The following discussion should be read in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws and particularly in Item 1: “Business,” Item 1A: “Risk Factors,” Item 3: “Legal Proceedings” and Item 7: “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. These statements are indicated by words or phrases such as “anticipate,” “expect,” “estimate,” “seek,” “plan,” “believe,” “could,” “intend,” “will,” and similar words or phrases. These forward-looking statements may include projections of financial information; statements about historical results that may suggest trends for our business; statements of the plans, strategies, and objectives of management for future operations; statements of expectation or belief regarding future events (including any acquisitions we may make), technology developments, our products, product sales, expenses, liquidity, cash flow and growth rates, or enforceability of our intellectual property rights; and the effects of seasonality on our business. Such statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections of our or industry performance and macroeconomic conditions, based on management’s judgment, beliefs, current trends and market conditions, and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. We derive most of our forward-looking statements from our operating budgets and forecasts, which are based upon many detailed assumptions. While we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, we caution that it is very difficult to predict the impact of known factors, and it is impossible for us to anticipate all factors that could affect our actual results. Accordingly, we caution you not to place undue reliance on these statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations are disclosed under “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. These factors include risks associated with: our acquisition of CA, Inc., or CA, including 1) potential difficulties in employee retention, (2) unexpected costs, charges or expenses, and (3) our ability to successfully integrate CA’s business and achieve the anticipated benefits of the transaction; any loss of our significant customers and fluctuations in the timing and volume of significant customer demand; our dependence on contract manufacturing and outsourced supply chain; our dependency on a limited number of suppliers; any acquisitions we may make, including integrating acquired companies with our existing businesses and our ability to achieve the growth prospects and synergies expected by such acquisitions; our ability to accurately estimate customers’ demand and adjust our manufacturing and supply chain accordingly; our significant indebtedness, including the additional indebtedness that we incurred in connection with the CA acquisition and the need to generate sufficient cash flows to service and repay such debt; dependence on and risks associated with distributors of our products; dependence on senior management; quarterly and annual fluctuations in our operating results; global economic conditions and concerns; the frequency of our stock repurchases; cyclicality in the semiconductor industry or in our target markets; our competitive performance and ability to continue achieving design wins with our customers, as well as the timing of any design wins; prolonged disruptions of our or our contract manufacturers' manufacturing facilities or other significant operations; our ability to improve our manufacturing efficiency and quality; our dependence on outsourced service providers for certain key business services and their ability to execute to our requirements; our ability to maintain or improve gross margin; our ability to protect our intellectual property and the unpredictability of any associated litigation expense; compatibility of our software products with operating environments, platforms or third-party products; our ability to enter into satisfactory software license agreements; sales to our government clients; availability of third party software used in our products; use of open source code sources in our products; any expense or reputational damage associated with resolving customer product warranty and indemnification claims; our ability to sell to new types of customers and to keep pace with technological advances; market acceptance of the end products into which our products are designed; our ability to protect against a breach of security systems; fluctuations in foreign exchange rates; our overall cash tax costs, legislation that may impact our overall cash tax costs and our ability to maintain tax concessions in certain jurisdictions; our redomiciliation of our ultimate parent company to the United States; and other events and trends on a national, regional and global scale, including those of a political, economic, business, competitive and regulatory nature. All of the forward-looking statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are qualified in their entirety by reference to the factors listed above and those discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. We caution you that the foregoing list of important factors may not contain all of the material factors that are important to you. In addition, in light of these risks and uncertainties, the matters referred to in the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may not in fact occur. We undertake no intent or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law.
Financial information and results of operations presented relate to (1) Broadcom Inc. for the periods after April 4, 2018 , (2) Broadcom Limited, our predecessor, for the period from February 1, 2016 to April 4, 2018, and (3) Avago Technologies Limited, predecessor to Broadcom Limited, for periods prior to February 1, 2016. Similarly, unless stated otherwise or the context otherwise requires, references to “Broadcom,” “we,” “our” and “us” mean Broadcom Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries after April 4, 2018 and, prior to that time, our predecessors. Our fiscal year ends on the Sunday closest to October 31 in a 52-week year and the first Sunday in November in a 53-week year. We refer to our fiscal years by the calendar year in which they end. For example, the fiscal year ended November 4, 2018 is referred to as “fiscal year 2018”, and was a 53-week year.
Overview
Broadcom Inc., or Broadcom, is the successor to Broadcom Limited, a company organized under the laws of the Republic of Singapore, or Broadcom-Singapore, as a result of our redomiciliation to the United States on April 4, 2018. We are a global technology leader that designs, develops and supplies a broad range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. Our over 50-year history of innovation dates back to our diverse origins from Hewlett-Packard Company, AT&T, LSI Corporation, or LSI, Broadcom Corporation, or BRCM, Brocade Communications Systems LLC, or Brocade, and CA, Inc., or CA. Over the years, we have assembled a large team of semiconductor and software design engineers around the world. We maintain design, product and software development engineering resources at locations in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Israel, providing us with engineering expertise worldwide. We strategically focus our research and development resources to address niche opportunities in our target markets and leverage our extensive portfolio of U.S. and other patents and other intellectual property, or IP, to integrate multiple technologies and create system-on-chip, or SoC, component and software solutions that target growth opportunities. We design products and software that deliver high-performance and provide mission-critical functionality.
We develop semiconductor devices with a focus on complex digital and mixed signal complementary metal oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, based devices and analog III-V based products. We have a history of innovation in the semiconductor industry and offer thousands of products that are used in end products such as enterprise and data center networking, home connectivity, set-top boxes, broadband access, telecommunication equipment, smartphones and base stations, data center servers and storage systems, factory automation, power generation and alternative energy systems, and electronic displays. We differentiate ourselves through our high performance design and integration capabilities and focus on developing products for target markets where we believe we can earn attractive margins.
Semiconductors are made by imprinting a network of electronic components onto a semiconductor wafer. These devices are designed to perform various functions such as processing, amplifying and selectively filtering electronic signals, controlling electronic system functions and processing, and transmitting and storing data. Our digital and mixed signal products are based on silicon wafers with CMOS transistors offering fast switching speeds and low power consumption, which are both critical design factors for the markets we serve. We also offer analog products, which are based on III-V semiconductor materials that have higher electrical conductivity than silicon, and thus tend to have better performance characteristics in radio frequency, or RF, and optoelectronic applications. III-V refers to elements from the 3rd and 5th groups in the periodic table of chemical elements. Examples of these materials used in our products are gallium arsenide, or GaAs, gallium nitride, and indium phosphide, or InP. We also offer mission critical fibre channel storage area networking, or FC SAN, products and related software that we acquired with Brocade in the form of modules, switches and subsystems incorporating multiple semiconductor products.
Original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, or their contract manufacturers, and distributors typically account for the substantial majority of our semiconductor sales. We have established strong relationships with leading OEM customers across multiple target markets. Many of our major customer relationships have been in place for many years and have often been built as a result of years of collaborative product development. This has enabled us to build our IP portfolio and develop critical expertise regarding our customers’ requirements, including substantial system level knowledge. This collaboration has provided us with key insights into our customers' businesses and has enabled us to be more efficient and productive and to better serve our target markets and customers. We have a direct sales force focused on supporting large OEMs. We also distribute a substantial portion of our products through our broad distribution network, and a significant amount of these sales are to large global electronic components distributors.
We focus on maintaining an efficient global supply chain and a variable, low-cost operating model. Accordingly, we outsource a majority of our manufacturing operations, utilizing third-party foundry and assembly and test capabilities, as well as some of our corporate infrastructure functions. We focus our internal fabrication capacity and capital expenditures on products utilizing our innovative and proprietary processes, to protect our IP and to accelerate time to market of our products, while outsourcing commodity processes such as standard CMOS. We also have a long history of operating in Asia, where approximately 38% of our employees are located and where we manufacture and source the majority of our products and materials. Our presence in Asia places us in close proximity to many of our customers’ manufacturing facilities and at the center of worldwide electronics manufacturing.