Akoustis Technologies (AKTSQ) Risk Analysis

The semiconductor industry is characterized by the vigorous pursuit and protection of intellectual property rights. We have not undertaken a comprehensive review of the rights of third parties in our field. From time to time, we may be named in lawsuits or receive notices or inquiries from third parties regarding our products or the manner in which we conduct our business suggesting that we may be infringing, misappropriating or otherwise misusing patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret and other intellectual property rights. Any claims that our technology infringes, misappropriates or otherwise misuses the rights of third parties, regardless of their merit or resolution, could be expensive to litigate or settle and could divert the efforts and attention of our management and technical personnel, cause significant delays and materially disrupt the conduct of our business. We may not prevail in such proceedings given the complex technical issues and inherent uncertainties in intellectual property litigation. If such proceedings result in an adverse outcome, we could be required to: - pay substantial damages, including treble damages if we were held to have willfully infringed;- cease the manufacture, offering for sale or sale of the infringing technology or processes;- expend significant resources to develop non-infringing technology or processes;- obtain a license from a third party, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or may not be available at all; or - lose the opportunity to license our technology to others or to collect royalty payments based upon successful protection and assertion of our intellectual property against others. On October 4, 2021, the Company was named as a defendant in a complaint filed by Qorvo, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware alleging, among other things, patent infringement, false advertising, false patent marking, and unfair competition. The plaintiff seeks an injunction enjoining us from the alleged infringement and damages, including punitive and statutory enhanced damages, in an unspecified amount. We believe this lawsuit is without merit and intend to defend against it vigorously. However, we can provide no assurance as to the outcome of such dispute, and such action may result in judgments against us for an injunction, significant damages or other relief, such as future royalty payments to Qorvo, Inc. or restrictions on certain of our activities. Resolution of such matter may be prolonged and costly, and the ultimate result or judgment is uncertain due to the inherent uncertainty in litigation and other proceedings. Even if ultimately settled or resolved in our favor, this and other possible future actions may result in significant expenses, diversion of management and technical personnel attention and disruptions and delays in our business and product development, and other collateral consequences, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Any out-of-court settlement of this or other actions may also have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations, including, but not limited to, substantial expenses, the payment of royalties, licensing or other fees payable to third parties, or restrictions on our ability to develop, manufacture and sell our products. Defense of any intellectual property infringement claims against us, regardless of their merit, would involve substantial litigation expense and would be a significant diversion of resources from our business. In the event of the foregoing or another successful claim of infringement against us, we may have to pay substantial damages, obtain one or more licenses from third parties, limit our business to avoid the infringing activities, pay royalties and/or redesign our infringing technology or alter related formulations, processes, methods or other technologies, any or all of which may be impossible or require substantial time and monetary expenditure. The occurrence of any of the above events could prevent us from continuing to develop and commercialize our filters and our business could materially suffer. In addition, our agreements with prospective customers and manufacturing partners may require us to indemnify such customers and manufacturing partners for third party intellectual property infringement claims. Pursuant to such agreements, we may be required to defend such customers and manufacturing partners against certain claims that could cause us to incur additional costs. While we endeavor to include as part of such indemnification obligations a provision permitting us to assume the defense of any indemnification claim, not all of our current agreements contain such a provision and we cannot provide any assurance that our future agreements will contain such a provision, which could result in increased exposure to us in the case of an indemnification claim.

Our business depends in significant part upon manufacturers of products requiring semiconductors, as well as the current and anticipated production of these products. As a supplier to such manufacturers, we are subject to the business cycles that characterize the industry. Recent sharp increases in demand for semiconductor products have resulted in a global shortage of manufacturing capacities and it is unclear how long this shortage may last. If our customers are forced to reduce the amount of their products they manufacture or plan to manufacture due to a limited supply of semiconductors, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be negatively affected.

As the source of our technological and product innovations, our key technical personnel represent a significant asset. We believe that our future success is highly dependent on the continued services of our current key officers, employees, and Board members, as well as our ability to attract and retain highly skilled and experienced technical personnel. The loss of their services could have a detrimental effect on our operations. Specifically, the loss of the services of our President and Chief Executive Officer, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, our Executive Vice President of Business Development, our Chief Product Officer, any major changes in our Board or other senior management, or our inability to attract, retain and motivate qualified personnel could have a material adverse effect on our ability to operate our business. The competition for management and technical personnel is intense in the wireless semiconductor industry, and therefore, we cannot assure you that we will be able to attract and retain qualified management and other personnel necessary for the design, development, manufacture and sale of our products.

We and our operating subsidiary are subject to various laws and regulations in different jurisdictions, and the interpretation and enforcement of laws and regulations are subject to change. We are also subject to different tax regulations in each of the jurisdictions where we conduct our business or where our management or the management of our operating subsidiary is located. We expect that the scope and extent of regulation in these jurisdictions, as well as regulatory oversight and supervision, will generally continue to increase. There can be no assurance that future regulatory, judicial and legislative changes in any jurisdiction will not have a material adverse effect on us or hinder us in the operation of our business. In addition, we may incur substantial costs in order to comply with current or future environmental, health and safety laws and regulations applicable to us. These current or future laws and regulations may impair our research, development or production efforts or impact the research activities we pursue. Our failure to comply with these laws and regulations also may result in substantial fines, penalties or other sanctions, which could cause our financial condition to suffer.

Regulations in the United States require that we determine whether certain materials used in our products, referred to as conflict minerals, originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or adjoining countries, or originated from recycled or scrap sources. We incur costs associated with our policies and procedures to comply with the applicable rules and due diligence procedures. In addition, verification and reporting requirements could affect the sourcing and availability of minerals that are used in the manufacture of our products, and we may face reputational and competitive challenges if we are unable to sufficiently verify the origins of all conflict minerals used in our products. We may also face challenges with government regulators, potential customers, suppliers and manufacturers if we are unable to sufficiently verify that the metals used in our products are conflict free.

The markets in which we compete are intensely competitive. We operate primarily in the industry that designs and produces semiconductor components for wireless communications and other wireless devices, which is subject to rapid changes in both product and process technologies based on demand and evolving industry standards. The markets for our products are characterized by: - rapid technological developments and product evolution,- rapid changes in customer requirements,- frequent new product introductions and enhancements,- continuous demand for higher levels of integration, decreased size and decreased power consumption,- short product life cycles with declining prices over the life cycle of the product, and - evolving industry standards. The continuous evolutions of these technologies and frequent introduction of new products and enhancements have generally resulted in short product life cycles for wireless semiconductor products, in general, and for RFFEs, in particular. Our R&D activity and resulting products could become obsolete or less competitive sooner than anticipated because of a faster than anticipated change in one or more of the above-noted factors. Therefore, in order for our RF filters to be competitive and achieve market acceptance, we need to keep pace with rapid development of new process technologies, which requires us to: - respond effectively to technological advances by timely introducing new technologies and products,- successfully implement our strategies and execute our R&D plan in practice,- improve the efficiency of our technology, and - implement our improved design and cost reductions into manufacturing of our RF filters.

We have limited experience selling, marketing or distributing products and currently have a small internal marketing and sales force. To progress the launch and commercialization of our technology and our RF filters, we must build on a territory-by-territory basis marketing, sales, distribution, managerial and other non-technical capabilities or make arrangements with third parties to perform these services, and we may not be successful in doing so. Therefore, we may choose to collaborate, either globally or on a territory-by-territory basis, with third parties that have direct sales forces and established distribution systems, either to augment our own sales force and distribution systems or in lieu of our own sales force and distribution systems. If so, our success will depend, in part, on our ability to enter into and maintain collaborative relationships for such capabilities, such collaborator's strategic interest in the products under development and such collaborator's ability to successfully market and sell any such products. If we are unable to enter into such arrangements when needed on acceptable terms or at all, we may not be able to successfully commercialize our filters. Further, to the extent that we depend on third parties for marketing and distribution, any revenues we receive will depend upon the efforts of such third parties, and there can be no assurance that such efforts will be successful. If we decide in the future to establish an internal sales and marketing team with technical expertise and supporting distribution capabilities to commercialize our RF filters, it could be expensive and time consuming and would require significant attention of our executive officers to manage. We may also not have sufficient resources to allocate to the sales and marketing of our filters. Any failure or delay in the development of sales, marketing and distribution capabilities, either through collaboration with one or more third parties or through internal efforts, would adversely impact the commercialization of any of our products that we obtain approval to market. As a result, our future product revenue would suffer, and we may incur significant additional losses.

A sustained disruption in the capital markets from the COVID-19 pandemic could negatively impact our ability to raise capital. In the past, we have financed our operations primarily by the issuance of equity and debt securities. However, we cannot predict when the macro-economic disruption stemming from COVID-19 will ebb or when the economy will return to pre-COVID-19 levels, if at all. This macro-economic disruption may disrupt our ability to raise additional capital to finance our operations in the future, which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and prospects, and could ultimately cause our business to fail.