Marvell Technology Group (MRVL)

We typically sell products pursuant to purchase orders rather than long-term purchase commitments. Customers can generally cancel or defer purchase orders on short notice without incurring a significant penalty. In the recent past, some of our customers have developed excess inventories of their own products and have, as a consequence, deferred purchase orders for our products. We cannot accurately predict what or how many products our customers will need in the future. Anticipating demand is difficult because our customers face volatile pricing and unpredictable demand for their own products and are increasingly focused more on cash preservation and tighter inventory management. In addition, as an increasing number of our chips are being incorporated into consumer products, we anticipate greater fluctuations in demand for our products, which makes it more difficult to forecast customer demand. We place orders with our suppliers based on forecasts of customer demand and, in some instances, may establish buffer inventories to accommodate anticipated demand. Our forecasts are based on multiple assumptions, each of which may introduce error into our estimates. If we overestimate customer demand, we may allocate resources to manufacturing products that we may not be able to sell when we expect to, if at all. As a result, we would hold excess or obsolete inventory, which would reduce our profit margins and adversely affect our financial results. Conversely, if we underestimate customer demand or if insufficient manufacturing capacity is available, we would forgo revenue opportunities and potentially lose market share and damage our customer relationships. In addition, any future significant cancellations or deferrals of product orders or the return of previously sold products could materially and adversely affect our profit margins, increase product obsolescence and restrict our ability to fund our operations. Furthermore, we generally recognize revenue upon shipment of products to a customer. If a customer refuses to accept shipped products or does not timely pay for these products, we could incur significant charges against our income.

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