Allot (ALLT) Risk Analysis

As a foreign private issuer, we are permitted under NASDAQ Rule 5615(a)(3) to follow Israeli corporate governance practices instead of the NASDAQ Stock Market requirements that apply to U.S. companies. As a condition to following Israeli corporate governance practices, we must disclose which requirements we are not following and describe the equivalent Israeli law requirement. We must also provide NASDAQ with a letter from our Israeli outside counsel, certifying that our corporate governance practices are not prohibited by Israeli law. As a result of these exemptions, our shareholders do not have the same protections as are afforded to shareholders of a U.S. company. We currently follow Israeli home country practices with regard to the quorum requirement for shareholder meetings and shareholder approval of equity compensation plans requirements.  As permitted under the Israeli Companies Law, 5759-1999, or the Companies Law, our articles of association provide that the quorum for any meeting of shareholders shall be the presence of at least two shareholders present in person or by proxy who hold at least 25% of the voting power of our shares instead of 33 1/3% of our issued share capital (as prescribed by NASDAQ's rules). We do not seek shareholder approval for equity compensation plans in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Law, which does not fully reflect the requirements of Rule 5635(c). In the future, we may also choose to follow Israeli corporate governance practices instead of NASDAQ requirements with regard to, among other things, the composition of our board of directors, compensation of officers, director nomination procedures and quorum requirements at shareholders' meetings. In addition, we may choose to follow Israeli corporate governance practice instead of NASDAQ requirements to obtain shareholder approval for certain dilutive events (such as for issuances that will result in a change of control of the company, certain transactions other than a public offering involving issuances of a 20% or more interest in the company and certain acquisitions of the stock or assets of another company). Accordingly, our shareholders may not be afforded the same protection as provided under NASDAQ corporate governance rules. Following our home country governance practices, as opposed to the requirements that would otherwise apply to a U.S. company listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, may provide less protection than is accorded to investors of domestic issuers. See "ITEM 16G: Corporate Governance".

The market price of our ordinary shares has been volatile in the past and may continue to be volatile. Our quarterly financial performance is likely to vary in the future, and may not meet our expectations or the expectations of analysts or investors, which may lead to additional volatility in our share price. Many factors could cause the market price of ordinary shares to fluctuate substantially, including, but not limited to: - announcements or introductions of technological innovations, new products, product enhancements or pricing policies by us or our competitors;- winning or losing contracts with service providers;- disputes or other developments with respect to our or our competitors' intellectual property rights;- announcements of strategic partnerships, joint ventures, acquisitions or other agreements by us or our competitors;- recruitment or departure of key personnel;- regulatory developments in the markets in which we sell our products;- our future repurchases, if any, of our ordinary shares pursuant to our current share repurchase program and/or any other share repurchase program which may be approved in the future;- our sale of ordinary shares or other securities;- changes in the estimation of the future size and growth of our markets;- The effect of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and containment efforts on global markets; or - market conditions in our industry, the industries of our customers and the economy as a whole. Share price fluctuations may be exaggerated if the trading volume of our ordinary shares is too low. The lack of a trading market may result in the loss of research coverage by securities analysts. Moreover, we can provide no assurance that any securities analysts will initiate or maintain research coverage of our company and our ordinary shares. If our future quarterly operating results are below the expectations of securities analysts or investors, the price of our ordinary shares would likely decline.  Securities class action litigation has often been brought against companies following periods of volatility.

We do not have a controlling shareholder. Notwithstanding provisions of our articles of association and Israeli law, a decline in the price of our ordinary shares may result in us becoming subject to an unsolicited or hostile acquisition bid. In the event that such a bid is publicly disclosed, it may result in increased speculation regarding our company and volatility in our share price even if our board of directors decides not to pursue a transaction. If our board of directors does pursue a transaction, there can be no assurance that it will be consummated successfully or that the price paid will represent a premium above the original price paid for our shares by all of our shareholders. Additionally, in recent years, U.S. and non-U.S. companies listed on securities exchanges in the United States have been faced with governance-related demands from activist shareholders, unsolicited tender offers and proxy contests. Although as a foreign private issuer we are not subject to U.S. proxy rules, responding to any action of this type by activist shareholders could be costly and time-consuming, disrupting our operations and diverting the attention of management and our employees. Such activities could interfere with our ability to execute our strategic plans. In addition, a proxy contest for the election of directors at our annual meeting would require us to incur significant legal fees and proxy solicitation expenses and require significant time and attention by management and our board of directors. The perceived uncertainties due to such actions of activist shareholders also could affect the market price of our securities.

We are incorporated in Israel. The majority of our executive officers and directors are not residents of the United States, and the majority of our assets and the assets of these persons are located outside the United States. Therefore, it may be difficult for an investor, or any other person or entity, to enforce a U.S. court judgment based upon the civil liability provisions of the U.S. federal securities laws against us or any of these persons in a U.S. or Israeli court, or to effect service of process upon these persons in the United States. Additionally, it may be difficult for an investor, or any other person or entity, to assert U.S. securities law claims in original actions instituted in Israel. Israeli courts may refuse to hear a claim based on a violation of U.S. securities laws on the grounds that Israel is not the most appropriate forum in which to bring such a claim. Even if an Israeli court agrees to hear a claim, it may determine that Israeli law and not U.S. law is applicable to the claim. If U.S. law is found to be applicable, the content of applicable U.S. law must be proved as a fact which can be a time-consuming and costly process. Certain matters of procedure will also be governed by Israeli law. There is little binding case law in Israel addressing the matters described above.

We integrate various third-party solutions into our products and offer third-party solutions bundled with our products. We may integrate or offer additional third-party solutions in the future. Sales of our products could be disrupted if such third-party solutions were either no longer available to us or no longer offered to us on commercially reasonable terms. In either case, we would be required to spend additional capital to either source alternative third-party solutions, redesign our products to function with alternate third-party solutions or develop substitute components ourselves. As a result, our sales may be delayed and/or adversely affected and we might be forced to limit the features available in our current or future product offerings, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.

We obtain certain hardware components used in our products from single or limited sources. Although such hardware components are off-the-shelf items, because our systems have been designed to incorporate these specific hardware components, any change to these components due to an interruption in supply chains or our inability to obtain such components on a timely basis, including as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, may require engineering changes to our products before substitute hardware components could be incorporated. Such changes could be costly and could result in lost sales particularly to our traffic management systems. The agreements with our suppliers do not contain any minimum supply commitments. If we or our contract manufacturers fail to obtain components in sufficient quantities when required, our business could be harmed. We obtain certain software components of our security products from a few limited sources, depending primarily on our customers' preferences. In the event that we are no longer able to source such software components from a particular source, and our customers refuse to implement components from our alternative sources, we may be required to identify an alternative source from which we do not currently acquire such software or develop such software ourselves. This may result in disputes with our customers and/or cancellation or delay of orders, which may materially adversely affect our business. Our suppliers also sell products to our competitors and may enter into exclusive arrangements with our competitors, stop selling their products or components to us at commercially reasonable prices or refuse to sell their products or components to us at any price. Our inability to obtain sufficient quantities of single-source or limited-sourced components or to develop alternative sources for components or products would harm our ability to maintain and expand our business.

Our DPI technology enabled products are used by service providers and enterprises to monitor and manage bandwidth-intensive applications that cause congestion in broadband networks and impact the quality of experience for users. Demand for our products is driven particularly by growth in applications, which are highly sensitive to network delays and therefore require efficient network management. If the rapid growth in the adoption of such applications does not continue, the demand for our products may be adversely impacted.

Our business from the enterprise segment may depends on new market and technology trends.  For example, some enterprises are starting to implement a new network architecture, enabled by Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) technology, in which some data traffic is sent from remote offices of the enterprise directly to the public cloud services. In such designs, Allot's products deployed at the central location of the enterprise will have less traffic capacity to manage and will provide only partial visibility into the enterprise's traffic. This may corrode the value provided by Allot's solutions and reduce amount of revenues derived from enterprise segment. Additionally, as networks start to evolve towards 5G, we will need to adapt the functionality of our products to comply with the design and standards prescribed by 3GPP organization, which requires significant investment. Our business may be affected if we are unable to adapt our existing products in a quick and timely manner or successfully develop and introduce solutions supporting 5G networks. In addition, in 4G/LTE networks, Allot provides a Traffic Detection Function (TDF) element of the core network. According to the recent network design specifications, published by the 3GPP organization, which is responsible for the industry standardization effort, in 5G networks this TDF function will be merged within the User Plane Function (UPF), which is provided by major NEP competitors. This change in network architecture may jeopardize Allot's ability to sell a standalone TDF function, which may have a material adverse impact on our business and financial results.

Currently a substantial amount of our revenues are received from communication service providers.  Many of these CSPs are facing declining revenues and profits due to commoditization of the provided services (voice and data) and limited success in introduction of the new services for the consumers and may not be able to continue to purchase our products and services for the prices we charge or will be unable to purchase these products and services entirely.   The outcome of such could result in a decline in our revenues and profits and adversely affect our business.

Service providers are subject to government regulation in a number of jurisdictions in which we sell our products. There are several existing regulations and proposals in the United States, Europe and elsewhere for regulating service providers' ability to prioritize applications in their networks. Some advocates for regulating this industry claim that collecting premium fees from certain "preferred" applications would distort the market for Internet applications in favor of larger and better-funded content providers. They also claim that this would impact end-users who already purchased broadband access only to experience response times that differ based on content provider. Some opponents believe that content providers who support bandwidth-intensive applications should be required to pay service providers a premium in order to support further network investments. On December 14, 2017 the United States Federal Communications Commission (the "FCC") announced that it voted to repeal the Open Internet Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order (the "Open Internet Order"). The Open Internet Order was issued by the FCC and went into effect on June 12, 2015.  The Open Internet Order set forth rules, grounded, among others, on Title II of the Communications Act of 1934; the Open Internet Order regulated both fixed and mobile Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and prohibited them, subject to reasonable network management, from blocking and/or throttling of lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, and from unreasonably interfering or disadvantaging of (i) end users' ability to select, access service of the lawful Internet content, applications, services, or devices of their choice or (ii) edge providers' ability to make lawful content, applications, services, or devices available to end users. The Open Internet Order also prohibited paid prioritization of content. The repeal largely reversed the Open Internet Order, including the classification of broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service, which is subject to certain common carrier regulations, and restored the regulatory framework that preceded the Open Internet Order. Because our products allow ISPs to identify network traffic and facilitate traffic management, the reinstatement of this traditional regulatory framework has not, to date, affected but may in the future affect ISP's demand for certain of our products.  The repeal of the Open Internet Order was upheld by a federal appeals court in October 2019, however, the repeal does not preclude state and local governments from enacting their own net neutrality rules and certain U.S. states have already implemented net neutrality protections. Therefore, the impact of the FCC's repeal on the demand for our products is uncertain and difficult to assess at this time. On April 30, 2016, Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council came into effect, setting forth the first EU-wide Net Neutrality ("Open Internet") rules. Under these rules, blocking, throttling and discrimination of internet traffic by ISPs is prohibited in the EU, with three exceptions: (i) compliance with legal obligations; (ii) integrity of the network; and (iii) congestion management in exceptional and temporary situations.  Outside these exceptions, there can be no prioritization of traffic within an internet access service. However, equal treatment permits reasonable day-to-day traffic management according to objectively justified technical requirements, and which must be independent of the origin or destination of the traffic and of any commercial considerations. These rules also allow internet access providers, as well as content and applications providers, to offer special services with specific quality requirements (provided the Open Internet is not negatively affected by the provision of these services). Such specialized services cannot be a substitute to internet access services, can only be provided if there is sufficient network capacity to provide them in addition to any internet access service and must not be to the detriment of the availability or general quality of internet access services for end-users. Such regulation of both fixed and mobile ISPs, in European Economic Area (EEA) Member States, may limit ISPs' ability to manage, prioritize and monetize their network. Additionally, these regulations may attract growing public debate and attention of regulators in other jurisdictions we operate in. Demand from service providers, in affected jurisdictions, for the traffic management and subscriber management features of our products may be adversely affected by such regulations. To date, we have not experienced any material  decrease in demand for these features; however, a decrease in demand in the future could adversely impact sales of our products and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, strict data privacy laws regulating the collection, transmission, storage and use of employee data and consumers' personally-identifying information applicable to ISPs are evolving in the US, European Union and other jurisdictions in which we sell our products. For example, in the U.S., legislation has in recent years been proposed regarding restrictions on the use of geolocation information collected by mobile devices without consumer consent and California's California Consumer Privacy Act, which grants expanded rights to access and delete personal information and opt out of certain personal information sharing, among other things, became effective on January 1, 2020 Similarly, the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), enforcement of which began on May 25, 2018, creates a range of new compliance obligations, increases financial penalties for non-compliance and extends the scope of the EU data protection law to all companies established in the EEA, and all companies established outside the EEA that either: (a) offer goods or services to individuals in the EEA; or (b) monitor the behavior of individuals in the EEA.  The GDPR imposes a strict data protection compliance regime and includes enhanced rights for individuals. It applies to the collection, use, retention, security, processing, transfer and deletion of personally identifiable information of individuals, and creates a range of new compliance obligations. Implementation of, and compliance with, the GDPR has increased, and could continue to increase, our cost of doing business. In addition, the GDPR may be interpreted or applied in a manner that is unforeseen by, or adverse to, us. Violations of the GDPR may result in significant fines (up to four percent of worldwide annual turnover or EUR 20.0 million, whichever is greater) and reputational harm. Such regulations may increase our compliance and administrative burden significantly and may require us to invest resources and management attention in order to update our IT systems to meet the new requirements. The GDPR and other privacy and data protection laws may be interpreted and applied differently from country to country and may create inconsistent or conflicting requirements. Such regulations increase our customers' compliance and administrative burden significantly and may require us to adapt certain of our products, if necessary, to different requirements in EEA Member States, as well as in the US, in order to allow our customers in such jurisdictions, to comply with such regulations. There is also no assurance that we will be able to adapt our products sufficiently in order to allow our customers in various jurisdictions to comply with such regulatory requirements in each jurisdiction. As data protection and privacy-related laws and regulations continue to evolve, these changes may result in increased regulatory and public scrutiny, escalating levels of enforcement and sanctions and increased costs of compliance. Therefore, we may be required to modify the features and functionalities of certain of our products, in a manner that is less attractive to customers. Such adjustments of our products, if required, may require extensive financial investments and may take long periods of time, leading to delay in sales cycles, deployment of our products and recognition of related revenues.

Our investment program in equipment at our facility in Hod-Hasharon, Israel, has been granted approved enterprise status and we are therefore eligible for tax benefits under the Israeli Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments, 1959, referred to as the Investments Law. We also have been granted benefited enterprise status.  We expect to utilize these tax benefits after we utilize our net operating loss carry forwards. As of December 31, 2019, our net operating loss carry forwards for Israeli tax purposes amounted to approximately $62 million. To remain eligible for these tax benefits, we must continue to meet certain conditions stipulated in the Investments Law and its regulations and the criteria set forth in the specific certificate of approval. If we do not meet these requirements, the tax benefits would be canceled and we could be required to refund any tax benefits and investment grants that we received in the past. Further, in the future these tax benefits may be reduced or discontinued. If these tax benefits are cancelled, our Israeli taxable income would be subject to regular Israeli corporate tax rates. The standard corporate tax rate in Israel since the 2018 tax year is 23%. Effective January 1, 2011, the Investments Law was amended (the "2011 Amendment") to revise the criteria for receiving tax benefits. Under the transition provisions of the 2011 Amendment, a company may decide to irrevocably implement the 2011 Amendment while waiving benefits provided under the Investments Law's prior benefits programs or to remain subject to the Investments Law's prior benefits programs. We have opted not to apply the benefits under the 2011 Amendment, however, in the future, we may not be eligible to receive additional tax benefits as were made available under the Investments Law prior to the 2011 Amendment. The termination or reduction of these tax benefits would increase our tax liability, which would reduce our profits. Finally, in the event of a distribution of a dividend from the abovementioned tax-exempt income, in addition to withholding tax at the following rates: (i) Israeli resident corporation – 0%, (ii) Israeli resident individual – 20% in 2014 and onwards, and (iii) non-Israeli resident – 20% in 2014 and onwards subject to a reduced tax rate under the provisions of an applicable double tax treaty, we would also be subject to income tax on the amount distributed in accordance with the effective corporate tax rate which would have been applied had we not enjoyed the exemption. See "ITEM 10: Additional Information-Taxation-Israeli Tax Considerations and Government Programs." No assurance can be given that we will be eligible to receive additional tax benefits under the Investments Law in the future. The termination or reduction of these tax benefits would increase our tax liability in the future, which would reduce our profits or increase our losses. Additionally, if we increase our activities outside of Israel, for example, by future acquisitions, our increased activities may not be eligible for inclusion in Israeli tax benefit programs.

Significant political or regulatory developments in the jurisdictions in which we sell our products, such as those stemming from the recent change in the presidential administration in the U.S. or the U.K.'s potential exit from the E.U., are difficult to predict and may have a material adverse effect on us. For example, in the United States, the presidential administration has imposed tariffs on imports from China, Mexico, Canada and other countries, and has expressed support for greater restrictions on free trade and has increased tariffs on goods imported into the United States. Changes in U.S. political, regulatory and economic conditions or in its policies governing international trade and foreign manufacturing and investment in the U.S. could materially adversely affect our sales in the U.S. In the United Kingdom, following the vote to approve an exit from the E.U., commonly referred to as "Brexit," the government officially separated from the E.U. on January 31, 2020. While the U.K. and the E.U. entered into a withdrawal agreement providing for a transition period through the end of 2020 (which may be extended up to 2022), during which time E.U. law is applicable to and in the U.K., the scope and exact terms of their future relationship remain unclear. The withdrawal of the U.K from the E.U. could potentially disrupt the free movement of goods, services and people between the U.K. and the E.U., undermine bilateral cooperation in key geographic areas and significantly disrupt trade between the U.K. and the E.U. or other nations as the U.K. pursues independent trade relations. Because this is an unprecedented event, it is unclear what long-term economic, financial, trade, tax and legal implications Brexit would have and how it would affect the regulation applicable to our business globally and in the region. The impact on us will depend, in part, on the outcome of tariff, trade, regulatory and other negotiations. Brexit could also lead to legal uncertainty and potentially divergent national laws and regulations as the U.K. determines which E.U. laws to replace or replicate. In addition, Brexit may lead other E.U. member countries to consider referendums regarding their European Union membership. Any of these developments, along with any political, economic and regulatory changes that may occur, could cause political and economic uncertainty in Europe and internationally and could materially adversely affect our sales in Europe.