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

 

 

Form 10-K

 

ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d)
OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended October 1, 2010

 

Commission file number: 001-31650

MINDSPEED TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code:

(949) 579-3000

 

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 o     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.  þ

 

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 Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).  Yes o     No þ

 

The aggregate market value of the Registrant’s voting and non-voting stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant as of the end of its most recently completed second fiscal quarter was approximately $247.7 million. Shares held by each officer and director and each person owning more than 10% of the outstanding voting and non-voting stock have been excluded from this calculation because such persons may be deemed to be affiliates of the Registrant. This determination of potential affiliate status is not necessarily a conclusive determination for other purposes. Shares held include shares of which certain of such persons disclaim beneficial ownership.

 

The number of outstanding shares of the Registrant’s Common Stock as of October 29, 2010 was 32,228,598.

 

Documents Incorporated by Reference

 

Portions of the Registrant’s Proxy Statement for the 2011 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, to be filed pursuant to Regulation 14A within 120 days after the end of the 2010 fiscal year, are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Form 10-K.

 

 

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

 

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains statements relating to Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. (including certain projections and business trends) that are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act), and are subject to the “safe harbor” created by those sections. All statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, other than those that are purely historical, are forward-looking statements. Words such as “expect,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “outlook,” “could,” “target,” “project,” “intend,” “plan,” “seek,” “estimate,” “should,” “may,” “assume” and “continue,” as well as variations of such words and similar expressions, also identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K include, without limitation, statements regarding:

 

 

 

Our expectations, beliefs, anticipations, objectives, intentions, plans and strategies regarding the future are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, and actual events that occur, to differ materially from results contemplated by the forward-looking statement. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to:

 

 

The forward-looking statements in this report are subject to additional risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in Item 1A — “Risk Factors” and those detailed from time to time in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof and, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of them, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Mindspeed^®, Mindspeed Technologies^®, Comcerto^® and Transcede^tm are registered trademarks or trademarks of Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. Other brands, names and trademarks contained in this report are the property of their respective owners.

 

PART I

 

 

Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. (we or Mindspeed) designs, develops and sells semiconductor solutions for communications applications in the wireline and wireless network infrastructure, which includes enterprise networks, broadband access networks (fixed and mobile) and metropolitan and wide area networks. We have organized our solutions for these interrelated and rapidly converging networks into three product families: communications convergence processing (formerly known as multiservice access), high-performance analog and wide area networking communications. Our communications convergence processing products include ultra-low-power, multi-core digital signal processor system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for the fixed and mobile (3G/4G) carrier infrastructure and residential and enterprise platforms. Our high-performance analog products include high-density crosspoint switches, optical drivers, equalization and signal-conditioning solutions that solve difficult switching, timing and synchronization challenges in next-generation optical networking, enterprise storage and broadcast video transmission applications. Our wide area networking (WAN) communications portfolio helps optimize today’s circuit-switched networks that furnish much of the Internet’s underlying long-distance infrastructure.

 

Our products are sold to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for use in a variety of network infrastructure equipment, including:

 

 

Our customers include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Inc., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Hitachi Ltd., LM Ericsson Telephone Company, Nokia Siemens Networks and Zhongxing Telecom Equipment Corp.

 

We believe the breadth of our product portfolio, combined with more than three decades of experience in semiconductor hardware, software and communications systems engineering, provides us with a competitive advantage. We have proven expertise in signal, packet and transmission processing technologies, which are critical core competencies for successfully defining, designing and implementing advanced semiconductor products for next-generation network infrastructure equipment. We have cultivated and continue to initiate and foster close relationships with leading network infrastructure OEMs to understand emerging markets, technologies and standards. We focus our research and development efforts on applications in the segments of the telecommunications network which we believe offer the most attractive growth prospects. Our business is fabless, which means we outsource all of our manufacturing needs, and we do not own or operate any semiconductor manufacturing facilities. We believe being fabless allows us to minimize operating infrastructure and capital expenditures, maintain operational flexibility and focus our resources on the design, development and marketing of our products — the highest value-creation elements of our business model.

 

Spin-off from Conexant Systems, Inc.

 

Mindspeed was originally incorporated in Delaware in 2001 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Conexant Systems, Inc. On June 27, 2003, Conexant completed the distribution to Conexant stockholders of all outstanding shares of common stock of Mindspeed. Prior to the distribution, Conexant transferred to us the assets and liabilities of its Mindspeed business, including the stock of certain subsidiaries, and certain other assets and liabilities, which were allocated to us under the distribution agreement entered into between us and Conexant. Also, prior to the

distribution, Conexant contributed cash to our company in an amount such that at the time of the distribution our cash balance was $100.0 million. We issued to Conexant a warrant to purchase approximately 6.1 million shares of our common stock at a price of $16.74 per share, as adjusted, exercisable for a period of ten years after the distribution. Following the distribution, we began operations as an independent, publicly held company. Our common stock trades on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “MSPD.”

 

Industry Overview

 

Communications semiconductor products are a critical part of network infrastructure equipment. Network infrastructure OEMs require advanced communications semiconductor products — such as low-power, multi-core digital signal processor (DSP) SoC solutions, as well as switching and signal timing and conditioning solutions — that are highly optimized for the equipment employed by their customers. We seek to provide semiconductor products that enable network infrastructure OEMs to meet the needs of their service provider and enterprise customers in terms of system performance, functionality and time-to-market.

 

Addressed Markets

 

Our semiconductor products are primarily focused on network infrastructure equipment applications in three areas of the broadly defined communications network: enterprise networks, broadband access service areas, including wireless and wireline infrastructure networks, and metropolitan and wide area networks. The type and complexity of network infrastructure equipment used in these network areas continues to expand, driven by the need for the processing, transmission and switching of digital voice, data and video traffic over multiple communication media, at numerous transmission data rates and employing different protocols.

 

Enterprise networks include equipment that enables voice and data communications and access to outside networks, and is deployed primarily in the offices of commercial enterprises, including specialized commercial segments, such as broadcast video production, which have demanding network requirements. An enterprise network may be comprised of many local area networks, as well as client workstations, centralized database management systems, storage area networks (SANs) and other components. In enterprise networks, communications semiconductors facilitate the processing and transmission of voice, data and video traffic in converged IP networks that are replacing the traditional separate telephone, data and video conferencing networks. Typical network infrastructure equipment found in enterprise networks that use our products include voice and media gateways, IP private branch exchanges, SAN routers, director-class switches and emerging enterprise-class wireless base station systems for enhanced mobile enterprise service delivery. In addition, a major trend in the broadcast video segment of the enterprise networking market is the switch from analog to digital television transmission and the conversion from standard-definition television services to high-definition television (HDTV) services featuring more detailed images and digital surround sound. We offer a family of broadcast-video products optimized for high-speed HDTV routing and production switcher applications.

 

Broadband Access service areas of the telecommunications network refer to the “last mile” of a telecommunications or cable service provider’s physical network (including copper, fiber optic or wireless transmission), including network infrastructure equipment that connects end-users (typically located at a business or residence) with metropolitan and wide area networks. For this portion of the network, infrastructure equipment requires semiconductors that enable reliable, high-speed connectivity capable of aggregating or disaggregating and transporting multiple forms of voice, data and video traffic. In addition, communications semiconductors must accommodate multiple transmission standards and communications protocols to provide a bridge between dissimilar access networks; for example, connecting wireless base station equipment to a wireline network, and enabling the computationally complex processing that is required in order for carriers to meet cellular data service demands with limited available spectrum. Typical network infrastructure equipment found at the edge of the broadband access service area that use our products include optical node units, optical line terminals, remote access concentrators, digital subscriber line (DSL) access multiplexers, mixed-media gateways, wireless base stations, digital loop carrier equipment and media converters.

 

Metropolitan and Wide Area Networks refer to the portion of a service provider’s physical network that enables high-speed communications within a city or a larger regional area, including inexpensive mobile backhaul services

for wireless communications carriers. In addition, this portion of the network provides the communications link between broadband access service areas and the fiber optic-based, wide area network. For metro equipment applications, our communications semiconductors provide transmission and processing capabilities, as well as information segmentation and classification, and routing and switching functionality, to support high-speed traffic from multiple sources employing different transmission standards and communications protocols. These functions require signal conversion, signal processing and packet processing expertise to support the design and development of highly integrated mixed-signal devices combining analog and digital functions with communications protocols and application software. Typical network infrastructure equipment found in metro service areas that use our products includes add-drop multiplexers, switches, high-speed routers, digital cross-connect systems, optical edge devices and multiservice provisioning platforms.

 

The telecommunications network, including the Internet, has evolved into a complex, hybrid series of converging digital and optical networks that connect individuals and businesses globally. These new higher-bandwidth, data-centric networks integrate voice, data and video traffic, operate over both wired and wireless media, link existing voice and data networks and cross traditional enterprise, broadband access, metro and long haul service area boundaries. Network infrastructure OEMs are designing faster, more intelligent and more complex equipment to satisfy the needs of service providers as they continue to expand their network coverage and service offerings while upgrading and connecting or integrating existing networks of disparate types. In this demanding environment, we believe network infrastructure OEMs select as their strategic partners communications semiconductor suppliers who can deliver advanced products that provide increased functionality, lower total system cost and support for a variety of communications media, operating speeds and protocols.

 

The Mindspeed Approach

 

We believe the breadth of our product portfolio, combined with our expertise in low-power semiconductor hardware and software and communications systems engineering, provide us with a competitive advantage in designing and selling our products to leading network infrastructure OEMs.

 

We have proven expertise in signal, packet and transmission processing technologies. Signal processing involves both signal conversion and digital signal processing techniques that convert and compress voice, data and video between analog and digital representations. Packet processing involves bundling or segmenting information traffic using standard protocols such as IP or ATM and enables sharing of transmission bandwidth across a given communication medium. Transmission processing involves the transport and receipt of voice, data and video traffic across copper wire and optical fiber communications media.

 

These core technology competencies are critical for developing semiconductor networking solutions that enable the processing, transmission and switching of high-speed voice, data and video traffic, employing multiple communications protocols, across disparate communications networks. Our core technology competencies are the foundation for developing our:

 

 

 

Increasing Demand for Communications Semiconductors

 

We believe the market for network infrastructure equipment in general, and for communications semiconductors in particular, offers attractive long-term growth prospects for several reasons:

 

 

 

 

Moreover, we expect that network infrastructure OEMs will outsource more of their semiconductor component requirements to semiconductor suppliers, allowing the OEMs to reduce their operating cost structure by shifting their focus and investment from internal application specific integrated circuit semiconductor design and development to more strategic systems development.

 

Strategy

 

Our objective is to grow our business and to become the leading supplier of semiconductor networking solutions to leading global network infrastructure OEMs in key enterprise, broadband access and metro service area market segments. To achieve this objective, we are pursuing the following strategies:

 

Focus on Increasing Share in Growth Applications

 

We have established strong market positions for our products in the enterprise, broadband access (fixed and mobile) and metro service areas of the telecommunications network. We believe the markets for semiconductor products that address these applications will grow at faster rates than the markets for network infrastructure equipment, in general. This key attribute is expected to make the enterprise, broadband access and metro service areas the most attractive markets for the foreseeable future. We believe that our three core technology competencies, coupled with focused investments in product development, will position us to increase our share in those target areas.

Expand Strategic Relationships with Industry-Leading Global Network Infrastructure OEMs and Maximize Design Win Share

 

We identify and selectively establish strategic relationships with market leaders in the network infrastructure equipment industry to develop next-generation products and, in some cases, customized solutions for their specific needs. We have an extensive history of working closely with our customers’ research and development groups and marketing teams to understand emerging markets, technologies and standards, and we invest our product development resources in those areas. We believe our close relationships with leading network infrastructure OEMs facilitate early adoption of our semiconductor products during development of their system-level products, enhance our ability to obtain design wins from those customers and encourage adoption of our technology throughout the industry.

 

In North America, we have cultivated close relationships with leading network infrastructure OEMs, including Cisco Systems, Inc. and Genband, Inc. Abroad, we have established close relationships with market leaders such as Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., and Zhongxing Telecom Equipment Corp. in the Asia-Pacific region and Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and LM Ericsson Telephone Company in Europe.

 

Capitalize on the Breadth of Our Product and Intellectual Property Portfolio

 

We build on the breadth of our product portfolio of physical-layer devices, together with our signal and packet processing devices and communications software expertise, to increase our share of the silicon content in our customers’ products. We offer a range of complementary products that are optimized to work with each other and provide our customers with complete information receipt, processing and transmission functions. These complementary products allow infrastructure OEMs to source components that provide proven interoperability from a single semiconductor supplier, rather than requiring OEMs to combine and coordinate individual components from multiple vendors.

 

In addition, we offer highly integrated products such as our family of Comcerto packet processors that provide our customers with a complete hardware and software solution in a single device. These integrated products perform functions typically requiring multiple discrete components and software, and combine the programmability of alternative general-purpose DSP solutions with the superior performance and power efficiency of a multi-processor solution with selected application-specific fixed-function acceleration. Our multi-core SoC expertise is also becoming increasingly important as network infrastructure equipment requires more and more computational complexity to solve difficult multi-layered signal processing challenges. To enable the integration of more and more processing cores into SoC devices, we have developed proprietary intellectual property for managing large arrays of DSPs, including task-scheduling technology that has been field-proven and steadily enhanced through several generations of triple-play edge gateways used for complex packet-processing applications.

 

We believe that this strategy of offering both complementary and integrated products increases product performance, speeds time-to-market and lowers the total system cost for our customers. The breadth of our product portfolio also provides a competitive advantage for serving network convergence applications such as multiprotocol wireless-to-wireline connectivity. These applications generally require a combination of processing, transmission or switching functionality to move high-speed voice and data traffic using multiple communications protocols across disparate communications networks.

 

Through our efforts in building a large product portfolio, we have developed and we maintain a broad intellectual property portfolio consisting of sophisticated algorithms and other specialized technology, such as the advanced echo-cancellation techniques that have been used in voice ports of carrier telecommunications equipment that our products have enabled. We periodically enter into strategic arrangements to leverage our portfolio by licensing or selling our intellectual property.

 

Additionally, we have aligned with key strategic partners to collaborate on advanced multi-core SoC architectures that we believe are critical for next-generation, ultra-low-power communications processing solutions. For instance, our work with ARM Holdings plc has resulted in 12 generations of power-efficiency advances, initially for carrier-class convergence processors and more recently for triple-play home-gateway

platforms, as well as for our Transcede^tm products. Power efficiency is becoming increasingly important as our customers adopt a variety of energy-efficiency initiatives, including the European Union energy-consumption guidelines for broadband equipment.

 

Provide Outstanding Technical Support and Customer Service

 

We provide broad-based technical and product design support to our customers through three dedicated teams: field application engineers, product application engineers and technical marketing personnel. We believe that comprehensive service and support are critical to shortening our customers’ design cycles and maintaining a long-term competitive position within the network infrastructure equipment market. Outstanding customer service and support are important competitive factors for semiconductor component suppliers like us seeking to be the preferred suppliers to leading network infrastructure OEMs.

 

Products

 

We provide network infrastructure OEMs with a broad portfolio of advanced semiconductor networking solutions. Our products can be classified into three focused product families: communications convergence processing products, high-performance analog products and WAN communications products. These three product families are found in a variety of networking equipment designed to process, transmit and switch voice, data and video traffic between, and within, the different segments of the communications network.

 

Communications Convergence Processing Products

 

Our software-configurable communications convergence processing (formerly known as multiservice access) products serve as bridges for transporting video, voice, fax and modem transmissions between circuit-switched and packet-based fixed and mobile networks, and across network boundaries. Our DSP device architecture combines the performance of a digital-signal processor core with the flexibility of a microcontroller core to support our extensive suite of voice compression techniques, echo cancellers and communications protocols. These products process and translate voice and data and perform various management and reporting functions. They compress the signals to minimize bandwidth consumption and modify or add communications protocols to accommodate transport of the signals across a variety of different networks. Supported services include video and VoIP, Voice-over-ATM (VoATM) and Voice-over-DSL services, as well as wireline-to-wireless connectivity.

 

Our communications convergence processing products include the eighth-generation Comcerto family for fiber-access service delivery, and our Transcede^tm family of 3G/4G base station baseband processors that extend our proven multi-core processing expertise into the mobile infrastructure.

 

Our Comcerto family of packet processors includes a full range of software-compatible solutions that enable OEMs to provide scalable systems with customized features for carrier, enterprise and customer premise applications. The high-density members of this family, the Comcerto 5000, 900, 700 and 600 series processors and related software, provide a complete SoC solution for carrier-class video and Voice-over-packet (VoP) applications. All are targeted for use in media gateways designed to bridge wireless, wireline and enterprise networks.

 

The Comcerto 300, 500 and 800 series solutions are designed for access and enterprise voice and data processing applications. The Comcerto 300 series is targeted at VoIP integration in lower density access platforms, such as multi-dwelling units (MDUs), digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) equipment and multi-service access nodes (MSANs), and are widely deployed in passive optical network/fiber-to-the-building (PON/FTTB) applications. The Comcerto 500 series is a silicon “PBX-on-a-chip” which supports all required voice processing functionality for up to 128 channels, including encryption. The Comcerto 800 series enables a new class of “office-in-a-box” systems by combining a high-quality VoP subsystem with a high-performance routing and virtual private network (VPN) engine. The Comcerto 800 series integrates voice processing, packet processing and encryption functionality into a single device for the rapidly growing market for VoP enterprise networks. This product is targeted for use in enterprise voice gateways, PBXs and integrated access devices.

The Comcerto 100 series broadband services processor, is designed to support secure triple-play (voice, video and data) networks for residential and small office/home office markets. The Comcerto 100 series processor integrates high-performance security processing, packet processing and quality of service (QoS) capabilities for next-generation broadband customer-premises equipment enabling service providers to deliver sophisticated multimedia content to their subscribers.

 

The Comcerto 1000 series of low-power embedded packet processers address a wide variety of applications ranging from high-end VoIP enabled home gateways and small-to-midsized business high performance security appliances to Ethernet powered 802.11n enterprise access points. The Comcerto 1000 series of processors delivers scalability, high-performance packet handling capabilities, increased VPN and secure sockets layer (SSL) throughput and industry leading QoS hardware features.

 

Our Transcede family extends our multi-core processor to deliver highly integrated baseband solutions for 3G/4G base stations. Transcede is designed to meet the huge increase in base station diversity and computational complexity caused by the mobile Internet’s migration from a voice- to data-centric mobile network. Transcede is designed to enable the development of a wide range of equipment, from picocells and enterprise femtocells serving a relatively small number of subscribers to microcells and macrocells serving hundreds or thousands of subscribers. Demand for this diverse set of platforms is being driven by the need for carriers to offload mobile data traffic and bridge today’s 3G coverage and performance gaps, while paving the way for next-generation 4G and long term evolution (LTE) networks.

 

The Transcede family includes the T4000, whose processor cores run at 600 MHz, with less than 12 watt power consumption, and the T4020, which features 750 MHz processor cores and typical power consumption less than 15 watts. These devices enable 64-user “picocell on a chip,” delivering three sectors of LTE processing in a single device, while still providing substantial processing headroom so manufacturers can deploy their own value-added features as part of an overall Transcede-based solution. The Transcede family also includes the Transcede 3000, which is designed for small-cell 3G and 4G base stations supporting up to 32 users. Mindspeed also offers the T4005 for 3G/4G macrocell developers who want to combine Transcede’s high-performance Layer One (L1) physical-layer (PHY) processing capabilities with an existing Layer Two (L2) media access control (MAC) processing solution. All other Transcede processors combine L1 PHY and L2 MAC functionality on the same device to deliver the lowest possible system latency.

 

High-Performance Analog Products

 

Our high-performance analog transmission devices and switching products support storage area network, fiber-to-the-premise, OTN and broadcast video typically operating at data transmission rates between 155 megabits per second (Mbps) and 10 gigabits per second (Gbps). Our transmission products include laser drivers, transimpedance amplifiers, post amplifiers, clock and data recovery circuits, signal conditioners, serializers/deserializers, video reclockers, cable drivers and line equalizers. These products serve as the connection between a fiber optic or coaxial cable component interface and the remainder of the electrical subsystem in various network equipment and perform a variety of functions, including:

 

 

Our switching products include a family of high-speed crosspoint switches capable of switching traffic beyond 8 Gbps within various types of network switching equipment. These crosspoint switches direct, or transfer, a large number of high-speed data input streams, regardless of traffic type, to different connection trunks for rerouting the information to new destination points in the network. Crosspoint switches are often used to provide redundant

traffic paths in networking equipment to protect against the loss of critical data from spurious network outages or failures that may occur from time-to-time. Target equipment applications for our switching products include OTN systems, add-drop multiplexers, high-density IP switches and storage-area routers. In addition, we offer crosspoint switches optimized for standard and high-definition broadcast video routing and production switching applications.

 

WAN Communications Products

 

Our WAN communications products include transmission solutions and high-performance ATM/multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network processors that facilitate the aggregation, processing and transport of voice and data traffic over copper wire or fiber optic cable to access metropolitan and long-haul networks.

 

Our high-performance ATM/MPLS network processors, and T1/E1, T3/E3 and SONET carrier devices are designed for use in a variety of equipment including digital loop carriers, DSL access multiplexers, add-drop multiplexers, switches, high-speed routers, digital cross-connect systems, optical edge devices, multiservice provisioning platforms, voice gateways, wireless backhaul and wireless base station controllers.

 

Customers

 

We market and sell our semiconductor networking solutions directly to leading network infrastructure OEMs. We also sell our products indirectly through electronic component distributors and third-party electronic manufacturing service providers, which manufacture products incorporating our semiconductor networking solutions for OEMs. Sales to distributors accounted for approximately 47% of our revenues for fiscal 2010. For fiscal 2010, distributors Avnet, Inc. and Alltek Technology Corporation each accounted for 15% of our net revenues.

 

Our top direct OEM customer for fiscal year 2010 was Zhongxing Telecom Equipment Corp. (ZTE), who accounted for 10% of our net revenues. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Cisco Systems Inc. were also significant direct OEM customers and accounted for a total of 12% of our net revenues. We believe that our significant indirect network infrastructure OEM customers for fiscal year 2010 also included Alcatel-Lucent, Genband, Inc., Hitachi, Ltd. and Nokia Siemens Networks.

 

Our customer base is widely dispersed geographically. Revenues derived from customers located in the Americas region was 26%, in the Europe region was 7% and in the Asia-Pacific region was 67% of our total revenues for fiscal 2010. We believe a portion of the products we sell to OEMs and third-party manufacturing service providers in the Asia-Pacific region is ultimately shipped to end-markets in the Americas and Europe. See Item 8 “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data,” including Note 2 and Note 17 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for additional information on customers and geographic areas.

 

Sales, Marketing and Technical Support

 

We have a worldwide sales, marketing and technical support organization that is currently comprised of 105 employees located in three domestic and eight international sales locations. Our marketing, sales and field applications engineering teams, augmented by 13 electronic component distributors and three sales representative organizations, focus on marketing and selling semiconductor networking solutions to worldwide network infrastructure OEMs.

 

We maintain close working relationships with our customers throughout their lengthy product development cycle. Our customers may need six months or longer to test and evaluate our products and an additional six months or longer to begin volume production of network infrastructure equipment that incorporates our products. During this process, we provide broad-based technical and product design support to our customers through our field application engineers, product application engineers and technical marketing personnel. We believe that providing comprehensive product service and support is critical to shortening our customers’ design cycles and maintaining a competitive position in the network infrastructure equipment market.

Operations and Manufacturing

 

We are a fabless company, which means we do not own or operate foundries for wafer fabrication or facilities for device assembly and final test of our products. Instead, we outsource wafer fabrication, assembly and testing of our semiconductor products to independent, third-party contractors. We use mainstream digital complementary metal- oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology for the majority of our products; we rely on specialty processes for the remainder of our products. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) is our principal foundry supplier of CMOS wafers and die and produces some of our specialty process products. We use several other suppliers for wafers used in older products. We believe that the raw materials, parts and supplies required by our foundry suppliers are generally available at present and will remain available in the foreseeable future.

 

Semiconductor wafers are usually shipped to third-party contractors for device assembly and packaging where the wafers are cut into individual die, packaged and tested before final shipment to customers. We use Amkor Technology, Inc., Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. (ASE) and other third-party contractors, located in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and California, to satisfy a variety of assembly and packaging technology and product testing requirements associated with the back-end portion of the manufacturing process.

 

We qualify each of our foundry and back-end process providers. This qualification process consists of a detailed technical review of process performance, design rules, process models, tools and support, as well as 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 back-end providers. We closely monitor wafer foundry production for overall quality, reliability and yield levels.

 

Competition

 

The communications semiconductor industry in general, and the markets in which we compete in particular, are intensely competitive. We compete worldwide with a number of United States (U.S.) and international suppliers that are both larger and smaller than us in terms of resources and market share. We expect intense competition to continue.

 

Our principal competitors are Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Cavium Networks Inc., Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., Gennum Corporation, Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., PMC-Sierra, Inc., Texas Instruments Inc. and Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation.

 

We believe that the principal competitive factors for semiconductor suppliers in each of our served markets are:

 

 

While we believe that we compete favorably with respect to each of these factors, many of our current and potential competitors have certain advantages over us, including:

 

 

As a result, these competitors may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products than we can. Our competitors may also be able to adapt more quickly to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements or may be more able to respond to the cyclical fluctuations or downturns that affect the semiconductor industry from time to time. If we are not successful in assuring our customers of our financial stability, our OEM customers may choose semiconductor suppliers whom they believe have a stronger financial position or liquidity, which may materially adversely affect our business.

 

Backlog

 

Our sales are made primarily pursuant to standard purchase orders for delivery of products. Because industry practice allows customers to cancel orders with limited advance notice to us prior to shipment, we believe that backlog as of any particular date is not a reliable indicator of our future revenue levels.

 

Research and Development

 

We have significant research, development, engineering and product design capabilities. We currently have 330 employees engaged in research and development activities. On research and development activities, we spent approximately $51.4 million in fiscal 2010, $50.7 million in fiscal 2009 and $56.2 million in fiscal 2008. We perform research and product development activities at our headquarters in Newport Beach, California and at nine design centers. In order to enhance the cost-effectiveness of our operations, we have increasingly sought to shift portions of our research and development operations to regions with lower cost structures than that available in the United States. Our design centers are strategically located to take advantage of key technical and engineering talent. Our success depends to a substantial degree upon our ability to develop and introduce in a timely fashion new products and enhancements to our existing products that meet changing customer requirements and emerging industry standards. We have made and plan to make substantial investments in research and development and to participate in the formulation of industry standards. In addition, we actively collaborate with technology leaders to define and develop next-generation technologies.

 

Intellectual Property

 

Our success and future revenue growth depend, in part, on the intellectual property that we own and develop, including patents, licenses, trade secrets, know-how, trademarks and copyrights, and on our ability to protect our intellectual property. We continuously review our patent portfolio to maximize its value to us, abandoning or selling inapplicable or less useful patents and filing new patents important to our product roadmap. Our patent portfolio may be used to avoid, defend or settle any potential litigation with respect to various technologies contained in our products. The portfolio may also provide negotiating leverage in attempts to cross-license patents or technologies with third parties. We may also seek to leverage our patent portfolio by licensing or selling our patents or other intellectual property. We rely primarily on patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as employee and third-party nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements and other methods to protect our proprietary technologies and processes. In connection with our participation in the development of various industry standards, we may be required to reasonably license certain of our patents to other parties, including

competitors that develop products based upon the adopted industry standards. We have also entered into agreements with certain of our customers and granted these customers the right to use our proprietary technology in the event that we file for bankruptcy protection or take other equivalent actions. While in the aggregate our intellectual property is important to our operations, we do not believe that any single patent, license, trade secret, know-how, trademark or copyright is considered of such importance that its loss or termination would materially affect our business or financial condition.

 

Employees

 

We currently have 519 full-time employees, approximately 354 of whom are engineers. Our employees are not covered by any collective bargaining agreements and we have not experienced a work stoppage in the past seven years since our inception. We believe our future success will depend in large part on our ability to continue to attract, motivate, develop and retain highly skilled and dedicated technical, marketing and management personnel.

 

Cyclicality

 

The semiconductor industry is highly cyclical and is characterized by constant and rapid technological change, rapid product obsolescence and price erosion, evolving technical standards, short product life cycles and wide fluctuations in product supply and demand. From time to time, these and other factors, together with changes in general economic conditions, cause significant upturns and downturns in the industry, and in our business in particular.

 

In addition, our operating results are subject to substantial quarterly and annual fluctuations due to a number of factors, such as demand for network infrastructure equipment, the timing of receipt, reduction or cancellation of significant orders, fluctuations in the levels of component inventories held by our customers, the gain or loss of significant customers, market acceptance of our products and our customers’ products, our ability to develop, introduce and market new products and technologies on a timely basis, the availability and cost of products from our suppliers, new product and technology introductions by competitors, intellectual property disputes and the timing and extent of product development costs.

 

Available Information

 

We maintain an Internet website at www.mindspeed.com. Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to such reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act, and other information related to our company, are available free of charge on this site as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, Guidelines on Corporate Governance and Board Committee Charters are also available on our website. We will provide reasonable quantities of paper copies of filings free of charge upon request. In addition, we will provide a copy of the Board Committee Charters to stockholders upon request. No portion of our Internet website or the information contained in or connected to the website is incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

 

 

Our business, financial condition and operating results can be affected by a number of factors, including those listed below, any one of which could cause our actual results to vary materially from recent results or from our anticipated future results. Any of these risks could also materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition or the price of our common stock or other securities.

 

Our operating results are subject to substantial quarterly and annual fluctuations.

 

Although we generated net income in fiscal 2010, we have incurred significant losses in prior periods. Our revenues and operating results have fluctuated in the past and may fluctuate in the future and we may incur losses

and negative cash flows in future periods. These fluctuations are due to a number of factors, many of which are beyond our control. These factors include, among others:

 

 

The foregoing factors are difficult to forecast, and these, as well as other factors, could materially and adversely affect our quarterly or annual operating results.

 

Our operating results may be adversely impacted by worldwide 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 common stock may fluctuate.

 

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 characterized by decreases in product demand, excess customer inventories and accelerated erosion of prices. The semiconductor industry also periodically experiences increased demand and production capacity constraints, which may affect our ability to ship products. Furthermore, during challenging economic times, our customers and vendors may face issues gaining timely access to sufficient credit, which could impact their ability to make timely payments to us. As a result, we may experience growth patterns that are different than the end demand for products, particularly during periods of high volatility. 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.

 

We cannot predict the timing, strength or duration of any economic slowdown or the impact it will have on our customers, our vendors or us. The combination of our lengthy sales cycle coupled with challenging macroeconomic conditions could have a compound impact on our business. The impact of market volatility is not limited to revenue, but may also affect our product gross margins and other financial metrics. Any downturns in the semiconductor industry could 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.

 

We are entirely dependent upon third parties for the manufacture of our products and are vulnerable to their capacity constraints during times of increasing demand for semiconductor products.

 

We are entirely dependent upon outside wafer fabrication facilities, known as foundries, for wafer fabrication services. Our principal suppliers of wafer fabrication services are TSMC and Jazz Semiconductor. We are also

dependent upon third parties, including Amkor and ASE, for the assembly and testing of all of our products. Under our fabless business model, our long-term revenue growth is dependent on our ability to obtain sufficient external manufacturing capacity, including wafer production capacity. Periods of upturns in the semiconductor industry may be characterized by rapid increases in demand and a shortage of capacity for wafer fabrication and assembly and test services.

 

The risks associated with our reliance on third parties for manufacturing services include:

 

 

Our standard lead time, or the time required to manufacture our products (including wafer fabrication, assembly and testing), is typically 12 to 16 weeks. During periods of manufacturing capacity shortages, the foundries and other suppliers on whom we rely may devote their limited capacity to fulfill the production requirements of other customers that are larger or better financed than we are, or who have superior contractual rights to enforce the manufacture of their products, including to the exclusion of producing our products.

 

Additionally, if we are required to seek alternative foundries or assembly and test service providers, we would be subject to longer lead times, indeterminate delivery schedules and increased manufacturing costs, including costs to find and qualify acceptable suppliers. For example, if we choose to use a new foundry, the qualification process may take as long as six months over the standard lead time before we can begin shipping products from the new foundry. Such delays could negatively affect our relationships with our customers.

 

Wafer fabrication processes are subject to obsolescence, and foundries may discontinue a wafer fabrication process used for certain of our products. In such event, we generally offer our customers a “last-time buy” program to satisfy their anticipated requirements for our products. Any unanticipated discontinuation of a wafer fabrication process on which we rely may adversely affect our revenues and our customer relationships.

 

The foundries and other suppliers on whom we rely may experience financial difficulties or suffer disruptions in their operations due to causes beyond our control, including deteriorations in general economic conditions, labor strikes, work stoppages, electrical power outages, fire, earthquake, flooding or other natural disasters. Certain of our suppliers’ manufacturing facilities are located near major earthquake fault lines in the Asia-Pacific region and in California. In the event of a disruption of the operations of one or more of our suppliers, we may not have an alternate source immediately available. Such an event could cause significant delays in shipments until we are able to shift the products from an affected facility or supplier to another facility or supplier. The manufacturing processes we rely on are specialized and are available from a limited number of suppliers. Alternate sources of manufacturing capacity, particularly wafer production capacity, may not be available to us on a timely basis. Even if alternate manufacturing capacity is available, we may not be able to obtain it on favorable terms, or at all. Difficulties or delays in securing an adequate supply of our products on favorable terms, or at all, could impair our ability to meet our customers’ requirements and have a material adverse effect on our operating results.

 

In addition, the highly complex and technologically demanding nature of semiconductor manufacturing has caused foundries to experience, from time to time, lower than anticipated manufacturing yields, particularly in connection with the introduction of new products and the installation and start-up of new process technologies. Lower than anticipated manufacturing yields may affect our ability to fulfill our customers’ demands for our products on a timely basis. Moreover, lower than anticipated manufacturing yields may adversely affect our cost of goods sold and our results of operations.

The price of our common stock may fluctuate significantly.

 

The price of our common stock is volatile and may fluctuate significantly. There can be no assurance as to the prices at which our common stock will trade or that an active trading market in our common stock will be sustained in the future. The market price at which our common stock trades may be influenced by many factors, including:

 

 

In addition, public stock markets have experienced, and may in the future experience, extreme price and trading volume volatility, particularly in the technology sectors of the market. This volatility has significantly affected the market prices of securities of many technology companies for reasons frequently unrelated to or disproportionately impacted by the operating performance of these companies. These broad market fluctuations may adversely affect the market price of our common stock. If we do not meet the requirements for continued quotation on the Nasdaq Global Market (NASDAQ), our common stock could be delisted which would adversely affect the ability of investors to sell shares of our common stock and could otherwise adversely affect our business.

 

We have substantial cash requirements to fund our operations, research and development efforts and capital expenditures. Our capital resources are limited and capital needed for our business may not be available when we need it.

 

Although we generated $23.8 million in cash through operating activities during fiscal 2010, we used $5.4 million cash in operating activities during fiscal 2009. Our principal sources of liquidity are our existing cash balances and cash generated from product sales and sales and licensing of intellectual property and our line of credit with Silicon Valley Bank. As of October 1, 2010, our cash and cash equivalents totaled $43.7 million. In November 2009, we repaid the $10.5 million outstanding balance of our 3.75% convertible senior notes, and we have no other principal payments on debt due in the next 12 months. We believe that our existing cash balances, along with cash expected to be generated from product sales and the sale and licensing of intellectual property will be sufficient to fund our operations, research and development efforts, anticipated capital expenditures, working capital and other financing requirements, including interest payments on our debt obligations, for at least the next 12 months. However, if we incur operating losses and negative cash flows in the future, we may need to further reduce our operating costs or obtain alternate sources of financing, or both. We have completed transactions that involved the issuance of equity and the issuance or incurrence of indebtedness, including credit facilities. Even after completing these transactions, we may need additional capital in the future and may not have access to additional sources of capital on favorable terms or at all. If we raise additional funds through the issuance of equity, equity-based or debt securities, such securities may have rights, preferences or privileges senior to those of our common stock and our stockholders may experience dilution of their ownership interests. In addition, there can be no assurance that we will continue to benefit from the sale or licensing of intellectual property as we have in previous periods.

 

The loss of one or more key customers or distributors, or the diminished demand for our products from a key customer could significantly reduce our revenues and profits.

 

A relatively small number of end customers and distributors have accounted for a significant portion of our revenues in any particular period. There has been an increasing trend toward industry consolidation in our markets

in recent years, particularly among major network equipment and telecommunications companies. Industry consolidation could decrease the number of significant customers for our products thereby increasing our reliance on key customers. In addition, industry consolidation has generally led, and may continue to lead, to pricing pressures and loss of market share. We have no long-term volume purchase commitments from our key customers. One or more of our key customers or distributors may discontinue operations as a result of consolidation, financial instability, liquidation or otherwise. Reductions, delays and cancellation of orders from our key customers or the loss of one or more key customers could significantly reduce our revenues and profits. We cannot assure you that our current customers will continue to place orders with us, that orders by existing customers will continue at current or historical levels or that we will be able to obtain orders from new customers.

 

We may not be able to attract and retain qualified personnel necessary for the design, development, sale and support of our products. Our success could be negatively affected if key personnel leave.

 

Our future success depends on our ability to attract, retain and motivate qualified personnel, including executive officers and other key management, technical and support personnel. As the source of our technological and product innovations, our key technical personnel represent a significant asset. The competition for such personnel can be intense in the semiconductor industry. We may not be able to attract and retain qualified management and other personnel necessary for the design, development, sale and support of our products.

 

In periods of poor operating performance, we have experienced, and may experience in the future, particular difficulty attracting and retaining key personnel. If we are not successful in assuring our employees of our financial stability and our prospects for success, our employees may seek other employment, which may materially and adversely affect our business. Moreover, our recent expense reduction and restructuring initiatives, including a series of worldwide workforce reductions, have reduced the number of our technical employees. We intend to continue to expand our international business activities including expansion of design and operations centers abroad and may have difficulty attracting and maintaining international employees. The loss of the services of one or more of our key employees, including Raouf Y. Halim, our chief executive officer, or certain key design and technical personnel, or our inability to attract, retain and motivate qualified personnel could have a material adverse effect on our ability to operate our business.

 

Many of our engineers are foreign nationals working in the U.S. under work visas. The visas permit qualified foreign nationals working in specialty occupations, such as certain categories of engineers, to reside in the U.S. during their employment. The number of new visas approved each year may be limited and may restrict our ability to hire additional qualified technical employees. In addition, immigration policies are subject to change, and these policies have generally become more stringent since the events of September 11, 2001. Any additional significant changes in immigration laws, rules or regulations may further restrict our ability to retain or hire technical personnel.

 

We are subject to the risks of doing business internationally.

 

A significant part of our strategy involves our continued pursuit of growth opportunities in a number of international markets. We market, sell, design and service our products internationally. Products shipped to international destinations, primarily in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, were approximately 77% of our net revenues for fiscal 2010 and 76% of our net revenues for fiscal 2009. China is a particularly important international market for us, as more than 31% of our revenue for fiscal 2010 came from customers in China. In addition, we have design centers, customer support centers, and rely on suppliers, located outside the U.S., including foundries and assembly and test service providers located in the Asia-Pacific region. We intend to continue to expand our international business activities and may open other design centers and customer support centers abroad. Our international sales and operations are subject to a number of risks inherent in selling and operating abroad which could adversely impact our international sales and could make our international operations more expensive. These include, but are not limited to, risks regarding:

 

 

 

Because most of our international sales are currently denominated in U.S. dollars, our products could become less competitive in international markets if the value of the U.S. dollar increases relative to foreign currencies. As we continue to shift a portion of our operations offshore, more of our expenses are incurred in currencies other than those in which we bill for the related services. An increase in the value of certain currencies, such as the Euro, Japanese yen, Ukrainian hryvnia and Indian rupee, against the U.S. dollar could increase costs of our offshore operations by increasing labor and other costs that are denominated in local currencies.

 

We may in the future enter into foreign currency forward exchange contracts to mitigate the risk of loss from currency exchange rate fluctuations for foreign currency commitments entered into in the ordinary course of business. We do not enter into foreign currency forward exchange contracts for other purposes. Our financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected by currency fluctuations.

 

We are subject to intense competition.

 

The communications semiconductor industry in general, and the markets in which we compete in particular, are intensely competitive. We compete worldwide with a number of U.S. and international semiconductor manufacturers that are both larger and smaller than we are in terms of resources and market share. We currently face significant competition in our markets and expect that intense price and product competition will continue. This competition has resulted, and is expected to continue to result, in declining average selling prices for our products.

 

Many of our current and potential competitors have certain advantages over us, including:

 

 

 

As a result, these competitors may be able to adapt more quickly to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements or may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products than we can. Moreover, we have incurred substantial operating losses and we may in the future incur losses in future periods. We believe that financial stability of suppliers is an important consideration in our customers’ purchasing decisions. If our OEM customers perceive that we lack adequate financial stability, they may choose semiconductor suppliers that they believe have a stronger financial position or liquidity.

 

Current and potential competitors also have established or may establish financial or strategic relationships among themselves or with our existing or potential customers, resellers or other third parties. These relationships may affect customers’ purchasing decisions. Accordingly, it is possible that new competitors or alliances among competitors could emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share. We may not be able to compete successfully against current and potential competitors.

 

Our success depends on our ability to develop competitive new products in a timely manner and keep abreast of the rapid technological changes in our market.

 

Our operating results will depend largely on our ability to continue to introduce new and enhanced semiconductor products on a timely basis as well as our ability to keep abreast of rapid technological changes in our markets. Our products could become obsolete sooner than we expect because of faster than anticipated, or unanticipated, changes in one or more of the technologies related to our products. The introduction of new technology representing a substantial advance over current technology could adversely affect demand for our existing products. Currently accepted industry standards are also subject to change, which may also contribute to the obsolescence of our products. If we are unable to develop and introduce new or enhanced products in a timely manner, our business may be adversely affected.

 

Successful product development and introduction depends on numerous factors, including, among others:

 

 

We may not have sufficient resources to make the substantial investment in research and development in order to develop and bring to market new and enhanced products, particularly if we are required to take further cost reduction actions. Furthermore, we are required to evaluate expenditures for planned product development continually and to choose among alternative technologies based on our expectations of future market growth. We may be unable to develop and introduce new or enhanced products in a timely manner, our products may not satisfy customer requirements or achieve market acceptance, or we may be unable to anticipate new industry standards and technological changes. We also may not be able to respond successfully to new product announcements and introductions by competitors.

 

Research and development projects may experience unanticipated delays related to our internal design efforts. New product development also requires the production of photomask sets and the production and testing of sample devices. In the event we experience delays in obtaining these services from the wafer fabrication and assembly and test vendors on whom we rely, our product introductions may be delayed and our revenues and results of operations may be adversely affected.

Because of the lengthy sales cycles of many of our products, we may incur significant expenses before we generate any revenues related to those products.

 

Our customers generally need six months or longer to test and evaluate our products and an additional six months or more to begin volume production of equipment that incorporates our products. These lengthy periods also increase the possibility that a customer may decide to cancel or change product plans, which could reduce or eliminate sales to that customer. As a result of this lengthy sales cycle, we may incur significant research and development and selling, general and administrative expenses before we generate any revenues from new products. We may never generate the anticipated revenues if our customers cancel or change their product plans as customers may increasingly do if economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

 

Uncertainties involving the ordering and shipment of our products could adversely affect our business.

 

Our sales are typically made pursuant to individual purchase orders and we generally do not have long-term supply arrangements with our customers. Generally, our customers may cancel orders until 30 days prior to shipment. In addition, we sell a substantial portion of our products through distributors, some of whom have a right to return unsold products to us. Sales to distributors accounted for approximately 47% of our revenues for fiscal 2010 and 46% of our revenues for fiscal 2009.

 

Because of the significant lead times for wafer fabrication and assembly and test services, we routinely purchase inventory based on estimates of end-market demand for our customers’ products. End-market demand may be subject to dramatic changes and is difficult to predict. End-market demand is highly influenced by the timing and extent of carrier capital expenditures which may decrease due to general economic conditions, and uncertainty, over which we have no control. The difficulty in predicting demand may be compounded when we sell to OEMs indirectly through distributors or contract manufacturers, or both, as our forecasts of demand are then based on estimates provided by multiple parties. In addition, our customers may change their inventory practices on short notice for any reason. The cancellation or deferral of product orders, the return of previously sold products or overproduction due to the failure of anticipated orders to materialize could result in our holding excess or obsolete inventory, which could result in write-downs of inventory. Conversely, if we fail to anticipate inventory needs we may be unable to fulfill demand for our products, resulting in a loss of potential revenue.

 

If network infrastructure OEMs do not design our products into their equipment, we will be unable to sell those products. Moreover, a design win from a customer does not guarantee future sales to that customer.

 

Our products are not sold directly to the end-user but are components of other products. As a result, we rely on network infrastructure OEMs to select our products from among alternative offerings to be designed into their equipment. We may be unable to achieve these “design wins.” Without design wins from OEMs, we would be unable to sell our products. Once an OEM designs another supplier’s semiconductors into one of its product platforms, it is more difficult for us to achieve future design wins with that OEM’s product platform because changing suppliers involves significant cost, time, effort and risk for the OEM. Achieving a design win with a customer does not ensure that we will receive significant revenues from that customer, and we may be unable to convert design wins into actual sales. Even after a design win, the customer is not obligated to purchase our products and can choose at any time to stop using our products if, for example, its own products are not commercially successful.

 

We may be subject to claims, or we may be required to defend and indemnify customers against claims, of infringement of third-party intellectual property rights or demands that we, or our customers, license third-party technology, which could result in significant expense.

 

The semiconductor industry is characterized by vigorous protection and pursuit of intellectual property rights. From time to time, third parties have asserted and may in the future assert patent, copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights against technologies that are important to our business. The resolution or compromise of any litigation or other legal process to enforce such alleged third party rights, including claims arising through our

contractual indemnification of our customers, or claims challenging the validity of our patents, regardless of its merit or resolution, could be costly and divert the efforts and attention of our management and technical personnel.

 

We may not prevail in any such litigation or other legal process or we may compromise or settle such claims because of the complex technical issues and inherent uncertainties in intellectual property disputes and the significant expense in defending such claims. If litigation or other legal process results in adverse rulings, we may be required to:

 

 

In connection with the distribution from Conexant, we generally assumed responsibility for all contingent liabilities and litigation against Conexant or its subsidiaries related to our business.

 

If we are not successful in protecting our intellectual property rights, it may harm our ability to compete.

 

We rely primarily on patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as employee and third-party nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements and other methods, to protect our proprietary technologies and processes. We may be required to engage in litigation to enforce or protect our intellectual property rights, which may require us to expend significant resources and to divert the efforts and attention of our management from our business operations; in particular:

 

 

Despite the preventive measures and precautions that we take, a third party could copy or otherwise obtain and use our technology without authorization, develop similar technology independently or design around our patents. 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, former employees may seek employment with our business partners, customers or competitors, and the confidential nature of our proprietary information may not be maintained in the course of such future employment. Further, in some countries outside the U.S., patent protection is not available or not reliably enforced. Some countries that do allow registration of patents do not provide meaningful redress for patent violations. As a result, protecting intellectual property in those countries is difficult and competitors may sell products in those countries that have functions and features that infringe on our intellectual property.

 

The complexity of our products may lead to errors, defects and bugs, which could subject us to significant costs or damages and adversely affect market acceptance of our products.

 

Although we, our customers and our suppliers rigorously test our products, our products are complex and may contain errors, defects or bugs when first introduced or as new versions are released. We have in the past

experienced, and may in the future experience, errors, defects and bugs. If any of our products contain production defects or reliability, safety, quality or compatibility problems that are significant to our customers, our reputation may be damaged and customers may be reluctant to buy our products, which could adversely affect our ability to retain existing customers and attract new customers. In addition, these defects or bugs could interrupt or delay sales of affected products to our customers, which could adversely affect our results of operations.

 

If defects or bugs are discovered after commencement of commercial production of a new product, we may be required to make significant expenditures of capital and other resources to resolve the problems. This could result in significant additional development costs and the diversion of technical and other resources from our other development efforts. We could also incur significant costs to repair or replace defective products, and we could be subject to claims for damages by our customers or others against us. We could also be exposed to product liability claims or indemnification claims by our customers. These costs or damages could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

 

We may make business acquisitions or investments, which involve significant risk.

 

We may, from time to time, make acquisitions, enter into alliances or make investments in other businesses to complement our existing product offerings, augment our market coverage or enhance our technological capabilities. However, any such transactions could result in:

 

 

Integrating acquired organizations and their products and services may be expensive, time-consuming and a strain on our resources and our relationships with employees, customers and suppliers, and ultimately may not be successful. The benefits or synergies we may expect from the acquisition of complementary or supplementary businesses may not be realized to the extent or in the time frame we initially anticipate.

 

Additionally, in periods subsequent to an acquisition, we must evaluate goodwill and acquisition-related intangible assets for impairment. If such assets are found to be impaired, they will be written down to estimated fair value, with a charge against earnings.

 

Our ability to utilize our net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes may be limited.

 

As of October 1, 2010, we had net operating loss carryforwards of approximately $627.1 million for federal income tax purposes. Under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code, if a corporation undergoes an “ownership change,” the corporation’s ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards and other pre-change tax attributes to offset its post-change income may be significantly limited. An ownership change is generally defined as a greater than 50% change in equity ownership by value over a three-year period. In August 2009, our board of directors adopted a shareholder rights agreement that is designed to help preserve our ability to utilize fully certain tax assets primarily associated with net operating loss carryforwards under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code. Even with this rights agreement in place, we may experience an ownership change in the future as a result of shifts in our stock ownership, including upon the issuance of our common stock, the exercise of stock options or warrants or as a result of any conversion of our convertible notes into shares of our common stock, among other things. If we were to trigger an ownership change in the future, our ability to use any net operating loss carryforwards existing at that time could be significantly limited.

Our results of operations could vary as a result of the methods, estimates and judgments we use in applying our accounting policies.

 

The methods, estimates and judgments we use in applying our accounting policies have a significant impact on our results of operations (see “Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates” in Part I, Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K). Such methods, estimates and judgments are, by their nature, subject to substantial risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and changes in rule making by various regulatory bodies. Factors may arise over time that lead us to change our methods, estimates and judgments. Changes in those methods, estimates and judgments could significantly affect our results of operations.

 

Substantial sales of the shares of our common stock issuable upon conversion of our convertible senior notes or exercise of the warrant issued to Conexant could adversely affect our stock price or our ability to raise additional financing in the public capital markets.

 

Conexant holds a warrant to acquire approximately 6.1 million shares of our common stock at a price of $16.74 per share, as adjusted, exercisable through June 27, 2013, representing approximately 14% of our outstanding common stock on a fully diluted basis. The warrant may be transferred or sold in whole or part at any time. If Conexant sells the warrant or if Conexant or a transferee of the warrant exercises the warrant and sells a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the future, or if investors perceive that these sales may occur, the market price of our common stock could decline or market demand for our common stock could be sharply reduced. At October 1, 2010, we had $15.0 million aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes outstanding. These notes are convertible at any time, at the option of the holder, into a total of approximately 3.2 million shares of common stock. The conversion of the notes and subsequent sale of a substantial number of shares of our common stock could also adversely affect demand for, and the market price of, our common stock. Each of these transactions could adversely affect our ability to raise additional financing by issuing equity or equity-based securities in the public capital markets.

 

Antidilution and other provisions in the warrant issued to Conexant may also adversely affect our stock price or our ability to raise additional financing.

 

The warrant issued to Conexant contains antidilution provisions that provide for adjustment of the warrant’s exercise price, and the number of shares issuable under the warrant, upon the occurrence of certain events. If we issue, or are deemed to have issued, shares of our common stock, or securities convertible into our common stock, at prices below the current market price of our common stock (as defined in the warrant) at the time of the issuance of such securities, the warrant’s exercise price will be reduced and the number of shares issuable under the warrant will be increased. The amount of such adjustment if any, will be determined pursuant to a formula specified in the warrant and will depend on the number of shares issued, the offering price and the current market price of our common stock at the time of the issuance of such securities. Adjustments to the warrant pursuant to these antidilution provisions may result in significant dilution to the interests of our existing stockholders and may adversely affect the market price of our common stock. The antidilution provisions may also limit our ability to obtain additional financing on terms favorable to us.

 

Moreover, we may not realize any cash proceeds from the exercise of the warrant held by Conexant. A holder of the warrant may opt for a cashless exercise of all or part of the warrant. In a cashless exercise, the holder of the warrant would make no cash payment to us, and would receive a number of shares of our common stock having an aggregate value equal to the excess of the then-current market price of the shares of our common stock issuable upon exercise of the warrant over the exercise price of the warrant. Such an issuance of common stock would be immediately dilutive to the interests of other stockholders.

 

Some of our directors and executive officers may have potential conflicts of interest because of their positions with Conexant or their ownership of Conexant common stock.

 

One of our directors is a Conexant director. Several of our directors and executive officers own Conexant common stock and hold options to purchase Conexant common stock. Service on our board of directors and as a director or officer of Conexant, or ownership of Conexant common stock by our directors and executive officers,

could create, or appear to create, potential conflicts of interest when directors and officers are faced with decisions that could have different implications for us and Conexant. For example, potential conflicts could arise in connection with decisions involving the warrant to purchase our common stock issued to Conexant, or with respect to other agreements made between us and Conexant in connection with the distribution.

 

Our restated certificate of incorporation includes provisions relating to the allocation of business opportunities that may be suitable for both us and Conexant based on the relationship to the companies of the individual to whom the opportunity is presented and the method by which it was presented and also includes provisions limiting challenges to the enforceability of contracts between us and Conexant.

 

We may have difficulty resolving any potential conflicts of interest with Conexant, and even if we do, the resolution may be less favorable than if we were dealing with an entirely unrelated third party.

 

Provisions in our organizational documents and stockholders rights agreements and Delaware law will make it more difficult for someone to acquire control of us.

 

Our restated certificate of incorporation, our amended and restated bylaws, our stockholders rights agreements and the Delaware General Corporation Law contain several provisions that would make more difficult an acquisition of control of us in a transaction not approved by our board of directors. Our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws include provisions such as:

 

 

Our stockholders rights agreements give our stockholders certain rights that would substantially increase the cost of acquiring us in a transaction not approved by our board of directors.

 

In addition to the stockholders rights agreements and the provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws, Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law generally provides that a corporation shall not engage in any business combination with any interested stockholder during the three-year period following the time that such stockholder becomes an interested stockholder, unless a majority of the directors then in office approves either the business combination or the transaction that results in the stockholder becoming an interested stockholder or specified stockholder approval requirements are met.

 

 

None.

 

 

Currently, we occupy our headquarters located in Newport Beach, California (which includes design and sales offices), eight design centers and nine sales locations. These facilities had an aggregate floor space of approximately 160,000 square feet, all of which is leased, consisting of approximately 97,000 square feet at our headquarters, 47,000 square feet at our design centers and 16,000 square feet at our sales locations. We believe our properties are well maintained, are in sound operating condition and contain all the equipment and facilities to operate at present levels.

 

Through our design centers, we provide design engineering and product application support and after-sales service to our OEM customers. The design centers are strategically located to take advantage of key technical and engineering talent worldwide.

 

 

We are currently not engaged in legal proceedings that require disclosure under this Item.

 

PART II

 

 

Market Information

 

Our common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol “MSPD.” The following table lists the high and low closing sales price of our common stock as reported by the Nasdaq Global Market for the periods indicated.

 

 

Recent Share Prices and Holders

 

The last reported sale price of our common stock on November 18, 2010 was $6.36 and there were approximately 28,067 holders of record of our common stock. However, many holders’ shares are listed under their brokerage firms’ names.

 

Dividend Policy

 

We have never paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any earnings for use in our business and do not anticipate paying cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Our current revolving credit facility restricts our ability to pay cash dividends on our common stock without the lender’s consent. Our future dividend policy will depend on our earnings, capital requirements and financial condition, as well as requirements of our financing agreements and other factors that our board of directors considers relevant.

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

 

 

 

 

Use of Proceeds from Sale of Registered Securities

 

In August 2009, we issued and sold 4.8 million shares of our common stock at a public offering price of $2.05 per share. We received approximately $8.9 million in net proceeds from this offering. On November 17, 2009, the full amount of the net proceeds was applied to the repayment of the remaining $10.5 million outstanding under our 3.75% convertible senior notes.

 

In March 2010, we issued and sold 2.5 million shares of our common stock at a public offering price of $7.25 per share. We received approximately $17.0 million in net proceeds from this offering. We intend to use the proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures, as well as to potentially refinance our outstanding indebtedness. Pending such uses, the proceeds will be held in highly liquid investments.

 

 

The selected consolidated financial data presented below should be read in conjunction with Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto appearing elsewhere in this report. Our consolidated selected financial data have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overview

 

Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. (we or Mindspeed) designs, develops and sells semiconductor solutions for communications applications in the wireline and wireless network infrastructure, which includes enterprise networks, broadband access networks (fixed and mobile) and metropolitan and wide area networks. We have organized our solutions for these interrelated and rapidly converging networks into three product families: communications convergence processing (formerly known as multiservice access), high-performance analog and wide area networking communications. Our communications convergence processing products include ultra-low-power, multi-core digital signal processor (DSP) system-on-chip (SoC) products for the fixed and mobile (3G/4G) carrier infrastructure and residential and enterprise platforms. Our high-performance analog products include high-density crosspoint switches, optical drivers, equalization and signal-conditioning solutions that solve difficult switching, timing and synchronization challenges in next-generation optical networking, enterprise storage and broadcast video transmission applications. Our WAN communications portfolio helps optimize today’s circuit-switched networks that furnish much of the Internet’s underlying long-distance infrastructure.

 

Our products are sold to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for use in a variety of network infrastructure equipment, including:

 

 

Our customers include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Inc., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Hitachi Ltd., LM Ericsson Telephone Company, Nokia Siemens Networks and Zhongxing Telecom Equipment Corp.

 

We report on a fifty-two/fifty-three week fiscal year ending on the Friday closest to September 30. Fiscal year 2010 comprised 52 weeks and ended on October 1, 2010. Fiscal year 2009 comprised 52 weeks and ended on October 2, 2009. Fiscal year 2008 comprised 53 weeks and ended on October 3, 2008.

 

Trends and Factors Affecting Our Business

 

Our products are components of network infrastructure equipment. As a result, we rely on network infrastructure OEMs to select our products from among alternative offerings to be designed into their equipment. These “design wins” are an integral part of the long sales cycle for our products. Our customers may need six months or longer to test and evaluate our products and an additional six months or more to begin volume production of equipment that incorporates our products. We believe our close relationships with leading network infrastructure OEMs facilitate early adoption of our products during development of their products, enhance our ability to obtain design wins and encourage adoption of our technology by the industry. We believe our diverse portfolio of semiconductor solutions has us well positioned to capitalize on some of the most significant trends in telecommunications spending, including: next generation network convergence; VoIP/fiber access deployment in developing and developed markets; 3G/4G wireless infrastructure build-out; the adoption of higher speed interconnectivity solutions; and the migration of broadcast video to high definition.

 

We market and sell our semiconductor products directly to network infrastructure OEMs. We also sell our products indirectly through electronic component distributors and third-party electronic manufacturing service

providers, who manufacture products incorporating our semiconductor networking solutions for OEMs. Sales to distributors accounted for approximately 47% of our revenues for fiscal 2010. Our revenue is well diversified globally, with 77% of fiscal 2010 revenue coming from outside of the Americas. We believe a portion of the products we sell to OEMs and third-party manufacturing service providers in the Asia-Pacific region is ultimately shipped to end markets in the Americas and Europe. We believe we are well-situated in China, where fiber deployments are being rolled out by the country’s major telecommunications carriers. Through our OEM customers, we are shipping into the fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) deployments of China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, 24% of our revenue was derived from China.

 

We have significant research, development, engineering and product design capabilities. Our success depends to a substantial degree upon our ability to develop and introduce in a timely fashion new products and enhancements to our existing products that meet changing customer requirements and emerging industry standards. We have made, and plan to make, substantial investments in research and development and to participate in the formulation of industry standards. We spent approximately $51.4 million on research and development in fiscal 2010. We seek to maximize our return on our research and development spending by focusing our research and development investment in what we believe are key growth markets, including VoIP and other high-bandwidth multiservice access applications, high-performance analog applications such as optical networking and broadcast-video transmission, and wireless infrastructure solutions for base station processing. We have developed and maintain a broad intellectual property portfolio, and we may periodically enter into strategic arrangements to leverage our portfolio by licensing or selling our intellectual property.

 

We are dependent upon third parties for the development, manufacturing, assembly and testing of our products. Our ability to bring new products to market, to fulfill orders and to achieve long-term revenue growth is dependent upon our ability to obtain sufficient external manufacturing capacity, including wafer fabrication capacity. Periods of upturn in the semiconductor industry may be characterized by rapid increases in demand and a shortage of capacity for wafer fabrication and assembly and test services. In such periods, we may experience longer lead times or indeterminate delivery schedules, which may adversely affect our ability to fulfill orders for our products. During periods of capacity shortages for manufacturing, assembly and testing services, our primary foundries and other suppliers may devote their limited capacity to fulfill the requirements of their other customers that are larger than we are, or who have superior contractual rights to enforce manufacture of their products, including to the exclusion of producing our products. We may also incur increased manufacturing costs, including costs of finding acceptable alternative foundries or assembly and test service providers. In order to achieve sustained profitability and positive cash flows from operations, we may need to further reduce operating expenses and/or increase our revenues. We have completed a series of cost reduction actions, which have improved our operating cost structure, and we will continue to perform additional actions, when necessary.

 

Our ability to achieve revenue growth will depend on increased demand for network infrastructure equipment that incorporates our products, which in turn depends primarily on the level of capital spending by communications service providers, the level of which may decrease due to general economic conditions and uncertainty, over which we have no control. We believe the market for network infrastructure equipment in general, and for communications semiconductors in particular, offers attractive long-term growth prospects due to increasing demand for network capacity, the continued upgrading and expansion of existing networks and the build-out of telecommunication networks in developing countries. However, the semiconductor industry is highly cyclical and is characterized by constant and rapid technological change, rapid product obsolescence and price erosion, evolving technical standards, short product life cycles and wide fluctuations in product supply and demand. In addition, there has been an increasing trend toward industry consolidation, particularly among major network equipment and telecommunications companies. Consolidation in the industry has generally led to pricing pressure and loss of market share. These factors have caused substantial fluctuations in our revenues and our results of operations in the past, and we may experience cyclical fluctuations in our business in the future.

 

Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates

 

The preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP) requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported

amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. Among the significant estimates affecting our consolidated financial statements are those relating to inventories, stock-based compensation, revenue recognition, income taxes and impairment of long-lived assets. We regularly evaluate our estimates and assumptions based upon 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 that are not readily apparent from other sources. To the extent actual results differ from those estimates, our future results of operations may be affected.

 

Inventories — We assess the recoverability of our inventories at least quarterly through a review of inventory levels in relation to foreseeable demand (generally over 12 months). Foreseeable demand is based upon all available information, including sales backlog and forecasts, product marketing plans and product life cycles. When the inventory on hand exceeds the foreseeable demand, we write down the value of those inventories which, at the time of our review, we expect to be unable to sell. The amount of the inventory write-down is the excess of historical cost over estimated realizable value. Once established, these write-downs are considered permanent adjustments to the cost basis of the excess inventory.

 

Our products are used by OEMs that have designed our products into network infrastructure equipment. For many of our products, we gain these design wins through a lengthy sales cycle, which often includes providing technical support to the OEM customer. In the event of the loss of business from existing OEM customers, we may be unable to secure new customers for our existing products without first achieving new design wins. In the event that quantities of inventory on hand exceed foreseeable demand from existing OEM customers into whose products our products have been designed, we generally are unable to sell our excess inventories to others, and the estimated realizable value of such inventories to us is generally zero.

 

We base our assessment of the recoverability of our inventories, and the amounts of any write-downs, on currently available information and assumptions about future demand and market conditions. Demand for our products may fluctuate significantly over time, and actual demand and market conditions may be more or less favorable than those projected by management. In the event that actual demand is lower than originally projected, additional inventory write-downs may be required.

 

Stock-Based Compensation — We account for stock-based compensation transactions using a fair-value method and recognize the fair value of each award as an expense over the service period. The fair value of restricted stock awards is based upon the market price of our common stock at the grant date. For the majority of our awards, we estimate the fair value of stock option awards, as of the grant date, using the Black-Scholes option-pricing model. The use of the Black-Scholes model requires that we make a number of estimates, including the expected option term, the expected volatility in the price of our common stock, the risk-free rate of interest and the dividend yield on our common stock. If our expected option term and stock-price volatility assumptions were different, the resulting determination of the fair value of stock option awards could be materially different. In addition, judgment is also required in estimating the number of share-based awards that we expect will ultimately vest upon the fulfillment of service conditions (such as time-based vesting) or the achievement of specific performance conditions. If the actual number of awards that ultimately vest differs significantly from these estimates, stock-based compensation expense and our results of operations could be materially impacted. We classify compensation expense related to these awards in our consolidated statement of operations based on the department to which the recipient reports.

 

Revenue Recognition — Our products are often integrated with software that is essential to the functionality of the equipment. Additionally, we provide unspecified software upgrades and enhancements through our maintenance contracts for many of our products. Accordingly, we account for revenue in accordance with Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 985-605, Software Revenue Recognition, and all related interpretations. For sales of products where software is not included or is incidental to the equipment, we apply the provisions of ASC 605, Revenue Recognition, and all related interpretations.

 

We generate revenues from direct product sales, sales to distributors, maintenance contracts, development agreements and the sale and license of intellectual property. We recognize revenues when the following fundamental criteria are met: (i) persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists; (ii) delivery has occurred;

(iii) our price to the customer is fixed or determinable; and (iv) collection of the sales price is reasonably assured. In instances where final acceptance of the product, system, or solution is specified by the customer, revenue is deferred until all acceptance criteria have been met. Technical support services revenue is deferred and recognized ratably over the period during which the services are to be performed. Advanced services revenue is recognized upon delivery or completion of performance.

 

We recognize revenues on products shipped directly to customers at the time the products are shipped and title and risk of loss transfer to the customer, in accordance with the terms specified in the arrangement, and the four above mentioned revenue recognition criteria are met.

 

We recognize revenues on sales to distributors based on the rights granted to these distributors in our distribution agreements. We have certain distributors who have been granted return rights and receive credits for changes in selling prices to end customers, the magnitude of which is not known at the time products are shipped to the distributor. The return rights granted to these distributors consist of limited stock rotation rights, which allow them to rotate up to 10% of the products in their inventory twice a year, as well as certain product return rights if the applicable distribution agreement is terminated. These distributors also receive price concessions because they resell our products to end customers at various negotiated price points which vary by end customer, product, quantity, geography and competitive pricing environments. When a distributor’s resale is priced at a discount from the distributor’s invoice price, we credit back to the distributor a portion of the distributor’s original purchase price after the resale transaction is complete. Thus, a portion of the “Deferred income on sales to distributors” balance will be credited back to the distributor in the future. Under these agreements, we defer recognition of revenue until the products are resold by the distributor, at which time our final net sales price is fixed and the distributor’s right to return the products expires. At the time of shipment to these distributors: (i) we record a trade receivable at the invoiced selling price because there is a legally enforceable obligation from the distributor to pay us currently for product delivered; (ii) we relieve inventory for the carrying value of products shipped because legal title has passed to the distributor; and (iii) we record deferred revenue and deferred cost of inventory under the “Deferred income on sales to distributors” caption in the liability section of our consolidated balance sheets. We evaluate the deferred cost of inventory component of this account for possible impairment by considering potential obsolescence of products that might be returned to us and by considering the potential of resale prices of these products being below our cost. By reviewing deferred inventory costs in the manners discussed above, we ensure that any portion of deferred inventory costs that are not recoverable from future contractual revenue are charged to cost of sales as an expense. “Deferred income on sales to distributors” effectively represents the gross margin on sales to distributors; however, the amount of gross margin we recognize in future periods may be less than the originally recorded deferred income as a result of negotiated price concessions. In recent years, such concessions have exceeded 30% of list price on average. For detail of this account balance, see Note 3 to our consolidated financial statements.

 

We recognize revenues from other distributors at the time of shipment and when title and risk of loss transfer to the distributor, in accordance with the terms specified in the arrangement, and when the four above mentioned revenue recognition criteria are met. These distributors may also be given business terms to return a portion of inventory, however they do not receive credits for changes in selling prices to end customers. At the time of shipment, product prices are fixed or determinable and the amount of future returns can be reasonably estimated and accrued.

 

Revenue from the sale and license of intellectual property is recognized when the above mentioned four revenue recognition criteria are met. Development revenue is recognized when services are performed and customer acceptance has been received and was not significant for any of the periods presented.

 

Deferred Income Taxes and Uncertain Tax Positions — We have provided a full valuation allowance against our U.S federal and state deferred tax assets. If sufficient positive evidence of our ability to generate future U.S federal and/or state taxable income becomes apparent, we may be required to reduce our valuation allowance, resulting in income tax benefits in our statement of operations. We evaluate the realizability of our deferred tax assets and assess the need for a valuation allowance quarterly. We follow ASC 740, Income Taxes, for the accounting for uncertainty in income taxes recognized in an entity’s financial statements. ASC 740 prescribes a recognition threshold and measurement attributes for financial statement disclosure of tax positions taken or expected to be taken on a tax return. Under ASC 740, the impact of an uncertain income tax position on the income

tax return must be recognized at the largest amount that is more-likely-than-not to be sustained upon audit by the relevant taxing authority. An uncertain income tax position will not be recognized if it has less than a 50% likelihood of being sustained. Additionally, the new interpretations provide guidance on de-recognition, classification, interest and penalties, accounting in interim periods, disclosure and transition. The application of tax laws and regulations is subject to legal and factual interpretation, judgment and uncertainty. Tax laws and regulations themselves are subject to change as a result of changes in fiscal policy, changes in legislation, the evolution of regulations and court rulings. Therefore, the actual liability for U.S. or foreign taxes may be materially different from our estimates, which could result in the need to record additional tax liabilities or potentially reverse previously recorded tax liabilities.

 

Impairment of Long-Lived Assets — We regularly monitor and review long-lived assets, including fixed assets, goodwill and intangible assets, for impairment including whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying amount of any such asset may not be recoverable. The determination of recoverability is based on an estimate of the undiscounted cash flows expected to result from the use of an asset and its eventual disposition. The estimate of cash flows is based upon, among other things, certain assumptions about expected future operating performance, growth rates and other factors. Our estimates of undiscounted cash flows may differ from actual cash flows due to, among other things, technological changes, economic conditions, changes to our business model or changes in our operating performance. If the sum of the undiscounted cash flows (excluding interest) is less than the carrying value, we recognize an impairment loss, measured as the amount by which the carrying value exceeds the fair value of the asset. See Notes 13 and 14 to our consolidated financial statements for a discussion of the impairment of certain long-lived assets.

 

Recent Accounting Pronouncements

 

On October 3, 2009, we adopted ASC 470-20, for the accounting of convertible debt instruments that may be settled in cash upon conversion (including partial cash settlements), formerly FASB Staff Position APB 14-1. This standard required retrospective adjustments to prior period financial statements to conform with current period accounting treatment. Accordingly, our prior period financial statements have been adjusted. ASC 470-20 requires that convertible debt instruments that may be settled in cash be separated into a debt component and an equity component. The value assigned to the debt component as of the issuance date is the estimated fair value of a similar debt instrument without the conversion feature. The difference between the proceeds obtained for the instruments and the estimated fair value assigned to the debt component represents the equity component. See Note 6 to our consolidated financial statements for additional information on the adoption of this accounting standard.

 

On October 3, 2009, we adopted ASC 260-10-45-61A, Determining Whether Instruments Granted in Share-Based Payment Transactions Are Participating Securities. This authoritative guidance provides that before the completion of an award’s requisite service period, all outstanding awards that contain rights to nonforfeitable dividends in undistributed earnings with common stock are participating securities and shall be included in the computation of earnings per share. We determined that a limited number of our instruments granted in share-based payment transactions contained rights to nonforfeitable dividends in undistributed earnings. During the first quarter of fiscal 2010, we amended the related instruments’ plan documents to eliminate this provision and therefore no longer have any instruments subject to this authoritative guidance. We have determined that there is no impact to our presentation of earnings per share in any historical periods by including the limited number of applicable instruments prior to this plan amendment.

 

In January 2010, the FASB issued guidance that expands the interim and annual disclosure requirements of fair value measurements, including the information about movement of assets between Level 1 and 2 of the three-tier fair value hierarchy established under its fair value measurement guidance. This guidance also requires separate disclosure for purchases, sales, issuances and settlements in the reconciliation for fair value measurements using significant unobservable inputs using Level 3 methodologies. We adopted the relevant provisions of this guidance, which did not have a material impact on our consolidated financial statements.

 

In April 2010, the FASB reached a consensus on the Milestone Method of Revenue Recognition, which provides guidance on the criteria that should be met for determining whether the milestone method of revenue recognition is appropriate. A vendor can recognize consideration that is contingent upon the achievement of a

milestone in its entirety as revenue in the period in which the milestone is achieved only if the milestone meets all criteria to be considered substantive. The updated guidance is effective on a prospective basis for milestones achieved in fiscal years, and interim periods within those years beginning on or after June 15, 2010, with early adoption permitted. We do not expect adoption of these provisions to have a material impact on our consolidated financial statements.

 

In September 2009, the Emerging Issues Task Force reached a consensus on Accounting Standards Update, or ASU, 2009-13, Revenue Recognition (Topic 605) — Multiple-Deliverable Revenue Arrangements, or ASU 2009-13 and ASU 2009-14, Software (Topic 985) — Certain Revenue Arrangements That Include Software Elements, or ASU 2009-14. ASU 2009-13 modifies the requirements that must be met for an entity to recognize revenue from the sale of a delivered item that is part of a multiple-element arrangement when other items have not yet been delivered. ASU 2009-13 eliminates the requirement that all undelivered elements must have either: (i) vendor specific objective evidence (VSOE) of fair value; or (ii) third-party evidence (TPE) before an entity can recognize the portion of an overall arrangement consideration that is attributable to items that have already been delivered. In the absence of VSOE or TPE of the standalone selling price for one or more delivered or undelivered elements in a multiple-element arrangement, entities will be required to estimate the selling prices of those elements. Overall arrangement consideration will be allocated to each element (both delivered and undelivered items) based on their relative selling prices, regardless of whether those selling prices are evidenced by VSOE or TPE or are based on the entity’s estimated selling price. The residual method of allocating arrangement consideration has been eliminated. ASU 2009-14 modifies the software revenue recognition guidance to exclude from its scope tangible products that contain both software and non-software components that function together to deliver a product’s essential functionality. These new updates are effective for revenue arrangements entered into or materially modified in fiscal years beginning on or after June 15, 2010. We do not expect adoption of these provisions to have a material impact on our consolidated financial statements.

 

Results of Operations

 

Net Revenues

 

Fiscal 2010 Compared to Fiscal 2009; Fiscal 2009 Compared to Fiscal 2008

 

The following table summarizes our net revenues:

 

 

For fiscal 2010, the 41% increase in our net revenues compared to fiscal 2009 mainly reflects higher sales volume in all three of our product families, as well as an increase in the sales and licensing of our intellectual property. Net revenues from our communications convergence processing products increased $17.4 million, or 35%, in fiscal 2010 compared to fiscal 2009, mainly reflecting an increase in shipments of our CPE products, which are used in broadband home gateways and other equipment used by service providers in fiber-to-the-home deployments in order to deliver voice, data and video services to residential subscribers. Within communications convergence processing, we also experienced an increase in shipments for FTTB deployments, particularly to customers in China. Net revenues from our high-performance analog products increased $15.2 million, or 39%, when comparing fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2009 due primarily to increased demand for crosspoint switches primarily related to strength in the optical transport market and broadcast video market, and increased demand for our physical media devices as we expanded into the gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) market. Net revenues from our WAN communications products increased $11.2 million, or 34%, mainly reflecting an increase in shipments of our network processor products and our carrier Ethernet products in fiscal 2010. Net revenues from intellectual property licensing and sales increased $7.8 million, or 156%, in fiscal 2010 compared to fiscal 2009,

due to the sale of certain intellectual property in two significant transactions in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. We have developed and maintain a broad intellectual property portfolio, and we may periodically enter into strategic arrangements to leverage our portfolio by licensing or selling our patents.

 

The 21% decrease in our net revenues for fiscal 2009 compared to fiscal 2008 reflects declines in high-performance analog products and WAN communications products, as well as a decrease in revenues from the sale and licensing of intellectual property. These declines were partially offset by an increase in revenues in our communications convergence processing products. Net revenues from our communications convergence processing products increased $1.1 million, or 2%, mainly reflecting an increase in shipments for FTTB deployments, particularly in Asia, partially offset by decreased demand at one of our large strategic North American customers. We experienced increased sales volumes from our VoIP product families as telecommunication service providers install equipment to transmit their voice traffic over IP data networks. We believe we benefited from the deployment of IP-based networks both in new network buildouts and the replacement of circuit-switched networks. Net revenues from our high-performance analog products decreased $2.8 million, or 7%, when comparing fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2008. Within high-performance analog, we experienced a benefit from increased demand for our crosspoint switches, which are used in telecommunications applications. This benefit was offset by weak economic conditions affecting our physical media devices, which are used in infrastructure equipment for fiber-to-the-premise deployments, metropolitan area networks and wide area networks. Net revenues from our WAN communications products decreased $21.0 million, or 39%, mainly reflecting a significant decrease in demand due to weak economic conditions, particularly in North America and Europe. This decrease in demand was primarily in our ATM/MPLS network processor products, our T/E carrier transmission products and our Carrier Ethernet products. Net revenues from intellectual property licensing and sales decreased $11.4 million, or 70%, in fiscal 2009 compared to fiscal 2008, due to the magnitude and timing of intellectual property sales.

 

Gross Margin

 

 

Gross margin represents net revenues less cost of goods sold. As a fabless semiconductor company, we use third parties (including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Amkor Technology, Inc. and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc.) for wafer fabrication and assembly and test services. Our cost of goods sold consists predominantly of: purchased finished wafers; assembly and test services; royalty and other intellectual property costs; labor and overhead costs associated with product procurement; amortization of the cost of mask sets purchased; and sustaining engineering expenses pertaining to products sold.

 

Our gross margin for fiscal 2010 increased $41.7 million from fiscal 2009, principally reflecting an increase in both product and intellectual property revenues in fiscal 2010, as well as the effect of asset impairment charges recorded in the second quarter of fiscal 2009. Our fiscal 2010 product sales increased $43.8 million, or 36%, compared to fiscal 2009 and our sale or licensing of intellectual property increased $7.8 million, or 156%. The increase in our gross margin as a percent of net revenues for fiscal 2010 compared to fiscal 2009 was primarily due to the effect of asset impairment charges incurred in fiscal 2009 and increased sales of higher margin intellectual property in fiscal 2010.

 

Our gross margin for fiscal 2009 decreased $36.5 million from fiscal 2008, principally reflecting a decrease in revenues, as well as asset impairment charges recorded in the second quarter of fiscal 2009. Our fiscal 2009 product sales decreased $22.8 million, or 16%, compared to fiscal 2008 and our sale or licensing of intellectual property decreased $11.4 million, or 70%. The decrease in our gross margin as a percent of net revenues for fiscal 2009 compared to fiscal 2008 was primarily due to the drop in revenues from the sale or licensing of intellectual property, which had little associated cost, as well as product mix changes and reduced levels of overhead absorption caused by a lower level of product sales in fiscal 2009. The decrease in gross margin in fiscal 2009 was also impacted by asset impairment charges of $3.7 million recorded in fiscal 2009. Asset impairments consisted of $2.4 million related to the write-down of the carrying value of technology developed by Ample Communications, Inc., a $1.1 million write-down of Ample Communications related inventory and an approximate $300,000 write-down of

certain manufacturing related fixed assets. Gross margin as a percent of net revenues for fiscal 2009 included an approximate 3% negative effect from these asset impairments.

 

Research and Development

 

 

Our research and development (R&D) expenses consist principally of direct personnel costs, photomasks, electronic design automation tools and pre-production evaluation and test costs. The $700,000 increase in R&D expenses for fiscal 2010 compared to fiscal 2009 was primarily driven by a $1.4 million increase in compensation and personnel-related costs, including stock compensation expense. This increase is due to both a management bonus accrual in accordance with our fiscal 2010 cash bonus plan, as well as an increase in headcount within our communications convergence processing and high-performance analog groups. This increase was partially offset by a decrease in the cost of our facilities of almost $1.1 million, which was mainly the result of entering into a new corporate headquarters lease at a more favorable rental rate than we had previously.

 

The $5.5 million decrease in R&D expenses for fiscal 2009 compared to fiscal 2008 was primarily driven by a $4.5 million decrease in compensation and personnel-related costs mainly due to a focused effort to reduce costs associated with our workforce, including headcount reductions associated with our restructuring activities. In addition, R&D expenses in fiscal 2008 included $817,000 related to severance benefits payable to certain former employees as a result of organizational changes, which were not incurred in fiscal 2009.

 

Selling, General and Administrative

 

 

Our selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses include personnel costs, independent sales representative commissions and product marketing, applications engineering and other marketing costs. Our SG&A expenses also include costs of corporate functions, including accounting, finance, legal, human resources, information systems and communications. The $200,000 decrease in our SG&A expenses in fiscal 2010 compared to fiscal 2009 is primarily due to a $549,000 decrease in the cost of our facilities, which was mainly due to our entering into a new corporate headquarters lease at a more favorable rental rate than we had previously. In addition, the decrease in SG&A in fiscal 2010 as compared to fiscal 2009 is due to a decrease in the cost of our professional fees and insurance totaling approximately $600,000. These decreases in SG&A expenses were mostly offset by an increase in compensation, including stock compensation expense, of approximately $1.0 million. The increase in compensation, including stock compensation expense, reflects a decrease in costs resulting from headcount reductions associated with our restructuring activities, which is more than offset by an increase in compensation expense related to a management bonus accrual in accordance with our fiscal 2010 cash bonus plan, as well as an increase in stock compensation expense.

 

The $5.4 million decrease in our SG&A expenses in fiscal 2009 compared to fiscal 2008 reflected a $2.0 million decrease in compensation and personnel-related costs, including stock compensation expense mainly due to a focused effort to reduce costs associated with our workforce, including headcount reductions associated with our restructuring activities. In addition, SG&A expenses decreased $1.2 million as a result of decreased spending on professional fees in fiscal 2009 and a $761,000 decrease in commissions paid to our sales representatives. In addition, SG&A expense decreased $571,000 in fiscal 2009 due to a decrease in expenses incurred related to severance benefits payable to former officers and employees.

Special Charges

 

Special charges consist of the following:

 

 

Asset Impairments

 

During fiscal 2010, we recorded asset impairment charges of $828,000. These impairment charges consisted of property and equipment that we determined to abandon or scrap.

 

During fiscal 2009, we recorded asset impairment charges of $2.9 million. Included in this amount were asset impairment charges of approximately $500,000 related to software and property and equipment that we determined to abandon or scrap, as well as asset impairment charges of $2.4 million to write-down the carrying value of goodwill related to our acquisition of certain assets of Ample Communications. In the second quarter of fiscal 2009, our Ample Communications reporting unit experienced a severe decline in sales and profitability due to a significant decline in demand that we believe was a result of the downturn in global economic conditions, as well as a bankruptcy filed by the reporting unit’s most significant customer. The drop in market demand resulted in significant declines in unit sales. Due to these market and economic conditions, our Ample Communications reporting unit experienced a significant decline in market value. As a result, we concluded that there were sufficient factual circumstances for interim impairment analyses. Accordingly, in the second quarter of fiscal 2009, we performed a goodwill impairment assessment. Based on the results of our assessment of goodwill for impairment, we determined that the carrying value of the Ample Communications reporting unit exceeded its estimated fair value. Therefore, we performed a second step of the impairment test to estimate the implied fair value of goodwill. The required analysis indicated that there would be no remaining implied value attributable to goodwill in the Ample Communications reporting unit and we impaired the entire goodwill balance of $2.4 million.

 

We continually monitor and review long-lived assets, including fixed assets and intangible assets, for possible impairment. Future impairment tests may result in significant write-downs of the value of our assets.

 

Restructuring Charges

 

We have from time to time, and may in the future, commit to restructuring plans to help manage our costs or to help implement strategic initiatives, among other reasons.

 

Mindspeed Fourth Quarter of Fiscal 2010 Restructuring Plan — In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, we committed to the implementation of a restructuring plan. The plan consisted primarily of a targeted headcount reduction in our WAN product family and selling, general and administrative functions. The restructuring plan was substantially completed during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. Of the $1.3 million in charges incurred, $966,000 related to severance costs for affected employees and $311,000 related to abandoned technology.

 

Activity and liability balances related to our fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 restructuring plan through October 1, 2010 were as follows (in thousands):

 

The remaining accrued restructuring balance principally represents employee severance benefits. We expect to pay these remaining obligations through the second quarter of fiscal 2012.

 

Mindspeed First Quarter of Fiscal 2010 Restructuring Plan — In the first quarter of fiscal 2010, we announced the implementation of cost reduction measures consisting of a facilities consolidation and a targeted headcount reduction. During fiscal 2010, we incurred special charges of $860,000 in connection with this restructuring, primarily related to contractual obligations on vacated space at our Newport Beach, California headquarters. We do not expect to incur any significant additional expenses related to this plan in future periods.

 

Activity and liability balances related to our first quarter of fiscal 2010 restructuring plan through October 1, 2010 were as follows (in thousands):

 

 

At October 1, 2010, there was no remaining accrued restructuring balance related to this plan

 

Mindspeed Second Quarter of Fiscal 2009 Restructuring Plan — In the second quarter of fiscal 2009, we announced the implementation of cost reduction measures with most of the savings expected to be derived from focused reductions in the areas of sales, general and administrative and wide area networking communication spending, including the closure of our Dubai facility. During fiscal 2009, we incurred special charges of $1.1 million in connection with this restructuring, primarily related to severance costs for affected employees. As of the end of fiscal 2010, this restructuring plan was complete and we do not expect to incur significant additional expenses related to this restructuring plan in future periods.

 

Activity and liability balances related to our second quarter of fiscal 2009 restructuring plan from October 2, 2009 through October 1, 2010 were as follows (in thousands):

 

 

The remaining accrued restructuring balance principally represents employee severance benefits. We expect to pay these remaining obligations in the first quarter of fiscal 2011.

 

Mindspeed First Quarter of Fiscal 2009 Restructuring Plan — During the first quarter of fiscal 2009, we implemented a restructuring plan under which we reduced our workforce by approximately 6%. In connection with this reduction in workforce, we recorded a charge of $2.4 million for severance benefits payable to the affected employees. In December 2008, we vacated approximately 70% of our Massachusetts facility and recorded a charge related to contractual obligations on this space of approximately $400,000. This restructuring plan is complete and we do not expect to incur significant additional expenses related to this restructuring plan in future periods.

Activity and liability balances related to our first quarter of fiscal 2009 restructuring plan from October 2, 2009 through October 1, 2010 are as follows (in thousands):

 

 

The remaining accrued restructuring balance principally represents employee severance benefits. We expect to pay these remaining obligations in the first quarter of fiscal 2011.

 

Interest Expense

 

 

Interest expense for fiscal 2010, 2009 and 2008 primarily represents interest on our convertible senior notes issued in December 2004 and July 2008. The decline in our interest expense charge from fiscal 2008 through fiscal 2010 corresponds to the decrease in our overall debt balance during that period. In November 2009, we repaid the remaining $10.5 million due under our 3.75% convertible senior notes, thereby decreasing our interest expense related to these notes for the remainder of fiscal 2010. In October 2008, we repurchased $20.5 million aggregate principal amount of our 3.75% convertible senior notes, thereby decreasing our interest expense related to these notes for the remainder of fiscal 2009. As a result of adopting ASC 470-20 on October 3, 2009, we have separately accounted for the liability and equity components of our convertible senior notes, retrospectively, which resulted in recognizing interest expense based on the entity’s borrowing rate at the time of issuance for similar unsecured senior debt without an equity conversion feature. Pre-tax non-cash interest expense attributable to the adoption was $546,000 (fiscal 2010), $1.5 million (fiscal 2009) and $3.7 million (fiscal 2008). See Note 6 to our consolidated financial statements for additional information on the adoption of ASC 470-20.

 

Other Income, Net

 

 

Other income principally consists of interest income, foreign exchange gains and losses and other non-operating gains and losses, including gains/losses on debt extinguishments. The decrease in other income in fiscal 2010 compared to fiscal 2009 principally reflects the $1.1 million gain we recorded in connection with the extinguishment of $20.5 million aggregate principal amount of our 3.75% convertible senior notes for cash of $17.3 million in fiscal 2009. See Note 6 to our consolidated financial statements for additional information on the adoption of ASC 470-20. This decrease in other income was partially offset by approximately $430,000 in net foreign exchange gains recorded in fiscal 2010 compared to net foreign exchange loss of $217,000 in fiscal 2009. The increase in other income in fiscal 2009 compared to fiscal 2008 also principally reflects the $1.1 million gain on debt extinguishment. The gain on debt extinguishment was partially offset by a $724,000 decrease in interest income resulting from the lower cash and cash equivalents balance in fiscal year 2009 compared to fiscal year 2008.

 

Provision for Income Taxes

 

Our provision for income taxes for fiscal year 2010 principally consisted of income tax due on operating income generated in the U.S. A substantial portion of this operating income was offset by previously generated net operating losses, thereby reducing the effective tax rate on U.S. earnings. Our provision for income taxes for fiscal years 2009 and 2008 principally consisted of income taxes incurred by our foreign subsidiaries.

 

As of October 1, 2010, we had a valuation allowance of $249.2 million against our U.S. federal and state deferred tax assets (which reduces their carrying value to zero) because we continue to believe that it is unlikely that we will realize these deferred tax assets through the reduction of future income tax payments. We have considered both positive and negative evidence in reaching this determination and placed considerable weight upon the cumulative losses over the past three year period. As of October 1, 2010, we had U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards of approximately $627.1 million, including the net operating loss carryforwards we retained in the distribution. We can provide no assurances that we will be able to retain or fully utilize such net operating loss carryforwards, or that such net operating loss carryforwards will not be significantly limited in the future.

 

Liquidity and Capital Resources

 

Our principal sources of liquidity are our existing cash and cash equivalent balances, cash generated from product sales and the sales or licensing of our intellectual property, and our line of credit with Silicon Valley Bank. As of October 1, 2010, our cash and cash equivalents totaled $43.7 million and working capital was $53.8 million. As of October 2, 2009, our cash and cash equivalents totaled $20.9 million and working capital was $14.1 million.

 

In order to sustain profitability and positive cash flows from operations, we may need to further reduce operating expenses and/or increase revenues. We have completed a series of cost reduction actions, which have improved our operating expense structure, and we will continue to perform additional actions, if necessary. In addition, from time to time, we may commit to additional restructurings to help implement strategic initiatives. These restructurings and other cost saving measures alone may not allow us to sustain the profitability we achieved in fiscal 2010. Our ability to maintain, or increase, current revenue levels to sustain profitability will depend on demand for network infrastructure equipment that incorporates our products, which in turn depends primarily on the level of capital spending by communications service providers and enterprises, the level of which may decrease due to general economic conditions, and uncertainty, over which we have no control. We may be unable to maintain, or increase current revenue levels or sustain past and future expense reductions in subsequent periods. We may not be able to sustain profitability.

 

We believe that our existing cash balances, along with cash expected to be generated from product sales and the sale and licensing of intellectual property, will be sufficient to fund our operations, research and development efforts, anticipated capital expenditures, working capital and other financing requirements, including interest payments on debt obligations, for the next 12 months. In November 2009, we repaid the $10.5 million outstanding balance of our 3.75% senior convertible notes, and we have no other principal payments on currently outstanding debt due in the next 12 months. From time to time, we may acquire our debt securities through privately negotiated transactions, tender offers, exchange offers (for new debt or other securities), redemptions or otherwise, upon such terms and at such prices as we may determine appropriate. We will need to continue a focused program of capital expenditures to meet our research and development and corporate requirements. We may also consider acquisition opportunities to extend our technology portfolio and design expertise and to expand our product offerings. In order to fund capital expenditures, increase our working capital or complete any acquisitions, we may seek to obtain additional debt or equity financing. We may also need to seek to obtain additional debt or equity financing if we experience downturns or cyclical fluctuations in our business that are more severe or longer than anticipated or if we fail to achieve anticipated revenue and expense levels. However, we cannot assure you that such financing will be available to us on favorable terms, or at all, particularly in light of recent economic conditions in the capital markets.

 

Cash generated by operating activities was $23.8 million for fiscal 2010 compared to cash used in operating activities of $5.4 million for fiscal 2009 and cash generated by operating activities of $26.7 million for fiscal 2008. Operating cash flows for fiscal 2010 reflect our net income of $21.1 million, non-cash charges (depreciation and amortization, asset impairments, restructuring charges, stock compensation, inventory provisions, deferred income tax, amortization of debt discount and other) of approximately $14.6 million, and net working capital increases of approximately $11.9 million. Operating cash flows for fiscal 2009 reflect our net loss of $25.1 million, non-cash charges (depreciation and amortization, asset impairments, restructuring charges, stock compensation, inventory

provisions, gain on debt extinguishment, amortization of debt discount and other) of $19.5 million, and net working capital decreases of approximately $200,000.

 

The significant components of the fiscal 2010 $11.9 million change in net working capital include an $18.0 million increase in accounts receivable, which is due to various factors, including an increase in sales volume in fiscal 2010 compared to fiscal 2009, the timing of sales and the timing of collections. Our net days sales outstanding increased from 20 days in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 to 41 days in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. In addition, restructuring related payments made during fiscal 2010 were $1.3 million lower than payments made in fiscal 2009. Partially offsetting the increase in accounts receivable and decrease in restructuring related payments was a $5.1 million increase in accrued expenses and other current liabilities, due to our fiscal 2010 management bonus accrual, as well as the timing of vendor payments. In addition, deferred income on shipments to distributors increased $2.6 million because of an increase in inventory being held by our distributors.

 

The significant components of the fiscal 2009 $200,000 net working capital decrease include a $6.9 million decrease in accounts receivable, which is due to both the timing of sales and the timing of collections. Our net days sales outstanding decreased from 36 days in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 to 20 days in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. In addition, our inventory balance decreased $4.6 million during 2009 due to our focused efforts in decreasing our inventory on hand and increasing our inventory turns. Mostly offsetting the decrease in accounts receivable and inventory was a $5.1 million decrease in accounts payable, due to reduced levels of inventory purchases and the timing of vendor payments. In addition, deferred income on shipments to distributors decreased $2.3 million because of a decrease in inventory being held by our distributors.

 

Cash used in investing activities of $8.0 million for fiscal 2010 and $8.1 million in fiscal 2009 consisted solely of payments made for capital expenditures.

 

Cash provided by financing activities of $7.0 million for fiscal 2010 principally consisted of three significant items. In the first quarter of fiscal 2010, we used cash when we paid $10.5 million to retire the remaining principal amount of our 3.75% convertible senior notes, which matured in November 2009. Offsetting this use of cash is $17.0 million in net proceeds we received from the sale of approximately 2.5 million shares of our common stock in an offering that was completed in the second quarter of fiscal 2010. We also generated cash from financing activities of $1.6 million in proceeds received in conjunction with the exercise of stock options in fiscal 2010. Cash used in financing activities of $8.6 million in fiscal 2009 consisted of two significant items. First, in the first quarter of fiscal 2009, we paid $17.3 million to retire $20.5 million in principal amount of our 3.75% convertible senior notes due in November 2009 and paid approximately $300,000 of debt issuance costs related to both our revolving credit facility and the issuance of our 6.50% convertible senior notes due in 2013. Partially offsetting these uses of cash is $8.9 million in net proceeds we received from the sale of 4.8 million shares of our common stock in an offering that was completed in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009.

 

Revolving Credit Facility and Convertible Senior Notes

 

Revolving Credit Facility

 

On September 30, 2008, we entered into a loan and security agreement with Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB. Under the loan and security agreement, SVB has agreed to provide us with a three-year revolving credit line of up to $15.0 million, subject to availability against certain eligible accounts receivable, for the purposes of: (i) working capital; (ii) funding our general business requirements; and (iii) repaying or repurchasing our 3.75% convertible senior notes due in November 2009. In April 2010, we amended the loan and security agreement and reduced the maximum amount available under the revolving credit line from $15.0 million to $5.0 million. This amendment was initiated in order to reduce fees due under the agreement. Our indebtedness to SVB under the loan and security agreement is guaranteed by three of our domestic subsidiaries and secured by substantially all of the domestic assets of the company and such subsidiaries, other than intellectual property.

 

Any indebtedness under the loan and security agreement bears interest at a variable rate ranging from prime plus 0.25% to a maximum rate of prime plus 1.25%, as determined in accordance with the interest rate grid set forth in the loan and security agreement. The loan and security agreement contains affirmative and negative covenants which, among other things, require us to maintain a minimum tangible net worth and to deliver to SVB specified financial

information, including annual, quarterly and monthly financial information, and limit our ability to (or, in certain circumstances, to permit any subsidiaries to), subject to certain exceptions and limitations: (i) merge with or acquire other companies; (ii) create liens on our property; (iii) incur debt obligations; (iv) enter into transactions with affiliates, except on an arm’s length basis; (v) dispose of property; and (vi) issue dividends or make distributions.

 

As of October 1, 2010, we were in compliance with all required covenants and had no outstanding borrowings under our revolving credit facility with SVB.

 

3.75% Convertible Senior Notes due 2009

 

In December 2004, we sold an aggregate principal amount of $46.0 million in 3.75% convertible senior notes due in November 2009 for net proceeds (after discounts and commissions) of approximately $43.9 million. Our adoption of ASC 470-20 changed the accounting for these convertible senior notes and the related deferred financing costs. Prior to the issuance of this accounting standard, we reported the 3.75% convertible senior notes at their principal amount of $46.0 million, less an original issuance discount of $2.1 million, in long-term debt and capitalized debt issuance costs amounting to approximately $400,000. Upon adoption of ASC 470-20, we adjusted the accounting for the convertible senior notes and the deferred financing costs for all prior periods since initial issuance of the debt in December 2004. We recorded a discount on the convertible senior notes in the amount of $17.6 million as of the date of issuance, which was amortized over the five year period from December 2004 through November 2009. See Notes 1 and 6 to our consolidated financial statements for further information on this adoption.

 

In July 2008, we entered into separate exchange agreements with certain holders of our 3.75% convertible senior notes due 2009, pursuant to which holders of an aggregate principal amount of $15.0 million of these notes agreed to exchange their notes for $15.0 million in aggregate principal amount of a new series of 6.50% convertible senior notes due in August 2013. In October 2008, we repurchased $20.5 million aggregate principal amount of our 3.75% convertible senior notes due in November 2009, for $17.3 million in cash. The repurchases occurred in two separate transactions on October 16 and October 23, 2008. During the first quarter of fiscal 2010, our 3.75% convertible senior notes matured and the remaining balance of $10.5 million was repaid.

 

6.50% Convertible Senior Notes due 2013

 

We issued the convertible senior notes due in August 2013 pursuant to an indenture, dated as of August 1, 2008, between us and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., as trustee.

 

The convertible senior notes are unsecured senior indebtedness and bear interest at a rate of 6.50% per annum. Interest is payable on February 1 and August 1 of each year, commencing on February 1, 2009. The notes mature on August 1, 2013. At maturity, we will be required to repay the outstanding principal amount of the notes. At October 1, 2010, $15.0 million in aggregate principal amount of our 6.50% convertible senior notes were outstanding.

 

The 6.50% convertible senior notes are convertible at the option of the holders, at any time on or prior to maturity, into shares of our common stock at a conversion rate equal to approximately $4.74 per share of common stock, which is subject to adjustment in certain circumstances. Upon conversion of the notes, we generally have the right to deliver to the holders thereof, at our option: (i) cash; (ii) shares of our common stock; or (iii) a combination thereof. The initial conversion price of the notes will be adjusted to reflect stock dividends, stock splits, issuances of rights to purchase shares of our common stock, and upon other events. If we undergo certain fundamental changes prior to maturity of the notes, the holders thereof will have the right, at their option, to require us to repurchase for cash some or all of their 6.50% convertible senior notes at a repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the notes being repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest (including additional interest, if any) to, but not including, the repurchase date, or convert the notes into shares of our common stock and, under certain circumstances, receive additional shares of our common stock in the amount provided in the indenture.

 

For financial accounting purposes, our contingent obligation to issue additional shares or make additional cash payment upon conversion following a fundamental change is an “embedded derivative.” At October 1, 2010, the liability under the fundamental change adjustment has been recorded at its estimated fair value and is not significant.

If there is an event of default under the 6.50% convertible senior notes, the principal of and premium, if any, on all the notes and the interest accrued thereon may be declared immediately due and payable, subject to certain conditions set forth in the indenture. An event of default under the indenture will occur if we: (i) are delinquent in making certain payments due under the notes; (ii) fail to deliver shares of common stock or cash upon conversion of the notes; (iii) fail to deliver certain required notices under the notes; (iv) fail, following notice, to cure a breach of a covenant under the notes or the indenture; (v) incur certain events of default with respect to other indebtedness; or (vi) are subject to certain bankruptcy proceedings or orders. If we fail to deliver certain SEC reports to the trustee in a timely manner as required by the indenture: (x) the interest rate applicable to the notes during the delinquency will be increased by 0.25% or 0.50%, as applicable (depending on the duration of the delinquency); and (y) if the required reports are not delivered to the trustee within 180 days after their due date under the indenture, a holder of the notes will generally have the right, subject to certain limitations, to require us to repurchase all or any portion of the notes then held by such holder.

 

Our adoption of ASC 470-20 changed the accounting for these 6.50% convertible senior notes and the related deferred financing costs. Prior to the issuance of this accounting standard, we reported the notes at their principal amount of $15.0 million in long-term debt and capitalized debt issuance costs amounting to approximately $900,000. Upon adoption of ASC 470-20, we adjusted the accounting for the 6.50% convertible senior notes and the deferred financing costs for all prior periods since initial issuance of the debt in August 2008. We recorded a discount on the convertible senior notes in the amount of $2.0 million as of the date of issuance, which will be amortized over the five year period from August 2008 through August 2013. See Notes 1 and 6 to our consolidated financial statements for further information on this adoption.

 

Contractual Obligations

 

The following table summarizes the future payments we are required to make under contractual obligations as of October 1, 2010:

 

 

Long-term debt consists of $15.0 million of convertible senior notes that bear interest at a rate of 6.50%, payable semiannually in arrears each February 1 and August 1, and mature on August 1, 2013.

 

In March 2010, we entered into a lease agreement with the owner of our headquarters in Newport Beach, California with a term beginning in June 2010 and extending through December 2012. We may, at our option, extend the lease for an additional five-year term. Rent payable under the lease is approximately $2.1 million annually, including operating expenses associated with the leased property. We estimate our minimum future obligation under the lease at approximately $4.6 million over the remaining lease term.

 

We lease our other facilities and certain equipment under non-cancelable operating leases. The leases expire at various dates through fiscal 2015 and contain various provisions for rental adjustments, including, in certain cases, adjustments based on increases in the Consumer Price Index. The leases generally contain renewal provisions for varying periods of time. Although we have entered into non-cancelable subleases with anticipated rental income totaling $44,000 and extending to various dates through fiscal 2013, we have not reduced the amount of our contractual obligations under the related operating leases to take into account the anticipated rental income.

Purchase obligations are comprised of commitments to purchase design tools and software for use in product development, which will be spent between fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2012. We have not included open purchase orders for inventory or other expenses issued in the normal course of business in the purchase obligations shown above.

 

Capital leases consist of equipment purchased under capital lease with payments due through June 2013.

 

In addition to the obligations included in the table above, we have a $557,000 liability related to post-retirement benefits for employees at two of our international locations. The timing of the related payments is not known.

 

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

 

We have made guarantees and indemnities, under which we may be required to make payments to a guaranteed or indemnified party, in relation to certain transactions. In connection with the distribution to Conexant stockholders of all outstanding shares of common stock of Mindspeed, we generally assumed responsibility for all contingent liabilities and then-current and future litigation against Conexant or its subsidiaries related to our business. We may also be responsible for certain federal income tax liabilities under a tax allocation agreement between us and Conexant, which provides that we will be responsible for certain taxes imposed on us, Conexant or Conexant stockholders. In connection with certain facility leases, we have indemnified our lessors for certain claims arising from the facility or the lease. We indemnify our directors, officers, employees and agents to the maximum extent permitted under the laws of the State of Delaware. The duration of the guarantees and indemnities varies, and in many cases is indefinite. The majority of our guarantees and indemnities do not provide for any limitation of the maximum potential future payments we could be obligated to make. We have not recorded any liability for these guarantees and indemnities in the accompanying consolidated balance sheets.

 

 

We do not use derivative instruments for speculative or investment purposes.

 

Interest Rate Risk

 

Our cash and cash equivalents are not subject to significant interest rate risk. As of October 1, 2010, the carrying value of our cash and cash equivalents approximated fair value.

 

At October 1, 2010, our debt consisted of long-term convertible senior notes. Our convertible senior notes bear interest at a fixed rate of 6.5%. Consequently, our results of operations and cash flows are not subject to any significant interest rate risk relating to our convertible senior notes. The fair value of the debt could increase or decrease if interest rates decreases or increase, respectively, and that could impact our ability and cost to negotiate a settlement of such notes prior to maturity. In addition, we have a long-term revolving credit facility. Advances under our credit facility bear interest at a variable rate ranging from prime plus 0.25% to a maximum rate of prime plus 1.25%, as determined in accordance with the interest rate grid set forth in the loan and security agreement. If the prime rate increases, thereby increasing our effective borrowing rate by the same amount, cash interest expense related to the credit facility would increase dependent on any outstanding borrowings. Because there were no outstanding borrowings on the credit facility as of October 1, 2010, any change in the prime interest rate would have no effect on our obligations under the credit facility.

 

Foreign Exchange Risk

 

We transact business in various foreign currencies and we face foreign exchange risk on assets and liabilities that are denominated in foreign currencies. Currently, our foreign exchange risks are not hedged; however, from time to time, we may utilize foreign currency forward exchange contracts to hedge a portion of our exposure to foreign exchange risk.

 

These hedging transactions are intended to offset the gains and losses we experience on foreign currency transactions with gains and losses on the forward contracts, so as to mitigate our overall risk of foreign exchange gains and losses. We do not enter into forward contracts for speculative or trading purposes. At October 1, 2010, we held no foreign currency forward exchange contracts. Based on our overall currency rate exposure at October 1, 2010, a 10% change in currency rates would not have a material effect on our consolidated financial position, results of operations or cash flows.

 

 

MINDSPEED TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

 

CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

 

 

See accompanying notes to consolidated financial statements.

MINDSPEED TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

 

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS

 

 

See accompanying notes to consolidated financial statements.

MINDSPEED TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

 

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

 

 

See accompanying notes to consolidated financial statements.

MINDSPEED TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

 

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF STOCKHOLDERS’ EQUITY AND

COMPREHENSIVE LOSS/(GAIN)

(In thousands)