Pixelworks (PXLW) Risk Analysis

The markets in which we compete or seek to compete are subject to rapid technological change and miniaturization capabilities, frequent new product introductions, changing customer requirements for new products and features and evolving industry standards. The introduction of new technologies and emergence of new industry standards could render our products less desirable or obsolete, which could harm our business and significantly decrease our revenue. Examples include the increased adoption of artificial intelligence in visual processing systems, the growing use of broadband to deliver video content, increased display resolution and size, faster screen refresh rates, video capability such as High Dynamic Range, the proliferation of new display devices and the drive to network display devices together. Our failure to predict market needs accurately or to timely develop new competitively priced products or product enhancements that incorporate new industry standards and technologies, including integrated circuits with increasing levels of integration and new features, using smaller geometry process technologies, may harm market acceptance and sales of our products. Our products are incorporated into our customers' products, which have different parts and specifications and utilize multiple protocols that allow them to be compatible with specific computers, video standards and other devices. If our customers' products are not compatible with these protocols and standards, consumers will return, or not purchase these products and the markets for our customers' products could be significantly reduced. Additionally, if the technology used by our customers becomes less competitive due to cost, customer preferences or other factors relative to alternative technologies, sales of our products could decline.

We have licensed certain intellectual property to third parties and may enter into additional license arrangements in the future. We cannot assure you, however, that others will be interested in licensing our intellectual property on commercially favorable terms or at all. We also cannot ensure that licensees will honor agreed-upon market restrictions, not infringe upon or misappropriate our intellectual property or maintain the confidentiality of our proprietary information. IP license agreements are complex and earning and recognizing revenue under these agreements depends upon many factors, including completion of milestones, allocation of values to delivered items and customer acceptances. Many of these factors require significant judgments. Also, generating revenue from these arrangements is a lengthy and complex process that may last beyond the period in which efforts begin and, once an agreement is in place, the timing of revenue recognition may depend on events such as customer acceptance of deliverables, achievement of milestones, our ability to track and report progress on contracts, customer commercialization of the licensed technology and other factors, any or all of which may or may not be achieved. The accounting rules associated with recognizing revenue from these transactions are complex and subject to interpretation. Due to these factors, the amount of licensing revenue recognized in any period, if any, and our results of operations, may differ significantly from our expectations. Finally, because licensing revenue typically has a higher margin compared to product sales, licensing revenue can have a disproportionate impact on our gross profit and results of operations. There is no assurance that we will be able to maintain a consistent level of licensing revenue or mix of licensing revenue and revenue from product sales, which could result in wide fluctuations in our results of operations from period to period, making it difficult to accurately measure the performance of our business.

We maintain and rely upon certain critical information systems for the effective operation of our business. These information systems include telecommunications, the Internet, our corporate intranet, various computer hardware and software applications, network communications and e-mail. These information systems are subject to attacks, failures and access denials from a number of potential sources including viruses, destructive or inadequate code, power failures, and physical damage to computers, communication lines and networking equipment. To the extent that these information systems are under our control, we have implemented security procedures, such as virus protection software and firewall monitoring, to address the outlined risks. Security procedures for information systems cannot be guaranteed to be failsafe and our inability to use or access these information systems at critical times could compromise the timely and efficient operation of our business. Additionally, any compromise of our information security could result in the unauthorized publication of our confidential business or proprietary information, cause an interruption in our operations, result in the unauthorized release of customer or employee data, result in a violation of privacy or other laws, or expose us to a risk of litigation or damage our reputation, any or all of which could harm our business and operating results.

While the overall effect of legislation over the past two decades has significantly enhanced the protections afforded to various foreign investments in China, China has not developed a fully integrated legal system based on the rule of law, and recently enacted laws and regulations may not sufficiently cover all aspects of economic activities in China. Because the PRC legal system continues to evolve rapidly, the interpretations of many laws, regulations and rules are not always uniform and enforcement of these laws, regulations and rules involves uncertainties, which may limit legal protections available to the Company. Uncertainties due to evolving laws and regulations could also impede the ability of an entity based in China, such as our Chinese subsidiaries, to obtain or maintain permits or licenses required to conduct business in China. In addition, some regulatory requirements issued by certain PRC government authorities may not be consistently applied by other PRC government authorities (including local government authorities), thus making strict compliance with all regulatory requirements impractical, or in some circumstances impossible. In addition, China's legal system is based in part on government policies and internal rules, some of which are not published on a timely basis or at all, which may have a retroactive effect. As a result, we may not be aware of our violation of these policies and rules until after the violation occurs. Any administrative and court proceedings in China may be protracted, resulting in substantial costs and diversion of resources and management attention. Further, since Chinese administrative and court authorities have significant discretion in interpreting and implementing statutory and contractual terms, it may be more difficult to evaluate the outcome of administrative and court proceedings. These uncertainties may also impede our ability to enforce the contracts entered into by our Chinese subsidiaries and could materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations. The PRC government at times will exercise significant oversight and discretion over the conduct of business in the PRC and may intervene or influence business operations as the government deems appropriate to further regulatory, political and societal goals. Our Chinese subsidiaries are required to obtain certain permits and licenses from certain PRC government agencies to operate businesses in China, such as business licenses from the State Administration for Market Regulation ("SAMR"), registrations with PRC tax authorities, filings with PRC customs for carrying out export and import business activities and registrations with China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) for the ability to receive funds from offshore entities and transfer funds to offshore entities. The Company has determined, in consultation with its general counsel, that we are not currently required to obtain permissions or approvals from the CAC. The Company is also not currently required to obtain permissions or approvals from the CSRC, but would need to obtain approval from CSRC if PWSH applies for the Listing, and as a listed company PWSH would continue to be subject to CSRC rules and regulations. As of the date of this filing, our Chinese subsidiaries have obtained the required business licenses from the SAMR and complied with registration and filing requirements of other Chinese government agencies, and have not been denied such registrations or filings by any PRC authority, however, if we do not receive or maintain the necessary permissions or approvals, inadvertently conclude that such permissions or approvals are not required, or applicable laws, regulations or interpretations change and we become required to obtain such permissions or approvals in the future and we fail to do so, we may be subject to investigations, fines, penalties, suspensions in operations, or other punitive action which could result in a material adverse change in our PRC operations and our results of operation, which in turn could cause our stock price to be materially and adversely affected. Additionally, rules and regulations in China can change quickly and with little advance notice. For example, the PRC government has recently initiated a series of regulatory actions and made a number of public statements on the regulation of businesses in China with little advance notice, including enhancing supervision over China-based companies listed overseas, adopting new measures to extend the scope of cybersecurity reviews, and expanding efforts in anti-monopoly enforcement. While we do not believe we are subject to these regulatory actions or statements, as we have not implemented the kind of monopolistic behavior that is the target of these rules, and our business does not involve large-scale collection of user data, implicate cybersecurity, or involve any other type of restricted industry, and therefore these regulatory actions and statements do not impact our ability to conduct our business, accept foreign investments into PWSH, or list our PWSH shares on the STAR Market, there is no guarantee that the PRC government will refrain from releasing regulations or policies regarding the Company's industry that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations or ability to list PWSH shares on the STAR Market.

We are subject to numerous environmental laws and regulations. Compliance with current or future environmental laws and regulations could require us to incur substantial expenses which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. We have worked, and will continue to work, with our suppliers and customers to ensure that our products are compliant with enacted laws and regulations. Failure by us or our contract manufacturers to comply with such legislation could result in customers refusing to purchase our products and could subject us to significant monetary penalties in connection with a violation, either of which would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We compete with specialized and diversified electronics and semiconductor companies that offer display processors or scaling components including: Actions Microelectronics Co., Ltd., ARM Holdings PLC, Dolby Laboratories, Inc., EGiS Technologies, Inc., HiSilicon Technologies Co., Ltd., i-Chips Technology Inc., Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, MediaTek Inc., Novatek Microelectronics Corp., NVIDIA Corporation, Qualcomm Incorporated, Realtek Semiconductor Corp., Socionext Inc., Solomon Systech (International) Ltd., STMicroelectronics N.V., Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd., Synaptics Incorporated, Texas Instruments Incorporated, Unisoc (Shanghai) Technologies Co., Ltd., and other companies. Potential and current competitors may include diversified semiconductor manufacturers and the semiconductor divisions or affiliates of some of our customers, including: Apple Inc., Broadcom Inc., LG Electronics, Inc., MegaChips Corporation, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Inc., NEC Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Socionext Inc., ON Semiconductor Corporation, Seiko Epson Corporation, Sharp Corporation, Sony Group Corporation, and Toshiba America, Inc. In addition, start-up companies may seek to compete in our markets. Many of our competitors have longer operating histories and greater resources to support development and marketing efforts than we do. Some of our competitors operate their own fabrication facilities. These competitors may be able to react more quickly and devote more resources to efforts that compete directly with our own. Additionally, any consolidation in the semiconductor industry may impact our competitive position. Our current or potential customers have developed, and may continue to develop, their own proprietary technologies and become our competitors. Increased competition from both competitors and our customers' internal development efforts could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations by, for example, increasing pressure on our profit margin or causing us to lose sales opportunities. For example, frame rate conversion technology similar to that used in our line of MotionEngine advanced video co-processors continues to be integrated into the SoC and display timing controller products of our competitors. We cannot assure you that we can compete successfully against current or potential competitors. Although our TrueCut Motion product is the first motion grading solution for the cinematic market, competitive solutions could arise rapidly. These competitive solutions could come from several sources, including companies that provide solutions for other post-processing needs (such as Dolby Laboratories, Inc., Epic Games, Inc., Unity Technologies, Adobe Inc., Soluciones Gráficas por Ordenador S.L. (SGO), The Foundry Visionmongers Limited, and Autodesk, Inc.) as well as visual effects studios that use digital effects to reduce artifacts before they are created (such as Weta FX, DNEG Plc, Pixar Animation Studios, Digital Domain, and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)).

The display manufacturing market is highly concentrated and we are, and will continue to be, dependent on a limited number of customers and distributors for a substantial portion of our revenue. Sales to our top distributor represented 30% and 48% of revenue for the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively. If any of our distributors ceases to do business with us, it may be difficult for us to find adequate replacements, and even if we do, it may take some time. The loss of any of our top distributors could negatively affect our results of operations. Additionally, revenue attributable to our top five end customers represented 88% and 87% of revenue for the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively. As of December 31, 2024, we had three accounts that each represented 10% or more of accounts receivable. As of December 31, 2023, we had two accounts that each represented 10% or more of accounts receivable. All of the orders included in our backlog are cancellable. A reduction, delay or cancellation of orders from one or more of our significant customers, or a decision by one or more of our significant customers to select products manufactured by a competitor or to use its own internally-developed semiconductors, would significantly and negatively impact our revenue. Further, the concentration of our accounts receivable with a limited number of customers increases our credit risk. The failure of these customers to pay their balances, or any customer to pay future outstanding balances, would result in an operating expense and reduce our cash flows.

Average selling prices for our products can decline over relatively short periods of time, while many of our product costs are relatively fixed. When our average selling prices decline, our gross profit declines unless we are able to sell more units or reduce the cost to manufacture our products. We have experienced declines in our average selling prices and expect that we will continue to experience them in the future, although we cannot predict when they may occur or how severe they will be. Our financial results will suffer if we are unable to offset any reductions in our average selling prices by increasing our sales volumes, reducing our costs, adding new features to our existing products or developing new or enhanced products in a timely manner with higher selling prices or gross profits.

We build most of our products on a customer-owned tooling basis, whereby we directly contract the manufacture of our products, including wafer production, assembly and testing. As a result, we are subject to increased risks arising from wafer manufacturing yields and risks associated with coordination of the manufacturing, assembly and testing process. Poor product yields result in higher product costs, which could make our products less competitive if we increase our prices to compensate for our higher costs or could result in lower gross profit margins if we do not increase our prices.

We do not own or operate a semiconductor fabrication facility and do not have the resources to manufacture our products internally. We rely on a limited number of foundries and assembly and test vendors to produce all of our wafers and for completion of finished products. Our wafers are not fabricated at more than one foundry at any given time and our wafers typically are designed to be fabricated in a specific process at only one foundry. Sole sourcing each product increases our dependence on our suppliers. We have limited control over delivery schedules, quality assurance, manufacturing yields, potential errors in manufacturing and production costs. We do not have long-term supply contracts with our third-party manufacturers, so they are not obligated to supply us with products for any specific period of time, quantity or price, except as may be provided in a particular purchase order. Our suppliers can increase the prices of the products we purchase from them with little notice, which may cause us to increase the prices to our customers and harm our competitiveness. Because our requirements represent only a small portion of the total production capacity of our contract manufacturers, they could reallocate capacity to other customers during periods of high demand for our products, as they have done in the past. We expect this may occur again in the future. Establishing a relationship with a new contract manufacturer in the event of delays or increased prices would be costly and burdensome. The lead time to make such a change would be at least nine months, and the estimated time for us to adapt a product's design to a particular contract manufacturer's process is at least four months. Additionally, we have chosen, and may continue to choose new foundries to manufacture our wafers which in turn, may require us to modify our design methodology flow for the process technology and intellectual property cores of the new foundry. If we have to qualify a new foundry or packaging, assembly and testing supplier for any of our products or if we are unable to obtain our products from our contract manufacturers on schedule, at costs that are acceptable to us, or at all, we could incur significant delays in shipping products, our ability to satisfy customer demand could be harmed, our revenue from the sale of products may be lost or delayed and our customer relationships and ability to obtain future design wins could be damaged.

The state of the global economy continues to be uncertain. Additionally, recent high-profile global business failures, such as the court-ordered liquidation of Chinese property developer Evergrande Group, have caused general uncertainty and concern regarding the health of the economy of China, which is a major market for our products. As a result, we or our manufacturers, vendors and customers might experience deterioration of our or their businesses, cash flow shortages and difficulty obtaining financing, which could result in interruptions or delays in the performance of any contracts, reductions and delays in customer purchases, delays in or the inability of the Company or our customers to obtain financing or of our customers to purchase our products, and bankruptcy of customers. Furthermore, the constraints in the capital and credit markets, may limit our ability to access the capital we need when we need it, on favorable terms or otherwise, or limit the ability of our customers to meet their liquidity needs, which could result in an impairment of their ability to make timely payments to us and reduce their demand for our products, adversely impacting our results of operations and cash flows. This environment has also made it difficult for us to accurately forecast and plan future business activities.

Many of our customers are located in Japan, China, or Taiwan. Sales outside the U.S. accounted for approximately 98.3% and 99.7% of revenue for the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively. We anticipate that sales outside the U.S. will continue to account for a substantial portion of our revenue in future periods. In addition, customers who incorporate our products into their products sell a substantial portion of their products outside of the U.S. All of our products are also manufactured outside of the U.S. and most of our current manufacturers are located in Taiwan. Furthermore, most of our employees are located in China, Japan and Taiwan. Our Asian operations require significant management attention and resources, and we are subject to many risks associated with operations in Asia, including, but not limited to: - the continued effect of health epidemics in China or other parts of Asia, such as the COVID-19 pandemic;- difficulties in managing international distributors and manufacturers due to varying time zones, languages and business customs;- compliance with U.S. laws affecting operations outside of the U.S., such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act;- reduced or limited protection of our IP, particularly in software, which is more prone to design piracy;- difficulties in collecting outstanding accounts receivable balances;- changes in tax rates, tax laws and the interpretation of those laws;- difficulties regarding timing and availability of export and import licenses;- ensuring that we obtain complete and accurate information from our Asian operations to make proper disclosures in the United States;- political and economic instability and tensions, including tensions between China and each of the U.S., Taiwan and Japan;- difficulties in maintaining sales representatives outside of the U.S. that are knowledgeable about our industry and products;- changes in the regulatory environment in China, Japan and Taiwan that may significantly impact purchases of our products by our customers or our customers' sales of their own products;- imposition of new tariffs, quotas, trade barriers and similar trade restrictions on our sales;- varying employment and labor laws; and - greater vulnerability to infrastructure and labor disruptions than in established markets. Any of these factors could require a disproportionate share of management's attention, result in increased costs or decreased revenues, and could materially affect our product sales, financial condition and results of operations.

The risk of natural disasters in the Pacific Rim region is significant. Natural disasters in countries where our manufacturers or customers are located could result in disruption of our manufacturers' and customers' operations, resulting in significant delays in shipment of, or significant reductions in orders for, our products. There can be no assurance that we can locate additional manufacturing capacity or markets on favorable terms, or find new customers, in a timely manner, if at all. Natural disasters in this region could also result in: - reduced end user demand due to the economic impact of any natural disaster;- a disruption to the global supply chain for products manufactured in areas affected by natural disasters that are included in products purchased either by us or by our customers;- an increase in the cost of products that we purchase due to reduced supply; and - other unforeseen impacts as a result of the uncertainty resulting from a natural disaster.