Thursday, February 26, 2009

Advanced Analogic Technologies 10K

Customer concentration: "We received in aggregate, approximately 84%, 81% and 80% of our net revenue from our ten largest customers in 2008, 2007 and 2006, respectively. LG Electronics was our largest direct customer in 2008, 2007 and 2006, representing 25%, 20% and 28% of net revenues, respectively. Sales to Samsung accounted for 20% of our net revenue in 2008 and 11% of our net revenue in both 2007 and 2006. Additionally, we sell to a number of contract manufacturers of Samsung. Total sales to Samsung and its contract manufacturers represented 36%, 25% and 20% of our net revenue for 2008, 2007 and 2006, respectively."

An unique approach to both fabrication process and foundries: ......we contract with specialty foundries that have former DRAM fabs employing advanced analog CMOS process technology and, under license, our patented ModularBCD technology. We have spent significant time and engineering resources collaborating with our suppliers to simulate, characterize, and, as necessary, adapt these processes to enable us to design and develop products for higher performance and smaller die size. We also capture the operational and financial benefits of the fabless model, including reduced manufacturing personnel, capital expenditures, fixed assets and fixed costs. Relative to other fabless companies that use CMOS foundries, we believe that our use of fully-depreciated DRAM fabs allows us to achieve lower costs using either advanced analog CMOS processes or specialized process technologies, such as our ModularBCD technology, in order to maximize device performance for a given application. ......To date, we have developed and released to production two wafer fabrication processes, ModularBCD, an advanced fully-isolated analog integrated circuit process, and vertical TrenchDMOS, an advanced discrete power MOSFET process. ModularBCD is our patented IC process technology designed for integrating fully-isolated power, analog and mixed-signal circuitry of differing operating voltages without the need for expensive epitaxial depositions or long high-temperature diffusions. Based on 0.35 micron features, it is a flexible, cost-effective process well-suited for precision analog and PowerSOC implementations. The majority of our new product designs now in development utilize ModularBCD. In the fourth quarter of 2008, ModularBCD products represented 19% of revenue."

Employees: "As of December 31, 2008, we had 281 employees located in the United States, China, Hong Kong, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Macau. Of this total, there were 99 employees in engineering, research and development, 82 in sales and marketing and 100 in operations, general and administration, quality assurance, information technology and facilities."