Proto Labs (PRLB) Risk Factors

Our system stores, processes and transmits our customers' confidential information, including the intellectual property in their part designs and other sensitive data. We rely on encryption, authentication and other technologies licensed from third parties, as well as administrative and physical safeguards, to secure such confidential information. Any compromise of our information security could damage our reputation and brand and expose us to a risk of loss, costly litigation and liability that would substantially harm our business and operating results. The rapid evolution and increased adoption of artificial intelligence technologies may intensify our cybersecurity risks. We may not have adequately assessed the internal and external risks posed to the security of our company's systems and information and may not have implemented adequate preventive safeguards or take adequate reactionary measures in the event of a security incident. In addition, most states have enacted laws requiring companies to notify individuals and often state authorities of data security breaches involving their personal data. These mandatory disclosures regarding a security breach often lead to widespread negative publicity, which may cause our existing and prospective customers to lose confidence in the effectiveness of our data security measures. Any security breach, whether successful or not, would harm our reputation and brand and could cause the loss of customers.

We are subject to general business regulations and laws as well as regulations and laws specifically governing the Internet and e-commerce. Existing and future laws and regulations may impede the growth of the Internet or other online services. These regulations and laws may cover taxation, restrictions on imports and exports, customs, tariffs, user privacy, data protection, pricing, content, copyrights, distribution, electronic contracts and other communications, consumer protection, the provision of online payment services, broadband residential Internet access and the characteristics and quality of products and product lines. It is not clear how existing laws governing issues such as property use and ownership, sales and other taxes, fraud, libel and personal privacy apply to the Internet and e-commerce, especially where these laws were adopted prior to the advent of the Internet and do not contemplate or address the unique issues raised by the Internet or e-commerce. Those laws that do reference the Internet are being interpreted by the courts and their applicability and reach are therefore uncertain. The costs of compliance with these regulations may increase in the future as a result of changes in the regulations or the interpretation of them. Further, any failures on our part to comply with these regulations may subject us to significant liabilities. Those current and future laws and regulations or unfavorable resolution of these issues may substantially harm our business and results of operations.

The parts we manufacture may contain undetected defects or errors that are not discovered until after the products have been installed and used by customers. This could result in claims from customers or others, damage to our business and reputation and brand, or significant costs to correct the defect or error. We attempt to include provisions in our agreements with customers that are designed to limit our exposure to potential liability for damages arising from defects or errors in our products. However, it is possible that these limitations may not be effective as a result of unfavorable judicial decisions or laws enacted in the future. The sale and support of our products entails the risk of product liability claims. Any product liability claim brought against us, regardless of its merit, could result in material expense, diversion of management time and attention, damage to our business, reputation, and brand, and cause us to fail to retain existing customers or to fail to attract new customers.

We are a multinational company based in the United States and subject to tax in multiple tax jurisdictions, both domestic and abroad. Our future effective tax rates could be adversely affected by changes in statutory tax rates or interpretation of tax rules, and regulations in jurisdictions in which we do business, changes in the amount of revenue or earnings in the countries with varying statutory tax rates, or by changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities. In addition, we are subject to audits and examinations of previously filed income tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, and other domestic and foreign tax authorities. We regularly assess the potential impact of such examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes and have reserved for potential adjustments that may result from the current examinations. We believe such estimates to be reasonable; however, there is no assurance that the final determination of any examination will not have an adverse effect on our operating results and financial position.

We are highly dependent upon the continued service and performance of the key members of our management team and other personnel. The loss of any of these individuals, each of whom is "at will" and may terminate his or her employment relationship with us at any time, could disrupt our operations and significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our business objectives. We believe that our future success will also depend in part on our continued ability to identify, hire, train and motivate qualified personnel. A possible shortage of qualified individuals in the regions where we operate might require us to pay increased compensation to attract and retain key employees, thereby increasing our costs. In addition, we face intense competition for qualified individuals from numerous companies, many of whom have substantially greater financial and other resources and name recognition than us. We may be unable to attract and retain suitably qualified individuals who are capable of meeting our growing operational, managerial and other requirements, or we may be required to pay increased compensation in order to do so. Our failure to attract, hire, integrate and retain qualified personnel could impair our ability to achieve our business objectives.

We acquire substantially all of the manufacturing equipment and certain of our materials that are critical to the ongoing operation and future growth of our business from several third parties. We do not have long-term supply contracts with any of our suppliers and operate on a purchase-order basis. While most manufacturing equipment and materials for our products are available from multiple suppliers, certain of those items are only available from single or limited sources. Should any of our present single or limited source suppliers for manufacturing equipment or materials become unavailable or inadequate, or impose terms unacceptable to us such as increased pricing terms, we could be required to spend a significant amount of time and expense to develop alternate sources of supply, and we may not be successful in doing so on terms acceptable to us, or at all. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, may affect our supply of materials, particularly resins, from time to time, and we may purchase larger amounts of certain materials in anticipation of future shortages or increases in pricing. Global supply chain disruptions may make scarce materials or supplies critical to our product offers and adversely impact our ability to manufacture and deliver products to our customers on time. In addition, if we were unable to find a suitable supplier for a particular type of manufacturing equipment or material, we could be required to modify our existing business processes and offerings to accommodate the situation. As a result, the loss of a single or limited source supplier could adversely affect our relationship with our customers and our results of operations and financial condition.

The market for custom parts manufacturing is fragmented and highly competitive. We compete for customers with a wide variety of custom parts manufacturers and methods. Some of our current and potential competitors include captive in-house product lines, other custom parts manufacturers, brokers of custom parts and alternative manufacturing vendors such as those utilizing 3D printing processes. Moreover, some of our existing and potential competitors are researching, designing, developing and marketing other types of products and product lines. We also expect that future competition may arise from the development of allied or related techniques for custom parts manufacturing that are not encompassed by our patents, from the issuance of patents to other companies that may inhibit our ability to develop certain products and from improvements to existing technologies. Furthermore, our competitors may attempt to adopt and improve upon key aspects of our business model, such as development of technology that automates much of the manual labor conventionally required to quote and manufacture custom parts, implementation of interactive web-based and automated user interface and quoting systems and/or building scalable operating models specifically designed for efficient custom production. Third-party CAD software companies may develop software that mold-makers, injection molders and CNC machine shops could use to compete with our business model. Additive manufacturers may develop stronger, higher temperature resins or introduce other improvements that could more effectively compete with us on part quality. We may also, from time to time, establish alliances or relationships with other competitors or potential competitors. To the extent companies terminate such relationships and establish alliances and relationships with our competitors, our business could be harmed. Existing and potential competitors may have substantially greater financial, technical, marketing and sales, manufacturing, distribution and other resources and name recognition than us, as well as experience and expertise in intellectual property rights and operating within certain international locations, any of which may enable them to compete effectively against us. Though we plan to continue to expend resources to develop new technologies, processes and product lines, we cannot assure you that we will be able to maintain our current position or continue to compete successfully against current and future sources of competition. Our challenge to develop new products manufactured internally is finding product lines for which our automated quotation and manufacturing processes offer an attractive value proposition, and we may not be able to find any new product lines with potential economies of scale similar to our existing product lines. We mitigate this risk through products offered by our manufacturing partner network via our acquisition of Hubs in 2021. If we do not keep pace with technological change and introduce new technologies, processes and product lines, the demand for our products and product lines may decline and our operating results may suffer.

Since our products and product lines are sold primarily through our websites, the success of our business depends upon our ability to attract new and repeat customers to our websites in order to increase business and grow our revenue. Customer awareness and the perceived value of our brand will depend largely on the success of our marketing efforts, as well as our ability to consistently provide quality custom parts within the required timeframes and positive customer experiences, which we may not do successfully. A primary component of our business strategy is the continued promotion and strengthening of our brand, and we have incurred and plan to continue to incur substantial expense related to advertising and other marketing efforts directed toward enhancing our brand. We have initiated marketing efforts through social media, but this method of marketing may not be successful and subjects us to a greater risk of inconsistent messaging and bad publicity. We may choose to increase our branding expense materially, but we cannot be sure that this investment will be profitable. If we are unable to successfully maintain and enhance our brand, this could have a negative impact on our business and ability to generate revenue.

The prospects for economic growth in regions where we operate remain uncertain and could worsen. Economic concerns and other issues such as reduced access to capital for businesses may cause product developers and engineers to further delay or reduce the product development projects that our business supports. Given the continued uncertainty concerning the global economy, we face risks that may arise from financial difficulties experienced by our suppliers, product developers, and engineers and other related risks to our business.

We have established our operations in the United States and Europe and are seeking to further expand our international operations. Our international revenue accounted for approximately 21% of our total revenue in each of the years ended December 31, 2023, 2022 and 2021. The future growth and profitability of our international business is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Many of the following factors have adversely affected our international operations and sales to customers located outside of the United States and may again in the future: - difficulties in staffing and managing foreign operations, particularly in new geographic locations;- challenges in providing solutions across a significant distance, in different languages and among different cultures;- rapid changes in government, economic and political policies and conditions, political or civil unrest or instability, terrorism or epidemics, and other similar outbreaks or events;- fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates;- compliance with and changes in foreign laws and regulations, as well as U.S. laws affecting the activities of U.S. companies abroad, including those associated with export controls, tariffs and embargoes, other trade restrictions and antitrust and data privacy concerns;- different, complex and changing laws governing intellectual property rights, sometimes affording companies lesser protection in certain areas;- seasonal reductions in business activity in certain parts of the world, particularly during the summer months in Europe and holiday season;- higher costs of doing business internationally;- interruptions resulting from any events affecting raw material supply or manufacturing capabilities abroad;- protectionist laws and business practices that favor local producers and service providers;- taxation;- energy costs;- restrictions imposed by local labor practices and laws on our business and operations;- workforce uncertainty in countries where labor unrest is more common than in the United States;- transportation delays; and - increased payment risk and higher levels of payment fraud. Our business depends on customer demand for our product lines, the general economic health of current and prospective customers, and companies' desire or ability to make investments in new products. A deterioration of global, regional or local political, economic or social conditions could affect potential customers in ways that reduce demand for our product lines, disrupt our manufacturing and sales plans and efforts or otherwise negatively impact our business. Acts of terrorism, wars, public health issues and increased energy costs could disrupt commerce in ways that could impair our ability to get products to our customers and increase our manufacturing and delivery costs. We have not undertaken hedging transactions to cover our foreign currency exposure, and changes in foreign currency exchange rates may negatively impact reported revenue and expenses. In addition, our sales are often made on unsecured credit terms, and a deterioration of political, economic or social conditions in a given country or region could reduce or eliminate our ability to collect accounts receivable in that country or region. In any of these events, our results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

All of our in-house manufacturing products are produced in 10 manufacturing facilities, located in Rosemount, Minnesota; Plymouth, Minnesota; Brooklyn Park, Minnesota; Cary, North Carolina (2 facilities); Nashua, New Hampshire (2 facilities); Telford, United Kingdom; Putzbrunn, Germany; and Eschenlohe, Germany. These facilities and the manufacturing equipment we use would be costly to replace and could require substantial lead time to repair or replace. Our facilities may be harmed by natural or man-made disasters, including, without limitation, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, fires, hurricanes, tsunamis and nuclear disasters. In the event any of our facilities are affected by a disaster, we may: - be unable to meet the shipping deadlines of our customers;- experience disruptions in our ability to process submissions and generate quotations, manufacture and ship parts, provide marketing and sales support and customer service, and otherwise operate our business, any of which could negatively impact our business;- be forced to rely on third-party manufacturers;- need to expend significant capital and other resources to address any damage caused by the disaster; and - lose customers and be unable to regain those customers. We mitigate such risks through the addition of access to a network of manufacturing partners via our acquisition of Hubs in 2021. Although we possess insurance for damage to our property and the disruption of our business from casualties, this insurance may not be sufficient to cover all of our potential losses and may not continue to be available to us on acceptable terms, or at all.