Silicon Laboratories (SLAB) Risk Factors

Information technology system and/or network disruptions, regardless of the cause, but including acts of sabotage, error, or other actions, could harm our operations. Failure to effectively prevent, detect, and recover from security breaches, including cyber-attacks, could result in the misuse of company assets, disruption to the company, diversion of management resources, regulatory inquiries, legal claims or proceedings, reputational damage, loss of sales and other costs to the company. We routinely face attacks that attempt to breach our security protocols, gain access to or disrupt our computerized systems or steal proprietary company, customer, partner or employee information. These attacks are sometimes successful. These attacks may be due to security breaches, employee error, theft, malfeasance, phishing schemes, ransomware, faulty password or data security management, or other irregularities. The theft, loss, destruction, unavailability or misuse of personal or business data collected, used, stored or transferred by us to run our business could result in increased security costs or costs related to defending legal claims. Industrial espionage, theft or loss of our intellectual property data could lead to counterfeit products or harm the competitive position of our products and services. Costs to implement, test and maintain measures to promote compliance with applicable privacy and data security laws as well as to protect the overall security of our system have been and are expected to continue to be significant. While we have dedicated resources to privacy and security incident response capabilities, our response process may not be adequate, may fail to accurately assess the severity of an incident, may not be fast enough to prevent or limit harm, or may fail to sufficiently remediate an incident. Attempted or successful attacks against our products and services could damage our reputation with customers or users and reduce demand for our products and services. Additionally, there is an increased risk that we may experience cybersecurity-related events such as phishing attacks and other security challenges as a result of hybrid working arrangements and employees and our service providers working remotely. In addition, the risk of cyber-attacks has increased in connection with the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East. In light of those and other geopolitical events, nation-state actors or their supporters may launch retaliatory cyber-attacks, and may attempt to cause supply chain and other third-party service provider disruptions, or take other geopolitically motivated retaliatory actions that may disrupt our business operations, result in data compromise, or both. Nation-state actors have in the past carried out, and may in the future carry out, cyber-attacks to achieve their aims and goals, which may include espionage, information operations, monetary gain, ransomware, disruption, and destruction. In 2022, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a "Shields Up" alert for American organizations noting the potential for Russia's cyber-attacks on Ukrainian government and critical infrastructure organizations to impact organizations both within and beyond the United States, particularly in the wake of sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies. These circumstances increase the likelihood of cyber-attacks and/or security breaches.

We believe our future success will depend in large part upon our ability to attract and retain highly skilled managerial, engineering, sales and marketing personnel. We believe that our future success will be dependent on retaining the services of our key personnel, developing their successors and certain internal processes to reduce our reliance on specific individuals, and on properly managing the transition of key roles when they occur. There is currently a shortage of qualified personnel with significant experience in the design, development, manufacturing, marketing and sales of analog and mixed-signal products, and competition for such personnel is intense. Our key technical personnel represent a significant asset and serve as the primary source for our technological and product innovations. We may not be successful in attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of technical personnel to support our anticipated growth. The loss of any of our key employees or the inability to attract or retain qualified personnel both in the United States and internationally, including engineers, sales, applications and marketing personnel, could delay the development and introduction of, and negatively impact our ability to sell, our products.

We do not have our own wafer fab manufacturing facilities. Therefore, we rely on third-party vendors to manufacture the products we design. We also currently rely on third-party assembly subcontractors in Asia to assemble and package the silicon chips provided by the wafers for use in final products. Additionally, we rely on these offshore subcontractors for a substantial portion of the testing requirements of our products prior to shipping. We expect utilization of third-party subcontractors to continue in the future. The cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry drives wide fluctuations in available capacity at third-party vendors. On occasion, we have been unable to adequately respond to unexpected increases in customer demand due to capacity constraints and, therefore, were unable to benefit from this incremental demand. We may be unable to obtain adequate foundry, assembly or test capacity from our third-party subcontractors to meet our customers' delivery requirements even if we adequately forecast customer demand. There are significant risks associated with relying on these third-party foundries and subcontractors, including: - Failure by us, our customers or their end customers to qualify a selected supplier;- Disruption to our suppliers' operations due to geopolitical changes, including risks related to deteriorating relations between China and Taiwan;- Potential insolvency of the third-party subcontractors;- Reduced control over delivery schedules and quality;- Limited warranties on wafers or products supplied to us;- Potential increases in prices or payments in advance for capacity;- Increased need for international-based supply, logistics and financial management;- Disruption to our supply chain resulting from cyber-attacks on our suppliers' information technology systems;- Their inability to supply or support new or changing packaging technologies; and - Low test yields. We typically do not have long-term supply contracts with our third-party vendors which obligate the vendor to perform services and supply products to us for a specific period, in specific quantities, and at specific prices. Our third-party foundry, assembly and test subcontractors typically do not guarantee that adequate capacity will be available to us within the time required to meet demand for our products. In the event that these vendors fail to meet our demand for whatever reason, we expect that it would take up to 12 months to transition performance of these services to new providers. Such a transition may also require qualification of the new providers by our customers or their end customers. If our suppliers experience closures or reductions in their capacity utilization levels in the future, we may have difficulty sourcing materials necessary to fulfill production requirements. Public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, may affect our suppliers' production capabilities as a result of quarantines, closures of production facilities, lack of supplies or delays caused by restrictions on travel. Most of the silicon wafers for the products that we have sold were manufactured either by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. ("TSMC") or Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"). Our customers typically complete their own qualification process. If we fail to properly balance customer demand across the existing semiconductor fabrication facilities that we utilize or are required by our foundry partners to increase, or otherwise change the number of fab lines that we utilize for our production, we might not be able to fulfill demand for our products and may need to divert our engineering resources away from new product development initiatives to support the fab line transition, which would adversely affect our operating results. In addition, geopolitical changes in China-Taiwan relations could disrupt TSMC's operations and impact our third-party assembly subcontractors in Asia. Such a disruption could severely impact our ability to manufacture the majority of our products and as a result, could adversely affect our business, revenues and results of operations.

In order to ensure availability of our products for some of our largest customers, we start the manufacturing of our products in advance of receiving purchase orders based on forecasts provided by these customers. However, these forecasts do not represent binding purchase commitments and we do not recognize sales for these products until they are shipped to the customer. As a result, we incur inventory and manufacturing costs in advance of anticipated sales. Because demand for our products may not materialize, manufacturing based on forecasts subjects us to increased risks of high inventory carrying costs, increased obsolescence and increased operating costs. These inventory risks are exacerbated when our customers purchase indirectly through contract manufacturers or hold component inventory levels greater than their consumption rate because this causes us to have less visibility regarding the accumulated levels of inventory for such customers. A resulting write-off of unusable or excess inventories would adversely affect our operating results.

Prior to purchasing our products, our customers require that our products undergo an extensive qualification process, which involves testing of the products in the customer's system as well as rigorous reliability testing. This qualification process may continue for six months or longer. However, qualification of a product by a customer does not ensure any sales of the product to that customer. Even after successful qualification and sales of a product to a customer, a subsequent revision to the product or software, changes in the IC's manufacturing process or the selection of a new supplier by us may require a new qualification process, which may result in delays and in us holding excess or obsolete inventory. After our products are qualified, it can take an additional six months or more before the customer commences volume production of components or devices that incorporate our products. Despite these uncertainties, we devote substantial resources, including design, engineering, sales, marketing and management efforts, toward qualifying our products with customers in anticipation of sales. If we are unsuccessful or delayed in qualifying any of our products with a customer, such failure or delay would preclude or delay sales of such product to the customer, which may impede our growth and cause our business to suffer.

We are or may become subject to a variety of laws and regulations such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") regarding privacy, data protection and data security. There are numerous U.S. federal, state, and local laws and regulations and foreign laws and regulations regarding privacy and the collection, sharing, use, processing, disclosure, and protection of personal data. Such laws and regulations often vary in scope, may be subject to differing interpretations, and may be inconsistent among different jurisdictions. The costs of compliance with the GDPR and similar laws may have an adverse effect on our operations. Given that the scope, interpretation and application of these laws and regulations are often uncertain and may be in conflict across jurisdictions, it is possible they may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other rules or our practices. Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with our privacy or security policies or privacy-related legal obligations, or any compromise of security that results in the unauthorized release or transfer of personal data, may result in governmental enforcement actions, litigation or negative publicity, and could have an adverse effect on our operating results and financial condition.

We have established international subsidiaries and have opened offices in international markets to support our activities in Asia, the Americas and Europe. This has included the establishment of a headquarters in Singapore for non-U.S. operations. During the nine months ended September 28, 2024, the percentage of our revenues derived from outside of the United States was 93% (and the revenue associated with end customers in China was 15%, and revenue attributed to China based on shipped-to location was 33%). We may not be able to maintain or increase global market demand for our products. Our international operations are subject to a number of risks, including: - Complexity and costs of managing international operations and related tax obligations, including our headquarters for non-U.S. operations in Singapore;- Protectionist laws and business practices, including trade restrictions, tariffs, export controls, quotas and other trade barriers, including China-U.S. trade policies;- Trade tensions, geopolitical uncertainty, or governmental actions, including those arising from the trade dispute between the U.S. and China, may lead customers to favor products from non-US companies which could put us at a competitive disadvantage and result in decreased customer demand for our products and our customers' products;- Rising tensions and deteriorating military, political and economic relations between China and Taiwan could disrupt the operations of our third-party foundry, assembly and test subcontractors, which could severely impact our ability to manufacture the majority of our products and as a result, could adversely affect our business, revenues and results of operations;- Restrictions or tariffs imposed on certain countries and sanctions or export controls imposed on customers or suppliers may affect our ability to sell and source our products;- Difficulties related to the protection of our intellectual property rights in some countries;- Public health crises may affect our international operations, suppliers and customers and we may experience delays in product development, a decreased ability to support our customers and reduced design win activity if the travel restrictions or business shutdowns or slowdowns continue for an extended period of time in any of the countries in which we, our suppliers and our customers operate and do business;- Multiple, conflicting and changing tax and other laws and regulations that may impact both our international and domestic tax and other liabilities and result in increased complexity and costs, including the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which increased our effective tax rate, in part due to the impact of the requirement to capitalize and amortize foreign research and development expenses beginning in 2022;- Longer sales cycles;- Greater difficulty in accounts receivable collection and longer collection periods;- High levels of distributor inventory subject to price protection and rights of return to us;- Political and economic instability;- Risks that demand and the supply chain may be adversely affected by military conflict (including the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine), terrorism, sanctions or other geopolitical events globally;- Greater difficulty in hiring and retaining qualified personnel; and - The need to have business and operations systems that can meet the needs of our international business and operating structure. To date, substantially all of our sales to international customers and purchases of components from international suppliers have been denominated in U.S. dollars. As a result, an increase in the value of the U.S. dollar relative to foreign currencies could make our products more expensive for our international customers to purchase, thus rendering our products less competitive. Similarly, a decrease in the value of the U.S. dollar could reduce our buying power with respect to international suppliers.

The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the global economy, disrupted our operations, global supply chains and the operations of our customers. The impacts of any future public health crises on our business, customers, suppliers, employees, markets and financial results and condition are uncertain and dependent on numerous unpredictable factors outside of our control, including: - The duration and impact of a global economic recession or depression that could reduce demand and/or pricing for our products;- Disruptions to our business and supply chain (and the business and supply chains of our customers) in connection with the sourcing of materials, equipment and engineering support, and services from geographic areas impacted by the public health crisis, including disruptions caused by illnesses, quarantines and restrictions on people's ability to work, office and factory closures, disruptions to ports and other shipping infrastructure, border closures, and other travel or health-related restrictions;- Delays or limitations on the ability of our customers to make timely payments;- Governmental actions to limit exposure to and spreading of such infectious diseases, such as travel restrictions, quarantines and business shutdowns or slowdowns, facility closures or other restrictions;- Deterioration of worldwide credit and financial markets that could limit our ability to obtain external financing to fund our operations and capital expenditures or to refinance our existing indebtedness;- Potential asset impairments, including goodwill, intangible assets, investments and other assets;- Increased cyber-related risks due to hybrid working models and increased remote working;- Challenges with implementing and managing a hybrid model of working from home or the office, establishing appropriate office safety protocols, maintaining our corporate culture, and continuing to attract, retain and motivate our employees;- Potential failure of our computer systems or communication systems; and - Investment-related risks, including difficulties in liquidating investments due to current market conditions and adverse investment performance. There can be no assurance that any decrease in sales resulting from any public health crisis will be offset by increased sales in subsequent periods. Even after any public health crisis has subsided, we may continue to experience materially adverse impacts to our business as a result of its global economic impact, including any recession, economic downturn or increased unemployment that has occurred or may occur in the future. An extended period of global supply chain and economic disruption could materially affect our business, results of operations, access to sources of liquidity and financial condition.