PART I

 

Item 1.  Business

 

Overview

 

We are a leading provider of high-performance modular memory subsystems serving customers in diverse industries that require superior memory performance to empower critical business decisions. We have a long history of introducing disruptive new products, such as one of the first load reduced dual in-line memory modules ("LRDIMM") based on our distributed buffer architecture, which has been adopted by the industry for DDR4 LRDIMM. We were also one of the first to bring NAND flash memory ("NAND flash") to the memory channel with our NVvault non-volatile dual in-line memory modules ("NVDIMM") using software-intensive controllers and merging dynamic random access memory integrated circuits (“DRAM ICs” or "DRAM") and NAND flash to solve data bottleneck and data retention challenges encountered in high-performance computing environments. We recently introduced a new generation of storage class memory products called HybriDIMM to address the growing need for real-time analytics in Big Data applications and in-memory databases.

 

Due to the ground-breaking product development of our engineering teams, we have built a robust portfolio of over 100 issued and pending U.S. and foreign patents, many seminal, in the areas of hybrid memory, storage class memory, rank multiplication and load reduction. Since our inception in 2000, we have dedicated substantial resources to the development and protection of technology innovations essential to our business. Our early pioneering work in these areas has been broadly adopted in industry-standard LRDIMM and in NVDIMM. Our objective is to continue to innovate in our field and invest further in our intellectual property portfolio, with the goal of monetizing our intellectual property through a combination of product sales and licensing, royalty or other revenue-producing arrangements, which may result from defense of our patents through enforcement actions against parties we believe are infringing them. These arrangements can be structured in a variety of ways, including one-time paid-up fees or ongoing royalty arrangements. We aim to generate a portion of our revenues with this type of arrangement in the future, while continuing to pursue revenue growth from sales of our products.

 

In November 2015, we entered into a joint development and license agreement (“JDLA”) with Samsung pursuant to which we and Samsung have agreed to work together to jointly develop new storage class memory technologies including a standardized product interface for NVDIMM-P memory modules in order to facilitate broad industry adoption of this new technology. The JDLA also includes comprehensive cross-licenses to our and Samsung’s patent portfolios for the purpose of developing these new technologies, grants Samsung a right of first refusal to acquire our HybriDIMM technology before we offer the technology to a third party and grants us access to competitively priced DRAM and NAND flash raw materials. The JDLA also provided for a non-recurring engineering (“NRE”) fee that we received from Samsung for the joint development and calls for potential marketing collaboration and for the exchange of potential monetary consideration as progress is made towards commercialization of our storage class memory product. Moreover, we believe Samsung represents an important strategic partner with a high level of technical capability in memory that can facilitate bringing our HybriDIMM technology to market.

 

Further, in September 2016, we took action to protect and defend our innovations by filing legal proceedings for patent infringement against SK hynix and two of its subsidiaries in the U.S. International Trade Commission ("ITC") and in district court. We are seeking an exclusion order in the ITC that directs U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop allegedly infringing SK hynix RDIMM and LRDIMM products from entering the United States. The evidentiary hearing in the ITC investigations will occur in May 2017, with a final initial determination expected to be issued by the ITC in October 2017. In the district court proceedings, we are primarily seeking damages. Our patents involved in the proceedings cover key features of RDIMM and LRDIMM, which we believe are strategic product lines for SK hynix that together account for a significant portion of SK hynix's total revenue and profits.

 

Our Industry

 

The global high-performance memory module market is driven by increasing demand from data center and enterprise storage applications for improved input/output (I/O) performance, lower latency and data retention capabilities

---

 

in the event of unexpected system failure. Global data center IP traffic is expected to reach 40 zettabytes of data in 2020, corresponding to 40 billion terabyte storage drives of data, up from 3.4 zettabytes in 2014. The proliferation of mobile devices, social media platforms and cloud-based software applications is resulting in the creation of unprecedented amounts of unstructured data. In order to manage and analyze this data, new computing and memory architectures are not satisfying the needs in the industry.

 

In high-performance computing environments, such as cloud-based computing and Big Data applications, a system's overall processing speed is limited to the central processing unit's ("CPU") ability to access data cached in memory. Memory speeds have failed to keep pace with improvements in CPU processing speeds, resulting in buffering delays encountered in highly intensive computing environments. To mitigate challenges arising from differences in CPU and memory clock speeds, data center operators have increased the number of servers in their facilities as well as the memory content in each server. Memory capacity is expanded through the use of DIMMs, generally incorporating up to 16 GB of DRAM per module with today’s technology and moving up to 64 GB of DRAM per module and beyond. Our technology enables an intelligent controller to be integrated onto the DIMM, in order to manage the rapid flow of data between the CPU and memory. The number of DIMMs incorporated into a server increases in correlation with the number of processing cores in the CPU. DDR4 DIMMs incorporate our load-reduction technology to mitigate the trade-off between operating speed and memory capacity inherent in prior generations of server DIMM. These load-reduced DIMMs, or LRDIMMs, are now the pre-dominant memory technology used in high-capacity servers and high-performance computing clusters.

 

Technical challenges arising from the production of DRAM using leading edge semiconductor manufacturing processes is limiting the material's long-term viability as the high-speed memory of choice in demanding computing environments. Conversely, NAND flash, while characterized by lower access speeds, is scaling down in cost and scaling up in density at a significantly better rate than DRAM. This has led the industry to explore alternative computer architectures and new memory materials capable of bridging DRAM's superior access speed with NAND flash's lower cost and higher densities. We expect that memory subsystems relying on intelligent controller technology to leverage NAND flash will most effectively address the industry's growing need for high-speed data management and analytics.

 

Products

 

 

Our ability to introduce new or enhanced products that achieve customer or market acceptance in a timely manner has been and we believe will continue to be important factors in developing and maintaining our competitive position. Below are descriptions of our commercially available products and our new products that have been publicly announced, as well as other products that we sell.

---

 

 

Storage Class Memory

 

Using an industry standard DDR4 LRDIMM interface, we believe our HybriDIMM is the industry’s first storage class product capable of operating in existing Intel x86 servers without BIOS and hardware changes.  HybriDIMM unifies DRAM and NAND flash in a plug-and-play module delivering terabyte storage capacities operating at nanosecond memory speeds. HybriDIMM’s architecture combines an on-DIMM co-processor with our PreSight predictive software-defined data management algorithm. HybriDIMM’s feature-set encompasses the NVDIMM functionalities adopted by the industry. HybriDIMM dramatically improves application performance by reducing data access latency by up to 1,000 times versus the fastest existing storage solution and provides up to an 80% cost reduction compared to the highest existing memory density for in-memory applications. We publicly demonstrated a HybriDIMM prototype in August 2016, and we are planning to sample HybriDIMM with customers in the second half of 2017 and subsequently work with customers to transition to volume production.

 

Nonvolatile Memory

 

Our Vault product line enables customers to accelerate data running through their servers and storage and reliably protect enterprise-level cache, metadata and log data by providing near instantaneous recovery in the event of a system failure or power outage.  In 2015, sales of these products represented approximately 20% of our net product sales. Listed below is a summary of our nonvolatile memory offering.

 

EXPRESSvault PCIe (EV3). EV3 is a plug-and-play memory card for server appliances which provides data acceleration and data protection.  It is compatible with industry standard PCIe 3.0 x8 lane slots, eliminating the need for proprietary hardware and extra motherboard space.  EXPRESSvault ships with Linux and Windows drivers compatible with standard PCIe peripheral command sets.

 

NVvault DDR3 NVDIMM (NV3). NV3 provides data acceleration and data protection in a Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (“JEDEC”) standard DD3 interface for integration into industry-standard server and storage solutions. NV3 incorporates our patented Vault cache-to-flash controller in conjunction with general purpose CPUs, redundant array of independent disks (“RAID”) adapters and other devices.

 

NVvault DDR4 NVDIMM (NV4). NV4 relies on the NVDIMM-N interface specification to provide data acceleration and data protection in a JEDEC standard DDR4 interface.  We have demonstrated NV4 to deliver a 200% performance improvement in transaction-based workloads compared to PCIe NAND devices.

 

Specialty DIMMs and Embedded Flash

 

A portion of our net product sales is from original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) sales of specialty memory modules and flash-based products, the majority of which are utilized in data center and industrial applications.  When developing custom modules for an OEM system launch, we engage with our OEM customers from the earliest stages of new product development definition, providing us valuable insight into their full range of system architecture and performance requirements.  This close collaboration has also allowed us to develop a significant level of systems expertise. We leverage a portfolio of proprietary technologies and design techniques, including efficient planar design, alternative packaging techniques and custom semiconductor logic, to deliver memory subsystems with persistence, high density, small form factor, high signal integrity, attractive thermal characteristics, reduced power consumption and low cost per bit.

 

Component and Other Product Resales

 

We also resell certain Samsung products that we purchase under the terms of our JDLA with Samsung to certain end-customers that are not reached in Samsung’s distribution model. In 2016, resales of these products represented approximately 21% of our net product sales. Additionally, we sell excess component inventory of DRAM ICs and NAND flash to distributors and other users of memory integrated circuits.

 

---

 

 

Technology

 

We have developed our products based on our portfolio of proprietary technologies and design techniques. Below are descriptions of our technology competencies.

 

PreSight Technology

 

PreSight technology is, we believe, a breakthrough that allows for data that lives on a slower media, such as NAND flash, to coexist on the memory channel without breaking the deterministic nature of the memory channel. This is achieved by pre-fetching data into DRAM before an application needs it and ensures the memory channel’s integrity is maintained while moving the data on the DIMM. PreSight technology is material and protocol agnostic, allowing for leverage of future storage and memory technologies on the DIMM. Our HybriDIMM incorporates our PreSight technology for predictive memory management. 

 

Distributed Buffer Architecture

 

We invented the distributed buffer architecture that enables the buffering of data signals along the bottom edge of the memory module using multiple data buffer devices distributed between the edge connector and the DRAM. The result is shorter data paths, improved signal integrity and reduced latency compared to the industry-standard design for LRDIMM. Our HyperCloud product was our first load reduced DIMM built on this distributed buffer architecture.

 

IC Design Expertise

 

We have designed special algorithms that can be implemented in stand-alone integrated circuits or integrated into other functional blocks in application-specific integrated circuits (“ASICs”). We utilize these algorithms in our HybriDIMM product to incorporate rank multiplication and load reduction functionality. We also incorporate these algorithms in our NVvault product line of RDIMMS.

 

Proprietary PCB Designs

 

We utilize advanced techniques to optimize electronic signal strength and integrity within a PCB. These techniques include the use of 8-layer or 10-layer boards, matching conductive trace lengths, a minimized number of conductive connectors, or vias, and precise load balancing to, among other benefits, help reduce noise and crosstalk between adjacent traces. In addition, our proprietary designs for the precise placement of intra-substrate components allow us to assemble memory subsystems with significantly smaller physical size, enabling OEMs to develop products with smaller footprints for their customers.

 

Very Low Profile Designs

 

We believe we were the first company to create memory subsystems in a form factor of less than one inch in height. Our innovative very low profile (“VLP”) DIMMs provide developers of server blades, storage bridge bay applications, telecommunications servers, switches and routers with a wide range of high performance memory options where efficient use of motherboard space is critical. Our technology has allowed us to decrease the system board space required for memory, and improve thermal performance and operating speeds, by enabling our customers to use alternative methods of component layout. Our latest VLP memory product includes a patented PlanarX memory module technology providing 32 gigabyte 4Rx4 memory solutions for dense space requirements.

 

Thermal Management Designs

 

We design our memory subsystems to ensure effective heat dissipation. We use thermal cameras to obtain thermal profiles of the memory subsystem during the design phase, allowing us to rearrange components to enhance

---

 

thermal characteristics and, if necessary, replace components that do not meet specifications. We also develop and use proprietary heat spreaders to enhance the thermal management characteristics of our memory subsystems.

 

Our Strategy

 

Our objective is to be the leading supplier of storage class memory and other high-performance hybrid memory solutions. Key aspects of our growth strategy include:

 

Invest to Extend Our Intellectual Property Portfolio

 

We believe we own the largest portfolio of patents pertaining to high-performance server memory, hybrid memory and storage class memory that have withstood legal challenges. We believe our patent portfolio covers a range of high-volume products in the marketplace today that incorporate and practice our pioneering work in the field of high-performance memory and hybrid memory. We intend to continue investing in our intellectual property portfolio to further establish ourselves as an innovator in the high-performance memory subsystem market and to identify emerging customer requirements for future generations of products. This may include filing additional U.S. and foreign patent applications related to our technology advancements in order to expand the scope and strengthen the position of our portfolio.

 

Actively Pursue Intellectual Property Monetization Opportunities

 

We intend to vigorously defend our patent portfolio and other intellectual property rights, including, when necessary, through pursuit of enforcement actions seeking injunctive relieve or monetary damages, and aggressively pursue monetization avenues for these rights, including licensing, royalty or other revenue-producing arrangements. We dedicate substantial resources to protecting our intellectual property, including efforts to defend our patents against challenges made by way of reexamination and review proceedings at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”), and we expect these activities to continue for the foreseeable future.

 

Increase our Net Product Sales from our Base of Hybrid Memory Products

 

We intend to drive adoption of our portfolio of nonvolatile memory subsystems, EV3 and NV4, through collaboration with ecosystem partners.

 

Customers

 

In 2016, we primarily marketed and sold our products to leading OEMs in the server, high-performance computing and communications markets. Additionally, we resell certain Samsung products that we purchase under the terms of our JDLA with Samsung to certain end-customers that are not reached in Samsung’s distribution model, including storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. Consistent with the concentrated nature of the customer base in our target markets, a small number of large customers have historically accounted for a significant portion of our net product sales.  Net product sales to our largest customer, UATC, LLC, represented approximately 16% of our net product sales in 2016, and Dell and Singh Semiconductor and Systems represented approximately 27% and 10% of our net product sales in 2015, respectively. For further information regarding our customer base, refer to Note 10 to our consolidated financial statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this report.

 

The composition of major customers and their respective contributions to our net product sales have varied and will likely continue to vary from period to period as our existing and prospective customers progress through the life cycle of the products they produce and sell.

 

We do not have long-term agreements with any of our customers. Our sales are made primarily pursuant to standard purchase orders that we often receive no more than two weeks in advance of the desired delivery date and that may be rescheduled or cancelled on relatively short notice, which reduces our backlog of firm orders and our ability to

---

 

accurately estimate future customer requirements for our products. Customers are generally allowed limited rights of return for up to 30 days, except for sales of excess inventories, which contain no right-of-return privileges.

 

Additionally, we offer warranties on our memory subsystems generally ranging from one to three years, depending on the product and negotiated terms of purchase agreements with our customers. Such warranties require us to repair or replace defective products returned to us during such warranty period at no cost to the customer.

 

For additional information regarding our net product sales from external customers by geographic area, refer to Note 11 to our consolidated financial statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this report. The international scope of our operations, including our sales of products to customers located outside the United States and our manufacturing operations located outside the United States, exposes us to significant risks, such as, for instance, operational integration and currency exchange challenges and uncertainties in the economic and political climate in the countries in which we operate or make sales, including pronounced uncertainties regarding trade restrictions following the results of the recent U.S. presidential election. Refer to Item 1A. Risk Factors of this report for more information.

 

Sales and Marketing

 

We primarily market and sell our products through a direct sales force and a network of independent sales representatives.  Our sales activities focus primarily on developing strong relationships at the technical, marketing and executive management levels within existing and prospective OEM and ODM customers, large Datacenters and system builder customers.

 

We utilize well-trained, highly technical program management teams to drive new product development and quickly respond to our customers' needs and expectations. Our program management teams provide quick response times and act as a single point-of-contact for issues that may arise during the sales process. Additionally, they help us address the long-term business and technology goals of our customers. We employ a team approach to business development whereby our sales team and independent representatives identify, qualify and prioritize customer prospects through offices in a number of locations worldwide.

 

Manufacturing

 

We manufacture substantially all of our products at our facility in Suzhou in the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”). This in-house manufacturing, combined with our advanced engineering and design capabilities, allows us to assemble our memory subsystems reliably and in high volume. Our manufacturing facility is capable of surface mount assembly, subsystem testing, system‑level burn-in testing, programming, marking, labeling and packaging. At each stage of the production cycle, including product prototyping, qualification sample production and high-volume manufacturing and delivery, we focus on providing our customers with rapid response and short manufacturing turn-around times. Manufacturing cycle times for our products, from receipt of order, are typically one week or less and in some cases as short as two days.

 

We acquire components and materials such as field-programmable gate arrays (“FPGAs”), ASICs, DRAM ICs and NAND flash, directly from integrated circuit manufacturers and assemble them into finished subsystems. We have developed strong supplier relationships with several manufacturers of these components, which we believe gives us direct and ready access to the critical components we need for our production activities. Additionally, we typically qualify our products with our customers using multiple component manufacturers, which affords us the flexibility to choose from several suppliers. We believe that this efficient procurement and management of components for our subsystems benefits our customers in the form of lower costs and increased product availability. While we have developed relationships with a number of component suppliers that we could potentially use, our actual purchases of inventory are concentrated in a small number of suppliers, including Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., from which we obtained 73% of our total inventory purchases in 2016, and Arrow Electronics and Barun Electronics, Inc., from which we obtained 14% and 12% of our total inventory purchases in 2015, respectively. Further, our JDLA with Samsung contractually commits Samsung to supply NAND flash and DRAM products to us upon our request at competitive prices. For further information regarding our supplier concentrations, refer to Note 10 to our consolidated financial statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this report. We schedule production based on purchase order commitments and

---

 

anticipated orders. We release raw materials to the manufacturing floor by means of an online shop floor control system, which allows for internal quality analysis, direct access to inventory information and production floor material tracking. We have a flexible manufacturing workforce, which allows us to manage unforecasted demand. In addition, in order to mitigate inventory risks, we have the capability to sell excess quantities of certain component inventories of DRAM ICs and NAND flash to distributors and other users of memory integrated circuits. 

 

Our quality assurance engineers work with our suppliers to ensure that the raw materials we receive meet our high quality standards. These engineers also perform onsite supplier factory audits and use our internal test and inspection systems to verify that purchased components and materials meet our specifications. Our supplier quality program and incoming material quality control program are important aspects of our overall manufacturing process.

 

We perform ongoing reliability testing on our memory subsystems and share the results of that testing with our customers. We believe that this improves the system design process and allows for the elimination of potential problems at an early stage of the manufacturing process. In addition, we have implemented procedures that require all of our memory subsystems to undergo functional and system burn-in testing prior to delivery to a customer. We also supplement our test capabilities with advanced imaging technology to inspect the quality of our assemblies.

 

Our manufacturing facility is certified in International Organization for Standardization (“ISO”) 9001:2008 Quality Management Systems and ISO 14001:2004 Environmental Management Standards.

 

Competition

 

Our products are primarily targeted to OEMs in the server, high-performance computing and data storage markets. These markets are intensely competitive, as numerous companies vie for business opportunities at a limited number of large OEMs and other customers. We face competition from DRAM suppliers, memory module providers and logic suppliers for many of our products, including EXPRESSvault, NVvault and HybriDIMM. Additionally, if and to the extent we enter new markets or pursue licensing arrangements to monetize our technologies and intellectual property portfolio, we may face competition from a large number of competitors that produce solutions utilizing similar or competing technologies.

 

Some of our customers and suppliers may have proprietary products or technologies that are competitive with our products, or could develop internal solutions or enter into strategic relationships with, or acquire, other high-density memory module providers. Any of these actions could reduce our customers’ demand for our products. Some of our significant suppliers of memory integrated circuits may be able to manufacture competitive products at lower costs by leveraging internal efficiencies, or could choose to reduce our supply of memory integrated circuits, which could adversely affect our ability to manufacture our memory subsystems on a timely basis, if at all.

 

Certain of our competitors have substantially greater financial, technical, marketing, distribution and other resources, broader product lines, lower cost structures, greater brand recognition and longer standing relationships with customers and suppliers. Some of our competitors may also have a greater ability to influence industry standards than we do. Additionally, some of our competitors may have more extensive or established patent portfolios than we do. We may not be able to compete effectively against any of these organizations.

 

We expect our competitors to continue to improve the performance of their current products and potentially reduce their prices. In addition, our competitors may develop future generations and enhancements of competitive products or new or enhanced technologies that may offer greater performance and improved pricing or render our technologies obsolete. Our ability to compete in our current target markets and potential future markets will depend in large part on our ability to successfully develop, introduce and sell new and enhanced products or technologies on a timely and cost-effective basis and to respond to changing market requirements. We believe that the principal competitive factors in the selection of high-performance memory subsystems by existing and potential future customers are:

 

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We believe that we compete favorably with respect to these factors. However, if our target markets disagree or if circumstances changes with respect to one or more of these competitive factors, our market position and prospectus could deteriorate and our revenues could decline.

 

Research and Development

 

Our industry is characterized by rapid technological change, evolving industry standards and rapid product obsolescence. As a result, continuous development of new technology, processes and product innovation is necessary in order to be successful. We believe that the continued and timely development of new products and improvement of existing products are critical to our business and prospects for growth.

 

To this end, we have assembled a team of engineers with expertise in computer architectures, system memory, subsystem design and memory software, as well as PCB design, VLP design and thermal management. Our engineers also focus on developing and incorporating new techniques, methodologies and processes for testing and manufacturing our products.

 

Our engineers closely engage with our customers and their engineering teams at early stages in their systems development and new product definition. This collaboration provides us with valuable insight into the customer’s system architecture, power budget, performance requirements, operating environment (such as air flow and operating temperature) and any mechanical constraints. Our engineers use this information to provide guidance and solutions to implement optimum memory subsystems. This close collaboration has also allowed us to develop a significant level of systems expertise. An important aspect of our research and development effort is to understand the challenges faced by our customers and provide cost -effective solutions that satisfy their requirements by utilizing our industry knowledge, proprietary technologies and technical expertise.

 

In our product development, we use advanced design tools that allow us to model behavior of a signal trace on our memory modules as well as airflow and thermal profiles of all components in the system. These design tools enable real-time simulation for signal integrity and behavioral modeling of our designs using the same models as our component suppliers. These simulation tools help us reduce or eliminate electronic signal reflections, clock skews, signal jitter and noise, which can reduce system performance and reliability, which allows us to develop optimum solutions for our customers.

 

In our product development efforts, we have designed and developed custom semiconductor logic devices. These logic devices are integrated into our next-generation memory subsystems in order to improve their performance. Logic devices in our NVvault and EXPRESSvault hybrid memory products enable DRAM and NAND flash memory to be efficiently combined for the purposes of accelerating system performance and providing mission -critical back-up. The development of these semiconductor devices is an important part of our overall product development efforts.

 

---

 

We have invested significant resources in our product development efforts. Our customers typically do not separately compensate us for design and engineering work involved in developing application‑specific products for them. Our total expenditures for research and development were approximately $6.3 million and $6.0 million for 2016 and 2015, respectively.

 

Intellectual Property Rights

 

Our high-performance memory subsystems are developed in part using our proprietary technologies, and we believe that the strength of our intellectual property rights will be important to the success of our business. We utilize patent and trade secret protection, confidentiality agreements with customers and partners, disclosure and invention assignment agreements with employees and consultants and other contractual provisions to protect our intellectual property and other proprietary information. As of December 31, 2016, we had 66 U.S. and foreign patents issued and 42 U.S. and foreign patent applications pending. Assuming that they are properly maintained, our patents will expire at various dates between 2022 and 2035. Our issued patents and patent applications relate to the use of custom logic in high-performance memory subsystems, PCB design, layout and packaging techniques. Our patents cover different aspects of our technology innovations and various claim scopes and, as such, we believe that our business is not materially dependent upon any one claim in any of our existing patents or pending patent applications.

 

Employees

 

As of December 31, 2016, we had approximately 95 employees (including 78 full-time employees and 17 temporary employees). Of these employees, 38 were located in the United States and 40 were located in the PRC and the Republic of Korea. We had 52 employees in operations, 25 employees in research and development, 11 employees in sales and marketing, and 7 employees engaged in other administrative functions. In addition to our employees, a significant portion of our workforce consists of contract personnel. We are not party to any collective bargaining agreements with any of our employees. We have never experienced a work stoppage, and we believe our employee relations are good.

 

Compliance with Environmental and Other Laws

 

We are subject to various and frequently changing U.S. federal, state and local and foreign laws and regulations relating to the protection of the environment, including laws governing the discharge of pollutants into the air and water, the management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes and the clean-up of contaminated sites. In particular, some of our manufacturing processes may require us to handle and dispose of hazardous materials from time to time. For example, in the past our manufacturing operations have used lead-based solder in the assembly of our products. Today, we use lead-free soldering technologies in our manufacturing processes, as this is required for products entering the European Union. We could incur substantial costs, including clean-up costs, civil or criminal fines or sanctions and third-party claims for property damage or personal injury, as a result of violations of or noncompliance with these and other environmental laws and regulations. Although we have not incurred significant costs to date to comply with these laws and regulations, new laws or changes to current laws and regulations to make them more stringent could require us to incur significant costs to remain in compliance.

 

We are also subject to a variety of laws and regulations relating to other matters, including workplace health and safety, labor and employment, foreign business practices, public reporting and taxation, among others. It is difficult and costly to manage the requirements of every authority having jurisdiction over our various activities and to comply with their varying standards. Any changes to existing regulations or adoption of new regulations may result in significant additional expense to us and our customers. Further, our failure to comply with any applicable laws and regulations may result in a variety of administrative, civil and criminal enforcement measures, including monetary penalties or imposition of sanctions or other corrective requirements.

 

General Information

 

We were incorporated in Delaware in June 2000 and commenced operations in September 2000.  Our principal executive offices are located at 175 Technology Drive, Suite 150, Irvine, California 92618 and our telephone number at

---

 

that address is (949) 435-0025. We maintain a website at www.netlist.com (this reference to our website is an inactive textual reference only and is not intended to incorporate our website into this report). We file reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and make available, free of charge, on or through our website, our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy and information statements and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. Our website also contains copies of our corporate governance policy, code of business conduct and ethics, insider trading policy and whistleblower policy, as well as copies of the charters for our audit committee, compensation committee and nominating and corporate governance committee.

 

Item 1A.  Risk Factors

 

Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. Before making any investment decision with respect to our securities, you should carefully consider each of the following risk factors as well as the other information in this report.  Each of these risk factors, either alone or taken together, could adversely affect our business, operating results, financial condition, ability to access capital resources and future growth prospects, as well as adversely affect the value of an investment in our common stock. As a result, you could lose some or all of any investment you have made or may make in our common stock. In assessing these risks, you should also refer to the other information contained or incorporated by reference in this report, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes.   The risks described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks of which we are not presently aware or that we currently believe are immaterial may also impair our business operations and financial position.  

 

Risks Related to Our Business  

   

We have historically incurred losses and may continue to incur losses.  

   

Since the inception of our business in 2000, we have only experienced one fiscal year (2006) with profitable results. In order to regain profitability, or to achieve and sustain positive cash flows from operations, we must reduce operating expenses and/or increase our revenues and gross margins. Although we have in the past engaged in a series of cost reduction actions, such expense reductions alone may not make us profitable or allow us to sustain profitability if it is achieved and eliminating or reducing strategic initiatives could limit our opportunities and prospects. Our ability to achieve profitability will depend on increased revenue growth from, among other things, monetization of our intellectual property, increased demand for our memory subsystems and other product offerings and our ability to expand into new and emerging markets. We may not be successful in any of these pursuits and we may never achieve profitability or sustain profitability if achieved.

 

We may not have sufficient working capital to fund our planned operations and, as a result, we may need to raise additional capital in the future, which may not be available when needed, on acceptable terms or at all.  

We believe that, taking into account our planned activities, we have sufficient cash resources to satisfy our capital needs for at least the next 12 months. However, our estimates of our operating revenues and expenses and working capital requirements could be incorrect, and we may use our cash resources faster than we anticipate. Further, some or all of our ongoing or planned investments may not be successful and could result in further losses.

Our capital requirements will depend on many factors, including, among others:

·

the  acceptance of, and demand for, our products;

 

·

our success, and that of our strategic partners, in developing and selling products derived from our technology;

 

·

the extent and timing of any investments in developing, marketing and launching new or enhanced products or technologies;

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We expect to rely in the near term on funds raised pursuant to recent public and private placement offerings of debt and equity securities, such as our November 2015 issuance of convertible debt to Samsung and our September 2016 public offering of common stock. However, until we can generate sufficient revenues to finance our cash requirements from our operations, which we may never do, we may need to increase our liquidity and capital resources by one or more measures, which may include, among others, reducing operating expenses, restructuring our balance sheet by negotiating with creditors and vendors, entering into strategic partnerships or alliances, raising additional financing through the issuance of debt, equity, or convertible securities or pursuing alternative sources of capital, such as through asset or technology sales or licenses. We may not be able to obtain capital when needed, on terms acceptable to us or at all.

Inadequate working capital would have a material adverse effect on our business and operations and could cause us to fail to execute our business plan, fail to take advantage of future opportunities or fail to respond to competitive pressures or customer requirements. A lack of sufficient funding may also require us to significantly modify our business model and/or reduce or cease our operations, which could include implementing cost-cutting measures or delaying, scaling back or eliminating some or all of our ongoing and planned investments in corporate infrastructure, research and development projects, business development initiatives, and sales and marketing activities, among other activities. Modification of our business model and operations could result in an impairment of assets, the effects of which cannot be determined. Furthermore, if we continue to issue equity or convertible debt securities to raise additional funds, our existing stockholders may experience significant dilution, and the new equity or debt securities may have rights, preferences and privileges that are superior to those of our existing stockholders. If we incur additional debt, it may increase our leverage relative to our earnings or to our equity capitalization or have other material consequences. If we pursue asset or technology sales or licenses to obtain additional capital, our operational capacity may be limited and any revenue streams or business plans that are dependent on the sold or licensed assets may be eliminated. Moreover, we may incur substantial costs in pursuing any future capital-raising transactions, including investment banking, legal and accounting fees, printing and distribution expenses and other similar costs, which would reduce the benefit of the capital received from the transaction.

We have incurred a material amount of indebtedness to fund our operations, the terms of which have required us to pledge substantially all of our assets as security. Our level of indebtedness and the terms of such indebtedness could adversely affect our operations and liquidity.  

   

We have incurred debt secured by all of our assets under our convertible note issued to an affiliate of Samsung, Samsung Venture Investment Co. (“SVIC”), and our credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”). Our convertible note issued to SVIC is secured by a first priority security interest in our patent portfolio and a second priority security interest in substantially all of our other assets. Our credit facility with SVB is secured by a first priority security interest

---

 

in all of our assets other than our patent portfolio, to which SVB has a second priority security interest. The SVIC and SVB debt instruments contain customary representations, warranties and indemnification provisions, as well as affirmative and negative covenants that, among other things, restrict our ability to:

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The SVIC and SVB debt instruments also include events of default, including, among other things, payment defaults, any breach by us of representations, warranties or covenants, certain bankruptcy events and certain material adverse changes. If an event of default were to occur under either debt instrument and we were unable to obtain a waiver for the default, the lenders could, among other remedies, accelerate our obligations under the debt instruments and exercise their rights to foreclose on their security interests, which would cause substantial harm to our business and prospects.

 

Additionally, incurrence and maintenance of this or other debt could have material adverse consequences on our business and financial condition, such as:

   

   

   

   

   

  We are involved in and expect to continue to be involved in costly legal and administrative proceedings to enforce or protect our intellectual property rights and to defend against claims that we infringe the intellectual property rights of others.  

As is common in the semiconductor industry, we have experienced substantial litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights. We are currently involved in litigation and USPTO proceedings based on alleged third-party infringement of our patents, and lawsuits claiming that we are infringing others’ intellectual property rights also have been and may in the future be brought against us.

---

 

The process of obtaining and protecting patents is inherently uncertain. In addition to the patent issuance process established by law and the procedures of the USPTO, we must comply with JEDEC administrative procedures to protect our intellectual property within its industry standard-setting process. These procedures evolve over time, are subject to variability in their application and may be inconsistent with each other. Failure to comply with the USPTO’s or JEDEC’s administrative procedures could jeopardize our ability to claim that our patents have been infringed.

Our business strategy includes litigating claims against others, such as our competitors, customers and former employees, to enforce our intellectual property, contractual and commercial rights including, in particular, our patent portfolio and our trade secrets, as well as to challenge the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others. This or other similar proceedings could also subject us to counterclaims or countersuits against us, or the parties we sue could seek to invalidate our patents or other intellectual property rights through reexamination or similar processes at the USPTO or similar bodies. Moreover, any legal disputes with customers could cause them to cease buying or using our products or delay their purchase of our products and could substantially damage our relationship with them.

Making use of new technologies and entering new markets increases the likelihood that others might allege that our products infringe on their intellectual property rights. The likelihood of this type of lawsuit may also be increased due to the limited pool of experienced technical personnel that we can draw upon to meet our hiring needs. As a result, a number of our existing employees have worked for our existing or potential competitors at some point during their careers, and we anticipate that a number of our future employees will have similar work histories. Moreover, lawsuits of this type may be brought, even if there is no merit to the claim, as a strategy to prevent us from hiring qualified candidates, drain our financial resources and divert management’s attention away from our business.

Litigation is inherently uncertain. An adverse outcome in existing or any future litigation could force us to, among other things:



 

 

 

 

 

 

Moreover, any litigation, regardless of its outcome, would involve a significant dedication of resources, including time and costs, would divert management’s time and attention and could negatively impact our results of operations. As a result, any current or future infringement claims by or against third parties could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

---

 

We are involved in and expect to continue to be involved in legal proceedings at the ITC and related enforcement actions to stop allegedly infringing SK hynix RDIMM and LRDIMM products from entering the United States and in district court to seek damages for patent infringement.  

On September 1, 2016, we took action to protect and defend our innovations by filing legal proceedings for patent infringement against SK hynix and two of its subsidiaries in the ITC and in district court. We are seeking an exclusion order in the ITC that directs U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop allegedly infringing SK hynix RDIMM and LRDIMM products from entering the United States. ITC investigations typically proceed on an expedited basis. The evidentiary hearing in the ITC investigation will occur in May 2017, with a final initial determination expected to be issued by the ITC in October 2017, but there can be no guarantee that our proceedings will follow such a timeline.

Intellectual property litigation is expensive and time‑consuming, regardless of the merits of any claim, and could divert management’s attention from operating our business. In addition, lawsuits in the ITC and in district courts are subject to inherent uncertainties due to the complexity of the technical issues involved, and we may not be successful in our actions. Moreover, if we are countersued by SK hynix and lose the suit, we could be required to pay substantial damages or lose some of our intellectual property protections. Furthermore, we may not be able to reach a settlement with SK hynix to license our patent portfolio, and even if we are able to reach a settlement, the terms of the arrangement may not be as favorable as we anticipated. Any of the foregoing could cause us to incur significant costs, decrease the perceived value of our intellectual property and materially adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We may be unsuccessful in monetizing our intellectual property portfolio.  

 

We have dedicated substantial resources to the development and protection of technology innovations essential to our business, and we expect these activities to continue for the foreseeable future. We also intend to aggressively pursue monetization avenues for our intellectual property portfolio, potentially including licensing, royalty or other revenue-producing arrangements. However, our revenues are currently generated by our product sales and we may never be successful in generating a revenue stream from our intellectual property, in which case our investments of time, capital and other resources into our intellectual property portfolio may not provide adequate, or any, returns.

 

Although we may pursue agreements with third parties to commercially license certain of our products or technologies, we may never successfully enter into any such agreement. Further, the terms of any such agreements that we may reach with third-party licensees are uncertain and may not provide sufficient royalty or other licensing revenues to us to justify our costs of developing and maintaining the licensed intellectual property or may otherwise include terms that are not favorable to us. Additionally, the pursuit of licensing arrangements would require by its nature that we relinquish certain of our rights to our technologies and intellectual property that we license to third parties, which could limit our ability to base our own products on such technologies or could reduce the economic value that we receive from such technologies and intellectual property. Additionally, the establishment of arrangements to monetize our intellectual property may be more difficult or costly than expected, may require additional personnel and investments and may be a significant distraction for management. In connection with any monetization avenues we may develop, our licenses and royalty revenue may be uncertain from period to period and we may be unable to attract sufficient licensing customers, which would materially and adversely affect our results of operations.

 

Our ability to establish licensing, royalty or similar revenues, and maintain or increase any such revenues we are able to establish, depends on a variety of factors, including the novelty, utility, performance, quality, breadth, depth and overall perceived value of our intellectual property portfolio, all as compared to that of our competitors, as well as our sales and marketing capabilities. If secured, licensing or royalty revenues may also be negatively affected by factors within and outside our control, including reductions in our customers’ sales prices, sales volumes and the terms of the license arrangements. If we are not successful in monetizing our intellectual property portfolio, we may never recoup the costs associated with developing, maintaining, defending and enforcing this portfolio and our financial condition and prospects would be harmed.

 

---

 

Our revenues and results of operations have been substantially dependent on single products, including NVvault in historical periods and Samsung products in recent periods. Revenue lost from any decline in sales of these products, such as the recent decline in NVvault product sales, may be challenging to replace and could significantly harm our performance.  

 

Historically, we have been substantially dependent on sales of single products or product categories. For instance, for the fiscal year ended January 2, 2016, our NVvault NVDIMM used in cache-protection and data-logging applications, including our NVvault battery‑free, the flash‑based cache system, accounted for approximately 20% of our net product sales, and for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, our resales of certain Samsung products that we purchase under the terms of our JDLA with Samsung to certain end-customers that are not reached in Samsung’s distribution model accounted for approximately 21% of our net product sales. Demand for these products could decline at any time for a number of reasons, including, among others, product obsolescence, introduction of more advanced or otherwise superior competing products by our competitors, the ability to obtain these products or substitute products from alternate sources, or the other risk factors described in this Item 1A. Further, we have no long-term purchase agreements or other commitments with respect to sales of any of our products. As a result, any decline in demand for these products from us would result in our reduced sales of these products, which could materially adversely impact our revenues and results.

 

For example, we have experienced a sharp decline in NVvault sales in recent years, due in large part to our loss of our former most significant NVvault customer, Dell beginning in 2012. For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, 0.4% of our net product sales were from sales of NVvault products, down from 20% during the prior year, and we recognized no NVvault sales to Dell in the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 or January 2, 2016 and we expect no future demand from Dell for these products. In order to leverage our NVvault technology and secure one or more new key customers, we continue to pursue additional qualifications of NVvault with other OEMs and to target new customer applications, such as online transaction processing, virtualization, Big Data analytics, high speed transaction processing, high-performance database applications and in‑memory database applications. We also introduced EXPRESSvault in March 2011 and the next-generation of EXPRESSvault (EV3) in July 2015, and we continue to pursue qualification of the next-generation DDR3 NVvault and DDR4 NVvault with customers. Our future operating results will depend on our ability to commercialize these NVvault product extensions, as well as our other products such as HybriDIMM and other high‑density and high-performance solutions. HybriDIMM is still under development and may require additional investment and the services and attention of key employees who have competing demands on their available time. Although we believe that our JDLA with Samsung may advance the development of this product, our partnership with Samsung and any other steps we take to further the development of this or any other products in development could fail. If we are not successful in expanding our qualifications or marketing any new or enhanced products, we will be unable to secure revenues sufficient to replace lost NVvault revenues and our results of operations and prospects could be materially harmed.

 

In addition, significant sales of certain products could impact our costs and our margins. For instance, our resales of Samsung products, which contributed a significant portion of our net product sales in 2016, carry lower gross margin than sales of our own products. As a result, any increase in sales of these products in future periods could reduce our overall gross profit margin.

 

We are subject to risks relating to our focus on developing our HybriDIMM and NVvault products and a lack of market diversification.  

 

We have historically derived a substantial portion of our revenues from sales of our high‑performance modular memory subsystems to OEMs in the server, high-performance computing and communications markets, as well as from sales products to storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. We expect these memory subsystems to continue to account for a portion of our revenues in the near term. We believe that market acceptance of these products or derivative products that incorporate our core memory subsystem technology is critical to our success.

---

 

We have invested significant research and development time and costs into the design of ASIC and hybrid devices, including our NVvault family of products and most recently our next-generation HybriDIMM memory subsystem. These products are subject to increased risks as compared to our legacy products. For example:

These and other risks attendant to the production of our memory subsystem products could impair our ability to obtain customer or market acceptance of these products or obtain such acceptance in a timely manner, which would reduce our achievable revenues from these products and limit our ability to recoup our investments in the products.

Additionally, if the demand for servers deteriorates or if the demand for our products to be incorporated in servers declines, our operating results would be adversely affected, and we would be forced to diversify our product portfolio and our target markets. We may not be able to achieve this diversification, and our inability to do so may adversely affect our business, operating performance and prospects.

Sales to a small number of customers represent a significant portion of our net product sales and the loss of, or a significant reduction in sales to, any one of these customers could materially harm our business.  

 

Sales to small number of customers represent a substantial portion of our net product sales. Approximately 16% of our net product sales in the year ended December 31, 2016 were to one customer, which was a new customer in 2016. Approximately 27% and 10% of our net product sales in the year ended January 2, 2016 were to two customers, both of which purchased few products and contributed only a small portion of our revenues in 2016. The composition of major customers and their respective contributions to our net product sales have varied and will likely continue to vary from period to period as our existing and prospective customers progress through the life cycle of the products they produce and sell.

 

We do not have long-term agreements with any of our customers and, as result, any or all of them could decide at any time to discontinue, decrease or delay their purchase of our products. In addition, the prices that these customers pay for our products could change at any time. Further, we may not be able to sell some products developed for one customer to a different customer because our products are often customized to address specific customer requirements, and even if we are able to sell these products to another customer, our margin on these products may be reduced. Additionally, although customers are generally allowed only limited rights of return after purchasing our products, we may determine that it is in our best interest to accept returns from certain large or key customers even if we are not contractually obligated to accept them in order to maintain good relations with these customers. Any returns beyond our expectations could negatively impact our operating results. Moreover, because a few customers account for a substantial portion of our net product sales, the failure of any one of these customers to pay on a timely basis would negatively impact our cash flows. As a result, the loss of any of our customers or a reduction in sales to or difficulties collecting payments from any of them could significantly reduce our net product sales and adversely affect our operating results.

 

Our ability to maintain or increase our net product sales to our key customers depends on a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control. These factors include our customers’ continued sales of servers and other computing systems that incorporate our memory subsystems and our customers’ continued incorporation of our products

---

 

into their systems. Because of these and other factors, sales to these customers may not continue and the amount of such sales may not reach or exceed historical levels in any future period.

 

Our customers require that our products undergo a lengthy and expensive qualification process without any assurance of sales.  

 

Our prospective customers generally test and evaluate our memory subsystems before purchasing our products and integrating them into their systems. This extensive qualification process involves rigorous reliability testing and evaluation of our products, which may continue for nine months or longer and is often subject to delays. In addition to qualification of specific products, some of our customers may also require us to undergo a technology qualification if our product designs incorporate innovative technologies that the customer has not previously encountered. Such technology qualifications often take substantially longer than product qualifications and can take over a year to complete. Qualification by a prospective customer does not ensure any sales to that prospective customer, in which case we would receive no or limited revenues in spite of our investment of time and other resources in this qualification process, which could adversely affect our operating results.

 

Even after successful qualification and sales of our products to a customer, because the qualification process is both product-specific and platform-specific, our existing customers sometimes require us to re-qualify our products or to qualify our new products for use in new platforms or applications. For example, as our OEM customers transition from prior generation architectures to current generation architectures, we must design and qualify new products for use by these customers. In the past, this design and qualification process has taken up to nine months to complete, during which time our net product sales to these customers declined significantly. Additionally, after our products are qualified with existing or new customers, the customer may take several months to begin purchasing the product or may decide not to purchase the product at all.

 

Likewise, changes in our products, our manufacturing facilities, our production processes or our component suppliers may require a new qualification process. For example, when our memory and NAND flash component vendors discontinue production of components, it may be necessary for us to design and qualify new products for our customers. As a result, some customers may require us, or we may decide, to purchase an estimated quantity of discontinued memory components necessary to ensure a steady supply of existing products until products with new components can be qualified. Purchases of this nature may affect our liquidity. Additionally, our estimation of quantities required during the transition may be incorrect, which could adversely impact our results of operations through lost revenue opportunities or charges related to excess and obsolete inventory.

 

We must devote substantial resources, including design, engineering, sales, marketing and management efforts, to qualify our products with prospective customers in anticipation of sales. Significant delays or other difficulties in the qualification process could result in an inability to keep up with rapid technology change or new, competitive products. If we delay or do not succeed in qualifying a product with an existing or prospective customer, we would not be able to sell that product to that customer, which may result in our holding excess and obsolete inventory and could reduce our net product sales and customer base, any of which could materially harm our operating results and business.

 

We are subject to risks of disruption in the supply of the components of our products.  

   

Our ability to fulfill customer orders or produce qualification samples is dependent on a sufficient supply of FPGAs, ASICs, DRAM ICs and NAND flash, which are essential components of our memory subsystems. In addition, we resell some of the components that we purchase from Samsung under the terms of our JDLA to certain end-customers that are not reached in Samsung’s distribution model, including small to medium storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. We have no long‑term supply contracts for any of these components. Further, there are a relatively small number of suppliers of these components and we typically purchase from only a subset of these suppliers. As a result, our inventory purchases have historically been concentrated in a small number of suppliers, including Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., from which we obtained a large portion of our total inventory purchases in 2016. We also use consumables and other components, including PCBs, to manufacture our memory subsystems, which we sometimes procure from single or limited sources to take advantage of volume pricing discounts.

---

 

 

From time to time, shortages in DRAM ICs and NAND flash have required some suppliers to limit the supply of these components. In the past, we have experienced supply chain disruptions and shortages of DRAM and NAND flash required to create our HyperCloud, NVvault and Planar X VLP products, and we are continually working to secure adequate supplies of the components necessary to fill customers’ orders for our products in a timely manner. If we are unable to obtain a sufficient supply of DRAM ICs, NAND flash or other essential components to avoid interruptions in the delivery of our products as required by our customers or the delivery of these components to customers to whom we resell them directly, these customers may reduce future orders for our products or not purchase our products at all, which would cause our net product sales to decline and harm our operating results. In addition, our reputation could be harmed due to failures to meet our customers’ demands and, even assuming we are successful in resolving supply chain disruptions, we may not be able to replace any lost business and we may lose market share to our competitors. Further, if our suppliers are unable to produce qualification samples on a timely basis or at all, we could experience delays in the qualification process with existing or prospective customers, which could have a significant impact on our ability to sell our products. Moreover, if we are not able to obtain these components in the amounts needed on a timely basis and at commercially reasonable prices, we may not be able to develop or introduce new products or we may be forced to cease our resale activities for the components we sell to customers directly.

Our dependence on a small number of suppliers and the lack of any guaranteed sources for the essential components of our products expose us to several risks, including the inability to obtain an adequate supply of these essential components, increases in their costs, delivery delays and poor quality. Additionally, our customers qualify certain of the components provided by our suppliers for use in their systems. If one of our suppliers experiences quality control or other problems, it may be disqualified by one or more of our customers. This would disrupt our supplies of these components, and would also reduce the number of suppliers available to us and may require that we qualify a new supplier, which we may not be able to do.

 

Historical declines in customer demand and our revenues have caused us to reduce our purchases of DRAM ICs and NAND flash. Such declines or other fluctuations could continue in the future. If we fail to maintain sufficient purchase levels with some suppliers, our ability to obtain supplies of raw materials may be impaired due to the practice of some suppliers to allocate their products to customers with the highest regular demand.

   

Frequent technology changes and the introduction of next-generation versions of these components may also result in the obsolescence of our inventory on-hand, which could involve significant time and costs to replace, reduce our net product sales and gross margin and adversely affect our operating performance and financial condition.

 

  If we are unable to timely and cost-effectively develop new or enhanced products that meet our customers’ requirements and achieve market acceptance or technologies that we can monetize, our revenues and prospectus could be materially harmed.  

 

Our industry is characterized by rapid technological change, evolving industry standards and rapid product obsolescence. As a result, continuous development of new technology, processes and product innovations is necessary in order to be successful. We believe that the continued and timely development of new products and improvement of existing products are critical to our business and prospects for growth.

 

In order to develop and introduce new or enhanced products and technologies, we need to:

   

 

   

   

---

 

 

   

 

   

   

   

We may not be successful at any of these activities. As a result, we may not be able to successfully develop new or enhanced products or we may experience delays in this process. Failures or delays in product development and introduction could result in the loss of, or delays in generating, net products sales or other revenues and the loss of key customer relationships. Even if we develop new or enhanced products or technologies, they may not meet our customers’ requirements or gain market acceptance, as our product development efforts are inherently risky due to the challenges of foreseeing changes or developments in technology or anticipating the adoption of new standards. Moreover, we have invested significant resources in our product development efforts, which would be lost if we fail to develop successful products. If any if these risks were to occur, our net product sales, prospects and reputation could be materially adversely affected.

 

We face intense competition in our industry, and we may not be able to compete successfully in our target markets.  

   

Our products are primarily targeted to OEMs in the server, high-performance computing and communications markets, as well as to storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. These markets are intensely competitive, as numerous companies vie for business opportunities at a limited number of large OEMs and other customers. We face competition from DRAM suppliers, memory module providers and logic suppliers for many of our products, including EXPRESSvault, NVvault and HybriDIMM. Additionally, if and to the extent we enter new markets or pursue licensing arrangements to monetize our technologies and intellectual property portfolio, we may face competition from a large number of competitors that produce solutions utilizing similar or competing technologies.

   

Some of our customers and suppliers may have proprietary products or technologies that are competitive with our products, or could develop internal solutions or enter into strategic relationships with, or acquire, other high-density memory module providers. Any of these actions could reduce our customers’ demand for our products. Some of our significant suppliers of memory integrated circuits may be able to manufacture competitive products at lower costs by leveraging internal efficiencies, or could choose to reduce our supply of memory integrated circuits, which could adversely affect our ability to manufacture our memory subsystems on a timely basis, if at all.

   

Certain of our competitors have substantially greater financial, technical, marketing, distribution and other resources, broader product lines, lower cost structures, greater brand recognition and longer standing relationships with customers and suppliers. Some of our competitors may also have a greater ability to influence industry standards than we do. Additionally, some of our competitors may have more extensive or more established patent portfolios than we do. We may not be able to compete effectively against any of these organizations.

   

Our ability to compete in our current target markets and future markets will depend in large part on our ability to successfully develop, introduce and sell new and enhanced products or technologies on a timely and cost-effective basis and to respond to changing market requirements. We expect our competitors to continue to improve the performance of their current products and potentially reduce their prices. In addition, our competitors may develop future generations and enhancements of competitive products or new or enhanced technologies that may offer greater

---

 

performance and improved pricing or render our technologies obsolete. If we are unable to match or exceed the improvements made by our competitors, our market position and prospects could deteriorate and our net product sales could decline.

 

A limited number of relatively large potential customers dominate the markets for our products.  

 

Our target markets are characterized by a limited number of large companies. Consolidation in one or more of our target markets may further increase this industry concentration. As a result, we anticipate that sales of our products will continue to be concentrated among a small number of large customers in the foreseeable future. We believe that our financial results will depend in significant part on our success in establishing and maintaining relationships with and effecting substantial sales to these potential customers. Even if we establish and successfully maintain these relationships, our financial results will be largely dependent on these customers’ sales and business results.

 

If a standardized memory solution that addresses the demands of our customers is developed, our net product sales and market share may decline.  

 

Many of our memory subsystems are specifically designed for our OEM customers’ high-performance systems. In a drive to reduce costs and assure supply of their memory module demand, our OEM customers may endeavor to design JEDEC standard DRAM modules into their new products. Although we also manufacture JEDEC modules, this trend could reduce the demand for our higher-priced customized memory solutions, which would have a negative impact on our operating results. In addition, the adoption of a JEDEC standard module instead of a previously custom module might allow new competitors to participate in a share of our customers’ memory module business that previously belonged to us.

 

If our OEM customers were to adopt JEDEC standard modules, our future business may be limited to identifying the next generation of high-performance memory demands of OEM customers and developing solutions that address these demands. Until fully implemented, any next generation of products may constitute a significantly smaller market, which could reduce our revenues and harm our competitive position.

 

If we fail to protect our proprietary rights, our customers or our competitors might gain access to our proprietary designs, processes and technologies, which could adversely affect our operating results.  

   

We rely on a combination of patent protection, trade secret laws and restrictions on disclosure to protect our intellectual property rights. We have submitted a number of patent applications regarding our proprietary processes and technology. It is not certain when or if any of the claims in our patent applications will be allowed. As of December 31, 2016, we had 66 U.S. and foreign patents issued and 42 pending patent applications worldwide. Although we intend to continue filing patent applications with respect to the new processes and technologies that we develop, patent protection may not be available for some of these processes or technologies, in which case they may remain unprotected from use by third parties, including our competitors.

   

Our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights may not:

   

   

   

   

   

   

---

 

   

Monitoring for any unauthorized use of our technologies is costly, time-consuming and difficult. This is particularly true in foreign countries, such as the PRC, where we have established a manufacturing facility and where the laws may not protect our proprietary rights to the same extent as applicable U.S. laws.

   

If some or all of the claims in our patent applications are not allowed or if any of our intellectual property protections are limited in scope by the USPTO, a court or applicable foreign authorities or are circumvented by third parties, we could face increased competition for our products and be unable to execute on our strategy of monetizing our intellectual property. Any of these outcomes could significantly harm our business, operating results and prospects.

   

Our operating results may be adversely impacted by worldwide economic and political uncertainties and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the cyclical nature of and volatility in the memory market and semiconductor industry.  

   

Adverse changes in domestic and global economic and political conditions have made it extremely difficult for our customers, our vendors and us to accurately forecast and plan future business activities, and these conditions have caused and could continue to cause U.S. and foreign businesses to slow or decrease spending on our products and services. In addition, sales of our products are dependent upon demand by OEMs in the server, high-performance computing and communications markets, as well as by storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. These markets are characterized by wide fluctuations in product supply and demand. Additionally, these markets have been cyclical and have experienced significant downturns, often connected with or in anticipation of maturing product cycles, reductions in technology spending and declines in general economic conditions. During these downturns, product demand diminishes, production capacity exceeds demand, inventory levels increase and average selling prices decline, all of which would materially adversely impact our business and operating results. Additionally, such a downturn could decrease the perceived value of our intellectual property portfolio and result in reduced ability to pursue our goal of monetizing this portfolio.

   

We may experience substantial period-to-period fluctuations in our operating results due to factors affecting the markets in which we operate. A decline or significant shortfall in demand in any of these markets could have a material adverse effect on demand for our products and on our net product sales. In addition, because many of our costs and operating expenses are relatively fixed, if we are unable to control our expenses adequately in response to reduced product sales, our gross margins, operating income and cash flows would be negatively impacted.

   

During challenging economic times our customers may face issues gaining timely access to sufficient credit, which could impair their ability to make timely payments to us. This may impair our liquidity and cash flows and require us to increase our allowance for doubtful accounts. Furthermore, our vendors may face similar issues gaining access to credit, which may limit their ability to supply components or provide trade credit to us. We cannot predict the timing, strength or duration of any economic slowdown or subsequent economic recovery, either generally or in our markets. If the economy or markets in which we operate experience such a slowdown, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. Additionally, the combination of our lengthy sales cycle coupled with any challenging macroeconomic conditions could compound the negative impact of any such downturn on the results of our operations.

   

Our lack of a significant backlog of unfilled orders and the difficulty inherent in estimating customer demand makes it difficult to forecast our short-term production requirements, and any failure to optimally calibrate our production capacity and inventory levels to meet customer demand could adversely affect our revenues, gross margins and earnings.  

   

We make significant decisions regarding the levels of business we will seek and accept, production schedules, component procurement, personnel needs and other resource requirements based on our estimates of customer demand. We do not have long-term agreements with any of our customers. Instead, sales are made primarily pursuant to standard purchase orders that we often receive no more than two weeks in advance of the desired delivery date and that may be rescheduled or cancelled on relatively short notice. The short-term nature of the commitments by many of our customers

---

 

and the fact that our customers may cancel or defer purchase orders for any reason reduces our backlog of firm orders and our ability to accurately estimate future customer requirements for our products. This fact, combined with the quick turn-around times that apply to most orders, makes it difficult to forecast our production needs and allocate production capacity efficiently. As a result, we attempt to forecast the demand for the components needed to manufacture our products, but any such forecasts could turn out to be wrong. Further, lead times for components vary significantly and depend on various factors, such as the specific supplier and the demand and supply for a component at a given time.

   

Our production expense and component purchase levels are to a large extent fixed in the short term. As a result, we may be unable to adjust spending on a timely basis to compensate for any unexpected shortfall in customer orders. If we overestimate customer demand, we may have excess inventory of components, which may not be able to be used in other products or may become obsolete before any such use. If there is a subsequent decline in the prices of these components, the value of our inventory would fall. As a result, we may need to write-down the value of our component inventory, which may result in a significant decrease in our gross margin and financial condition. Also, to the extent that we manufacture products in anticipation of future demand that does not materialize or in the event a customer cancels or reduces outstanding orders, we could experience an unanticipated increase in our finished goods inventory. In the past, we have had to write-down inventory due to obsolescence, excess quantities and declines in market value below our costs. Any significant shortfall of customer orders in relation to our expectations could hurt our operating results, cash flows and financial condition.

   

Conversely, any rapid increases in production required by our customers could strain our resources and reduce our margins. If we underestimate customer demand, we may not have sufficient inventory of necessary components on hand to manufacture enough product to meet that demand. We also may not have sufficient manufacturing capacity at any given time to meet any demands for rapid increases in production. These shortages of inventory and capacity would lead to delays in the delivery of our products, which may force us to forego sales opportunities, reduce our net product sales and damage our customer relationships.

   

In addition, we resell certain Samsung products that we purchase under the terms of our JDLA with Samsung to certain end-customers that are not reached in Samsung’s distribution model. This includes small to medium storage customers, appliance customers, system builders and cloud and datacenter customers. However, there is no guarantee of sufficient demand for these products and such demand could decline, due to customers obtaining these products from alternate sources, reducing their need for these products generally or for other reasons. The lack of sales of these products may adversely impact our financial conditions and results of operations. Furthermore, sales of these products generally carry lower gross margin than sales of our own products and, as a result, any increase in sales of these products in future periods could reduce our overall gross profit margin.

Declines in our average sales prices, driven by volatile prices for essential components and other factors, may result in declines in our revenues and gross profit.  

   

Our industry is competitive and historically has been characterized by declines in average sales price, based in part on market prices for DRAM ICs, NAND flash and other essential product components, which have historically constituted a substantial portion of the total cost of our memory subsystems. Our average sales prices may decline due to several factors, including overcapacity in the worldwide supply of these components, increased manufacturing efficiencies, implementation of new manufacturing processes and expansion of manufacturing capacity by component suppliers.

   

Once our prices with a customer are negotiated, we are generally unable to revise pricing with that customer until our next regularly scheduled price adjustment. As a result, if market prices for essential components increase, we generally cannot pass the price increases on to our customers for products purchased under an existing purchase order. Consequently, we are exposed to the risks associated with the volatility of prices for these components and our cost of sales could increase and our gross margins could decrease in the event of price increases. Alternatively, if there are declines in the price of these components, we may need to reduce our selling prices for subsequent purchase orders, which may result in a decline in our net product sales.

   

---

 

In addition, since a large percentage of our product sales are to a small number of customers that are primarily large OEMs, these customers have exerted, and we expect they will continue to exert, pressure on us to make price concessions. If not offset by increases in volume of sales or the sales of newly-developed products with higher margins, decreases in average sales prices could have a material adverse effect on our business and operating results.

   

Our manufacturing operations involve significant risks.  

   

We maintain a manufacturing facility in the PRC at which we produce most of our products. This internal manufacturing process allows us to utilize our own materials and processes, protect our intellectual property and develop the technology for manufacturing.     However, our manufacturing activities require significant resources to maintain. For instance, we must continuously review and improve our manufacturing processes in order to maintain satisfactory manufacturing yields and product performance, try to lower our costs and otherwise remain competitive. As we manufacture more complex products, the risk of encountering delays, difficulties or higher costs increases. The start-up costs associated with implementing new manufacturing technologies, methods and processes, including the purchase of new equipment and any resulting manufacturing delays and inefficiencies, could negatively impact our results of operations.

   

Additionally, we could experience a prolonged disruption, material malfunction, interruption or other loss of operations at our manufacturing facility or we may need to add manufacturing capacity to satisfy any increased demand for our products. Under these circumstances, we may be forced to rely on third parties for our manufacturing needs, which could increase our manufacturing costs, decreases our profit margin, decrease our control over manufacturing processes, limit our ability to meet customer demand and delay new product development until we could secure a relationship with a third-party manufacturer, which we may not be able to do in a timely manner, on acceptable terms or at all. If any of these risks were to occur, our operations, performance and customer relationships could be severely harmed. In addition, we may need to expand our existing manufacturing facility or establish a new facility. Any need to expand or replace our manufacturing facility would be expensive and time-consuming and could also subject us to factory audits by our customers that could themselves result in delays, unexpected costs or customer losses if we cannot meet the standards of any such audits. Further, we may not be able to replace or increase our manufacturing capacity at all. The occurrence of any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

   

We depend on third parties to design and manufacture custom components for some of our products, which exposes us to risks.  

   

Significant customized components, such as ASICs, that are used in HyperCloud and some of our other products are designed and manufactured by third parties. The ability and willingness of third parties to enter into these engagements with us and perform in accordance with these engagements is largely outside of our control. If one or more of our design or manufacturing partners experiences a manufacturing disruption, fails to dedicate adequate resources to the production of our products, experiences financial instability or otherwise fails to perform its obligations to us in a timely manner or at satisfactory quality levels, our ability to bring products to market or deliver products to our customers, as well as our reputation, could suffer and our business and prospects could be materially harmed. In the event of any failure by our component manufacturers, we may have no readily available alternative source of supply for these components, since, in our experience, the lead time needed to establish a relationship with a new design or manufacturing partner is substantial, and the time for our OEM customers to re-qualify our product with components from a new vendor is also significant. Additionally, if we need to replace one of our component manufacturers, we may not be able to do so in a timely manner, on acceptable terms or at all. Further, we may not be able to redesign our customized components to be manufactured by the new manufacturer, in which case we could infringe on the intellectual property of our current design or manufacturing partner when we redesign the custom components. Such an occurrence could force us to stop selling certain products or expose us to lawsuits, license payments or other liabilities.

   

Our dependence on third-party manufacturers exposes us to many other risks, including, among others: reduced control over delivery schedules, quality, manufacturing yields and costs; the potential lack of adequate capacity during periods of excess demand; limited warranties on products supplied to us; and potential misappropriation of our intellectual property or the intellectual property of others. We are dependent on our manufacturing partners to

---

 

manufacture components with acceptable quality and manufacturing yields, to deliver these components to us on a timely basis and to allocate a portion of their manufacturing capacity sufficient to meet our needs. Although our products are designed using the process design rules of the particular manufacturers, our manufacturing partners may not be able to achieve or maintain acceptable yields or deliver sufficient quantities of components on a timely basis or at an acceptable cost. Additionally, our manufacturing partners may not continue to devote adequate resources to produce our products or continue to advance the process design technologies on which the qualification and manufacturing of our products are based. Further, we could be exposed to liability if our component manufacturers are found to infringe the intellectual property rights of others and we are held responsible for any such infringement. Any of these risks could limit our ability to meet customer demand and materially adversely affect our business and operating results.

   

If our products do not meet quality standards or are defective or used in defective systems, we may be subject to quality holds, warranty claims, recalls or liability claims.  

   

Our customers require our products to meet strict quality standards. If our products do not meet these standards, our customers may discontinue purchases from us until we are able to resolve the quality issues that are causing us to not meet the standards, which we may not be able to do. These “quality holds” could be costly and time-consuming to resolve and could have a significant adverse impact on our revenues and operating results.

   

If our products are defectively manufactured, contain defective components or are used in defective or malfunctioning systems, we could be subject to warranty and product liability claims, product recalls, safety alerts or advisory notices.  

 

Although we generally attempt to contractually limit our exposure to incidental and consequential damages, if these contract provisions are not enforced or if liabilities arise that are not effectively limited, we could incur substantial costs in defending or settling product liability claims. While we currently have product liability insurance coverage, it may not provide coverage under certain circumstances and it may not be adequate to satisfy claims made against us. We also may be unable to maintain insurance in the future at satisfactory rates or in adequate amounts.

   

Warranty and product liability claims, product recalls, safety alerts or advisory notices, regardless of their coverage by insurance or their ultimate outcome, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and ability to attract and retain customers.

   

We may become involved in non‑patent related litigation and administrative proceedings that may materially adversely affect us.  

From time to time, we may become involved in various legal proceedings relating to matters incidental to the ordinary course of our business, including commercial, employment, class action, whistleblower and other litigation and claims, as well as governmental and other regulatory investigations and proceedings. Such matters can be time-consuming, divert management’s attention and resources and cause us to incur significant expenses. Furthermore, because litigation is inherently unpredictable, the results of these actions could subject us to monetary damages or other liabilities and have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

   

Our indemnification obligations for the infringement by our products of the intellectual property rights of others could require us to pay substantial damages.  

   

As is common in our industry, we have a number of agreements in which we have agreed to defend, indemnify and hold harmless our customers and suppliers from damages and costs that may arise from the infringement by our products of third-party patents, trademarks or other proprietary rights. The scope of these indemnities varies, but may, in some instances, include indemnification for damages and expenses, including attorneys’ fees. The term of these indemnification obligations is generally perpetual after execution of an agreement and the maximum potential amount of future payments we could be required to make under these indemnification obligations is often unlimited. Any indemnification claims by customers could require us to incur significant legal fees and could potentially result in our

---

 

payment of substantial damages, and our insurance generally would not cover these fees or damages. As a result, the occurrence of any of these risks could result in a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

 

We depend on a few key employees, and our business could be harmed if we lose the services of any of these employees or are unable to attract and retain other qualified personnel.  

   

To date, we have been highly dependent on the experience, relationships and technical knowledge of certain key employees. We believe that our future success will be dependent on our ability to retain the services of these key employees, develop their successors and properly manage the transition of their roles should departures occur. The loss of these key employees or their inability to provide their services could delay the development and introduction of new or enhanced products, negatively impact our ability to sell our existing products, limit our ability to pursue our other business goals and strategies and otherwise harm our business. We do not have employment agreements with any of these key employees other than Chun K. Hong, our President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of our board of directors. We maintain “Key Man” life insurance on Mr. Hong, but we do not carry “Key Man” life insurance on any of our other key employees.

   

Our future success also depends on our ability to attract, retain and motivate highly skilled engineering, manufacturing and other technical and sales personnel. Competition for experienced personnel is intense. We may not be successful in attracting new engineers or other technical personnel or in retaining or motivating our existing personnel. If we are unable to hire and retain engineers with the skills necessary to keep pace with the evolving technologies in our markets, our ability to continue to provide our existing products and to develop new or enhanced products will be negatively impacted, which would harm our business. In addition, a general shortage of experienced engineers could lead to increased recruiting, relocation and compensation costs to attract such engineers, which may exceed our expectations and resources. These increased costs may make hiring new engineers difficult or may increase our operating expenses.

   

A significant portion of our workforce consists of contract personnel. We invest considerable time and expense to train these contract personnel; however, they typically may terminate their relationships with us at any time. As a result, we may experience high turnover rates in this contract personnel workforce, which may require us to expend additional resources to attract, train and retain replacements. Additionally, if we convert any of these contract personnel into permanent employees, we may have to pay finder’s fees to the contract agency. These risks associated with our contract personnel workforce may involve increased costs or delays or failures in meeting customer requirements or developing new or enhanced products, any of which could materially adversely affect our business and operating performance.

We rely on our internal and third-party sales representatives to market and sell our products, and any failure by these representatives to perform as expected could reduce our sales.  

We primarily market and sell our products through a direct sales force and a network of independent sales representatives. We have expended significant resources to build our internal sales and marketing function, but compared to many of our competitors, we have relatively little experience creating a sales and marketing platform and developing a team to implement it. We may be unsuccessful in these efforts.

These sales representatives generally may terminate their relationships with us at any time. As a result, our performance depends in part on our ability to retain existing and attract additional sales representatives that will be able to market and support our products effectively, especially in markets in which we have not previously distributed our products. Our efforts to attract, train and retain these sales representatives to be knowledgeable about our industry, products and technologies are costly and time-consuming. If these efforts fail, our investments in these sales representatives may not produce the expected benefits and our ability to market and sell our products may be limited, which could materially harm our financial condition and operating results. Further, our reliance upon independent sales representatives subjects us to risks, as we have very little control over their activities and they are generally free to market and sell other, potentially competing products. As a result, these independent sales representatives could devote insufficient time or resources to marketing our products, could market them in an ineffective manner or could otherwise be unsuccessful in selling adequate quantities of our products.

---

 

Economic, geographic and political and other risks associated with our international sales and operations expose us to significant risks.  

Part of our growth strategy involves making sales to foreign corporations and delivering our products to facilities located in foreign countries. To facilitate this process and to meet the long-term projected demand for our products, we have established a manufacturing facility in the PRC, which performs most of our worldwide manufacturing activities. Selling and manufacturing in foreign countries subjects us to additional risks not present with our domestic operations, as we are operating in business and regulatory environments in which we have limited experience. Further, the geographic distance from our headquarters in Irvine, California, compounds the difficulties of running a manufacturing operation in the PRC. For instance, we may not be able to maintain the desired amount of control over production capacity and timing, inventory levels, product quality, delivery schedules, manufacturing yields and costs. Moreover, we will need to continue to overcome language and cultural barriers to effectively conduct these international operations. Our failure to meet applicable regulatory requirements or overcome cultural barriers could result in legal consequences or production delays and increased turnaround times, which would adversely affect our business. In addition, changes to the labor laws of the PRC could increase the cost of employing the local workforce. The increased industrialization of the PRC, as well as general economic and political conditions in the PRC, could also increase the cost of local labor or the other costs of doing business in the PRC. Any of these factors could negatively impact the cost savings we experience from locating our manufacturing facility in the PRC. Additionally, our management has limited experience creating or overseeing foreign operations, and the ongoing management of our PRC facility may require our management team to divert substantial amounts of their time and attention, particularly if we encounter operational, legal or cultural difficulties or disruptions at our PRC facility.

To date, all of our net product sales have been denominated in U.S. dollars. In the future, however, some of our net product sales may be denominated in Chinese Renminbi (“RMB”). The Chinese government controls the procedures by which RMB is converted into other currencies, which generally requires government consent. As a result, RMB may not be freely convertible into other currencies at all times. If the Chinese government institutes changes in currency conversion procedures or imposes additional restrictions on currency conversion, our operations and our operating results could be negatively impacted. In addition, Chinese law imposes restrictions on the movement of funds outside of the PRC. If we need or decide to repatriate funds from our Chinese operations, we would be required to comply with the procedures and regulations of applicable Chinese law. Any failure to comply with these procedures and regulations could adversely affect our liquidity and financial condition. Further, if we are able to repatriate funds from our Chinese operations, these funds would be subject to U.S. corporate income tax. In addition, fluctuations in the exchange rate between RMB and U.S. dollars may adversely affect our expenses and results of operations, the value of our assets and liabilities and the comparability of our period-to-period results.

In addition, international turmoil and the threat of future terrorist attacks, both domestically and internationally, have contributed to an uncertain political and economic climate, both in the United States and globally, and have negatively impacted the worldwide economy. The economies of the PRC and other countries in which we make sales have been highly volatile in the recent past, resulting in significant fluctuations in local currencies and other instabilities. These conditions could continue or worsen, which could adversely affect our foreign operations and some of our customers or suppliers and our performance.

Our international sales are subject to a number of additional risks, including regulatory risks, timing and availability of export licenses, difficulties in accounts receivable collections, difficulties in managing distributors, lack of a significant local sales presence, difficulties in obtaining governmental approvals, compliance with a wide variety of complex foreign laws and treaties and potentially adverse tax consequences. In addition, the United States or foreign countries may implement quotas, duties, tariffs, taxes or other charges or restrictions upon the importation or exportation of our products, leading to a reduction in sales and profitability in that country. This risk of increased trade barriers or charges has become more pronounced following the results of the recent U.S. presidential election, as the trade policies of the current U.S. presidential administration, including withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and proposed revision to the North American Free Trade Agreement, could threaten or otherwise have a significant negative effect on our ability to continue to conduct our international operations in the manner and at the costs as we have in the past. Any increased costs or regulatory obstacles with respect to our international operations, including our manufacturing facility

---

 

in the PRC and our international sales, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and prospects for growth.

Our operations could be disrupted by power outages, natural disasters or other factors.  

   

Due to the geographic concentration of our manufacturing operations in our PRC facility and our small number of component suppliers, a disruption resulting from equipment or power failures, quality control issues, human errors, government intervention or natural disasters, including earthquakes and floods, could require significant costs to repair and could interrupt or interfere with the manufacture of our products and cause significant delays in product shipments, which could harm our customer relationships, financial condition and results of operations. In July 2014, our PRC facility suffered water damage as a result of heavy rain and floods, which forced us to temporarily halt manufacturing at the facility while necessary repairs or replacements were made to the facility and to certain of our manufacturing equipment. This incident caused us to incur additional expenses, as we shifted our manufacturing activities to a third-party facility in the PRC to mitigate the disruption in product shipments to our customers. While we believe we were able to contain this disruption, we may not be able to secure alternative manufacturing capabilities if manufacturing at the PRC facility is disrupted in the future, in which case our relationships with our customers could be materially harmed. Additionally, while we were able to favorably resolve our claim with our insurance carrier with respect to the damage to our facility cause by the July 2014 incident, we may not experience the same outcome if a similar event occurs in the future, in which case we would be forced to bear the significant costs to repair any damage to our manufacturing equipment and facility.

   

Difficulties with our global information technology systems, including any unauthorized access, could harm our business.  

   

Any failure or malfunctioning of our global information technology systems, errors or misuse by system users, difficulties in migrating stand-alone systems to our centralized systems or inadequacy of the systems in addressing the needs of our operations could disrupt our ability to timely and accurately manufacture and ship products, divert management’s and key employees’ attention away from other business matters and involve significant costs and other resources to repair or otherwise resolve, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Any such event could also disrupt our ability to timely and accurately process, report and evaluate key operating metrics and key components of our results of operations, financial position and cash flows and could adversely affect our ability to complete other important business process, such as maintenance of our disclosure controls and procedures and evaluation of our internal control over financial reporting.

   

We store data about our business, including certain customer data, information about our and our customer’s intellectual property and other proprietary information, on our global information technology systems. While our systems includes security measures designed to prevent unauthorized access, third parties may circumvent these measures and gain unauthorized access to our systems. This unauthorized access could be the result of employee error, employee malfeasance or other causes, including intentional misconduct by computer hackers. Because the techniques used to gain unauthorized access to information technology systems evolve frequently and generally are not recognized until successful, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. Any security breach could result in disruption to our business, misappropriation or loss of data, significant resources to correct, loss of confidence in us by our customers, damage to our reputation, legal liability and a negative impact on our performance.

   

Our failure to comply with environmental and other applicable laws and regulations could subject us to significant fines and liabilities or cause us to incur significant costs.  

   

We are subject to various and frequently changing U.S. federal, state and local and foreign laws and regulations relating to the protection of the environment, including laws governing the discharge of pollutants into the air and water, the management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes and the clean-up of contaminated sites. In particular, some of our manufacturing processes may require us to handle and dispose of hazardous materials from time to time. For example, in the past our manufacturing operations have used lead-based solder in the assembly of our products. Today, we use lead-free soldering technologies in our manufacturing processes, as this is required for products entering the

---

 

European Union. We could incur substantial costs, including clean-up costs, civil or criminal fines or sanctions and third-party claims for property damage or personal injury, as a result of violations of or noncompliance with these and other environmental laws and regulations. Although we have not incurred significant costs to date to comply with these laws and regulations, new laws or changes to current laws and regulations to make them more stringent could require us to incur significant costs to remain in compliance.

   

We are also subject to a variety of laws and regulations relating to other matters, including workplace health and safety, labor and employment, foreign business practices, public reporting and taxation, among others. It is difficult and costly to manage the requirements of every authority having jurisdiction over our various activities and to comply with their varying standards. Any changes to existing regulations or adoption of new regulations may result in significant additional expense to us and our customers. Further, our failure to comply with any applicable laws and regulations may result in a variety of administrative, civil and criminal enforcement measures, including monetary penalties or imposition of sanctions or other corrective requirements, any of which could materially adversely affect our reputation and our business.

   

Regulations related to “conflict minerals” may cause us to incur additional expenses and could limit the supply and increase the cost of certain metals used in manufacturing our products.  

   

In August 2012, the SEC adopted rules requiring disclosure of specified minerals, known as conflict minerals, that are necessary to the functionality or production of products manufactured or contracted to be manufactured by public companies. The rules require companies to verify and disclose whether or not such minerals, as used in a company’s products or their manufacture, originate from the Democratic Republic of Congo or an adjoining country. Because our products contain certain conflict minerals and we or our manufacturers use these conflict minerals in the manufacture of our products, we are required to comply with these disclosure rules. To comply with the rules, we are required to conduct a reasonable country of origin inquiry each year and, depending on the results of that inquiry, we may be required to exercise due diligence on the source and chain of custody of conflict minerals contained in or used to manufacture our products. Such due diligence must conform to a nationally or internationally recognized due diligence framework. We are also required to file a disclosure report with the SEC of each year relating to our conflict mineral use.

   

The due diligence activities required to determine the source and chain of custody of minerals contained in our products or used in their manufacture are time -consuming and may result in significant costs.  Due to the size and complexity of our supply chain, we face significant challenges in verifying the origins of the minerals used in our products.  Further, these rules could affect the availability in sufficient quantities and at competitive prices of certain minerals used in our products and their manufacture, which could result in increased material and component costs and additional costs associated with potential changes to our products, processes or sources of supply.  Additionally, if we are unable to sufficiently verify the origin of the minerals used in our products through the due diligence measures that we implement, we may not be able to satisfy customers who require that our products be certified as “conflict-free,” which could place us at a competitive disadvantage.

   

Our internal control over financial reporting may not be effective, which could have a significant and adverse effect on our business.  

   

Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the related rules and regulations of the SEC, which we collectively refer to as Section 404, require us to evaluate our internal control over financial reporting and require management to report on the effectiveness of this internal control as of the end of each year. Effective internal control is necessary for us to produce reliable financial reports and is important in our effort to prevent financial fraud. In the course of our Section 404 evaluations, we or our independent registered public accounting firm may identify significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. If we fail to maintain an effective system of internal control over financial reporting or if management or our independent registered public accounting firm discover material weaknesses, we may be unable to produce reliable financial reports or prevent fraud, which could harm our financial condition and results of operations, result in a loss of investor confidence and negatively impact our stock price. Further, our Section 404 evaluations may lead us to conclude that enhancements, modifications or changes

---

 

to our internal control over financial reporting are necessary or desirable. Implementing any such changes would divert the attention of management, could involve significant time and costs and may negatively impact our financial results.

   

If we do not effectively manage any future growth we may experience, our resources, systems and controls may be strained and our results of operations may suffer.  

   

Any future growth we may experience could strain our resources, management, information and telecommunication systems and operating and financial controls. To manage future growth effectively, including any expansion of volume in our manufacturing facility in the PRC, we must be able to improve and expand our systems and controls. We may not be able to do this in a timely or cost-effective manner. In addition, our officers have relatively limited experience in managing a rapidly growing business. As a result, they may not be able to manage any future growth we may experience. Any failure to manage any growth we may experience or improve or expand our existing systems and controls, or unexpected difficulties in doing so, could harm our business.

   

If we acquire businesses or technologies or pursue other strategic transactions in the future, these transactions could disrupt our business and harm our operating results and financial condition.  

   

We evaluate opportunities to acquire businesses or technologies or pursue other strategic transactions, including collaboration or joint development arrangements such as our JDLA with Samsung, that might complement our current product offerings or enhance our intellectual property portfolio or technical capabilities. We have no experience acquiring other businesses or technologies. Acquisitions and other strategic transactions entail a number of risks that could adversely affect our business and operating results, including, among others:







 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

If any of these risks were to occur, we may not be able to realize the intended benefits of an acquisition or strategic transaction and our operating results, financial condition and business prospects could be materially negatively affected.

   

Risks Related to Our Common Stock  

   

Our results of operations fluctuate significantly and are difficult to predict, and any failure to meet investor or analyst expectations could cause the price of our common stock to decline.

   

Our operating results have fluctuated significantly in the past, and we expect they will continue to fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control. Factors relating to our business that may contribute to these quarterly and annual fluctuations include, among other, the other risk factors described in this Item 1A. Due to the various factors described herein and others, the results of any prior quarterly or annual periods should not be relied upon as an indication of our future operating performance. If our quarterly results of operations fall below the expectations of securities analysts or investors, the price of our common stock could decline substantially. As a result of the significant fluctuations of our operating results in prior periods, period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful and investors in our common stock should not rely on these comparisons.

   

Our principal stockholders have significant voting power and may take actions that may not be in the best interest of our other stockholders.  

   

As of March 24, 2017, 9.2% of our outstanding common stock was held by our directors and officers, including 8.2% held by Chun K. Hong, our Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of our board of directors. As a result, Mr. Hong has the ability to exert substantial influence over all matters requiring approval by our stockholders, including the election and removal of directors, any proposed merger, consolidation or sale of all or substantially all of our assets and other significant corporate transactions. This concentration of control could be disadvantageous to other stockholders with interests different from those of Mr. Hong.

   

Anti-takeover provisions under our charter documents and Delaware law could delay or prevent a change of control and could also limit the market price of our common stock.  

   

Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws contain provisions that could delay or prevent a change of control of our Company or changes in our board of directors that our stockholders might consider favorable. In addition, these anti-takeover provisions could limit the price that investors would be willing to pay for shares of our common stock. The following are examples of the anti-takeover provision that are included in our certificate of incorporation and bylaws as currently in effect:

   

   

   

   

   

In addition, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which may prohibit certain business combinations with stockholders owning 15% or more of our outstanding voting stock. These and other provisions in our certificate of incorporation and bylaws and of Delaware law could make it more difficult for stockholders or potential acquirers to obtain control of our board of directors or initiate actions that are opposed by our board of directors, including a merger, tender offer, proxy contest or other change of control transaction

---

 

involving our Company. Any delay or prevention of a change of control transaction or changes in our board of directors could prevent the consummation of a transaction in which our stockholders could receive a substantial premium over the then-current market price for our common stock.

   

The price and trading volume of our common stock has and may continue to fluctuate significantly.  

   

Our common stock has been publicly traded since November 2006. The price and trading volume of our common stock are volatile and have in the past fluctuated significantly. This volatility could continue, in which case an active trading market in our common stock may never be sustained and stockholder may not be able to sell their shares at the desired time or the desired price. The market price at which our common stock trades may be influenced by many factors, including, among others, the following:

 



 



 

 

 

 

 

In addition, shares of our common stock and the public stock markets in general have experienced, and may continue to experience, extreme price and trading volume volatility, at times irrespective of the state of the business of any particular company. These fluctuations may adversely affect the market price of our common stock.

 

In 2007, following a drop in the market price of our common stock, securities litigation was initiated against us. Given the historic volatility of our securities and securities in our industry, we may become engaged in this type of litigation again in the future. Securities litigation, like other types of litigation, is expensive and time-consuming and could subject us to unfavorable results.

   

We do not currently intend to pay dividends on our common stock, and any return to investors is expected to come, if at all, only from potential increases in the price of our common stock.

 

We intend to use all available funds to finance our operations. Accordingly, while payment of dividends rests within the discretion of our board of directors, no cash dividends on our common shares have been declared or paid by us in the past and we have no intention of paying any such dividends in the foreseeable future. Any return to investors is expected to come, if at all, only from potential increases in the price of our common stock.

---

 

We may not be able to maintain our NASDAQ listing.

During 2015 and into early 2016, there were periods in which we were not compliant with the continued listing standards of the NASDAQ Global Market. As a result of a compliance process, we transferred the listing of our common stock from the NASDAQ Global Market to the NASDAQ Capital Market. In February 2016, we received a compliance letter from the NASDAQ Stock Market notifying us that we had regained compliance with the applicable requirements for continued listing on the NASDAQ Capital Market. Notwithstanding our current compliance, we may not be able to continue to comply with the continued listing standards of the NASDAQ Capital Market.  If we are delisted from the NASDAQ Capital Market, the liquidity of our common stock may be impaired and the market price of our common stock may decline.

Item 1B.  Unresolved Staff Comments .

 

Not applicable.

 

Item 2.  Properties

 

Our corporate headquarters is located in approximately 8,200 square feet of space in Irvine, California, under a lease that expires in July 2017. We also currently lease approximately 42,200 square feet of space for our manufacturing facility in the PRC under a lease that expires in June 2017.

 

We believe that our current facilities are adequate for our current and expected operations for the next twelve months and that additional space could be obtained if needed.

 

Item 3.  Legal Proceedings

 

The information under the heading “Litigation and Patent Reexaminations” in Note 7 to our consolidated financial statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this report is incorporated herein by reference.

 

Item 4.  Mine Safety Disclosures

 

Not applicable.

 

PART II

 

Item 5.  Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securitie s

 

Our common stock began trading under the trading symbol “NLST” on the NASDAQ Global Market on November 30, 2006. As of January 14, 2016, our common stock commenced trading on the NASDAQ Capital Market

---

 

under the same trading symbol. The following table sets forth the high and low sales prices for our common stock as reported on the NASDAQ Global Market or the NASDAQ Capital Market tier, as applicable, for the periods indicated:

 

		High			Low
Year Ended December 31, 2016
Fourth Quarter		$	1.31		$	0.93
Third Quarter			1.83			1.13
Second Quarter			1.49			0.94
First Quarter			1.75			0.60
Year Ended January 2, 2016
Fourth Quarter		$	1.10		$	0.35
Third Quarter			0.60			0.28
Second Quarter			0.76			0.50
First Quarter			2.09			0.52

 

Holders

 

As of March 24, 2017 there were approximately 9 holders of record of our shares of common stock, plus an indeterminate number of additional stockholders whose shares of our common stock are held on their behalf by brokerage firms or other agents.

 

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

 

On November 22, 2016, a warrant holder exercised a warrant to acquire 1,000,000 shares of our common stock in full on a cashless basis, pursuant to which the 1,000,000 shares were exercised in exchange for our issuance of an aggregate of 605,599 shares of our common stock. The warrant was originally issued in November 2015 to an affiliate of our former lender, Fortress Credit Opportunities I LP. Additionally, on December 22, 2016, a warrant holder exercised for cash a warrant to acquire 60,000 shares of our common stock in full, pursuant to which we received a cash payment of $27,000.  This warrant was originally issued in November 2015 to a law firm as partial consideration for legal services rendered.

 

None of these warrants or the common stock issuable upon exercise of the warrants has been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”). The securities were sold and issued in reliance upon the exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act afforded by Section 4(a)(2) thereof. In determining that the issuance of the securities qualified for exemption under Section 4(a)(2), we relied upon the following facts: we did not use general solicitation or advertising to market or sell the securities; each warrant holder represented to us that it was an accredited investor (as that term is defined in Rule 501 of Regulation D under the Securities Act) and that it was acquiring the securities with the present intention of holding them for purposes of investment and not with a view to their public resale or distribution within the meaning of the Securities Act; and the securities were issued as restricted securities.

 

Dividend Policy

 

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. Additionally, our credit facility with SVB prohibits the payment of cash dividends without obtaining SVB’s prior consent. Accordingly, we do not anticipate declaring or paying cash dividends on our capital stock in the foreseeable future. Any payments of cash dividends will be at the discretion of our board of directors, and will depend upon our results of operations, capital requirements, legal and contractual restrictions and other factors deemed relevant by our board of directors.

 

 

 

Item 6.  Selected Financial Data

 

Not applicable.

---