetings;

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the removal of directors only for cause and only upon the affirmative vote of the holders of at least 662/3% of the shares of common stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors if Silver Lake and its affiliates cease to beneficially own at least 50% of shares of common stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors; and

•

that certain provisions may be amended only by the affirmative vote of at least 662/3% of shares of common stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors if Silver Lake and its affiliates cease to beneficially own at least 50% of shares of common stock entitled to vote generally in the election of directors.

These anti-takeover provisions could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us, even if the third party’s offer may be considered beneficial by many of our stockholders. As a result, our stockholders may be limited in their ability to obtain a premium for their shares.

Our Board of Directors is authorized to issue and designate shares of our preferred stock in additional series without stockholder approval.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation authorizes our Board of Directors, without the approval of our stockholders, to issue 250,000,000 shares of our preferred stock, subject to limitations prescribed by applicable law, rules and regulations and the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as shares of preferred stock in series, to establish from time to time the number of shares to be included in each such series and to fix the designation, powers, preferences and rights of the shares of each such series and the qualifications, limitations or restrictions thereof. The powers, preferences and rights of these additional series of preferred stock may be senior to or on parity with our common stock, which may reduce its value.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides, subject to limited exceptions, that state and federal courts (as appropriate) located within the State of Delaware will be the sole and exclusive forum for certain stockholder litigation matters, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, employees or stockholders.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides, subject to limited exceptions, that unless we consent to the selection of an alternative forum, the state or federal courts (as appropriate) located within the State of Delaware shall, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for any (i) derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of our company, (ii) action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any director, officer, or other employee or stockholder of our company to the Company or our stockholders, creditors or other constituents, (iii) action asserting a claim against the Company or any director or officer of the Company arising pursuant to any provision of the Delaware General Corporation Law, or the DGCL, or our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws or as to which the DGCL confers jurisdiction on the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware, or (iv) action asserting a claim against the Company or any director or officer of the Company governed by the internal affairs doctrine. The choice of forum provision described in the preceding sentence does not apply to claims brought under the Securities Act or the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (as amended, the “Exchange Act”), meaning that nothing in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or amended and restated by-laws will preclude stockholders that assert claims under the Securities Act or the Exchange Act, from bringing such claims in state or federal court, subject to applicable law. Our exclusive forum provision shall not relieve the Company of its duties to comply with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder, and our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with these laws, rules and regulations. Further, stockholders may not waive their rights under the Exchange Act, including their right to bring suit.

Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in shares of our capital stock shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to the forum provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. This choice of forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or any of our directors, officers, other employees or stockholders which may discourage lawsuits with respect to such claims. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

General Risk Factors

Failure to comply with requirements to design, implement and maintain effective internal controls could have a material adverse effect on our business and stock price, and any failure to maintain financial controls could result in our financial statements becoming unreliable.

As a public company, we have significant requirements for enhanced financial reporting and internal controls. We have made, and will continue to make, changes to our internal controls and procedures for financial reporting and accounting systems to meet our reporting obligations as a public company. The process of designing and implementing effective internal controls is a continuous effort that requires us to anticipate and react to changes in our business and the economic and regulatory environments and to expend significant resources to maintain a system of internal controls that is adequate to satisfy our reporting obligations as a public company. The measures we may take may not be sufficient to satisfy our obligations as a public company and if we are unable to establish or maintain appropriate internal financial reporting controls and procedures, it could cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations on a timely basis, result in material misstatements in our consolidated financial statements, and harm our operating results. The rules governing the standards that must be met for our management to assess our internal control over financial reporting are complex and require significant documentation, testing and possible remediation. Testing and maintaining internal controls may divert our management’s attention from other matters that are important to our business.

In connection with the implementation of the necessary procedures and practices related to internal control over financial reporting, we may identify deficiencies, and we may encounter problems or delays in completing the remediation of any such deficiencies that we identify or that are identified by our independent registered public accounting firm in connection with the issuance of their attestation report. Our testing, or the subsequent testing (if required) by our independent registered public accounting firm, may reveal deficiencies in our internal controls over financial reporting that are deemed to be material weaknesses. Any material weaknesses could result in a material misstatement of our annual or quarterly consolidated financial statements or disclosures that may not be prevented or detected.

We may not be able to conclude on an ongoing basis that we have effective internal control over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404 or our independent registered public accounting firm may not issue an unqualified opinion. If either we are unable to conclude that we have effective internal control over financial reporting or our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to provide us with an unqualified report (to the extent it is required to issue a report), investors could lose confidence in our reported financial information, which could have a material adverse effect on the trading price of our common stock.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business or if they downgrade our stock or our sector, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock relies in part on the research and reports that industry or financial analysts publish about us or our business. We do not control these analysts. Furthermore, if one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our stock or our industry, or change their views regarding the stock of any of our competitors, or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, or if we fail to meet their expectations for our financial results, the price of our stock could decline. If one or more of these analysts ceases coverage of the Company or fails to publish reports on us regularly, we could lose visibility in the market, which in turn could cause our stock price or trading volume to decline.

Climate change may have a long-term impact on our business.

While we seek to partner with organizations that mitigate their business risks associated with climate change, we recognize that there are inherent risks wherever business is conducted. Access to clean water and reliable energy in the communities where we conduct our business, whether for our offices or for our vendors, is a priority. Our major sites in the United States and India are vulnerable to climate change effects. While this danger has a low-assessed risk of disrupting normal business operations, it has the potential impact on employees’ abilities to commute to work or to work from home and stay connected effectively. Climate-related events, including the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and their impact on the United States, India and other major regions’ critical infrastructure, have the potential to disrupt our business, our third-party suppliers and/or the business of our customers, and may cause us to experience higher attrition, losses and additional costs to maintain or resume operations.

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments.

None.

Item 1C. Cybersecurity.

Risk Management and Strategy

We have processes in place for assessing, identifying, and managing material risks from potential unauthorized occurrences on or through our electronic information systems that could adversely affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of our information systems or the information residing on those systems. These include a wide variety of mechanisms, controls, technologies, methods, systems, and other processes that are designed to prevent, detect, mitigate or remediate data loss, theft, misuse, unauthorized access, or other security incidents or vulnerabilities affecting the data. The data includes confidential, proprietary, and business and personal information that we collect, process, store, and transmit as part of our business, including on behalf of third parties. We also use systems and processes designed to reduce the impact of a security incident impacting our data at a third-party vendor or customer. Additionally, we use processes to oversee and identify material risks from cybersecurity threats associated with our use of third-party technology and systems, including: technology and systems we use for encryption and authentication; employee email; content delivery to customers; back-office support; and other functions.

Our cybersecurity team is led by our interim chief information security officer (“CISO”), who directs a unified cross-functional team that is responsible for implementing and maintaining centralized cybersecurity and data protection practices at First Advantage. Our interim CISO has numerous years of experience at First Advantage and other organizations managing security infrastructure, providing a variety of security services, and overseeing incident response and management, escalation of security events, vulnerability scanning, and security defect management. Collectively, the interim CISO and our cybersecurity team act in close coordination with senior leadership and other teams across First Advantage. In addition to our extensive in-house cybersecurity capabilities, we engage assessors, consultants, auditors, or other third parties to help assess, identify, and manage cybersecurity risks.

Our cybersecurity risk management process forms a critical component of our overall risk management and business strategy. As part of our risk management process, we conduct application security assessments, vulnerability management, penetration testing, security audits, and ongoing risk assessments. Additionally, we utilize data encryption and access control, single sign-on and multi-factor authentication, and malware protection within our control environment. We also maintain a variety of incident response plans that are utilized when incidents are detected. These plans are designed to be flexible so that they may be adapted to an array of potential scenarios and provide for the creation of cross-functional cybersecurity incident response teams in the event of a cybersecurity incident. We regularly review our incident response plans and conduct multiple incident response exercises each year, including sessions with management, to test and assess our preparedness to respond to a cybersecurity incident. Additionally, we require employees with access to our information systems, including all corporate employees, to undertake data protection and cybersecurity training and compliance programs annually.

As part of our incident detection and response processes, we have established internal teams to investigate and escalate notification of cybersecurity incidents. Pursuant to this process, cybersecurity incidents are reported to appropriate personnel within First Advantage (including the interim CISO, Chief Financial Officer, and General Counsel) and to the Audit Committee and Board of Directors based on incident materiality. We track incidents through resolution, conduct post-incident analysis and update our processes and procedures if areas for improvement are identified. On a monthly basis, a summary of prior period cybersecurity investigation escalations is reviewed by management, including our head of Internal Audit, our interim CISO, our Chief Global Compliance Officer, and our General Counsel.

Governance

Our cybersecurity risks and associated mitigations are evaluated by senior leadership, including as part of our enterprise risk assessments that are reviewed by the Audit Committee and our Board of Directors. Such risks and related mitigation activities are also subject to oversight by the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors. The Audit Committee, which is comprised of independent directors, oversees our policies and procedures for protecting our cybersecurity infrastructure and for compliance with applicable data protection and security regulations, and related risks, including management’s response to any significant cybersecurity incidents. The Audit Committee receives regular reports, from our interim CISO and Chief Technology Officer, regarding the cybersecurity control environment, including remediation updates, control posture analyses and other recurring items, and reports to the Board of Directors at least quarterly.

Our business strategy, results of operations and financial condition have not been materially affected by risks from cybersecurity threats, including as a result of previously identified cybersecurity incidents, but we cannot provide assurance that they will not be materially affected in the future by such risks or any future material incidents.

Additional information about cybersecurity risks we face is discussed in Item 1A of Part I, “Risk Factors,” under the heading “Our business, brand, and reputation may be harmed as a result of security breaches, cyber-attacks, employee or other internal misconduct, computer viruses, or the mishandling of personal data” should be read in conjunction with the information above.

Item 2. Properties.

Our corporate office is located at 1 Concourse Parkway NE, Suite 200, Atlanta, GA 30328 under a lease agreement that expires on January 31, 2030, with one five-year renewal option. This property also houses our executive offices. We also lease office space in Bangalore, India, where our Global Operating Center is located. Additionally, we lease office space in Fishers, Indiana; Nottingham, United Kingdom; Manila, Philippines; and Mumbai, India for certain significant operational and support functions. We believe that our executive and other offices are adequate for our immediate needs and that we will obtain additional or substitute space, as needed, on commercially reasonable terms.

In addition to leveraging public cloud vendors, we maintain data centers across the globe. Our public cloud vendors and data centers are fully PCI compliant and equipped with redundant power, cooling, and fire suppression. We also ensure that our data centers maintain connectivity to major internet service providers and are protected and surveilled by our Global Network Operations Center. In the event of a disaster or emergency, each data center can rely on a backup located outside of the primary site’s region where all critical data is replicated. In the event of a service failure, critical customer-facing solutions are set to resume service at the designated backup location.

Item 3. Legal Proceedings.

The information required under this Item 3 is set forth in Note 13 within “Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements” included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report and is incorporated herein by this reference.

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures.

Not applicable.

PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities.

Market Information for Common Stock

On June 23, 2021, our common stock began trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol “FA.” Prior to that time, there was no public market for our common stock.

Holders of Record

As of February 23, 2024, the closing price of our common stock on the Nasdaq was $17.27 per share and we had 13 holders of record of our common stock. The actual number of stockholders is greater than this number of record holders, and includes stockholders who are beneficial owners but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and other nominees.

Dividend Policy

On August 8, 2023, the Company’s Board of Directors declared a one-time special cash dividend of $1.50 per share to stockholders of record at the close of business on August 21, 2023. The cash dividend was paid on August 31, 2023. Any further determination to pay dividends on our capital stock will be at the discretion of our Board of Directors, subject to applicable laws, and will depend on our financial condition, operating results, capital requirements, general business conditions, and other factors that our Board of Directors considers relevant.

Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer or Affiliated Purchaser

On August 2, 2022, the Company’s Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to $50.0 million of the Company’s common stock over the 12-month period ending August 2, 2023.

On November 8, 2022, the Company’s Board of Directors authorized an increase to the total available amount under its Repurchase Program to $150.0 million and extended the program through December 31, 2023.

On February 28, 2023, the Company’s Board of Directors authorized an increase to the total available amount under its Repurchase Program to $200.0 million.

On September 14, 2023, the Company announced that its Board of Directors approved a one-year extension of its share repurchase authorization, extending the previously authorized $200.0 million program through December 31, 2024.

As of February 23, 2024, the Company has repurchased 9.0 million shares of common stock for $119.5 million under the Repurchase Program. All share repurchases were made under the Company's publicly announced program, and there are no other programs under which the Company repurchases shares. The following information relates to the Company’s purchase of its common stock during each month within the fourth quarter of 2023:


Period	Total Number of Shares Purchased		Average Price Paid Per Share (1)		Total Number of Shares Purchased as Part of Publicly Announced Plans or Programs		Maximum Dollar Value of Shares that May Yet Be Purchased Under the Plans or Programs
October 1, 2023 through October 31, 2023		80,825	$	13.19		80,825	$	82,486,396
November 1, 2023 through November 30, 2023		151,535	$	13.25		151,535	$	80,478,639
December 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023		—	$	—		—	$	80,478,639
Total		232,360	$	13.23		232,360	$	80,478,639

(1)

Average price paid per share for shares purchased as part of our Repurchase Program (includes brokerage commissions).

Stock repurchases may be effected through open market repurchases at prevailing market prices, including through the use of block trades and trading plans intended to qualify under Rule 10b5-1 under the Exchange Act, privately-negotiated transactions, through other transactions in accordance with applicable securities laws, or a combination of these methods on such terms and in such amounts as the Company deems appropriate and will be funded from available capital. The Company is not obligated to repurchase any specific number of shares, and the timing, manner, value, and actual number of shares repurchased will depend on a variety of factors, including the Company’s stock price and liquidity requirements, other business considerations and general market and economic conditions. No shares will be purchased from SLP Fastball Aggregator, L.P. and its affiliates. The Company may discontinue or modify purchases without notice at any time. In connection with the execution of the Merger Agreement, the Company will be suspending purchases under its Repurchase Program.

Performance Graph

The following performance graph and related information shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or to be “filed” with the SEC, nor shall such information be incorporated by reference into any future filing under the Securities Act or the Exchange Act, whether made before or after the date hereof and irrespective of any general incorporation language in any such filing, or otherwise subject to the liabilities under the Securities Act or Exchange Act, except to the extent that we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing.

The following graph depicts the total cumulative stockholder return on our common stock from the closing price on June 23, 2021, the first day of trading of our common stock on the Nasdaq, through December 31, 2023, relative to the performance of the Russell 2000 and S&P 500 Index. The graph assumes an initial investment of $100.00 at the close of trading on June 23, 2021 and that all dividends paid by the Company and the companies included in these indices have been reinvested. The performance shown in the graph below is not intended to forecast or be indicative of future stock price performance.

Item 6. [Reserved]

Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

The following discussion and analysis is intended to help the reader understand the results of operations and financial condition of First Advantage and should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report. The discussion contains forward-looking statements involving risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our results to differ materially from expectations. See “Cautionary Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.” Factors that might cause such differences include those described in Item 1A. “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report.

Numerical figures included in this Annual Report have been subject to rounding adjustments. Accordingly, numerical figures shown as totals in various tables may not be arithmetic aggregations of the figures that precede them.

Overview

Our comprehensive product suite includes criminal background checks, drug / health screening, extended workforce screening, biometrics and identity, education / work verifications, resident screening, fleet / driver compliance, executive screening, data analytics, continuous monitoring, social media monitoring, and hiring tax incentives. We derive a substantial majority of our revenues from pre-onboarding screening and perform screens in over 200 countries and territories, enabling us to serve as a one-stop-shop provider to both multinational companies and growth companies. Our more than 30,000 customers are global enterprises, mid-sized companies, and small companies, and our products and solutions are used by personnel in recruiting, human resources, risk, compliance, vendor management, safety, and/or security.

Our products are sold both individually and packaged. The First Advantage platform offers flexibility for customers to specify which products to include in their screening package, such as Social Security numbers, criminal records, education and work verifications, sex offender registry, and global sanctions. Generally, our customers order a background screening package or selected combination of screens related to a single individual before they onboard that individual. The type and mix of products and solutions we sell to a customer vary by customer size, their screening requirements, and industry vertical. Therefore, order volumes are not comparable across both customers and periods. Pricing can also vary considerably by customer depending on the product mix in their screening packages, order volumes, screening requirements and preferences, pass-through and third-party out of pocket costs, and bundling of products.

We enter into contracts with our customers that are typically three years in length. These contracts set forth the general terms and pricing of our products and solutions but generally do not include minimum order volumes or committed order volumes. Accordingly, contracts do not provide guarantees of future revenues. Due to our contract terms and the nature of the background screening industry, we determined our contract terms for ASC 606 purposes are less than one year. We typically bill our customers at the end of each month and recognize revenues as completed orders are reported or otherwise made available to our customers. Approximately 90% of the criminal searches performed in the United States are completed the same day they are submitted.

We generated revenues of $763.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, which represents a decline of 5.7% as compared to $810.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Approximately 87% of our revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023 was generated in the Americas, predominantly in the U.S., while the remaining 13% was generated internationally. Other than the United States, no single country accounted for 10% or more of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023.

Segments

We manage our business and report our financial results in two reportable segments, Americas and International:

•

Americas. This segment performs a variety of background check and compliance services across all phases of the workforce lifecycle from pre-onboarding services to post-onboarding and ongoing monitoring services, covering employees, contractors, contingent workers, tenants, and drivers. We generally classify our service offerings into three categories: pre-onboarding, post-onboarding, and adjacent products. We deliver our solutions across multiple industry verticals in the United States, Canada, and Latin America markets.

•

International. The International segment provides services similar to our Americas segment in regions outside of the Americas. We primarily deliver our solutions across multiple industry verticals in the Europe, India, and Asia Pacific markets.

Recent Developments

Pending Acquisition of Sterling Check Corp.

On February 28, 2024, we entered into the Merger Agreement providing for the acquisition of Sterling in a cash-and-stock transaction that values Sterling at approximately $2.2 billion.

In connection with the execution of the Merger Agreement, the Borrower, entered into a commitment letter with certain financial institutions that committed to provide, subject to the terms and conditions of the commitment letter, an incremental term loan in an aggregate principal amount of $1.820 billion and incremental revolving commitments in an aggregate principal amount of $150 million, in each case, under the Borrower’s existing credit agreement. Such financial institutions also agreed to extend the maturity date of the Borrower’s revolving credit facility from July 31, 2026 to the date that is the fifth anniversary of the closing date of the Acquisition.

The Acquisition is subject to satisfaction or waiver of customary closing conditions, including, among others, adoption of the Merger Agreement by Sterling stockholders, the expiration or termination of the waiting period under the HSR Act and clearance under the antitrust or foreign direct investment laws of certain other jurisdictions, and the effectiveness of a registration statement on Form S-4 to be filed by First Advantage in connection with the Acquisition.

Current Economic Conditions

Macroeconomic factors, including inflation, interest rates, recent declines in hiring activity and job openings, stability of the global banking system, global health crises, global supply chain constraints, and global economic and geopolitical developments, have negatively impacted significant portions of the global economy, and created volatility in the financial markets.

If the economic uncertainty is sustained or increases, we may experience a negative impact on new business, customer renewals and demand levels, sales and marketing efforts, revenues growth rates, customer deployments, customer collections, product development, or other financial metrics. Any of these factors could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.

Despite the continuing uncertainty associated with these events, we are confident in the overall long-term health of our business, the strength of our product offerings, and our ability to continue to execute on our strategy and help our customers hire smarter and onboard faster. Our ability to deliver innovative products and solutions that enhance workplace safety and address compliance risks has contributed to the durability of our financial results.

For additional information, see Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Our Business—Macroeconomic factors beyond our control, including the state of the economy, could impact demand and the fulfillment costs for our products and solutions.”

Factors Affecting Operating Results

We believe that the future growth and profitability of our business depend on numerous factors, including the following:

Acquiring New Customers

We are focused on continuing to grow our customer base, particularly with respect to high-growth Enterprise customers in attractive industry verticals. In 2023, we performed approximately 100 million screens on behalf of more than 30,000 customers, spanning the globe and all major industry verticals. Our customer acquisition strategy depends on our ability to continue to cost-effectively offer innovative and comprehensive products and solutions, execute our verticalized go-to-market strategy, and maintain our reputation and brand. New customers typically begin generating revenues within one to three months of executing a contract and increase order volumes over the subsequent three to five month period. We believe there is opportunity to continue to increase our domestic and international market share, grow our international customer base, and increase adoption and expansion of screening and verification products and solutions.

M&A

We selectively evaluate acquisitions as a means to expand our business and to enter new markets. Over the last three years, we have completed the following acquisitions, including those that impact the comparability of our results between periods:

In March 2021, the Company completed its acquisition of selected assets and specified liabilities comprising the United Kingdom background screening business unit of a United Kingdom-based company. Results of operations have been included in our International segment from the date of the acquisition.

In November 2021, the Company acquired 100% of the equity interest of MultiLatin Advisors, S.A. de C.V. (“MultiLatin”), a Mexico-based background screening and verifications provider. This acquisition strategically expands the Company’s presence and screening capabilities in Latin America. Results of operations have been included in our Americas segment from the date of the acquisition.

In November 2021, the Company acquired 100% of the equity interest of Corporate Screening Services, LLC (“Corporate Screening”), a U.S.-based healthcare and higher education focused screening and compliance solutions provider headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. Results of operations have been included in our Americas segment from the date of the acquisition.

In January 2022, the Company completed its asset acquisition of Form I-9 Compliance (“Form I-9”), a U.S.-based technology solution and consulting service provider for I-9 and E-Verify compliance. The acquisition was effective as of January 1, 2022 and strategically expands the Company’s product suite offerings through the addition of new I-9 and employment eligibility solutions. Results of operations have been included in our Americas segment from the effective date of the acquisition.

In September 2023, the Company acquired 100% of the equity interest of a U.S.-based digital identity and biometrics solutions company. The acquired company operates under the trade name Infinite ID. The acquisition expands the Company’s network and portfolio of identity solutions in the United States. Results of operations have been included in our Americas segment from the date of the acquisition.

As discussed above under “—Recent Developments—Pending Acquisition of Sterling Check Corp.,” we have entered into an agreement to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Sterling, which will impact the comparability of our results of operations in the future if consummated.

Expanding Wallet Share with Existing Customers

Our growth in revenues depends on our ability to sell more products and solutions to existing customers. We typically grow our revenues over time with customers as their underlying screening volumes grow and as they roll out our products and solutions to new divisions or geographies, increase our wallet share in multi-provider programs, perform more extensive screens, and purchase additional products and solutions such as identity solutions, continuous screening, hiring tax credits, employment eligibility, and fleet solutions. Our Customer Success teams work closely with our customers to further develop their screening, compliance, and risk management programs within their organization and in doing so, frequently identify opportunities to expand their relationship with First Advantage. Our revenue growth with existing customers is also dependent upon our ability to retain customers. We achieved a gross retention rate of approximately 97% for 2023.

Maintaining Performance Through Macroeconomic Environments

Our results are also impacted by our customers’ underlying business performance and hiring trends, which drive their demand for background screening and adjacent products. Our customers’ business can be affected by a variety of factors, including general economic conditions, hiring velocity and turnover, and other industry-related trends. We are also exposed to macroeconomic cyclicality, as companies typically reduce employee hiring and flexible workforces in weaker economic environments, which can impact demand for our products and solutions. Our ability to grow our business will also depend on the long-term strength, diversity, and durability of the verticals that we focus on and rely upon to drive our revenues.

Developing New Products to Expand Our Revenue Opportunity with Existing Customers

We plan to continue to expand our data solutions and adjacent sources of revenues. For example, we are currently investing in criminal and verifications data products and identity services. In addition, we are developing innovative solutions that align with our capabilities in areas such as biometric verification, fraud mitigation, driver and vehicle compliance, franchise screening programs, and remote drug testing.

Profitably Managing our Growth

Our ability to grow profitably depends on our ability to manage our cost structure. Our costs are affected by third-party costs including government fees and data vendors, as these third parties have discretion to adjust pricing, although these third-party fees are typically invoiced to our customers as pass-through costs. Continued pricing increases in third-party fees may lead our existing and potential customers to reduce the scope of their spending.

Our historical margin expansion has been largely driven by increased automation and deployment of RPA technologies in the background screening process, which has increased our speed, efficiency, quality, and operating leverage. Additionally, we have gained operating leverage from efficiencies and managing general and administrative costs. In order to grow profitably, we make strategic investments that generate incremental revenues and enable us to deliver our products and solutions and support our customers in a cost-effective manner. Our ability to innovate and drive future reductions of operating costs through automation and digitization does require upfront investment.

Recently Issued Accounting Standards

See Note 2 to the audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report for disclosure of the impact that recent accounting pronouncements may have on the consolidated financial statements.

Components of our Results of Operations

Revenues

The Company derives revenues from a variety of background screening and adjacent products that cover all phases of the workforce lifecycle from pre-onboarding screening services to post-onboarding and ongoing monitoring services, covering employees, contractors, contingent workers, tenants, and drivers. We generally classify our products and solutions into three major categories: pre-onboarding, post-onboarding, and adjacent products, each of which is enabled by our technology, proprietary internal databases, and data analytics capabilities. Pre-onboarding products, which comprise the substantial majority of our revenues, span an extensive array of products that customers typically utilize to enhance their applicant evaluation process and ensure compliance with their workforce onboarding criteria from the time an application is submitted to an applicant’s successful onboarding. Post-onboarding products are comprised of continuous monitoring, re-screening, and other solutions to help our customers keep their end customers, workforces, and other stakeholders safer, more productive, and more compliant. Adjacent products include products that complement our pre-onboarding and post-onboarding solutions such as fleet / vehicle compliance, hiring tax credits and incentives, resident / tenant screening, employment eligibility, and investigative research.

Our suite of products is available individually or through packaged solutions that can be configured and tailored according to our customers’ needs. We typically bill our customers at the end of each month and recognize revenues after completed orders are reported or otherwise made available to our customers, with a substantial majority of our customers’ orders completed the same day they are submitted. We recognize revenues for other products over time as the customer simultaneously receives and consumes the benefits of the products and solutions delivered.

Operating Expenses

We incur the following expenses related to our cost of revenues and operating expenses:

•

Cost of Services (exclusive of depreciation and amortization below): Consists of amounts paid to third parties for access to government records, other third-party data and services, and our internal processing fulfillment and customer care functions. In addition, cost of services includes expenses from our drug screening lab and collection site network as well as our court runner network. Third-party cost of services are largely variable in nature and are typically invoiced to our customers as direct pass-through costs. Cost of services also includes our salaries and benefits expense for personnel involved in the processing and fulfillment of our screening products and solutions, as well as our customer care organization and robotics process automation implementation team. Other costs included in cost of services relate to allocations of certain overhead costs for our revenue-generating products and solutions, primarily consisting of certain facility costs and administrative services allocated by headcount or another related metric. We do not allocate depreciation and amortization to cost of services.

•

Product and Technology Expense: Consists of salaries and benefits of personnel involved in the maintenance of our technology and its integrations and APIs, product marketing, management of our network and infrastructure capabilities, and maintenance of our information security and business continuity functions. A portion of the personnel costs are related to the development of new products and features that are primarily developed through agile methodologies. These costs are partially capitalized, and therefore, are partially reflected as amortization expense within the depreciation and amortization cost line item. Product and technology expense also includes third-party costs related to our cloud computing services, software licensing and maintenance, telecommunications, and other data processing functions. We do not allocate depreciation and amortization to product and technology expense.

•

Selling, General, and Administrative Expense: Consists of sales, customer success, marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Sales, customer success, and marketing expenses consist primarily of employee compensation such as salaries, bonuses, sales commissions, share-based compensation, and other employee benefits for our verticalized sales and customer success teams. General and administrative expenses include travel expenses and various corporate functions including finance, human resources, legal, and other administrative roles, in addition to certain professional service fees and expenses incurred in connection with our IPO and now as a public company. We expect our selling, general, and administrative expenses to increase in the short-term, primarily as a result of additional public company related reporting and compliance costs. Over the long-term, we expect our selling, general, and administrative expenses to decrease as a percentage of revenues as we leverage our past investments. We do not allocate depreciation and amortization to selling, general, and administrative expenses.

•

Depreciation and Amortization: Property and equipment consisting mainly of capitalized software costs, furniture, hardware, and leasehold improvements are depreciated or amortized and reflected as operating expenses. We also amortize the capitalized costs of finite-life intangible assets acquired in connection with business combinations.

We have a flexible cost structure that allows our business to adjust quickly to the impacts of macroeconomic events and scale to meet the needs of large new customers. Operating expenses are influenced by the amount of revenues, customer mix, and product mix that contribute to our revenues for any given period. As revenues grow, we would generally expect cost of services to grow in a similar fashion, albeit influenced by the effects of automation, productivity, and other efficiency initiatives as well as customer and product mix shifts and third-party pass-through costs. We regularly review expenses and investments in the context of revenues growth and any shifts we identify in the business in order to align with our overall financial objectives. While we expect operating expenses to increase in absolute dollars to support our continued growth, we believe that, in the long term, operating expenses as a percentage of total revenues will decline gradually in the future as our business grows and our operating efficiency and automation initiatives continue to advance.

Other Expense, Net

Our other expense, net consists of the following:

•

Interest Expense, Net: Relates primarily to our debt service costs, the interest-related unrealized gains and losses of our interest rate derivative instruments and, to a lesser extent, the interest on our capital lease obligations and the amortization of deferred financing costs. Additionally, interest expense, net includes interest income earnings on our cash and cash equivalent balances held in interest-bearing accounts. We also earn interest income on our short-term investments which are fixed-time deposits having a maturity date within twelve months.

•

Loss on Extinguishment of Debt: Reflects losses on the extinguishment of debt.

Provision for Income Taxes

Provision for income taxes consists of domestic and foreign corporate income taxes related to earnings from our sale of services, with statutory tax rates that differ by jurisdiction. Our effective tax rate may be affected by many other factors including changes in tax laws, regulations or rates, new interpretations of existing laws or regulations, shifts in the allocation of income earned throughout the world, and changes in overall levels of income before tax.

Results of Operations

Comparison of Results of Operations for the Year Ended December 31, 2023 compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2022 and for the Year Ended December 31, 2022 compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2021


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands, except percentages)	2023			2022			2021
Revenues	$	763,761		$	810,023		$	712,295

Operating Expenses:
Cost of services (exclusive of depreciation and amortization below)		386,777			408,928			352,170
Product and technology expense		49,263			51,931			45,507
Selling, general, and administrative expense		116,732			116,640			107,980
Depreciation and amortization		129,473			138,246			142,815
Total operating expenses		682,245			715,745			648,472
Income from operations		81,516			94,278			63,823

Other Expense, Net:
Interest expense, net		33,040			9,199			24,972
Loss on extinguishment of debt		—			—			13,938
Total other expense, net		33,040			9,199			38,910
Income before provision for income taxes		48,476			85,079			24,913
Provision for income taxes		11,183			20,475			8,862
Net income	$	37,293		$	64,604		$	16,051
Net income margin		4.9	%		8.0	%		2.3	%

Revenues


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023			2022			2021
Revenues
Americas	$	673,075		$	694,865		$	604,413
International		96,832			122,599			114,009
Eliminations		(6,146	)		(7,441	)		(6,127	)
Total revenues	$	763,761		$	810,023		$	712,295

Revenues were $763.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $810.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $46.3 million, or 5.7%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

The decrease in revenues was primarily due to a net decrease of $84.3 million, or 10.4%, in existing customer revenues, primarily driven by reduced demand from our customers more impacted by the macroeconomic conditions in 2023 (as compared to 2022), the elevated levels of growth experienced in the first half of 2022 due to the post-pandemic recovery that was not sustained into 2023, and the impact of lost accounts. In the Americas segment, certain industry verticals were impacted by reduced hiring activity, resulting in lower revenues. In the International segment, declines were more significantly experienced in the India and APAC markets relative to other markets in that segment. These consolidated decreases were partially offset by ongoing strength in upselling and cross-selling to existing customers, contributing $36.9 million, or 4.6%, of additional revenues, and increased revenues from certain existing customers that were impacted by macroeconomic conditions to a lesser extent as compared to other existing customers.

The decrease in existing customer revenues was offset by:

•

revenues of $35.1 million, or 4.3%, from new customers, primarily attributable to our Americas segment; and

•

revenues of $2.9 million, or 0.4%, attributable to the Infinite ID acquisition in the Americas segment.

Pricing remained relatively stable across all periods.

Revenues were $810.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $712.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Revenues for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $97.7 million, or 13.7%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021.

The increase in revenues was primarily due to:

•

revenues of $37.0 million, or 5.2%, attributable to the Company’s acquisitions in the Americas and International segments;

•

increased revenues of $35.4 million, or 5.0%, attributable to new customers in both the Americas and International segments; and

•

a net increase of $25.3 million, or 3.5%, in existing customer revenues, primarily driven by strength across our Americas business in the first half of 2022, which was supported by positive jobs market trends including sustained job switching and churn. These existing customer increases were offset by the impact of lost accounts, slower hiring in the second half of 2022, and the effects of changes in foreign currencies.

In 2022, the Company experienced growing demand among customers across numerous industry verticals and account sizes in both its Americas and International segments. However, during the second half of 2022, certain industry verticals in the Americas segment and select International segment markets experienced reduced revenue volumes as a result of macro-economic headwinds and negative foreign currency impacts due to strengthening of the U.S. Dollar. Pricing remained relatively stable across all periods.

Cost of Services


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands, except percentages)	2023			2022			2021
Cost of services	$	386,777		$	408,928		$	352,170
Revenues		763,761			810,023			712,295
Cost of services as a % of revenue		50.6	%		50.5	%		49.4	%

Cost of services was $386.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $408.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Cost of services for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $22.2 million, or 5.4%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

The decrease in cost of services was primarily due to:

•

a $13.8 million decrease in personnel expenses in our operations and customer care functions as a result of cost savings actions taken by the Company, as well as productivity efficiencies from the implementation of additional automation programs; and

•

a decrease in variable third-party data expenses of $9.1 million as a result of decreased revenue volumes, variation in customer ordering mix, and increased automation.

The decrease in cost of services was partially offset by foreign currency exchange losses of $1.6 million due to the impact of foreign exchange rate volatility.

Cost of services as a percentage of revenues was 50.6% for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to 50.5% for the year ended December 31, 2022. The cost of services percentage of revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023 was impacted by increases in certain third-party data costs, primarily due to variation in customer ordering mix. This increase was partially offset by cost savings from the Company’s continued implementation of automation and other process efficiencies, as well as certain cost savings actions taken by the Company.

Cost of services was $408.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $352.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Cost of services for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $56.8 million, or 16.1%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021.

The increase in cost of services was primarily due to:

•

an increase in variable third-party data expenses of $42.7 million as a direct result of increased revenues, increases in the prices of certain third-party data usage, variation in customer ordering mix, and acquisitions having a larger mix of third-party data expenses;

•

a $12.5 million increase in personnel related expenses in our operations and customer care functions as a result of additional operational support headcount to process and fulfill the Company’s order volume growth;

•

a $1.4 million increase in liability insurance related expenses; and

•

a number of cost of services related operating expense increases attributable to travel, software licenses, and other expenses related to the increased revenue volumes experienced in 2022.

The increase in cost of services was partially offset by foreign currency exchange gains of $1.8 million due to the impact of foreign exchange rate volatility.

Cost of services as a percentage of revenues was 50.5% for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to 49.4% for the year ended December 31, 2021. The cost of services percentage of revenues for the year ended December 31, 2022 was impacted by increases in certain third-party data costs, variation in customer ordering mix to lower margin products, and acquisitions having a larger mix of third-party data expenses. This increase was partially offset by cost savings from the Company’s continued implementation of automation and other process efficiencies, as well as certain cost savings actions taken by the Company in 2022.

Product and Technology Expense


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022		2021
Product and technology expense	$	49,263	$	51,931	$	45,507

Product and technology expense was $49.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $51.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Product and technology expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $2.7 million, or 5.1%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

The decrease in product and technology expense was primarily due to a $2.9 million decrease in personnel expenses, primarily due to cost savings actions taken by the Company and decreases in incentive compensation, partially offset by increased share-based compensation expense.

The decrease in product and technology expense was partially offset by a $1.1 million increase in software licensing related expenses.

Product and technology expense was $51.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $45.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Product and technology expense for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $6.4 million, or 14.1%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021.

The increase in product and technology expense was primarily due to a $5.9 million increase in software licensing related expenses.

Selling, General, and Administrative Expense


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022		2021
Selling, general, and administrative expense	$	116,732	$	116,640	$	107,980

Selling, general, and administrative expense was $116.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $116.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Selling, general, and administrative expense for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $0.1 million, or 0.1%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

Selling, general, and administrative expense increased primarily due to:

•

a $6.3 million increase in share-based compensation expense primarily as a result of a modification to the vesting terms of outstanding unvested and unearned performance-based equity awards in May 2023;

•

a $2.8 million increase in expenses related to litigation in the ordinary course of business; and

•

foreign currency exchange losses of $0.7 million due to the impact of foreign exchange rate volatility.

The increase in selling, general, and administrative expense was partially offset by:

•

a $4.0 million decrease in commission and bonus expenses due to lower performance against internal targets;

•

a $3.1 million decrease in personnel expenses due to certain cost savings actions taken by the Company;

•

a $1.0 million decrease in professional service fees incurred related to the Company’s initial public company compliance efforts that did not reoccur in 2023;

•

a $0.9 million decrease in marketing expenses; and

•

a number of other corporate expenses that decreased primarily as a result of cost savings actions taken by the Company.

Selling, general, and administrative expense was $116.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $108.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Selling, general, and administrative expense for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $8.7 million, or 8.0%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021.

Selling, general, and administrative expense increased primarily due to:

•

a $6.7 million increase in personnel related expenses primarily due to additional investments made in the Company’s Sales and Customer Success functions and additional headcount related to the Company’s growth and operating as a public company;

•

a $2.0 million increase in liability insurance expenses;

•

a $3.2 million increase in expenses related to litigation activities in the ordinary course of business;

•

a $1.4 million increase in marketing expenses;

•

a $0.9 million increase in travel expenses; and

•

a number of other corporate expenses that increased primarily as a result of the Company now being a publicly traded company and the Company’s acquisition activity.

The increase in selling, general, and administrative expense was partially offset by:

•

a $4.2 million decrease in professional service fees incurred related to the Company’s preparation for its 2021 IPO and secondary offering that did not reoccur in 2022;

•

a $3.5 million decrease in share-based compensation expenses as a result of performance related vesting due to the Company’s IPO and incremental awards granted in conjunction with the IPO in 2021 which did not reoccur in 2022; and

•

a $2.7 million decrease in commissions and bonus related expenses due to lower variable commissions based on actual results against internal performance targets.

Depreciation and Amortization


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022		2021
Depreciation and amortization	$	129,473	$	138,246	$	142,815

Depreciation and amortization was $129.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $138.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Depreciation and amortization for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $8.8 million, or 6.3% compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. This decrease was partially offset by increases in depreciation related to assets placed in service during the year ended December 31, 2023.

Depreciation and amortization was $138.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $142.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Depreciation and amortization for the year ended December 31, 2022 decreased by $4.6 million, or 3.2% compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. This decrease was partially offset by increases in depreciation related to assets placed in service during the year ended December 31, 2022.

Interest Expense, Net


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022		2021
Interest expense, net	$	33,040	$	9,199	$	24,972

Interest expense, net was $33.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $9.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Interest expense, net for the year ended December 31, 2023 increased by $23.8 million, or 259.2%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

The increase in interest expense was primarily attributable to higher interest expense on the First Lien Credit Facility as a result of increasing interest rates and fluctuations in unrealized gains and losses on the Company’s interest swaps resulting from interest rate volatility. Increases in interest expense were offset by interest income of $13.4 million earned on cash held within interest bearing accounts.

Interest expense, net was $9.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $25.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Interest expense, net for the year ended December 31, 2022 decreased by $15.8 million, or 63.2%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021.

The decrease in interest expense, net was primarily attributable to $12.4 million of unrealized gains on the interest rate swap as a result of the increased interest rate volatility observed in 2022. This decrease was further impacted by the Company’s February 2021 refinancing of the First Lien Credit Facility, early repayment of the Second Lien Credit Facility, and the prepayment of $200.0 million of the First Lien Credit Facility in June 2021, resulting in interest rate savings due to lower principal and more favorable interest rate margins, and $5.0 million of interest income earned on cash held within interest bearing accounts. These decreases were partially offset by higher interest expense on the First Lien Credit Facility as a result of rising interest rates in 2022.

Loss on Extinguishment of Debt


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022		2021
Loss on extinguishment of debt	$	—	$	—	$	13,938

Loss on extinguishment of debt for the year ended December 31, 2021 relates to expenses stemming from the write-off of debt issuance costs associated with the February 2021 refinancing of the First Lien Credit Facility.

Provision for Income Taxes


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022		2021
Provision for income taxes	$	11,183	$	20,475	$	8,862

Our provision for income taxes was $11.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $20.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Our provision for income taxes for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $9.3 million, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

The decrease in our provision for income taxes was primarily due to the decrease of income before income taxes during the year ended December 31, 2023, as compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, and the decrease of GILTI inclusion.

Our provision for income taxes was $20.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $8.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Our provision for income taxes for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $11.6 million, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021.

The increase in our provision for income taxes was primarily due to the increase of income before income taxes during the year ended December 31, 2022, as compared to the year ended December 31, 2021, due to higher levels of pre-tax income as well as increases due to increased GILTI inclusion and lower research and development credits.

Net Income and Net Income Margin


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands, except percentages)	2023			2022			2021
Net income	$	37,293		$	64,604		$	16,051
Net income margin		4.9	%		8.0	%		2.3	%

Net income was $37.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to $64.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Net income for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $27.3 million, or 42.3%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022.

Net income margin was 4.9% for the year ended December 31, 2023, compared to 8.0% the year ended December 31, 2022, as reduced demand from customers more impacted by macroeconomic events contributed to lower revenues and increasing interest rates resulting from interest rate volatility resulted in lower profitability.

Net income was $64.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to $16.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. Net income for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $48.6 million, or 302.5%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021.

Net income margin was 8.0% for the year ended December 31, 2022, compared to 2.3% the year ended December 31, 2021. The improvement in our net income margin is attributable to our ability to leverage operating efficiencies to control our overall expenses while increasing revenues as well as reducing interest and other debt related expenses incurred as a result of the February 2021 refinancing.

Key Operating and Financial Metrics

In addition to our results determined in accordance with GAAP, we believe certain measures are useful in evaluating our operating performance. Management believes these non-GAAP measures are useful to investors in highlighting trends in our operating performance, while other measures can differ significantly depending on long-term strategic decisions regarding capital structure, the tax jurisdictions in which we operate, and capital investments. Management uses Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA Margin, Adjusted Net Income, and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share to supplement GAAP measures of performance in the evaluation of the effectiveness of our business strategies, to make budgeting decisions, to establish discretionary annual incentive compensation, and to compare our performance against that of other peer companies using similar measures. Management supplements GAAP results with non-GAAP financial measures to provide a more complete understanding of the factors and trends affecting the business than GAAP results alone.

The presentations of these measures have limitations as analytical tools and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. Because not all companies use identical calculations, the presentations of these measures may not be comparable to other similarly titled measures of other companies and can differ significantly from company to company. A reconciliation is provided below for each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable financial measure stated in accordance with GAAP.

Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin

Management believes that Adjusted EBITDA is a strong indicator of our overall operating performance and is useful to management and investors as a measure of comparative operating performance from period to period. We define Adjusted EBITDA as net income before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and as further adjusted for loss on extinguishment of debt, share-based compensation, transaction and acquisition-related charges, integration and restructuring charges, and other non-cash charges. We exclude the impact of share-based compensation because it is a non-cash expense and we believe that excluding this item provides meaningful supplemental information regarding performance and ongoing cash generation potential. We exclude loss on extinguishment of debt, transaction and acquisition related charges, integration and restructuring charges, and other charges because such expenses are episodic in nature and have no direct correlation to the cost of operating our business on an ongoing basis.

Adjusted EBITDA was $237.6 million, $248.9 million, and $226.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022, and 2021, respectively. This represented an Adjusted EBITDA Margin of 31.1%, 30.7%, and 31.8% for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022, and 2021, respectively.

Adjusted EBITDA for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $11.4 million, or 4.6%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022, as macroeconomic events impacted our revenues attributed to existing customers. Decreases were further impacted by the effects of changes in foreign currencies. These decreases were partially offset by increased revenues from certain existing and new customers, including ongoing strength in upselling and cross-selling, cost structure benefits due to increased automation, operational efficiencies, and certain other cost savings actions taken by the Company in late 2022 and into 2023.

Adjusted EBITDA for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $22.6 million, or 10.0%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. For the year ended December 31, 2022, Adjusted EBITDA increased due to revenues growth attributed to new and existing customers, primarily driven by strength across our business during the first half of the year and further supported by certain cost reductions implemented primarily in the second half of the year. These positive factors were partially offset by increases in insurance premiums and third-party data verification costs, additional investments in technology and sales, the effects of changes in foreign currencies, and lower margin revenues from our acquisitions.

The following table presents a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA for the periods presented.


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022		2021
Net income	$	37,293	$	64,604	$	16,051
Interest expense, net		33,040		9,199		24,972
Provision for income taxes		11,183		20,475		8,862
Depreciation and amortization		129,473		138,246		142,815
Loss on extinguishment of debt		—		—		13,938
Share-based compensation(a)		15,265		7,856		9,530
Transaction and acquisition-related charges(b)		4,364		6,018		9,314
Integration, restructuring, and other charges(c)		6,938		2,512		812
Adjusted EBITDA	$	237,556	$	248,910	$	226,294

(a)

Share-based compensation for the year ended December 31, 2023, includes approximately $6.6 million of incrementally recognized expense associated with the May 2023 vesting modification. See Note 10 to the audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report for further information.

(b)

Represents charges incurred related to acquisitions and similar transactions, primarily consisting of change in control-related costs, professional service fees, and other third-party costs. Also includes incremental professional service fees incurred related to the initial public offering, subsequent one-time compliance efforts, and the registered common stock offering by certain selling stockholders in November 2021. The years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021 include a transaction bonus expense related to one of the Company’s 2021 acquisitions.

(c)

Represents charges from organizational restructuring and integration activities, non-cash, and other charges primarily related to nonrecurring legal exposures, foreign currency (gains) losses, and (gains) losses on the sale of assets.

We define Adjusted EBITDA Margin as Adjusted EBITDA divided by total revenues. The following table presents the calculation of Adjusted EBITDA Margin for the periods presented.


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands, except percentages)	2023			2022			2021
Adjusted EBITDA	$	237,556		$	248,910		$	226,294
Revenues		763,761			810,023			712,295
Adjusted EBITDA Margin		31.1	%		30.7	%		31.8	%

The following table presents a calculation of Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin by segment for the periods presented. Refer to Note 17 to the consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report for a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA for the periods presented by segment.


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands, except percentages)	2023			2022			2021
Adjusted EBITDA (1)
Americas	$	221,645		$	221,655		$	198,473
International		15,911			27,255			27,821
Adjusted EBITDA	$	237,556		$	248,910		$	226,294

Revenues
Americas	$	673,075		$	694,865		$	604,413
International		96,832			122,599			114,009
Less: intersegment eliminations		(6,146	)		(7,441	)		(6,127	)
Total revenues	$	763,761		$	810,023		$	712,295

Adjusted EBITDA Margin
Americas		32.9	%		31.9	%		32.8	%
International		16.4	%		22.2	%		24.4	%
Adjusted EBITDA Margin		31.1	%		30.7	%		31.8	%

(1)

See the reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA above. Segment Adjusted EBITDA margins are calculated using segment gross revenues and segment Adjusted EBITDA. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA margin is calculated using consolidated revenues and consolidated Adjusted EBITDA.

Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share

Similar to Adjusted EBITDA, management believes that Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share are strong indicators of our overall operating performance and are useful to our management and investors as measures of comparative operating performance from period to period. We define Adjusted Net Income for a particular period as net income before taxes adjusted for debt-related costs, acquisition-related depreciation and amortization, share-based compensation, transaction and acquisition related charges, integration and restructuring charges, and other non-cash charges, to which we then apply the related effective tax rate. We define Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share as Adjusted Net Income divided by adjusted weighted average number of shares outstanding—diluted.

Adjusted Net Income was $145.8 million, $156.5 million, and $142.4 million for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022, and 2021, respectively. Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share was $1.00, $1.03, and $1.01 for the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022, and 2021, respectively.

Adjusted Net Income for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $10.7 million, or 6.8%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share for the year ended December 31, 2023 decreased by $0.03, or 2.9%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2022. Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share declined during the year ended December 31, 2023, as reduced demand from customers more impacted by macroeconomic events contributed to lower revenues and profitability. Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share were further impacted by changes in acquisition-related depreciation and amortization and changes in our capital structure that are captured in interest expense. Gains or losses and actual cash payments and receipts on the Company’s interest rate swaps impact the comparability of Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share across historical periods. Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share is further impacted by shares repurchased under the Company’s Repurchase Program.

Adjusted Net Income for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $14.1 million, or 9.9%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share for the year ended December 31, 2022 increased by $0.02, or 2.0%, compared to the year ended December 31, 2021. Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share were impacted by changes in acquisition-related depreciation and amortization and changes in our capital structure that are captured in interest expense across all periods, the impacts of which were offset by the factors contributing to Adjusted EBITDA growth year over year. The prepayment of the Company’s First Lien and Second Lien debt and gains or losses and actual cash payments and receipts on the Company’s interest rate swaps impact the comparability of Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share across historical periods.

The following table presents a reconciliation of Adjusted Net Income for the periods presented.


	Year Ended December 31,
(in thousands)	2023		2022			2021
Net income	$	37,293	$	64,604		$	16,051
Provision for income taxes		11,183		20,475			8,862
Income before provision for income taxes		48,476		85,079			24,913
Debt-related charges(a)		12,845		(9,569	)		20,143
Acquisition-related depreciation and amortization(b)		102,659		115,944			126,865
Share-based compensation(c)		15,265		7,856			9,530
Transaction and acquisition-related charges(d)		4,364		6,018			9,314
Integration, restructuring, and other charges(e)		6,938		2,512			812
Adjusted Net Income before income tax effect		190,547		207,840			191,577
Less: Adjusted income taxes(f)		44,759