Additional Risk Factors for Q1 2010

  • general economic and political conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the continuing volatility in the technology sector and semiconductor industry, the recent global economic recession, trends in the broadband communications markets in various geographic regions, including seasonality in sales of consumer electronic products into which our products are incorporated;
  • the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders and our ability, as well as the ability of our customers, to manage inventory;
  • our ability to adjust our operations in response to changes in demand for our existing products and services or demand for new products requested by our customers;
  • the effectiveness of our expense and product cost control and reduction efforts;
  • our ability to specify, develop or acquire, complete, introduce, market and transition to volume production new products and technologies in a cost-effective and timely manner;
  • our ability to timely and accurately predict market requirements and evolving industry standards and to identify opportunities in new markets;
  • the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Broadcom's technologies and products in our target markets;
  • the risks inherent in acquisitions of technologies and businesses, including the timing and successful completion of technology and product development through volume production, integration issues, potential contractual, intellectual property or employment issues, the risk that anticipated benefits of an acquisition may not be realized, and prescribed changes in accounting treatment and charges;
  • changes in current or future laws or the imposition of new laws or regulations, including new or changed tax regulations, or changes in the interpretation or enforcement of those laws or regulations;
  • our dependence on a few significant customers for a substantial portion of our revenue;
  • competitive pressures and other factors such as the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products;
  • intellectual property disputes and customer and directors' and officers' indemnification claims and other types of litigation risk;
  • the quality of our products and any potential remediation costs;
  • our ability to retain, recruit and hire key executives, technical personnel and other employees in the positions and numbers, with the experience and capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans;
  • the risks and uncertainties associated with our international operations;
  • the risks and uncertainties resulting from Broadcom's equity award review, including pending and potential new claims and proceedings related to such matters, such as shareholder litigation and any action by the SEC, U.S. Attorney's Office or other governmental agency that has resulted in, and could result in further, civil or criminal sanctions against the company and/or certain of our current or former officers, directors or employees, or other actions taken or required as a result of the review and the risk that we are unable to finalize the preliminary settlement of the securities class action litigation pending against us. In addition, in exchange for receiving certain payments from our directors' and officers' liability insurance carriers under the partial derivative settlement and the insurance agreement with those carriers, and subject to the terms described more completely therein, we agreed to relinquish the right to further recovery from those carriers as to the matters described above;
  • the volume of our product sales and pricing concessions on volume sales;
  • the availability and pricing of third party semiconductor foundry, assembly and test capacity and raw materials;
  • fluctuations in the manufacturing yields of our third party semiconductor foundries and other problems or delays in the fabrication, assembly, testing or delivery of our products
  • the risks of producing products with new suppliers and at new fabrication and assembly and test facilities;
  • changes in our product or customer mix;
  • problems, costs or delays that we may face in shifting our products to smaller geometry process technologies and in achieving higher levels of design integration;
  • delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in our target markets;
  • the timing of customer-industry qualification and certification of our products and the risks of non-qualification or non-certification; and
  • the level of orders received that can be shipped in a fiscal quarter.