UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549

 

 

 

 

Form 10-K

 

 

Commission file number 000-23993

 

 

Broadcom Corporation

(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in Its Charter)

 

5300 California Avenue

Irvine, California 92617-3038

(Address of Principal Executive Offices) (Zip Code)

 

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (949) 926-5000

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files).  Yes þ     No o

 

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§ 229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K.  o

 

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

 

(Do not check if a smaller reporting company)

 

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

 

The aggregate market value of the registrant’s common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, held by non-affiliates of the registrant on June 30, 2009, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was $10.8 billion (based on the closing sales price of the registrant’s common stock on that date). Shares of the registrant’s common stock held by each officer and director and each person known to the registrant to own 10% or more of the outstanding voting power of the registrant have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not a determination for other purposes.

 

The registrant has two classes of common stock authorized, Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The rights, preferences and privileges of each class of common stock are substantially identical except for voting rights. Shares of Class B common stock are not publicly traded but are convertible at any time into shares of Class A common stock on a one-for-one basis. As of December 31, 2009 there were 438.6 million shares of Class A common stock and 57.0 million shares of Class B common stock outstanding.

 

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

 

Part III incorporates by reference certain information from the registrant’s definitive proxy statement (the “Proxy Statement”) for the 2010 Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be filed on or before April 5, 2010.

 

 

 

Broadcom^®, the pulse logo, BroadVoice^®, CellAirity^tm, CryptoNetX^®, InConcert^®, HiGig^tm, NetXtreme^®, ROBOswitch-plus^tm, ROBO-HS^tm, SmartAudio^®, StrataSwitch^®, StrataXGS^®, and Videocore^® are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

 

 

BROADCOM CORPORATION

 

 

ANNUAL REPORT ON FORM 10-K

 

 

FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2009

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT

 

All statements included or incorporated by reference in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, other than statements or characterizations of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning projected total net revenue, costs and expenses and product gross margin; our accounting estimates, assumptions and judgments; our success in other pending litigation matters; estimates related to the amount and/or timing of the expensing of unearned stock-based compensation expense; the demand for our products; the effect that recent economic conditions, seasonality and volume fluctuations in the demand for our customers’ consumer-oriented products will have on our quarterly operating results; our dependence on a few key customers and/or design wins for a substantial portion of our revenue; our ability to adjust operations in response to changes in demand for existing products and services or the demand for new products requested by our customers; the competitive nature of and anticipated growth in our markets; our ability to migrate to smaller process geometries; manufacturing, assembly and test capacity; our ability to consummate acquisitions and integrate their operations successfully; our potential needs for additional capital; inventory and accounts receivable levels; the impact of the Internal Revenue Service review of certain income and employment tax returns on our results of operations; the effect of potential changes in U.S. or foreign tax laws and regulations or the interpretation thereof; the level of accrued rebates, income we expect to record in connection with the Qualcomm Agreement; and the impact of litigation related to the January 2007 restatement of our financial statements for prior periods. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry and business, management’s beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us, all of which are subject to change. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “predicts,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “potential,” “continue,” “ongoing,” similar expressions, and variations or negatives of these words. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, our actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, some of which are listed under the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Part II, Item 1A of this Report. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this Report. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement, except as otherwise required by law.

 

 

Overview

 

Broadcom Corporation (including our subsidiaries, referred to collectively in this Report as “Broadcom,” “we,” “our” and “us”) is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Our system-on-a-chip (SoC) and software solutions enable the delivery of voice, video, data and rich multimedia content to mobile devices, consumer electronics (CE) devices in the home and business networking products for the workplace, data centers, service providers and carriers. We provide the industry’s broadest portfolio of cutting-edge SoC solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, CE and broadband access products, and mobile devices. Our diverse product portfolio includes:

 

 

Our Class A common stock trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market^sm under the symbol BRCM.

 

Industry Environment and Our Business

 

Over the past two decades, communications technologies have evolved dramatically in response to ubiquitous wireless and mobile networks, the emergence of new data-intensive computing and communications applications, and the continuing convergence of personal computing devices and mobile devices. Consumer electronics and computer manufacturers as well as carriers have increasingly sought to enhance the users’ ability to share digital content (movies, photos, Internet videos and music) between devices such as PCs, set-top boxes (STBs), mobile handsets, personal media players, Blu-Ray Disc players, gaming consoles and a host of other products. This requires increasingly higher processing speeds and information transfer rates within the computing systems and the data storage devices that support them and across the network communication infrastructures that serve them.

 

The broadband transmission of digital information over wired and wireless infrastructures requires very sophisticated semiconductor solutions to perform critical systems functions such as complex signal processing, converting digital data to and from analog signals, and switching and routing packets of information over IP-based networks. Solutions that are based on multiple separate analog and digital chips generally cannot achieve the cost-effectiveness, performance and reliability required by today’s communications markets. These requirements are best addressed by new generations of highly integrated mixed-signal devices that combine complex analog, digital, and in many cases, radio frequency functions onto a single integrated circuit (an SoC), and can be manufactured in high volumes using cost-effective process technologies.

 

Reportable Segments and Broadcom^® Products

 

We currently operate in three reportable segments: Broadband Communications, Mobile & Wireless and Enterprise Networking, as described in greater detail in Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

We design, develop and supply a diverse portfolio of products. Our semiconductor and software solutions are used globally by leading manufacturers and are embedded in an array of products for the home, the hand, and network infrastructure, delivered by our three reportable segments, as reflected in the table below:

 

 

The majority of our products are now manufactured in 130 nanometer and 65 nanometer complementary metal oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, processes. Most new products are designed in 65 nanometer and 40 nanometer, which are currently the most advanced lithographic nodes for manufacturing semiconductors in large volumes. These smaller geometry processes provide significant benefits over the 90 nanometer and 130 nanometer processes by enabling lower power consumption, smaller size, higher yields and higher levels of integration.

 

Net Revenue by Reportable Segment

 

Net revenue for our reportable segments, Broadband Communications, Mobile & Wireless and Enterprise Networking is presented below. “All Other” includes our licensing revenue from Verizon Wireless and related income from the Qualcomm Agreement (see detailed discussion in “Overview” section in Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations).

Percentage of Net Revenue

 

 

The following is a brief description of each of our reportable segments.

 

Broadband Communications Reportable Segment

 

We offer manufacturers a range of broadband communications and consumer electronics SoC solutions that enable voice, video, data and multimedia services over wired and wireless networks for the home. These highly integrated silicon solutions continue to enable the most advanced system solutions, which include broadband modems and residential gateways, digital cable, satellite and IP set-top boxes and media servers, high definition digital television and Blu-ray Disc players and recorders. Net revenue from our Broadband Communications reportable segment represented 34.0%, 37.0% and 37.4% of our total net revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively.

 

Broadband Modems and Residential Gateways

 

Cable Modems and Residential Gateways.  Cable modems provide consumers and businesses high-speed Internet access through a cable television network. An additional device, called a cable modem termination system, or CMTS, located at a local cable provider’s network hub, communicates to cable modems in subscribers’ homes and controls access to the network.

 

We offer integrated semiconductor solutions for cable modems and CMTS equipment, with an extensive product offering for ultra high-speed data services to transmit voice, video, data and multimedia services to residential customers, enabling such services as video-on-demand. Our cable modem SoC solutions include integrated circuits, reference design hardware and a full software suite to support our customers’ needs and accelerate their time to market. Our cable modem SoCs provide levels of integration and performance that allow cable modem functionality to be provided by a small silicon core that can be incorporated into other consumer devices for broader distribution of IP-based services throughout the home. We also offer residential broadband gateway solutions that bring together a range of capabilities, including those for cable modems, digital set-top boxes, home networking, VoIP and Ethernet connectivity.

 

DSL.  Digital subscriber line technologies, commonly known as DSL, represent a family of broadband solutions that use a greater range of frequencies over existing telephone lines than traditional telephone services. This provides greater bandwidth to send and receive information. DSL has a number of standards or line codes used worldwide, and we support all of them, such as asymmetric DSL, or ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+ and very-high-speed DSL, or VDSL.

 

We provide end-to-end DSL technology, with solutions designed for both customer premises equipment, or CPE, and central office applications. Our DSL solutions enable local exchange carriers and enterprise networking vendors to deliver bundled broadband services, such as digital video, high-speed Internet access, VoIP, video teleconferencing and IP data business services, over existing telephone lines. For CPE applications, we provide products that address the wide variety of local area network connectivity options, including Ethernet, USB-powered

solutions, VoIP-enabled access devices and wireless access points with multiple Ethernet ports. Our central office solutions enable equipment manufacturers of digital subscriber line access multiplexers, or DSLAMs, and next generation digital loop carriers to offer a significant increase in the number of DSL connections that can be supported within telecommunication companies’ tight heat, power and space constraints. We also provide the inter-networking software that is enabling DSLAM technology to transition from Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) to Internet Protocol.

 

GPON.  Gigabit Passive Optical Network, commonly known as GPON, represents a family of broadband solutions that provide data, voice and video services over fiber networks used by telecommunications service providers around the world. We provide several different access devices used for Internet access, gateway routers and voice and data integrated access devices (IADs).

 

Digital Cable, Direct Broadcast Satellite, Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) and IP Set-Top Boxes

 

The last decade has seen rapid growth in the quantity and diversity of television programming. In an effort to increase the number of channels available to viewers, digital TV programming is now being offered by various service providers, including cable operators, satellite operators and traditional telephone companies, using the same high-speed connections that bring telephone customers broadband Internet access. In addition to offering more TV channels, these operators compete to differentiate their services through high definition programming, digital video recording services, high quality 2D/3D program guides and the ability to view and stream Internet content. To take advantage of all of these capabilities, viewers need a set-top box in the home to process these functions and distribute them to TVs and other STBs within the home.

 

Cable-TV Set-Top Box Solutions.  We offer a complete silicon platform for the digital cable-TV set-top box market. These highly integrated SoC solutions provide manufacturers with a broad range of features and capabilities for building standard digital cable-TV STBs (for digital video broadcasting), as well as high-end interactive set-top boxes supporting simultaneous viewing of television program and Internet content. Our cable-TV set-top box silicon consists of front-end transceivers with media access controller, or MAC, functions, single-chip cable modems, advanced 2D/3D graphics video encoders and MPEG decoders, radio frequency television tuners based on CMOS process technology, and digital visual interface chipsets. These cable-TV set-top box chips support most industry transmission and television standards, enabling universal interoperability and easy retail channel distribution. Our set-top box SoC solutions can also incorporate DVR functionality, home networking and VOIP technologies.

 

DBS Solutions.  By leveraging our extensive investment and expertise in the cable-TV set-top box market, we have also developed comprehensive direct broadcast satellite, or DBS, solutions. These products include an advanced, high definition video graphics subsystem, which drives the audio, video and graphics interfaces in DBS set-top boxes, and provides multi-stream control to support DVR capabilities; a CMOS satellite tuner, which allows our customers to provide additional channel offerings; front-end receiver chips for set-top boxes, including 65 nanometer receivers that incorporate DVR functionality, and an advanced modulation system to increase satellite capacity; and a digital visual interface transmitter. In addition, we offer a complete end-to-end chipset for receiving and displaying HDTV, and a complete satellite system solution that enables DBS providers to provide Internet access via satellite, combining the functionality of a satellite modem, a firewall router and home networking into a single chip.

 

IP Set-Top Box Solutions.  Broadcom provides a family of advanced video compression, high definition SoC solutions for IP set-top boxes. These solutions include high definition video decoder/audio processor chips and a dual channel high definition and digital video recorder chip. We also offer an advanced IPTV platform based on our solution for next generation STBs and Microsoft’s Mediaroom^tm. This platform will enable service providers and equipment manufacturers to offer a range of new services and features such as multi-room digital video recording, high performance user interfaces, and photo and music sharing. Additionally, we offer encoder/transcoder SoC solutions that allow non-compatible video and audio content to be shared and transferred in real-time across several classes of consumer devices to and from the PC.

 

Digital Transport Adapter or DTA solutions represent a family of devices for both cable and terrestrial applications, and are used primarily to enable legacy televisions to display the latest digital broadcast services as

national analog broadcast systems transition to digital broadcast systems. We offer several products that support digital conversion requirements in every major geography worldwide. A DTA product is, in most cases, a very simplified set-top box with a limited feature set and a non-upgradeable configuration.

 

Digital Television

 

Beginning in 2009, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, required that traditional terrestrial broadcast stations broadcast only in digital format. We offer a complete turnkey digital television-on-a-chip solution and associated software to enable digital-to-analog converter boxes that extend the lives of analog-only TVs by allowing them to receive digital-only broadcasts. Capitalizing on the FCC DTV mandate, as well as on our extensive cable-TV set-top box technology portfolio, we offer a highly integrated DTV SoC solution that, when combined with our existing satellite, cable or terrestrial demodulators, forms a complete platform for the delivery of HDTV, allowing DTV manufacturers to develop digital cable-ready TVs that connect directly to the North American cable infrastructure without the need for an external set-top box.

 

In 2008 we acquired the DTV business of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., or AMD, enabling us to rapidly extend our DTV offerings to include a more complete product line that covers all DTV markets, ranging from low-end value and mid-range quality to high-end interactive platforms and panel processors. DTV solutions developed through the integration of this acquisition with our existing technology include (1) a complete advanced video coding, or AVC, connected TV platform that allows viewers to customize their TV viewing experience, and provides new options for accessing video content, and (2) a complete turnkey platform that integrates the customer application ready design reference platform, allowing TV manufacturers to customize both hardware and software designs for differentiating products based on the user interface and visual look-and-feel, while accelerating their time to market.

 

Broadcom also supports the Digital Living Network Alliance, or DLNA^®, technology that allows users to share and access digital media easily across a variety of wired and wireless connectivity technologies, such as Multimedia over Coax Alliance, or MoCA^®, Wi-Fi and Ethernet. Support of DLNA allows consumers to easily share and stream digital content (including DVR recordings, music, photos and videos) between consumer electronics devices, mobile handsets, set-top boxes and PCs anywhere throughout their homes.

 

High Definition Blu-ray Disc Players

 

With the increasing consumer adoption of HDTV and greater availability of high definition video content, CE manufacturers have begun offering high definition Blu-ray Disc players and recorders, with substantially greater storage capacity and the ability to effectively handle the significantly higher bit rates associated with high resolution HDTV content. Our Blu-ray Disc SoC is a prevalent technology for Blu-ray Disc playback, offering HD video playback at 1080p resolution, picture-in-picture video support, HD multi-channel audio, and world class BD-Java performance for full support of BD-Live functionality. Integrated security and streaming features have enabled manufacturers to deploy a new class of Blu-ray Disc players that feature Internet-based streaming media playback capabilities. We also offer a reference design for the development of Blu-ray Disc media players that includes our HD audio/video decoder chip, as well as an HD digital video system chip and a software platform that affords our customers a wide range of integration options.

 

Mobile & Wireless Reportable Segment

 

Broadcom’s mobile and wireless reportable segment offers products supporting a broad range of solutions for the “hand”, leading-edge portable devices that enable end-to-end wireless connectivity at home, at work and on-the-go. Products in this area include solutions in major wireless market segments including wireless local area networking, personal area networking, location technologies, and a comprehensive range of mobile technologies. This portfolio of mobile and wireless products enables a broad range of portable devices including cellular handsets, personal navigation devices, mobile TV products, portable media players, gaming platforms and other wireless-enabled consumer electronics and peripherals, such as home gateways, printers, VoIP phones, home entertainment systems and notebook computers. Net revenue from our Mobile & Wireless reportable segment, our

fastest growing segment, represented 38.3%, 32.8% and 31.6% of our total net revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively.

 

Wireless Local Area Networking

 

Wireless local area networking, also known as WLAN or Wi-Fi networking, allows devices on a local area network to communicate with each other without the use of any cables or wires. It adds the convenience of mobility to the powerful utility provided by high-speed data networks, and is a natural extension of broadband connectivity in the home, office and on the road. Wi-Fi technology was first utilized in applications such as computers and routers, and is now being embedded into a number of other electronic devices such as smartphones, printers, gaming devices, televisions, Blu-Ray Disc players and broadband modems.

 

We offer a family of high performance, low power Wi-Fi chipsets that supports all of the current Wi-Fi standards, including IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and the latest standard, 802.11n. Delivering up to eight times the throughput and up to four times the range of 802.11g, our 802.11n chipsets enable us to serve a new demand for the transfer of HD content between devices and throughout the home. Our entire family of wireless LAN chips consists of all-CMOS solutions that offer advanced security features and are capable of self-calibration based on usage temperatures and other environmental conditions.

 

Wireless Personal Area Networking

 

The Bluetooth short-range wireless networking standard is a low power wire replacement technology that enables connectivity among a wide variety of mainstream consumer electronic devices including PCs, mobile phones, smartphones, headsets and consumer electronics. Bluetooth wireless connectivity enables personal area networking, or PAN, at speeds up to 3 Mbps, and can cover distances up to approximately 10 meters. This short-range wireless technology allows devices to automatically synchronize and exchange data with other Bluetooth-enabled devices without the need for wires, and enables wireless audio connections to cellular phones, as well as wireless mouse and keyboard applications.

 

We offer a complete family of Bluetooth silicon and software solutions for mobile phones, PCs, wireless headphones and headsets, digital televisions, peripherals, gaming and other applications. Our family of single-chip Bluetooth devices and software applications and protocol stacks provides a complete solution that enables manufacturers to add Bluetooth functionality to almost any electronic device with a minimal amount of development time and resources. Our highly integrated Bluetooth solutions are designed in standard CMOS process technology, offering smaller sizes and lower power consumption while reducing manufacturing costs. In addition, we have developed InConcert^® coexistence technology to allow products enabled with multiple wireless technologies such as our Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth to collaboratively co-exist and maximize throughput and performance.

 

Global Positioning Systems

 

The demand for location based technologies has grown dramatically over the last several years, as evidenced by the increased deployment of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) semiconductors, software and location data. GPS has always been a required feature in navigation devices and is becoming a standard feature in mobile phones and in the PC market. Broadcom offers standalone GPS and assisted-global positioning system, or A-GPS semiconductor products, software and data services. The company also maintains a worldwide GPS reference network that provides assistance data to A-GPS-equipped chips via wireless transport, including cellular data channels (GPRS or 3G) and Wi-Fi, which boosts performance and reduces the time required to determine a location by up to 100 times. Combining our GPS technology with our leading Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular and other mobile technologies allows leading cellular handset and personal navigation device makers to obtain all of the key wireless connectivity solutions from a single source.

 

Wireless Combination Chips

 

Consumers increasingly expect their portable media devices to be able to seamlessly communicate with other devices, such as TVs, PCs, printers, remote speakers, headsets and car stereos, utilizing a wide variety of wireless

technologies. At the same time, our customers are continually seeking to lower their costs, extend the battery life of their devices and bring new products to market quickly. To meet these demands, we have developed a family of combination chip, or “combo chip”, solutions that integrate multiple discrete wireless technologies into a single-chip solution. For example, we offer combo chip solutions that integrate a complete Bluetooth system (radio and baseband), Wi-Fi radio and baseband and a high performance FM stereo radio receiver into a single die. With these combo chips, makers of multimedia cell phones and digital media players enabled with Broadcom Bluetooth technology can conveniently add Wi-Fi and FM radio functionality to their products while maintaining optimal power, size and cost. In addition, we offer combo chip solutions that combine our Bluetooth and FM technologies onto a single silicon die and a combo chip solution that combines our Bluetooth, GPS, and FM technologies onto a single device.

 

Cellular Technology

 

The cellular handset is transitioning from a pure voice device to a broadband multimedia gateway. Products emerging from this transition allow end users to wirelessly download email, view web pages, stream audio and video, play games and conduct videoconferences with cellular phones, smartphones, notebook computers and other mobile devices.

 

The international Global System for Mobile Communication, or GSM, standard is currently the most popular standard for cellular mobile communications. Enhanced data communications standards derived from GSM include General Packet Radio Services, or GPRS, Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution, or EDGE, and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, or UMTS. UMTS technologies, including Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, or WCDMA, and High Speed Packet Access, or HSPA, are typically referred to as 3G technologies. These standards have extended GSM to enable “always on” Internet applications and more efficient data transport with higher transmission rates and better network utilization for a new generation of data services such as Internet browsing, 3D gaming and multimedia messaging with rich graphics and audio content.

 

We develop and market GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS chipsets and reference designs with complete software and terminal solutions for use in cellular phones, cellular modem cards and smartphones. Our CellAirity^tm cellular platform includes baseband processor solutions, which integrate both mixed-signal and digital functions into a single chip as well as our single-chip HSPA processor ‘phone-on-a-chip’ solution that enables manufacturers to build next generation 3G phones with breakthrough features, sleek form factors and an extended battery life. In conjunction with our hardware platform solutions, we offer full software suites for a variety of operating systems to enable complete phone designs by our customers.

 

Mobile Multimedia Processors

 

Multimedia has become increasingly prevalent in handheld devices such as cellular phones, Internet appliances and portable media players. To support new multimedia features including imaging, graphics, camera image capture, audio capture, music playback, music streaming, video streaming, video capture, gaming, mobile TV, and more, Broadcom offers our VideoCore^® line of video and multimedia processors based on a low power, high performance architecture.

 

Unlike hard-wired only processor cores, VideoCore processors are built to provide customers the benefit of software flexibility and programmability, as well as low power from hardware acceleration. The programmability delivered by a powerful vector processor enables OEMs to quickly port new and evolving codecs. VideoCore products integrate dedicated hardware blocks for high performance, low power 2D and 3D graphics, high definition 720p and 1080p video recording and playback, and an image signal processor, or ISP, for still image processing. This combination of programmability and dedicated low power hardware enables OEMs to deliver compelling products and an easy migration to new technologies made popular by ever changing Internet applications.

 

Our VideoCore products can be used either as standalone multimedia processors or as co-processors in conjunction with a host processor such as a cellular baseband.

Mobile Application Processors

 

The increasing popularity of multimedia features in cellular phones and other portable devices, such as mobile televisions and portable audio, video and gaming devices, is generating a demand for high-end applications processors optimized to work with video and camera capabilities at prices affordable to consumers. Our family of mobile application processors, which integrate our VideoCore multimedia processor and an ARM^® RISC processor, software, and reference designs, enable an array of multimedia features, including support for high megapixel digital cameras, HD video encoding and decoding, and TV signal output via composite, component and S-video connections. In addition, the ARM processor runs the operating system found in smart phones and other embedded devices. Our mobile applications processors also support advanced mobile device applications such as e-mail, web browsing, file management and graphical user interfaces.

 

Mobile Power Management

 

Increasingly sophisticated functionality and applications are becoming available in new cellular handsets and other portable devices. However, each of these applications adds to the power consumption and power management complexity of the overall system, creating a need for more sophisticated battery charging, monitoring, and highly efficient power supplies and audio drivers. Portable device makers are seeking advanced power management solutions that reduce total system cost, occupy very little board space and are flexible and scalable enough to manage even the most demanding power requirements. Broadcom provides a family of power management devices that intelligently manage power consumption in mobile devices to optimize system operation and maximize battery life in cellular phones, personal navigation devices, and personal media players.

 

Touch Controllers

 

Touch screen functionality is an increasingly popular feature on mobile devices, with many new cellular handsets and portable media players allowing users to access content and navigate menus and graphical user interfaces with the touch of a finger. We provide custom designed low power touch screen controllers to help enable this functionality.

 

Voice over Internet Protocol

 

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, refers to the transmission of voice over any IP packet-based network such as Ethernet. VoIP is stimulating dramatic changes in traditional public switched and enterprise telephone networks since packet-based networks provide significant economic advantages over traditional circuit-switched voice networks. The trend to IP networks for voice has been driven by the significant build-out of the Internet and deregulation of long distance and local phone services. A host of new enterprise services can be enabled when a LAN-based Ethernet switching infrastructure is used to carry both data and voice. Within residential markets, VoIP is gaining momentum as a viable alternative to traditional public telephone networks. In addition to enabling cost savings for long distance calls, VoIP creates a number of consumer product opportunities and applications for equipment vendors and service providers.

 

Our VoIP phone silicon and software solutions integrate packet processing, voice processing and switching technologies to provide the quality of service, high fidelity and reliability necessary for enterprise telephony applications. Our portfolio also features terminal adapter VoIP solutions that enable existing analog phones to be connected to broadband modems via Ethernet. These products support residential VoIP services that are now being offered by a variety of broadband service providers. Our VoIP solutions allow carriers and service providers to offer low cost and high quality telephone services that can be bundled with high-speed Internet access, IPTV and a host of converged wireless capabilities. By combining our VoIP solutions with our video and mobile multimedia processors, our customers can create scalable solutions that enable the transmission of voice, video data and multimedia content over an IP network.

 

All of our VoIP processors support our SmartAudio^® and BroadVoice^® technologies, which feature a wideband high fidelity mode that significantly improves the clarity and quality of telephony voice services.

Enterprise Networking Reportable Segment

 

Through our Enterprise Networking reportable segment, we design and develop complete silicon and software solutions for infrastructure that is scalable, secure, and easy to manage for service provider, data center, enterprise and small-to-medium business, or SMB, networks. Our solutions leverage industry-proven Ethernet technology to promote faster, ‘greener’ and more cost-efficient transport and processing of voice, video, data and multimedia across both wired and wireless networks. Our products are found in a wide variety of networking equipment including Ethernet switches, routers and gateways, security appliances, DSLAMs, 3G/4G wireless backhaul equipment, cable and VoIP hardware, desktop and notebook computers, servers and storage appliances, and network-attached printers. Net revenue from our Enterprise Networking reportable segment represented 23.5%, 27.0%, and 30.2% of our total net revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively.

 

Local Area Networking

 

Local area networks, or LANs, consist of various types of equipment, such as servers, workstations and desktop and notebook computers, interconnected by copper or fiber cables utilizing a common networking protocol, generally the Ethernet protocol. Ethernet can scale in speeds ranging from 10 Megabits per second, or Mbps, to 40 Gigabits per second, or Gbps. As the volume and complexity of network traffic continues to increase, technologies such as Gigabit Ethernet, or GbE, a networking standard that supports data transfer rates of up to one Gbps, and the 10 Gigabit Ethernet, or 10GbE, standard, which supports data transfer rates of up to 10 Gbps, are replacing older technologies such as Fast Ethernet, which can only support data transfer rates of up to 100 Mbps.

 

Gigabit Ethernet has emerged as the predominant networking technology for desktop and notebook computers, and we expect server and backbone connections to continue to migrate to the newer 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard. Convergence around the 10GbE standard will allow massive data flow from remote storage sites across the country over metropolitan area networks, or MANs, and into corporate LANs, without unnecessary delays, costly buffering for speed mismatches or latency, or breaks in the quality of service.

 

Our complete line of highly integrated, low power SoC solutions includes Ethernet transceivers, controllers and switches for servers, workstations, desktop and notebook computers, VoIP phones, switches and routers, wireless access points and network infrastructure products. These solutions enable users to share Internet access, exchange graphics and video presentations, utilize VoIP and video conferencing services, and share peripheral devices, such as printers and scanners. In addition, we incorporate intelligent networking functionality into our devices, enabling system vendors to deploy quality of service (QoS) features and applications, found typically in the core of the network, to every corporate desktop.

 

Ethernet Transceivers.  Our complex Ethernet transceivers are built upon a proprietary digital signal processing, or DSP, communication architecture optimized for high-speed enterprise network connections. Our DSP silicon core enables interoperability and robust performance over a wide range of cable lengths and operating conditions. We offer a variety of single port and multi-port products ranging from 10 Mbps up to 40 Gbps speeds. We believe this equipment can significantly upgrade the performance of existing networks without the need to rewire the network infrastructure with fiber or enhanced copper cabling. These Ethernet transceivers are driving the market towards lower power and smaller footprints, making it easier and less expensive to build Ethernet network interface cards, or NICs, switches, hubs and routers, and to put networking chips directly on computer motherboards in LAN on motherboard, or LOM, configurations.

 

Gigabit Ethernet Controllers.  Built upon multiple generations of Ethernet media access controller , or MAC, technology, our NetXtreme^® family of Gigabit Ethernet controllers supports peripheral component interconnections, or PCI^®, PCI-X^® and PCI Express^® local bus interfaces, for use in NIC and LOM implementations. The NetXtreme family includes comprehensive solutions for servers, workstations, and desktop and notebook computers. These devices incorporate an integrated Gigabit Ethernet physical layer, or PHY, transceiver and are provided with an advanced software suite that supports a variety of operating systems. The NetXtreme architecture also features a processor-based design that enables customers to run advanced management software in firmware so they can remotely upgrade it through simple downloads. The entire NetXtreme controller family incorporates security

features, including integrated Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, functionality, to enable PC manufacturers to offer hardware-based security as a standard feature on enterprise client personal computers.

 

Ethernet Switches.  We offer switch-on-a-chip products ranging from low cost, unmanaged and managed, Layer 2 to high-end managed, Layer 3 through Layer 7 enterprise class switch chips. We also offer high-end metro Ethernet scalable switch solutions with applications that include Carrier Ethernet switches and routers, next generation transport equipment, synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy, or SONET/SDH, telecommunications equipment and Ethernet access equipment. Our Carrier Ethernet switch portfolio offers a broad feature set that enables carrier/service provider networks to support a large number of high value services such as VoIP, IPTV, video-on-demand, HDTV and Internet gaming. In addition, we provide networking software that enables communications system manufacturers to reduce development costs and deliver IP/Ethernet products to market faster.

 

For SMB applications, our ROBOswitch-plus^tm product family consists of Layer 2+ Ethernet switches, and our ROBO-HS^tm product family supports single-chip networking solutions for Layer 2+ Gigabit Ethernet configurations. In 2008 we introduced a family of 65 nanometer GbE switches for this market with full Layer 2 switching to address the feature set and port density requirements of today’s SMB networks. The entire family is designed to support lower power modes and comply with industry standards while utilizing packaging materials free of lead and other harmful toxins creating truly ‘green’ products for the SMB market. To address multi-tenant unit and multi-dwelling unit applications, we also offer a family of Layer 2 managed switches that are designed specifically for the service provider market in Asia to address Internet connectivity and the delivery of high bandwidth content, such as multimedia, to densely populated residential and commercial buildings. Our highly integrated family of switch products combines the switching fabric, MACs, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet transceivers, media independent interface and packet buffer memory in single-chip solutions. These chips enable manufacturers to develop multiple switch design options that combine plug-and-play ease-of-use, scalability, network management features and non-blocking switching performance at optimal price points for the SMB market.

 

For enterprise applications, our StrataXGS^® product family provides the multi-layer switching capabilities of our earlier StrataSwitch^® II technology with wire-speed Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching performance for enterprise business networks. Our newest StrataXGS IV family of single-chip switches enables the scalability necessary for data center 3.0 applications, the security required for enterprise networks, and the protocols and quality of service needed to implement next generation service provider networks. We also provide the StrataXGS HiGig^tm high-density switch fabric that provides a one-half terabit of packet switching capacity on a single chip that can scale to multi-terabits of capacity on a single backplane. These multi-layer switches are capable of receiving, prioritizing and forwarding packets of voice, video, data and multimedia at high speeds over existing corporate networks. The StrataXGS family also enables advanced network management capabilities in the switching infrastructure to track data flows and monitor or control bandwidth on any one of these flows. This results in a more intelligent use of network resources and enables a whole new set of network service applications that require high bandwidth, reliable data transmission, low latency and advanced quality service features such as streaming video and VoIP.

 

Metropolitan and Wide Area Networking

 

We offer a portfolio of CMOS OC-48 and OC-192 transceiver and forward error correction, or FEC, solutions, chips for synchronous optical networks and dense wave division multiplexing, or DWDM, applications, as well as a serial CMOS transceiver for 10GbE applications to allow MANs and WANs to address increasing volumes of data traffic. Our use of the CMOS process allows substantially higher levels of integration and lower power consumption than competitive solutions. Optical communications components are a natural extension of our large portfolio of high-speed LAN chips, and allow us to provide end-to-end semiconductor solutions across the WAN, MAN and LAN to increase the performance, intelligence and cost effectiveness of broadband communications networks.

Security Processors and Adapters

 

Our SSL family of CryptoNetX^® high-speed security processors enables companies to guard against Internet attacks without compromising the speed and performance of their networks. These processors are built upon a proprietary, scalable silicon architecture that performs standards-compliant cryptographic functions at data rates ranging from a few Mbps to 10 Gbps. This architecture is being deployed across all of our products, addressing the entire broadband security network spectrum from residential applications to enterprise networking equipment. This scalable architecture allows us to develop standalone security products for very high-speed networking applications as well as to integrate the IP security processor core into lower speed solutions for consumer products, such as cable and DSL modem applications. We also offer a family of secure applications processors for use in PC and desktop solutions and point of sale devices. These new security solutions integrate an on-chip ‘vault’ architecture that houses the credentials and processes all secure transactions rather than running secure applications on the main system processor, which is at greater risk of tampering and theft.

 

Broadband Processors

 

Broadband processors are high performance SoC solutions that enable high-speed computations to identify, optimize and control the flow of data within the broadband network. With the migration from second generation cellular mobile systems, or 2G, to the third generation cellular mobile systems, or 3G, and with the continued growth of IP traffic and demand for new services and applications, networks and mobile infrastructure equipment must also be able to support higher bandwidth rates utilizing low power resource levels.

 

Leveraging our expertise in large scale integration design, we have developed a family of high performance, low power processor solutions designed specifically to meet the needs of next generation networks. This family of processors delivers four key features essential for today’s embedded broadband network processors: (1) very high performance; (2) low power dissipation; (3) high integration of network-centric functions; and (4) programmability based on an industry-standard instruction set architecture. These processors provide customers with a solution for high-speed network processing, including packet classification, queuing, forwarding and exception processing for wired and wireless networks. They enable complex applications such as deep content switching, routing and load balancing to be performed at wire speed.

 

Custom Silicon Products

 

Custom silicon products are devices for applications that customers are able to semi-customize by integrating their own intellectual property with our proprietary intellectual property cores. We have successfully deployed such devices into the LAN, WAN and PC markets. Our typical semi-custom devices are complex mixed-signal designs that leverage our advanced design processes.

 

Licensing of Intellectual Property

 

We also generate licensing revenue and related income from the licensing of our intellectual property. The vast majority of our licensing revenue and related income to date has been derived from agreements with two customers, Verizon Wireless and QUALCOMM Incorporated, or Qualcomm. See detailed discussion in “Overview” section in Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. This licensing revenue and related income represented 4.2%, 3.2%, and 0.8% of our total net revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively.

 

Reference Platforms

 

We also develop reference platforms designed around our integrated circuit products that represent prototypical system-level applications for incorporation into our customers’ products. These reference platforms generally include an extensive suite of software drivers, as well as protocol and application layer software, to assist our customers in developing their own end products. By providing these reference platforms, we can assist our customers in achieving easier and faster transitions from initial prototype designs to final production releases. These reference platforms enhance the customer’s confidence that our products will meet its market requirements and product introduction schedules.

Customers and Strategic Relationships

 

We sell our products to leading wired and wireless communications manufacturers. Because we leverage our technologies across different markets, certain of our integrated circuits may be incorporated into products used in several markets.

 

Customers currently shipping wired and/or wireless communications equipment and devices incorporating our products include Alcatel, Apple, Cisco, Dell, EchoStar, Hewlett-Packard, LG, Motorola, Netgear, Nintendo, Nokia, Pace, Samsung, and Thomson CE, among others. We have also established strategic relationships with multiservice operators that provide wired and wireless communications services to consumers and businesses.

 

A small number of customers have historically accounted for a substantial portion of our net revenue. Sales to our five largest customers represented 34.6%, 35.8% and 39.7% of our net revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively. See Note 12 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report. We expect that our key customers will continue to account for a substantial portion of our net revenue in 2010 and in the foreseeable future. These customers and their respective contributions to our net revenue have varied and will likely continue to vary from period to period. We typically sell products pursuant to purchase orders that customers can generally cancel, change or defer on short notice without incurring a significant penalty.

 

Core Technologies

 

Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, we design, develop and supply complete SoC solutions and system-level software, together with related hardware and software applications. Our proven SoC design methodology has enabled us to be first to market with advanced chips that are highly integrated and cost-effective, and that facilitate the easy integration of our customers’ intellectual property. Our design methodology leverages industry-standard, state-of-the-art electronic design automation tools, and generally migrates easily to new silicon processes and technology platforms. It also allows for the easy integration of acquired or licensed technology, providing customers with a broad range of silicon options with differentiated networking and performance features.

 

We believe our key competitive advantages include superior engineering execution and our broad base of core technologies encompassing the complete design space from systems to silicon. We have developed and continue to build on the following technology foundations:

 

 

Research and Development

 

We have assembled a large team of experienced engineers and technologists, many of whom are leaders in their particular field or discipline. As of December 31, 2009 we had 5,535 research and development employees, the majority of whom hold advanced degrees, including 546 employees with Ph.Ds. These key employees are involved in advancing our core technologies, as well as applying them to our product development activities. Because the SoC solutions benefit from the same underlying core technologies, we are able to address a wide range of wired and wireless communications markets with a relatively focused investment in research and development.

 

We believe that the achievement of higher levels of integration and the timely introduction of new products is essential to our growth. While we intend to continue to manage our costs and expenses to attain our long-term business objectives, we will need to maintain significant research and development staffing levels in 2010 and for the foreseeable future. We have design centers throughout the United States, including our principal design facilities in Irvine, California and Santa Clara County, California. Internationally, we have design facilities in Asia,

Europe and Canada. We anticipate establishing additional design centers in the United States and in other countries.

 

Our research and development expense was $1.535 billion, $1.498 billion and $1.349 billion in 2009, 2008, and 2007, respectively. These amounts included stock-based compensation expense for employees engaged in research and development of $351.9 million, $358.0 million and $353.6 million in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively.

 

Manufacturing

 

Wafer Fabrication

 

We depend on five independent foundry subcontractors located in Asia to manufacture substantially all of our products. Our key silicon foundries are Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation in Taiwan, GlobalFoundries, Inc. (formerly Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing) in Singapore, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation in China, Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. in Malaysia and United Microelectronics Corporation in Singapore and Taiwan, several of which maintain multiple fabrication facilities in various locations. See “Risk Factors” under Item 1A of this Report for a detailed discussion of the risks associated with our dependence on independent foundry subcontractors.

 

Most of our products are manufactured using CMOS process technology. The processes we select permit us to engage independent silicon foundries to fabricate our integrated circuits. By subcontracting our manufacturing requirements, we can focus our resources on design and test applications where we believe we have greater competitive advantages. This strategy also eliminates the high cost of owning and operating semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities.

 

Our products are currently fabricated on a variety of processes ranging from 500 nanometers to 65 nanometers. We evaluate the benefits, on a product-by-product basis, of migrating to smaller geometry process technologies. The majority of our products are currently manufactured in 130 nanometers and 65 nanometers, and we are designing most new products in 65 nanometers and 40 nanometers. See “Risk Factors” under Item 1A of this Report for a detailed discussion of the risks associated with transitioning to smaller geometry process technologies.

 

Our operations and quality engineering teams closely manage the interface between manufacturing and design engineering. As a result, we are responsible for the complete functional and parametric performance testing of our devices, including quality. We employ an operations and quality organization to work very closely with semiconductor wafer manufacturers. We also arrange with our foundries to have online work-in-process control.

 

Assembly and Test

 

Our wafer probe testing is conducted by either our independent foundries or independent wafer probe test subcontractors. Following completion of the wafer probe tests, the die are assembled into packages and the finished products are tested by one of our three primary subcontractors for testing: United Test and Assembly Center in Singapore, EEMS in Singapore and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) in China and Taiwan. Our eight key subcontractors for assembly are: Advanced Semiconductor Engineering in China and Taiwan; Amkor in Korea, Philippines and China; ASAT in China; EEMS Test Singapore in Singapore and China; Signetics in Korea; Siliconware Precision in Taiwan; STATSChipPAC in Singapore, Korea, Malaysia and China; and United Test and Assembly Center in Singapore and Thailand. The availability of assembly and testing services from these subcontractors could be materially and adversely affected in the event a subcontractor experiences financial difficulties in the current global economic environment, or if a subcontractor suffers any damage to or destruction of its facilities, or in the event of any other disruption of assembly and testing capacity. See “Risk Factors” under Item 1A of this Report for a more detailed discussion of the risks associated with our dependence on third party assembly and test subcontractors.

Quality Assurance

 

Manufacturers of wired and wireless communications products demand high-quality and reliable semiconductors for incorporation into their products. We focus on product reliability from the initial stage of the design cycle through each specific design process, including layout and production test design.

 

We prequalify each assembly and foundry subcontractor. This prequalification process consists of a series of industry standard environmental product stress tests, as well as an audit and analysis of the subcontractor’s quality system and manufacturing capability. We also participate in quality and reliability monitoring through each stage of the production cycle by reviewing electrical and parametric data from our wafer foundry and assembly subcontractors. We closely monitor wafer foundry production to ensure consistent overall quality, reliability and yield levels.

 

As part of our total quality program, we received ISO 9001 certification, a comprehensive International Standards Organization specified quality system acknowledgement, for our Singapore facility. All of our principal independent foundries and package assembly facilities are currently ISO 9001 certified.

 

Environmental Management

 

We monitor the environmental impact of our products. Our manufacturing flow is registered to ISO 14000, the international standard related to environmental management, by our subcontractors. Due to environmental concerns, the need for lead-free solutions in electronic components and systems is receiving increasing attention within the semiconductor industry and many companies are moving towards becoming compliant with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, or RoHS, the European legislation that restricts the use of a number of substances, including lead. We believe that our products are compliant with the RoHS Directive. In 2008 we began managing our compliance towards the new European REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) legislation.

 

Product Distribution

 

We distribute products to our customers through our international distribution center in Singapore and an operations and distribution center located in Irvine, California. Our Singapore facility distributes products to international destinations, while our Irvine facility ships products to U.S. destinations. Net product revenue derived from actual shipments to international destinations, primarily in Asia (including foreign subsidiaries or manufacturing subcontractors of customers that are headquartered in the United States), represented 94.8%, 91.8% and 88.3% of our net revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively.

 

Sales and Marketing

 

Our sales and marketing strategy is to achieve design wins with technology leaders in each of our targeted wired and wireless communications markets by providing quality, state-of-the-art products, superior engineering execution, and superior sales, field application and engineering support. We market and sell our products in the United States through a direct sales force, distributors and manufacturers’ representatives. The majority of our domestic sales occur through our direct sales force, which is based in offices located in California and throughout the United States. We have also engaged independent distributors, Arrow Electronics and Avnet, Inc., to service the North American and South American markets.

 

We market and sell our products internationally through regional offices in Asia, Europe and North America, as well as through a network of independent distributors and representatives in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. We select these independent entities based on their ability to provide effective field sales, marketing communications and technical support to our customers. All international sales to date have been in U.S. dollars. For information regarding revenue from independent customers by geographic area, see Note 12 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report.

 

We dedicate sales managers to principal customers to promote close cooperation and communication. We also provide our customers with reference platform designs for most products. We believe this enables our customers to achieve easier and faster transitions from the initial prototype designs through final production releases. We believe

these reference platform designs also significantly enhance customers’ confidence that our products will meet their market requirements and product introduction schedules.

 

Backlog

 

Our sales are made primarily pursuant to standard purchase orders for delivery of products. Due to industry practice that allows customers to cancel, change or defer orders with limited advance notice prior to shipment, we do not believe that backlog is a reliable indicator of future revenue levels.

 

Competition

 

Wired and wireless communications markets and the semiconductor industry are intensely competitive and are characterized by rapid change, evolving standards, short product life cycles and price erosion. We believe that the principal factors of competition for integrated circuit providers include:

 

 

We believe that we compete favorably with respect to each of these factors.

 

We compete with a number of major domestic and international suppliers of integrated circuits and related applications. We also compete with suppliers of system-level and motherboard-level solutions incorporating integrated circuits that are proprietary or sourced from manufacturers other than Broadcom. This competition has resulted and will continue to result in declining average selling prices for our products in certain markets. We also may face competition from newly established competitors, suppliers of products based on new or emerging technologies, and customers that choose to develop their own silicon solutions. We also expect to encounter further consolidation in the markets in which we compete.

 

Many of our competitors operate their own fabrication facilities and have longer operating histories and presence in key markets, greater name recognition, larger customer bases and significantly greater financial, sales and marketing, manufacturing, distribution, technical and other resources than we do. As a result, these competitors may be able to adapt more quickly to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements or to devote greater resources to the promotion and sale of their products. Current and potential competitors have established or may establish financial or strategic relationships among themselves or with existing or potential customers, resellers or other third parties, and may refuse to provide us with information necessary to permit the interoperability of our products with theirs. Accordingly, it is possible that new competitors or alliances among competitors could emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share. In addition, competitors may develop technologies that more effectively address our markets with products that offer enhanced features, lower power requirements or lower costs. Increased competition could result in pricing pressures, decreased gross margins and loss of market share and may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

Intellectual Property

 

Our success and future product revenue growth depend, in part, on our ability to protect our intellectual property. We rely primarily on patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as nondisclosure agreements and other methods, to protect our proprietary technologies and processes. However, these measures may not provide meaningful protection for our intellectual property.

 

We currently hold more than 3,800 U.S. and more than 1,550 foreign patents (up from more than 3,100 U.S. and more than 1,400 foreign patents from the prior year) and more than 7,800 additional U.S. and foreign pending patent applications. We also generally enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees and strategic partners, and typically control access to and distribution of our documentation and other proprietary

information. Despite these precautions, it is possible that competitors or other unauthorized third parties may obtain, copy, use or disclose our technologies and processes, develop similar technology independently, or design around our patents. As such, any rights granted under our patents may not provide us with meaningful protection. In addition, we may not be able to successfully enforce our patents against infringing products in every jurisdiction.

 

Some or all of our patents have in the past been licensed and likely will in the future be licensed to certain of our competitors through cross-license agreements, such as the Qualcomm Agreement. See detailed discussion in “Overview” section in Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. Moreover, because we have participated and continue to participate in developing various industry standards, we may be required to license some of our patents to others, including competitors, who develop products based on those standards.

 

Companies in and related to the semiconductor industry and the wired and wireless communications markets often aggressively protect and pursue their intellectual property rights. We are currently engaged in litigation and may need to engage in additional litigation to enforce our intellectual property rights or the rights of our customers, to protect our trade secrets, or to determine the validity and scope of proprietary rights of others, including our customers. In addition, we are currently engaged in litigation and may engage in future litigation with parties that claim that we infringed their patents or misappropriated or misused their trade secrets. Such litigation will result in substantial costs and diversion of our resources and could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. For a detailed description of our outstanding intellectual property litigation, see Note 11 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report.

 

The risks associated with patents and intellectual property are more fully discussed under the section entitled “Risk Factors” under Item 1A of this Report.

 

Employees

 

As of December 31, 2009 we had 7,407 full-time, contract and temporary employees, including 5,535 individuals engaged in research and development, 707 engaged in sales and marketing, 534 engaged in manufacturing operations, and 631 engaged in finance, legal and general administrative activities. Our employees are not represented by any collective bargaining agreement, and we have never experienced a work stoppage. We believe our employee relations are good.

 

Other

 

Broadcom was incorporated in California in August 1991. Our principal executive offices are located at 5300 California Avenue, Irvine, California 92617-3038, and our telephone number at that location is 949.926.5000. Our Internet address is www.broadcom.com. The inclusion of our website address in this Report does not include or incorporate by reference into this Report any information on our website. Our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, amendments to those reports and other SEC filings are available free of charge through our website as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC.

 

 

Before deciding to purchase, hold or sell our common stock, you should carefully consider the risks described below in addition to the other cautionary statements and risks described elsewhere and the other information contained in this Report and in our other filings with the SEC, including subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial may also affect our business. If any of these known or unknown risks or uncertainties actually occurs with material adverse effects on Broadcom, our business, financial condition, results of operations and/or liquidity could be seriously harmed. In that event, the market price for our Class A common stock will likely decline, and you may lose all or part of your investment.

Our operating results may be adversely impacted by worldwide political and economic uncertainties and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the cyclical nature of and volatility in the semiconductor industry. As a result, the market price of our Class A common stock may decline.

 

We operate primarily in the semiconductor industry, which is cyclical and subject to rapid change and evolving industry standards. From time to time, the semiconductor industry has experienced significant downturns, such as the most recent global downturn. These downturns are characterized by decreases in product demand, excess customer inventories, and accelerated erosion of prices. These factors could cause substantial fluctuations in our revenue, gross margins and results of operations. In addition, during these downturns some competitors may become more aggressive in their pricing practices, which would adversely impact our product gross margins. Any downturns in the semiconductor industry may be severe and prolonged, and any failure of the industry or wired and wireless communications markets to fully recover from downturns could seriously impact our revenue and harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. The semiconductor industry also periodically experiences increased demand and production capacity constraints, which may affect our ability to ship products. Accordingly, our operating results may vary significantly as a result of the general conditions in the semiconductor industry, which could cause large fluctuations in our stock price.

 

Many other factors have the potential to significantly impact our business, such as: concerns about inflation and deflation, deterioration in credit availability due to the recent financial crisis, volatility in energy costs, decreased consumer confidence, reduced corporate profits and capital spending, adverse business conditions and liquidity concerns in the wired and wireless communications markets, reduced availability of insurance coverage or reduced ability to pay claims by insurance carriers, recent international conflicts and terrorist and military activity, and the impact of natural disasters and public health emergencies. These conditions may make it extremely difficult for our customers, our vendors and us to accurately forecast and plan future business activities, and they could cause U.S. and foreign businesses to reduce spending on our products and services, which would delay and lengthen sales cycles. Furthermore, during challenging economic times our customers may face issues gaining timely access to sufficient credit or could even need to file for bankruptcy. Either of these circumstances could result in an impairment of their ability to make timely payments to us. If these circumstances were to occur, we may be required to increase our allowance for doubtful accounts and our days sales outstanding would be negatively impacted. Historically, semiconductor companies are several steps removed from the end-customer in the supply chain and have experienced growth patterns that are different than what the end demand might be, particularly during periods of high volatility. This can manifest itself in periods of growth in excess of their customers’ followed by periods of under-shipment before the volatility abates. However, given recent economic conditions it is possible that any correlation will continue to be less predictable and will result in increased volatility in our operating results and stock price. We cannot predict the timing, strength or duration of any economic slowdown or subsequent economic recovery, worldwide, in the semiconductor industry or in the wired and wireless communications markets. If the economy or markets in which we operate deviate from present levels or deteriorate, we may record additional charges related to restructuring costs and the impairment of goodwill and long-lived assets, and our business, financial condition and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected. Additionally, the combination of our lengthy sales cycle coupled with challenging macroeconomic conditions could have a synergistic negative impact on the results of our operations. The impact of market volatility is not limited to revenue but may also affect our product gross margins and other financial metrics. Such impact could be manifested in, but not limited to, factors such as fixed cost overhead absorption.

 

Our quarterly operating results may fluctuate significantly. As a result, we may fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts and investors, which could cause our stock price to decline.

 

Our quarterly net revenue and operating results have fluctuated significantly in the past and are likely to continue to vary from quarter to quarter due to a number of factors, many of which are not within our control. For example, recently our income has fluctuated from a net loss of $159.2 million for the three months ended December 31, 2008, to net income of $59.2 million for the three months ended December 31, 2009. If our operating results do not meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors, who may derive their expectations by extrapolating data from recent historical operating results, the market price of our Class A common stock will likely decline. Fluctuations in our operating results may be due to a number of factors, including, but not limited

to, those listed below and those identified throughout this “Risk Factors” section, some of which may contribute to more pronounced fluctuations in an uncertain global economic environment:

 

 

We expect new products to account for a high percentage of our future sales. The markets for some of these products are immature and/or unpredictable or are new markets for Broadcom. We cannot assure you that these markets will develop into significant opportunities or that we will continue to derive significant revenue from new products. Based on the limited amount of historical data available to us, it is difficult to anticipate our future revenue streams from, or the sustainability of, such newer products. Typically our new products have lower gross margins until we commence volume production and launch lower cost revisions of such products, enabling us to benefit from economies of scale and more efficient designs.

 

Our industry is economically dynamic and the level of research and development investment required to remain competitive has been and continues to be subject to change over time. While we intend to manage our operations to achieve results consistent with our long-term financial model, it is possible that we may not achieve results consistent with our model due to increased research and development or other spending occasioned by changing industry dynamics.

 

Additionally, as an increasing number of our chips are being incorporated into consumer electronic products, we anticipate greater seasonality and fluctuations in the demand for our products, which may result in greater variations in our quarterly operating results. Depending upon where they are in their product life cycle, consumer electronic products can also have lower prices, which could negatively impact our product revenue and product gross margin.

We are subject to order and shipment uncertainties, and our ability to accurately forecast customer demand may be impaired by our lengthy sales cycle. If we are unable to accurately predict customer demand, we may hold excess or obsolete inventory, which would reduce our product gross margin. Conversely, we may have insufficient inventory, which would result in lost revenue opportunities and potentially in loss of market share and damaged customer relationships.

 

We typically sell products pursuant to purchase orders rather than long-term purchase commitments. Customers can generally cancel, change or defer purchase orders on short notice without incurring a significant penalty. In the recent past, some of our customers have developed excess inventories of their own products and have, as a consequence, deferred purchase orders for our products. It is difficult to accurately predict what or how many products our customers will need in the future. Anticipating demand is challenging because our customers face volatile pricing and unpredictable demand for their own products, are increasingly focused on cash preservation and tighter inventory management, and may be involved in legal proceedings that could affect their ability to buy our products.

 

Our ability to accurately forecast customer demand may also be impaired by the delays inherent in our lengthy sales cycle. After we have developed and delivered a product to a customer, the customer will usually test and evaluate our product prior to designing its own equipment or devices that will incorporate our product. Our customers may need three to more than nine months to test, evaluate and adopt our products and an additional three to more than twelve months to begin volume production of equipment or devices that incorporates our products. Due to this lengthy sales cycle, we may experience significant delays from the time we increase our operating expenses and make investments in inventory until the time that we generate revenue from these products. It is possible that we may never generate any revenue from these products after incurring such expenditures. Even if a customer selects our product to incorporate into its equipment or devices, we have no assurance that the customer will ultimately bring its product to market or that such effort by our customer will be successful. The delays inherent in our lengthy sales cycle increase the risk that a customer will decide to cancel or curtail, reduce or delay its product plans. If we incur significant research and development expenses, marketing expenses and investments in inventory in the future that we are not able to recover, our operating results could be adversely affected. In addition, as an increasing number of our chips are being incorporated into consumer products, we anticipate greater fluctuations in demand for our products, which makes it even more difficult to forecast customer demand.

 

We place orders with our suppliers based on forecasts of customer demand and, in some instances, may establish buffer inventories to accommodate anticipated demand. Our forecasts are based on multiple assumptions, each of which may introduce error into our estimates. If we overestimate customer demand, we may allocate resources to manufacturing products that we may not be able to sell when we expect to, if at all. As a result, we could hold excess or obsolete inventory, which would reduce our profit margins and adversely affect our financial results. Conversely, if we underestimate customer demand or if insufficient manufacturing capacity is available, we could forego revenue opportunities and potentially lose market share and damage our customer relationships. In addition, any future significant cancellations or deferrals of product orders or the return of previously sold products could materially and adversely affect our profit margins, increase product obsolescence and restrict our ability to fund our operations. Furthermore, we generally recognize revenue upon shipment of products to a customer. If a customer refuses to accept shipped products or does not timely pay for these products, which has occurred in the past, our revenue and financial results could be materially and adversely impacted.

 

In addition, a growing percentage of our inventory is maintained under hubbing arrangements with certain of our customers and we plan to continue to use these arrangements for the foreseeable future. Pursuant to these arrangements, we deliver products to a customer or a designated third party warehouse based upon the customer’s projected needs, but do not recognize product revenue unless and until the customer reports that it has removed our product from the warehouse to incorporate into its end products. Historically we have had good visibility into customer requirements and shipments within a quarter. However, if a customer does not take our products under a hubbing arrangement in accordance with the schedule it originally provided us, our predicted future revenue stream could vary substantially from our forecasts and our results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. In addition, distributors and/or customers with hubbing arrangements provide us periodic reports regarding product, price, quantity, and when products are shipped to their customers, as well as the quantities of

our products they still have in stock. For specialized shipping terms we may also rely on data provided by our freight forwarding providers. For our royalty revenue we also rely on data provided by our customers. Any error in the data provided to us by customers, distributors or other third parties could lead to inaccurate reporting of our revenue, gross profit and net income. Additionally, since we own inventory that is physically located in a third party’s warehouse, our ability to effectively manage inventory levels may be impaired, causing our total inventory turns to decrease, which could increase expenses associated with excess and obsolete product and negatively impact our cash flow.

 

If we fail to appropriately adjust our operations in response to changes in demand for our existing products and services or to the demand for new products requested by our customers, our business could be materially and adversely affected.

 

We intend to manage our costs and expenses in the short term to achieve our long-term business objectives. We anticipate that in the long term, we may need to expand as general worldwide economic conditions improve. Through internal growth and acquisitions, we significantly increased the scope of our operations and expanded our workforce from 2,774 full-time employees and temporary workers as of December 31, 2003 (excluding interns) to 7,407 full-time employees and temporary workers as of December 31, 2009 (excluding interns). Nonetheless, we may not be able to adjust our workforce and operations in a sufficiently timely manner to respond effectively to changes in demand for our existing products and services or to the demand for new products requested by our customers. In that event, we may be unable to meet competitive challenges or exploit potential market opportunities, and our current or future business could be materially and adversely affected.

 

Conversely, if we expand our operations and workforce too rapidly in anticipation of increased demand for our products, and such demand does not materialize at the pace at which we expect, our business could be materially and adversely affected. We expect new products, which often require substantial research and development expenses, to account for a high percentage of our future revenue. However, some of the markets for these new products are immature and/or unpredictable or are new markets for Broadcom, and if these markets do not develop at the rates we originally anticipated or if we do not execute successfully, the rate of increase in our operating expenses may exceed the rate of increase, if any, in our revenue. Moreover, we may intentionally choose to increase the rate of our research and development expenses more rapidly than the increase in the rate of our revenue in the short term in anticipation of the long term benefits we would derive from such investment. However, such benefits may never materialize or may not be as significant as we originally believed they would be. For instance, during the last five years we have incurred substantial expenditures on the development of new products for the cellular handset market.

 

Additionally, our operations are characterized by a high percentage of costs that are fixed or difficult to reduce in the short term, such as research and development expenses, the employment and training of a highly skilled workforce, stock-based compensation expense, and legal, accounting and other external fees. If we experience a slowdown in the semiconductor industry or the wired and wireless communications markets in which we operate, such as the recent slowdown, we may not be able to adjust our operating expenses in a sufficiently timely or effective manner. Although we implemented restructuring actions and a number of other cost saving measures in 2009, if the recovery from the recent slowdown is not sustained, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected and we may incur additional restructuring costs.

 

Our past growth has placed, and any future long-term growth is expected to continue to place, a significant strain on our management personnel, systems and resources. To implement our current business and product plans, we will need to continue to expand, train, manage and motivate our workforce. All of these endeavors will require substantial management effort. In the past we have implemented an enterprise resource planning system to help us improve our planning and management processes, and implemented an equity administration system to support our more complex equity programs. We anticipate that we will also need to continue to implement a variety of new and upgraded operational and financial systems, including enhanced human resources management systems and a business-to-business solution, as well as additional procedures and other internal management systems. In general, the accuracy of information delivered by these systems may be subject to inherent limitations of programming quality. We may relocate our employees or operations from time to time. Such relocations could result in temporary disruptions of our operations or a diversion of management’s attention and resources. If we are

unable to effectively manage our expanding operations, we may be unable to adjust our business quickly enough to meet competitive challenges or exploit potential market opportunities, or conversely, we may scale our business too quickly and the rate of increase in our expenses may exceed the rate of increase in our revenue, either of which would materially and adversely affect our current or future business.

 

If we are unable to develop and introduce new products successfully and in a cost-effective and timely manner or to achieve market acceptance of our new products, our operating results would be adversely affected. Additionally, if we are unable to sustain our licensing revenue, our operating results would be adversely affected.

 

Our future success is dependent upon our ability to develop new semiconductor products for existing and new markets, introduce these products in a cost-effective and timely manner, and convince leading manufacturers to select these products for design into their own new products. Our products are generally incorporated into our customers’ products at the design stage. We often incur significant expenditures on the development of a new product without any assurance that a manufacturer will select our product for design into its own product. Once a manufacturer designs a competitor’s product into its product offering, it becomes significantly more difficult for us to sell our products to that customer because changing suppliers involves significant cost, time, effort and risk for the customer.

 

Even if a manufacturer designs one of our products into its product offering, we have no assurances that its product will be commercially successful or that we will receive any revenue from sales of that product. Sales of our products largely depend on the commercial success of our customers’ products. Our customers are typically not obligated to purchase our products and can choose at any time to stop using our products if their own products are not commercially successful or for any other reason. Any substantial delay in our customers’ product development plans could have a material negative impact on our business.

 

The vast majority of our licensing revenues and related income to date has been derived from agreements with two customers, Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm. The patent license agreement entered into with Verizon Wireless in July 2007 and the four-year Qualcomm Agreement entered into in April 2009 together are expected to result in licensing revenue and related income that is expected to total $1.056 billion over a seven year period. From July 2007 through December 2009, we have recorded licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless and income from the Qualcomm Agreement of $370.6 million. From January 2010 through March 2013, we expect to record income from the Qualcomm Agreement of $685.8 million. The licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless has ended and the income from the Qualcomm Agreement is non-recurring and will terminate in 2013. There can be no assurances that we will be able to enter into similar arrangements in the future, or that we will be able to successfully collect the remaining payments due to us under the Qualcomm Agreement in the event of a default by Qualcomm.

 

Our historical results have been, and we expect that our future results will continue to be, dependent on the introduction of a relatively small number of new products and the timely completion and delivery of those products to customers. The development of new silicon devices is highly complex, and from time to time we have experienced delays in completing the development and introduction of new products or lower than anticipated manufacturing yields in the early production of such products. If we were to experience any similar delays in the successful completion of a new product or similar reductions in our manufacturing yields for a new product in the future, our customer relationships, reputation and business could be seriously harmed.

 

In addition, the development and introduction of new products often requires substantial research and development resources. As a result, we may choose to discontinue one or more products or product development programs to dedicate more resources to new products. The discontinuation of an existing or planned product may materially and adversely affect our relationship with our customers, including customers who may purchase more than one product from us.

 

Our ability to develop and deliver new products successfully will depend on various factors, including our ability to:

 

 

In some of our businesses, our ability to develop and deliver products successfully and in a timely manner may depend in part on access to information, or licenses of technology or intellectual property rights, from companies that are our competitors. We cannot assure you that such information or licenses will be made available to us on a timely basis, if at all, or at reasonable cost and on commercially reasonable terms.

 

If we are not able to develop and introduce new products successfully and in a cost effective and timely manner, we will be unable to attract new customers or to retain our existing customers, as these customers may transition to other companies that can meet their product development needs, which would materially and adversely affect our results of operations.

 

Our acquisition strategy may result in unanticipated accounting charges or otherwise adversely affect our results of operations, and result in difficulties in assimilating and integrating the operations, personnel, technologies, products and information systems of acquired companies or businesses, or be dilutive to existing shareholders. In addition, completing and integrating acquisitions can be costly.

 

A key element of our business strategy involves expansion through the acquisitions of businesses, assets, products or technologies that allow us to complement our existing product offerings, expand our market coverage, increase our engineering workforce or enhance our technological capabilities. We have historically acquired numerous companies and certain assets of other businesses. We continually evaluate and explore strategic opportunities as they arise, including business combination transactions, strategic partnerships, and the purchase or sale of assets, including tangible and intangible assets such as intellectual property.

 

Acquisitions may require significant capital infusions, typically entail many risks, and could result in difficulties in assimilating and integrating the operations, personnel, technologies, products and information systems of acquired companies or businesses. We have in the past, and may in the future experience delays in the timing and successful integration of an acquired company’s technologies and product development through volume production, unanticipated costs and expenditures, changing relationships with customers, suppliers and strategic partners, or contractual, intellectual property or employment issues. In addition, key personnel of an acquired company may decide not to work for us. Moreover, to the extent we acquire a company with existing products, those products may have lower gross margins than our customary products, which could adversely affect our gross margin and operating results. If an acquired company also has inventory that we assume, we will be required to write up the carrying value of that inventory to fair value. When that inventory is sold, the gross margin for those products will be nominal and our gross margin for that period will be negatively affected. The acquisition of another company or its products and technologies may also require us to enter into a geographic or business market in which we have little or no prior experience. These challenges could disrupt our ongoing business, distract our management and employees, harm our reputation and increase our expenses. These challenges are magnified as the size of the acquisition increases. Furthermore, these challenges would be even greater if we acquired a business or entered into a business combination transaction with a company that was larger and more difficult to integrate than the companies we have historically acquired.

Acquisitions can result in increased debt or contingent liabilities, adverse tax consequences, additional stock-based compensation expense, and the recording and later amortization of amounts related to certain purchased intangible assets, any of which items could negatively impact our results of operations. In addition, we may record goodwill and other purchased intangible assets in connection with an acquisition and incur impairment charges in the future. For example, we have previously recorded goodwill and long-lived asset impairment charges in connection with various acquisitions related to our Mobile Platforms reporting unit and with respect to our acquisition of the DTV Business of AMD. If our actual results, or the plans and estimates used in future impairment analyses, are less favorable than the original estimates used to assess the recoverability of these assets, we could incur additional impairment charges. Any of these types of charges could cause the price of our Class A common stock to decline. As of January 1, 2009, the accounting for business combinations has changed. In connection with the new guidance, previously capitalized acquisition costs incurred in connection with a business combination are now expensed as incurred. In addition, previously expensed in-process research and development costs are now capitalized. These in-process research and development costs are subsequently tested for impairment prior to achieving technological feasibility and are amortized to expense upon achieving technological feasibility. If the in-process research and development program is abandoned, the capitalized costs are expensed immediately. We expect that the new requirements will have an impact on our consolidated financial statements, but the nature and magnitude of the specific effects will depend upon the nature, terms, size and results of operations of any future acquisitions.

 

Acquisitions or asset purchases made entirely or partially for cash may reduce our cash reserves. We may seek to obtain additional cash to fund an acquisition by selling equity or debt securities. Any issuance of equity or convertible debt securities may be dilutive to our existing shareholders. In addition, the equity or debt securities that we may issue could have rights, preferences or privileges senior to those of our Class A and/or Class B common stock. For example, as a consequence of the prior pooling-of-interests accounting rules, the securities issued in nine of our acquisitions were shares of Class B common stock, which have voting rights superior to those of our publicly traded Class A common stock.

 

We cannot assure you that we will be able to consummate any pending or future acquisitions or that we will realize any anticipated benefits from these acquisitions. We may not be able to find suitable acquisition opportunities that are available at attractive valuations, if at all. Even if we do find suitable acquisition opportunities, we may not be able to consummate the acquisitions on commercially acceptable terms, and any decline in the price of our Class A common stock may make it significantly more difficult and expensive to initiate or consummate additional acquisitions. In addition, acquisitions may involve significant transaction expenses which are expensed as incurred and may negatively affect our operating expenses.

 

Changes in current or future laws or regulations or the imposition of new laws or regulations, including new or changed tax regulations or new interpretations thereof, by federal or state agencies or foreign governments could adversely affect our results of operations, impede the sale of our products or otherwise harm our business.

 

Changes in current laws or regulations applicable to us or the imposition of new laws and regulations in the United States or elsewhere could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

We currently operate under tax holidays and favorable tax incentives in certain foreign jurisdictions. For instance, in Singapore we operate under tax holidays that reduce taxes on substantially all of our operating income in that jurisdiction. Such tax holidays and incentives often require us to meet specified employment and investment criteria in such jurisdictions. We cannot assure you that we will continue to meet such criteria or enjoy such tax holidays and incentives, or realize any net tax benefits from these tax holidays or incentives. If any of our tax holidays or incentives are terminated, our results of operations may be materially and adversely affected. Additionally, potential future U.S. tax legislation could impact the tax benefits we effectively realize from our tax holidays and tax incentives.

 

A decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on May 27, 2009 in the case between Xilinx, Inc. and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue overturned a 2005 U.S. Tax Court ruling regarding treatment of certain compensation expenses under a company’s research and development cost-sharing arrangements with

affiliates. The Court of Appeals held that related parties to such an arrangement must share stock option costs, notwithstanding the fact that unrelated parties in such an arrangement would not share such costs. On January 13, 2010, the Court of Appeals withdrew the May 27, 2009 ruling and announced that it will reconsider the matter at a future date to be determined. In accounting for income tax uncertainties, only information that is available at our reporting date of December 31, 2009 can be considered in measuring our tax position. Accordingly, the accounting impact of the withdrawal of the Xilinx ruling will be reflected in our consolidated financial statements for the period ending March 31, 2010. The potential impact to Broadcom, should the Internal Revenue Service prevail, of including such stock-based compensation expenses in our research and development cost-sharing arrangements would be additional income for federal and state purposes from January 1, 2001 forward, and may result in additional related federal and state income and franchise taxes, and material adjustments to our federal and state net operating loss carryforwards, our federal and state capitalized research and development costs and our deferred tax positions. We are subject to ongoing examination of our income tax returns in the United States and other jurisdictions. We regularly assess the likely outcomes of these audits to determine the appropriateness of our provision for income taxes, but there can be no assurance that the outcomes from these audits will not have an adverse effect on our operating results.

 

The effects of regulation on our customers or the industries in which they operate may materially and adversely impact our business. For example, the Federal Communications Commission has broad jurisdiction in the United States. Although current FCC regulations and the laws and regulations of other federal or state agencies are not directly applicable to our products, they do apply to many of the devices into which our products are incorporated. FCC regulatory policies that affect the ability of cable or satellite operators or telephone companies to offer certain services to their customers or other aspects of their business may impede sales of our products in the United States. For example, in the past we have experienced delays when products incorporating our chips failed to comply with FCC emissions specifications.

 

In addition, we and our customers are subject to various import and export laws and regulations. Changes in or violations of such regulations could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Additionally, various government export regulations apply to the encryption or other features contained in some of our products. We have made numerous filings and applied for and received a number of export licenses under these regulations. However, if we fail to continue to receive licenses or otherwise comply with these regulations, we may be unable to manufacture the affected products at foreign foundries or ship these products to certain customers, or we may incur penalties or fines or our business, financial condition or results of operations may be otherwise adversely affected.

 

We and our customers may also be subject to regulation by countries other than the United States. Foreign governments may impose tariffs, duties and other import restrictions on components that we obtain from non-domestic suppliers and may impose export restrictions on products that we sell internationally. These tariffs, duties or restrictions could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

Due to environmental concerns, the use of lead and other hazardous substances in electronic components and systems is receiving increased attention. In response, the European Union passed the Restriction on Hazardous Substances, or RoHS, Directive, legislation that limits the use of lead and other hazardous substances in electrical equipment. The RoHS Directive became effective July 1, 2006. We believe that our current product designs and material supply chains are in compliance with the RoHS Directive.

Because we depend on a few significant customers and/or design wins for a substantial portion of our revenue, the loss of a key customer or design win or any significant delay in our customers’ product development plans could seriously impact our revenue and harm our business. In addition, if we are unable to continue to sell existing and new products to our key customers in significant quantities or to attract new significant customers, our future operating results could be adversely affected.

 

We have derived a substantial portion of our past revenue from sales to a relatively small number of customers. As a result, the loss of any significant customer could materially and adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.

 

Sales to our five largest customers represented 34.6%, 35.8% and 39.7% of our total net revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively. We expect that our largest customers will continue to account for a substantial portion of our total net revenue in 2010 and for the foreseeable future. The identities of our largest customers and their respective contributions to our net revenue have varied and will likely continue to vary from period to period.

 

A significant portion of our revenue may also depend on a single product design win with a large customer. As a result, the loss of any such key design win or any significant delay in the ramp of volume production of the customer’s products into which our product is designed could materially and adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations. In addition, these key design wins are often with large customers who have significantly greater financial, sales, marketing and other resources than we have and greater bargaining and pricing power, which could materially and adversely affect our operating margins.

 

We may not be able to maintain or increase sales to certain of our key customers or continue to secure key design wins for a variety of reasons, including the following:

 

 

These relationships often require us to develop new products that may involve significant technological challenges. Our customers frequently place considerable pressure on us to meet their tight development schedules. Accordingly, we may have to devote a substantial portion of our resources to strategic relationships, which could detract from or delay our completion of other important development projects or the development of other products and technologies. Delays in development could impair our relationships with strategic customers and negatively impact sales of the products under development.

 

In addition, our longstanding relationships with some larger customers may also deter other potential customers who compete with these customers from buying our products. To attract new customers or retain existing customers, we may offer certain customers favorable prices on our products. We may have to offer the same lower prices to certain of our customers who have contractual “most favored nation” pricing arrangements. In that event, our average selling prices and gross margins would decline. The loss of a key customer or design win, a reduction in sales to any key customer, a significant delay in our customers’ product development plans or our inability to attract new significant customers or secure new key design wins could seriously impact our revenue and materially and adversely affect our results of operations.

 

We face intense competition in the semiconductor industry and the wired and wireless communications markets, which could reduce our market share in existing markets, affect our entry into new markets and may cause average selling prices and gross margins to decline.

 

The semiconductor industry and the wired and wireless communications markets are intensely competitive. We expect competition to continue to increase as industry standards become well known and as other competitors

enter our business. We currently compete with a number of major domestic and international suppliers of integrated circuits and related applications. We also compete with suppliers of system-level and motherboard-level solutions incorporating integrated circuits that are proprietary or sourced from manufacturers other than Broadcom. We also may face competition from newly established competitors, suppliers of products based on new or emerging technologies, and customers who choose to develop their own semiconductor solutions. We expect to encounter further consolidation in the markets in which we compete.

 

Many of our competitors operate their own fabrication facilities and have longer operating histories and presences in key markets, greater name recognition, larger customer bases, and significantly greater financial, sales and marketing, manufacturing, distribution, technical and other resources than we do. These competitors may be able to adapt more quickly to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements. They may also be able to devote greater resources to the promotion and sale of their products. In addition, current and potential competitors have established or may establish financial or strategic relationships among themselves or with existing or potential customers, resellers or other third parties. Accordingly, new competitors or alliances among competitors could emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share. Existing or new competitors may also develop technologies that more effectively address our markets with products that offer enhanced features and functionality, lower power requirements, greater levels of integration or lower cost. Increased competition has resulted in and is likely to continue to result in declining average selling prices, reduced gross margins and loss of market share in certain markets. We cannot assure you that we will be able to continue to compete successfully against current or new competitors. If we do not compete successfully, we may lose market share in our existing markets and our revenues may fail to increase or may decline.

 

Intellectual property risks and third party claims of infringement, misappropriation of proprietary rights or other claims against us could adversely affect our ability to market our products, require us to redesign our products or seek licenses from third parties, and seriously harm our operating results. In addition, the defense of such claims could result in significant costs and divert the attention of our management or other key employees.

 

Companies in and related to the semiconductor industry and the wired and wireless communications markets often aggressively protect and pursue their intellectual property rights. There are various intellectual property risks associated with developing and producing new products and entering new markets, and we may not be able to obtain, at reasonable cost and upon commercially reasonable terms, licenses to the intellectual property of others that is alleged to read on such new or existing products. From time to time, we have received, and may continue to receive, notices that claim we have infringed upon, misappropriated or misused other parties’ proprietary rights. Moreover, in the past we have been and we currently are engaged in litigation with parties that claim that we infringed their patents or misappropriated or misused their trade secrets. In addition, we or our customers may be sued by other parties that claim that our products have infringed their patents or that we or our current or former employees have misappropriated or misused their trade secrets, or which may seek to invalidate one or more of our patents. An adverse determination in any of these types of disputes could prevent us from manufacturing or selling some of our products, limit or restrict the type of work that employees involved in such litigation may perform for Broadcom, increase our costs of revenue, and expose us to significant liability. Any of these claims or litigation may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. For example, in a patent or trade secret action, a court could issue a preliminary or permanent injunction that would require us to withdraw or recall certain products from the market, redesign certain products offered for sale or under development, or restrict employees from performing work in their areas of expertise. We may also be liable for damages for past infringement and royalties for future use of the technology, and we may be liable for treble damages if infringement is found to have been willful. In addition, governmental agencies may commence investigations or criminal proceedings against our employees, former employees and/or the company relating to claims of misappropriation or misuse of another party’s proprietary rights. We may also have to indemnify some customers and strategic partners under our agreements with such parties if a third party alleges or if a court finds that our products or activities have infringed upon, misappropriated or misused another party’s proprietary rights. We have received requests from certain customers and strategic partners to include increasingly broad indemnification provisions in our agreements with them. These indemnification provisions may, in some circumstances, extend our liability beyond the products we provide to include liability for combinations of components or system level designs and

for consequential damages and/or lost profits. Even if claims or litigation against us are not valid or successfully asserted, these claims could result in significant costs and diversion of the attention of management and other key employees to defend. Additionally, we have sought and may in the future seek to obtain licenses under other parties’ intellectual property rights and have granted and may in the future grant licenses to certain of our intellectual property rights to others in connection with cross-license agreements or settlements of claims or actions asserted against us. However, we may not be able to obtain licenses under another party’s intellectual property rights on commercially reasonable terms, if at all. In addition, any other rights that we grant to competitors may increase their ability to compete in the marketplace.

 

Our products may contain technology provided to us by other parties such as contractors, suppliers or customers. We may have little or no ability to determine in advance whether such technology infringes the intellectual property rights of a third party. Our contractors, suppliers and licensors may not be required to indemnify us in the event that a claim of infringement is asserted against us, or they may be required to indemnify us only up to a maximum amount, above which we would be responsible for any further costs or damages. In addition, we may have little or no ability to correct errors in the technology provided by such contractors, suppliers and licensors, or to continue to develop new generations of such technology. Accordingly, we may be dependent on their ability and willingness to do so. In the event of a problem with such technology, or in the event that our rights to use such technology become impaired, we may be unable to ship our products containing such technology, and may be unable to replace the technology with a suitable alternative within the time frame needed by our customers.

 

We may not be able to adequately protect or enforce our intellectual property rights, which could harm our competitive position.

 

Our success and future revenue growth will depend, in part, on our ability to protect our intellectual property. We primarily rely on patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as nondisclosure agreements and other methods, to protect our proprietary technologies and processes. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary technologies and processes, it is possible that competitors or other unauthorized third parties may obtain, copy, use or disclose our technologies and processes. We currently hold more than 3,800 U.S. and more than 1,550 foreign patents and more than 7,800 additional U.S. and foreign pending patent applications. However, we cannot assure you that any additional patents will be issued. Even if a new patent is issued, the claims allowed may not be sufficiently broad to protect our technology. In addition, any of our existing or future patents may be challenged, invalidated or circumvented. As such, any rights granted under these patents may not provide us with meaningful protection. We may not be able to obtain foreign patents or file pending applications corresponding to our U.S. patents and patent applications. Even if foreign patents are granted, effective enforcement in foreign countries may not be available. If our patents do not adequately protect our technology, our competitors may be able to offer products similar to ours. Our competitors may also be able to develop similar technology independently or design around our patents. Some or all of our patents have in the past been licensed and likely will in the future be licensed to certain of our competitors through cross-license agreements. Moreover, because we have participated and continue to participate in developing various industry standards, we may be required to license some of our patents to others, including competitors, who develop products based on those standards.

 

Certain of our software (as well as that of our customers) may be derived from so-called “open source” software that is generally made available to the public by its authors and/or other third parties. Such open source software is often made available under licenses, such as the GNU General Public License, or GPL, which impose certain obligations on us in the event we were to distribute derivative works of the open source software. These obligations may require us to make source code for the derivative works available to the public, and/or license such derivative works under a particular type of license, rather than the forms of license customarily used to protect our intellectual property. In addition, there is little or no legal precedent for interpreting the terms of certain of these open source licenses, including the determination of which works are subject to the terms of such licenses. While we believe we have complied with our obligations under the various applicable licenses for open source software, in the event that the copyright holder of any open source software were to successfully establish in court that we had not complied with the terms of a license for a particular work, we could be required to release the source code of that work to the public and/or stop distribution of that work. With respect to our proprietary software, we

generally license such software under terms that prohibit combining it with open source software as described above. Despite these restrictions, parties may combine Broadcom proprietary software with open source software without our authorization, in which case we might nonetheless be required to release the source code of our proprietary software.

 

We generally enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees, consultants and strategic partners. We also try to control access to and distribution of our technologies, documentation and other proprietary information. Despite these efforts, internal or external parties may attempt to copy, disclose, obtain or use our products, services or technology without our authorization. Also, current or former employees may seek employment with our business partners, customers or competitors, and we cannot assure you that the confidential nature of our proprietary information will be maintained in the course of such future employment. Additionally, current, departing or former employees or third parties could attempt to penetrate our computer systems and networks to misappropriate our proprietary information and technology or interrupt our business. Because the techniques used by computer hackers and others to access or sabotage networks change frequently and generally are not recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate, counter or ameliorate these techniques. As a result, our technologies and processes may be misappropriated, particularly in countries where laws may not protect our proprietary rights as fully as in the United States.

 

In addition, some of our customers have entered into agreements with us that grant them the right to use our proprietary technology if we fail to fulfill our obligations, including product supply obligations, under those agreements, and if we do not correct the failure within a specified time period. Also, some customers may require that we make certain intellectual property available to our competitors so that the customer has a choice among semiconductor vendors for solutions to be incorporated into the customer’s products. Moreover, we often incorporate the intellectual property of strategic customers into our own designs, and have certain obligations not to use or disclose their intellectual property without their authorization.

 

We cannot assure you that our efforts to prevent the misappropriation or infringement of our intellectual property or the intellectual property of our customers will succeed. Identifying unauthorized use of our products and technologies is difficult and time consuming. We have in the past been and currently are engaged in litigation to enforce or defend our intellectual property rights, protect our trade secrets, or determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, including our customers. It is possible that the advent of or developments in such litigation may adversely affect our relationships and agreements with certain customers that are either involved in such litigation or also have business relationships with the party with whom we are engaged in litigation. Such litigation (and the settlement thereof) has been and will likely continue to be very expensive and time consuming. Additionally, any litigation can divert the attention of management and other key employees from the operation of the business, which could negatively impact our business and results of operations.

 

The complexity of our products could result in unforeseen delays or expenses and in undetected defects, or bugs, which could damage our reputation with current or prospective customers, result in significant costs and claims, and adversely affect the market acceptance of new products.

 

Highly complex products such as the products that we offer frequently contain hardware or software defects or bugs when they are first introduced or as new versions are released. Our products have previously experienced, and may in the future experience, these defects and bugs. If any of our products contains defects or bugs, or has reliability, quality or compatibility problems, our reputation may be damaged and customers may be reluctant to buy our products, which could materially and adversely affect our ability to retain existing customers and attract new customers. In addition, these defects or bugs could interrupt or delay sales or shipment of our products to customers. To alleviate these problems, we may have to invest significant capital and other resources. Although our products are tested by us, our subcontractors, suppliers and customers, it is possible that new products will contain defects or bugs. If any of these problems are not found until after we have commenced commercial production of a new product, we may be required to incur additional development costs and product recall, repair or field replacement costs. These problems may divert our technical and other resources from other development efforts and could result in claims against us by our customers or others, including possible claims for consequential damages and/or lost profits. Moreover, we may lose, or experience a delay in, market acceptance of the affected product or products, and we could lose credibility with our current and prospective customers. In addition, system

and handset providers that purchase components may require that we assume liability for defects associated with products produced by their manufacturing subcontractors and require that we provide a warranty for defects or other problems which may arise at the system level.

 

We may be unable to attract, retain or motivate key senior management and technical personnel, which could seriously harm our business.

 

Our future success depends to a significant extent upon the continued service of our key senior management personnel, including our Chief Executive Officer and other senior executives. We have employment agreements with our Chief Executive Officer and certain other executive officers; however the agreements do not govern the length of their service with Broadcom. We do not have employment agreements with most of our elected officers, or any other key employees, although we do have limited change in control severance benefit arrangements in place with certain executives. The loss of the services of key senior management or technical personnel could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. For instance, if certain of these individuals were to leave our company unexpectedly, we could face substantial difficulty in hiring qualified successors and could experience a loss in productivity during the search for and while any such successor is integrated into our business and operations.

 

Furthermore, our future success depends on our ability to continue to attract, retain and motivate senior management and qualified technical personnel, particularly software engineers, digital circuit designers, RF and mixed-signal circuit designers and systems applications engineers. Competition for these employees is intense. If we are unable to attract, retain and motivate such personnel in sufficient numbers and on a timely basis, we will experience difficulty in implementing our current business and product plans. In that event, we may be unable to successfully meet competitive challenges or to exploit potential market opportunities, which could adversely affect our business and results of operations.

 

We have recently effected a number of cost saving measures and implemented a restructuring plan, both of which could negatively impact employee morale. Over the last few years we have also modified our compensation policies by increasing cash compensation to certain employees and instituting awards of restricted stock units, while simultaneously reducing awards of stock options. These modifications of our compensation policies and the requirement to expense the fair value of equity awards to employees have increased our operating expenses. However, because we are mindful of the dilutive impact of our equity awards, we currently intend to further reduce the number of equity awards granted to employees over time to conform to our model of stock-based compensation expense as 5% of net revenue. While this may have a positive impact on our operating expenses over time, it may negatively impact employee morale and our ability to attract, retain and motivate employees. Our inability to attract and retain additional key employees and any increase in stock-based compensation expense could each have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

We depend on third-party subcontractors to fabricate, assemble and test substantially all of our products. If any of our subcontractors experience production disruptions or financial difficulties, shipments of our products may be affected, which could adversely impact customer relationships or impair sales. Furthermore, any failure to secure and maintain sufficient foundry capacity could materially and adversely affect our business.

 

We do not own or operate an assembly or test facility. Eight third-party subcontractors located in Asia assemble and test substantially all of our current products. Because we rely on third-party subcontractors to perform these functions, we cannot directly control our product delivery schedules and quality assurance. This lack of control could result in product shortages or quality assurance problems. These issues could delay shipments of our products or increase our assembly or testing costs.

 

We do not have long-term agreements with any of our assembly or test subcontractors and typically procure services from these suppliers on a per order basis. If any of them experience financial difficulties, suffer any damage to facilities, experience power outages or any other disruption of assembly or testing capacity, we may not be able to obtain alternative assembly and testing services in a timely manner, or at all. Due to the amount of time that it usually takes to qualify assemblers and testers, we could experience significant delays in product shipments if we

are required to find alternative assemblers or testers for our components. Any problems that we may encounter with the delivery, quality or cost of our products could damage our customer relationships and materially and adversely affect our results of operations. We are continuing to develop relationships with additional third-party subcontractors to assemble and test our products. However, even if we use these new subcontractors, we will continue to be subject to all of the risks described above.

 

Similarly, we do not own or operate a fabrication facility. Five third-party foundry subcontractors located in Asia manufacture substantially all of our semiconductor devices in current production. Availability of foundry capacity has at times in the past been, and may in the future be, reduced due to strong demand. Additionally, due to the recent global economic environment it is possible that our foundry subcontractors could experience financial difficulties that would impede their ability to operate effectively. If we are unable to secure sufficient capacity at our existing foundries, or in the event of a closure at any of these foundries, our product revenue, cost of product revenue and results of operations would be negatively impacted.

 

If any of our foundries experiences a shortage in capacity, suffers any damage to its facilities due to earthquake, typhoon or other natural disaster, suffers a public health emergency, experiences power outages, suffers an adverse outcome in pending or future litigation, or encounters financial difficulties or any other disruption of foundry capacity, we may encounter supply delays or disruptions, and we may need to qualify an alternative foundry. Our current foundries need to have new manufacturing processes qualified if there is a disruption in an existing process. We typically require several months to qualify a new foundry or process before we can begin shipping products from it. If we cannot accomplish this qualification in a timely manner, we may experience a significant interruption in supply of the affected products.

 

Because we rely on outside foundries, we face several significant risks in addition to those discussed above, including:

 

 

The manufacture of integrated circuits is a highly complex and technologically demanding process. Although we work closely with our foundries to minimize the likelihood of reduced manufacturing yields, our foundries have from time to time experienced lower than anticipated manufacturing yields. This often occurs during the production of new products or the installation and start-up of new process technologies. Poor yields from our foundries could result in product shortages or delays in product shipments, which could seriously harm our relationships with our customers and materially and adversely affect our results of operations.

 

The ability of each foundry to provide us with semiconductor devices is limited by its available capacity and existing obligations. Although we have entered into contractual commitments to supply specified levels of products to some of our customers, we do not have a long-term volume purchase agreement or a significant guaranteed level of production capacity with any of our foundries. Foundry capacity may not be available when we need it or at reasonable prices. Availability of foundry capacity has in the past been reduced from time to time due to strong demand. Foundries can allocate capacity to the production of other companies’ products and reduce deliveries to us on short notice. It is possible that foundry customers that are larger and better financed than we are, or that have long-term agreements with our main foundries, may induce our foundries to reallocate capacity to them. This reallocation could impair our ability to secure the supply of components that we need. Although we use five independent foundries to manufacture substantially all of our semiconductor products, each component is typically manufactured at only one or two foundries at any given time, and if any of our foundries is unable to provide us with components as needed and under acceptable terms, we could experience significant delays in securing sufficient supplies of those components. Also, our third party foundries typically migrate capacity to newer, state-of-the-art manufacturing processes on a regular basis, which may create capacity shortages for our products designed to be manufactured on an older process. We cannot assure you that any of our existing or new foundries will be able to produce integrated circuits with acceptable manufacturing yields, or that our foundries will be able

to deliver enough semiconductor devices to us on a timely basis, or on reasonable terms or at reasonable prices. These and other related factors could impair our ability to meet our customers’ needs and have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

Although we may utilize new foundries for other products in the future, in using any new foundries we will be subject to all of the risks described in the foregoing paragraphs with respect to our current foundries.

 

As our international business expands, we are increasingly exposed to various legal, business, political and economic risks associated with our international operations.

 

We currently obtain substantially all of our manufacturing, assembly and testing services from suppliers located outside the United States. In addition, 52.6%, 41.8% and 35.9% of our product revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively, was derived from product sales to independent customers outside the United States, excluding foreign subsidiaries or manufacturing subcontractors of customers that are headquartered in the United States. We also frequently ship products to our domestic customers’ international manufacturing divisions and subcontractors. Products shipped to international destinations, primarily in Asia, represented 94.8%, 91.8% and 88.3% of our product revenue in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively. We also undertake design and development activities in Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Greece, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, among other locations. In addition, we undertake various sales and marketing activities through regional offices in a number of countries. We intend to continue to expand our international business activities and to open other design and operational centers abroad. The continuing effects of overseas conflicts and the risk of terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad, the resulting heightened security, and the increasing risk of extended international military conflicts may adversely impact our international sales and could make our international operations more expensive. International operations are subject to many other inherent risks, including but not limited to:

 

 

Any of the factors described above may have a material adverse effect on our ability to increase or maintain our foreign sales.

 

Economic conditions in our primary overseas markets, particularly in Asia, may negatively impact the demand for our products abroad. All of our international sales to date have been denominated in U.S. dollars. Accordingly, an increase in the value of the U.S. dollar relative to foreign currencies could make our products less competitive in international markets or require us to assume the risk of denominating certain sales in foreign currencies. We anticipate that these factors will impact our business to a greater degree as we further expand our international business activities.

 

In addition, a significant portion of our cash and marketable securities are held in non-U.S. domiciled countries.

Our outstanding civil litigation relating to the voluntary review of our past equity award practices reported in January 2007 could continue to result in significant costs to us. In addition, any other related action by a governmental agency could result in civil or criminal sanctions against certain of our current and/or former officers, directors and/or employees.

 

In April 2008 the SEC brought a complaint against Broadcom alleging violations of the federal securities laws, and we entered into a settlement with the SEC. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations, we paid a civil penalty of $12.0 million, which we recorded as a settlement cost in the three months ended March 31, 2008, and stipulated to an injunction against future violations of certain provisions of the federal securities laws. The settlement was approved by the United States District Court for the Central District of California in late April 2008, thus concluding the SEC’s investigation of this matter with respect to Broadcom.

 

As discussed in detail in Note 11 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report, in May 2008 the SEC filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against Dr. Henry Samueli, our then Chairman of the Board and Chief Technical Officer, and three former executive officers of Broadcom. The SEC’s civil complaint alleges that Dr. Samueli, along with the other defendants, violated the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws, falsified books and records, and caused the company to report false financial results. On December 15, 2009, in connection with the criminal matters discussed below, the District Court dismissed the SEC’s complaint without prejudice as to all defendants. The SEC was given 30 days to refile or amend its complaint if it chose to do so, and had not done so within the required time period. Instead, the SEC filed a request for clarification of the District Court’s order, which was heard on January 28, 2010. Following that hearing, the District Court gave the SEC seven days to refile or amend its complaint. Broadcom cannot predict whether the SEC will attempt to refile its complaint against some or all of the defendants. After the SEC complaint was dismissed, Dr. Samueli was re-elected Chief Technical Officer. Dr. Samueli is not currently a director or executive officer.

 

In August 2006 we were informally contacted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California and asked to produce documents related to our historical option granting practices. We cooperated with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and provided substantial amounts of documents and information to the U.S. Attorney’s Office on a voluntary basis and pursuant to grand jury subpoenas. In June 2008, Dr. Henry T. Nicholas, III, our former President and Chief Executive Officer and former Co-Chairman of the Board, and William J. Ruehle, our former Chief Financial Officer, were named in an indictment relating to alleged stock option backdating at the company. Also, in June 2008 Dr. Samueli pled guilty to making a materially false statement to the SEC in connection with its investigation of alleged stock option backdating at the company. In September 2008 the United States District Court for the Central District of California rejected Dr. Samueli’s plea agreement. Dr. Samueli appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but that court rejected his appeal. On December 7, 2009, the District Court granted Dr. Samueli use immunity so that he could testify in Mr. Ruehle’s trial. On December 8, 2009, at the conclusion of Dr. Samueli’s testimony, the District Court set aside Dr. Samueli’s guilty plea and dismissed the information against him. Mr. Ruehle’s trial began in October 2009 and concluded December 15, 2009. After both sides rested, the District Court dismissed the indictment against Mr. Ruehle on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct and insufficient evidence of criminal intent. The District Court simultaneously dismissed the option backdating charges against Dr. Nicholas, which were scheduled to be tried in February 2010. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has filed notices of appeal as to both Dr. Nicholas and Dr. Samueli, but also represented to the District Court that no final decision has yet been reached as to whether those appeals will be pursued. Any further action by the SEC, the U.S. Attorney’s Office or other governmental agency could result in additional civil or criminal sanctions and/or fines against us and/or certain of our current or former officers, directors and/or employees.

 

Additionally, as discussed in Note 11 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, we currently are engaged in civil litigation with parties that claim, among other allegations, that certain of our current and former directors and officers improperly dated stock option grants to enhance their own profits on the exercise of such options or for other improper purposes (such actions, the Stock Option Class Actions). Although we and the other defendants intend to defend these claims vigorously, there are many uncertainties associated with any litigation, and we cannot assure you that these actions will be resolved without substantial costs and/or settlement charges that may exceed any reimbursement we may be entitled to under our directors’ and officers’ insurance policies.

In December 2009 we agreed in principle to settle the Stock Option Class Actions. Under the proposed settlement, the claims against Broadcom and its current and former officers and directors will be dismissed with prejudice and released in exchange for a $160.5 million cash payment by Broadcom. We recorded the settlement amount as a one-time charge in our statement of income for the three months and year ended December 31, 2009 as our best estimate of our liability based upon current facts and circumstances. The proposed settlement remains subject to the satisfaction of various conditions, including negotiation and execution of a final stipulation of settlement and court approval. If these conditions are satisfied, the proposed settlement will resolve all claims in the Stock Option Class Actions against Broadcom and the individual defendants. In the event that we are unable to execute a final stipulation of settlement and obtain court approval, our estimated liability to settle the Stock Option Class Actions could differ materially from the $160.5 million recorded at December 31, 2009.

 

In addition, we rely on independent registered public accounting firms for opinions and consents to maintain current reports under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, and to have effective registration statements under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, on file with the SEC, including our outstanding registration statements on Forms S-3, S-4 and S-8. The pending arbitration proceedings involving Ernst & Young LLP, or E&Y, our former independent registered public accounting firm, could adversely impact our ability to obtain any necessary consents in the future from E&Y. In that event, we may be required to have our new independent registered public accounting firm reaudit the affected periods and during such reaudit may not be able to timely file required Exchange Act reports with the SEC or to issue equity, including common stock pursuant to equity awards that comprise a significant portion of our compensation packages, under our outstanding or any new registration statements. Furthermore, as a result of the reaudit, it is possible that additional accounting issues may be identified.

 

The resolution of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the defense of our pending civil litigation, and the defense of any additional litigation that may arise relating to our past equity award practices or the January 2007 restatement of our prior financial statements has in the past and could continue to result in significant costs and diversion of the attention of management and other key employees. We have indemnification agreements with each of our present and former directors and officers, under which Broadcom is generally required to indemnify them against expenses, including attorneys’ fees, judgments, fines and settlements, arising from the pending litigation and related government actions described above (subject to certain exceptions, including liabilities arising from willful misconduct, from conduct knowingly contrary to the best interests of Broadcom, or conduct that is knowingly fraudulent or deliberately dishonest or results in improper personal benefit). The potential amount of the future payments we could be required to make under these indemnification obligations could be significant and could have a material impact on our results of operations.

 

As discussed in Note 11 in the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements, in August 2009 Broadcom and certain of the defendants in the federal derivative action pertaining to past employee stock option grants executed the Partial Derivative Settlement and the Insurance Agreement, a settlement with Broadcom’s directors and officers liability insurance carriers. Pursuant to the Insurance Agreement, and subject to the terms described more completely therein, including relinquishing of rights to any further recovery as to the matters described above under these directors’ and officers’ liability insurance policies by Broadcom and certain of its former and current officers and directors, Broadcom received payments totaling $118.0 million from its insurance carriers.

 

In the event that the trial court’s approval of the Partial Derivative Settlement is reversed or vacated by an appellate court or otherwise does not become final and non-appealable, Broadcom in its sole discretion has the election to either provide a release to the insurance carriers and indemnify them related to any future claims and retain the $118.0 million in accordance with the Insurance Agreement or repay to the insurance carriers certain portions of the aggregate amount previously paid to Broadcom. In the event the Partial Derivative Settlement is revised or vacated, it would be our intention to exercise our option to retain the $118.0 million and indemnify the insurance carriers.

To remain competitive, we must keep pace with rapid technological change and evolving industry standards in the semiconductor industry and the wired and wireless communications markets.

 

Our future success will depend on our ability to anticipate and adapt to changes in technology and industry standards and our customers’ changing demands. We sell products in markets that are characterized by rapid technological change, evolving industry standards, frequent new product introductions, short product life cycles and increasing demand for higher levels of integration and smaller process geometries. Our past sales and profitability have resulted, to a large extent, from our ability to anticipate changes in technology and industry standards and to develop and introduce new and enhanced products incorporating the new standards and technologies. Our ability to adapt to these changes and to anticipate future standards, and the rate of adoption and acceptance of those standards, will be a significant factor in maintaining or improving our competitive position and prospects for growth. If new industry standards emerge, our products or our customers’ products could become unmarketable or obsolete, and we could lose market share. We may also have to incur substantial unanticipated costs to comply with these new standards. In addition, our target markets continue to undergo rapid growth and consolidation. A significant slowdown in any of these wired and wireless communications markets could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. These rapid technological changes and evolving industry standards make it difficult to formulate a long-term growth strategy because the semiconductor industry and the wired and wireless communications markets may not continue to develop to the extent or in the time periods that we anticipate. We have invested substantial resources in emerging technologies that did not achieve the market acceptance that we had expected. If new markets do not develop as and when we anticipate, or if our products do not gain widespread acceptance in those markets, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.

 

We may experience difficulties in transitioning to smaller geometry process technologies or in achieving higher levels of design integration, which may result in reduced manufacturing yields, delays in product deliveries and increased expenses.

 

To remain competitive, we expect to continue to transition our semiconductor products to increasingly smaller line width geometries. This transition requires us to modify the manufacturing processes for our products and to redesign some products as well as standard cells and other integrated circuit designs that we may use in multiple products. We periodically evaluate the benefits, on a product-by-product basis, of migrating to smaller geometry process technologies to reduce our costs. Substantially all of our products are currently manufactured in 130 nanometers and 65 nanometer geometry processes, and we are now designing most new products in 65 nanometers and 40 nanometers and planning for the transition to smaller process geometries. In the past, we have experienced some difficulties in shifting to smaller geometry process technologies or new manufacturing processes, which resulted in reduced manufacturing yields, delays in product deliveries and increased expenses. The transition to 65 nanometer geometry process technology has resulted in significantly higher mask and prototyping costs, as well as additional expenditures for engineering design tools and related computer hardware. We may face similar difficulties, delays and expenses as we continue to transition our products to smaller geometry processes.

 

We are dependent on our relationships with our foundry subcontractors to transition to smaller geometry processes successfully. We cannot assure you that the foundries that we use will be able to effectively manage the transition in a timely manner, or at all, or that we will be able to maintain our existing foundry relationships or develop new ones. If any of our foundry subcontractors or we experience significant delays in this transition or fail to efficiently implement this transition, we could experience reduced manufacturing yields, delays in product deliveries and increased expenses, all of which could negatively impact our results of operations.

 

As smaller geometry processes become more prevalent, we expect to continue to integrate greater levels of functionality, as well as customer and third party intellectual property, into our products. However, we may not be able to achieve higher levels of design integration or deliver new integrated products on a timely basis, if at all. Moreover, even if we are able to achieve higher levels of design integration, such integration may have an adverse impact on our operating results, as a result of increasing costs and expenditures as described above as well as the risk that we may reduce our revenue by integrating the functionality of multiple chips into a single chip.

Our stock price is highly volatile. Accordingly, you may not be able to resell your shares of common stock at or above the price you paid for them.

 

The market price of our Class A common stock has fluctuated substantially in the past and is likely to continue to be highly volatile and subject to wide fluctuations. From January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2009 our Class A common stock has traded at prices as low as $12.98 and as high as $32.29 per share. Fluctuations have occurred and may continue to occur in response to various factors, many of which we cannot control, including:

 

 

In addition, the market prices of securities of Internet-related, semiconductor and other technology companies have been and remain volatile. This volatility has significantly affected the market prices of securities of many technology companies for reasons frequently unrelated to the operating performance of the specific companies. Accordingly, you may not be able to resell your shares of common stock at or above the price you paid. In the past, we and other companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their securities have been, and we currently are, the subject of securities class action litigation.

 

Due to the nature of our compensation programs, most of our executive officers sell shares of our common stock each quarter or otherwise periodically, often pursuant to trading plans established under Rule 10b5-1 promulgated under the Exchange Act. As a result, sales of shares by our executive officers may not be indicative of their respective opinions of Broadcom’s performance at the time of sale or of our potential future performance. Nonetheless, the market price of our stock may be affected by sales of shares by our executive officers.

 

In addition, fluctuations in the price of our stock may reduce the ability of our share repurchase program to deliver long-term shareholder value, because the market price of the stock may decline significantly below the levels at which repurchases were made.

 

Our co-founders and their affiliates can control the outcome of matters that require the approval of our shareholders, and accordingly we will not be able to engage in certain transactions without their approval.

 

As of December 31, 2009 our co-founders, directors, executive officers and their respective affiliates beneficially owned 12.9% of our outstanding common stock and held 56.3% of the total voting power held by our shareholders. Accordingly, these shareholders currently have enough voting power to control the outcome of matters that require the approval of our shareholders. These matters include the election of our Board of Directors,

the issuance of additional shares of Class B common stock, and the approval of most significant corporate transactions, including certain mergers and consolidations and the sale of substantially all of our assets. In particular, as of December 31, 2009 our two founders, Dr. Henry T. Nicholas III and Dr. Henry Samueli, beneficially owned a total of 11.6% of our outstanding common stock and held 55.9% of the total voting power held by our shareholders. Because of their significant voting stock ownership, we will not be able to engage in certain transactions, and our shareholders will not be able to effect certain actions or transactions, without the approval of one or both of these shareholders. These actions and transactions include changes in the composition of our Board of Directors, certain mergers, and the sale of control of our company by means of a tender offer, open market purchases or other purchases of our Class A common stock, or otherwise. Repurchases of shares of our Class A common stock under our share repurchase program will result in an increase in the total voting power of our co-founders, directors, executive officers and their affiliates, as well as other continuing shareholders.

 

Some of the independent foundries upon which we rely to manufacture our products, as well as our own California and Singapore facilities, are located in regions that are subject to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

 

Two of the third-party foundries upon which we rely to manufacture a substantial number of our semiconductor devices, are located in Taiwan. Taiwan has experienced significant earthquakes in the past and could be subject to additional earthquakes. Any earthquake or other natural disaster, such as a tsunami, in a country in which any of our foundries is located could significantly disrupt our foundries’ production capabilities and could result in our experiencing a significant delay in delivery, or substantial shortage, of wafers and possibly in higher wafer prices.

 

Our California facilities, including our principal executive offices and major design centers, are located near major earthquake fault lines. Our international distribution center and some of our third-party foundries are located in Singapore, which could also be subject to an earthquake, tsunami or other natural disaster. If there is a major earthquake or any other natural disaster in a region where one or more of our facilities are located, our operations could be significantly disrupted. Although we have established business interruption plans to prepare for any such event, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to effectively address all interruptions that such an event could cause.

 

Any supply disruption or business interruption could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

 

There can be no assurance that we will continue to declare cash dividends at all or in any particular amounts.

 

On January 27, 2010 our Board of Directors declared Broadcom’s first quarterly cash dividend. We intend to continue to pay quarterly dividends subject to capital availability and periodic determinations by our Board of Directors that cash dividends are in the best interest of our shareholders and are in compliance with all laws and agreements of Broadcom applicable to the declaration and payment of cash dividends. Future dividends may be affected by, among other factors: our views on potential future capital requirements for investments in acquisitions and the funding of our research and development; legal risks; stock repurchase programs; changes in federal and state income tax laws or corporate laws; and changes to our business model. Our dividend payments may change from time to time, and we cannot provide assurance that we will continue to declare dividends at all or in any particular amounts. A reduction in our dividend payments could have a negative effect on our stock price.

 

Our articles of incorporation and bylaws contain anti-takeover provisions that could prevent or discourage a third party from acquiring us.

 

Our articles of incorporation and bylaws contain provisions that may prevent or discourage a third party from acquiring us, even if the acquisition would be beneficial to our shareholders. In addition, we have in the past issued and may in the future issue shares of Class B common stock in connection with certain acquisitions, upon exercise of certain stock options, and for other purposes. Class B shares have superior voting rights entitling the holder to ten votes for each share held on matters that we submit to a shareholder vote (as compared to one vote

per share in the case of our Class A common stock) as well as the right to vote separately as a class (i) as required by law and (ii) in the case of a proposed issuance of additional shares of Class B common stock, unless such issuance is approved by at least two-thirds of the members of the Board of Directors then in office. Our Board of Directors also has the authority to fix the rights and preferences of shares of our preferred stock and to issue shares of common or preferred stock without a shareholder vote. It is possible that the provisions in our charter documents, the exercise of supervoting rights by holders of our Class B common stock, our co-founders’, directors’ and officers’ ownership of a majority of the Class B common stock, or the ability of our Board of Directors to issue preferred stock or additional shares of Class B common stock may prevent or discourage third parties from acquiring us, even if the acquisition would be beneficial to our shareholders. In addition, these factors may discourage third parties from bidding for our Class A common stock at a premium over the market price for our stock. These factors may also materially and adversely affect voting and other rights of the holders of our common stock and the market price of our Class A common stock.

 

 

None.

 

 

We lease facilities in Irvine (our corporate headquarters) and Santa Clara County, California. These facilities are our principal design facilities and each includes administration, sales and marketing, research and development and operations functions. We lease additional design facilities throughout the United States.

 

Internationally, we lease a distribution center that includes engineering design and administrative facilities in Singapore as well as engineering design and administrative facilities in Asia, Europe and Canada.

 

In addition, we lease various sales and marketing facilities in the United States and several other countries.

 

We lease our facilities and certain engineering design tools and information systems equipment under operating lease agreements. Our leased facilities comprise an aggregate of 2.8 million square feet. Our principal facilities in Irvine comprise 0.80 million square feet and have lease terms that expire at various dates through 2017.

 

We believe that the facilities under lease will be adequate for at least the next 12 months. For additional information regarding our obligations under property leases, see Note 6 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report.

 

 

The information set forth under Note 11 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report, is incorporated herein by reference. For an additional discussion of certain risks associated with legal proceedings, see “Risk Factors” in Item 1A of this Report.

 

 

No matters were submitted to a vote of security holders, through the solicitation of proxies or otherwise, in the three months ended December 31, 2009.

 

 

Market Information and Holders

 

Our Class A common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol BRCM. The following table sets forth, for the periods indicated, the high and low sale prices for our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market:

 

 

As of December 31, 2009 and 2008 there were 1,168 and 1,253 record holders of our Class A common stock and 167 and 200 record holders of our Class B common stock, respectively. On February 2, 2010 the last reported sale price of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market was $28.03 per share.

 

Our Class B common stock is not publicly traded. Each share of Class B common stock is convertible at any time at the option of the holder into one share of Class A common stock and in most instances automatically converts upon sale or other transfer.

Stock Performance Graph

 

The graph below shows a comparison of the cumulative total shareholder return on our Class A common stock with the cumulative total return on the S&P 500 Index, the NASDAQ Composite Index and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index over the five year period ended December 31, 2009. The graph assumes $100 invested at the indicated starting date in our Class A common stock and in each of the market indices, with the reinvestment of all dividends. Prior to 2010 we had never declared or paid cash dividends on shares of our capital stock. On January 27, 2010 the Board of Directors adopted a dividend policy pursuant to which we intend to pay quarterly cash dividends on our common stock and declared the first quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share payable to holders of our Class A and Class B common stock. Prices and shareholder returns over the indicated periods should not be considered indicative of future stock prices or shareholder returns.

 

COMPARISON OF CUMULATIVE TOTAL RETURN FOR
THE FIVE YEAR PERIOD ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2009

 

Dividend Policy

 

Prior to 2010 we had never declared or paid cash dividends on shares of our capital stock. On January 27, 2010, the Board of Directors adopted a dividend policy pursuant to which we intend to pay quarterly cash dividends on our common stock and declared the first quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share payable to holders of our common stock. The dividend will be paid on March 8, 2010 to holders of our Class A and Class B common stock of record at the close of business on February 19, 2010. The dividend so declared will be paid from U.S. domestic sources other than our retained earnings and will be treated for accounting purposes as a reduction of shareholders’ equity. The cash dividend policy and the payment of future cash dividends under that policy are subject to the Board’s continuing determination that the dividend policy and the declaration of dividends thereunder are in the best interests of our shareholders and are in compliance with all laws and agreements of Broadcom applicable to the declaration and payment of cash dividends.

 

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

 

In 2009 we issued an aggregate of 5.9 million shares of Class A common stock upon conversion of a like number of shares of Class B common stock in connection with their disposition. Each share of Class B common stock is convertible at any time into one share of Class A common stock at the option of the holder. The offers and sales of those securities were effected without registration in reliance on the exemption from registration provided by Section 3(a)(9) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act.

 

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

 

From time to time our Board of Directors has authorized various programs to repurchase shares of our Class A common stock depending on market conditions and other factors. Under such programs, we repurchased a total of 15.0 million, 65.2 million and 35.8 million shares of Class A common stock at weighted average prices of $28.12, $19.44 and $32.31 per share, in the years ended December 31, 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively.

 

In July 2008 the Board of Directors authorized our current program to repurchase shares of Broadcom’s Class A common stock having an aggregate value of up to $1.0 billion. Repurchases under the program may be made from time to time during the period that commenced July 31, 2008 and continuing through and including July 31, 2011. As of December 31, 2009, $154.0 million remained authorized for repurchase.

 

Repurchases under our share repurchase programs were and will be made in open market or privately negotiated transactions in compliance with Rule 10b-18 promulgated under the Exchange Act.

 

The following table presents details of our various repurchases during the three months ended December 31, 2009:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following table presents details of product and total gross margin as a percentage of product and total revenue, respectively:

 

 

The following table presents details of total stock-based compensation expense that is included in each functional line item in the consolidated statements of income data above:

 

 

 

 

The tables above set forth our selected consolidated financial data. We prepared this information using the consolidated financial statements of Broadcom for the five years ended December 31, 2009. Due to the separate presentation of product revenue, income from the Qualcomm Agreement and licensing revenue implemented in 2009, certain amounts in the selected consolidated financial data above have been reclassified to conform to the 2009 presentation. In addition, we have included a table for product gross margin in addition to our previously reported total gross margin. See Notes 1 and 2 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements. In addition, the consolidated financial statements include the results of operations of acquisitions commencing on their respective acquisition dates. See Note 3 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements.

 

You should read this selected consolidated financial data together with the Consolidated Financial Statements and related Notes contained in this Report and in our prior and subsequent reports filed with the SEC, as well as the section of this Report and our other reports entitled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”

 

You should read the following discussion and analysis in conjunction with our Consolidated Financial Statements and related Notes thereto included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report and the “Risk Factors” included in Part I, Item 1A of this Report, as well as other cautionary statements and risks described elsewhere in this Report, before deciding to purchase, hold or sell our common stock.

 

Overview

 

Broadcom Corporation (including our subsidiaries, referred to collectively in this Report as “Broadcom,” “we,” “our” and “us”) is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Our system-on-a-chip (SoC) and software solutions enable the delivery of voice, video, data and rich multimedia content to mobile devices, consumer electronics (CE) devices in the home and business networking products for the workplace, data centers, service providers and carriers. We provide the industry’s broadest portfolio of cutting-edge SoC solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, CE and broadband access products, and mobile devices.

 

Net Revenue.  Our product revenue consists principally of sales of semiconductor devices and, to a lesser extent, software licenses and royalties, development, support and maintenance agreements, data services and cancellation fees. The majority of our product sales occur through the efforts of our direct sales force. The remaining balance of our product sales occurs through distributors. Our licensing revenue and income from the Qualcomm Agreement is generated from the licensing of intellectual property.

 

On April 26, 2009 we entered into a four-year Settlement and Patent License and Non-Assert Agreement, or the Qualcomm Agreement, with QUALCOMM Incorporated, or Qualcomm. The Qualcomm Agreement is a multiple element arrangement which includes: (i) an exchange of intellectual property rights, including in certain circumstances, by a series of covenants not to assert claims of patent infringement under future patents issued within one to four years of the execution date of the agreement, (ii) the assignment of certain existing patents by Broadcom to Qualcomm with Broadcom retaining a royalty-free license under these patents, and (iii) the settlement of all outstanding litigation and claims between us and Qualcomm. The proceeds of the Qualcomm Agreement were allocated amongst the principal elements of the transaction. A gain from the settlement of litigation was immediately recognized that approximates the value of awards determined by the United States District Court for the Central District of California. The remaining consideration was predominantly associated with the transfer of current and future intellectual property rights, as well as the settlement of all other outstanding litigation, and is being recognized over the performance period of four years as a single unit of accounting. See further discussion below and Notes 1 and 2 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements.

 

We sell our products to leading wired and wireless communications manufacturers in each of our reportable segments: Broadband Communications, Enterprise Networking and Mobile & Wireless. Because we leverage our technologies across different markets, certain of our integrated circuits may be incorporated into products used in multiple markets. We utilize independent foundries and third-party subcontractors to manufacture, assemble and test all of our semiconductor products.

 

The following table presents details of our total net revenue:

 

The following table presents details of our product net revenue:

 

 

 

 

The demand for our products has been affected in the past, and may continue to be affected in the future, by various factors, including, but not limited to, the following:

 

 

In addition, the vast majority of our licensing revenues and related income to date has been derived from agreements with two customers, Verizon Wireless and Qualcomm. The patent license agreement entered into with Verizon Wireless in July 2007 and the Qualcomm Agreement entered into in April 2009 together are expected to result in licensing revenue and related income that is expected to total $1.056 billion over a seven year period. This amount includes $30.5 million recognized in 2009 related to previous payments made to us by Qualcomm for shipments from May 2007 through December 31, 2008, related to a court-ordered permanent injunction. From July 2007 through December 2009, we have recorded licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless and income from the Qualcomm Agreement of $370.6 million. From January 2010 through March 2013, we expect to record income from the Qualcomm Agreement of $685.8 million. The licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless has ended and the income from the Qualcomm Agreement is non-recurring and will terminate in 2013. There can be no assurances that we will be able to enter into similar arrangements in the future.

 

The following table details the amount of licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless and income from the Qualcomm Agreement that was recognized or is scheduled to be recognized from 2007 to 2013:

 

 

From time to time, our key customers place large orders causing our quarterly net revenue to fluctuate significantly. We expect that these fluctuations will continue and that they may be exaggerated by the seasonal

variations in consumer products and changes in the overall economic environment. In addition, 7.1% of our net product revenue is maintained under hubbing arrangements with certain of our customers. Pursuant to these arrangements we deliver products to a customer or a designated third party warehouse based upon the customer’s projected needs, but do not recognize product revenue unless and until the customer reports that it has removed our product from the warehouse to incorporate into its end products. Historically, we have had good visibility into customer requirements and shipments within a quarter. However, if a customer does not take our products under a hubbing arrangement in accordance with the schedule it originally provided to us, our predicted future revenue stream could vary substantially from our forecasts and our results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. Additionally, since we own inventory that is physically located in a third party’s warehouse, our ability to effectively manage inventory levels may be impaired, causing our total inventory turns to decrease, which could increase expenses associated with excess and obsolete products and negatively impact our cash flow.

 

For these and other reasons, our total net revenue and results of operations for 2009 and prior periods may not necessarily be indicative of future net revenue and results of operations.

 

Sales to our significant customers, including sales to their manufacturing subcontractors, as a percentage of net revenue were as follows:

 

 

 

 

We expect that our largest customers will continue to account for a substantial portion of our total net revenue in 2010 and for the foreseeable future. The identities of our largest customers and their respective contributions to our total net revenue have varied and will likely continue to vary from period to period.

 

Product revenue derived from all independent customers located outside the United States, excluding foreign subsidiaries or manufacturing subcontractors of customers that are headquartered in the United States even though such subsidiaries or manufacturing subcontractors are located outside of the United States, as a percentage of product revenue was as follows:

 

 

Product revenue derived from shipments to international destinations, as a percentage of product revenue was as follows:

 

 

All of our revenue to date has been denominated in U.S. dollars.

Product Gross Margin.  Our product gross margin has been affected in the past, and may continue to be affected in the future, by various factors, including, but not limited to, the following:

 

 

Net Income.  Our net income has been affected in the past, and may continue to be affected in the future, by various factors, including, but not limited to, the following:

 

 

In 2009 our net income was $65.3 million as compared to net income of $214.8 million in 2008, a difference of $149.5 million. This decrease in profitability was the direct result of decreases in net revenue of $167.8 million and total gross margin of 170 basis points. In addition, during 2009 we recognized estimated settlement costs of $160.5 million in connection with the proposed settlement of our shareholder class action, a $50.0 million charitable contribution and an increase of restructuring costs of $8.5 million. These costs were offset by an increase in the recovery of legal expenses of $74.6 million, a gain on the settlement of the Qualcomm litigation of $65.3 million and a decrease in impairment of long-lived assets of $152.7 million.

 

The decrease in net revenue in 2009 resulted primarily from a decrease in both our Broadband Communications and Enterprise Networking reportable segments, offset in part by an increase in our Mobile & Wireless reportable segment. The decrease in net revenue from our Broadband Communications reportable segment resulted primarily from a decrease in demand for broadband modems, digital set-top boxes and digital TV products, offset in part by an increase in demand for our high definition DVD products. The increase in net revenue from our Mobile & Wireless reportable segment resulted primarily from the ramp in the second half of 2009 of our cellular products and wireless combo solutions, offset in part by a decrease in demand for VoIP solutions. The decrease in

net revenue from our Enterprise Networking reportable segment resulted primarily from a broad-based decline in demand for our controller and Ethernet switch products. In 2009 we recognized $170.6 million of income from the Qualcomm Agreement and $19.0 million of licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless. In 2008 we recognized $149.2 million of licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless. See discussion under “Qualcomm Agreement” below and Notes 1 and 2 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements.

 

We expect research and development costs to increase over the short term and continue to increase over the longer term as a result of growth in, and the diversification of, the markets we serve, new product opportunities, the number of design wins that go into production, changes in our compensation policies, and any expansion into new markets and technologies.

 

Qualcomm Agreement.  As part of the Qualcomm Agreement, each party granted certain rights under its patent portfolio to the other party including, in certain circumstances, under future patents issued within one to four years after April 26, 2009. The term of the Qualcomm Agreement commenced April 26, 2009 and will continue until the expiration of the last to expire of the covered patents. In addition, certain existing patents were assigned by Broadcom to Qualcomm with Broadcom retaining a royalty-free license under these patents. The Qualcomm Agreement also resulted in the parties dismissing with prejudice all outstanding litigation between them, and in Broadcom withdrawing its complaints with foreign competition authorities.

 

Under the terms of the agreement, Qualcomm is expected to make payments to Broadcom totaling $891.2 million, of which $286.4 million has been paid through December 31, 2009. The remaining balance of $604.8 million is expected to be paid in fourteen equal and successive quarterly payments of $43.2 million each, continuing in the three months ending March 31, 2010 and concluding in the three months ending June 30, 2013.

 

We allocated the payment due us under the Qualcomm Agreement amongst several elements. In 2009 we recorded a gain from the settlement of litigation related to intellectual property of $65.3 million, which approximated the value of the settlements determined by the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

 

The fair value associated with the transfer of intellectual property rights, as well as the settlement of other outstanding litigation, of $825.9 million, will be treated as a single unit of accounting and recognized within net revenue over the Qualcomm Agreement’s performance period of four years; however it will be limited to the lesser of the cumulative straight-line amortization over the four year performance period or the cumulative cash proceeds received. As a result, income from the Qualcomm Agreement will never be recorded ahead of cash payments received. In 2009 we recognized income from the Qualcomm Agreement of $140.1 million. We also recognized income from the Qualcomm Agreement of $30.5 million in 2009 related to previous payments made to us by Qualcomm for shipments from May 2007 through December 31, 2008, related to a court-ordered permanent injunction. We had deferred the recognition of these amounts, which were received during 2008, due to continuing litigation appeals. These appeals were resolved through the Qualcomm Agreement.

 

Income from the Qualcomm Agreement is expected to be recognized as follows:

 

 

At December 31, 2009 we had deferred income of $81.0 million related to the Qualcomm Agreement. The income from the Qualcomm Agreement is non-recurring and will terminate in 2013. We cannot assure you that we will be able to enter into similar arrangements in the future.

 

Product Cycles.  The cycle for test, evaluation and adoption of our products by customers can range from three to more than nine months, with an additional three to more than twelve months before a customer commences volume production of equipment or devices incorporating our products. Due to this lengthy sales cycle, we may experience significant delays from the time we incur expenses for research and development, selling, general and administrative efforts, and investments in inventory, to the time we generate corresponding revenue, if any. The rate of new orders may vary significantly from month to month and quarter to quarter. If anticipated sales or shipments in any quarter do not occur when expected, expenses and inventory levels could be

disproportionately high, and our results of operations for that quarter, and potentially for future quarters, would be materially and adversely affected.

 

Acquisition Strategy.  An element of our business strategy involves the acquisition of businesses, assets, products or technologies that allow us to reduce the time or costs required to develop new technologies and products and bring them to market, incorporate enhanced functionality into and complement our existing product offerings, augment our engineering workforce, and enhance our technological capabilities. We plan to continue to evaluate strategic opportunities as they arise, including acquisitions and other business combination transactions, strategic relationships, capital infusions and the purchase or sale of assets.

 

In 2009, 2008 and 2007 we completed several acquisitions for original total consideration of $581.2 million.

 

 

The accompanying consolidated financial statements include the results of operations of the acquired companies commencing on their respective acquisition dates. See Note 3 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for additional information related to these acquisitions.

 

Business Enterprise Segments.  Broadcom has three reportable segments consistent with our target markets. Our three reportable segments are as follows:

 

 

Historically, we reported one segment. In 2009 several factors contributed to our decision to report in three segments. First, entering into the Qualcomm Agreement resulted in significant licensing income and triggered the need to display licensing revenue separately in our consolidated statements of income. Second, the narrative we use to communicate our strategic focus to investors and help them understand our business evolved to our present framework of Home (Broadband Communications), Hand (Mobile & Wireless) and Infrastructure (Enterprise Networking). Accordingly, we believe that a segment presentation consistent with this would represent better disclosure and increase transparency. Third, and consistent with this approach, in our annual reexamination of the economics of our businesses, we found that the financial metrics for our Enterprise Networking business were diverging from those of our other businesses, and that our Broadband Communications business was becoming

dissimilar from our Mobile & Wireless business. Accordingly, we now report three segments: Broadband Communication, Mobile & Wireless and Enterprise Networking.

 

Our Chief Executive Officer, who is our chief operating decision maker, or CODM, reviews financial information at the operating segment level. Our Mobile Platforms and Wireless Connectivity businesses (originally operated as a single operating segment) are reported separately to the CODM to allow greater management focus on our Mobile Platform opportunity. However as the customers, economics, and competitors substantially overlap, and the product functionality is being integrated across these products in our own and competitor roadmaps, we aggregate these two businesses into one reportable segment, Mobile & Wireless.

 

We also report an “All Other” category that includes licensing revenue from our agreement with Verizon Wireless and income from the Qualcomm Agreement since they are principally the result of corporate efforts. “All Other” also includes operating expenses that we do not allocate to our other operating segments as these expenses are not included in the segment operating performance measures evaluated by our CODM. Operating costs and expenses that are not allocated include stock-based compensation, amortization of purchased intangible assets, impairment of goodwill and other long-lived assets, net settlement costs, net restructuring costs, in-process research and development, charitable contributions, employer payroll tax on certain stock option exercises, and other miscellaneous expenses related to corporate allocations that were either over or under the original projections at the beginning of the year. We include stock-based compensation and acquisition-related items in the “All Other” category as decisions regarding equity compensation are made at the corporate level and our CODM believes that acquisition accounting distorts the underlying economics of the reportable segment. Our CODM does not review any information regarding total assets on an operating segment basis. The accounting policies for segment reporting are the same as for Broadcom as a whole.

 

We have presented 2008 and 2007 financial information on a comparative basis to conform with the current year three reportable segment presentation.

 

The following table presents details of our reportable segments and the “All Other” category:

 

 

 

Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates

 

The preparation of financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of net revenue and expenses in the reporting period. We regularly evaluate our estimates and assumptions related to revenue recognition, rebates, allowances for doubtful accounts, sales returns and allowances, warranty reserves, inventory reserves, stock-based compensation expense, goodwill and purchased intangible asset valuations, strategic investments, deferred income tax asset valuation allowances, uncertain tax positions, tax contingencies, self-insurance, restructuring costs, litigation and other loss contingencies. We base our estimates and assumptions on current facts, historical experience and various other factors that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets and liabilities and the recording of revenue, costs and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. The actual results experienced by us may differ materially and adversely from our estimates. To the extent there are material differences between our estimates and the actual results, our future results of operations will be affected.

 

We believe the following are either (i) critical accounting policies that require us to make significant estimates or assumptions in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements or (ii) other key accounting policies that generally do not require us to make estimates or assumptions but may require us to make difficult or subjective judgments:

 

 

In arrangements that include a combination of semiconductor products and software, where software is considered more-than-incidental and essential to the functionality of the product being sold, we account for the entire arrangement as a sale of software and software-related items and allocate the arrangement

consideration based on vendor-specific objective evidence, or VSOE. In arrangements that include a combination of semiconductor products, software and/or services, where software is not considered more-than-incidental to the product being sold, we allocate the arrangement consideration based on each element’s relative fair value. In the arrangements described above, both the semiconductor products and software are delivered concurrently and post-contract customer support is not provided. Therefore, we recognize revenue upon shipment of the semiconductor product, assuming all other basic revenue recognition criteria are met, as both the semiconductor products and software are considered delivered elements and no undelivered elements exist. In limited instances where there are undelivered elements, we allocate revenue based on the relative fair value of the individual elements. If there is no established fair value for an undelivered element, the entire arrangement is accounted for as a single unit of accounting, resulting in a deferral of revenue and costs for the delivered element until the undelivered element has been fulfilled. In cases where the undelivered element is a data or support service, the revenue and costs applicable to both the delivered and undelivered elements are recorded ratably over the respective service period or estimated product life. If the undelivered element is essential to the functionality of the delivered element, no revenue or costs are recognized until the undelivered element is delivered. If we enter into future multiple element arrangements in which the fair value of each deliverable is not known, the portion of revenue we recognize on a deferred basis may vary significantly in any given quarter, which could cause even greater fluctuations in our quarterly operating results. For further discussion, see “Recent Accounting Pronouncements” below.

 

A portion of our sales is made through distributors under agreements allowing for pricing credits and/or rights of return. These pricing credits and/or rights of return provisions prevent us from being able to reasonably estimate the final price of the inventory to be sold and the amount of inventory that could be returned pursuant to these agreements. As a result, the price to the customer is not fixed or determinable at the time we deliver products to our distributors. Accordingly, product revenue from sales made through these distributors is not recognized until the distributors ship the product to their customers. We also maintain inventory, or hubbing, arrangements with certain of our customers. Pursuant to these arrangements, we deliver products to a customer or a designated third party warehouse based upon the customer’s projected needs, but do not recognize product revenue unless and until the customer or third-party warehouse reports it has removed our product from the warehouse to be incorporated into its end products. Historically, we have had good visibility into customer requirements and shipments within a quarter. However, if a customer does not take our products under a hubbing arrangement in accordance with the schedule it originally provided to us, our future revenue stream could vary substantially from our forecasts and our results of operations could be materially and adversely affected. In addition, distributors and customers with hubbing arrangements provide us with periodic data regarding product, price, quantity, and customers when products are shipped to their customers, as well as the quantities of our products that they still have in stock. For specialized shipping terms we may rely on data provided by our freight forwarding providers. For our licensing revenue we rely on data provided by the licensee. Any error in the data provided to us by customers, distributors or other third parties could lead to inaccurate reporting of our total net revenue and net income.

 

We defer revenue and income when advance payments are received from customers before performance obligations have been completed and/or services have been performed. Deferred revenue and income do not include amounts from products delivered to distributors that the distributors have not yet sold through to their end customers.

 

 

We determined that the value associated with the transfer of intellectual property rights and other elements will be treated as a single unit of accounting and, based on the predominant nature of these elements, recognized them within net revenue over the contractual performance period of four years, beginning in 2009 and extending through 2013. The elements included: (i) an exchange of intellectual property rights, including in certain circumstances, a series of covenants not to assert claims of patent infringement under future patents issued within one to four years of the execution date of the agreement, (ii) the assignment of certain existing patents by Broadcom to Qualcomm with Broadcom retaining a royalty-free license under these patents, and (iii) the settlement of all outstanding litigation and claims between us and Qualcomm.

 

We consider the Qualcomm Agreement as predominantly related to the transfer of current and future intellectual property rights. This conclusion was based on (a) the amounts specifically awarded by the courts for the patents that were the subject of litigation for which appeals had been substantially exhausted and (b) the extensive nature of the rights transferred to Qualcomm, both for our existing patent portfolio and for the patents we would develop during the next one to four years. In addition, we obtained a third party valuation of the intellectual property rights. The inputs and assumptions we used in this valuation were from a market participant perspective and included projected revenue, royalty rates, estimated discount rates, useful lives and income tax rates, among others. The development of a number of these inputs and assumptions in our model requires significant amount of management judgment and is based upon a number of factors including the selection of industry comparables, market growth rates and other relevant factors. Changes in any number of these assumptions would have substantially changed the fair value assigned to the intellectual property rights. These inputs and assumptions represent management’s best estimates at the time of the transaction.

 

 

 

 

Results of Operations

 

The following table sets forth certain Consolidated Statements of Income data expressed as a percentage of net revenue for the periods indicated:

 

 

The following table presents details of product and total gross margin as a percentage of product and total revenue, respectively:

 

 

The following table presents details of total stock-based compensation expense as a percentage of net revenue included in each functional line item in the consolidated statements of income data above:

 

Years Ended December 31, 2009 and 2008

 

Net Revenue, Cost of Product Revenue, Product Gross Margin, and Total Gross Margin

 

The following tables present net revenue, cost of product revenue, product gross margin and total gross margin for 2009 and 2008 and the three months ended December 31, 2009 and September 30, 2009: