Microchip (MCHP) Risk Factors

The amount, timing, and execution of repurchases of shares of our common stock may fluctuate based on the share price of our common stock, general business and market conditions, tax regulations impacting share repurchases and other factors including our operating results, level of cash flow, capital expenditures and dividend payments. Although our Board of Directors has authorized share repurchases of up to $4.00 billion, of which $1.56 billion is still available, the authorization does not obligate us to acquire any particular amount of shares. We cannot guarantee that our share repurchase authorization will be fully consummated or that it will enhance long-term stockholder value. The repurchase authorization may be suspended or discontinued at any time at our discretion and may affect the trading price of our common stock and increase volatility.

We prepare our financial statements in conformity with U.S. GAAP. These accounting principles are subject to interpretation or changes by the FASB and the SEC. New accounting pronouncements and interpretations of accounting standards and practices have occurred in the past and are expected to occur in the future. New accounting pronouncements or a change in the interpretation of accounting standards or practices may have a significant effect on our reported financial results and may affect our reporting of transactions completed before the change is effective.

The conversion of some or all of our outstanding Convertible Debt will dilute the ownership interest of our existing stockholders to the extent we deliver common stock upon conversion of such debt. Following our irrevocable settlement election made on April 1, 2022, upon conversion, we are required to satisfy our conversion obligation with respect to such converted Convertible Debt by delivering cash equal to the principal amount of such converted Convertible Debt and cash and shares of common stock or any combination, at our option, with respect to any conversion value in excess thereof (i.e., the conversion spread). There would be no adjustment to the numerator in the net income per common share computation for the cash settled portion of the Convertible Debt as that portion of the debt instrument will always be settled in cash. The conversion spread will be included in the denominator for the computation of diluted net income per common share. Any sales in the public market of any common stock issuable upon conversion of our Convertible Debt could adversely affect prevailing market prices of our common stock. In addition, the existence of the Convertible Debt may encourage short selling by market participants because the conversion of the Convertible Debt could be used to satisfy short positions, or anticipated conversion of the Convertible Debt into shares of our common stock could depress the price of our common stock.

We have acquired, and expect in the future to acquire, additional businesses that we believe will complement or augment our existing businesses. In May 2018, we acquired Microsemi, which was our largest and most complex acquisition ever. Integration of our acquisitions is complex and may be costly and time consuming and include unanticipated issues, expenses and liabilities. We may not successfully or profitably integrate, operate, maintain and manage any newly acquired operations or employees. We may not be able to maintain uniform standards, procedures and policies. We may not realize the expected synergies and cost savings from the integration. There may be increased risk due to integrating financial reporting and internal control systems. It may be difficult to develop, manufacture and market the products of a newly acquired company, or grow the business at the rate we anticipate. There may be increased risk associated with the activities of the acquired company such as regulatory violations related to their use of AI in their operations, technology development or product offerings or cyber security risks. Following an acquisition, we may not achieve the revenue or net income levels that justify the acquisition. We may suffer loss of key employees, customers and strategic partners of acquired companies and it may be difficult to implement our corporate culture at acquired companies. We have been and may in the future be subject to claims from terminated employees, stockholders of Microchip or the acquired companies and other third parties related to the transaction. In particular, in connection with our Microsemi and Atmel acquisitions, we became involved with third-party claims, litigation, governmental investigations and disputes related to such businesses and transactions. Acquisitions may also result in charges (such as acquisition-related expenses, write-offs, restructuring charges, or future impairment of goodwill), contingent liabilities, adverse tax consequences, additional share-based compensation expense and other charges that adversely affect our operating results. To fund our acquisition of Microsemi, we used a significant portion of our cash balances and incurred approximately $8.10 billion of additional debt. We may fund future acquisitions of new businesses or strategic alliances by utilizing cash, borrowings under our Revolving Credit Facility, issuing Commercial Paper, raising debt, issuing shares of our common stock, or other mechanisms. Further, if we decide to divest assets or a business, it may be difficult to find or complete divestiture opportunities or alternative exit strategies, which may include site closures, timely or on acceptable terms. These circumstances could delay the achievement of our strategic objectives or cause us to incur additional expenses with respect to the desired divestiture, or the price or terms of the divestiture may be less favorable than we had anticipated. Even following a divestiture or other exit strategy, we may have certain continuing obligations to former employees, customers, vendors, landlords or other third parties. We may also have continuing liabilities related to former employees, assets or businesses. Such obligations may have a material adverse impact on our results of operations and financial condition. In addition to acquisitions, we have in the past, and expect in the future, to enter into joint development agreements or other strategic relationships with other companies. These transactions are subject to a number of risks similar to those we face with our acquisitions including our ability to realize the expected benefits of any such transaction, to successfully market and sell products resulting from such transactions or to successfully integrate any technology developed through such transactions.

Our technology licensing business is based on our SuperFlash and other technologies. The success of our licensing business depends on the continued market acceptance of these technologies and on our ability to further develop such technologies, to introduce new technologies, and to enforce our license terms. To be successful, any such technology must be able to be repeatably implemented by licensees, provide satisfactory yield rates, address licensee and customer requirements, and perform competitively. The success of our technology licensing business depends on various other factors, including, but not limited to: - proper identification of licensee requirements;- timely development and introduction of new or enhanced technology;- our ability to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights for our licensed technology, and enforce the terms of our licenses;- our ability to limit our liability and indemnification obligations to licensees;- availability of development and support services to assist licensees in their design and manufacture of products;- availability of foundry licensees with sufficient capacity to support OEM production; and - market acceptance of our customers' end products. Because our licensed technologies are complex, there may be delays from time to time in developing and enhancing such technologies. There can be no assurance that our existing or any enhanced or new technology will achieve or maintain substantial market acceptance. Our licensees may experience disruptions in production or reduced production levels which would adversely affect the revenue that we receive. Our technology license agreements generally include a clause that indemnifies the licensee against liability and damages (including legal defense costs) arising from certain intellectual property matters. We could be exposed to substantial liability for claims or damages related to intellectual property matters or indemnification claims. We have a program to audit the royalty payments made by our licensees to help ensure that the payments are in accordance with the terms of the applicable license agreements. From time to time, we or our licensees have contested the amount of royalty payments and related claims have resulted and could result in significant legal fees and require significant attention from our management. These issues may adversely impact the success of our licensing business and adversely affect our future operating results.

We rely on the uninterrupted operation of complex IT systems and networks to operate our business.  Any improper handling of confidential data, or significant disruption to our systems or networks, including, but not limited to, any that may relate to new system implementations, computer viruses, security breaches or incidents, cyber-attacks, ransom-style attacks, theft or tampering, inadvertent error, facility issues, natural disasters, terrorism, war, telecommunication failures or energy blackouts, security breaches or incidents in our customers' or third-party providers' networks, in third-party products we use, or in cloud-based services provided to, by, or enabled by us, or any data we or our service providers maintain or otherwise process, including but not limited to, data belonging to us or our customers, suppliers, contractors or employees, or any perception any of the foregoing has occurred, could have a material adverse impact on our business, operations, supply chain, sales and operating results, result in regulatory inquiries, investigations or other proceedings against us, result in claims, demands and litigation against us, or damage our reputation.  Such improper handling of confidential data, or system or network disruption, or any cyber-attack or other means of effectuating a security breach or incident, could result in loss or unavailability of all or a portion of our systems and business operations, and a loss, unavailability, an unauthorized release of, or other unauthorized use or processing of, personal data, or our suppliers' or our customers' intellectual property or confidential, proprietary or sensitive information. Any such matter, or any perception that it has occurred, could harm our business or competitive position, result in a loss of customer confidence, and cause us to incur significant costs to remedy the damages, and may result in lower revenue, lower margins, regulatory investigations, inquiries or other proceedings, enforcement actions, remediation obligations, claims for damages, litigation, and fines, penalties, damages, other liabilities, and other sanctions. We have experienced and continue to experience verifiable attacks on our IT systems and data, including network compromises, attempts to breach our security measures and attempts to introduce malicious software into our IT systems. For example, in August 2024, we determined that an unauthorized party disrupted our use of certain servers and some of our business operations. As a result, certain of our manufacturing facilities were operating at less than normal levels for a period of time, and our ability to fulfill orders was temporarily impacted. While we were able to bring the affected portions of our IT systems back online and restore normal business operations in response to this August 2024 incident without a material impact to our business, we cannot be certain that we would be able to achieve this result in the event of another cyber-attack. We routinely evaluate the effectiveness of the containment mechanisms that we have implemented and continue to implement additional measures. We analyzed the information that was compromised in August 2024 and we do not believe that this cyber incident has had a material adverse effect on our business or resulted in any material damage to us. New information can develop that may impact our assessment of cyber events, including information learned as we develop and deploy mitigations. Due to the types of products we sell and the significant amount of sales we make to government agencies or customers whose principal sales are to U.S. government agencies, we have experienced and expect to continue to experience in the future, attacks on our IT systems and data, including attempts to breach our security, network compromises and attempts to introduce malicious software into our IT systems. Geopolitical events and tensions may increase these risks. Also, as AI continues to evolve, cyber-attackers could use AI to develop malicious code, sophisticated phishing attempts, and convincing deep fakes. A deep fake is a manipulation of our content or the voices or images of our leaders to maliciously publish false messages that appear to be authentic. Such messages may harm our reputation, which may in turn have an adverse impact on our revenue and profits, and reduce the trading price of our stock. A threat could also be introduced by our or our customers and business partners use of AI tools. The output of these tools may include threats such as introducing malicious code when AI generated source code is incorporated into products or systems. Were any future attacks to be successful, or through the unintentional introduction of security vulnerability due to AI usage, we may be unaware of the incident, its magnitude, or its effects until significant harm is done. More generally, we may face significant delays in identifying, remediating, and otherwise responding to any interruption, disruption, security breach or incident. In recent years, we have regularly implemented improvements to our protective measures that have included, but have not been limited to, implementation of the following: firewalls, endpoint intrusion detection and response software, regular patches, log monitors, event correlation tools, network segmentation, routine backups with offsite retention of storage media, system audits, dual factor identification, data partitioning, privileged account segregation and monitoring, routine password modifications, and an enhanced information security program including training classes and phishing exercises for employees and contractors with system access, along with tabletop exercises conducted by information security personnel. As a result of the material weakness in our internal controls resulting from the IT systems compromise that we experienced in fiscal 2019, we have taken remediation actions and implemented additional controls and we are continuing to take actions to attempt to address evolving threats. However, our system improvements have not been fully effective in preventing attacks on our IT systems and data, including breaches of our security measures, and there can be no assurance that any future system improvements will be effective in preventing cyber-attacks or disruptions, a ransom-style attack, or limiting the damage from any cyber-attacks or disruptions. Our ability to recover from ransomware and other ransom-style attacks may be limited if our backups have been affected by the attack, or if restoring data from backups is delayed or not feasible. Our system improvements have resulted in increased costs to us and we may be required to dedicate additional expenditures and resources to making system improvements and otherwise addressing cybersecurity matters in the future, whether in response to any disruption, interruption, breach, incident or otherwise. Further, any future improvements, attacks or disruptions could result in additional costs related to rebuilding our internal systems, defending litigation, complaints or other claims, providing notices to regulatory agencies or other third parties, responding to regulatory inquiries, actions or other proceedings, or paying damages, fines or penalties. Such attacks or disruptions could have a material adverse impact on our business, operations and financial results. Furthermore, our efforts to comply with evolving laws and regulations related to cybersecurity, such as the recently enacted SEC rules requiring disclosure of a material cybersecurity incident, may be costly and any actual or alleged failure to comply could result in investigations, proceedings, investor lawsuits and reputational damage. In addition, employees and former employees, in particular former employees who become employees of our competitors, customers, licensees, or other third parties, including state actors, have in the past and may in the future misappropriate, wrongfully use, publish, access, process or provide to our competitors, customers, licensees or other third parties, including state actors, our technology, intellectual property, or other proprietary or confidential information. This risk would be exacerbated to the extent our competitors for talent, particularly engineering talent, hire our employees. Similarly, we provide access to certain of our technology, intellectual property, and other proprietary or confidential information to our direct and indirect customers and licensees and certain of our consultants, who may wrongfully use such technology, intellectual property or information, or wrongfully disclose such technology, intellectual property or information to third parties, including our competitors or state actors. Third-party service providers, such as wafer foundries, assembly and test contractors, distributors, credit card processors, and other vendors have access to portions of our and our customers' data. These service providers also face significant cybersecurity threats, and they may be subject to cyber-attacks, disruptions, and interruptions to their networks and systems,and otherwise may suffer from security breaches and incidents. Any such breach or incident, including any involving misappropriation, loss or other unauthorized processing of data maintained or otherwise processed by our third-party service providers, or any perception any of these has occurred, could negatively impact our business, operations and financial results, as well as our relationship with our customers. Our contracts may not contain limitations of liability, and even where they do, there can be no assurance that limitations of liability in our contracts are sufficient to protect us from liabilities, damages, or claims related to our cybersecurity practices or measures. We do not have insurance coverage specially for cybersecurity matters. Insurance coverage that we do have may not be adequate or sufficient to protect us from or to mitigate liabilities arising out of our cybersecurity practices or measures or otherwise relating to any cybersecurity breach or incident, and we cannot be sure that such coverage will continue to be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all, or that such coverage will pay future claims.

Operations at any of our facilities, at the facilities of any of our wafer fabrication or assembly and test subcontractors, or at any of our significant vendors, licensees or customers may be disrupted due to public health concerns (including outbreaks such as COVID-19), work stoppages or reduction in available labor, power loss, insufficient water, cyber-attacks, computer network compromises, incidents of terrorism or security risk, political instability, governmental actions, telecommunications, transportation or other infrastructure failure, radioactive contamination, adverse changes in climate, or fires, earthquakes, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters. We have taken steps to mitigate the impact of some of these events should they occur; however, we cannot be certain that we will avoid a significant impact on our business in the event of a business interruption. For example, in August 2024, we determined that an unauthorized party disrupted our use of certain servers and some of our business operations. As a result, certain of our manufacturing facilities were operating at less than normal levels for a period of time, and our ability to fulfill orders was temporarily impacted. While we were able to bring the affected portions of our IT systems back online and restore normal business operations in response to this August 2024 incident without a material impact to our business, we cannot be certain that we would be able to achieve this result in the event of another cyber incident. Separately, in the first three months of fiscal 2023 and in fiscal 2022, COVID-19 related restrictions adversely impacted our manufacturing operations in the U.S., the Philippines and Thailand along with our subcontractors' manufacturing operations in Malaysia, Taiwan and China. Similar challenges arose for our logistics service providers, which adversely impacted their ability to ship product to our customers. The pandemic could adversely impact our business in future periods if the impact of COVID-19 or other public health issues again becomes severe in one or more of our key markets such as China or in areas where our suppliers or manufacturing operations are located. In the future, local governments could require us to reduce production or cease operations at any of our facilities, and we could experience constraints in fulfilling customer orders. Additionally, operations at our customers and licensees may be disrupted for a number of reasons. In April and May 2020, we received a greater number of order cancellations and requests by our customers to reschedule deliveries to future dates. Some customers requested order cancellations within our firm order window and claimed applicability of force majeure clauses due to the impact of COVID-19. Likewise, if our licensees are unable to manufacture and ship products incorporating our technology, or if there is a decrease in product demand due to a business disruption, our royalty revenue may decline. Also, Thailand has experienced periods of severe flooding in recent years. While our facilities in Thailand have continued to operate normally, there can be no assurance that future flooding in Thailand would not have a material adverse impact on our operations. If operations at any of our facilities, or our subcontractors' facilities are interrupted, we may not be able to timely shift production to other facilities, and we may need to spend significant amounts to repair or replace our facilities and equipment.  Business interruptions would likely cause delays in shipments of products to our customers, and alternate sources for production may be unavailable on acceptable terms. This could result in reduced revenues, cancellation of orders, or loss of customers. Although we maintain business interruption insurance, such insurance will likely not compensate us for any losses or damages, and business interruptions could significantly harm our business. For more information on adverse climate change see our risk "Sustained adverse climate change poses risks that could harm our results of operations" on page 60.

We rely on outside wafer foundries for a significant portion of our wafer fabrication needs. Specifically, during the first six months of fiscal 2025, approximately 65% of our net sales came from products that were produced at outside wafer foundries compared to 64% of our net sales in fiscal 2024. We also use several contractors for a portion of the assembly and testing of our products. Specifically, during the first six months of fiscal 2025, approximately 33% of our assembly requirements and 33% of our test requirements were performed by third-party contractors, compared to approximately 41% and 29%, respectively, during fiscal 2024. Due to increased demand for our products, we took actions in fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2022 to increase our capacity allocation from our wafer fabrication, assembly and test subcontractors. As product demand softened in fiscal 2024, we took actions to selectively reduce our purchases from foundries. In the event of future increases in demand, there can be no assurance that we will be able to secure the necessary allocation of capacity from our wafer foundries and other contractors, that any such capacity will have the ability to manufacture the process technologies that we need, or that such capacity will be available on acceptable terms. Although we are continuing to selectively expand our internal wafer fabrication, assembly and test capacity, we expect that our reliance on third-party contractors may increase over time to the extent our business grows, and any inability to secure necessary external capacity could adversely affect our operating results. As our manufacturing subcontractors move to more advanced process technologies over time, we may find that they do not invest in some of the trailing edge process technologies on which a large portion of our products are manufactured. If this occurs, it may limit the amounts of net sales that we can achieve or require us to make significant investments to be able to manufacture these products in our own existing facilities, at new facilities or at other foundries and assembly and testing contractors. In August 2022, the U.S. government passed the CHIPS Act to provide billions of dollars of cash incentives and a new investment tax credit to increase domestic manufacturing capacity in our industry. We expect to receive the cash benefit associated with the investment tax credit for qualifying capital expenditures in future periods and have applied for other incentives provided by the legislation; however, there can be no assurance that we will receive any such other incentives, what the amount and timing of any incentive we receive will be, as to which other companies will receive incentives and whether the legislation will have a positive or negative impact on our competitive position. If we do receive a CHIPS Act grant, the restrictions and operational requirements that are imposed on CHIPS Act grant recipients could add complexity to our operations and increase our costs. Our use of third parties reduces our control over the subcontracted portions of our business. Our future operating results could suffer if a significant contractor were to experience production difficulties, insufficient capacity, decreased manufacturing, reduced availability of labor, assembly and test yields, or increased costs due to disruptions such as political upheaval, transit disruptions, infrastructure disruption or pandemics. Additionally, our future operating results could suffer if our wafer foundries and other contractors increase the prices of the products and services that they provide to us. If third parties do not timely deliver products or services in accordance with our quality standards, we may be unable to qualify alternate manufacturing sources in a timely manner or on favorable terms, or at all. Additionally, these subcontractors could abandon processes that we need, or fail to adopt technologies that we desire to control costs. In such event, we could experience an interruption in production, an increase in manufacturing costs or a decline in product reliability, and our business and operating results could be adversely affected. Further, use of subcontractors increases the risks of misappropriation of our intellectual property. Certain of our SuperFlash and other technology licensees rely on wafer foundries. If our licensees experienced disruption in supply at such foundries, this would reduce the revenue from our technology licensing business and would harm our operating results.

Our net sales in any given quarter depend upon a combination of shipments from backlog, and orders that are both received and shipped in the same quarter, which we call turns orders. We measure turns orders at the beginning of a quarter based on the orders needed to meet the shipment targets that we set entering the quarter. Historically, our ability to respond quickly to customer orders has been part of our competitive strategy, resulting in customers placing orders with relatively short delivery schedules. Shorter lead times generally mean that turns orders as a percentage of our business are relatively high in any particular quarter and reduce our visibility on future shipments. Turns orders correlate to overall semiconductor industry conditions and product lead times. Although our backlog had been strong in fiscal 2022, fiscal 2023 and the first half of fiscal 2024, due to favorable business conditions and the impact of our Preferred Supply Program and our LTSAs, the business conditions that led us to implement the Preferred Supply Program changed and, as a result, on February 1, 2024, we discontinued the Preferred Supply Program for new orders. This change in our Preferred Supply Program does not impact our LTSAs. With the cancellation of the Preferred Supply Program, turns orders are once again key to our ability to meet our business objectives. Because turns orders can be difficult to predict, especially in times of economic volatility, as experienced in current and recent quarters, where customers may change order levels within the quarter, varying levels of turns orders make it more difficult to forecast net sales. The level of turns orders has in the past and may in the future decrease in periods where customers are holding excess inventory of our products. We believe our customers increased their order levels in previous periods of tight supply to help ensure they have sufficient inventory of our products to meet their needs, and they were unable to sell their products at their forecasted levels which reduced our level of turns orders. As a significant portion of our products are manufactured at foundries, foundry lead times may affect our ability to satisfy certain turns orders. If we do not achieve a sufficient level of turns orders in a particular quarter relative to our revenue targets or effectively manage our production based on changes in order forecasts, our revenue and operating results will likely suffer. In February 2021, we announced our Preferred Supply Program and, starting in the first quarter of calendar 2022, we began entering into LTSAs, which offer our customers the ability to receive prioritized capacity. To participate in the original Preferred Supply Program, customers were expected to place 12 months of orders, which could not be cancelled or rescheduled by the customer except in the event of price increases. In August 2023, we modified our Preferred Supply Program to allow orders for six months of continuous backlog, and those orders could be cancelled or rescheduled if our planned delivery date was greater than six months from the request date. The capacity priority under the Preferred Supply Program began for shipments in July 2021, and ended upon delivery of orders that were placed under the Preferred Supply Program prior to February 1, 2024. The Preferred Supply Program and the LTSAs are not a guarantee of supply; however, they were designed to provide the highest priority for those orders which are under these programs, and the capacity priority was on a first-come, first-served basis until the available capacity was booked. A significant portion of our backlog was booked under these programs while the programs were in effect. There can be no assurance that these programs will continue to be successful or that they will provide the benefits we expect to our business. For example, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 and in fiscal 2024, we accommodated requests by customers to push-out certain orders to help them manage inventory levels and, in some cases, to help other customers that are experiencing supply shortages. However, in the event that we decide to not accommodate a request to push out orders and customers under these programs still attempt to cancel or reschedule orders, or refuse shipment, we may have to take legal or other action to enforce the terms of the programs, and any such actions could result in damage to our customer relationships or cause us to incur significant costs. We may be unable to recover damages from customers that default under these programs. Additionally, these programs have resulted in some customers holding excess inventory of our products and thus decreased their need to place new orders, including turns orders, in recent periods.

The current administration in the U.S. and administrations in other global jurisdictions in which we operate, have indicated support for significant legislative and policy changes in areas including but not limited to tax, trade, labor, and the environment. If implemented, these changes could increase our effective tax rate, decrease our revenue and increase our selling and/or manufacturing costs, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial conditions. Changes in tax policy, trade regulations or other matters, and any uncertainty surrounding the scope or timing of such changes, could negatively impact the stock market, and reduce the trading price of our stock. For example, in February 2022, the U.S. began implementing widescale sanctions against Russia due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions against Belarus and certain Ukrainian regions were later implemented. Because the actions by Russia against Ukraine are in conflict with our Guiding Values, we chose to cease shipments into Russia and Belarus, and we will continue to comply with applicable U.S. sanctions regarding Ukraine. While sales of our products into these regions, and to customers that sell into these regions, have been negatively impacted, at this time, we have not experienced a material adverse impact on our revenue. Retaliatory acts by Russia in response to the sanctions could include cyber-attacks, sanctions, or other actions that could disrupt the economy. As a result of the foregoing risks or similar risks, the imposition of sanctions could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial condition. New technology trends, such as AI, require us to keep pace with evolving regulations and industry standards. In the U.S., the EU, and China, there are various current and proposed regulatory frameworks relating to the use of AI in products and services. We expect that the legal and regulatory environment relating to emerging technologies such as AI will continue to develop and could increase the cost of doing business, and create compliance risks and potential liability, all of which may have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.