Silicon Motion (SIMO) Risk Factors

Our success depends to a significant extent on the development, qualification, implementation and acceptance of new product designs and improvements that provide value to our customers. Our ability to develop, qualify and distribute, and have manufactured, new products and related technologies to meet evolving industry requirements, at prices acceptable to our customers and on a timely basis are significant factors in determining our competitiveness in our target markets. For example, for our products addressing the SSD market, we must successfully identify customer requirements and design, develop and produce products on time that compete effectively as to price, functionality and performance. We sell products in markets that are characterized by rapid technological change, evolving industry standards, frequent new product introductions, smaller process geometries and other factors. We cannot assure you that our efforts to execute our product roadmap will result in innovative products and technologies that provide value to our customers. If we fail to or are delayed in developing, qualifying or shipping new products or technologies that provide value to our customers and address these new trends and adjust our business accordingly, we may lose competitive positioning, which could cause us to lose market share and require us to discount the selling prices of our products. Although we make substantial investments in research and development, we cannot be certain that we will be able to develop and successfully bring to market new products and technologies on a timely basis or that they will be well-received by our customers. Moreover, our investments in new products and technologies involve certain risks and uncertainties and could disrupt our ongoing business. New investments may not generate sufficient revenue, may incur unanticipated liabilities and may divert our limited resources and distract management from our current operations. We cannot be certain that our ongoing investments in new products and technologies will be successful, will meet our expectations and will not adversely affect our reputation, financial condition and operating results. We believe that our future success depends on our ability to develop and introduce new technologies and products for new applications to generate new sources of revenue to replace, or build upon, existing product revenue for applications that are mature or in secular decline. If we are not able to repeatedly introduce, in successive years, new products for new applications that ship in volume, our revenue will likely not grow and may decline significantly and rapidly. In the past, we were able to successfully grow our revenue by adding over time successive categories of new controller technologies for new applications, such as memory card and flash drive controllers for external storage, eMMC and UFS mobile embedded memory controllers for smartphones and SSD controllers for PCs and other client devices. If we are unable to successfully expand our sales of SSD controllers for data center and enterprise applications, our prospects for continued revenue growth could be adversely affected.

We experience cyberattacks of varying degrees on our technology infrastructure and systems and, as a result, unauthorized parties have obtained in the past, and may in the future obtain, access to our computer systems and networks. The technology infrastructure and systems of our customers, suppliers, vendors and partners may also experience such attacks. Cyberattacks are external and internal threats that include, but are not limited to, malware, phishing, advanced persistent threats, denial of service attacks, malicious software downloads, insider security breaches, and hardware and software vulnerabilities. We believe cyberattack attempts are increasing not only in number also in scope and that perpetrators of cyberattacks continue to develop increasingly sophisticated systems and means to not only attack systems and damage data, but also evade detection or obscure their activities. We have controls and policies in place, will continue to review and enhance our capabilities and upgrade our protective solutions to guard against known and emerging threats, detect malicious or unauthorized activities, and have recovery systems to minimize business disruptions. If efforts to breach our infrastructure and systems are successful or we are unable to protect against these risks, we could suffer interruptions, delays, or cessation of operations of our systems, and loss or misuse of proprietary or confidential information, intellectual property, or sensitive or personal information. Breaches of our infrastructure and systems could also cause our customers and other affected third parties to suffer loss or misuse of proprietary or confidential information, intellectual property, or sensitive or personal information, and could harm our relationships with customers and other third parties. As a result, we could experience additional costs, indemnification claims, litigation, and damage to our brand and reputation. All of these consequences could harm our reputation and our business and materially and adversely affect our operating results and financial condition.

We are primarily a fabless semiconductor company focused on NAND flash controllers and the sales of these controllers account for a significant majority of our overall sales. In addition, we also sell SSD solutions, mostly Ferri industrial SSDs and Shannon enterprise SSDs, but also Bigtera software-defined storage solutions and appliances. We introduced our Ferri products in 2011, acquired Shannon in 2015 for US$45.6 million, acquired Bigtera in 2017 for US$4.7 million and are developing our FlashGo all-flash array storage solution. Both our Shannon and Bigtera acquisitions have not met financial expectations to date, have been dilutive to our gross margins, operating margins and earnings per ADS, and led to US$16.0 million and US$17.5 million write-downs of Shannon goodwill and intangible assets in 2019 and 2020, respectively, US$4.1 million write-down of Bigtera goodwill and intangible assets in 2018. We cannot provide assurance that in the future, we will be able to sell our Shannon and Bigtera products profitably or if we will incur further write downs of inventories. If we are able to expand the sales of our SSD solutions, we cannot provide assurance that expanded sales of these products will not negatively affect our gross margin and operating margin, which could negatively affect the market price of our ADSs. Furthermore, even if we are able to sell our SSD solutions to customers profitably, our return on invested capital for SSD solutions will likely be materially lower than our corporate average primarily because of lower product profitability and higher investments, mainly for working capital necessary for financing NAND and other inventory, and this could negatively affect our overall financial return and the market price of our ADSs. Our SSD solutions are modules, software and appliances, which are different from our primary controller products, which are integrated circuits and have different financial characteristics. Our SSD solutions gross margin is materially lower than our controller gross margin because these products are generally less differentiated and, in the case of our Ferri and Shannon SSDs, where NAND flash components are the majority of their cost of sales, we have limited ability to mark-up the cost of NAND flash components that we procure. We are also subject to NAND price volatility with our Ferri and Shannon SSDs; because of rapidly falling NAND prices, we wrote-down US$5.5 million of NAND components and SSDs in inventory in 2020, US$4.3 million in 2021 and US$8.1 million in 2022. With our Bigtera products, we have had issues with sales returns, with US$2.5 million in 2019. We cannot assure you that in the future our results of operations will not be negatively affected by further NAND component and SSD inventory write-downs and Bigtera sales returns.

We face competition from a number of competitors, including Marvell and Phison, our flash memory customers and smaller merchant suppliers in China. We expect to face competition in the future from our current and potential competitors. In addition, some of our flash memory customers could developed products and technologies that replace their need for our products or otherwise reduce their demand for our products. Some of our current and potential competitors have longer operating histories, greater name recognition, access to larger customer bases and significantly greater financial, sales and marketing, manufacturing, distribution, technical and other resources than we have. As a result, they may be able to respond more quickly to changing customer demands or to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sales of their products than we can. Our current and potential competitors may develop and introduce new products that will be priced lower, provide superior performance or achieve greater market acceptance than our products. For our SSD solutions, if we are unable to procure sufficient supplies of NAND flash components and at terms that enable our products to be competitive in terms of price or develop technologically competitive products, our customers may seek to purchase SSD solutions from other suppliers.

We have limited sales visibility as our customers typically do not provide us with firm, long-term purchase commitments. Additionally, our customers may also have limited sales visibility because of the rapidly changing nature of the global economy, NAND supply and demand dynamics and the markets in which devices using our products are sold. Substantially all of our sales are made on a purchase order basis, which permits our customers to cancel, change or delay their product purchase commitments with little or no notice to us and often without penalty to them, which limits our ability to accurately forecast sales and maintain adequate inventory levels, manufacturing capacity and operating infrastructure requirements. Our customers, most of whom are NAND flash makers and module makers, face difficulties in predicting demand for their storage devices using our products, which could result in the procurement forecast provided to us changing at short notice. The majority of our customers are building storage devices such as SSDs used in PCs and other client devices and embedded MultiMediaCard ("eMMC") and universal flash storage ("UFS") mobile embedded storage used primarily in smartphones and other smart devices and are dependent on original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs") of these devices accurately anticipating end-consumer demand, which has historically been difficult and subject to unpredictable deviations from past sales patterns. Also, since a significant portion of our quarterly sales, especially from module maker customers targeting channel markets, are from orders received and fulfilled in that quarter, our visibility as to expected orders from these customers in subsequent periods and for any extended period of time is limited. The multiple layers of forecasts from other customers and from their customers may introduce other errors into our estimates of anticipated sales. To ensure the availability of our products for our customers, we generally instruct our foundries to begin manufacturing our products based on forecasts provided by these customers in advance of receiving purchase orders. However, these forecasts do not represent binding purchase commitments, and sales of our products are only recognized when they are shipped with ownership transferred to the customer. As a result, we incur inventory and manufacturing costs in advance of anticipated revenue. Because demand for our products may not materialize, manufacturing based on forecasts subjects us to risks of high inventory carrying costs and increased obsolescence and may increase our costs. If we overestimate customer demand for our products or if purchase orders are cancelled or shipments delayed, we may end up with excess or obsolete inventory, which could have a material and adverse effect on our financial results. The risk of obsolescence and/or excess inventory is heightened for devices designed for consumer electronics due to short product lifecycles for these types of products. Conversely, if we underestimate demand or if insufficient manufacturing capacity is available, we may not have sufficient product inventory, which could lead to missed revenue opportunities, loss of market share, damages to our customer relationships and other harm to our business. In addition, any future significant cancellations or deferrals of product orders or the return of previously sold products could materially and adversely affect our profit margins, increase product obsolescence and restrict our ability to fund our operations. Because many of our expenses are fixed in the short term or are incurred in advance of anticipated sales, we may not be able to decrease our expenses in a timely manner to offset any shortfall of sales, or expand our R&D and other operating infrastructure in a timely manner to capture anticipated business opportunities. If we expand our business operations and demand for our products does not increase as we may have projected, our operating results could be affected by our higher operating expense levels. Conversely, if we maintain or reduce our business operations and related expenses in accordance with our projections and demand for our products increases more than expected, our operating results could be affected by lost business opportunities, less competitive economies of scale, and damaged relationships with our customers.

Our products are complex and may contain undetected hardware or software defects or failures, especially when first introduced or when new versions are released. These errors could cause us to incur significant re-engineering costs, divert the attention of our engineering personnel from other important product development efforts and materially affect our customer relations and business reputation. If we deliver products with errors or defects, our credibility and the market acceptance and sales of our products could be harmed. Defects could also lead to liability for defective products as a result of lawsuits against us or against our customers. We have agreed to indemnify some of our customers in some circumstances against liability from defects in our products. A successful warranty or product liability claim could require us to make significant payments.

We rely heavily on the services of our key employees, including Wallace C. Kou, our President and Chief Executive Officer. In addition, our engineers and other highly skilled personnel are a significant asset and are the source of our technological and product innovations. We believe our future success will depend upon our ability to attract and retain skilled managerial, engineering and sales and marketing personnel. The competition for such personnel, particularly engineering personnel, is intense in our industry. We may not be successful in attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of engineering personnel to support our anticipated growth. These personnel are required to design and develop integrated circuits, including firmware, and to introduce product enhancements for use in future applications. Despite the incentives we provide, our current employees may not continue to work for us, and if additional personnel were required for our operations, we may not be able to obtain the services of additional personnel necessary for our growth. In addition, we do not maintain "key person" life insurance for any of our senior executives or other key employees. The loss of any of our key employees or our inability to attract or retain qualified personnel, including engineers, could delay the development and introduction of, and have an adverse effect on our ability to sell, our products as well as have an adverse effect on our overall growth. In addition, if any other members of our senior management or any of our other key personnel depart, join a competitor or form a competing company, we may not be able to replace them easily and we may lose customers, business partners, key professionals and staff members. Substantially all of our senior executives and key personnel have entered into confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. In the event of a dispute between any of our senior executives or key personnel and our operating companies in Taiwan and other foreign countries, we cannot assure you the extent, if any, to which these provisions may be enforceable in Taiwan or other foreign countries due to the constantly evolving nature of their respective legal systems.

We do not own or operate semiconductor fabrication facilities. Instead, we rely on third parties to manufacture our semiconductors. Two outside foundries, primarily Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ("TSMC") and secondarily Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC") fabricate our semiconductors. As a result, we face several significant risks, including wafer cost, availability of wafers and other raw materials, manufacturing capacity, quality assurance, manufacturing yields and production costs, control over delivery schedules and product quality, control of our intellectual property, labor availability or strikes and actions taken by third party contractors that breach our agreements. The ability of each foundry to provide us with semiconductors is limited by its available capacity and access to wafers, and the ability of each subcontractor to assemble and test our products is limited by available capacity and access to substrates and other raw materials. We do not have long-term agreements with any of these foundries and subcontractors and we place our orders based on our customers' purchase orders and sales forecasts. However, the foundries and subcontractors can allocate capacity to the fabrication, assembly and testing of the products of their other customers and reduce deliveries to us on short notice or increase the price they charge us. It is possible that other foundry and subcontractor customers that are larger and better financed than we are, or have long-term agreements with these foundries and subcontractors, may induce these foundries and subcontractors to reallocate capacity to them which could impair our ability to secure manufacturing, assembly and testing capacity that we need for our products. Other factors that could materially adversely affect our business and results of operation include, but are not limited to, our foundries and subcontractors being unable to secure the necessary raw materials from their suppliers, experience power outages, lack sufficient capacity to manufacture our products or suffer other disruption or reduction in efficiency. If our foundries fail to deliver fabricated silicon wafers of satisfactory quality in the volume and at the price we require, or if our assembly and testing subcontractors fail to efficiently and accurately assemble and test our products, we will be unable to meet our customers' demand for our products or to sell those products at an acceptable profit margin, which would have a material and adverse effect on our sales and margins and damage our customer relationships. In addition, interruptions to the wafer manufacturing processes caused by a natural disaster or human error could result in partial or complete disruption in supply until manufacturing is re-started or we are able to shift manufacturing to another fabrication facility. It may not be possible to obtain sufficient capacity or comparable production costs at another foundry. Migrating our design methodology to a new third-party foundry could involve increased costs, resources and development time comparable to a new product development effort. Any reduction in the supply of semiconductors for our products could significantly delay our ability to ship our products and potentially have negative effects on our relationships with existing customers and our results of operations. In addition, if our subcontractors terminate their relationships with us, we would be required to qualify new subcontractors, which could take at least six months, resulting in unforeseen operating problems, and our operating results may be materially and adversely affected. The manufacture of semiconductors is a highly complex process. Minor deviations in the manufacturing process can cause substantial decreases in yield. In some situations, such deviations may cause production to be suspended. The foundries that manufacture our semiconductors have from time to time experienced lower than anticipated manufacturing yields, including yields for our semiconductors, typically during the production of new products or architectures or during the installation and start-up and ramp-up of new process technologies or equipment. If the foundries that manufacture our semiconductors do not achieve planned yields, our product costs could increase and product availability would decrease. After the wafer fabrication processes, our wafers are shipped to our assembly and testing subcontractors. We have a system to maximize consistent product quality, reliability and yield that involves our quality assurance team working closely with subcontractors in the various phases of the assembly and testing processes. Our supplier quality management includes procedures such as processes to pre-qualify our manufacturing suppliers and subcontractors. If our subcontractors do not achieve planned product quality, reliability and yield during the assembly and testing processes, our product cost could increase, product availability could decrease, or our customers may not accept products manufactured for them.

In September 2018, we purchased 65,700 square feet of land in Hsinchu, Taiwan for a total cost of US$58.9 million and expect to spend an estimated US$77 million for the development and construction of our future Hsinchu headquarters building, which is currently targeted for completion in 2024. On February 18, 2021, the Company won a bid with a third-party to build an office building in Taipei, Taiwan and executed a property development agreement in May 2021, with property development costs to be defined and agreed in a subsequent agreement. We have no experience developing and constructing office buildings and managing real property of this scale. We may encounter unanticipated occurrences or conditions during construction that may increase the expense of these projects. We may also encounter unanticipated delays in the construction of the new buildings and local government approvals for the projects may be delayed. We will also be required to comply with applicable environmental regulations in connection with such development. We are financing these construction projects from our cash balance, which could limit alternative deployments of capital. The purchase of the land and construction of the buildings will increase our fixed assets significantly and could reduce our return on invested capital. After the office buildings have been constructed, we may consider sale and leaseback arrangements if favorable terms can be obtained.

We are subject to various state, federal and international laws and regulations governing the environment, including restricting the presence of certain substances in electronic products. In addition, we are also subject to various industry requirements restricting the presence of certain substances in electronic products. Although our management systems are designed to maintain compliance, we cannot assure you that we have been or will be at all times in complete compliance with such laws and regulations. If we violate or fail to comply with any of them, a range of consequences could result, including fines, import/export restrictions, sales limitations, criminal and civil liabilities or other sanctions. Recently there has been increased focus on environmental protection and social responsibility initiatives, which are subject to change, can be unpredictable, and may be difficult for us to comply with, given the complexity of our supply chain and our significant outsourced manufacturing. We are required to implement various standards or processes due to the adoption of rules or regulations that result from these initiatives, such as the SEC rules on the disclosure of the use of "conflict minerals." If we are unable to comply, or ensure that our suppliers or contract manufacturers comply, with such standards or processes, customers may stop purchasing from us, which could adversely affect our sales and results of operations. Our business is subject to various other international laws and other legal requirements, including packaging, product content, labor and international trade regulations, such as the U.S. Export Administration Regulations and sanctions against Huawei and other companies, and applicable executive orders. These laws, regulations and orders are complex, change frequently and with limited notice, have generally become more stringent over time and have intensified as U.S.-China geopolitical tensions worsen. Although we have policies, controls, and procedures designed to help ensure compliance with applicable laws, there can be no assurance that our employees, contractors, suppliers, or agents will not violate such laws or our policies. Any such violations of trade laws, restrictions, or regulations can result in fines; criminal sanctions against us or our officers, directors, or employees; prohibitions on the conduct of our business; and damage to our reputation. We may be required to incur significant expense to comply with, or to remedy violations of, these regulations and laws. In addition, if our customers fail to comply with these regulations and laws, we may be required to suspend sales to these customers, which could damage our reputation and negatively impact our results of operations. The technology industry is subject to intense media, political, and regulatory scrutiny, which can increase our exposure to government investigations, legal actions, and penalties.