SEC Company Response from MICROS SYSTEMS INC (CIK 0000320345) — May 10, 2005
MICROS SYSTEMS INC (CIK 0000320345)
Date: May 10, 2005 · CIK: 0000320345 · Accession: 0001104659-05-022253
AI Filing Summary & Sentiment
File numbers found in text: 000-09993
Referenced dates: March 21, 2005
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CORRESP 1 filename1.htm MICROS Systems, Inc 7031 Columbia Gateway Drive Columbia, MD 21046-2289 April 15, 2005 UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Division of Corporation Finance 450 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20549 Attn: Craig Wilson, Senior Assistant Chief Accountant, Brent Watson, Staff Accountant Re: MICROS Systems, Inc. (File No. 000-09993) Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2004 Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2004 Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2004 Dear Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Watson: On March 21, 2005, I received your letter dated March 21, 2005 (the “Letter”) from the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Staff”) with respect to MICROS Systems, Inc.’s (the “Company”) Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2004 (the “2004 10-K”) and Forms 10-Q for the quarterly periods ended September 30 and December 31, 2004. In response to the comments provided to me in this Letter, I am providing a detailed explanation as well as any supplemental information requested. For your convenience, we have repeated each of the Staff’s comments in bold prior to our responses, and we have included in our responses, as exhibits, various referenced pages from our 2004 10-K. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, page 21 1. Where you identify two or more sources of a material change, we note the dollar amount that each source contributed to the change is not disclosed. Examples include, but are not limited to: • The increase in 2004 hardware revenue due to sale of the Workstation 4 offset by a decrease in the sale of PC Workstations; • The increase in 2004 software revenue due to various rollout programs and the sale of Datavantage’s suite of software products; • The increase in service revenue due to increased support revenues and increased installation revenue from the continued expansion of the MICROS customer base as well as the recurring support revenue of existing customers and the addition of professional services and support provided by Datavantage; and • This increase in selling, general and administrative expenses due to the acquisition of Datavantage, increase in salaries and foreign exchange. Refer to SEC Release Nos. 33-8350 and 33-6835 and explain to us what consideration you gave to providing these disclosures throughout your MD&A. Comment 1 Response: Our reporting objective in our Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (“MD&A”) is to provide readers information in a “clear and straightforward manner” that enables “investors an opportunity to look at the company through the eyes of management.” We believe this reporting objective is met by providing the context in which information should be analyzed, and by providing information in order to help an investor ascertain whether or not past performance is indicative of future performance. We are relying on the interpretive guidance provided in SEC Release Nos. 33-8530 and 33-6835 in making our disclosures. In our filings, we disclosed in MD&A the reasons for the changes between two or more sources to the extent, we believe, it will provide readers an understanding of the business as a whole. After careful consideration of each disclosure, we did not include dollar amounts in instances when providing that information would overly complicate a reader’s understanding of the business as a whole, provide a level of detail that would be overly burdensome or unnecessarily provide to our competitors a competitive advantage. In other instances, in accordance with Instruction 4 of Item 303(a), we did not include dollar amounts where it would create repetition of line items or where the figures were readily computed from the financial statements or supporting tables. However, we note the Staff’s comments and will address these by further expanding our disclosures. Where appropriate, we will include additional tables and narratively expand upon the specific details of each material change presented. The examples provided to us in your comment are illustrated and described further below in order to describe our consideration of these specific disclosures as well as other disclosures not presented herein. The increase in 2004 hardware revenue due to sale of the Workstation 4 offset by a decrease in the sale of PC Workstation In our discussion of year-over-year changes in revenue in our MD&A, we breakdown changes in revenue from 2003 to 2004 by sales mix (hardware, software and service), which management believes is useful to investors in understanding our business as a whole (see 10-K Ex. 5 & 7). We do not quantify the drivers within individual categories beyond this level of detail, a practice which is in line with the disclosure practice in our industry. Further, management does not believe that this information is necessary to an understanding of the changes that are described in narrative form in our disclosure and that, pursuant to Interpretive Release No. 33-6835, Section III.D., first paragraph, quantifying the drivers behind the changes in revenue by sales mix is not required. Management believes that the disclosure on page 22 (see 10-K Ex. 5) analyzing the changes in hardware revenue meets the requirements of Interpretive Release No. 33-6835 because we identify the increase of approximately $14,627,000 in hardware revenue as: • primarily due to the sale of Workstation 4, which was released in the fourth quarter of 2003 and, therefore, had a significantly greater impact on 2004 results than on 2003 results • and offset by a decrease in the sale of PC Workstations, which constitute an older technology platform being replaced by Workstation 4. With respect to the increase in Workstation 4 sales, we describe, on page 5 of our 10-K, the product and its recent addition to our suite of products (see 10-K Ex. 2). We believe this information provides the basis for understanding our overall businesses and product offering. Supplementally, we do not consider customer specific or product level specific dollar amount information helpful in meeting our reporting objectives for the following reasons: • No customer is considered a material customer requiring disclosure — No customer accounts for more than 10% of consolidated revenues (Regulation S-K; 229.100; Item 101(c)(iiv)), and the loss of any current customer would not significantly impact our results; • Our ability to provide detailed customer information publicly is usually contractually limited by the agreement with the customer; and • We do not consider dollar amount detail, by customer, information that is comparable with our competitors public disclosures including but not limited to NCR Corporation (Symbol: NCR), International Business Machines (Symbol: IBM), Radiant Systems (Symbol: RADS), and Par Technologies (Symbol: PTS). One example of how a customer may contractually limit our ability to disclose its purchasing information is as follows: • The XYZ Corporation is protective of the use of its brand name. When we sell our product to the XYZ Corporation, XYZ stipulates in the contract that we must separately negotiate permission to use its name associated with the purchase. In this example, the XYZ Corporation would require that we pay a fee of $1,000,000 if we disclose that they are our customer; providing this disclosure and paying this fee is not in the best interest of our shareholders. 2 The increase in 2004 software revenue due to various rollout programs and the sale of Datavantage’s suite of software products Management believes that the disclosure on page 22 (see 10-K Ex. 5) analyzing the changes in software revenue meets the requirements of Interpretive Release No. 33-6835 because we identify the increase of approximately $14.9 in software revenue as: • Primarily due to an increase in volume purchases from a number of customers (i.e. rollout programs) • Software product offerings by Datavantage, which we acquired effective May 1, 2003 and, therefore, had a significantly greater impact on 2004 results than on 2003 results. Our disclosure does not provide specifics of those multiple site customer sales (rollout programs) as we believe it would affect future prices obtained for the same product. Each major sale is a set of specific facts and circumstances; these include software requirements, development needs, hardware configuration, customer commitments, and geographic issues. Accordingly, each contract is negotiated separately with each customer. We do not want future negotiations with potential customers to be adversely impacted by disclosing customer pricing details. Our sales strategy is to negotiate our prices from a set of list prices, and we do not want potential future customers basing their pricing decision on another customer’s price who may have entirely different facts and circumstances. Depending on the customers situation, we offer certain incentives from our list price, and not from another customer’s price. In addition, some of our multiple site customers require that their purchasing information not be disclosed unless negotiated as part of the agreement (see XYZ Corporation example above). We do, on occasion, obtain our customer’s permission to disclose their purchase information, and have detailed those customers in Part 1, Item 1 — “Business” in our Form 10-K. Also, when we obtain a customer’s permission to disclose their purchase publicly, we issue, separately, an independent press release. However, we still do not include pricing information for the reasons already provided. Lastly, we do not provide the specific details of the increases from Datavantage, our newly acquired subsidiary, because we felt the disclosures made in other parts of the filing related to the acquisition of Datavantage was sufficient, specifically pages 3, 6 and page 18 of our 2004 Form 10-K (see 10-K Ex. 1, Ex. 3, & Ex. 4). The increase in service revenue due to increased support revenues and increased installation revenue from the continued expansion of the MICROS customer base as well as the recurring support revenue of existing customers and the addition of professional services and support provided by Datavantage Management believes that the disclosure on page 22 (see 10-K Ex. 5) analyzing the changes in service revenue meets the requirements of Interpretive Release No. 33-6835 because we identify the increase of approximately $52.1 million in service revenue as: • mainly due to increased support and installation revenue from new customers; • along with support revenue from existing customers The primary reason our service revenue increases as our customer base grows is because our customers prefer a “one-stop-shop” for all their IT needs. We do, however, have customers and prospects who prefer to support the product themselves. Since each sale is a set of specific facts and circumstances, and those facts and circumstances are negotiated separately with each and every customer, identifying every variable associated with our service revenue is not meaningful. Competition, level of a customer’s Information Technology (“IT”) expertise, a customer’s financial constraints, and various other market and customer specific factors impact our customers purchasing behavior toward service and support. However, we note the Staff’s comment and will address this by further expanding our disclosures related to the recurring nature of our service maintenance revenue. Where appropriate, we will include additional tables and narratively expand upon the specific details of each material change presented. This increase in selling, general and administrative expenses due to the acquisition of Datavantage, increase in salaries and foreign exchange On page 23 of our 2004 Form 10-K (see 10-K Ex. 6), we describe the drivers behind the $22.6 million increase in selling, general and administrative expenses as: • primarily due to $13.0 million in expenses related to the acquisition of Datavantage which had a significantly greater impact on 2004 results than on 2003 results; 3 • salary increases and related salary expenses (primarily from annual merit increases and the rising cost of employee related expenses (e.g. healthcare and 401(k) match); • the effects of foreign currency related changes; and • $1.3 million of expenses related to compliance with our obligations under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In future filings, we intend to clarify the components of salary increases and related salary expenses in order to assist a reader in assessing the impact of such items on our operations as shown in the following example: Selling, general and administrative expenses increase $22.6 million, or 17.1%, in fiscal year 2004 compared to fiscal year 2003. Approximately $13.0 million of this increase is the result of the acquisition of Datavantage. We acquired Datavantage on May 1, 2003. As a result, in fiscal year 2003, we recorded only two months of SG&A expenses related to Datavantage compared to twelve months expense recorded in fiscal year 2004. In addition, we incurred $1.3 million of additional expenses related to compliance with our obligations under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley act. The remaining $8.3 million increase is primarily a result of salary costs due to annual merit increases and the rising cost of employee related expenses (i.e. Healthcare, 401(k) match), which coupled to a lesser extent with foreign currency related changes have contributed to the overall increase in SG&A expenses, comparatively. 4 2. We note that foreign currency exchange rates appear to have a significant impact on your results of operations. What consideration did you give to providing sensitivity analyses that allow readers to understand the potential impact of rate changes on your results in future period? It appears that presenting key historical amounts on a consistent foreign currency basis would also be useful information. Comment 2 Response: Historically, changes in foreign currency exchange rates have not been material to our business or our results of operations, and primarily impact our International reporting segment. We have reviewed Item 305 of Regulation S-K and, because management believes that our exposure to foreign currency exchange rate risk has historically not been material, we have not presented quantitative information or sensitivity analyses with respect to foreign currency exchange rate risk. We believe, however, that disclosing the % of reported revenue by functional currency as well as month end exchange rates will provide investors a better understanding of foreign currencies impact, comparatively, on our results. Prospectively, we intend to include as an example the disclosure below starting with our June 2005 annual report on Form 10-K. An example of our proposed prospective disclosure is as follows: The Company’s revenue for fiscal 2004 was transacted in approximately twenty-three currencies, while in fiscal years 2003 and 2004, the Company’s revenue was transacted in approximately twenty-four. The relative mix over the past three years was as follows: Year Ended June 30, % of Reported Revenues Month End Exchange Rates (*) Revenues by currency (1) 2004 2003 2002 2004 2003 2002 United States Dollar 58 % 56 % 58 % 1.00 1.00 1.00 European Euro 24 % 27 % 24 % 1.1515 0.9914 0.8503 British Pound