NetApp (NTAP) Risk Factors

We store and transmit, and sell products and services that store and transmit, personal, sensitive and proprietary data related to our products, our employees, customers, clients and partners (including third-party vendors such as data centers and providers of SaaS, cloud computing, and internet infrastructure and bandwidth), and their respective customers, including intellectual property, books of record and personal information. It is critical to our business strategy that our infrastructure, products and services remain secure and are perceived by customers, clients and partners to be secure. There are numerous and evolving risks to cybersecurity and privacy, including criminal hackers, state-sponsored intrusions, industrial espionage, human error and technological vulnerabilities. Material cybersecurity incidents or other security breaches could result in (1) unauthorized access to, or loss or unauthorized use, alteration, or disclosure of, such information; (2) litigation, indemnity obligations, government investigations and proceedings, regulatory fines and penalties, and other possible liabilities; (3) negative publicity; and (4) disruptions to our internal and external operations. Any of these could damage our reputation and public perception of the security and reliability of our products, as well as harm our business and cause us to incur significant liabilities. In addition, a material cybersecurity incident or loss of personal information, or other material security breach could result in other negative consequences, including remediation costs, disruption of internal operations, increased cybersecurity protection costs and lost revenues. Our clients and customers use our platforms for the transmission and storage of sensitive data. We do not generally review the information or content that our clients and their customers upload and store, and we have no direct control over the substance of the information or content stored within our platforms. If our employees, or our clients, partners or their respective customers use our platforms for the transmission or storage of personal or other sensitive information, or our supply chain cybersecurity is compromised and our security measures are breached as a result of third-party action, employee error, malfeasance, stolen or fraudulently obtained log-in credentials or otherwise, our reputation could be damaged, our business may be harmed and we could incur significant liabilities. Security industry experts and US Government officials continue to emphasize risks to our industry. Cyber attacks and security breaches continue to increase, and of particular concern are supply-chain attacks against software development and breaches of technology service providers. We anticipate that cyberattacks will continue to increase in the future given cyber warfare has become a consistent lever within geopolitical conflicts and increasingly leverages hacktivism. We cannot give assurance that we will always be successful in preventing or repelling unauthorized access to our systems. We also may face delays in our ability to identify or otherwise respond to any cybersecurity incident or any other breach. Additionally, we use third-party service providers to provide some services to us that involve the storage or transmission of data, such as SaaS, cloud computing, and internet infrastructure and bandwidth, and they face various cybersecurity threats and also may suffer cybersecurity incidents or other security breaches. Many jurisdictions have enacted or are enacting laws requiring companies to notify regulators or individuals of data security incidents involving certain types of personal data. These mandatory disclosures regarding security incidents often lead to widespread negative publicity. Moreover, the risk of reputational harm may be magnified and/or distorted through the rapid dissemination of information over the internet, including through news articles, blogs, social media, and other online communication forums and services. Any security incident, loss of data, or other security breach, whether actual or perceived, or whether impacting us or our third-party service providers, could harm our reputation, erode customer confidence in the effectiveness of our data security measures, negatively impact our ability to attract new customers, cause existing customers to elect not to renew their support contracts or their SaaS subscriptions, or subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results. There can be no assurance that the limitations of liability in our contracts would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. Our existing general liability insurance coverage, cybersecurity insurance coverage and coverage for errors and omissions may not continue to be available on acceptable terms or may not be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more large claims, or our insurers may deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceeds 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 have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition and cash flows.

Emerging standards may adversely affect the UNIX, Windows and World Wide Web server markets upon which we depend. For example, we provide our open access data retention solutions to customers within the financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical and government market segments, industries that are subject to various evolving governmental regulations with respect to data access, reliability and permanence in the U.S. and in the other countries in which we operate. If our products do not meet and continue to comply with these evolving governmental regulations in this regard, customers in these market and geographical segments will not purchase our products, and we may not be able to expand our product offerings in these market and geographical segments at the rates which we have forecasted.

Our markets are intensely competitive and are characterized by fragmentation and rapidly changing technology. We compete with many companies in the markets we serve, including established public companies, newer public companies with a strong flash focus, and new market entrants addressing the opportunity for GenAI and application data management for Kubernetes. Some offer a broad spectrum of IT products and services (full-stack vendors) and others offer a more limited set of products or services. Technology trends, such as hosted or public cloud storage, software as a service (SaaS) and flash storage are driving significant changes in storage architectures and solution requirements. Cloud service provider competitors provide customers storage on demand, without requiring a capital expenditure, which meets rapidly evolving business needs and has changed the competitive landscape. We also compete in the emerging cloud operations market, where growth is being driven by increased customer cloud usage and commensurate spend, but customer requirements are still evolving. There is no clear leader in this market. Competitors may develop new technologies, products or services in advance of us or establish new business models, more flexible purchase models or new technologies disruptive to us. By extending our flash, cloud storage, converged infrastructure and cloud operations offerings, we are competing in new segments with both traditional competitors and new competitors, particularly smaller emerging storage and cloud operations vendors. The longer-term potential and competitiveness of these emerging vendors remains to be determined. In cloud and converged infrastructure, we also compete with large well-established competitors. It is possible that new competitors or alliances among competitors might emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share or buying power. Changes in customer requirements or an increase in industry consolidation might result in stronger competitors that are better able to compete. In addition, current and potential competitors have established or might establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties, including some of our partners or suppliers. For additional information regarding our competitors, see the section entitled "Competition" contained in Part I, Item 1 – Business of this Form 10-K.

Our products and services are complex. We have experienced in the past, and expect to experience in the future, quality issues impacting certain products, and in the future, we could experience reliability issues with services we provide. Such quality and reliability issues may be due to, for example, our own designs or processes, the designs or processes of our suppliers, and/or flaws in third-party software used in our products. These types of risks are most acute when we are introducing new products. Quality or reliability issues have and could again in the future cause customers to experience outages or disruptions in service, data loss or data corruption. If we fail to remedy a product defect or flaw, we may experience a failure of a product line, temporary or permanent withdrawal from a product or market, damage to our reputation, loss of revenue, inventory costs or product reengineering expenses and higher ongoing warranty and service costs, and these occurrences could have a material impact on our gross margins, business and operating results. In addition, we exercise little control over how our customers use or maintain our products and services, and in some cases improper usage or maintenance could impair the performance of our products and services, which could lead to a perception of a quality or reliability issue. Customers may experience losses that may result from or are alleged to result from defects or flaws in our products and services, which could subject us to claims for damages, including consequential damages.

Our continued success depends, in part, on our ability to hire and retain qualified personnel and to advance our corporate strategy and preserve the key aspects of our corporate culture. Because our future success is dependent on our ability to continue to enhance and introduce new products and features, we are particularly dependent on our ability to hire and retain qualified engineers and technical talent, including in emerging areas of technology such as AI and machine learning. In addition, to increase revenues, we will be required to increase the productivity of our sales force and support infrastructure to achieve adequate customer coverage. Competition for qualified employees, particularly in the technology industry, remains tight. We have periodically reduced our workforce, including reductions of approximately 9% and 2% announced in fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024, respectively, and these actions may make it more difficult to attract and retain qualified employees. Our inability to hire and retain qualified management and skilled personnel, particularly engineers, salespeople and key executive management, could disrupt our development efforts, sales results, business relationships and/or our ability to execute our business plan and strategy on a timely basis and could materially and adversely affect our operating results, financial conditions and cash flows. Many of our employees participate in our hybrid work program, and work remotely on a full- or part-time basis. While this has been generally well received by employees, it may also create other challenges that impact our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, including, but not limited to, some employees may prefer an in person work environment, difficulty collaborating and communicating among employees, and ability to maintain consistent experience of our corporate culture and workforce morale. If we are unable to effectively manage the risks and challenges associated with hybrid work, our business operations and financial performance may be adversely affected. A number of our employees are foreign nationals who rely on visas and entry permits in order to legally work in the U.S. and other countries. In recent years, the U.S. has increased the level of scrutiny in granting H-1B, L-1 and other business visas. Compliance with new and unexpected U.S. immigration and labor laws could also require us to incur additional unexpected labor costs and expenses or could restrain our ability to retain and attract skilled professionals. Any of these restrictions could have a negative material adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial conditions. Equity grants are a critical component of our current compensation programs as they support attraction and engagement of key talent and align employee interests with shareholders. A competitive broad-based equity compensation program is essential to compete for talent in both the hardware and software industries, in which competitors for talent provide a more significant portion of compensation via equity. If we reduce, modify or eliminate our equity programs or fail to grant equity competitively, we may have difficulty attracting and retaining critical employees. In addition, because of the structure of our sales, cash and equity incentive compensation plans, we may be at increased risk of losing employees at certain times. For example, the retention value of our compensation plans decreases after the payment of periodic bonuses or the vesting of equity awards.

Our effective tax rate is influenced by a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. These factors include among other things, fluctuations in our earnings and financial results in the various countries and states in which we do business, changes to the tax laws in such jurisdictions and the outcome of income tax audits. Changes to any of these factors could materially impact our operating results, financial condition and cash flows. We receive significant tax benefits from sales to our non-U.S. customers. These benefits are contingent upon existing tax laws and regulations in the U.S. and in the countries in which our international operations are located. Future changes in domestic or international tax laws and regulations or a change in how we manage our international operations could adversely affect our ability to continue realizing these tax benefits. Many countries around the world are beginning to implement legislation and other guidance to align their international tax rules with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project ("BEPS") recommendation and related action plans that aim to standardize and modernize global corporate tax policy, including changes to cross-border tax, transfer pricing documentation rules and nexus-based tax incentive practices. As a result, many of these changes, if enacted in whole or in part, could increase our worldwide effective tax rate and harm our operating result, financial condition, and cash flows. Implementation of the BEPS inclusive framework ("Inclusive Framework"), including potential incremental taxes under a new global minimum tax framework known as Pillar Two, is effective in most jurisdictions for fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2024. The first fiscal year for which NetApp will be potentially subject to additional taxes under the Inclusive Framework is fiscal year 2025. Our effective tax rate could also be adversely affected by changes in tax laws and regulations and interpretations of such laws and regulations, which in turn would negatively impact our earnings and cash and cash equivalent balances we currently maintain. Additionally, our effective tax rate could also be adversely affected if there is a change in international operations, our tax structure and how our operations are managed and structured, and as a result, we could experience harm to our operating results and financial condition. For example, on August 16, 2022, the U.S. enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a corporate minimum tax and a 1% excise tax on net stock repurchases. We continue to evaluate the impacts of changes in tax laws and regulations on our business. We are routinely subject to income tax audits in the U.S. and several foreign tax jurisdictions. If the ultimate determination of income taxes or at-source withholding taxes assessed under these audits results in amounts in excess of the tax provision we have recorded or reserved for, our operating results, financial condition and cash flows could be adversely affected.

We operate globally and as a result, our business, revenues and profitability are impacted by global economic and market conditions, including, among others, inflation, slower growth or recession, changes to fiscal and monetary policy, higher interest rates, tax rates, economic uncertainty, political instability, warfare, changes in laws, reduced consumer confidence and spending, and economic and trade barriers. Such factors may contribute to increased periodic volatility in the IT industry at large and limit our ability to forecast future demand for our products and services, impact availability of supplies and could constrain future access to capital for our suppliers, customers and partners. Additionally, adverse macroeconomic conditions, including those identified above, could materially adversely impact the demand for our products and our operating results amid customer concerns over slowing demand for their products, reduced asset values, volatile energy costs, geopolitical issues, the availability and cost of credit and the stability and solvency of financial institutions, financial markets, businesses, local and state governments, and sovereign nations. The impacts of these circumstances are global and pervasive, and the timing and nature of any ultimate resolution of these matters remain highly uncertain. All of these risks and conditions could materially adversely affect our future sales and operating results.

A significant portion of our operations are located, and a significant portion of our revenues are derived, outside of the U.S. In addition, most of our products are manufactured outside of the U.S., and we have research and development, sales and service centers overseas. Accordingly, our international operations, business and future operating results could be adversely impacted by economic, business, regulatory, social and political factors in foreign countries including, among other things, the imposition of government controls, local political or economic conditions including recessionary cycles, inflationary conditions and political uncertainty, economic sanctions, trade protections and regulations and export and import requirements, tariffs, tax policies, treaties or laws, local labor conditions, transportation costs, government spending patterns, geopolitical tensions and uncertainties, acts of terrorism, international conflicts and natural disasters in areas with limited infrastructure and adverse public health developments. In particular, ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China could impact our business and operating results. Any increase in tensions between China and Taiwan, including threats of military actions or escalation of military activities, could adversely affect our or our contract manufacturers' ability to source key supply chain components included in our products. As a result of Russia's actions in Ukraine, numerous countries and organizations have imposed sanctions and export controls, while businesses, including the Company, have limited or suspended Russian operations. Russia has likewise imposed currency restrictions and regulations and may further take retaliatory trade or other actions, including the nationalization of foreign businesses. These actions could impact our supply chain, pricing, business and operating results and expose us to cyberattacks. In addition, due to the global nature of our business, we are subject to complex legal and regulatory requirements in the U.S. and the foreign jurisdictions in which we operate and sell our products, including antitrust and anti-competition laws, and regulations related to data privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity. We are also subject to the potential loss of proprietary information due to piracy, misappropriation, or laws that may be less protective of our intellectual property rights than U.S. laws. Such factors have or could have an adverse impact on our business, operating results, financial condition and cash flows. We face exposure to adverse movements in foreign currency exchange rates as a result of our international operations. These exposures may change over time as business practices evolve, and they could have a material adverse impact on our operating results, financial condition and cash flows. We utilize forward and option contracts in an attempt to reduce the adverse earnings impact from the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on certain assets and liabilities. Our hedging strategies may not be successful, and currency exchange rate fluctuations could have a material adverse effect on our operating results and cash flows. In addition, our foreign currency exposure on assets, liabilities, and cash flows that we do not hedge could have a material impact on our financial results in periods when the U.S. dollar significantly fluctuates in relation to foreign currencies. Moreover, in many foreign countries, particularly in those with developing economies, it is a common business practice to engage in activities that are prohibited by NetApp's internal policies and procedures, or U.S. laws and regulations applicable to us, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. There can be no assurance that all our employees, contractors and agents, as well as those companies to which we outsource certain of our business operations, will comply with these policies, procedures, laws and/or regulations. Any such violation could subject us to fines and other penalties, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition and cash flows.

We depend on the ability of our personnel, inventories, equipment and products to move reasonably unimpeded around the world. Any political, military, terrorism, global trade, world health or other issue that hinders this movement or restricts the import or export of materials could lead to significant business disruptions. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic impeded the mobility of our personnel, inventories, equipment and products and disrupted our business operations. Furthermore, any economic failure or other material disruption caused by natural disasters, including fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanoes; power loss or shortages; environmental disasters; telecommunications or business information systems failures or break-ins and similar events could also adversely affect our ability to conduct business. As a result of climate change, we expect the frequency and impact of such natural disasters or other material disruptions to increase. If such disruptions result in cancellations of customer orders or contribute to a general decrease in economic activity or corporate spending on IT, or directly impact our marketing, manufacturing, financial and logistics functions, or impair our ability to meet our customer demands, our operating results and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. Our headquarters is located in Northern California, an area susceptible to earthquakes and wildfires. If any significant disaster were to occur there, our ability to operate our business and our operating results, financial condition and cash flows could be adversely impacted.