Tuesday, March 3, 2009

LSI 10K

Customer concentration: "In 2008, Seagate Technology accounted for approximately 17% and International Business Machines Corporation accounted for approximately 16% of our total revenues........Our top 10 end customers in 2008, based on revenue, accounted for approximately 60.7% of our revenue."

Wafer fabrication: "Our wafer fabrication is performed by third-party foundries, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, our primary foundry partner, and other foundries such as IBM and Silicon Manufacturing Partners, a joint venture owned by Chartered Semiconductor and LSI."

Assembly and test: "We also use third-party suppliers, including STATS ChipPAC and Amkor Technology, to perform final assembly and test operations for us."

Patent foundation: "As of December 31, 2008, we had approximately 11,000 U.S. patents and patent applications and a number of related foreign patents and patent applications."

Employees: "As of December 31, 2008, we had 5,488 full-time employees."

Recent legal actions: "On March 23, 2007, CIF Licensing, LLC, d/b/a GE Licensing (“GE”) filed a lawsuit against Agere in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, asserting that Agere products infringe patents in a portfolio of patents GE acquired from Motorola. GE has asserted that four of the patents cover inventions relating to modems. GE is seeking monetary damages. The Company believes it has a number of defenses to the infringement claims in this action, including laches, exhaustion and its belief that it has a license to the patents. The court postponed hearing motions based on these defenses until after the trial, and did not allow the Company to present evidence on these defenses at trial. On February 17, 2009, the jury in this case returned a verdict finding that three of the four patents were invalid and that Agere products infringed the one patent found to be valid and awarding GE $7.6 million for infringement of that patent. The jury also found Agere’s infringement was willful, which means that the judge could enhance the verdict up to three times its original amount. The court has not scheduled hearings on the Company’s post-trial motions related to its defenses. One of these motions seeks to have a mis-trial declared based on the Company’s belief that GE withheld evidence in discovery which affected the Company’s ability to present evidence at trial. The court has agreed to appoint a special master to investigate this matter. If the jury’s verdict is entered by the court, the Company would also expect to be required to pay interest from the date of infringing sales and estimates that interest through the end of 2008 could amount to approximately $2 million. If the verdict is entered, LSI intends to appeal the matter."