UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the Fiscal Year Ended June 27, 2020

Or

For the transition period from                to

Commission File Number 000-49602

SYNAPTICS INCORPORATED

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:  None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.  Yes  ☒    No  ☐

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act.  Yes  ☐    No  ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.  Yes  ☒    No  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).  Yes  ☒    No  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by checkmark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report.  ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act).  Yes  ☐    No  ☒

The aggregate market value of Common Stock held by nonaffiliates of the registrant (20,753,257 shares), based on the closing price of the registrant’s Common Stock as reported on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on December 27, 2019 of $66.89, was $1,388,185,361.  For purposes of this computation, all officers, directors, and 10% beneficial owners of the registrant are deemed to be affiliates.  Such determination should not be deemed to be an admission that such officers, directors, or 10% beneficial owners are, in fact, affiliates of the registrant.

As of August 17, 2020, there were outstanding 34,229,602 shares of the registrant's Common Stock, par value $.001 per share.

Documents Incorporated by Reference

Portions of the registrant's definitive Proxy Statement for the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Form 10-K.

SYNAPTICS INCORPORATED

ANNUAL REPORT ON FORM 10-K

FISCAL 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 27, 2020 contains forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbors created under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and the Securities Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”).  Forward-looking statements give our current expectations and projections relating to our financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business, including our expectations regarding the potential impacts on our business of the COVID-19 pandemic, and can be identified by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. Such forward-looking statements may include words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “believe,” “estimate,” “plan,” “target,” “strategy,” “continue,” “may,” “will,” “should,” variations of such words, or other words and terms of similar meaning. All forward-looking statements reflect our best judgment and are based on several factors relating to our operations and business environment, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. Such factors include, but are not limited to, the risks as identified in the “Risk Factors,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Business” sections in this report on Form 10-K, and other risks as identified from time to time in our Securities and Exchange Commission reports. Forward-looking statements are based on information available to us on the date hereof, and we do not have, and expressly disclaim, any obligation to publicly release any updates or any changes in our expectations, or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any forward-looking statement is based.  Our actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any mergers, acquisitions, or other business combinations that had not been completed as of the date of this filing.

Statements made in this report, unless the context otherwise requires, include the use of the terms “us,” “we,” “our,” the “Company” and “Synaptics” to refer to Synaptics Incorporated and its consolidated subsidiaries.

PART I

Impact of COVID-19

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, which continues to spread in the U.S. and globally. Governmental authorities have implemented numerous containment measures, including travel bans and restrictions, quarantines, shelter-in-place orders, and business restrictions and shutdowns, resulting in rapidly changing market and economic conditions.  

While the severity and duration of business disruption to our customers and suppliers due to the COVID-19 pandemic is still uncertain, we expect that it will continue to weigh on our business and consolidated results of operations in the near term and may further impact our financial condition (including liquidity) in the future. We have not incurred significant disruptions thus far from the COVID-19 outbreak, but we are unable to accurately predict the full impact COVID-19 will have on our future results due to numerous uncertainties, including the severity of the disease, the duration of the outbreak, a potential future recurrence of the outbreak, further containment actions that may be taken by governmental authorities, the impact to the businesses of our customers and suppliers and other factors.

We will continue to evaluate the nature and scope of the impact to our business, consolidated results of operations, and financial condition, and may take further actions altering our business operations and managing our costs and liquidity that we deem necessary or appropriate to respond to this fast moving and uncertain global health crisis and the resulting global economic consequences.

Overview

We are a leading worldwide developer and supplier of custom-designed semiconductor solutions that enable people to interact more easily and intuitively with a wide variety of mobile computing, communications, entertainment, and other electronic devices.  We currently generate revenue from the markets for Internet of Things, or IoT, products, which include smart devices with voice, speech, video, wireless connectivity, smartphones, tablets, personal computer, or PC, products, and other select electronic devices, including devices in automobiles.  We deliver semiconductor solutions including connectivity products, audio input and output System-On-Chips, or SoCs, high-definition video and vision SoCs, touch controllers, display drivers, fingerprint sensors, and touchpads, which comprise our semiconductor chip, firmware, and software as a complete customer solution.

We are a market leader in providing premium mixed signal semiconductor solutions to our target markets. Our original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, customers include most of the world’s largest OEMs for smart home devices, automotive solutions, smartphones and tablets, PC devices and peripherals and many large OEMs for audio and video products.  We generally supply our product solutions to our OEM customers through their contract manufacturers, which take delivery of our products and pay us directly for such products.

Our website is located at www.synaptics.com.  Through our website, we make available, free of charge, all our Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, filings, including our annual reports on Form 10-K, our proxy statements, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and our current reports on Form 8-K, as well as Form 3, Form 4, and Form 5 Reports for our directors, officers, and principal stockholders, together with amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a), 15(d), or 16 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act.  These reports are available on our website promptly after their electronic filing with the SEC.  You can also read these SEC filings and reports over the Internet at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.  Our website also includes corporate governance information, including our Code of Conduct, our Code of Ethics for the Chief Executive Officer and Senior Financial Officers, and our Board Committee Charters.  The contents of our website are not incorporated into or deemed to be a part of this report.

We were initially incorporated in California in 1986 and were re-incorporated in Delaware in 2002.  Our fiscal year is the 52- or 53-week period ending on the last Saturday in June.  The fiscal years presented in this report were the 52-week periods ended June 27, 2020, and June 29, 2019 and the 53-week period ended June 30, 2018.  

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IoT Applications Market

Our IoT market solutions broadly consist of SoC products, audio and video solutions, and wireless connectivity solutions. We provide SoC products used in human interface solutions for enabling smart devices at the edge.  We enable products for service provider set-top boxes, smart assistant speakers, over-the-top multimedia devices, wireless speakers, voice driven intelligent devices, including those integrating far-field technology, personal voice and audio products, video interface solutions for docking stations, hubs, high-speed connectivity for virtual reality devices, video surveillance, and imaging solutions for use in printers and fax/modems.  In addition, our automotive solutions include over a decade of mass production experience in mature touch solutions and display drivers adapted from our mobile consumer business to meet automotive-grade quality standards. Net revenue for our IoT product solutions accounted for approximately 24%, 21% and 21% of our net revenue for fiscal 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

Within the fast growing consumer IoT market, we continue to expand our footprint in various devices by bringing converged video, vision, audio, and voice technologies coupled with leading edge human interface solutions and wireless connectivity capabilities. Our deep investment in far-field voice technology, our intellectual property portfolio for video, vision, audio and security, and our significant experience enabling Android-based platforms for service providers, coupled with our focus on enabling high performance, low power, and highly secure SoC solutions enable us to effectively serve our existing customers and position us to grow within the addressable market of consumer IoT devices.  

Mobile Product Applications Markets

We believe our intellectual property portfolio, engineering know-how, systems engineering experience, technological expertise, and experience in providing human interface product solutions to major OEMs of electronic devices position us to be a key technological enabler for multiple consumer electronic devices targeted to meet the mobile product applications markets.  Mobile product applications include smartphones, tablets, large touchscreen applications, as well as a variety of mobile, handheld, and entertainment devices.  Our array of product solutions for mobile product applications are designed to enrich the interface on smartphones, tablets, and peripherals, and enable the owner to view the screen on these devices and to more seamlessly interact with the content on these devices.  We believe our existing technologies, our range of product solutions, and our emphasis on ease of use, advanced functionality, small size, low power consumption, durability, and reliability enable us to serve multiple aspects of the markets for mobile product applications and other electronic devices.

Our human interface product solutions for mobile applications constitute a substantial percentage of our net revenue.  Net revenue for our mobile product applications accounted for approximately 52%, 61%, and 63% of our net revenue for fiscal 2020, 2019, and 2018, respectively.  Our ongoing success in serving these markets will depend upon the size of the smartphone portion of the overall mobile phone market; our ability to demonstrate to OEMs the advantages of our product solutions in terms of performance, usability, size, simplified security, durability, power consumption, integration, and industrial design possibilities; and the success of products utilizing our human interface product solutions.  In addition, our success will depend on our ability to demonstrate to mobile OEMs the advantages of our high-performance touch controller products and Display Driver Integrated Circuits, or DDIC products, our flexible touchscreen panel and systems engineering expertise, including our ability to successfully deliver DDIC products into the Organic Light Emitting Diode, or OLED, smartphone market.  The OLED smartphone market remains a key growth area for us. The thinner bendable (e.g. flexible and folding) displays will require special touch solutions to address the unique challenges such displays present to touch controllers.  We believe we are well-positioned to take advantage of this growing market based on our technology, engineering know-how, systems engineering experience, and the acceptance of our product solutions by OEMs in this market. The adoption of flexible OLED at top OEMs is expected to continue to grow, which could drive opportunities for our products.

The extended reality, or XR markets, including virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, represents growth opportunities for our display driver products.  The XR market is expected to continue to grow, with major investors in the space including today’s major hardware makers, in addition to new start-ups. Our high-performance, low power display driver technology is well-suited to the demands of the XR market.  The wearables market is also continuing to grow with many high-end wearables such as smartwatches utilizing a touchscreen that can be addressed by our touch and DDIC technologies.  Our engineering know-how and technological expertise with display drivers could represent an opportunity for us in these markets.

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PC Product Applications Market

We provide custom product solutions for navigation, cursor control, access to devices or applications through fingerprint authentication, and audio codecs for the world’s premier PC OEMs.  These functions are offered as both stand-alone and integrated touch pads plus fingerprint recognition solutions.  In addition to notebook applications, other PC product applications for our technology include peripherals, such as high-end keyboards and accessory touchpads.  Net revenue for our human interface product solutions for PC product applications accounted for approximately 24%, 18%, and 16% of our net revenue for fiscal 2020, 2019, and 2018, respectively.

We continue to expand our available product offerings through technology development enabling us to increase our product content within each notebook unit.  We are also applying our technologies to enable adoption of fingerprint recognition solutions to broaden our market opportunities. Based on the strength of our technology and engineering know-how, we believe we are well positioned to continue taking advantage of opportunities in the PC product applications market. 

Recent Divestiture

In April 2020, we completed the sale of the assets of our Liquid Crystal Display, or LCD, Touch Controller and Display Driver Integration product line, or TDDI, for LCD-based mobile displays.  We retained our automotive TDDI product line and our discrete touch and discrete display driver product lines supporting LCD and OLED for the mobile market. The assets sold under the asset purchase agreement, had a carrying value of approximately $33.6 million as of the closing date of the transaction for cash consideration of $138.7 million.  The gain on sale of the assets was $105.1 million.

Our Strategy

Our objective is to continue to enhance our position as a leading supplier of premium semiconductor product solutions for each of the target markets in which we operate, including the IoT applications market, mobile product applications markets, and the PC product applications market.  Key aspects of our strategy to achieve this objective include those set forth below.

Extend Our Technological Leadership

We plan to utilize our extensive intellectual property portfolio, engineering know-how, and technological expertise to extend the functionality of our current product solutions and offer new and innovative product solutions to customers across multiple markets.  We intend to continue utilizing our technological expertise to reduce the overall size, cost, and power consumption of our product solutions while increasing their applications, capabilities, and performance.  We plan to continue enhancing the ease of use and functionality of our solutions.  We plan to invest in our research and development efforts through our engineering activities, including advancement of existing technologies, the hiring of key engineering personnel, and strategic acquisitions and alliances.  We believe that these efforts will enable us to meet customer expectations and achieve our goal of supplying, on a timely and cost-effective basis, the most advanced, easy-to-use, functional human interface semiconductor product solutions to our target markets.

Capitalize on Growth of New and Evolving Markets

We intend to capitalize on the growth of new and evolving markets, such as the smart home and home automation market, voice enabled assistants, virtual reality, video interface docking, and wearables within the IoT market, the smartphone market, portions of the PC market, and the automotive market, brought about by the convergence of computing, communications, and entertainment devices.  We intend to build upon our existing innovative and intuitive and intelligent semiconductor product solutions portfolio and continue to address the evolving portability, connectivity, security, and functionality requirements of these new markets.  We will offer our solutions to existing and potential customers to enable increased functionality, reduced size, lower cost, simplified security, enhanced industrial design features, and to enhance the user experience of our OEMs’ products.  We plan to utilize our existing technologies as well as aggressively pursue new technologies as new markets evolve that demand new solutions.

Enhance Our Position in the Smartphone, Tablet, and PC Product Application Markets

We intend to continue introducing market-leading human interface product solutions in terms of performance, power consumption, functionality, size, and ease of use for the smartphone, tablet, and PC product applications markets.  We plan to continue enhancing our customers’ industrial design options and device functionality through innovative product development, in order to enhance and grow our position within our target markets. As the high-end market for smartphones continues the shift to OLED solutions, we intend to deliver further enhancements to our products to support that market.

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Emphasize and Expand Customer Relationships

We intend to emphasize and expand our strong and long-standing customer relationships and seek to build and establish successful relationships with new customers.  In each market we serve, we plan to provide the most advanced human interface product solutions for our customers' products.  We believe that our human interface product solutions enable our customers to deliver a positive user experience and to differentiate their products from those of their competitors.  We continually strive to enhance the competitive position of our customers by providing them with innovative, distinctive, and high-quality human interface product solutions on a timely and cost-effective basis.  To do so, we work continually to improve our productivity, reduce costs, and increase the speed of delivery of our product solutions.  We endeavor to streamline the entire design and delivery process through our ongoing design, engineering, and production improvement efforts.  We also focus on providing timely pre- and post-sales support to our customers, assisting with their efforts to develop, integrate, and manufacture their products with our solutions.

We plan to offer IoT voice, audio, and video solutions, wireless connectivity solutions, touch and display driver solutions, and fingerprint sensor solutions, as well as design tools, technical support and documentation to assist in the development of human interface designs in products such as digital entertainment devices, smartphones, notebooks, PC peripherals, and other applications.  We offer our customers a choice of our chip solutions or our custom module solutions.  Our chip solution consists of our proprietary integrated circuit, firmware and software, including customer-specific firmware and software, while our custom module solution enables customers to utilize our proprietary integrated circuit together with third-party components and assembly.  

Pursue Strategic Relationships and Acquisitions

We intend to develop and expand our strategic relationships to enhance our ability to offer value-added semiconductor product solutions to our customers, penetrate new markets, and strengthen the technological leadership of our product solutions.  We also intend to evaluate the potential acquisitions of companies and assets in order to expand our technological expertise and to establish or strengthen our presence in selected target markets.  

Fabless Semiconductor Manufacturing

We plan to selectively partner with foundries and backend processors to solidify our longstanding key supply chain relationships.  This strategy results in a scalable business model, enables us to concentrate on our core competencies of research and development and product design and engineering, and reduces our capital expenditures and working capital requirements.  Our fabless semiconductor manufacturing strategy allows us to maintain a variable cost model, in which we do not incur most of our manufacturing costs until our product solutions have been shipped and invoiced to our customers.

Competitive Advantages

We develop advanced human interface technologies that enrich the users’ experience in interacting with their computing, communications, and entertainment devices.  We engage with our customers in the design of their custom products and offer product solutions ranging from chips, which may include customer-specific firmware, to full module solutions. Our innovative and intuitive human interface product solutions are engineered to accommodate diverse platforms, and our expertise in device interfaces and usability help improve the features and functionality of our solutions.  Our extensive array of technologies includes chips, firmware, software, mechanical and electrical designs, artificial intelligence, or AI, and algorithm-based pattern recognition, multi-finger touch-sensing technologies, advanced noise mitigation technologies, display driver technologies, image, voice and multimedia processing.

Our products are custom-engineered, total solutions including sensor design, module layout, application specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, firmware, and software features for which we provide design, manufacturing and testing support. This allows us to be a one-stop supplier for complete human interface design from concept prototyping, to product development, manufacturing, testing and support.  Through our engineering know-how and technological expertise, we provide our customers with solutions that address their individual design requirements and result in high-performance, feature-rich, and reliable interface solutions.  We believe our solutions offer the following characteristics:

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We believe these characteristics will enable us to continue enhancing our position as a technological enabler within our target markets.

Our emphasis on technological leadership and design capabilities positions us to provide unique human interface product solutions that address specific customer requirements, as well as satisfy specifications, for features and functionality, industrial design, security, mechanical, and electrical requirements.  With our Edge SOC products, we offer full system solutions that enable an immersive voice/audio, multimedia and vision experience.  Our Edge SOCs enable secure artificial intelligence processing on device, for enhanced privacy and responsiveness. Our diversified audio product line enables clear voice for audio calls, immersive surround sound for gaming, advanced noise cancellation for consumer products and ultra-low-power hi-fidelity audio for mobile applications. Our products also offer unique integration options, including the ability to place our capacitive sensors underneath plastic or glass surfaces on a device or the combining of a touchpad and fingerprint sensor in one device and the ability to optimize the performance our wireless connectivity together with our AI enhanced edge SoC multimedia processors.  

Our long-term working relationships with large, global OEMs and leading display manufacturers provide us with the experience to satisfy their demanding design specifications and other requirements.  Our custom product solutions provide OEMs with numerous benefits, including:

Our collaborative efforts with our customers reduce duplication and overlap of investment and resources, enabling our OEM partners to devote more time and resources to the market development of their differentiated products.

Products

Our family of product solutions allows our customers to solve their interface needs and differentiate their products from those of their competitors.

VideoSmart™

Our VideoSmart series SoCs include CPUs running at up to 40K DMIPS, gaming-grade GPUs, voice, and Neural Network processing units.  These powerful solutions combine a CPU, NPU, and GPU into a single software-enriched SoC. They enable smart multimedia devices including set-top boxes, or STB, over-the-top, or OTT, streaming devices, soundbars, surveillance cameras and smart displays.

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AudioSmart®

AudioSmart products bring forward optimum analog, mixed-signal and digital signal processor, or DSP, technologies for high-fidelity voice and audio processing. Our AudioSmart products include far-field voice technologies that enable accurate voice command recognition from a distance while disregarding other sounds, such as music, in order to activate smart devices such as smart speakers. AudioSmart also includes personal voice and audio solutions for high-performance headsets that enable active noise cancellation.

ConnectSmart^™

Our ConnectSmart video interface IC portfolio offers a full range of high-speed video/audio/data connectivity solutions that are designed for linking CPUs/GPUs and various endpoints for applications including PC docking stations, travel docks, dongles, protocol converters and virtual reality head mounted displays.

DisplayLink^®

Our DisplayLink products utilize highly efficient video encode/decode algorithms to deliver a semiconductor-based solution which transmits compressed video frames across low bandwidth connections. These solutions are used in PC docking applications, conference room video display systems, and video casting applications.

Wireless Connectivity

Our wireless connectivity solutions include state-of-the-art Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and GNSS, to address broad IoT market applications including home automation, multimedia streamers, security cameras, wireless speakers, games, drones, printers, wearable and fitness devices, in addition to numerous other applications which require a wireless connection.

ImagingSmart^™

Our ImagingSmart solutions include a product portfolio that spans four distinct product areas including document and photo imaging controllers, digital video, fax, and modem solutions. ImagingSmart products leverage image processing IP, JPEG encoders and DSP technology to deliver a wide range of fax, modem, digital video and printer solutions for home, mobile and imaging applications.

ClearPad^®

Our ClearPad family of products enables the user to interact directly with the display on electronic devices, such as mobile smartphones, tablets, and automobiles.  Our ClearPad has distinct advantages, including low-profile form factor; high reliability, durability, and accuracy; and low power consumption.  We typically sell our ClearPad solution as a chip, together with customer-specific firmware, to sensor manufacturers, OLED manufacturers or LCD manufacturers, to integrate into their touch-enabled products.  A discrete touchscreen product typically consists of a transparent, thin capacitive sensor that is placed over or integrated into a display, such as an LCD or OLED, and combined with a flexible circuit board and a touch controller chip.  Each ClearPad solution is custom designed to integrate customer-specific input preferences such as force sensing, pen input, gloved finger recognition and proximity.

We utilize capacitive technology, rather than resistive or mechanical technology, in our touch and fingerprint solutions.  Unlike resistive and mechanical technology, our solid-state capacitive technology has no moving parts and does not require activation force, thereby providing a durable and more reliable solution that can be integrated into both curved and flat surfaces.  Capacitive technologies also allow for much thinner sensors than resistive or mechanical technology, providing for slimmer, more compact and unique industrial designs.

Our ClearPad Series 3 product family can provide full-time tracking of ten or more fingers simultaneously, and features stylus support as well as support for various sensor configurations, including traditional discrete sensors; sensor-on-lens, which includes sensor electrodes patterned on the bottom of the glass cover lens and on-cell, which includes sensor electrodes patterned on the display glass.

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Our ClearPad Series 7 product family is designed to meet the requirements of the large touchscreen market for products more closely related to tablets, notebooks, slates and similar devices.  Our ClearPad Series 7 products include low-cost, single-chip touchscreen solutions and multi-chip touchscreen solutions designed for devices that have more demanding user input requirements, such as gaming applications.

ClearView^TM

Our ClearView display driver products offer advanced image processing and low power technology for displays on electronic devices, including smartphones and tablets. ClearView products include adaptive image processing that works in concert with proprietary customization options to enable development of efficient and cost-effective high-performance solutions and faster time to market.  Our display driver products offer automatic regional control of color balance that optimizes light and dark areas of an image simultaneously, and sunlight readability enhancement capabilities that optimize image quality under various lighting conditions.  Our virtual reality bridge and virtual reality DDIC chips enable our customers to move to higher resolution displays that solve the “screen door” effect caused by lower resolution displays.

Natural ID^®

Our Natural ID family of capacitive-based fingerprint ID products is designed for use in automobiles, notebook PCs, PC peripherals, and other applications.  Thin form factors provide industrial design flexibility, while robust matching algorithms and anti-spoofing technology provide strong security.  Our Natural ID family of products spans a range of form factors, colors, and materials suitable for design on the front, back or side of a device.  

Natural ID products are designed to be compatible with Fast IDentity Online, or FIDO, protocols, enhancing security and interoperability with a broad range of solutions.  FIDO was formed to enhance online authentication by developing open, scalable technical standards to help facilitate the adoption of robust, easy to use authentication that reduces the reliance on passwords.  Natural ID products increase the security of automobile and PC products while maintaining ease of use for the customer.

TouchPad^TM

Our TouchPad family of products, which can take the place of, and exceed the functionality of a mouse, consists of a touch-sensitive pad that senses the position and movement of one or more fingers on its surface through the measurement of capacitance.  Our TouchPad provides an accurate, comfortable, and reliable method for screen navigation, cursor movement, and gestures, and provides a platform for interactive input for both the consumer and corporate markets.  Our TouchPad solutions allow our OEMs to provide stylish, simple, user-friendly, and intuitive solutions to consumers.  Our TouchPad solutions also offer various advanced features, including scrolling, customizable tap zones, tapping and dragging of icons, and device interaction.

Our TouchPad solutions are available in a variety of sizes, electrical interfaces, and thicknesses, and are designed to meet the electrical and mechanical specifications of our customers.  Customized firmware and driver software ensure the availability of specialized features.  As a result of their solid-state characteristics, our TouchPad solutions have no moving parts that wear out, resulting in a robust and reliable input solution that also allows for unique industrial designs.

SecurePad^TM

Our SecurePad integrates our Natural ID fingerprint sensor directly into the TouchPad area, improving usability and simplifying the supply chain for notebook PC manufacturers.

ClickPad^TM

Our ClickPad introduces a clickable mechanical design to the TouchPad solution, eliminating the need for physical buttons. The button-less design of our ClickPad allows for unique, intuitive industrial design and makes an excellent alternative to conventional input and navigation devices.  Our ClickPad is activated by pressing down on the internal tact switch to perform left-button or right-button clicks and provides tactile feedback similar to pressing a physical button.  The latest version of ClickPad features ClickEQ^TM, a mechanical solution that provides uniform click depth to maximize the surface area available for gestures and improves click performance over hinged designs.

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ForcePad®

Our ForcePad is a thinner version of our ClickPad, which introduces a new dimension in control through the addition of variable force sensitivity.  ForcePad is designed to provide consistent performance across OEM models through its design intelligence and self-calibration features.  By detecting the amount of force applied, ForcePad is engineered to enable more intuitive and precise user interactions in operating system controls and applications.  Designed with thin and light notebooks in mind, ForcePad is 40% thinner than a conventional touch pad.  

Other Products

Other product solutions we offer include Dual Pointing Solutions, and TouchStyk^TM.  Our dual pointing solutions offer TouchPad with a pointing stick in a single notebook computer, enabling users to select their interface of choice.  TouchStyk is a self-contained pointing stick module that uses capacitive technology similar to that used in our TouchPad.  

Technologies

We have developed and own an extensive array of technologies, encompassing ASICs, firmware, software, mechanical and electrical designs, display systems, pattern recognition, touch-sensing technologies, fingerprint sensing, voice, audio, imaging, modem and multimedia technologies.  We continue to develop technology in these areas.  We believe these technologies and the related intellectual property rights create barriers for competitors and allow us to provide high-value human interface semiconductor product solutions in a variety of high-growth markets.

Our broad line of human interface semiconductor product solutions is currently based upon the following key technologies:

In addition to these technologies, we develop firmware and device driver software that we incorporate into our products, which provide unique and advanced features.  In addition, our ability to integrate all our products to interface with major operating systems provides us with a competitive advantage.

Proprietary Microcontroller Technology.  One example of our microcontroller technology is our proprietary 16-bit microcontroller core that is embedded in the digital portion of our capacitive touch mixed signal ASICs, which is allowing us to optimize our ASICs for position sensing tasks.  Our embedded microcontroller provides great flexibility in customizing our products via firmware, which eliminates the need to design new circuitry for each new application.

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Proprietary Vector Co-Processor Technology.  Our vector co-processor technology is designed for use in our ASICs, accompanying either one of our own proprietary microcontroller cores or a commercially available one.  The co-processor boosts an ASIC’s computational performance by efficiently processing vectors of data for a range of mathematical operations.  This allows us to implement more computationally intensive algorithms within our firmware.

Multimedia Processing Technology.  This technology allows us to create multimedia SoC products for set-top boxes, soundbars, digital personal assistants, smart displays, virtual reality, OTT, audio and video.  Our video processing technology includes hardware and algorithms to reduce analog and digital noise, convert to different video formats, and enhance color and contrast.  Our products include security and secure encrypt/decrypt technology, including secure boot and hardware root of trust.

Voice and Audio Technology.  This technology allows us to develop human interface and communication products based on voice and audio interaction.  The technology embodies a broad range of analog and mixed signal circuits expertise and audio signal processing algorithms, including:

Pattern Recognition Technology.  This technology is a set of software algorithms and techniques for converting real world data, such as gestures and handwriting, into a digital form that can be recognized and manipulated within a computer.  Our technology provides reliable gesture decoding and handwriting recognition and can be used in other applications such as signature verification for a richer user experience.

Deep Learning and Neural Network Inferencing Technology.  This technology allows us to create and train deep neural networks for audio, image processing, video processing and computer vision functions.  Some of our products contain hardware designed to evaluate deep neural networks securely and with low latency.  We also have technology that allows us to compress our trained neural networks for more efficient AI-at-the-edge on our hardware.  These neural network algorithms improve the quality of the sensed data (for example, reduce the noise, or increase the resolution) as well as interpret the sensed data.

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Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuit Technology.  This hybrid analog-digital integrated circuit technology combines the power of digital computation with the ability to interface with non-digital, real-world signals, such as the position of a finger or stylus on a surface.  Our patented design techniques permit us to utilize this technology to optimize our core ASIC engine for all our products.  Our mixed-signal technology consists of a broad portfolio of circuit expertise in areas such as the following:

Wireless Technology.  Our wireless connectivity solutions include discrete and integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth solutions, and satellite-based GPS/GNSS mobile navigation receivers. Wi-Fi allows devices on a local area network to communicate wirelessly, adding the convenience of mobility to the utility of high-speed data networks. We offer a family of high performance, low power Wi-Fi chipsets. We offer products which incorporate the latest Wi-Fi standards such as 802.11AX, which is known as Wifi-6. Bluetooth is a low power technology that enables direct connectivity between devices. We offer a complete family of Bluetooth silicon and software solutions that enable customers to easily and cost-effectively add Bluetooth functionality to virtually any device. These solutions include combination chips that offer integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality, which provides significant performance advantages over discrete solutions.  

We also offer a family of GPS and GNSS semiconductor products, software and data services. These products are part of a broad location platform that enable customer devices to wirelessly communicate and receive precise location and navigational data from satellite constellations for use in various location services applications.

Video Compression Technology.  Our video interface solutions include our ConnectSmart and DisplayLink portfolios, offering a full range of interface solutions that connect devices to external displays and support the latest versions of the most widely used protocols, connectors and operating systems. Our flexible product lines for connecting devices combine high-performance interface with low power consumption and are designed for both commercial and consumer end-products. Our solutions have been broadly adopted by the top OEMs and original device manufacturers, or ODMs, to enable video expansion and protocol conversion, leverage high-end features, and deliver the bandwidth needed to drive multiple high-resolution external displays simultaneously.

Imaging and Modem Technology.  This technology allows us to create a family of SoC integrated circuits and software for printers, video cameras, fax machines and modems.  Key functional blocks include:

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Capacitive Fingerprint Sensing Technology.  Our fingerprint sensing technology simplifies the system or application authentication process by substituting the user’s fingerprint for the login name and password. Our capacitive fingerprint sensing technology provides for fingerprint authentication by scanning and matching an image of a user’s fingerprint, as well as initial fingerprint enrollment.  Our sensing technology also incorporates spoof detection and includes many implementation choices including the back of the phone or PC, button integration, touchpad integration, and under glass.

Capacitive Position and Force Sensing Technology.  Our Position Sensing technology provides a method for sensing the presence, position, and contact area of one or more fingers or a stylus on a flat or curved surface.  Our technology works with very light touch, supports full multi-touch capabilities, and provides highly responsive cursor navigation, scrolling, and selection.  It uses no moving parts, can be implemented under plastic or glass, and is extremely durable.  Our technology can also track one or more fingers in proximity to the touch surface. Our Force Sensing technology senses the direction and magnitude of a force applied to an object.  The object can either move when force is applied, like a typical joystick used for gaming applications, or it can be isometric, with no perceptible motion during use, like our TouchStyk, ForcePad, or ClearForce.  The primary competition for this technology is resistive strain gauge technology.  Our electronic circuitry determines the magnitude and direction of an applied force, permits very accurate sensing of tiny changes in capacitance, and minimizes electrical interference from other sources.  Our capacitive force sensing technology can be integrated with our position sensing technology.

Capacitive Active Pen Technology.  This technology allows us to develop a pen that can be used for input on a capacitive touchscreen.  As well as generating a signal that allows the touchscreen to track the pen, additional data, such as the pen applied force and pen button states, are also communicated to the touchscreen device.  Information can also be communicated from the touchscreen to the pen.

Multi-touch Technology.  This technology allows us to create capacitive touch products that simultaneously track the presence, position and other characteristics of multiple objects in contact with or in close proximity to a flat or curved touch surface.  It enables, for example, the recognition of multi-finger gestures, the tracking of a stylus position while the user’s palm is also in contact with the touch surface, and the simultaneous interaction of multiple users with the same touch surface.

Display Systems and Circuit Technology.  This technology enables us to develop optimized human interface semiconductor product solutions with improved compatibility with their application environments. This technology consists of mobile and large format display semiconductor expertise, including the following functional blocks:

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This technology also enables us to develop advanced products that combine the functions of the display and touch sensing systems to enable highly integrated display and touch functionality with improved performance, thinner form factors, and lower system cost.

Our latest addition to our automotive portfolio is an automotive grade integrated touch and display drivers, or TDDI, for indium gallium zinc oxide and amorphous silicon gate-in-panel displays and low-temperature polycrystalline panels up to 4K resolution.

Research and Development

We conduct ongoing research and development programs that focus on advancing our existing interface technologies, improving our current product solutions, developing new products, improving design and manufacturing processes, enhancing the quality and performance of our product solutions, and expanding our technologies to serve new markets.  Our goal is to provide our customers with innovative solutions that address their needs and improve their competitive positions.  

Our research and development programs focus on the development of accurate, easy to use, reliable, and intuitive human interfaces for electronic devices.  We believe our innovative interface technologies can be applied to many diverse products, and we believe the interface is a key factor in the differentiation of these products.  AI-at-the-edge is a focus area for us in enabling better performance and enhancing user experience in many of these products.  We believe that our interface technologies enable us to provide customers with product solutions that have significant advantages over alternative technologies in terms of functionality, size, power consumption, durability, and reliability.  We also intend to pursue strategic relationships and acquisitions to enhance our research and development capabilities, leverage our technology, and shorten our time to market with new technological applications.

Our research, design, and engineering teams frequently work directly with our customers to design custom solutions for specific applications.  We focus on enabling our customers to overcome their technical barriers and enhance the performance of their products.  We believe our engineering know-how and electronic systems expertise provide significant benefits to our customers by enabling them to concentrate on their core competencies of production and marketing.

As of the end of fiscal 2020, we employed 1,012 people in our technology, engineering, and product design functions in the United States, China, Taiwan, Japan, India, Korea, and Hong Kong.  Our research and development expenses were $302.5 million, $342.7 million, and $363.2 million for fiscal 2020, 2019, and 2018, respectively.

Intellectual Property Rights

Our success and ability to compete depend in part on our ability to maintain the proprietary aspects of our technologies and products.  We rely on a combination of patents, trade secrets, copyrights, confidentiality agreements, and other statutory and contractual provisions to protect our intellectual property, but these measures may provide only limited protection.  

As of June 27, 2020, we held 1,851 active patents and 725 pending patent applications worldwide.  Collectively, these patents and patent applications cover various aspects of our key technologies, including those for capacitive sensing, secure biometrics, display driver and integrated sensing, video processing, optical imaging, acoustics and audio processing, far-field voice and speech capture, image processing, edge computing, and wired connectivity.  Our proprietary firmware and software, including source code, are also protected by copyright laws and applicable trade secret laws.  

Our extensive array of technologies include those related to ICs, firmware, software, and mechanical hardware.  Our products rely on a combination of these technologies, making it difficult to use any single technology as the basis for replicating our products.  Furthermore, the lengths of our customers’ design cycles and the customizations required within the products we provide to our customers also serve to protect our intellectual property rights.

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Customers

Our customers include many of the world’s largest mobile and PC OEMs, based on unit shipments, as well as many large IoT OEMS, automotive manufacturers and a variety of consumer electronics manufacturers.  Our demonstrated track record of technological leadership, design innovation, product performance, cost effectiveness, and on-time deliveries have resulted in our leadership position in providing human interface semiconductor product solutions.  We believe our strong relationship with our OEM customers, many of which are also currently developing product solutions which are focused in several of our target markets, will continue to position us as a source of supply for their product offerings.

Our leading OEM customers in fiscal 2020 included the following:

We generally supply custom-designed products to OEMs through their contract manufacturers, supply chain or distributors. Sales to Fuhrmeister Electronics Co., Ltd. and Sharp Corporation accounted for 18% and 12%, respectively, of our net revenue in fiscal 2020.  

We consider both the OEMs and their contract manufacturers or supply chain partners to be our customers, as well as in some cases, our distributors.  Both the OEMs and their partners may determine the design and pricing requirements and make the overall decision regarding the use of our human interface semiconductor product solutions in their products.  The contract manufacturers and distributors place orders with us for the purchase of our products, take title to the products purchased upon delivery by us, and pay us directly for those purchases.  The majority of these customers do not have return rights except for warranty provisions.

Strategic Relationships

We have used strategic relationships to enhance our ability to offer value-added customer solutions in the past. We intend to enter additional strategic relationships with companies that may help us serve our target markets.

Sales and Marketing

We sell our product solutions for incorporation into the products of our OEM customers.  We generate sales through direct sales employees as well as outside sales representatives, distributors and value-added resellers.  Our sales personnel receive substantial technical assistance and support from our internal technical marketing and engineering resources because of the highly technical nature of our product solutions.  Sales frequently result from multi-level sales efforts that involve senior management, design engineers, and our sales personnel interacting with our customers' decision makers throughout the product development and order process.

As of the end of fiscal 2020, we employed 172 sales and marketing professionals.  We maintain customer support offices domestically and internationally, which are located in the United States, Taiwan, China, India, Korea, Japan, and Europe.  In addition, we utilize value-added resellers and sales distributors which are primarily located in the United States, China, Korea and Taiwan.

International sales constituted over 94% of our revenue for each of fiscal 2020, 2019, and 2018. Approximately 78%, 78% and 75% of our sales in fiscal 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively, were made to companies located in China, Japan, and South Korea that provide design and manufacturing services for major notebook computer and mobile product applications OEMs.  Our sales are almost exclusively denominated in U.S. dollars.  This information should be read in conjunction with Note 12 Segment, Customers, and Geographic Information to the consolidated financial statements contained elsewhere in this report.

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Manufacturing

We employ a fabless semiconductor manufacturing platform through third-party relationships.  We currently utilize third-party semiconductor wafer manufacturers to supply us with silicon wafers integrating our proprietary design specifications.  The completed silicon wafers are forwarded to third-party package and test processors for further processing into die and packaged ASICs, as applicable, which are then utilized in our custom interface products or processed as our ASIC-based solution.

After processing and testing, the die and ASICs are consigned to various contract manufacturers for assembly or are shipped directly to our customers.  During the assembly process, our die or ASIC is either combined with other components to complete the module for our custom human interface solution or the ASIC is maintained as a standalone finished good.  The finished assembled product is subsequently shipped directly to our customers or by our contract manufacturers directly to our customers for integration into their products.

We diversify our production capacity through third-party relationships, thereby strengthening our supply chain platform.  We believe our third-party manufacturing strategy provides a scalable business model, enables us to concentrate on our core competencies of research and development, technological advances, and product design and engineering, and reduces our capital investment.  

Our third-party contract manufacturers and semiconductor fabricators are predominately Asia-based organizations. We generally provide our contract manufacturers with six-month rolling forecasts of our production requirements.  We generally do not have long-term agreements with our contract manufacturers that guarantee production capacity, prices, lead times, or delivery schedules.  Our reliance on these parties exposes us to vulnerability owing to our dependence on a few sources of supply.  We believe, however, that other sources of supply are available.  We may establish relationships with other contract manufacturers in order to reduce our dependence on any one source of supply.

Periodically, we purchase inventory from our contract manufacturers when a customer delays its delivery schedule or cancels its order.  In those circumstances in which our customer has cancelled its order and we purchase inventory from our contract manufacturers, we consider a write-down to reduce the carrying value of the inventory purchased to its net realizable value. We charge write-downs to reduce the carrying value of obsolete, slow moving, and non-usable inventory to its net realizable value and charge such write-downs to cost of revenue.  We also record a liability and charge to cost of revenue for estimated losses on inventory we are obligated to purchase from our contract manufacturers when such losses become probable from customer delays or order cancellations.

Backlog

As of the end of fiscal 2020, we had a backlog of orders of $256.6 million, a decrease of $20.4 million compared with a backlog of orders as of the end of fiscal 2019 of $277.0 million.  The decrease in backlog as compared to those reflected in backlog at the end of fiscal 2019 is primarily due to a lower number of units in backlog for our mobile business at the end of fiscal 2020, largely due to the sale of our TDDI mobile business which closed in April 2020, partially offset by an increase in the number of units in backlog for the same period in our PC business, as well as higher average selling prices of products ordered in backlog in all our businesses.  Our backlog consists of products for which purchase orders have been received and are scheduled for shipment on a subsequent date.  Most orders are subject to rescheduling or cancellation with limited penalties.  Because of the possibility of customer changes in product shipments, our backlog as of a particular date may not necessarily be indicative of net revenue for any succeeding period.

Competition

IoT

Our SoC solutions enabling new forms of media consumption paradigms integrate video processing, far-field voice and linguistics processing products are sold into market segments that offer significant potential growth, ranging from home automation applications, smart assistant platforms, surveillance cameras, to STB/OTT platforms and VR/AR solutions. The markets for STB/OTT products, surveillance cameras, home automation, and smart assistant solutions require strong technology innovation and deep systems and systems engineering expertise. Our principal competition in these markets include Broadcom, MediaTek, AmLogic, and Ambarella, among others.  

We provide voice processing silicon and software solutions for voice-enabled devices, consumer and commercial imaging, and next-generation audio applications. In addition to our voice solutions, we support the audio headphone and virtual reality/mixed reality head mounted display industry with USB-C audio codec solutions for next generation wireless audio devices and wearables. Our competitors in the sale of audio products include Cirrus Logic, DSP Group, BES Technic, and Realtek.

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Our wireless products for use in IoT application markets include our technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi-Bluetooth combinations, and GPS/GNSS support our customers’ need to develop products which can wirelessly communicate to networks, remote control of edge-devices, machine-to-machine communication, among other purposes.  Our principal competition includes Infineon, Qualcomm, MediaTek, NXP, and Silicon Labs, among others.

Our automotive products include touch, display driver, and TDDI solutions for major automotive OEMs.  Our principal competitors for these products include Focaltech, Himax, and Microchip.  Our IoT video interface products are sold into PC and smartphone docks and wireless adapter market applications. Our principal competitors in the sale of IoT interface products are Parade, Megachips, and Realtek.  We provide fax, modem and print silicon and software solutions for printers, fax machines, point of sale terminals, and medical applications. Our principal competitors in these markets are Marvell and Qbit.

PC and Mobile

Our touch, display and fingerprint-based semiconductor products are sold into markets for mobile product applications, PC product applications, and other electronic devices.  The markets for touchscreen products are characterized by rapidly changing technology and intense competition.  Our principal competition in the sale of touchscreen products includes Samsung LSI, Broadcom, Goodix and various other companies involved in human interface semiconductor product solutions.  Our principal competitors in the sale of notebook touch pads are Cirque Corporation, Elan Microelectronics and Goodix.  Our principal competitors in the sale of display driver products for the mobile and PC product applications markets include Focaltech, Novatek Microelectronics, Samsung LSI and SiliconWorks.  Our principal competitors in the sale of fingerprint authentication solutions for PC product applications markets are Egis Technology, Elan Microelectronics, and Goodix.  

General

We believe our solutions-based systems and engineering experience, coupled with our technologies, offer benefits in terms of size, power consumption, durability, ease of use, cost effectiveness, and reliability when compared to our competitors and other technologies.  While our markets continue to evolve, we believe we are well positioned to compete aggressively for this business based on our proven track record, our technological expertise, our marquee global customer base, our technology roadmap, and our reputation for design innovation.  Our competitive position could be adversely affected if one or more of our current OEMs reduce their orders or if we are unable to develop new customers for our human interface semiconductor product solutions.

Employees

As of the end of fiscal 2020, we employed a total of 1,387 persons, including 203 in operations, finance, and administration; 172 in sales and marketing; and 1,012 in research and development.  Of these employees, 483 were located in North America and 904 in Asia/Pacific and the rest of the world. We consider our relationship with our employees to be good, and none of our employees are represented by a union in collective bargaining with us.

Competition for qualified personnel in our industry is extremely intense, particularly for engineering and other technical personnel.  Our success depends on our continued ability to attract, hire, and retain qualified personnel.

Information about our Executive Officers

The following table sets forth certain information regarding our executive officers as of August 17, 2020:

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Michael Hurlston has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of our Company since August 19, 2019. Prior to joining our company, Mr. Hurlston served as the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of Finisar Corporation from January 2018 to August 2019. Prior to joining Finisar, he served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Mobile Connectivity Products/Wireless Communications and Connectivity Division and held senior leadership positions in sales, marketing and general management at Broadcom Limited and its predecessor corporation from November 2001 through October 2017. Prior to joining Broadcom in 2001, Mr. Hurlston held senior marketing and engineering positions at Oren Semiconductor, Inc., Avasem, Integrated Circuit Systems, Micro Power Systems, Exar and IC Works from 1991 until 2001. Mr. Hurlston is a member of the board of directors of Ubiquiti Networks, Inc. and Vilynx Inc. Mr. Hurlston holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Davis.

Dean Butler has been the Chief Financial Officer of our Company since October 21, 2019.  Prior to joining our company, Mr. Butler served as Vice President of Finance at Marvell Technology Group Ltd. from July 2016 to October 2019. Prior to joining Marvell, he served as Controller of the Ethernet Switching Division at Broadcom Limited from January 2015 through July 2016. Prior to joining Broadcom, Mr. Butler held senior finance positions at Maxim Integrated from May 2007 to December 2014.  Mr. Butler received his Bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Saleel Awsare became the Senior Vice President and General Manager of our PC & Peripherals Division in July 2020 and had been the Senior Vice President and General Manager of our IoT Division since April 2019 and the Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing & Investor Relations since December 2018. Before joining our company as Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Audio & Imaging Products, he was President of Conexant Systems, LLC (“Conexant”) from March 2016 to July 2017, and Senior Vice President & General Manager of Audio & Imaging from April 2012 to March 2016.  Synaptics acquired Conexant in July 2017. Mr. Awsare served as President of Nuvoton Technology Corporation's U.S. operations and General Manager of Nuvoton’s audio and voice divisions from December 2008 to March 2012. Prior to Nuvoton, Mr. Awsare was the Executive Vice President and General Manager of mixed signal products for Winbond Electronics Corporation America. Before Winbond, Mr. Awsare was a director of engineering for Information Storage Devices. Mr. Awsare is a member of the Board of Directors, Audit Committee, Compensation Committee and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of Sigma Designs, Inc. and a member of the Board of Trustees of Stevens Institute of Technology. Mr. Awsare holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University.

Philip Kumin has been the Senior Vice President, Sales of our Company since March 30, 2020. Prior to joining our company, Mr. Kumin was the founder and managing partner of Paragon Technical from July 1997 to March 2020. Mr. Kumin has more than 30 years of industry experience with more than 20 semiconductor companies, including leadership roles at Brooktree (acquired by Rockwell) and Texas Instruments. Mr. Kumin received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

John McFarland has been the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of our company since November 2013.  Prior to joining our company, Mr. McFarland served for nine years as the Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of MagnaChip Semiconductor. Mr. McFarland spent his early career at law firms in Palo Alto, California, and Seoul, Korea. Mr. McFarland holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian Studies, conferred with highest distinction from the University of Michigan, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

Kermit Nolan has been the Chief Accounting Officer since February 2019 and was Interim Chief Financial Officer of our company from February 2019 to October 2019. Mr. Nolan joined the company in March 2004 and has served in various accounting, tax and finance roles including most recently as Vice President of Finance and Corporate Controller. Prior to joining our company, Mr. Nolan worked in various tax and accounting positions at two public companies including Hello Direct (acquired by GN Netcom in November 2000), and Inmac (acquired by MicroWarehouse in January 1996). Mr. Nolan began his career in accounting with KPMG, formerly, Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co. Mr. Nolan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from San Jose State University.

There are no arrangements, understandings, or family relationships pursuant to which our executive officers were selected.  There are no related party transactions between us and our executive officers.  We have entered into indemnification agreements with our officers and directors. 

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You should carefully consider the following factors, together with all the other information included in this report, in evaluating our company and our business.

We currently depend on our solutions for the mobile product applications market and the PC product applications market for a substantial portion of our revenue, and any downturn in sales of these products would adversely affect our business, revenue, operating results, and financial condition.

We currently depend on our solutions for the mobile product applications market and the PC product applications market for a substantial portion of our revenue. Any downturn in sales of these products would adversely affect our business, revenue, operating results, and financial condition.  Similarly, a softening of demand in the smartphone market, the tablet market, or the notebook portion of the PC product applications market, or a slowdown of growth in the mobile product applications market because of consumer preferences, the emergence of applications not including our solutions, or other factors would cause our business, operating results, and financial position to suffer.

Net revenue from our solutions for mobile product applications has been volatile in the past and may not increase or be less volatile in the future.

Net revenue from our solutions for mobile product applications, particularly smartphones, has been volatile in the past, and may not increase or be less volatile in the future.  Net revenue from our solutions for mobile product applications was $698.9 million for fiscal 2020, $900.1 million for fiscal 2019, and $1,021.0 million for fiscal 2018.  Our business for mobile product applications faces many uncertainties, including our success in enhancing our position in evolving markets dominated by a limited number of OEMs, and market acceptance of our products over competitive or lower-cost solutions. Our inability to address these uncertainties successfully would negatively affect our business.

A significant portion of our sales comes from one or more large customers, the loss of which could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.

Historically, we have relied on a limited number of customers for a substantial portion of our total revenue. If we lost key customers, or if key customers reduced or stopped placing orders for our high-volume products, our financial results could be adversely affected. Sales to Sharp Corporation and Fuhrmeister Electronics Co., Ltd. accounted for 10% or more of our net revenue in fiscal 2020.  During fiscal 2020, we had two OEM customers that integrated our products into their mobile products representing approximately 30% and 12% of our revenue and one OEM customer that integrated our products into their PC products that represented approximately 15% of our revenue; we sold to these customers primarily indirectly through multiple distributors. Significant reductions in sales to our largest customers, the loss of other major customers, or a general decrease in demand for our products within a short period of time could adversely affect our revenue, financial condition and business.

We sell to contract manufacturers that serve our OEM customers.  Any material delay, cancellation, or reduction of orders from any one or more of these contract manufacturers or the OEMs they serve could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.  The adverse effect could be more substantial if our other customers do not increase their orders or if we are unsuccessful in generating orders for our solutions with new customers.  Many of these contract manufacturers sell to the same OEMs, and therefore our concentration with certain OEMs may be higher than with any individual contract manufacturer.  Concentration in our customer base may make fluctuations in revenue and earnings more severe and make business planning more difficult.

Our business, results of operations and financial condition (including liquidity) and prospects may be materially and adversely affected by health epidemics, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Public health threats, such as COVID-19, influenza and other highly communicable diseases or viruses, outbreaks of which have from time to time occurred in various parts of the world in which we operate could adversely impact our operations, as well as the operations of our suppliers and customers. Any of these public health threats and related consequences could adversely affect our financial results.

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COVID-19, a potentially deadly respiratory tract infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has spread rapidly and enveloped most of the world, causing a global public health crisis. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization characterized the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. Governments in affected countries are imposing travel bans, quarantines and other emergency public health measures. In response to the virus, national and local governments in numerous countries around the world have implemented substantial lockdown measures, and other countries and local governments may enact similar policies. The United States has temporarily restricted travel by foreign nationals into the country from a number of areas. In addition, the federal government and all of the states in the U.S., have declared a state of emergency or similar disaster declaration, and many states, including California where we are headquartered, have enacted shelter-in-place or similar restrictive orders. Companies are also taking precautions, such as requiring employees to work remotely, imposing travel restrictions and temporarily closing businesses. These restrictions, and future prevention and mitigation measures, have had an adverse impact on global economic conditions, which could materially adversely affect our future operations. Uncertainties regarding the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak have resulted in market turmoil, which could also negatively impact our business, financial condition and cash flows.

These measures have impacted and may further impact our workforce and operations, the operations of our customers, and those of our respective vendors, suppliers, and partners. The disruptions to our operations caused by the COVID-19 outbreak may result in inefficiencies, delays and additional costs in our product development, sales, marketing, and customer service efforts that we cannot fully mitigate through remote or other alternative work arrangements. Also, some suppliers of materials used in the production of our products may be located in areas more severely impacted by COVID-19, which could limit our ability to obtain sufficient materials for our products. In addition, the severe global economic disruption caused by COVID-19 may cause our customers and end-users of our products to suffer significant economic hardship, which could result in decreased demand for our products in the future and materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition (including liquidity) and prospects.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve and its duration and ultimate disruption on our customers, end-users, overall demand for our products, supply chain, and the related financial impact to us, cannot be estimated at this time. Should such disruption continue for an extended period of time, the impact could have a more severe adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition (including liquidity). Additionally, weaker economic conditions generally could result in impairment in value of our tangible or intangible assets, or our ability to raise additional capital, if needed.

We are exposed to industry downturns and cyclicality in our target markets that may result in fluctuations in our operating results.

The consumer electronics industry has experienced significant economic downturns at various times.  These downturns are characterized by diminished product demand, accelerated erosion of average selling prices, and production overcapacity.  In addition, the consumer electronics industry is cyclical in nature.  We seek to reduce our exposure to industry downturns and cyclicality by providing design and production services for leading companies in rapidly expanding industry segments.  We may, however, experience substantial period-to-period fluctuations in future operating results because of general industry conditions or events occurring in the general economy.

We cannot assure you that our product solutions for new markets will be successful or that we will be able to continue to generate significant revenue from these markets.

Our product solutions may not be successful in new markets despite the fact that these product solutions are capable of enabling people to interact more easily and intuitively with a wide variety of personal computer, mobile computing, communications, entertainment, automotive, electronic and smart devices.

Various target markets for our product solutions, such as automotive touchscreens and IoT, may develop slower than anticipated or could utilize competing technologies.  The markets for certain of these products depend in part upon the continued development and deployment of wireless and other technologies, which may or may not address the needs of the users of these products.

Our ability to generate significant revenue from new markets will depend on various factors, including the following:

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Many manufacturers of these products have well-established relationships with competitive suppliers.  Our ongoing success in these markets will require us to offer better performance alternatives to other solutions at competitive costs.  The failure of any of these target markets to develop as we expect, or our failure to serve these markets to a significant extent, will impede our sales growth and could result in substantially reduced earnings and a restructuring of our operations.  We cannot predict the size or growth rate of these markets or the market share we will achieve or maintain in these markets in the future.

If we fail to maintain and build relationships with our customers, or our customers’ products which utilize our solutions do not gain widespread market acceptance, our revenue may stagnate or decline.

We do not sell any products to end users and we do not control or influence the manufacture, promotion, distribution, or pricing of the products that incorporate our solutions.  Instead, we design various solutions that our OEM customers incorporate into their products, and we depend on such OEM customers to successfully manufacture and distribute products incorporating our solutions and to generate consumer demand through marketing and promotional activities.  As a result of this, our success depends almost entirely upon the widespread market acceptance of our OEM customers’ products that incorporate our solutions.  Even if our technologies successfully meet our customers' price and performance goals, our sales could decline or fail to develop if our customers do not achieve commercial success in selling their products that incorporate our solutions.

We must maintain our relationships with our existing customers, particularly with leading notebook computer, smartphone and tablet OEMs, and expand our relationships with IoT OEMs. Our customers generally do not provide us with firm, long-term volume purchase commitments, opting instead to issue purchase orders that they can cancel, reduce, or delay, subject to certain limitations.  In order to meet the expectations of our customers, we must provide innovative solutions on a timely and cost-effective basis. This requires us to match our design and production capacity with customer demand, maintain satisfactory delivery schedules, and meet performance goals.  If we are unable to achieve these goals for any reason, our sales may decline or fail to develop, which would result in decreasing revenue.

In addition to maintaining and expanding our customer relationships, we must also identify areas of significant growth potential in other markets, establish relationships with OEMs in those markets, and assist those OEMs in developing products that incorporate our solutions.  Our failure to identify potential growth opportunities, particularly in the smartphone and the tablet market, the PC product applications market, or the IoT market, or our failure to establish and maintain relationships with OEMs in those markets, would prevent our business from growing in those markets.

We depend on third parties to maintain satisfactory manufacturing yields and delivery schedules, and their inability to do so could increase our costs, disrupt our supply chain, and result in our inability to deliver our products, which would adversely affect our operating results.

We depend on our contract manufacturers and semiconductor fabricators to maintain high levels of productivity and satisfactory delivery schedules at manufacturing and assembly facilities located primarily in Asia.  We provide our contract manufacturers with six-month rolling forecasts of our production requirements.  We generally do not, however, have long-term agreements with our contract manufacturers that guarantee production capacity, prices, lead times, or delivery schedules.  On occasion, customers require rapid increases in production, which can strain our resources and reduce our margins.  Although we have been able to obtain increased production capacity from our third-party contract manufacturers in the past, there is no guarantee that our contract manufacturers will be able to increase production capacity to meet customer demands in the future.  Our contract manufacturers also serve other customers, a number of which have greater production requirements than we do.  As a result, our contract manufacturers could determine to prioritize production capacity for other customers or reduce or eliminate deliveries to us on short notice. Qualifying new contract manufacturers, and specifically semiconductor foundries, is time consuming and might result in unforeseen manufacturing and operations problems. We may also encounter lower manufacturing yields and longer delivery schedules in commencing volume production of new products that we introduce, which could increase our costs or disrupt our supply of such products.  The loss of relationships with our contract manufacturers or assemblers, or their inability to conduct their manufacturing and assembly services for us as anticipated in terms of capacity, cost, quality, and timeliness could adversely affect our ability to fill customer orders in accordance with required delivery, quality, and performance requirements, and adversely affect our operating results.

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Shortages of components and materials may delay or reduce our sales and increase our costs, thereby harming our operating results.

The inability to obtain sufficient quantities of components and other materials necessary for the production of our products could result in reduced or delayed sales or lost orders.  Many of the materials used in the production of our products are available only from a limited number of foreign suppliers, particularly suppliers located in Asia.  In most cases, neither we nor our contract manufacturers have long-term supply contracts with these suppliers.  As a result, we are subject to increased costs, supply interruptions, and difficulties in obtaining materials.  Our customers also may encounter difficulties or increased costs in obtaining the materials necessary to produce their products into which our product solutions are incorporated. Future shortages of materials and components, including potential supply constraints of silicon, could cause delayed shipments and customer dissatisfaction, which may result in lower revenue.

We are subject to lengthy development periods and product acceptance cycles, which can result in development and engineering costs without any future revenue.

We provide solutions that are incorporated by OEMs into the products they sell.  OEMs make the determination during their product development programs whether to incorporate our solutions or pursue other alternatives.  This process requires us to make significant investments of time and resources in the design of solutions for our OEMs’ products well before our customers introduce their products incorporating our interface solutions into the market, and before we can be sure that we will generate any significant sales to our customers or even recover our investment.  During a customer’s entire product development process, we face the risk that our interfaces will fail to meet our customer’s technical, performance, or cost requirements, or that our products will be replaced by competitive products or alternative technological solutions.  Even if we complete our design process in a manner satisfactory to our customer, the customer may delay or terminate its product development efforts.  The occurrence of any of these events could cause sales to not materialize, be deferred, or be cancelled, which could adversely affect our operating results.

We face intense competition that could result in our losing or failing to gain market share and suffering reduced revenue.

We serve intensely competitive markets that are characterized by price erosion, rapid technological change, and competition from major domestic and international companies.  This intense competition could result in pricing pressures, lower sales, reduced margins, and lower market share.  Depressed economic conditions, a slowdown in the PC, mobile or IoT product applications markets, the emergence of new products not including our product solutions, rapid changes in the smartphone or IoT markets and competitive pressures may result in lower demand for our product solutions and reduced unit margins.

Some of our competitors, particularly in the markets for mobile product applications and other electronic devices, have greater market recognition, larger customer bases, and substantially greater financial, technical, marketing, distribution, and other resources than we possess and that afford them greater competitive advantages.  As a result, they may be able to devote greater resources to the promotion and sale of products, negotiate lower prices for raw materials and components, deliver competitive products at lower prices, and introduce new product solutions and respond to customer requirements more quickly than we can.  Our competitive position could suffer if one or more of our customers determine not to utilize our custom engineered, total solutions approach and instead, decide to design and manufacture their own interfaces, contract with our competitors, or use alternative technologies.

Our ability to compete successfully depends on a number of factors, both within and outside our control.  These factors include the following:

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If we do not keep pace with technological innovations, our products may not remain competitive and our revenue and operating results may suffer.

We operate in rapidly changing, highly competitive markets.  Technological advances, the introduction of new products and new design techniques could adversely affect our business unless we are able to adapt to changing conditions.  Technological advances could render our solutions less competitive or obsolete, and we may not be able to respond effectively to the technological requirements of evolving markets.  Therefore, we will be required to expend substantial funds for and commit significant resources to enhancing and developing new technology, which may include purchasing advanced design tools and test equipment, hiring additional highly qualified engineering and other technical personnel, and continuing and expanding research and development activities on existing and potential solutions.

Our research and development efforts with respect to new technologies may not result in customer or market acceptance.  Some or all of those technologies may not successfully make the transition from the research and development stage to cost-effective production as a result of technology problems, competitive cost issues, yield problems, and other factors.  Even if we successfully complete a research and development effort with respect to a particular technology, our customers may decide not to introduce or may terminate products utilizing the technology for a variety of reasons, including difficulties with other suppliers of components for the products, superior technologies developed by our competitors and unfavorable comparisons of our solutions with these technologies, price considerations and lack of anticipated or actual market demand for the products.

Our business could be harmed if we are unable to develop and utilize new technologies that address the needs of our customers, or our competitors or customers develop and utilize new technologies more effectively or more quickly than we can.  Any investments made to enhance or develop new technologies that are not successful could have an adverse effect on our net revenue and operating results.

We may not be able to enhance our existing product solutions and develop new product solutions in a timely manner.

Our future operating results will depend to a significant extent on our ability to continue to provide new solutions that compare favorably with alternative solutions on the basis of time to introduction, cost, performance, and end user preferences.  Our success in maintaining existing customers, attracting new customers, and developing new business depends on various factors, including the following:

Our inability to enhance our existing product solutions and develop new product solutions on a timely basis could harm our operating results and impede our growth.

Additionally, our human interface solutions are designed to integrate touch, handwriting, vision and voice capabilities.  New computing and communications devices could be developed that call for a different interface solution.  Existing devices could also be modified to allow for a different interface solution.  Our business could be harmed if our products become noncompetitive as a result of a technological breakthrough that allows a new interface solution to displace our solutions and achieve significant market acceptance.

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Changes to import, export and economic sanction laws may expose us to liability, increase our costs and adversely affect our operating results.

As a global company headquartered in the U.S., we are subject to U.S. laws and regulations, including import, export and economic sanction laws. These laws may include prohibitions on the sale or supply of certain products to embargoed or sanctioned countries, regions, governments, persons and entities, may require an export license prior to the export of the controlled item, or may otherwise limit and restrict the export of certain products and technologies.  Many of our customers, suppliers and contract manufacturers are foreign companies or have significant foreign operations. The imposition of new or additional economic and trade sanctions against our major customers, suppliers or contract manufacturers could result in our inability to sell to, and generate revenue from such customer, supplier or contract manufacturer. As a result of restrictive export laws, our customers may also develop their own solutions to replace our products or seek to obtain a greater supply of similar or substitute products from our competitors that are not subject to these restrictions, which could material and adversely affect our business and results of operations.  

In addition, compliance with additional export regulations may result in increased costs to the company. Although we have an export compliance program, maintaining and adapting our export controls program to new and shifting regulations is expensive, time-consuming and requires significant management attention. Failure to comply with trade or economic sanctions could subject the company to legal liabilities and fines from the U.S. government. We must also comply with export restrictions and laws imposed by other countries affecting trade and investments. Although these restrictions and laws have not materially restricted our operations in the recent past, there is a significant risk that they could do so in the future, which would materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

Changes to international trade policy and rising concerns of international tariffs, including tariffs applied to goods traded between the United States and China, could materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.

Many of the materials used in the production of our products are available only from a limited number of foreign suppliers, particularly suppliers located in Asia.  The imposition of tariffs against foreign imports of certain materials could make it more difficult or expensive for us or our OEMs to obtain sufficient quantities of components and other materials necessary for the production of our products or products which incorporate our product solutions.  Any interruptions to supply could result in delay or cancellation of our products, which could adversely affect our business and operating results.  

In addition, the institution of trade tariffs both globally and between the U.S. and China carry the risk that China’s overall economic condition may be negatively affected, which could affect our China operations, including the manufacturing operations on which we rely in China. Further, imposition of tariffs could cause a decrease in the sales of our products to customers located in China or to our OEMs selling to customers in China, which could impact our business, revenue and operating results.

International sales and manufacturing risks could adversely affect our operating results.

Our manufacturing and assembly operations are primarily conducted in China, Taiwan, and Thailand by contract manufacturers and semiconductor fabricators.  We have sales and logistics operations in Hong Kong, and sales and engineering design support operations in China, Denmark, India, Japan, Korea, Poland, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the U.K.  These international operations expose us to various economic, political, regulatory, and other risks that could adversely affect our operations and operating results, including the following:

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If any of these risks associated with international operations materialize, our operations could significantly increase in cost or be disrupted, which would negatively affect our revenue and operating results.

Our operating results could be adversely affected by fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies.

We transact business predominantly in U.S. dollars, and we invoice and collect our sales in U.S. dollars.  A weakening of the U.S. dollar could cause our overseas vendors to require renegotiation of either the prices or currency we pay for their goods and services.  In the future, customers may negotiate pricing and make payments in non-U.S. currencies.  For fiscal 2020, approximately 12% of our costs were denominated in non-U.S. currencies, including Armenian dram, Canadian dollars, European Union euro, Hong Kong dollars, Indian rupee, New Taiwan dollars, Japanese yen, Korean won, Chinese yuan, and Swiss francs.

If our overseas vendors or customers require us to transact business in non-U.S. currencies, fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates could affect our cost of goods, operating expenses, and operating margins, and could result in exchange losses.  In addition, currency devaluation could result in a loss to us if we hold deposits of that currency.  Hedging foreign currencies can be difficult, especially if the currency is not freely traded.  We cannot predict the impact of future exchange rate fluctuations on our operating results.  

If we fail to manage our growth effectively, our infrastructure, management, and resources could be strained, our ability to effectively manage our business could be diminished, and our operating results could suffer.

The failure to manage our planned growth effectively could strain our resources, which would impede our ability to increase revenue.  We have increased the number of our solutions in the past and may plan to further expand the number and diversity of our solutions and their use in the future.  Our ability to manage our planned diversification and growth effectively will require us to:

In connection with the expansion and diversification of our product and customer base, we may increase our personnel and make other expenditures to meet demand for our expanding product offerings, including offerings in the mobile product applications market, the PC applications market, and the IoT market.  Any increase in expenses or investments in infrastructure and facilities in anticipation of future orders that do not materialize would adversely affect our profitability.  Our customers also may require rapid increases in design and production services that place an excessive short-term burden on our resources and the resources of our contract manufacturers.  An inability to quickly expand our development, design or production capacity or an inability of our third-party manufacturers to quickly expand development, design or production capacity to meet this customer demand could result in a decrease to our revenue or operating results. If we cannot manage our growth effectively, our business and operating results could suffer.

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We depend on key personnel who would be difficult to replace, and our business will likely be harmed if we lose their services or cannot hire additional qualified personnel.

Our success depends substantially on the efforts and abilities of our senior management and other key personnel.  The competition for qualified management and key personnel, especially engineers, is intense.  Although we maintain nondisclosure covenants with most of our key personnel, and our key executives have change of control severance agreements, we do not have employment agreements with many of them.  The loss of services of one or more of our key employees or the inability to hire, train, and retain key personnel, especially engineers and technical support personnel, and capable sales and customer-support employees outside the United States, could delay the development and sale of our products, disrupt our business, and interfere with our ability to execute our business plan.

If we are unable to obtain stockholder approval of share-based compensation award programs or additional shares for such programs, we could be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace for qualified personnel or may be required to increase the cash element of our compensation program.

Competition for qualified personnel in our industry is extremely intense, particularly for engineering and other technical personnel.  Our compensation program, which includes cash and share-based compensation award components, has been instrumental in attracting, hiring, motivating, and retaining qualified personnel. Our success depends on our continued ability to use our share-based compensation programs to effectively compete for engineering and other technical personnel and professional talent without significantly increasing cash compensation costs.  In the future, if we are unable to obtain stockholder approval of our share-based compensation programs or additional shares for such programs, we could be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace for qualified personnel or we may be required to increase the cash elements of our compensation program to account for this disadvantage.

Our ability to compete successfully and continue growing as a company depends on our ability to adequately protect our proprietary technology and confidential information.

We protect our proprietary technology and confidential information through the use of patents, trade secrets, trademarks, confidentiality agreements and other contractual provisions. The process of seeking patent protection is lengthy and expensive. Further, there can be no assurance that even if a patent is issued, that it will not be challenged, invalidated or circumvented, or that the rights granted under the patents will provide us with meaningful protection or any commercial advantage.

We have not applied for, and do not have, any copyright registration on our technologies or products.  We have applied to register certain of our trademarks in the United States and other countries. There can be no assurance that we will obtain registrations of principal or other trademarks in key markets.  Failure to obtain registrations could compromise our ability to fully protect our trademarks and brands, and could increase the risk of challenge from third parties to our use of our trademarks and brands. Effective intellectual property protection may be unavailable or limited in some foreign countries in which we operate. In particular, the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of intellectual property in China, where we derive a significant portion of our net sales, and certain other countries where we derive net sales, are still evolving and historically, have not protected and may not protect in the future, intellectual property rights to the same extent as laws developed in the United States.

We do not consistently rely on written agreements with our customers, suppliers, manufacturers, and other recipients of our technologies and products and therefore, some trade secret protection may be lost and our ability to enforce our intellectual property rights may be limited.  Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements which are in place may not be adequate to protect our proprietary technologies or may be breached by other parties. Additionally, our customers, suppliers, manufacturers, and other recipients of our technologies and products may seek to use our technologies and products without appropriate limitations. In the past, we did not consistently require our employees and consultants to enter into confidentiality, employment, or proprietary information and invention assignment agreements.  Therefore, our former employees and consultants may try to claim some ownership interest in our technologies and products or may use our technologies and products competitively and without appropriate limitations. Unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or otherwise use aspects of our technologies and products that we regard as proprietary. Other companies, including our competitors, may independently develop technologies that are similar or superior to our technologies, duplicate our technologies, or design around our patents. If our intellectual property protection is insufficient to protect our intellectual property rights, we could face increased competition in the markets for our technologies and products.

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We may pursue, and from time to time defend litigation to enforce our intellectual property rights, to protect our trade secrets, and to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others.  These litigations, whether successful or unsuccessful, could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and operating results.

Any claims that our technologies infringe the intellectual property rights of third parties could result in significant costs and have a material adverse effect on our business.

We cannot be certain that our technologies and products do not and will not infringe issued patents or other third party proprietary rights.  Any claims, with or without merit, could result in significant litigation costs and diversion of resources, including the attention of management, and could require us to enter into royalty or licensing agreements, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business. There can be no assurance that such licenses could be obtained on commercially reasonable terms, if at all, or that the terms of any offered licenses would be acceptable to us.  We may also have to pay substantial damages to third parties or indemnify customers or licensees for damages they suffer if the products they purchase from us or the technology they license from us violates any third party intellectual property rights. An adverse determination in a judicial or administrative proceeding, or a failure to obtain necessary licenses to use such third-party technology could prevent us from manufacturing, using, or selling certain of our products, and there is no guarantee that we will be able to develop or acquire alternate non-infringing technology.

In addition, we license certain technology used in and for our products from third parties.  These third-party licenses are granted with restrictions, and there can be no assurances that such third-party technology will remain available to us on commercially acceptable terms.

If third-party technology currently utilized in our products is no longer available to us on commercially acceptable terms, or if any third party initiates litigation against us for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights, we may not be able to sell certain of our products and we could incur significant costs in defending against litigation or attempting to develop or acquire alternate non-infringing products, which would have an adverse effect on our operating results.

If we become subject to product returns or claims resulting from defects in our products, we may incur significant costs resulting in a decrease in revenue.

We develop complex products in an evolving marketplace and generally warrant our products for a period of 12 months from the date of delivery.  Despite testing by us and our customers, defects may be found in existing or new products.  Manufacturing errors or product defects could result in a delay in recognition or loss of revenue, loss of market share, or failure to achieve market acceptance.  Additionally, defects could result in financial or other damages to our customers, causing us to incur significant warranty, support, and repair costs, and diverting the attention of our engineering personnel from key product development efforts.

Any acquisitions that we undertake could be difficult to integrate, disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value, and harm our operating results.

We expect to continue to pursue opportunities to acquire other businesses and technologies in order to complement our current solutions, expand the breadth of our markets, enhance our technical capabilities, or otherwise create growth opportunities.  We cannot accurately predict the timing, size, and success of any currently planned or future acquisitions.  We may be unable to identify suitable acquisition candidates or to complete the acquisitions of candidates that we identify.  Increased competition for acquisition candidates or increased asking prices by acquisition candidates may increase purchase prices for acquisitions to levels beyond our financial capability or to levels that would not result in the returns required by our acquisition criteria.  Acquisitions may also become more difficult in the future as we or others acquire the most attractive candidates.  Unforeseen expenses, difficulties, and delays frequently encountered in connection with rapid expansion through acquisitions could inhibit our growth and negatively impact our operating results.  If we make any future acquisitions, we could issue stock that would dilute existing stockholders' percentage ownership, incur substantial debt, assume contingent liabilities, or experience higher operating expenses.

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We may be unable to effectively complete an integration of the management, operations, facilities, and accounting and information systems of acquired businesses with our own; efficiently manage, combine or restructure the operations of the acquired businesses with our operations; achieve our operating, growth, and performance goals for acquired businesses; achieve additional revenue as a result of our expanded operations; or achieve operating efficiencies or otherwise realize cost savings as a result of anticipated acquisition synergies.  The integration of acquired businesses involves numerous risks, including the following:

We cannot assure you that we would be successful in overcoming problems encountered in connection with any acquisitions, and our inability to do so could disrupt our operations, result in goodwill or intangible asset impairment charges, and adversely affect our business.

Potential strategic alliances may not achieve their objectives, and the failure to do so could impede our growth.

We have entered, and we anticipate that we will continue to enter, into strategic alliances.  We continually explore strategic alliances designed to enhance or complement our technology or to work in conjunction with our technology; to provide necessary know-how, components, or supplies; and to develop, introduce, and distribute products utilizing our technology.  Certain strategic alliances may not achieve their intended objectives, and parties to our strategic alliances may not perform as contemplated.  The failure of these alliances to achieve their objectives may impede our ability to introduce new products and enter new markets.

We must finance the growth of our business and the development of new products, which could have an adverse effect on our operating results.

To remain competitive, we must continue to make significant investments in research and development, marketing, and business development.  Our failure to sufficiently increase our net revenue to offset these increased costs would adversely affect our operating results.

From time to time, we may seek additional equity or debt financing to provide for funds required to expand our business, including through acquisitions.  We cannot predict the timing or amount of any such requirements at this time.  If such financing is not available to us on satisfactory terms, we may be unable to expand our business or to develop new business at the rate desired and our operating results may suffer.  If obtained, the financing itself carries risks including the following:  (i) debt financing increases expenses and must be repaid regardless of operating results; and (ii) equity financing, including the issuance of convertible notes or additional shares in connection with acquisitions, could result in dilution to existing stockholders and could adversely affect the price of our common stock.

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Transactions relating to our Convertible Notes may dilute the ownership interest of our stockholders or may otherwise depress the price of our common stock.

The conversion of some or all of our outstanding 0.50% Convertible Senior Notes due 2022 (the “Notes”) would dilute the ownership interests of existing stockholders to the extent we deliver shares upon conversion of any such notes.  If the Notes become convertible under the terms of the indenture, and if holders subsequently elect to convert their notes, we could be required to deliver to them a significant number of shares of our common stock. Any sales in the public market of the common stock issuable upon such conversion could adversely affect prevailing market prices of our common stock. In addition, the existence of the Notes may encourage short selling by market participants because the conversion of such notes could be used to satisfy short positions. Additionally, anticipated conversion of such notes into shares of our common stock could depress the price of our common stock. Please see Note 6 Debt to the consolidated financial statements contained elsewhere in this report for more information about our Notes.

Our indebtedness could adversely affect our financial condition or operating flexibility and prevent us from fulfilling our obligations outstanding under our credit agreement, the Notes, and other indebtedness we may incur from time to time.

On June 26, 2017, we completed the offering of the Notes in the aggregate principal amount of $525.0 million, of which $220.0 million of the net proceeds were used to repay the amounts outstanding under our credit agreement (which we refer to herein, as amended and supplemented, as the “Credit Agreement”) with the lenders party thereto, or the Lenders, and Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, or the Administrative Agent, as administrative agent for the Lenders, with a corresponding reduction of revolver commitments under the Credit Agreement to $250.0 million, $100.0 million of which was outstanding as of June 27, 2020.  We are permitted under the indenture governing our Notes and the Credit Agreement to incur additional debt under certain conditions, including additional secured debt.  If new debt were to be incurred in the future, the related risks that we now face could intensify.

Our level of indebtedness could have important consequences on our future operations, including:

Our business may not generate sufficient cash flow from operations and future borrowings may not be available to us under the Credit Agreement, the indenture governing the Notes or otherwise in an amount sufficient to enable us to pay our debt or to fund our other liquidity needs.

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The accounting method for convertible debt securities that may be settled in cash, such as the Notes, could have a material effect on our reported financial results.

In May 2008, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, issued Accounting Standards Codification, or ASC, 470-20, Debt with Conversion and Other Options. Under ASC 470-20, companies are required to separately account for the liability and equity components of convertible debt instruments that may be settled entirely or partially in cash upon conversion in a manner that reflects the issuer’s effective interest. The equity component of our Notes is required to be included in the additional paid-in capital section of stockholders’ equity on our consolidated balance sheet, and the value of the equity component is treated as an original issue discount for purposes of accounting for the debt component of the Notes. As a result, we are required to record a greater amount of non-cash interest expense in current periods presented as a result of the amortization of the discounted carrying value of the Notes to their face amount over the term of the Notes. ASC 470-20 requires interest to include both the current period’s amortization of the debt discount and the instrument’s coupon interest, which could adversely affect our reported or future financial results, the trading price of our common stock and the trading price of the Notes. In addition, under certain circumstances, the convertible debt instruments that may be settled entirely or partially in cash will be accounted for utilizing the treasury stock method beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 2018, the effect of which is that the shares issuable upon conversion of the Notes are not included in the calculation of diluted earnings per share except to the extent that the conversion value of the Notes exceeds their principal amount. Under the treasury stock method, for diluted earnings per share purposes, the transaction is accounted for as if the number of shares of common stock that would be necessary to settle such excess, if we elected to settle such excess in shares, are issued. In August 2020, the FASB issued ASU No. 2020-06, Debt—Debt with Conversion and Other Options (Subtopic 470-20) and Derivatives and Hedging - Contracts in Entity’s Own Equity (Subtopic 815-40), which simplifies the accounting for convertible instruments. The guidance removes certain accounting models which separate the embedded conversion features from the host contract for convertible instruments, requiring bifurcation only if the convertible debt feature qualifies as a derivative under ASC 815 or for convertible debt issued at a substantial premium. The ASU removes certain settlement conditions required for equity contracts to qualify for the derivative scope exception, permitting more contracts to qualify for it. In addition, the guidance eliminates the treasury stock method to calculate diluted earnings per share for convertible instruments and requires the use of the if-converted method. The ASU is effective for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2021, including interim reporting periods within those annual periods, with early adoption permitted no earlier than the fiscal year beginning after December 15, 2020. We are currently evaluating the impact of the new guidance on our consolidated financial statements.

The covenants in the Credit Agreement impose restrictions that may limit our operating and financial flexibility.

The Credit Agreement includes certain covenants that limit (subject to certain exceptions) our ability to, among other things: (i) incur or guarantee additional indebtedness; (ii) incur or suffer to exist liens securing indebtedness; (iii) make investments; (iv) consolidate, merge or transfer all or substantially all of our assets; (v) sell assets; (vi) pay dividends or other distributions on, redeem or repurchase capital stock; (vii) enter into transactions with affiliates; (viii) amend, modify, prepay or redeem subordinated indebtedness; (ix) enter into certain restrictive agreements; (x) engage in a new line of business; and (xi) enter into sale leaseback transactions. In addition, the Credit Agreement contains financial covenants that (i) restrict the amount of capital expenditures that may be made in any fiscal year, (ii) require the ratio of the amount of our consolidated total indebtedness to consolidated EBITDA to be less than certain maximum ratio levels, and (iii) require the ratio of the amount of our consolidated EBITDA to consolidated interest expense to be greater than a certain minimum ratio level.

If we violate these covenants and are unable to obtain waivers, our debt under the Credit Agreement would be in default and could be accelerated, and could permit, in the case of secured debt, the lenders to foreclose on our assets securing the Credit Agreement. If the indebtedness is accelerated, we may not be able to repay our debt or borrow sufficient funds to refinance it. Even if we are able to obtain new financing, it may not be on commercially reasonable terms or on terms that are acceptable to us. If our debt is in default for any reason, our cash flows, results of operations or financial condition could be materially and adversely affected. In addition, complying with these covenants may also cause us to take actions that may make it more difficult for us to successfully execute our business strategy and compete against companies that are not subject to such restrictions.

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If we are unable to maintain effective internal control over our financial reporting, we may incur significant expenses to remediate internal control deficiencies, lose investor confidence and our share price may decline.

We are subject to rules adopted by the SEC, pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or SOX, which requires us to include in our quarterly and annual reports on Forms 10-Q and 10-K, our management’s report on, and assessment of the effectiveness of, our internal control over financial reporting.  We have concluded that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, however, we need to maintain our existing processes and systems and incorporate and adapt to new or improved processes and systems as our business grows and changes, including in connection with planned acquisitions. This continuous process of maintaining and adapting our internal controls and complying with SOX is expensive, time-consuming and requires significant management attention. We cannot be certain that we will be able to maintain adequate and effective internal controls over our, and our acquired companies’ financial processes and reporting and ensure compliance with SOX and SEC rules. Further, as we grow our company, including through acquisitions, our internal controls may become more complex and may require significantly more resources to ensure they remain effective.  Failure to comply with SOX and SEC rules, including a delay in or failure to successfully integrate new businesses into our internal control over financial reporting, a failure to implement required new or improved controls, or difficulties encountered in the implementation of such new or improved controls, could harm our operating results or cause us to not meet our reporting obligations. If we or our auditors identify material weaknesses in our internal controls, the disclosure of that fact, even if quickly remedied, may cause investors to lose confidence in our consolidated financial statements and the trading price of our common stock may decline. Remediation of a material weakness could require us to incur significant expense and expend significant management attention.  Failure to remedy any material weakness could result in inaccurate financial statements, an inability for the company to report our financial results on a timely and accurate basis, a loss in investor confidence, decline in the trading price of our common stock, restriction on access to worldwide capital markets, and sanctions or investigation by regulatory authorities, including the SEC or the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

If tax laws change in the jurisdictions in which we do business or if we receive a material tax assessment in connection with an examination of our income tax returns, our consolidated financial position, results of operations and cash flows could be adversely affected.

We are subject to U.S. federal, state, and foreign income taxes in the various jurisdictions in which we do business. In addition, we are required to pay U.S. federal taxes on the operating earnings of certain of our foreign subsidiaries. Our future effective tax rates and the value of our deferred tax assets could be adversely affected by changes in tax laws in the U.S. or in the foreign jurisdictions in which we operate. In addition, we are subject to the examination of our income tax returns by the tax authorities in the jurisdictions in which we do business. The calculation of tax liabilities involves significant judgment in estimating the impact of uncertainties in the application of highly complex tax laws.  Our results have in the past, and could in the future, include favorable and unfavorable adjustments to our estimated tax liabilities in the period a determination of such estimated tax liability is made or resolved, upon the filing of an amended return, upon a change in facts, circumstances, or interpretation, or upon the expiration of a statute of limitation.  While we believe we have adequately provided for reasonably foreseeable outcomes in connection with the resolution of income tax uncertainties, the resolution of these uncertainties in a manner inconsistent with our expectations could have a material impact on our consolidated financial position, result of operations, or cash flows.

We may incur material environmental liabilities as a result of prior operations at an acquired company.

In connection with our acquisition in July 2017 of Conexant, we agreed to assume certain environmental liabilities, including remediation of environmental impacts at a property formerly owned and operated by Conexant (the “Conexant Site”) and for potential future claims alleging personal injury or property damage related to the environmental impacts at and about the Conexant Site. We continue to incur costs to investigate and remediate the Conexant Site’s environmental impacts, and we are at risk for future personal injury and property damage claims related to the Conexant Site.  Various federal, state and local authorities regulate the release of hazardous substances into the environment and can impose substantial fines if our remediation efforts at or about the Conexant Site fail or are deemed inadequate.  In addition, changes in laws, regulations and enforcement policies, the discovery of previously unknown contamination at the Conexant Site, the implementation of new technology at the Conexant Site, or the establishment or imposition of stricter federal, state, or local cleanup standards or requirements with respect to the Conexant Site could require us to incur additional costs in the future that could have a negative effect on our financial condition or results of operations.

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We face risks associated with security breaches or cyberattacks.

We face risks associated with security breaches or cyber-attacks of our computer systems or those of our third-party representatives, vendors, and service providers.  Although we have implemented security procedures and controls to address these threats, our systems may still be vulnerable to data theft, computer viruses, programming errors, attacks by third parties, or similar disruptive problems.  If our systems, or systems owned by third parties affiliated with our company, were breached or attacked, the proprietary and confidential information of our company, our employees and our customers could be disclosed and we may be required to incur substantial costs and liabilities, including the following: liability for stolen assets or information; fines imposed on us by governmental authorities for failure to comply with privacy laws or for disclosure of any personally identifiable information as a part of such attack; costs of repairing damage to our systems; lost revenue and income resulting from any system downtime caused by such breach or attack; loss of competitive advantage if our proprietary information is obtained by competitors as a result of such breach or attack; increased costs of cyber security protection; costs of incentives we may be required to offer to our customers or business partners to retain their business; damage to our reputation; and expenses to rectify the consequences of the security breach or cyberattack.  In addition, any compromise of security from a security breach or cyberattack could deter customers or business partners from entering into transactions that involve providing confidential information to us.  As a result, any compromise to the security of our systems could have a material adverse effect on our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results.

The accounting requirements for income taxes on certain of our share-based compensation awards may subject our future quarterly and annual effective tax rates to volatility.

We recognize a tax benefit upon expensing nonqualified stock options and restricted stock units, or RSUs, issued under our share-based compensation plans.  However, under current accounting standards, we cannot recognize that tax benefit concurrent with expensing incentive stock options and employee stock purchase plan shares (qualified stock options) issued under our share-based compensation plans.  For qualified stock options that vested after our adoption of the applicable accounting standards, we recognize the tax benefit only in the period when disqualifying dispositions of the underlying stock occur and, for qualified stock options that vested prior to our adoption of the applicable accounting standards, the tax benefit is recorded directly to additional paid-in capital.  Accordingly, because we cannot recognize the tax benefit for share-based compensation expense associated with qualified stock options until the occurrence of future disqualifying dispositions of the underlying stock, such disqualified dispositions may happen in periods when our stock price substantially increases, and because a portion of that tax benefit may be directly recorded to additional paid-in capital, our future quarterly and annual effective tax rates may be subject to volatility.

Our charter documents and Delaware law could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us and discourage a takeover.

Our certificate of incorporation and the Delaware General Corporation Law contain provisions that may have the effect of making more difficult or delaying attempts by others to obtain control of our company, even when such attempts may be in the best interests of our stockholders.  Our certificate of incorporation also authorizes our Board of Directors, without stockholder approval, to issue one or more series of preferred stock, which could have voting and conversion rights that adversely affect or dilute the voting power of the holders of our common stock.  Delaware law also imposes conditions on certain business combination transactions with “interested stockholders.”  Our certificate of incorporation divides our Board of Directors into three classes, with one class to stand for election each year for a three-year term after the election.  The classification of directors tends to discourage a third party from initiating a proxy solicitation or otherwise attempting to obtain control of our company and may maintain the incumbency of our Board of Directors, as this structure generally increases the difficulty of, or may delay, replacing a majority of directors.  Our certificate of incorporation authorizes our Board of Directors to fill vacancies or newly created directorships.  A majority of the directors then in office may elect a successor to fill any vacancies or newly created directorships, thereby increasing the difficulty of, or delaying a third party’s efforts in, replacing a majority of directors.

The market price of our common stock has been and may continue to be volatile.

The trading price of our common stock has been and may continue to be subject to wide fluctuations in response to various factors, including the following:

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In addition, stocks of technology companies have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that often have been unrelated or disproportionate to these companies’ operating performance.  Public announcements by technology companies concerning, among other things, their performance, accounting practices, or legal problems could cause the market price of our common stock to decline regardless of our actual operating performance.

Not applicable.

Our principal executive offices, as well as our principal research and development, sales, marketing, and administrative functions, are located in San Jose, California, where we own and utilize approximately 161,000 square feet of facilities.  We also have research and development functions in leased offices in California, Georgia, Massachusetts and Texas.  Our two Asia/Pacific principal offices are located in leased offices in Hong Kong and Japan, where we have sales, operations, and research and development functions.  We have leased facilities with logistics operations in Hong Kong and Japan, leased facilities with sales and support operations in China, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan, and leased facilities with engineering design support operations in China, England, India, Japan, Korea, Poland, Switzerland, Taiwan, the U.K. and California, U.S.

We are party to various litigation matters and claims arising from time to time in the ordinary course of business.  While the results of such matters cannot be predicted with certainty, we believe that the final outcome of such matters will not have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.  

For further information regarding current legal proceedings, see Note 7 Leases, Commitments and Contingencies to the consolidated financial statements contained elsewhere in this report.

Not applicable.

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PART II

Market Information on Common Stock

Our common stock has been listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market (formerly the Nasdaq National Market) under the symbol "SYNA" since January 29, 2002.  Prior to that time, there was no public market for our common stock.  

Stockholders

As of August 17, 2020, there were approximately 126 holders of record of our common stock.  The closing price of our common stock as quoted on the Nasdaq Global Select Market as of August 17, 2020 was $84.95.

Dividends

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our common stock.  We currently plan to retain all earnings to finance the growth of our business, make our debt payments, or purchase shares under our common stock repurchase program.  Payments of any cash dividends in the future will depend on our financial condition, operating results, and capital requirements, as well as other factors deemed relevant by our Board of Directors.

Our Credit Agreement also places restrictions on the payment of any dividends.  For a further description of the terms of the Credit Agreement, see Note 6 Debt to the consolidated financial statements contained elsewhere in this report.

Stock-Based Compensation

For information on securities authorized for issuance under our equity compensation plans, see Item 12. Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters.

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

From April 2005 through June 2020, our Board of Directors cumulatively authorized the repurchase of $1.4 billion for our common stock in our stock repurchase program, which expires in July 2021.  The remaining amount authorized for repurchase under our stock repurchase program was $177.4 million as of June 27, 2020.  During the three-month period ended June 27, 2020, repurchases under the stock repurchase program were as follows:

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Performance Graph

The following line graph compares cumulative total stockholder returns for the five years ended June 27, 2020 for (i) our common stock, (ii) the Nasdaq Composite Index (iii) S&P Semiconductor Select Industry Index and (iv) the Russell 2000 Index.  The graph assumes an investment of $100 on June 30, 2015.  The calculations of cumulative stockholder return on the Nasdaq Composite Index, the S&P Semiconductor Select Industry Index, and the Russell 2000 Index include reinvestment of dividends.  The calculation of cumulative stockholder return on our common stock does not include reinvestment of dividends because we did not pay any dividends during the measurement period.  The historical performance shown is not necessarily indicative of future performance.

The performance graph above shall not be deemed “filed” for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or otherwise subject to the liability of that section.  The performance graph above will not be deemed incorporated by reference into any filing of our company under the Exchange Act or the Securities Act.

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The following table presents selected financial data for each fiscal year in the five-year period ended June 27, 2020.  Our fiscal year is the 52- or 53-week period ending on the last Saturday in June. Fiscal 2018 was a 53-week period and all other fiscal years presented were 52-week periods. Our past results of operations are not necessarily indicative of our future results of operations.  You should read the selected financial data below in conjunction with Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and our consolidated financial statements and related notes contained elsewhere in this report.