UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM
(Mark One)
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ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 |
For the fiscal year ended
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TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 |
For the transition period from to
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Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
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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.
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 ☐
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Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes
The aggregate market value of Common Stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant (based upon the closing sale price on the New York Stock Exchange as of May 31, 2020, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter) was $
As of January 22, 2021, there were
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
SYNNEX CORPORATION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2020 FORM 10-K
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Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations |
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Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters |
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Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence |
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PART I
When used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (this “Report”), the words “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “allows,” “can,” “may,” “could,’’ “designed,” “will,” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These are statements that relate to future periods and include statements about market trends, our business model and our services, our business and market strategy, our separation of SYNNEX and Concentrix, future growth, including expansion of our product and service lines, our infrastructure, our investment in our information technology, or IT, systems, our employee hiring and retention, the ownership interest of MiTAC Holdings Corporation, or MiTAC Holdings, in us and its impact, our revenue, sources of revenue, our gross margins, our operating costs and results, timing of payment, the value of our inventory, our competition, including with Synnex Technology International Corp., our future needs for additional financing, the likely sources for such funding and the impact of such funding, concentration of customers and suppliers, customer and supplier contract terms, customer forecasts and its impact on us, relationships with our suppliers, adequacy of our facilities, ability to obtain comparable leases, ability to manage and communicate with international resources, ability to meet demand, managing inventory and our shipping costs, our legal proceedings, our operations and trends related thereto, our international operations, foreign currency exchange rates and hedging activities, expansion of our operations and related effects, our strategic acquisitions and divestitures of businesses and assets, revenue, cost of revenue and gross margin, our goodwill, seasonality of sales, changes in share price, adequacy of our cash resources to meet our capital needs, our debt and financing arrangements, cash held by our international subsidiaries and repatriation, changes in fair value of derivative instruments, our tax liabilities, adequacy of our disclosure controls and procedures, dependency on personnel, pricing pressures, cybersecurity and compliance with related rules and regulations, impact of rules and regulations affecting public companies, impact of our pricing policies, impact of economic and industry trends, changes to the markets in which we compete, impact of our accounting policies and recently issued accounting pronouncements, impact of inventory repurchase obligations and commitments and contingencies, our effective tax rates, impact of any impairment of our goodwill and intangible assets, our share repurchase and dividend program, our securitization programs, term loans and revolving credit lines, our investments in working capital, and personnel and our succession planning. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those risks discussed herein and risks related to the separation, the COVID-19 global pandemic, as well as the seasonality of the buying patterns of our customers, concentration of sales to large customers, dependence upon and trends in capital spending budgets in the IT, and consumer electronics, or CE, industries, fluctuations in general economic conditions, change in market for our customers' products, employee turnover, changes in value of foreign currencies and interest rates and other risk factors contained below under Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors.” These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.
In the sections of this Report entitled “Business” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” all references to “SYNNEX,” “we,” “us,” “our” or the “Company” mean SYNNEX Corporation and its subsidiaries, except where it is made clear that the term means only the parent company or one of its segments.
SYNNEX, the SYNNEX Logo, and all other SYNNEX company, product and services names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of SYNNEX Corporation. SYNNEX, and the SYNNEX Logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. Other names and marks are the property of their respective owners.
Item 1.Business
We are a Fortune 200 corporation and a leading provider of a comprehensive range of distribution, systems design and integration solutions for the technology industry. We also provided outsourced services focused on customer experience to a broad range of enterprises.
On December 1, 2020, we completed the previously announced separation of our customer experience services business (the “Separation”), which was accomplished by the distribution of one hundred percent of the outstanding common stock of Concentrix Corporation (“Concentrix”) to our stockholders as of the close of business on November 17, 2020, the record date for the distribution. Our stockholders received one share of Concentrix common stock for every share of our common stock held at the close of business on the record date. Concentrix is now an independent public company trading under the symbol “CNXC” on the Nasdaq Stock Market. After the Separation, we do not beneficially own any shares of Concentrix’ common stock and beginning December 1, 2020, we no longer consolidate Concentrix within our financial results or reflect the financial results of Concentrix within our continuing results of operations. We distributed a total of approximately 51.6 million shares of Concentrix common stock to our stockholders. In connection with the Separation, we have entered into a separation and distribution agreement, as well as various other agreements with Concentrix that provide a framework for the relationships between the parties going forward, including among others an employee matters agreement, a tax matters agreement, and a commercial agreement, pursuant to which Concentrix will continue to provide services to us following the Separation.
As of November 30, 2020, we were organized to provide our products and services through two reportable business segments: Technology Solutions and Concentrix. Our Technology Solutions segment distributes peripherals, information technology (“IT”) systems including data center server and storage solutions, system components, software, networking, communications and security
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equipment, consumer electronics (“CE”) and complementary products. Within our Technology Solutions segment, we also provide systems design and integration solutions. Our Concentrix segment offered a portfolio of technology-infused strategic solutions and end-to-end business services focused on customer experience, process optimization, technology innovation, front and back-office automation and business transformation to clients in five primary industry verticals.
In our Technology Solutions segment, we distribute more than 40,000 technology products (as measured by active SKUs) from more than 500 IT, CE and original equipment manufacturers (“OEM”), suppliers to more than 25,000 resellers, system integrators, and retailers throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Central and South America. We purchase peripherals, IT systems, system components, software, networking, communications and security equipment, CE and complementary products from our suppliers and sell them to our reseller and retail customers. We perform a similar function for our distribution of licensed software products. Our reseller customers include value-added resellers, corporate resellers, government resellers, system integrators, direct marketers, and national and regional retailers. We combine our core strengths in distribution with demand generation, supply chain management and design and integration solutions to help our customers achieve greater efficiencies in time to market, cost minimization, real-time linkages in the supply chain and aftermarket product support. We also provide comprehensive IT solutions in key vertical markets such as government and healthcare and we provide specialized service offerings that increase efficiencies in the areas of print management, renewals, logistics services and supply chain management. Additionally, we provide our customers with systems design and integration solutions for data center servers and networking solutions built specific to our customers’ workloads and data center environments.
Our Technology Solutions business is characterized by low gross profit as a percentage of revenue, or gross margin, and low income from operations as a percentage of revenue, or operating margin. The market for IT and CE products is generally characterized by declining unit prices and short product life cycles. We set our sales price based on the market supply and demand characteristics for each particular product or bundle of products we distribute and services we provide.
In our Technology Solutions segment, we are highly dependent on the end-market demand for IT and CE products, and on our partners’ strategic initiatives and business models. This end-market demand is influenced by many factors including the introduction of new IT and CE products and software by OEMs, replacement cycles for existing IT and CE products, trends toward cloud computing, overall economic growth and general business activity. A difficult and challenging economic environment may also lead to consolidation or decline in the IT and CE industries and increased price-based competition.
In our Concentrix segment, we provided a comprehensive range of strategic services and solutions to enhance our clients’ customer life cycles to acquire, support and renew customer relationships, to automate and optimize processes, to maximize the value of every customer experience and to improve business outcomes. Our portfolio of services included end-to-end process outsourcing to customers in various industry vertical markets delivered through omni-channels that included both voice and non-voice media and in more than 70 languages. Our portfolio of solutions and services supported our clients and their customers globally.
Our Concentrix segment generated revenue from performing services that were generally tied to our clients’ products and services and how they are received in the marketplace. Any shift in business or size of the market for our clients’ products, any failure of technology or failure of acceptance of our clients’ products in the market could impact the Concentrix business. The employee turnover rate in this business and the risk of losing experienced employees is high. Higher turnover rates can increase costs and decrease operating efficiencies and productivity.
We have been in business since 1980 and are headquartered in Fremont, California. We have significant operations in North and South America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa. We were originally incorporated in the State of California as COMPAC Microelectronics, Inc. in November 1980, and we changed our name to SYNNEX Information Technologies, Inc. in February 1994. We later reincorporated in the State of Delaware under the name of SYNNEX Corporation in October 2003. As of November 30, 2020, we had approximately 280,000 full-time and temporary employees worldwide, and on December 1, 2020 following the Separation we had approximately 8,800 full-time and temporary employees worldwide.
Financial information by segment is provided in our Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this Report.
Our Products and Suppliers
In our Technology Solutions segment, we distribute a broad line of IT products, including peripherals, IT systems, system components, software, security, UCC and networking equipment from more than 500 OEM suppliers, enabling us to offer comprehensive solutions to our reseller and retail customers. Our product offerings also include systems design and full rack integration solutions, build-to-order, and configure-to-order assemblies. Our Technology Solutions segment represented 81%, 80% and 88% of our consolidated revenue in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively.
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For fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, our product mix by category in the Technology Solutions segment was in the following ranges:
Product Category: |
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Peripherals |
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21% - 25% |
IT Systems |
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30% - 35% |
System Components and Integration Solutions |
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9% - 14% |
Software |
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16% - 20% |
Networking Equipment |
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13% - 15% |
Our suppliers include leading peripherals, IT systems, system components, software, security, networking equipment, UCC and CE manufacturers. Our primary OEM suppliers are Alphabet Inc. (Google), ASUSTeK Computer Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., HP Inc. (“HP”), Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company, Intel Corporation, Lenovo Group Ltd, Microsoft Corporation, and Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.
Our largest OEM supplier is HP. Revenue from the sale of products and services provided by HP represented approximately 12%, 12% and 13% of our consolidated revenue for fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively. As is typical with our OEM supplier agreements, our United States Business Development Partner Agreement with HP is short-term and may be terminated without cause upon short notice. In the event of any breach of the agreement by us, HP may terminate the agreement and we may be required to refund HP any discounts or program payments paid during the period we were in breach of the agreement and reimburse HP for reasonable attorneys’ fees. In the event the agreement is terminated for cause or if we fail to perform our obligations under the agreement, our agreement with HP for the resale of products, support and services will automatically terminate upon such default or termination. If either party becomes insolvent or bankrupt, the other party may terminate the agreement without notice and cancel any unfulfilled obligations, except for payment obligations. Some of our subsidiaries also have territorial supplier agreements with subsidiaries of HP located in the respective countries.
We have distribution agreements with most of our suppliers, including HP. These agreements usually provide for nonexclusive distribution rights and pertain to specific geographic territories. The agreements are also generally short-term, subject to periodic renewal, and often contain provisions permitting termination by either our supplier or us without cause upon relatively short notice. An OEM supplier that elects to terminate a distribution agreement will generally repurchase its products carried in our inventory.
Our Technology Solutions business subjects us to the risk that the value of our inventory will be affected adversely by suppliers’ price reductions or by technological changes affecting the usefulness or desirability of the products comprising our inventory. Many of our OEM suppliers offer us limited protection from the loss in value of our inventory due to technological change or a supplier’s price reduction. Under many of these agreements, we have a limited period of time to return or exchange products or claim price protection credits. We monitor our inventory levels and attempt to time our purchases to maximize our protection under supplier programs.
Our Customers
In our Technology Solutions segment, we distribute IT products to more than 25,000 resellers, system integrators and retailers. Resellers are classified primarily by their end-user customers. End-users include large corporations or enterprises, federal, state and local governments, small/medium sized businesses, or SMBs, and individual consumers. In addition, resellers vary greatly in size and geographic reach. Our reseller customers buy from us and other distributors. Our larger reseller customers also buy certain products directly from OEM suppliers. System integrators offer services in addition to product resale, primarily in systems customization, integration, and deployment. Retailers serve mostly individual end-users and to a small degree, small office/home office customers. We also provide systems design and integration solutions for data center servers built for our customers’ data center environments.
In our Concentrix segment, we served over 650 clients in five primary industry verticals: banking, financial services and insurance; communications and media; healthcare; retail, travel and e-commerce; and technology and consumer electronics. We focused on developing long-term, strategic relationships with large companies in these customer-intensive industry verticals to benefit from the complexity of services required, the anticipated growth of their market segments and their increasing need for more cost-effective customer experience services.
One customer accounted for 19% of our consolidated revenue in fiscal years 2020 and 2019 and 17% of our consolidated revenue in fiscal year 2018. We do not believe that the loss of any single customer would have a material adverse effect on us.
Our Services and Solutions
We offer a variety of business process services to our customers. These services can be purchased individually or they can be purchased in combination with others in the form of supply chain solutions and aftermarket product support. The two major categories of services and solutions provided up to November 30, 2020 included Technology Solutions and Concentrix:
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Technology Solutions. We have sophisticated pick, pack and ship operations, which allows us to efficiently receive shipments from our OEM suppliers and quickly fill orders for our reseller and retail customers. We generally stock or otherwise have access to the inventory of our OEM suppliers to satisfy the demands of our reseller and retail customers. In addition, we design and integrate energy efficient and cost-effective data center servers which are built specific to the data center environments and actual workloads of our large-scale data center customers.
The above services are complemented by the following:
Systems Design and Integration Solutions. We provide our customers with systems design and full rack integration solutions, build-to-order, and configure-to-order assembly capabilities. In both of these cases, we offer design, integration, test and other production value-added solutions such as thermal testing, power-draw efficiency testing, burn-in, quality and logistics support.
Logistics Services. We provide logistics support to our reseller customers such as outsourced fulfillment, virtual distribution and direct ship to end-users. Other logistics support activities we provide include generation of customized shipping documents, multi-level serial number tracking for customized, configured products and online order and shipment tracking. We also offer full turn-key logistics solutions designed to address the needs of large volume or specialty logistics services. Our full turn-key service offering is modular in nature and is designed to cover all aspects of the logistics life cycle including, transportation management, inventory optimization, complementary product matching, reverse logistics, asset refurbishment and disposal and strategic procurement.
Cloud Services. We provide cloud-based solutions and services to our reseller customers to enable sales of and migration to technologies in a hosted environment to small and medium businesses. Our proprietary cloud platform offers a complete package of cloud-based solutions on a user-friendly platform and allows our reseller customers and OEM vendors to own the complete customer lifecycle through direct billing, provisioning, management, and support. Our solutions cover all end-user customer needs, including, pure public cloud solutions in productivity and collaboration, IaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, PaaS, or Platform as a Service, SaaS, or Software as a Service, Security, Mobility, IoT, or Internet of Things, and other hybrid solutions. Our dedicated cloud team comprising developers, sales engineers and solutions specialists, supports our reseller customers in the sales of these solutions.
Online Services. We maintain electronic data interchange, or EDI, extensible markup language, or XML, web-based communication links and mobile applications with many of our reseller and retail customers. These links improve the speed and efficiency of our transactions with our customers by enabling them to search for products, check inventory availability and prices, configure systems, place and track orders, receive invoices, review account status and process returns. We also have web-based application software that allows our customers or their end-user customers to order software and take delivery online.
Financing Services. We offer our reseller customers a wide range of financing options, including net terms, third party leasing, floor plan financing and letters-of-credit backed financing and arrangements where we collect payments directly from the end-user. We also lease products to our reseller customers and their end-users and provide device-as-a-service to end-users. The availability and terms of our financing services are subject to our credit policies or those of third-party financing providers to our customers.
Marketing Services. We offer our OEM suppliers a full range of marketing activities targeting resellers, system integrators and retailers including direct mail, external media advertising, reseller product training, targeted telemarketing campaigns, national and regional trade shows, trade groups, database analysis, print on demand services and web-based marketing.
Concentrix. Our Concentrix segment represented 19%, 20% and 12% of our consolidated revenue in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively. We offered a portfolio of technology-infused comprehensive solutions and end-to-end business outsourcing services to approximately 650 clients around the world in five primary industry verticals.
We operated from over 284 locations in numerous countries throughout the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa. Services were provided from these global locations to clients worldwide in more than 70 languages. Our portfolio of services was sold as integrated solutions to clients which included:
Customer Lifecycle Management. Services provided to our clients’ customers across multiple media, such as intelligent self-service, voice, chat, social, messaging, email and knowledge management, supported our client’s entire customer care lifecycle. This included services such as welcome and activation calls, billing, payments, product and service inquiries, complaint resolution, customer surveys and emergency response. We also provided back office support for these processes which include document management, claims management, fraud prevention, mortgage document verification, rebate management as a few examples. We also provided services that provide feedback to our clients. This was provided through a dedicated team of professionals to deliver data-driven insights to our clients to improve the customer experience through analytics and consulting, and software solutions, such as, Enterprise Feedback Management/Multi-channel, Voice of Customer Software, Integrated Customer Experience Analytics, Post-Contact Surveys, Relational Loyalty Research, Customer Segmentation and Profiling, Call Elimination Analysis, Analysis of Customer Effort, Digital Channel Optimization, and Integrated Contact Center Analytics.
Marketing Solutions. Our services included data-driven customer acquisition and retention marketing solutions across digital, social, mobile and print channels that helped our clients manage their marketing through a diverse distribution channel enabling each constituent in the channel to participate in targeting end customers with the right brand experience. We also supported our client’s loyalty and incentive programs, event administration, point of purchase and targeted lifecycle messaging to customers through services as described in our Customer Lifecycle Management services.
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Third Party Administration of Insurance Policies. We were a licensed Third Party Administrator of certain types of insurance policies that were managed through our proprietary insurance management system as well as other third-party systems. The services were provided primarily in the United States.
Enterprise Mobile Development. We provided mobile application development across multiple industries for both IOS and Android devices that are focused on Enterprise deployments. Services within this group included UX/UI designed/development, optimization of applications and movement of on-premise systems to the cloud.
Automation and Process Optimization. We delivered focused front office solutions with workflows and macro/desktop automation that drive improved staff efficiency and implemented cognitive systems/robotic process automation to replace manual touch points. These services used both internal technology assets as well as third party tools.
Technology Assets. We licensed a number of our technology assets without being bundled with services which enabled our clients to be more efficient, drive higher visibility to data and identify valuable customer patterns and insights from enterprise data to design better customer experience strategies. These assets were used within our portfolio of services as well.
Sales and Marketing
In our Technology Solutions segment, we serve our large commercial, government reseller, and retail customers through dedicated sales professionals. We market to smaller resellers and OEMs through dedicated regional sales teams. In addition, we have dedicated product management and business development specialists that focus on the sale and promotion of products and services of selected suppliers or for specific end-market verticals. These specialists are also directly involved in establishing new relationships with leading OEMs to create demand for their products and services and with resellers for their customers’ needs. We also have a direct sales approach for our design and integration solutions business. Our sales and marketing professionals are complemented by members of our executive management team who are integral in identifying potential new customer opportunities, promoting sales growth and ensuring customer satisfaction. We have sales and marketing professionals in close geographic proximity to our reseller, retail and OEM customers.
In our Concentrix segment, we marketed our services through a sales force organized by industry vertical and geography. The length of our selling cycle varied depending on the type of engagement. Our efforts could begin in response to our lead generation program, a perceived opportunity, a reference by an existing client, a request for proposal or otherwise. The sales cycle varied depending on the type of services, as well as the existence of established relationships with the client.
We had designated client partners or global relationship managers for each of our strategic relationships. The relationship manager was supported by process improvement, quality, transition, finance, human resources, information technology and industry or subject matter expert teams to ensure the best possible solution is provided to our clients.
We also strived to foster relationships between our senior leadership team and our clients’ senior management. These “C-level” relationships ensured that both parties were focused on establishing priorities, aligning objectives and driving client value from the top down. High-level executive relationships were particularly constructive as a means of increasing business from our existing clients. It also provided us with a forum for addressing client concerns. We constantly measured our client satisfaction levels to ensure that we maintained high service levels for each client.
Our Operations
In our Technology Solutions segment, we operate approximately 63 distribution and administrative facilities in the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, China, and Central and South America. Our distribution processes are highly automated to reduce errors, ensure timely order fulfillment and enhance the efficiency of our warehouse operations and back office administration. Our distribution facilities are geographically dispersed to be near reseller customers and their end-users. This decentralized, regional strategy enables us to benefit from lower shipping costs and shorter delivery lead times to our customers. Furthermore, we track several performance measurements to continuously improve the efficiency and accuracy of our distribution operations. Our regional locations also enable us to make local deliveries and provide will-call fulfillment to more customers than if our distribution operations were more centralized, resulting in better service to our customers. Our workforce is comprised of permanent and temporary employees, enabling us to respond to short-term changes in order activity.
Our proprietary IT systems and processes enable us to automate many of our distribution operations. We use radio frequency and bar code scanning technologies in all of our warehouse operations to maintain real-time inventory records, facilitate frequent cycle counts and improve the accuracy of order fulfillment.
To enhance the accuracy of our distribution order fulfillment and protect our inventory from shrinkage, our distribution systems also incorporate numerous controls. These controls include order weight checks, bar code scanning, and serial number profile verification. We also use digital video imaging to record our small package shipping activities by order. These images and other warehouse and shipping data are available online to our customer service representatives, enabling us to quickly respond to order inquiries by our customers.
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We operate our principal system design and integration solutions facilities in the United States, and we operate integration facilities in the United Kingdom and China. We generally design and integrate IT systems, data center servers and networking solutions and IT appliances, by incorporating system components purchased directly from vendors or obtained from our distribution inventory. Additionally, we perform other production value-added services, including thermal testing, power-draw efficiency testing, burn-in, quality and logistics support. Some of our design and integration solutions facilities are ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 certified.
In our Concentrix segment, we had global delivery capability which allowed us to scale people and other resources from around the world, including foreign language fluency, proximity to clients and time-zone advantages. A critical component of this capability was our over 284 delivery and administrative centers in 40 countries throughout North and South America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa. Our delivery centers improved the efficiency of our engagement teams through the reuse of processes, solution designs and infrastructure by leveraging the experience of delivery center professionals. Services were provided from these global locations to clients worldwide in multiple languages. These services were supported by proprietary technology to enable efficient and secure customer contact through various methods including voice, chat, web, email, social media and digital and mobility competencies by providing improved business intelligence and performance through enabling technologies. All of our delivery centers were PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council's Data Security Standards) version 3.2.1 certified. All of our delivery centers were certified to ISO standards. Twenty-nine of our delivery centers around the world were certified to COPC (Customer Operation Performance Center) OSP standard.
We operated a distributed data processing environment that could integrate service delivery center data servers and databases with nineteen data centers and point of presence strategically located across the globe. Our technologically-advanced and secured data centers provided availability 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with redundant power and communication feeds and emergency power back-up, and were designed to withstand most natural disasters.
The capacity of our data center and contact center operations, coupled with the scalability of our customer management solutions, enabled us to meet the changing needs of large-scale and rapidly growing companies and government entities. By employing the scale and efficiencies of common application platforms, we could provide client-specific enhancements and modifications without incurring many of the costs of a full custom application, which positioned us as a value-added provider of customer support products and services.
International Operations
Approximately 34% of our consolidated revenue for fiscal year 2020 was generated by our international operations. Our end market strategy for our Technology Solutions business, while focused on the Americas, is expanding internationally on a selective basis in order to provide our distribution capabilities to OEMs in locations that meet their regional requirements. A key element in our business strategy had been to locate our Concentrix service delivery contact centers in markets that were strategic to our client requirements and cost beneficial. Our Concentrix segment had significant operations in the Philippines and India.
Sales and cost concentrations in foreign jurisdictions subject us to various risks, including the impact of changes in the value of these foreign currencies relative to the US Dollar, which in turn can impact reported sales.
See Note 11 -- Segment Information to the Consolidated Financial Statements included in Item 8 of this Report for additional financial information related to international and domestic operations.
Seasonality
Our operating results in the Technology Solutions segment are affected by the seasonality of the IT and CE products industries. We have historically experienced higher sales in our fourth fiscal quarter due to patterns in capital budgeting, federal government spending and purchasing cycles of our customers and end-users. These patterns may not be repeated in subsequent periods.
Revenue in our Concentrix segment was typically the highest in our fourth fiscal quarter.
Purchasing
In our Technology Solutions segment, product cost represents our single largest expense and IT and CE product inventory is one of our largest working capital investments. Furthermore, product procurement from our OEM suppliers is a highly complex process that involves incentive programs, rebate programs, price protection, volume and early payment discounts and other arrangements. Consequently, efficient and effective purchasing operations are critical to our success.
Our purchasing group works closely with many areas of our organization, especially our product managers who work closely with our OEM suppliers and our sales force, to understand the volume and mix of IT products that should be purchased.
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In addition, the purchasing group utilizes an internally developed, proprietary information systems application that further aids in forecasting future product demand based on several factors, including historical sales levels, expected product life cycle and current and projected economic conditions. We may also rely on our receipt of good-faith, non-binding, customer forecasts. We maintain electronic data interchange, or EDI, connection with our OEM suppliers to send purchase orders, receive purchase order status and receive notification once the product has shipped from our supplier. Our information system also tracks warehouse and channel inventory levels and open purchase orders on a real-time basis enabling us to stock inventory at a regional level closer to the customer as well as to actively manage our working capital resources. This level of automation promotes greater efficiencies of inventory management by replenishing and turning inventory, as well as placing purchase orders on a more frequent basis. Furthermore, our system tool also allows for automated checks and controls to prevent the generation of inaccurate orders.
Managing our OEM supplier incentive programs is another critical function of our purchasing and product management teams. We attempt to maximize the benefits of incentives, rebates and volume and early payment discounts that our OEM suppliers offer us from time to time. We carefully evaluate these supplier incentive benefits relative to our product handling and carrying costs so that we do not over-invest in our inventory. We also closely monitor inventory levels on a product-by-product basis and plan purchases to take advantage of OEM supplier provided price protection. By managing inventory levels and monitoring customer purchase patterns at each of our regional distribution facilities, we believe we can minimize our shipping costs by stocking products near our resellers and retailers, and their end-user customers.
Financial Services
In our Technology Solutions segment, we offer various financing options to our customers as well as prepayment, credit card and cash on delivery terms. In providing credit terms to our reseller and retail customers, we closely and regularly monitor their creditworthiness through our information systems, credit ratings information and periodic detailed credit file reviews by our financial services staff. We have also purchased credit insurance in some geographies to further control credit risks. Finally, we establish reserves for estimated credit losses in the normal course of business based on the overall quality and aging of our accounts receivable portfolio, the existence of a limited amount of credit insurance and specifically identified customer risks.
We also sell to certain reseller customers pursuant to third party floor plan financing. The expenses charged by these financing companies are subsidized either by our OEM suppliers or paid by us. We generally receive payment from these financing companies within 15 to 30 days from the date of sale, depending on the specific arrangement.
Information Technology
Within our Technology Solutions segment, our IT systems manage the entire order cycle, including processing customer orders, customer billing and payment tracking. These internally developed IT systems make our operations more efficient and provide visibility into our operations. We believe our IT infrastructure is scalable to support further growth. We continue to enhance and invest in our IT systems to improve product and inventory management, streamline order and fulfillment processes, and increase operational flexibility.
To allow our customers and suppliers to communicate and transact business with us in an efficient and consistent manner, we have implemented a mix of proprietary and off-the-shelf software programs that integrate our IT systems with those of our customers and suppliers. In particular, we maintain EDI, XML, web-based communication links and mobile platform applications with many of our reseller and retail customers to enable them to search for products, check real-time pricing, inventory availability and specifications, place and track orders, receive invoices and process returns.
Within our Concentrix segment, we invested in IT systems, infrastructure, automation and security to enhance workforce management and improve productivity. Our contact centers could employ a broad range of technology, including digital switching, intelligent call routing and tracking, proprietary workforce management systems, case management tools, proprietary software systems, computer telephony integration, interactive voice response, advanced speech recognition, web-based tools and relational database management systems with embedded security. Our innovative use of technology enabled us to improve our voice, chat, web and e-mail handling and personnel scheduling, thereby increasing our efficiency and enhancing the quality of the services we delivered to our clients and their customers. We were able to respond to changes in client call volumes and manage call volume traffic based on agent availability. Additionally, we could use this technology to collect information concerning the contacts, including number, response time, duration and results of the contact and report the information to the client on a periodic basis for purposes of monitoring quality of service and accuracy of billing.
Competition
We operate in a highly competitive global environment. The IT product industry is characterized by intense competition, based primarily on product availability, credit terms, price, speed and accuracy of delivery, effectiveness of sales and marketing programs, ability to tailor specific solutions to customer needs, quality and depth of product lines, pre- and post-sale technical support, flexibility and timely response to design changes, technological capabilities and product quality, service and support. We compete with a variety of regional, national and international IT product distributors and manufacturers.
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Our major competitors in our Technology Solutions segment include Arrow Electronics, Inc., Ingram Micro, Inc., ScanSource, Inc., and Tech Data Corporation and, to a lesser extent, regional distributors. We also face competition from our OEM suppliers that sell directly to resellers, retailers and end-users. The distribution industry has historically undergone, and continues to undergo, consolidation. Over the years, a number of providers within the IT distribution industry exited or merged with other providers. For example, during fiscal year 2017, we acquired the Westcon-Comstor Americas distribution business and Tech Data Corporation acquired the Technology Solutions operating group of Avnet Inc. We have participated in this consolidation and expect to continue to assess opportunities.
As we enter new business areas, we may encounter increased competition from our current competitors and/or new competitors. Some of our competitors are substantially larger and may have greater financial, operating, manufacturing and marketing resources than us. Some of our competitors may have broader geographic breadth and range of services than us. Some may have more developed relationships with their existing customers. In the Technology Solutions segment we attempt to offset our comparative scale difference by focusing on a limited number of leading OEMs by running a more efficient and low-cost operation, and by offering a high level of value-added and customer services. In the Concentrix Segment, we attempted to offset our comparative scale difference through efficiency, low-cost operations and by offering a high level of value-added customer services.
In our Concentrix segment, we operated in a highly competitive and rapidly evolving global marketplace. Our competitors were both regional players as well as global companies. Our major competitors included Accenture plc, Genpact Limited, Teleperformance S.A., TTEC Holdings, Inc., Conduent, Inc., Transcosmos Inc., Sykes Enterprises Inc., and Globant S.A.
We constantly seek to expand our business into areas primarily related to our core distribution as well as other support, logistics and related value-added services, both organically and through strategic acquisitions.
Human Capital Resources
As of November 30, 2020, we had approximately 270,000 full-time associates. Approximately 7,500 of those full-time associates worked in our Technology Solutions segment. Given the variability in our business and the quick response time required by customers, it is critical that we are able to rapidly ramp-up and ramp-down our operational capabilities to maximize efficiency. As a result, we use temporary or contract workers, who totaled approximately 7,900, on a full-time equivalent basis, as of November 30, 2020, approximately 1,300 of whom worked in our Technology Solutions segment. Except for a small number of our employees in certain countries, where it is required by local regulations or associates brought in through acquisitions, our employees are not represented by a labor union, nor are they covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace that attracts and retains exceptional talent. Through ongoing employee development, comprehensive compensation and benefits, and a focus on health, safety and employee wellbeing, we strive to help our employees in all aspects of their lives so they can do their best work. With the completion of the Separation on December 1, 2020, our discussion about our human capital resources is focused on our Technology Solutions segment.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
We are committed to being unconditionally inclusive to capture the ideas and perspectives that fuel innovation and enable our workforce, customers, and communities to succeed in the digital age. We strive to create an inclusive workplace where people can bring their authentic selves to work. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion starts at the top with a highly skilled and diverse board of directors. Women represent 25% of our board of directors and 43% of our associate base. We strive to remain a diverse company. Robert Huang, founder of our company, wanted to ensure we had the best associates regardless of their age, ethnicity, or gender. His legacy and our primary focus is to work hard, do well, and treat others with respect.
Pay Equity or Total Rewards
We believe people should be paid for what they do and how they do it, regardless of their gender, race, or other personal characteristics. To deliver on that commitment, we benchmark and set pay ranges based on market data and consider factors such as an employee’s role and experience, the location of their job, and their performance. We also review our compensation practices, both in terms of our overall workforce and individual employees, to ensure our pay is fair and equitable. We have reviewed the compensation of employees to ensure consistent pay practices by conducting a pay equity analysis annually comparing employees in the same role within a country/location.
We require a uniquely talented workforce and are committed to providing total rewards that are market-competitive and performance-based, driving innovation and operational excellence. Our compensation programs, practices, and policies reflect our commitment to reward short- and long-term performance that aligns with, and drives, stockholder value. Total direct compensation is generally positioned within a competitive range of the market median, with differentiation based on tenure, skills, proficiency, and performance to attract and retain key talent.
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Employee Engagement
We regularly collect feedback to better understand and improve the employee experience and identify opportunities to continually strengthen our culture. We want to know what is working well, what we can do better and how well our associates understand and are practicing our cultural values. In 2020, nearly 80% of associates participated in our annual employee survey.
Training and Development
Human capital development underpins our efforts to execute our strategy and continue to distribute, design, integrate and market innovative products and services. We continually invest in our employees’ career growth and provide employees with a wide range of development opportunities, including face-to-face, virtual, social and self-directed learning, mentoring, coaching, and external development.
Health, Safety and Wellness
The physical health, financial wellbeing, life balance and mental health of our employees is vital to our success. Our environmental, health, and safety leadership team uses our global injury and illness reporting system to assess trends regionally and worldwide as a part of quarterly reviews. Our warehouse and integration facilities continue to represent our most significant health and safety risks. Managing and reducing risks at these facilities remains a focus, and injury rates continue to be low. We also sponsor a wellness program designed to enhance physical, financial, and mental wellbeing for all our employees. Throughout the year, we encourage healthy behaviors through regular communications, educational sessions, voluntary progress tracking, wellness challenges, and other incentives. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have taken an integrated approach to helping our associates manage their work and personal responsibilities, with a strong focus on employee wellbeing, health and safety. We have successfully transitioned most of our workforce in both segments to a remote working environment and implemented a number of safety and social distancing measures within our premises to protect the health and safety of associates who are required to be on-premise to support our business.
Available Information
Our website is http://www.synnex.com. We make available free of charge, on or through our website, our Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports, if any, or other filings filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act as soon as reasonably practicable after electronically filing or furnishing these reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. Information contained on our website is not a part of this Report. We have adopted a code of ethics applicable to our employees including our principal executive, financial and accounting officers, and it is available free of charge, on our website’s investor relations page.
The SEC maintains an Internet site at http://www.sec.gov that contains our Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports, if any, or other filings filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act, and our proxy and information statements.
Item 1A. Risk Factors
The following discussion is divided into five sections. The first section, which begins immediately following this paragraph, discusses some of the risks that may affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The second section, captioned “Risks Related to Our Relationship with MiTAC Holdings Corporation,” discusses risks relating to MiTAC’s influence over us. The third section, captioned “Risks Related to our Industry,” discusses risk impacting businesses operating in our industry. The fourth section, captioned “Risks Related to the Separation,” discusses some of the risks relating to the separation of Concentrix into an independent publicly-traded company. The fifth section, captioned “Risks Related to the Macroeconomic and Regulatory Environment,” relates to risks which broadly affect companies operating in regions that we do. With the completion of the Separation on December 1, 2020, our discussion about our risks is focused on our Technology Solutions segment. You should carefully review all of these sections, as well as our consolidated financial statements and notes thereto and the other information appearing in this report, for important information regarding risks that affect us. These risk factors should be considered in connection with evaluating the forward-looking statements contained in this Report because these factors could cause the actual results and conditions to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Before you invest in our Company, you should know that making such an investment involves some risks, including the risks described below. The risks that have been highlighted here are not the only ones that we face. If any of the risks actually occur, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be negatively affected. In that case, the trading price of our common stock could decline, and you may lose all or part of your investment.
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Risks Related to Our Business and Operations
We anticipate that our revenue and operating results will fluctuate, which could adversely affect the enterprise value of our Company and our securities.
Our operating results have fluctuated and will fluctuate in the future as a result of many factors, including:
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the impact of the business acquisitions and dispositions we make; |
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general economic conditions and level of IT and CE spending and outsourced business services; |
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the loss or consolidation of one or more of our significant OEM suppliers or customers; |
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market acceptance, quality, pricing, availability and useful life of our products and services, as well as the mix of our products and services sold; |
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competitive conditions in our industry; |
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trends towards cloud based infrastructure and “as-a-Service” type product offerings; |
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pricing, margin and other terms with our OEM suppliers; |
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decline in inventory value as a result of product obsolescence and market acceptance; |
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variations in our levels of excess inventory, vendor reserves and doubtful accounts; |
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fluctuations in rates in the currencies in which we transact; |
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changes in the terms of OEM supplier-inventory protections, such as price protection and return rights; and |
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the expansion of our design and integration solutions sales and operations, globally. |
Although we attempt to control our expense levels, these levels are based, in part, on anticipated revenue. Therefore, we may not be able to control spending in a timely manner to compensate for any unexpected revenue shortfall.
Our operating results are affected by the seasonality of the IT and CE products and services industry. We have historically experienced higher sales in our fourth fiscal quarter due to patterns in the capital budgeting, federal government spending and purchasing cycles of end-users. These patterns may not be repeated in subsequent periods. You should not rely on period-to-period comparisons of our operating results as an indication of future performance. In future years, our operating results may be below our expectations or those of our public market analysts or investors, which would likely cause our share price to decline.
We are subject to uncertainties and variability in demand by our customers, which could decrease revenue and adversely affect our operating results, and we have customer contracts with provisions that could cause fluctuations in our revenue.
We sell to our customers on a purchase order basis, rather than pursuant to long-term contracts or contracts with minimum purchase requirements. Consequently, our sales are subject to demand variability by our customers. The level and timing of orders placed by our customers vary for a variety of reasons, including seasonal buying by end-users, the introduction of new hardware and software technologies and general economic conditions. Customers submitting a purchase order may cancel, reduce or delay their orders. If we are unable to anticipate and respond to the demands of our reseller, retail and design and integration solutions customers, we may lose customers because we have an inadequate supply of products, or we may have excess inventory, either of which could harm our business, financial position and operating results.
With regard to our design and integration solutions customers, unique parts are purchased based both on customer purchase orders and forecasted demand. We have limited protection against excess inventory should anticipated demand not materialize.
We depend on a limited number of OEMs to supply the IT and CE products and services that we sell and the loss of, or a material change in, our business relationship with a major OEM supplier could adversely affect our business, financial position and operating results.
Our future success is highly dependent on our relationships with a small number of OEM suppliers. For example, sales of HP products and services comprised approximately 12%, 12% and 13% of our consolidated revenue for fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively. Our OEM supplier agreements typically are short-term and may be terminated without cause upon short notice. The loss or deterioration of our relationship with HP or any other major OEM supplier, the authorization by OEM suppliers of additional distributors, the sale of products by OEM suppliers directly to our reseller and retail customers and end-users, or our failure to establish relationships with new OEM suppliers or to expand the distribution and supply chain services that we provide OEM suppliers could adversely affect our business, financial position and operating results. In addition, OEM suppliers may face liquidity or solvency issues that in turn could negatively affect our business and operating results.
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Our business is also highly dependent on the terms provided by our OEM suppliers. Generally, each OEM supplier has the ability to change the terms and conditions of its distribution agreements, such as reducing the amount of price protection and return rights or reducing the level of purchase discounts, incentive rebates and marketing programs available to us.
From time to time we may conduct business with a supplier without a formal agreement because the agreement has expired or was otherwise terminated. In such case, we are subject to additional risk with respect to products, warranties and returns, and other terms and conditions. If we are unable to pass the impact of these changes through to our reseller and retail customers, our business, financial position and operating results could be adversely affected.
Our gross margins are low, which magnifies the impact of variations in gross margin, operating costs and our operating results.
As a result of significant price competition in the IT and CE products and services industry, our gross margins are low, and we expect them to continue to be low in the future. Increased competition arising from industry consolidation and low demand for certain IT and CE products and services may hinder our ability to maintain or improve our gross margins. These low gross margins magnify the impact of variations in revenue and operating costs on our operating results. A portion of our operating expense is relatively fixed, and planned expenditures are based in part on anticipated orders that are forecasted with limited visibility of future demand. As a result, we may not be able to reduce our operating expense to sufficiently mitigate any further reductions in gross profit or margin in the future. If we cannot proportionately decrease our cost structure in response to competitive price pressures, our business and operating results could suffer.
We also receive purchase discounts and rebates from OEM suppliers based on various factors, including sales or purchase volume and breadth of customers. A decrease in net sales could negatively affect the level of volume rebates received from our OEM suppliers and thus, our gross margin. Because some rebates from OEM suppliers are based on percentage increases in sales of products, it may become more difficult for us to achieve the percentage growth in sales required for larger discounts due to the current size of our revenue base. A decrease or elimination of purchase discounts and rebates from our OEM suppliers would adversely affect our business and operating results.
We are subject to the risk that our inventory value may decline, and protective terms under our OEM supplier agreements may not adequately cover the decline in value, which in turn may harm our business, financial position and operating results.
The IT and CE products industry is subject to rapid technological change, new and enhanced product specification requirements, and evolving industry standards. These changes may cause inventory on hand to decline substantially in value or to rapidly become obsolete. Most of our OEM suppliers offer limited protection from the loss in value of inventory. For example, we can receive a credit from many OEM suppliers for products held in inventory in the event of a supplier price reduction. In addition, we have a limited right to return a certain percentage of purchases to most OEM suppliers. These policies are often subject to time restrictions and do not protect us in all cases from declines in inventory value. In addition, our OEM suppliers may become unable or unwilling to fulfill their protection obligations to us. The decrease or elimination of price protection, or the inability of our OEM suppliers to fulfill their protection obligations, could lower our gross margins and cause us to record inventory write-downs. If we are unable to manage our inventory with our OEM suppliers with a high degree of precision, we may have insufficient product supplies or we may have excess inventory, resulting in inventory write-downs, either of which could harm our business, financial position and operating results.
We depend on OEM suppliers to maintain an adequate supply of products to fulfill customer orders on a timely basis, and any supply shortages or delays could cause us to be unable to timely fulfill orders, which in turn could harm our business, financial position and operating results.
Our ability to obtain particular products in the required quantities and to fulfill reseller and retail customer orders on a timely basis is critical to our success. In most cases, we have no guaranteed price or delivery agreements with our OEM suppliers. We occasionally experience a supply shortage of certain products as a result of strong demand or problems experienced by our OEM suppliers. If shortages or delays persist, the price of those products may increase, or the products may not be available at all. Such delays could also impact our ability to procure critical components required to complete customer orders. In addition, our OEM suppliers may decide to distribute, or to substantially increase their existing distribution business, through other distributors, their own dealer networks, or directly to resellers, retailers or end-users. Accordingly, if we are not able to secure and maintain an adequate supply of products to fulfill our customer orders on a timely basis, our business, financial position and operating results could be adversely affected.
We experience customer concentration and intense competition which could adversely impact our revenue.
Our business experiences customer concentration from time to time. One customer accounted for 19%, of our consolidated revenue in fiscal years 2020 and 2019 and 17%, in fiscal year 2018. While we do not believe that the loss of any single customer would have a material adverse effect on us, such loss could result in an adverse impact on certain of our businesses. For example, our systems design and integration solutions product line has significant customer concentration, requires investments in working capital and infrastructure, and has customer contracts that often offer limited or no volume guarantees or protection for end-of-life investments. The loss of a customer or reduction in order volumes could adversely impact our revenue, provision for inventory losses, the absorption of fixed overhead costs and our future expansion plans. The systems design and integration solutions business operates in a competitive environment. Volumes can fluctuate based on customer demand, delivery quality and the competitive landscape. Our
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ability to deliver customized solutions on a timely basis is critical to our success. Any delay could impact our competitive position and result in loss of customer orders, which could impact our financial position and operating results.
The market for CE products that we distribute is characterized by short product life cycles. Increased competition for limited retailer shelf space, decreased promotional support from resellers or retailers or increased popularity of downloadable or online content and services could adversely impact our revenue.
The market for CE products, such as personal computers and tablets, mobile devices, wearable devices, video game titles and hardware, and audio or visual equipment, is characterized by short product life cycles and frequent introductions of new products. The markets in which we compete frequently introduce new products to meet changing consumer preferences and trends. As a result, competition is intense for resellers’ and retailers’ limited shelf space and promotions. If our vendors’ new products are not introduced in a timely manner or do not achieve significant market acceptance, we may not generate sufficient sales or profitability. Further, if we are unable to successfully compete for resellers’ or retailers’ space and promotional resources, this could negatively impact market acceptance of our products and negatively impact our business and operating results.
We have pursued and intend to continue to pursue strategic acquisitions or investments in new markets and may encounter risks associated with these activities, which could harm our business and operating results.
We have in the past pursued, and in the future expect to pursue, acquisitions of, or investments in, businesses and assets in new markets, either within or outside the IT and CE products and services industries and the customer experience services industry, that complement or expand our existing business. Our acquisition strategy involves a number of risks, including:
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difficulty in successfully integrating acquired operations, IT systems, customers, OEM supplier relationships, products, services and businesses with our operations; |
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risk that the acquired businesses will fail to maintain the quality of services that we have historically provided; |
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loss of key employees of acquired operations or inability to hire key employees necessary for our expansion; |
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diversion of our capital and management attention away from other business issues; |
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increase in our expenses and working capital requirements; |
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in the case of acquisitions that we may make outside of the United States, difficulty in operating in foreign countries and over significant geographical distances; |
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other financial risks, such as potential liabilities of the businesses we acquire; and |
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our due diligence process may fail to identify significant issues with the acquired company’s product and service quality, financial disclosures, accounting practices or internal control deficiencies. |
We may incur additional costs and certain redundant expenses in connection with our acquisitions and investments, which may have an adverse impact on our operating margins. Future acquisitions may result in dilutive issuances of equity securities, the incurrence of additional debt, large write-offs, a decrease in future profitability, or future losses. The incurrence of debt in connection with any future acquisitions could restrict our ability to obtain working capital or other financing necessary to operate our business. Our recent and future acquisitions or investments may not be successful, and if we fail to realize the anticipated benefits of these acquisitions or investments, our business and operating results could be harmed.
Our goodwill and identifiable intangible assets could become impaired, which could have a material non-cash adverse effect on our results of operations.
We recorded substantial goodwill and amortizable intangible assets as a result of our previous acquisitions. We review our goodwill and intangible assets for impairment when events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value may not be recoverable. We assess whether there has been an impairment in the value of goodwill at least annually. Factors that may be considered a change in circumstances indicating that the carrying value of our goodwill or intangible assets may not be recoverable include declines in stock price, market capitalization or cash flows and slower growth rates in our industry. We could be required to record a significant charge to earnings in our financial statements during the period in which any impairment of our goodwill or intangible assets were determined, negatively impacting our results of operations.
Because of the capital-intensive nature of our business, we need continued access to capital, which if not available to us or if not available on favorable terms, could harm our ability to operate or expand our business.
Our business requires significant levels of capital to finance accounts receivable and product inventory that is not financed by trade creditors. If cash from available sources is insufficient, proceeds from our accounts receivable securitization and revolving credit programs are limited or cash is used for unanticipated needs, we may require additional capital sooner than anticipated.
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In the event we are required, or elect, to raise additional funds, we may be unable to do so on favorable terms, or at all, and may incur expenses in raising the additional funds. Our current and future indebtedness could adversely affect our operating results and severely limit our ability to plan for, or react to, changes in our business or industry. We could also be limited by financial and other restrictive covenants in securitization or credit arrangements, including limitations on our borrowing of additional funds and issuing dividends. Furthermore, the cost of securitization or debt financing could significantly increase in the future, making it cost prohibitive to securitize our accounts receivable or borrow, which could force us to issue new equity securities. If we issue new equity securities, existing stockholders may experience dilution, or the new equity securities may have rights, preferences or privileges senior to those of existing holders of common stock. If we cannot raise funds on acceptable terms, we may not be able to take advantage of future opportunities or respond to competitive pressures or unanticipated requirements. Any inability to raise additional capital when required could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
We have significant credit exposure to our customers, and negative trends in their businesses could cause us significant credit loss and negatively impact our cash flow and liquidity position.
We extend credit to our customers for a significant portion of our sales to them and they have a period of time, generally 30 days after the date of invoice, to make payment. However, in certain cases, for some of our larger customers, we offer longer terms of payment. As a result, we are subject to the risk that our customers will not pay on time or at all. Our credit exposure risk may increase due to financial difficulties or liquidity or solvency issues experienced by our customers, resulting in their inability to repay us. The liquidity or solvency issues may increase as a result of an economic downturn or a decrease in IT or CE spending by end-users. If we are unable to collect payments in a timely manner from our customers due to changes in financial or economic conditions, or for other reasons, and we are unable to collect under our credit insurance policies, we may write-off the amount due from the customers. These write-offs may result in credit insurance being more expensive and on terms that are less favorable to us and may negatively impact our ability to utilize accounts receivable-based financing. In addition, the failure of customers to pay within a specified time period after the date of an invoice could result in defaults under our accounts receivable securitization program. These circumstances could negatively impact our cash flow and liquidity position, or result in the cross-default to our other indebtedness and acceleration of the repayment of our indebtedness. Further, we are exposed to higher collection risk as we continue to expand internationally, where the payment cycles are generally longer and the credit rating process may not be as robust as in the United States, and where our access to accounts receivable financing is more limited.
We are dependent on a variety of IT and telecommunications systems and the Internet, and any failure of these systems could adversely impact our business and operating results.
We depend on IT and telecommunications systems and the Internet for our operations. These systems support a variety of functions including inventory management, order processing, shipping, shipment tracking, and billing.
Failures or significant downtime of our IT or telecommunications systems could prevent us from taking customer orders, printing product pick-lists, shipping products, billing customers and handling call volume. Sales also may be affected if our reseller and retail customers are unable to access our pricing and product availability information. We also rely on the Internet, and in particular EDI and XML, for a large portion of our orders and information exchanges with our OEM suppliers and reseller and retail customers. The Internet and individual websites have experienced a number of disruptions and slowdowns, some of which were caused by organized attacks. In addition, some websites have experienced security breakdowns. If we were to experience a security breakdown, disruption or breach that compromised sensitive information, it could harm our relationship with our OEM suppliers and reseller and retail customers. Disruption of our website or the Internet in general could impair our order processing or more generally prevent our OEM suppliers and reseller and retail customers from accessing information. A significant increase in our IT costs or a temporary or permanent loss of our IT systems could harm our relationships with our customers. The occurrence of any of these events could have an adverse effect on our operations and financial results.
Because of the experience of our key personnel in the IT, CE and the customer experience services industries and their technological and industry expertise, if we were to lose any of our key personnel, it could inhibit our ability to operate and grow our business successfully.
We are dependent in large part on our ability to retain the services of our key senior executives and other technological and industry experts and personnel. Except for Dennis Polk, our President and Chief Executive Officer, we generally do not have employment agreements with our executives or employees. We also do not carry “key person” insurance coverage for any of our key executives. We compete for qualified senior management and technical personnel. The loss of, or inability to hire, key executives or qualified employees could inhibit our ability to operate and grow our business successfully.
We may experience theft of product from our warehouses, water damage to our properties and other casualty events which could harm our operating results.
From time to time, we have experienced incidents of theft at various facilities, water damages to our properties and other casualty events. These types of incidents may make it more difficult or expensive for us to obtain insurance coverage in the future. Also, the same or similar incidents may occur in the future for which we may not have sufficient insurance coverage or policy limits to be fully compensated for the loss, which may have an adverse effect on our business and financial results.
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We may become involved in intellectual property or other disputes that could cause us to incur substantial costs, divert the efforts of our management, and require us to pay substantial damages or require us to obtain a license, which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.
From time to time, we receive notifications alleging infringements of intellectual property rights allegedly held by others relating to our business or the products we sell or integrate for our OEM suppliers and others. Litigation with respect to patents or other intellectual property matters could result in substantial costs and diversion of management and other resources and could have an adverse effect on our business. Although we generally have various levels of indemnification protection from our OEM suppliers and design and integration solutions customers, in many cases any indemnification to which we may be entitled is subject to maximum limits or other restrictions.
In addition, we have developed proprietary IT systems, mobile applications, and cloud-based technology and acquired technologies that play an important role in our business. If any infringement claim is successful against us and if indemnification is not available or sufficient, we may be required to pay substantial damages or we may need to seek and obtain a license of the other party’s intellectual property rights. We may be unable to obtain such a license on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.
We are from time to time involved in other litigation in the ordinary course of business. We may not be successful in defending these or other claims. Regardless of the outcome, litigation could result in substantial expense and could divert the efforts of our management.
We have significant operations concentrated in North and Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe and any disruption in the operations of our facilities could harm our business and operating results.
Our worldwide operations could be subject to natural disasters, adverse weather conditions and other business disruptions, which could seriously harm our revenue and financial condition and increase our costs and expenses. We have significant operations in our facilities located in North and Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. As a result, any prolonged disruption in the operations of our facilities, whether due to technical difficulties, power failures, break-ins, destruction or damage to the facilities as a result of a natural disaster, fire or any other reason, could harm our operating results. If there are related disruptions in local or international supply chains, we may experience supply shortages or delays in receiving products from our OEM suppliers or experience other delays in shipping to our customers. If we are unable to fulfill customer requirements in a timely manner, this could harm our operating results. We currently have a disaster recovery plan and business interruption insurance; however, they may not be sufficient to compensate for losses that may occur.
The terms of our debt arrangements impose significant restrictions on our ability to operate which in turn could negatively affect our ability to respond to business and market conditions and therefore could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
As of November 30, 2020, we had $2.8 billion, including obligations of Concentrix, in outstanding short and long-term borrowings under term loans, lines of credit, accounts receivable securitization programs and capital leases, excluding trade payables. Subsequent to November 30, 2020, upon completion of the Separation, our outstanding borrowings totaled $1.6 billion. The terms of one or more of the agreements under which this indebtedness was incurred may limit or restrict, among other things, our ability to:
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incur additional indebtedness; |
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make investments; |
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pay dividends or make certain other restricted payments; |
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repurchase common stock; |
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consummate certain asset sales or acquisitions; |
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enter into certain transactions with affiliates; and |
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merge, consolidate or sell, assign, transfer, lease, convey or otherwise dispose of all or substantially all of our assets. |
We are also required to maintain specified financial ratios and satisfy certain financial condition tests under certain of our debt facilities. Our inability to meet these ratios and tests could result in the acceleration of the repayment of the related debt, termination of the applicable facility, an increase in our effective cost of funds or the cross-default of other credit and securitization arrangements. As a result, our ability to operate may be restricted and our ability to respond to business and market conditions may be limited, which could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
We may not be able to generate sufficient cash to service all of our indebtedness and may be forced to take other actions to satisfy our obligations, which could adversely affect our business.
Our ability to make scheduled debt payments or to refinance our debt obligations depends on our financial and operating performance, which is subject to prevailing economic and competitive conditions and to certain financial, business and other factors
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beyond our control. We cannot be certain that we will maintain a level of cash flows from operating activities sufficient to permit us to pay the principal and interest on our indebtedness.
If our cash flows and capital resources are insufficient to fund our debt service obligations we may be forced to reduce or delay capital expenditures, sell assets or operations, seek additional capital or restructure or refinance our indebtedness. We cannot be certain that we would be able to take any of these actions, that these actions would be successful and permit us to meet our scheduled debt service obligations or that these actions would be permitted under the terms of our existing or future debt agreements. In the absence of such operating results and resources, we could face substantial liquidity problems and might be required to dispose of material assets or operations to meet our debt service and other obligations. Some of our credit facilities restrict our ability to dispose assets and use the proceeds from such disposition. As such, we may not be able to consummate those dispositions or use any resulting proceeds and, in addition, such proceeds may not be adequate to meet any debt service obligations then due.
If we cannot make scheduled payments on our debt, we will be in default and, as a result:
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our lenders could declare all outstanding principal and interest to be due and payable; |
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the lenders under our credit agreements could terminate their commitments to loan us money and, in the case of our secured credit agreements, foreclose against the assets securing their borrowings; |
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we could be forced to raise additional capital through the issuance of additional, potentially dilutive securities; and |
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we could be forced into bankruptcy or liquidation, which is likely to result in delays in the payment of our indebtedness and in the exercise of enforcement remedies related to our indebtedness. |
If the interest rates on our borrowings increase, our access to capital and net income could be adversely affected.
Our borrowings and securitization arrangements are variable-rate obligations and expose us to interest rate risks. If interest rates increase, debt service obligations and our interest expense will increase even though the amount borrowed remains the same. Our net income and cash flows, including cash available for servicing indebtedness, will correspondingly decrease.
An increase in interest rates may increase our future borrowing costs and restrict our access to capital. Additionally, current market conditions, the recovering global economy, and overall credit conditions could limit our availability of capital, which could cause increases in interest margin spreads over underlying indices, effectively increasing the cost of our borrowing. While some of our credit facilities have contractually negotiated spreads, any changes to these spreads in connection with renegotiations of our credit facilities could adversely affect our results of operations.
We have entered into interest rate swaps with financial institutions to effectively convert a portion of our floating rate debt to a fixed interest rate to manage our exposure to fluctuations in interest rates. In the event of the nonperformance by the counterparties, we are exposed to credit losses.
A portion of our revenue is financed by floor plan financing companies and any termination or reduction in these financing arrangements could increase our financing costs and harm our business and operating results.
A portion of our product distribution revenue is financed by floor plan financing companies. Floor plan financing companies are engaged by our customers to finance, or floor, the purchase of products from us. In exchange for a fee, we transfer the risk of loss on the sale of our products to the floor plan companies. We currently receive payment from these financing companies within approximately 15 to 30 days from the date of the sale, which allows our business to operate at much lower relative working capital levels than if such programs were not available. If these floor plan arrangements are terminated or substantially reduced, the need for more working capital and the increased financing cost could harm our business and operating results.
Risks Related to Our Relationship with MiTAC Holdings Corporation
The concentration of ownership of our common stock among our executive officers, directors and principal stockholders could allow them to influence all matters requiring stockholder approval and could delay or prevent a change in control of SYNNEX.
As of November 30, 2020, our executive officers, directors and principal stockholders owned approximately 20% of our outstanding common stock. In particular, MiTAC Holdings Corporation (“MiTAC Holdings”) and its affiliates owned approximately 18% of our common stock. MiTAC Holdings is a publicly-traded company on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. As a result, these stockholders have the potential ability to influence matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and the approval of mergers and acquisitions, or exert influence on actions of our Board of Directors. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of delaying, preventing or deterring a change of control of our company, could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock as part of a sale of our company and might ultimately affect the market price of our common stock.
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There could be potential conflicts of interest between us and MiTAC Holdings and its affiliates, which could affect our business and operating results.
MiTAC Holdings’ and its affiliates’ continuing beneficial ownership of our common stock could create conflicts of interest with respect to a variety of matters, such as potential acquisitions, competition, issuance or disposition of securities, election of directors, payment of dividends and other business matters. For example, we currently purchase inventories from MiTAC Holdings. Similar risks could exist as a result of Matthew Miau’s positions as our Chairman Emeritus, a member of our Board of Directors, the Chairman of MiTAC Holdings and as a director or officer of MiTAC Holdings’ affiliates. For fiscal year 2020, Mr. Miau received the same compensation as our independent directors and during fiscal year 2021 Mr. Miau will receive the same compensation as our independent directors. Mr. Miau’s compensation as one of our directors is based upon the approval of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, which is solely composed of independent members of the Board of Directors. We also have adopted a policy requiring material transactions in which any of our directors has a potential conflict of interest to be approved by our Audit Committee, which is also composed of independent members of the Board of Directors.
Synnex Technology International Corp., or Synnex Technology International, a publicly-traded company based in Taiwan and affiliated with MiTAC Holdings, currently provides distribution and fulfillment services to various markets in Asia and Australia, and is also a potential competitor of ours. As of November 30, 2020, MiTAC Incorporated, a privately-held company based in Taiwan and a separate entity from MiTAC Holdings, directly and indirectly owned approximately 15.2% of Synnex Technology International and approximately 8.7% of MiTAC Holdings. As of November 30, 2020, MiTAC Holdings directly and indirectly owned 0.9% of Synnex Technology International. In addition, MiTAC Holdings directly and indirectly owned approximately 8.7% of MiTAC Incorporated and Synnex Technology International directly and indirectly owned approximately 18.4% of MiTAC Incorporated as of November 30, 2020. Synnex Technology International indirectly through its ownership of Peer Developments Limited owned approximately 7.5% of our outstanding common stock as of November 30, 2020. Neither MiTAC Holdings, nor Synnex Technology International is restricted from competing with us. In the future, we may increasingly compete with Synnex Technology International, particularly if our business in Asia expands or Synnex Technology International expands its business into geographies or customers we serve. Although Synnex Technology International is a separate entity from us, it is possible that there will be confusion as a result of the similarity of our names. Moreover, we cannot limit or control the use of the Synnex name by Synnex Technology International in certain geographies and our use of the Synnex name may be restricted as a result of registration of the name by Synnex Technology International or the prior use in jurisdictions where it currently operates.
Risks Related to Our Industry
Volatility in the IT and CE industries could have a material adverse effect on our business and operating results.
We have in the past, experienced decreases in demand and we anticipate that the industries we operate in will be subject to a high degree of cyclicality in the future. Softening demand for our products and services caused by an ongoing economic downturn and over-capacity may impact our revenue, as well the salability of inventory and collection of reseller and retail customer accounts receivable. In addition, if we are not able to adequately adapt to the emergence of new technology or customer demand, such as cloud-based IT infrastructure and software-as-a-service, our future operating results could be adversely affected.
We are subject to intense competition, both in the United States and internationally, and if we fail to compete successfully, we will be unable to gain or retain market share.
We operate in a highly competitive environment, both in the United States and internationally. This competition is based primarily on product and service availability, credit availability, price, speed of delivery, ability to tailor specific solutions to customer needs, quality and depth of product and service lines, pre-sales and post-sales technical support, flexibility and timely response to design changes, and technological capabilities, service and support. We compete with a variety of regional, national and international IT and CE product and service providers and contract manufacturers and assemblers and providers of customer experience services. In some instances, we also compete with our own customers, our own OEM suppliers and MiTAC Holdings and its affiliates.
Our primary competitors are substantially larger and have greater financial, operating, manufacturing and marketing resources than us. Some of our competitors may have broader geographic breadth and range of services than us and may have more developed relationships with their existing customers. We may lose market share in the United States or in international markets, or may be forced in the future to reduce our prices in response to the actions of our competitors and thereby experience a reduction in our gross margins.
We may initiate other business activities, including the broadening of our supply chain capabilities, and may face competition from companies with more experience in those new areas. In addition, as we enter new areas of business, we may also encounter increased competition from current competitors or from new competitors, including some that may once have been our OEM suppliers or reseller and retail customers. Increased competition and negative reaction from our OEM suppliers or reseller and retail customers resulting from our expansion into new business areas could harm our business and operating results.
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Our business may be adversely affected by some OEM suppliers’ strategies to consolidate business or increase their direct sales, which in turn could cause our business and operating results to suffer.
A determination by any of our primary OEMs to consolidate their business with other distributors or integration service providers could negatively affect our business and operating results. Consolidation of OEM suppliers has resulted in fewer sources for some of the products and services that we distribute. This consolidation has also resulted in larger OEM suppliers that have significant operating and financial resources. Other suppliers may reduce or eliminate promotional activities to reduce their expenses, which could, in turn, result in declined demand from our reseller or retailer customers and end-users.
Some OEM suppliers, including some of the leading OEM suppliers that we service, have been selling products and services directly to reseller and retail customers and end-users, thereby limiting our business opportunities. If large OEM suppliers increasingly sell directly to end-users or our resellers and retailers, rather than use us as the distributor of their products and services, our business and operating results will suffer.
The IT and CE industries are subject to rapidly changing technologies and process developments, and we may not be able to adequately adjust our business to these changes, which in turn would harm our business and operating results.
Dynamic changes in the IT and CE industries, including the consolidation of OEM suppliers and reductions in the number of authorized distributors used by OEM suppliers, have resulted in new and increased responsibilities for management personnel and have placed, and continue to place, a significant strain upon our management, operating and financial systems and other resources. We may be unable to successfully respond to and manage our business in light of industry developments and trends. As end-users migrate to cloud-based IT infrastructure and software-as-a-service, sales of hardware products may be reduced, thereby negatively impacting our operating results. Also crucial to our success in managing our operations is our ability to achieve additional economies of scale. Our failure to achieve these additional economies of scale or to respond to changes in the IT and CE industries could adversely affect our business and operating results.
Risks Related to the Separation
We or Concentrix may fail to perform under the transaction agreements executed as part of the Separation, which in turn may adversely affect our business.
In connection with the Separation, we and Concentrix entered into several agreements, including among others a separation and distribution agreement and an employee matters agreement. The separation and distribution agreement and employee matters agreement determine the allocation of assets and liabilities between the companies following the Separation for those respective areas and include any necessary indemnifications related to liabilities and obligations. Concentrix has spun off and some of its obligations under these and other agreements have transferred to the successor entities. We will rely on Concentrix or its successor entities to satisfy their performance and payment obligations under these agreements. If Concentrix or its successor entities are unable to satisfy their obligations under these agreements, we could incur operational difficulties or losses that could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
The Separation may not achieve some or all of the anticipated benefits, which may in turn affect our business and stock price.
We may not realize some or all of the anticipated strategic, financial, operational, marketing or other benefits from the Separation, or such benefits may be delayed by a variety of circumstances, which may not be under our control or Concentrix’. As independent publicly-traded companies, we and Concentrix will be smaller, less diversified companies with a narrower business focus and may be more vulnerable to changing market conditions, which could materially and adversely affect our respective business, financial condition and results of operations. Further, there can be no assurance that the combined value of the common stock of the two publicly-traded companies will be equal to or greater than what the value of our common stock would have been had the proposed Separation not occurred.
If the Separation fails to qualify for tax-free treatment, it could result in substantial tax liability for the Company.
We have obtained an opinion that, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, the Separation will qualify as a tax-free reorganization under Sections 368(a)(1)(D) and 355 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, to us and our United States stockholders. The opinion we received will not be binding on the IRS or any court. Accordingly, there can be no assurance that the IRS will not challenge the conclusions reflected in the opinion or that a court would not sustain such a challenge. If the Separation fails to qualify for tax-free treatment, we would be subject to tax as if we had sold the stock of Concentrix in a taxable sale for its fair market value, which would result in substantial tax liability for us, and our stockholders would be subject to tax on the fair market value of the Concentrix stock received in the Separation.
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Risks Related to the Macro-Economic and Regulatory Environment
The widespread outbreak of an illness or any other communicable disease, or any other public health crisis, could adversely affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.
We could be negatively impacted by the widespread outbreak of an illness or any other communicable disease, or any other public health crisis that results in economic and trade disruptions, including the disruption of global supply chains. In December 2019, there was an outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus, COVID-19. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the global economy, disrupted global supply chains and workforce participation due to “shelter-in-place” restrictions by various governments worldwide and created significant volatility and disruption of financial markets. This has adversely impacted our results of operations during fiscal year 2020. The extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our future operational and financial performance, including our ability to execute our business strategies and initiatives in the expected time frame, will depend on future developments, including the duration and spread of the pandemic and related restrictions on travel and transports, the effect on our customers and demand for our products and services; our ability to sell and provide our products and services, including as a result of travel restrictions and people working remotely; the ability of our customers to pay for our solutions; and any closures of our or our customers’ offices and facilities all of which are uncertain and cannot be predicted.
An extended period of global supply chain and economic disruption could materially affect our business, our results of operations, our access to sources of liquidity, the carrying value of our goodwill and intangible assets, our financial condition and our stock price.
Changes in foreign currency exchange rates and limitations on the convertibility of foreign currencies could adversely affect our business and operating results.
Approximately 34%, 34% and 28% of our revenues in fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively, were generated outside the United States. Most of our international revenue, cost of revenue and operating expenses are denominated in foreign currencies. In Latin America, our revenue is generally denominated in local currencies while cost of revenue is denominated in U.S. dollars. We presently have currency exposure arising from both sales and purchases denominated in foreign currencies. Changes in exchange rates between foreign currencies and the U.S. dollar may adversely affect our operating margins. For example, if these foreign currencies appreciate against the U.S. dollar, it will be more expensive in terms of U.S. dollars to purchase inventory or pay expenses with foreign currencies. This could have a negative impact on us if revenue related to these purchases is transacted in U.S. dollars. In addition, currency devaluation can result in our products, the majority of which are purchased by us in U.S. dollars, to be relatively more expensive to procure than products manufactured locally. We currently conduct only limited hedging activities, which involve the use of currency forward contracts. Hedging foreign currencies can be risky. Certain of these hedge positions are undesignated hedges of balance sheet exposures, such as intercompany loans, and typically have maturities of less than one year.
There is also additional risk if the currency is not freely or actively traded. Some currencies, such as the Chinese Renminbi are subject to limitations on conversion into other currencies, which can limit our ability to hedge or to otherwise react to rapid foreign currency devaluations. We cannot predict the impact of future exchange rate fluctuations on our business and operating results.
We do not use derivative financial instruments for speculative trading purposes, nor do we hedge our foreign currency exposure in a manner that entirely offsets the effects of changes in foreign exchange rates.
As a general rule, we do not use financial instruments to hedge local currency denominated operating expenses in countries where a natural hedge exists. For example, in many countries, revenue from the local currency services substantially offsets the local currency denominated operating expenses.
We rely on independent shipping companies for delivery of products, and price increases or service interruptions from these carriers could adversely affect our business and operating results.
We rely almost entirely on arrangements with independent shipping companies, such as FedEx and UPS, for the delivery of our products from OEM suppliers and delivery of products to reseller and retail customers. Freight and shipping charges can have a significant impact on our gross margin. As a result, an increase in freight surcharges due to rising fuel cost or general price increases will have an immediate adverse effect on our margins, unless we are able to pass the increased charges to our reseller and retail customers or renegotiate terms with our OEM suppliers. In addition, in the past, carriers have experienced work stoppages due to labor negotiations with management. An increase in freight or shipping charges, the termination of our arrangements with one or more of these independent shipping companies, the failure or inability of one or more of these independent shipping companies to deliver products, or the unavailability of their shipping services, even temporarily, could have an adverse effect on our business and operating results.
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Because we conduct substantial operations in China, risks associated with economic, political and social events in China could negatively affect our business and operating results.
A substantial portion of our IT systems operations, including our IT systems support and software development operations, are located in China. In addition, we also conduct general and administrative activities from our facilities in China. Our operations in China are subject to a number of risks relating to China’s economic and political systems, including:
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a government controlled foreign exchange rate and limitations on the convertibility of the Chinese Renminbi; |
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extensive government regulation; |
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changing governmental policies relating to tax benefits available to foreign-owned businesses; |
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the telecommunications infrastructure; |
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a relatively uncertain legal system; and |
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uncertainties related to continued economic and social reform. |
Our IT systems are an important part of our global operations. Any significant interruption in service, whether resulting from any of the above uncertainties, natural disasters or otherwise, could result in delays in our inventory purchasing, errors in order fulfillment, reduced levels of customer service and other disruptions in operations, any of which could cause our business and operating results to suffer.
We may have higher than anticipated tax liabilities.
We conduct business globally and file income tax returns in various tax jurisdictions. Our effective tax rate could be adversely affected by several factors, many of which are outside of our control, including:
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changes in income before taxes in various jurisdictions in which we operate that have differing statutory tax rates; |
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changing tax laws, regulations, and/or interpretations of such tax laws in multiple jurisdictions; |
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effect of tax rate on accounting for acquisitions and dispositions; |
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issues arising from tax audit or examinations and any related interest or penalties; and |
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uncertainty in obtaining tax holiday extensions or expiration or loss of tax holidays in various jurisdictions. |
We report our results of operations based on our determination of the amount of taxes owed in various tax jurisdictions in which we operate. The determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires estimation, judgment and calculations where the ultimate tax determination may not be certain. Our determination of tax liability is always subject to review or examination by tax authorities in various tax jurisdictions. Any adverse outcome of such review or examination could have a negative impact on our operating results and financial condition. The results from various tax examinations and audits may differ from the liabilities recorded in our financial statements and could adversely affect our financial results and cash flows.
Cyberattacks or the improper disclosure or control of personal information could result in liability and harm our reputation, which could adversely affect our business.
Our business is heavily dependent upon information technology networks and systems. Internal or external attacks on those networks and systems could disrupt our normal operations centers and impede our ability to provide critical products and services to our customers and clients, subjecting us to liability under our contracts and damaging our reputation.
Our business also involves the use, storage and transmission of information about our employees, and customers. If any person, including any of our employees, negligently disregards or intentionally breaches our established controls with respect to such data or otherwise mismanages or misappropriates that data, we could be subject to monetary damages, fines or criminal prosecution.
While we take measures to protect the security of, and prevent unauthorized access to, our systems and personal and proprietary information, the security controls for our systems, as well as other security practices we follow, may not prevent improper access to, or disclosure of, personally identifiable or proprietary information. Furthermore, data privacy is subject to frequently changing rules and regulations, which sometimes conflict among the various jurisdictions and countries in which we provide services. The General Data Protection Regulation in Europe, the California Consumer Privacy Act and other similar laws have resulted, and will continue to result, in increased compliance costs. Our failure to adhere to or successfully implement processes in response to these and other changing regulatory requirements in this area could result in legal liability or impairment to our reputation in the marketplace, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. We could also face legal, reputational and financial risks if we fail to protect customer and internal data from security breaches or cyberattacks.
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Global health and economic, political and social conditions may harm our ability to do business, increase our costs and negatively affect our stock price.
Worldwide economic conditions remain uncertain due to adverse consequences concerning the United States and China trade negotiations, market volatility as a result of political leadership in certain countries and other disruptions to global and regional economies and markets. External factors, such as potential terrorist attacks, acts of war, geopolitical and social turmoil or epidemics and other similar outbreaks in many parts of the world, could prevent or hinder our ability to do business, increase our costs and negatively affect our stock price. More generally, these geopolitical, social and economic conditions could result in increased volatility in the United States and worldwide financial markets and economy. For example, increased instability may enhance volatility in currency exchange rates, cause our customers or potential customers to delay or reduce spending on our products or services, and limit our suppliers’ access to credit. It could also adversely impact our ability to obtain adequate insurance at reasonable rates and may require us to incur increased costs for security measures for our domestic and international operations. We are predominantly uninsured for losses and interruptions caused by terrorism, acts of war and similar events. These uncertainties make it difficult for us and our suppliers and customers to accurately plan future business activities.
Part of our business is conducted outside of the United States, exposing us to additional risks that may not exist in the United States, which in turn could cause our business and operating results to suffer.
We have significant international operations and presence which subjects us to risks, including:
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political or economic instability; |
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extensive governmental regulation; |
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changes in import/export duties; |
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fluctuation in foreign currency exchange rates; |
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trade restrictions; |
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compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, U.K. bribery laws and similar laws; |
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difficulties and costs of staffing and managing operations in certain foreign countries; |
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work stoppages or other changes in labor conditions; |
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minimum wage increases; |
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difficulties in collecting accounts receivable on a timely basis or at all; |
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taxes; and |
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seasonal reductions in business activity in some parts of the world. |
We may continue to expand internationally to respond to competitive pressure and customer and market requirements. Establishing operations in any foreign country or region presents risks such as those described above as well as risks specific to the particular country or region. In addition, until a payment history is established over time with customers in a new geography or region, the likelihood of collecting accounts receivable generated by such operations could be less than our expectations. As a result, there is a greater risk that reserves set with respect to the collection of such accounts receivable may be inadequate. Furthermore, if our international expansion efforts in any foreign country are unsuccessful, we may decide to cease operations, which would likely cause us to incur additional expense and loss.
In addition, changes in policies or laws of the United States or foreign governments resulting in, among other things, higher taxation, currency conversion limitations, restrictions on fund transfers or the expropriation of private enterprises, could reduce the anticipated benefits of our international expansion. Any actions by countries in which we conduct business to reverse policies that encourage foreign trade or investment could adversely affect our business. If we fail to realize the anticipated growth of our future international operations, our business and operating results could suffer.
If we are unable to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, our ability to report our financial results on a timely and accurate basis may be adversely affected, which in turn could cause the market price of our common stock to decline.
Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires our management to report on, and our independent registered public accounting firm to attest to, the effectiveness of our internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting. We completed an evaluation of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting for fiscal year 2020, and we have an ongoing program to
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perform the system and process evaluation and testing necessary to continue to comply with these requirements. However, internal control over financial reporting has inherent limitations, including human error, the possibility that controls could be circumvented or become inadequate because of changed conditions, and fraud. Because of the inherent limitations, misstatements due to error or fraud may occur and may not always be prevented or timely detected. We expect to continue to incur significant expense and to devote management resources to Section 404 compliance. In the event that one of our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer or independent registered public accounting firm determines that our internal control over financial reporting is not effective as defined under Section 404, investor perceptions and our reputation may be adversely affected, and the market price of our stock could decline.
Changes to financial accounting standards may affect our results of operations and cause us to change our business practices.
We prepare our financial statements to conform to generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (“GAAP”). These accounting principles are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the SEC and various bodies formed to interpret and create appropriate accounting policies. A change in those policies can have a significant effect on our reported results and may affect our reporting of transactions completed before a change is announced. Changes to those rules or the questioning of current practices may adversely affect our reported financial results or the way we conduct our business.
The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (“EU”) could adversely impact our business, results of operations and financial condition.
On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom left the EU (“Brexit”). The United Kingdom and EU entered into a new trade agreement in December 2020, subject to final approval by the European Parliament. In addition, the United Kingdom is in the process of negotiating trade agreements with the United States and certain other countries The most significant impact of the new agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU are new regulations regarding trade, tax, security and employees, among others, in the United Kingdom. Compliance with such regulations could be costly, negatively impacting our business, results of operations and financial condition.
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
None.
Item 2. Properties
Our principal executive offices are located in Fremont, California, and are owned by us. We operate distribution, integration, contact center and administrative facilities in different countries.
Our Technology Solutions segment occupies approximately 63 facilities covering approximately 6.1 million square feet and includes warehouse, logistics and administrative facilities. We own approximately 2.1 million square feet of property and lease the remainder.
Our Concentrix segment occupied approximately 284 facilities comprising service and delivery centers and administrative facilities covering approximately 16.8 million square feet. We owned approximately 1.3 million square feet and leased the remainder.
We have sublet unused portions of some of our facilities. We believe our facilities are well maintained and adequate for current and near future operating needs. Upon the expiration or termination of any of our leased facilities, we believe we could obtain comparable office space.
Item 3. Legal Proceedings
We are from time to time involved in legal proceedings in the ordinary course of business. We do not believe that these proceedings will have a material adverse effect on the results of our operations, our financial position or the cash flows of our business.
In addition, we have been involved in various bankruptcy preference actions where we were a supplier to the companies now in bankruptcy. These preference actions are filed by the bankruptcy trustee on behalf of the bankrupt estate and generally seek to have payments made by the debtor within 90 days prior to the bankruptcy returned to the bankruptcy estate for allocation among all of the bankruptcy estate’s creditors. We are not currently involved in any material preference proceedings.
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Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures
Not applicable.
Information About our Executive Officers
The following table sets forth information regarding our executive officers as of November 30, 2020:
Name |
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Age |
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Position |
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Dennis Polk |
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54 |
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President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director |
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Michael Urban |
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56 |
|
President, Worldwide Technology Solutions Distribution |
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Peter Larocque |
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59 |
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President, North American Technology Solutions |
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Marshall Witt |
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55 |
|
Chief Financial Officer |
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Christopher Caldwell |
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48 |
|
Executive Vice President; President, Concentrix Corporation |
||
Simon Leung |
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55 |
|
Senior Vice President; General Counsel and Corporate Secretary |
Dennis Polk is our President and Chief Executive Officer and has served in this capacity since March 2018. Mr. Polk is also a Director and has served in this capacity since February 2012. Mr. Polk previously served as our Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance since joining us in February 2002. Mr. Polk is also a director on the board of Concentrix Corporation and Terreno Realty Corporation. At Terreno, he is the Chair of the Compensation Committee.
Michael Urban is our President of Worldwide Technology Solutions Distribution and has served in this capacity since February 2019. Prior to joining SYNNEX, Mr. Urban was Corporate Vice President of Strategy, Transformation, and Global Vendor Management of Tech Data Corporation from September 2012 until January 2019. Prior to Tech Data Corporation, Mr. Urban served in progressive leadership roles including Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Actebis. Mr. Urban received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Paderborn University in Germany.
Peter Larocque is President, North American Technology Solutions and has served in this capacity since November 2013, having previously served as President of U.S. Distribution since July 2006, Executive Vice President of Distribution since June 2001, and Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing from September 1997 until June 2001. Mr. Larocque is responsible for SYNNEX’ North American Technology Solutions business. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Marshall Witt is our Chief Financial Officer and has served in this capacity since April 2013. Prior to joining SYNNEX, Mr. Witt was Senior Vice President of Finance and Controller with FedEx Freight. During his fifteen year tenure with FedEx Corporation, Mr. Witt held progressive financial and operational roles. Prior to FedEx Corporation, he held accounting and finance leadership positions including five years with KPMG LLP as an audit manager for banking and transportation clients. Mr. Witt holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Pacific Lutheran University and a Masters in Accounting from Seattle University and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Christopher Caldwell served as Executive Vice President and President of Concentrix Corporation and has served in this capacity from February 2014 to the date of the Separation on December 1, 2020. He previously served as President of Concentrix Corporation from June 2012 to February 2014, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Concentrix Corporation from March 2007 to June 2012, and Senior Vice President, Global Business Development from March 2007 to June 2012. Mr. Caldwell joined SYNNEX in 2004 as Vice President, Emerging Business through the acquisition of EMJ Data Systems Ltd. Effective December 1, 2020, pursuant to the Separation, Mr. Caldwell resigned from SYNNEX.
Simon Leung is our Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary and has served in this capacity since May 2001. Mr. Leung joined SYNNEX in November 2000 as Corporate Counsel. Prior to SYNNEX, Mr. Leung was an attorney at the law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP. Mr. Leung received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Davis in International Relations and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Minnesota Law School.
22
PART II
Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
Our common stock, par value $0.001, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE, under the symbol “SNX.”
As of January 22, 2021, our common stock was held by approximately 4,400 stockholders of record. Because many of the shares of our common stock are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of beneficial owners represented by these stockholders of record.
Stock Price Performance Graph
The stock price performance graph below, which assumes a $100 investment on November 30, 2015, compares our cumulative total stockholder return, the NYSE Composite Index, S&P Midcap 400 Index, Computer and Peripheral Equipment index and a peer group of our Concentrix segment for the period beginning November 30, 2015 through November 30, 2020. The Computer and Peripheral Equipment index is based on the Standard Industrial Classification Code 5045—Wholesale Computer and Computer Peripheral Equipment and Software. The companies selected to form the Concentrix peer group index include Accenture plc, Genpact Limited, Teleperformance S.A., TTEC Holdings Inc., Conduent Inc., Transcosmos Inc., Sykes Enterprises, Inc., and Globant S.A. The closing price per share of our common stock was $160.31 on November 30, 2020. The comparisons in the table are required by the SEC and are not intended to forecast or be indicative of possible future performance of our common stock.
|
|
Fiscal Years Ended |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
11/30/2015 |
|
|
11/30/2016 |
|
|
11/30/2017 |
|
|
11/30/2018 |
|
|
11/30/2019 |
|
|
11/30/2020 |
|
||||||
SYNNEX Corporation |
|
$ |
100.00 |
|
|
$ |
125.15 |
|
|
$ |
147.08 |
|
|
$ |
88.42 |
|
|
$ |
136.52 |
|
|
$ |
178.70 |
|
NYSE Composite Index |
|
$ |
100.00 |
|
|
$ |
107.09 |
|
|
$ |
128.06 |
|
|
$ |
129.69 |
|
|
$ |
144.98 |
|
|
$ |
153.61 |
|
S&P Midcap 400 Index |
|
$ |
100.00 |
|
|
$ |
113.23 |
|
|
$ |
134.21 |
|
|
$ |
134.86 |
|
|
$ |
146.80 |
|
|
$ |
161.04 |
|
Computers and Peripheral Equipment |
|
$ |
100.00 |
|
|
$ |
154.69 |
|
|
$ |
161.26 |
|
|
$ |
161.90 |
|
|
$ |
185.91 |
|
|
$ |
160.85 |
|
Concentrix Peer Group |
|
$ |
100.00 |
|
|
$ |
111.90 |
|
|
$ |
143.20 |
|
|
$ |
158.34 |
|
|
$ |
199.69 |
|
|
$ |
246.46 |
|
23
Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans
Information regarding the Securities Authorized for Issuance under Equity Compensation Plans can be found under Item 12 of this Report.
Dividends
On September 29, 2014, we announced the initiation of a quarterly cash dividend. Since then, dividends have been declared in January, March, June and September and paid at the end of January, April, July and October. On March 24, 2020, as a result of the unpredictable economic environment due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we announced the suspension of our quarterly dividend. Dividends declared per share by fiscal quarter in 2020 and 2019 were as follows:
|
|
Fiscal Years Ended |
|
|||||
|
|
2020 |
|
|
2019 |
|
||
First Quarter |
|
$ |
0.400 |
|
|
$ |
0.375 |
|
Second Quarter |
|
$ |
— |
|
|
$ |
0.375 |
|
Third Quarter |
|
$ |
— |
|
|
$ |
0.375 |
|
Fourth Quarter |
|
$ |
— |
|
|
$ |
0.375 |
|
On January 11, 2021, we announced the reinstatement of a quarterly cash dividend of $0.20 per share to stockholders of record as of January 22, 2021, payable on January 29, 2021. Dividends are subject to continued capital availability, compliance with the covenants and conditions in some of our credit facilities and the declaration by our Board of Directors in the best interest of our stockholders.
Purchases of Equity Securities
In June 2020, our Board of Directors authorized a three-year $400 million share repurchase program, effective July 1, 2020, pursuant to which we may repurchase our outstanding common stock from time to time in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions. As of November 30, 2020, we had not repurchased any shares under this program.
In June 2017, our Board of Directors authorized a three-year $300 million share repurchase program, effective July 1, 2017, pursuant to which we may repurchase our outstanding common stock from time to time in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions. During the fiscal year 2020, we repurchased shares of our common stock aggregating 35,000 for an aggregate purchase price of $3.4 million under this program. Through the expiration of this program in June 2020, we had repurchased 874,517 shares of our common stock for a total cost of $84.6 million. The share purchases were made on the open market and the shares repurchased by us are held in treasury for general corporate purposes.
24
Item 6. Selected Financial Data
The following selected consolidated financial data are qualified by reference to, and should be read together with, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” included in Item 7 of this Report and the Consolidated Financial Statements and related Notes included in Item 8 of this Report. The selected Consolidated Statements of Operations and other data presented below for fiscal years 2020, 2019 and 2018 and the consolidated balance sheet data as of November 30, 2020 and 2019 have been derived from our audited Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this Report. The Consolidated Statements of Operations and other data for fiscal years 2017 and 2016 and the Consolidated Balance Sheet data as of November 30, 2018, 2017 and 2016 have been derived from our Consolidated Financial Statements that are not included in this Report. The Consolidated Statements of Operations data include the operating results from our acquisitions from the closing date of each acquisition. Historical operating results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for any future period. Please see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and Notes 2 and 3 to our Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this Report for a discussion of factors, such as business combinations and the adoption of new accounting guidance, that affect the comparability of the following selected consolidated financial data.
|
|
Fiscal Years Ended November 30, |
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
2020 |
|
|
2019 |
|
(1) |
2018 |
|
|
2017 |
|
|
2016 |
|
|||||
Statements of Operations Data: (in thousands, except per share amounts) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Revenue |
|
$ |
24,675,563 |
|
|
$ |
23,757,293 |
|
|
$ |
19,767,945 |
|
|
$ |
16,771,128 |
|
|
$ |
14,061,837 |
|
Gross profit |
|
|
2,847,604 |
|
|
|
2,897,917 |
|
|
|
1,926,899 |
|
|
|
1,549,312 |
|
|
|
1,282,965 |
|
Operating income |
|
|
830,103 |
|
|
|
813,761 |
|
|
|
550,236 |
|
|
|
507,337 |
|
|
|
379,596 |
|
Net income |
|
|
529,160 |
|
|
|
500,712 |
|
|
|
299,981 |
|
|
|
300,240 |
|
|
|
235,005 |
|
Earnings per common share: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Basic: |
|
$ |
10.28 |
|
|
$ |
9.79 |
|
|
$ |
7.21 |
|
|
$ |
7.52 |
|
|
$ |
5.91 |
|
Diluted: |
|
$ |
10.21 |
|
|
$ |
9.74 |
|
|
$ |
7.17 |
|
|
$ |
7.48 |
|
|
$ |
5.88 |
|
Cash dividends declared per share |
|
$ |
0.40 |
|
|
$ |
1.50 |
|
|
$ |
1.40 |
|
|
$ |
1.05 |
|
|
$ |
0.85 |
|
________________________________
(1) |
We adopted Accounting Standards Update No. 2014-19, “Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606),” during fiscal year 2019 on a full retrospective basis from fiscal year 2017. The amounts for fiscal year 2016 has not been adjusted to reflect the adoption of this new revenue standard. |
|
|
As of November 30, |
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
2020 |
|
(1) |
2019 |
|
|
2018 |
|
|
2017 |
|
|
2016 |
|
|||||
Balance Sheet Data: (in thousands) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cash and cash equivalents |
|
$ |
1,564,672 |
|
|
$ |
225,529 |
|
|
$ |
454,694 |
|
|
$ |
550,688 |
|
|
$ |
380,717 |
|
Working capital |
|
|
3,139,035 |
|
|
|
2,845,870 |
|
|
|
2,209,190 |
|
|
|
1,703,249 |
|
|
|
1,518,498 |
|
Total assets |
|
|
13,468,590 |
|
|
|
11,697,960 |
|
|
|
11,543,498 |
|
|
|
7,756,343 |
|
|
|
5,215,281 |
|
Borrowings, current |
|
|
158,715 |
|
|
|
298,969 |
|
|
|
833,216 |
|
|
|
805,471 |
|
|
|
362,889 |
|
Long-term borrowings |
|
|
2,608,061 |
|
|
|
2,718,267 |
|
|
|
2,622,782 |
|
|
|
1,136,089 |
|
|
|
601,095 |
|
Total equity |
|
|
4,338,860 |
|
|
|
3,788,450 |
|
|
|
3,435,054 |
|
|
|
2,287,297 |
|
|
|
1,975,798 |
|
________________________________
(1) We adopted Accounting Standards Codification Topic 842, Leases effective December 1, 2019, applying the optional transition method, which allows an entity to apply the new standard at the adoption date with a cumulative effect adjustment to the opening balance of retained earnings in the period of adoption.
|
|
Fiscal Years Ended November 30, |
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
2020 |
|
|
2019 |
|
|
2018 |
|
|
2017 |
|
|
2016 |
|
|||||
Other Data: (in thousands) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Depreciation and amortization |
|
$ |
341,637 |
|
|
$ |
372,108 |
|
|
$ |
225,287 |
|
|
$ |
159,886 |
|
|
$ |
121,293 |
|
25
Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
For an understanding of SYNNEX and the significant factors that influenced our performance during the past two fiscal years, the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with the description of the business appearing in Item 1 of this Report, Selected Consolidated Financial Data and Item 8 Financial Statements and Supplementary Data included elsewhere in this Report. You should carefully review and consider the information regarding our financial condition and results of operations set forth under Part I-Item 7 (Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations) in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended November 30, 2019, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 29, 2020, for an understanding of our results of operations and liquidity discussions and analysis comparing fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2018. Amounts in certain tables appearing in this Report may not add or compute due to rounding.
When used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, or this Report, the words “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “allows,” “can,” “may,” “designed,” “will,” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These are statements that relate to future periods and include statements about market trends, our business model and our services, our market strategy, including expansion of our product lines, the separation of SYNNEX and Concentrix, including as to the effect on our results of operations going forward, our infrastructure, our investment in information technology, or IT, systems, our employee hiring, retention and turnover, the ownership interest of MiTAC Holdings Corporation, or MiTAC Holdings, in us and its impact, our revenue, our gross margins, our operating costs and results, the value of our inventory, competition with Synnex Technology International Corp., our future needs for additional financing, the likely sources for such funding and the impact of such funding, market acceptance of our customers’ products, concentration of customers, our international operations, foreign currency exchange rates and expected trends related thereto, expansion and scaling of our operations and related effects, our strategic acquisitions and divestitures of businesses and assets, our goodwill, seasonality of sales, adequacy of our capital resources to meet our capital needs, cash held by our international subsidiaries and repatriation, changes in fair value of derivative instruments, adequacy of our disclosure controls and procedures, pricing pressures, competition, impact of economic and industry trends, impact of our accounting policies and recently issued accounting pronouncements, our belief regarding the impact of inventory repurchase obligations and commitments and contingencies, our effective tax rates, our share repurchase and dividend program, our securitization programs and revolving credit lines, our succession planning, our investments in working capital, personnel, facilities and operations. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those risks discussed herein, as well as the seasonality of the buying patterns of our customers, concentration of sales to large customers, dependence upon and trends in capital spending budgets in the IT, and consumer electronics, or CE, industries, fluctuations in general economic conditions and other risk factors set forth under Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors.” These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.
Revenue and Cost of Revenue
We derive our Technology Solutions revenue primarily through the distribution of peripherals, IT systems, system components, software, networking, communications and security equipment and CE and complementary products, and the delivery of servers and networking solutions for our design and integration solutions customers’ data centers. In our Concentrix segment, we provided high value business outsourcing services and solutions to improve customer experience of our clients. Our Concentrix customer contracts typically consisted of a master services agreement or statement of work, which contained the terms and conditions of each program or service we offered. Our agreements could range from less than one year to over five years and were subject to early termination by our customers or us for any reason, typically with 30 to 90 days’ notice.
In fiscal years 2020 and 2019, approximately 34% of our consolidated revenue and approximately 24% of our Technology Solutions revenue, was generated from our international operations. As a result, our revenue growth has been impacted by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates.
The market for IT products and services is generally characterized by declining unit prices and short product life cycles. Our overall business is also highly competitive on the basis of price. We set our sales price based on the market supply and demand characteristics for each particular product or bundle of products we distribute and solutions we provide. From time to time, we also participate in the incentive and rebate programs of our OEM suppliers. These programs are important determinants of the final sales price we charge to our reseller customers. To mitigate the risk of declining prices and obsolescence of our distribution inventory, our OEM suppliers generally offer us limited price protection and return rights for products that are marked down or discontinued by them. We carefully manage our inventory to maximize the benefit to us of these supplier provided protections.
A significant portion of our Technology Solutions cost of revenue is the purchase price we pay our OEM suppliers for the products we sell, net of any incentives, rebates, price protection and purchase discounts received from our OEM suppliers. Cost of products revenue also consists of provisions for inventory losses and write-downs, freight expenses associated with the receipt in and shipment out of our inventory, and royalties due to OEM vendors. In addition, cost of revenue includes the cost of material, labor and overhead for our systems design and integration solutions. In our Concentrix segment, cost of revenue consists primarily of personnel costs related to contract services delivery.
26
Revenue and cost of revenue in our Technology Solutions segment relate to products, and revenue and cost of revenue in our Concentrix segment relate to services.
Margins
The Technology Solutions industry in which we operate is characterized by low gross profit as a percentage of revenue, or gross margin, and low income from operations as a percentage of revenue, or operating margin. Our Technology Solutions gross margin has fluctuated annually due to changes in the mix of products we offer, customers we sell to, incentives and rebates received from our OEM suppliers, competition, seasonality, replacement of lower margin business, inventory obsolescence, and lower costs associated with increased efficiencies. Generally, when our revenue becomes more concentrated on limited products or customers, our Technology Solutions gross margin tends to decrease due to increased pricing pressure from OEM suppliers or reseller customers. Concentrix gross margins, which are higher than those in our Technology Solutions segment, can be impacted by the mix of customer contracts, additional lead time for programs to be fully scalable and transition and initial set-up costs. Our operating margin has also fluctuated in the past, based primarily on our ability to achieve economies of scale, the management of our operating expenses, changes in the relative mix of our Technology Solutions and Concentrix revenue, and the timing of our acquisitions and investments.
Economic and Industry Trends
Our Technology Solutions revenue is highly dependent on the end-market demand for IT and CE products. This end-market demand is influenced by many factors including the introduction of new IT and CE products and software by OEMs, replacement cycles for existing IT and CE products, seasonality and overall economic growth and general business activity. A difficult and challenging economic environment may also lead to consolidation or decline in the IT and CE distribution industry and increased price-based competition. Business in our system design and solutions is highly dependent on the demand for cloud infrastructure, and the number of key customers and suppliers in the market. Our Technology Solutions business includes operations in the United States, Canada, Japan and Latin America, so we are affected by demand for our products in those regions and the strengthening or weakening of local currencies relative to the U.S. Dollar.
The customer experience services industry in which our Concentrix segment operated is competitive. Customers’ performance measures were based on competitive pricing terms and quality of services. Our Concentrix business was largely concentrated in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, India, Canada, China and Japan. Accordingly, we were impacted by economic strength or weakness in these geographies and by the strengthening or weakening of local currencies relative to the U.S. Dollar.
In December 2019, there was an outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus (“COVID-19”). In March 2020, the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the global economy, disrupted global supply chains and workforce participation, including our own, and created significant volatility and disruption of financial markets. The disruptions due to COVID-19 have impacted our business including logistics operations in our Technology Solutions segment and limited the productive ability of many of our associates who were in our Concentrix segment, particularly during the second quarter of fiscal year 2020. We have successfully transitioned a significant portion of our workforce in both segments to a remote working environment and implemented a number of safety and social distancing measures within our premises to protect the health and safety of associates who are required to be on-premise to support our business. As of November 30, 2020, the majority of our workforce across both segments was productive. During the fiscal year ended November 30, 2020, we incurred net incremental costs associated with COVID-19 of approximately $131 million, of which Concentrix incurred net costs of approximately $86 million and Technology Solutions incurred net costs of approximately $45 million. We are unable to predict how long these conditions will persist, what additional measures may be introduced by governments, vendors or customers and the effect of any such additional measures on our business. As a result, many of the estimates and assumptions involved in the preparation of the financial statements included in this report on Form 10-K, required increased judgment and carry a higher degree of variability and volatility. As events continue to evolve with respect to the pandemic, our estimates may materially change in future periods.
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
The discussions and analysis of our consolidated financial condition and results of operations are based on our Consolidated Financial Statements, which have been prepared in conformity with GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, disclosure of any contingent assets and liabilities at the financial statement date, and reported amounts of revenue and expenses during the reporting period. On an ongoing basis, we review and evaluate our estimates and assumptions. Our estimates are based on our historical experience and a variety of other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making our judgment about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily available from other sources. Actual results could differ from these estimates under different assumptions or conditions.
27
We believe the following critical accounting policies involve the more significant judgments, estimates and/or assumptions used in the preparation of our Consolidated Financial Statements.
Revenue Recognition.
We generate revenue primarily from (i) the sale of various IT products through our Technology Solutions business unit and (ii) the provision of business outsourcing services focused on customer experience through our Concentrix business unit.
Revenue from our Technology Solutions segment is categorized as products revenue in our Consolidated Statements of Operations. Revenue from our Concentrix segment is categorized as services revenue in the Consolidated Statements of Operations.
We recognize revenue from the sale of IT hardware and software as control is transferred to customers, which is at the time when the product is shipped or delivered. Products sold by us are delivered via shipment from our facilities, drop-shipment directly from the vendor, or by electronic delivery of software products. We account for a contract with a customer when it has written approval, the contract is committed, the rights of the parties, including payment terms, are identified, the contract has commercial substance and consideration is probable of collection. Binding purchase orders from customers together with agreement to our terms and conditions of sale by way of an executed agreement or other signed documents are considered to be the contract with a customer. In situations where arrangements include customer acceptance provisions, revenue is recognized when we can objectively verify the products comply with specifications underlying acceptance and the customer has control of the products. Revenue is presented net of taxes collected from customers and remitted to government authorities. We generally invoice a customer upon shipment, or in accordance with specific contractual provisions. Payments are due as per contract terms and do not contain a significant financing component.
Provisions for sales returns and allowances are estimated based on historical data and are recorded concurrently with the recognition of revenue. A liability is recorded at the time of sale for estimated product returns based upon historical experience and an asset is recognized for the amount expected to be recorded in inventory upon product return. These provisions are reviewed and adjusted periodically. Revenue is reduced for early payment discounts and volume incentive rebates offered to customers, which are considered variable consideration, at the time of sale based on an evaluation of the contract terms and historical experience.
We recognize revenue on a net basis on certain contracts, where our performance obligation is to arrange for the products or services to be provided by another party or the rendering of logistics services for the delivery of inventory for which we do not assume the risks and rewards of ownership, by recognizing the margins earned in revenue with no associated cost of revenue. Such arrangements, which are not material to our consolidated revenue or our “Products” or “Services” revenue, include supplier service contracts, post-contract software support services and extended warranty contracts.
We consider shipping and handling activities as costs to fulfill the sale of products. Shipping revenue is included in revenue when control of the product is transferred to the customer, and the related shipping and handling costs are included in cost of products sold.
For the Concentrix segment, we recognize revenue from services contracts over time as the promised services are delivered to clients for an amount that reflects the consideration to which we are entitled in exchange for those services. We account for a contract with a customer when it has written approval, the contract is committed, the rights of the parties, including payment terms, are identified, the contract has commercial substance and consideration is probable of collection. Revenue is presented net of taxes collected from customers and remitted to government authorities. We generally invoice a customer after performance of services, or in accordance with specific contractual provisions. Payments are due as per contract terms and do not contain a significant financing component. Service contracts may be based on a fixed price or on a fixed unit-price per transaction or other objective measure of output. We determine whether the services performed during the initial phases of an arrangement, such as setup activities, are distinct. In most cases, the arrangement is a single performance obligation comprised of a series of distinct services that are substantially the same and that have the same pattern of transfer (i.e., distinct days of service). We record deferred revenue attributable to certain process transition, setup activities where such activities do not represent separate performance obligations. Billings related to such transition activities are classified under contract liabilities and subsequently recognized ratably over the period in which the related services are performed. We apply a measure of progress (typically time-based) to any fixed consideration and allocate variable consideration to the distinct periods of service based on usage. As a result, revenue is generally recognized over the period the services are provided on a usage basis. This results in revenue recognition that corresponds with the benefit to the client of the services transferred to date relative to the remaining services promised. Revenue on fixed price contracts is recognized on a straight-line basis over the term of the contract as services are provided. Revenue on unit-price transactions is recognized using an objective measure of output including staffing hours or the number of transactions processed by service agents. Client contract terms can range from less than one year to more than five years.
Certain client contracts include incentive payments from the client upon achieving certain agreed-upon service levels and performance metrics or service level agreements that could result in credits or refunds to the client. Revenue relating to such arrangements is accounted for as variable consideration when the likely amount of revenue to be recognized can be estimated to the extent that it is probable that a significant reversal of any incremental revenue will not occur.
28
Business Combinations. We allocate the fair value of purchase consideration to the assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and noncontrolling interests in the acquiree generally based on their fair values at the acquisition date. The excess of the fair value of purchase consideration over the fair value of these assets acquired, liabilities assumed and noncontrolling interests in the acquiree is recorded as goodwill and may involve engaging independent third-parties to perform an appraisal. When determining the fair values of assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and noncontrolling interests in the acquiree, we make significant estimates and assumptions, especially with respect to intangible assets. Critical estimates in valuing intangible assets include, but are not limited to, expected future cash flows, which includes consideration of future growth rates and margins, attrition rates, and discount rates. Fair value estimates are based on the assumptions we believe a market participant would use in pricing the asset or liability. Amounts recorded in a business combination may change during the measurement period, which is a period not to exceed one year from the date of acquisition, as additional information about conditions existing at the acquisition date becomes available.
Acquisitions
We continually seek to augment organic growth in both our business segments with strategic acquisitions of businesses and assets that complement and expand our existing capabilities. We also divest businesses that we deem no longer strategic to our ongoing operations. In our Technology Solutions business we seek to acquire new OEM relationships, enhance our supply chain and integration capabilities, the services we provide to our customers and OEM suppliers, and expand our geographic footprint. In our Concentrix segment, prior to the Separation, we sought to enhance our capabilities and domain expertise in key industry verticals, expand our geographic footprint and further expand into higher value service offerings and increase scale.
Results of Operations
The following table sets forth, for the indicated periods, data as percentages of total revenue:
|
|
Fiscal Years Ended November 30, |
|
|||||
Statements of Operations Data: |
|
2020 |
|
|
2019 |
|
||
Products revenue |
|
|
80.96 |
% |
|
|
80.27 |
% |
Services revenue |
|
|
19.04 |
|
|
|
19.73 |
|
Total revenue |
|
|
100.00 |
|
|
|
100.00 |
|
Cost of products revenue |
|
|
(76.12 |
) |
|
|
(75.40 |
) |
Cost of services revenue |
|
|
(12.34 |
) |
|
|
(12.40 |
) |
Gross profit |
|
|
11.54 |
|
|
|
12.20 |
|
Selling, general and administrative expenses |
|
|
(8.18 |
) |
|
|
(8.77 |
) |
Operating income |
|
|
3.36 |
|
|
|
3.43 |
|
Interest expense and finance charges, net |
|
|
(0.52 |
) |
|
|
(0.70 |
) |
Other income (expense), net |
|