UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

Form 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021

OR

For the transition period from              to             .

Commission file number 001-40423

Extreme Networks, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (408) 579-2800

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

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.    Yes  ☐    No  ☒

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  ☐    No  ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.    Yes ☒    No  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§229.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).    Yes  ☒    No  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report.  ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).    Yes  ☐    No  ☒

The aggregate market value of voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the Registrant was approximately $0.6 billion as of December 31, 2020 the last business day of the Registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, based upon the per share closing price of the Registrant’s common stock as reported on The Nasdaq Global Market reported on such date.  For purposes of this disclosure, shares of common stock held or controlled by executive officers and directors of the registrant and by persons who hold more than 5% of the outstanding shares of common stock have been treated as shares held by affiliates. This calculation does not reflect a determination that certain persons are affiliates of the Registrant for any other purpose.

Indicate the number of shares outstanding of each of the registrant’s classes of stock, as of the latest practicable date.

129,512,622 shares of the Registrant’s Common stock, $.001 par value, were outstanding as of August 20, 2021.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the registrant's definitive proxy statement for the year ended June 30, 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be filed with the Commission pursuant to Regulation 14A not later than 120 days after the end of the fiscal year covered by this Annual Report on Form 10-K are incorporated herein by reference in Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

EXTREME NETWORKS, INC.

FORM 10-K

INDEX

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FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

Except for historical information contained herein, certain matters included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933. The words “will,” “may,” “designed to,” “believe,” “should,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “expect,” “intend,” “estimate” and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this Annual Report. These forward-looking statements are contained principally under Item 1, “Business,” and under Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” but may also be in other sections of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Because these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results could differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements include those described in Item 1A, “Risk Factors” and Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” In addition, new risks emerge from time to time and it is not possible for management to predict all such risk factors or to assess the impact of such risk factors on our business. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

SUMMARY OF MATERIAL RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH OUR BUSINESS

The principal risks and uncertainties affecting our business include the following:

The summary risk factors described above should be read together with the text of the full risk factors below in the section entitled “Risk factors” and the other information set forth in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and the related notes, as well as in other documents that we file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”). The risks summarized above or described in full below are not the only risks that we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not precisely known to us or that we currently deem to be immaterial may also materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and future growth prospects.

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PART I

Item1. Business

Overview

Extreme Networks, Inc. (“Extreme” or “Company”) is a leading provider of end-to-end, cloud-driven networking solutions and top-rated services and support. Providing a set of comprehensive solutions from the Internet of Things (“IoT”) edge to the cloud, Extreme designs, develops, and manufactures wired and wireless network infrastructure equipment as well as a leading cloud networking platform and applications portfolio using cloud management, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to deliver network policy, analytics, security, and access controls. Our solutions enable companies to embrace the value of new cloud technology without having to rip and replace existing infrastructures.

Extreme has been pushing the boundaries of networking technology for a quarter of a century, driven by a higher purpose of helping our customers connect beyond the network. Extreme’s cloud-driven technologies provide flexibility and scalability in deployment, management, and licensing of networks globally. Our global footprint provides service to over 50,000 customers and over 10 million daily end users across the world including some of the world’s leading names in business, hospitality, retail, transportation and logistics, education, government, healthcare, manufacturing and service providers. We derive all our revenues from the sale of our networking equipment, software subscriptions, and related maintenance contracts.

Our global headquarters is located at 2121 RDU Center Drive, Suite 300, Morrisville, North Carolina 27560, and our telephone number is (408) 579-2800. We have several corporate offices in the United States and international locations. Our website is www.extremenetworks.com.

Industry Background

Enterprises are adopting new Information Technology (“IT”) delivery models and applications that require fundamental network alterations and enhancements spanning from the access edge to the data center. With the impact of the global pandemic, we believe IT teams in every industry will need more control and better insights than ever before to ensure secure, distributed connectivity and comprehensive centralized visibility. Machine Learning (“ML”) and Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) technologies have the potential to vastly improve the network experience in the post-pandemic world by collating large data sets to increase accuracy and derive resolutions to improve the operation of the network. When ML and AI are applied with cloud-driven networking and automation, administrators can quickly scale to provide productivity, availability, accessibility, manageability, security, and speed, regardless of how distributed the network is.

We believe that the network has never been more vital than it is today. As administrators grapple with more data, coming from more places, more connected devices, and more Software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) based applications, the cloud is fundamental to establishing a new normal. Traditional network offerings are not well-suited to fulfill enterprise expectations for rapid delivery of new services, more flexible business models, real-time response, and massive scalability.  

As enterprises continue to migrate increasing numbers of applications and services to either private clouds or public clouds offered by third parties and to adopt new IT delivery models and applications, they are required to make fundamental network alterations and enhancements spanning from device access points (“AP”) to the network core.  In either case, the network infrastructure must adapt to this new dynamic environment. Intelligence and automation are key if enterprises are to derive maximum benefit from their cloud deployments.

On the other hand, service providers are investing in network enhancements with platforms and applications that deliver data insights, provide flexibility, and can quickly respond to new user demands and 5G use cases.

We believe Extreme stands to benefit from the use of its technology to manage distributed campus network architecture centrally from the cloud. Extreme has blended a dynamic fabric attach architecture, that delivers simplicity for moves and changes at the edge of the network, together with corporate-wide role-based policy. This enables customers to migrate to new cloud managed switching and Wi-Fi, agnostic of the existing networking or wireless equipment they already have installed. In the end, we expect these customers to see lower operating and capital expenditures, lower subscription costs, lower overall cost of ownership and more flexibility along with a more resilient network.

We estimate the total addressable market for our Enterprise Networking solutions consisting of cloud networking, wireless local area networks (“WLAN”), data center networking, ethernet switching, campus local area networks (“LAN”), and software-defined wide area network (“SD-WAN”) solutions to be approximately $26 billion and growing at approximately five percent per year over the next three years.  We believe Extreme’s products, solutions, and services along with our geographic focus allow us to address $15 billion of this market. On the other hand, 5G provides an estimated $3 billion serviceable available market for Service Provider Networking, for which Extreme is targeting growing to approximately $50-$100 million per year over the next three to five years.

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The Extreme Strategy

The year 2020 resulted in unprecedented change – from the physical footprint of offices, to supply chain operations, to how we connect. Organizations and workforces extend anywhere and everywhere.  IT leaders are now tasked with ensuring the global, hybrid workforce is functional and successful no matter where they are and ensure people can work wherever they want.

Extreme has recognized that the way we and our customers communicate has changed and the new normal has given rise to these distributed enterprise environments, or in other words, the infinite enterprise.

There are three tenets for the infinite enterprise:

Extreme’s broad product, solutions and technology portfolio supports these three tenets and continues to innovate and evolve them to help businesses succeed.

Key elements of Extreme’s strategy and differentiation include:

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Products

Our products and services categories include:

•     Cloud Networking Platform: Core to our product portfolio and providing the end-to-end visibility from the access edge to the data center is our industry-leading cloud platform and cloud management application, ExtremeCloud IQ. ExtremeCloud IQ is an ML/AI powered, wired and wireless cloud network management solution that offers advanced visibility and control over users, devices, and applications. ExtremeCloud IQ allows customers to keep operational costs low, adjusts to customer demand, and delivers robust functionality for provisioning, management, and troubleshooting, as well as the industry’s only unlimited data access for the life of the subscription, and guaranteed data durability to assure access with 100% uptime. ExtremeCloud IQ is available in three deployment options (public, private, on-premises) that support one goal – to provide customers with maximum flexibility, continuous innovation, and consistent user experience. It can be deployed in any major data center environment such as AWS,GCP and Azure, or local private cloud options. The ExtremeCloud IQ application already manages almost 1.3 million devices in a public, private, and on-premises global cloud deployment, with over 8 million unique clients per day just in the public cloud. These devices produce and process over 6 petabytes of data per day.

•    Automation, Analytics, and Security Applications: Our application portfolio delivers additional analytics, security, access control, and management insights both on-premises and in the cloud. ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine extends cloud management to non-cloud native and multi-vendor devices to provide one dashboard view of your entire network that can be managed in the cloud or on-premises. ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine provides task automation, access control, granular visibility with real-time analytics and multi-vendor device management. ExtremeCloud IQ Essentials provides four key applications - WIPS, location services, IoT, and guest management - for ExtremeCloud IQ Pilot license customers at no added cost, enabling organizations to take advantage of an all-in-one platform for wired and wireless management, business insights, location tracking, wireless security, seamless IoT onboarding and guest access, and guest access through a single user interface.

•     Wired for Edge, Campus, and Data Center: Our switching portfolio includes products designed to make every connection effortless by enabling the deployment of high-speed performance at scale for access, high-density, campus, core, and data center environments. Within the ExtremeSwitching portfolio are Access Edge products offering connection speeds ranging from 100 Megabytes per second (“Mbps”) to 25 Gigabytes per second (“Gbps”) – including edge multi-rate 2.5Gbps and 5Gbps capabilities. These switches provide various physical presentations (copper and fiber) along with options to deliver traditional Ethernet or convergence-friendly Power-over-Ethernet (“PoE”), including high-power universal POE consisting of 90W power to support new classes of Ethernet-powered devices. These switching products, combined with our unique fabric capability, deliver automation and hyper-segmentation, as well as features, performance, and reliability required by our customers to deploy, operate and manage converged infrastructure, along with the ability to harden the perimeter of the network infrastructure.  

Our aggregation/core switches are designed to address the demanding needs of aggregation, top-of-rack, and campus core environments.  Delivering 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, and 100G connectivity with maximum throughput and reliability, these switches provide flexible Ethernet connectivity over a range of interface types and speeds and are available in both fixed and modular configurations. These switching platforms, in conjunction with our advanced operating systems and centralized management software, provide the density, performance, and reliability required to serve in a diverse range of environments, especially where application demands and uptime expectations are mission critical.

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Our campus switch portfolio also includes next-generation, low-profile, high-density Ethernet switches that empower the creation of versatile always-on campus solutions that are fabric-enabled and 25 to 100 gigabit-ready. The technologies supported by these innovative platforms can also leverage automated network attachment to proactively reduce operational burden and time-to-service.

Extreme’s data center switches and routers provide high levels of reliability and throughput - specifically designed to address the exacting demands of high-performance enterprise and cloud data centers.  These products are available in both fixed and modular chassis configurations and include a set of advanced features such as redundant management and fabric modules, hot-swappable line cards on our chassis-based platforms, as well as multi-speed stacking of up to 100G and flexible 10/25/40/50/100G port options on our fixed-form platforms, which makes these switches well-suited for enterprise data center environments.  Both platform types also provide redundant power supplies and fan trays to ensure high hardware availability.  

These switches also provide key feature extensions for data centers through technologies that include Virtual Extensible LAN (“VXLAN”), MPLS/VPLS, and Shortest Path Bridging capabilities. Our industry-first integrated Extreme Fabric Automation (“EFA”) simplifies and adds scalability to even the highest performance environments. In addition to these capabilities, our data center switches offer innovative traffic optimization enabling virtual machine (“VM”) mobility via Layer 3 Data Center Interconnect.  Our architecture delivers tens of millions of flows for deep visibility and control over users, services, and applications to meet the analytic and policy demands of today’s business applications.  

•   Cloud Native Platforms and Applications for Service Providers: 5G is the first generation of cellular technologies built on cloud-native principles, and most traditional network visibility tools cannot be easily adapted for future use cases like autonomous vehicles or industrial IoT. Because many 5G use cases are still undefined, service providers need a composable solution that provides visibility into highly distributed environments and is flexible enough to be adjusted for specific purposes as they arise without requiring expensive, time-consuming infrastructure upgrades. Extreme has introduced the 9000 series switches and related software, featuring the Extreme 9920 intelligent network visibility platform built with cloud-native design principles and a composable data pipeline to provide highly scalable traffic aggregation, packet filtering, replication, and advanced network packet processing for analytics tools in distributed network environments. The Extreme Visibility Manager has an intuitive graphical user interface to establish new rule sets and commands for all of Extreme's visibility devices. It provides full visibility into every aspect of the network, from a highly geographically dispersed environment with regions and zones to the services running on the system.

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Sales, Marketing and Distribution

We conduct our sales and marketing activities on a worldwide basis through a channel that utilizes distributors, resellers and our field sales organization. As of June 30, 2021, our worldwide sales and marketing organization consisted of 968 employees, including vice presidents, directors, managers, sales representatives, and technical and administrative support personnel. We have domestic sales offices located in eight states within the United States and international sales offices located in 30 countries.

We sell our products primarily through an ecosystem of channel partners who combine our infinite enterprise vision and product portfolio consisting of cloud-driven applications, wired, wireless, management and analytics software products with their vertical specific offerings to create compelling information technology solutions for end-user customers. We utilize our field sales organization to support our channel partners and to sell directly to certain end-user customers, including some large enterprise and service provider global accounts.

The details of our sales and distribution channels are as follows:

Although we compete in many vertical markets, in fiscal year 2021, we have focused on the specific verticals of healthcare, education, retail, manufacturing, government, sports, and entertainment venues. Years of experience and a track record of success in the verticals we serve enables us to address industry-specific problems.

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Customer Profiles:

Furthermore, in fiscal 2021, we decided to continue focus on the following customer profiles where we believe we can add the most value:

Customers with 10% of net revenues or greater

See Note 3 of our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for more information regarding our customers with 10% of net revenues or greater.

International sales

International sales are an important portion of our business. In fiscal 2021, sales to customers outside of the United States accounted for 52% of our consolidated net revenues, compared to 52% in fiscal 2020, and 50% in fiscal 2019. These sales are conducted primarily through foreign-based distributors and resellers managed by our worldwide sales organization. In addition, we have direct sales to end-user customers, including large global accounts.  The primary markets for sales outside of the United States are countries in Europe and Asia, as well as Canada, Mexico, Central America and South America.

We operate in one segment, the development and marketing of network infrastructure equipment and related software. Information concerning revenues, results of operations and revenues by geographic area is set forth under Item 7, “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”  Information on risks attendant to our foreign operations is set forth below in Item 1A. “Risk Factors.”

Marketing

We continue to develop and execute a number of marketing programs to support the sale and distribution of our products by communicating the value of our solutions to our existing and potential customers, our distribution channels, our resellers and our technology alliance partners.  Our marketing efforts include participation in industry tradeshows, conferences and seminars, publication of technical and educational articles in industry journals, communication across social media channels, frequent updates to our publicly available website, promotions, web-based training courses, advertising, analyst relations and public relations.  We also submit our products for independent product testing and evaluation.  Extreme participates in numerous industry analyst ratings including Gartner Magic Quadrants, Gartner Critical Capabilities, Gartner Peer Insights, Forrester Waves, IDC MarketScapes and InfoTech Vendor Landscapes.

Backlog

Our products are often sold based on standard purchase orders that are cancelable prior to shipment without significant penalties. In addition, purchase orders are subject to changes in quantities of products and delivery schedules in order to reflect changes in customer requirements and manufacturing capacity. Our business is characterized by seasonal variability in demand and short lead-time orders and delivery schedules. Actual shipments depend on the then-current capacity of our contract manufacturers and the availability of materials and components from our vendors.  Although we believe the orders included in the backlog are firm, all orders are subject to possible rescheduling by customers, cancellations by customers which we may elect to allow without penalty to customer, and further pricing adjustments on orders from distributors.  Therefore, we do not believe our backlog, as of any particular date is necessarily indicative of actual revenues for any future period.

Our product backlog at June 30, 2021, net of anticipated back-end rebates for distributor sales, was $105.0 million, compared to $31.7 million at June 30, 2020.

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Seasonality

Like many of our competitors, we historically have experienced seasonal fluctuations in customer spending patterns, which generally adversely affect our first and third fiscal quarters. This pattern should not be relied upon or be considered indicative of our future performance, as it has varied in the past.

Manufacturing

We utilize a global sourcing strategy that emphasizes procurement of materials and product manufacturing in competitive geographies. We rely upon third-party contract manufactures and (ODM) original design manufacturers (Alpha Networks, Lite-On Technology Corporation, Foxconn, Quanta, Senao Networks, Sercomm Corporation and Wistron NeWeb Corporation) to manufacture, support and ship our products, and therefore are exposed to risks associated with their businesses, financial condition, geographies and geopolitical conflict in which they operate. Our arrangements with these Tier 1 manufacturers generally provide for quality, cost, and delivery requirements, as well as manufacturing process terms, such as continuity of supply; inventory management; flexible capacity, quality, and cost management; oversight of manufacturing; and conditions for use of our intellectual property that allows us to adjust more quickly to changing end-customer demand.  We also leverage and depend on the strong Corporate and Social Responsibility policies and standards of our Tier 1 manufacturers.  The ODM manufacturing process uses automated testing equipment and burn-in procedures, as well as comprehensive inspection, testing, and statistical process controls, which are designed to help ensure the quality and reliability of our products. The manufacturing processes and procedures are generally certified to International Organization for Standardization (“ISO”) 9001 standards. The manufacturing process and material supply chains are flexible enough to be moved to steer away from geopolitical conflicts that impact cost.

We use a collaborative sales and operations planning (“S&OP”) forecast of expected demand based upon historical trends and analyses from our sales and product management functions as adjusted for overall market conditions. We update these forecasts monthly to determine our material requirements.  Our manufacturing partners procure the components needed to build our products based on our demand forecasts.  This allows us to leverage the purchasing power of our manufacturing partners. Our products rely on key components, including merchant silicon, integrated circuit components and power supplies purchased from a limited number of suppliers, including certain sole source providers. Lead times for materials and components vary significantly, and depend on factors such as the specific supplier, complexity, contract terms, demand and availability for a component at a given time. From time to time, we may experience price volatility or supply constraints for certain components that are not available from multiple qualified sources or where our suppliers are geographically concentrated. We, like the rest of our industry, are currently experiencing such a shortage in semiconductors used for our hardware.  This shortage is leading to increased costs for components and shipping.  In addition, labor shortages and facility closures related to the COVID pandemic are also causing delays and increased logistics costs. When necessary, we are often able to obtain scarce components for somewhat higher prices on the open market, which may have an impact on our gross margin, but does not generally disrupt production. We may also acquire component inventory in anticipation of supply constraints or enter into longer-term pricing commitments with vendors to improve the priority, price and availability of supply. Our product development efforts also depend upon continued collaboration with our key suppliers, including our merchant silicon vendors such as Broadcom. As we develop our product roadmap and continue to expand our relationships with these and other merchant silicon vendors, it is critical that we work in tandem with our key vendors to ensure that their silicon includes improved features and that our products take advantage of such improved features.

We believe our sourcing and manufacturing strategy allows us to conserve capital, lower costs of product revenues, adjust quickly to changes in market demand, and operate without dedicating significant resources to manufacturing-related plant and equipment. As part of our effort to optimize our operations, we continue to focus on driving cost reductions through sourcing, rationalizing our supply chain, outsourcing or virtualizing certain activities, and consolidating distribution sites and service logistics partners. These efforts also include process optimization initiatives, such as vendor managed inventory, and other operational models and strategies designed to drive improved efficiencies in our sourcing, production, logistics and fulfillment.

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Research and Development

The success of our products to date is due in large part to our focus on research and development. We believe that continued success in the marketplace will depend on our ability to develop new and enhanced products employing leading-edge technology. Accordingly, we plan to undertake development efforts with an emphasis on increasing the reliability, performance and features of our family of products, and designing innovative products to reduce the overall network operating costs of customers.

Our product development activities focus on solving the needs of customers in the enterprise campus by providing an end-to-end, wired and wireless network solution from the access edge to the private clouds in targeted verticals. Current activities include the continuing development of our innovative switching technology aimed at extending the capabilities of our products. Our ongoing research activities cover a broad range of areas, including, 1G, 2.5G, 5G, 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G and 100G Ethernet, routing, and resiliency protocols, open standards interfaces, software defined networks, network security, identity management, data center fabrics, and wireless networking. In addition, we continue to ramp up our investments in ML/AI technology targeting Cloud Wi-Fi, IoT anomaly detection, and autonomous networking.

We plan to continue to enhance the functionality of our network operating systems which have been designed to provide high reliability and availability. This allows us to leverage a common operating system across different hardware and network chipsets.

As of June 30, 2021, our research and development organization consisted of 653 employees.  Research and development efforts are conducted in several of our locations, including Morrisville, North Carolina; San Jose, California; Salem, New Hampshire; Toronto, Canada; Shannon, Ireland; and Bangalore and Chennai, India.

Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws and restrictions on disclosure to protect our intellectual property rights.  As of June 30, 2021, we had 737 issued patents in the United States and 452 patents outside of the United States.  The expiration dates of our issued patents in the United States range from 2021 to 2039.  Although we have patent applications pending, there can be no assurance that patents will be issued from pending applications or that claims allowed on any future patents will be sufficiently broad to protect our technology.  As of June 30, 2021, we had 25 registered trademarks in the United States and 247 registered trademarks outside of the United States.

We enter into confidentiality, inventions assignment or license agreements with our employees, consultants and other third parties with whom we do business, and control access to, and distribution of, our software, documentation and other proprietary information.  In addition, we provide our software products to end-user customers primarily under "clickwrap" license agreements.  These agreements are not negotiated with or signed by the licensee, and thus these agreements may not be enforceable in some jurisdictions.  Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or otherwise obtain and use our products or technology, particularly in foreign countries where the laws may not protect our proprietary rights as fully as in the United States.

Competition

The market for network switches, routers and software (including analytics) which is part of the broader market for networking equipment is extremely competitive and characterized by rapid technological progress, frequent new product introductions, changes in customer requirements and evolving industry standards. We believe the principal competitive factors in this market are:

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We believe we compete with our competitors with respect to many of the foregoing factors. However, the market for network switching solutions is dominated by a few large companies, particularly Cisco Systems, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Arista Networks Inc., Juniper Networks Inc., and Ubiquiti Inc. Most of these competitors have longer operating histories, greater name recognition, larger customer bases, broader product lines and substantially greater financial, technical, sales, marketing and other resources.

We expect to face increased competition from both traditional networking solutions companies and cloud platform companies offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (“IaaS”) and Platform-as-a-Service (“PaaS”) products to enterprise customers. In that regard, we expect to face increased competition from certain cloud computing companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google providing a cloud-based platform of data center compute and networking services for enterprise customers.

We believe Extreme is uniquely positioned to address its overarching vision of the future, the Infinite Enterprise, with its bet on industry-leading cloud solutions, automation and AI. Although we believe that our solutions and strategy will improve our ability to meet the needs of our current and potential customers, we cannot guarantee future success.

Restructuring and Impairment

Fiscal year 2019

On June 25, 2019, we began executing a reduction-in-force plan (the “2019 Plan”) to better align our work force and operating expenses. We incurred charges beginning in the third quarter of fiscal 2019 through the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, inclusive. Costs associated with the 2019 Plan were primarily comprised of employee severance and benefits expenses and affected 140 employees, relocation of personnel and equipment and exit of excess facilities.

Fiscal year 2020

During fiscal 2020, we reduced our operating expenses by exiting a floor of our San Jose, California facility and additional space in our Salem, New Hampshire facility. We continued our initiative to realign our operations resulting from the acquisition of Aerohive and consolidating our workforce and exited the facility we acquired from Aerohive in Milpitas, California.

During the third quarter of fiscal 2020, with the global disruptions and slow-down in the demand of its products caused by the global pandemic outbreak, COVID-19, and the uncertainty around the timing of the recovery of the market, we initiated a reduction-in-force plan (the “2020 Plan”) to reduce our operating costs and enhance financial flexibility. The plan affected approximately 320 employees primarily from the research and development and sales organizations who were located mainly in the United States and India. Costs associated with the 2020 Plan are primarily comprised of employee severance and benefits expenses.

Fiscal year 2021

Along with the reduction and realignment of the headcount under the 2020 Plan, we are in the process of relocating certain lab test equipment to third-party consulting companies during fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022.

Environmental Matters

We are subject to various environmental and other regulations governing product safety, materials usage, packaging and other environmental impacts in the United States and in various countries where our products are manufactured and sold.  We are also subject to regulatory developments, including recent SEC disclosure regulations relating to so-called "conflict minerals," relating to ethically responsible sourcing of the components and materials used in our products.  To date, compliance with federal, state, local, and foreign laws enacted for the protection of the environment has had no material effect on our capital expenditures, earnings, or competitive position.

We are committed to energy efficiency in our product lines. Accordingly, we believe this is an area that affords us a competitive advantage for our products in the marketplace. We maintain compliance with various regulations related to the environment, including the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment and the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment regulations adopted by the European Union. To date, our compliance efforts with various United States and foreign regulations related to the environment has not had a material effect on our operating results.

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Human Capital

At Extreme, we manage our human capital guided by our core values of Candor, Transparency, Curiosity, Teamwork, Ownership, and Inclusion.  We apply these principles to talent acquisition and management, compensation and benefits, and diversity and inclusion.

As of June 30, 2021, we employed 2,441 people, including 968 in sales and marketing, 653 in research and development, 117 in operations, 433 in customer support and services and 270 in finance and administration. These employees were located worldwide, with 1,249 located in the United States, 168 in other locations in the Americas, 594 in the APAC region, which includes Asia Pacific, China, South Asia and Japan, and 430 in the EMEA region, which includes Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa.

None of our U.S. employees are subject to a collective bargaining agreement. In certain foreign jurisdictions, where required by local law or custom, some of our employees are represented by local workers’ councils and/or industry collective bargaining agreements. We consider our relationship with our employees to be good, and we have not experienced any work stoppages due to labor disagreements.

Talent Acquisition and Management.  We strive to attract and retain the most qualified employees for each role within the Company.  To do this, we utilize various recruiting channels, including employee referrals and those targeting diverse candidates.  We on-board new employees through the New Hire Academy and encourage skill development through various role-specific training programs, career development tools, manager training, coaching, and mentorship.  

Compensation and Benefits.  Our compensation philosophy is to offer a competitive compensation package designed to reward achievement of the Company’s goals.  Our short-term bonus plan is designed to motivate employees to meet half-year goals, and our employee stock purchase plan and grants of restricted stock units to eligible employees reward longer-term stock price appreciation.  Our U.S. benefits plan includes health benefits, life and disability insurance, various voluntary insurances, flexible time off and leave programs, an employee assistance plan, an educational assistance policy, and a 401(k) plan with a competitive employer match.  

Diversity and Inclusion.   We believe that we gain valuable perspective that drives better decision making when we listen to diverse voices.  To foster an inclusive environment, we have expanded our employee resource groups (“ERGs”) this year to include The Women’s Council, Black at Extreme (Black/African American), LaRaza (Latino/Hispanic), Maitri (India ERG), Pride Alliance (LGBTQ+), Global Veterans Council, API (Asian Pacific Islanders), and APPs (Early in Career ERG).  We are stepping up to this challenge of fostering an inclusive environment through efforts to improve recruiting of diverse candidates, identify and support high potential employees, and retain diverse employees.  Since we started our first ERG, our Women’s Leadership Council, we have increased the number of women employees and our female leadership.  We are striving to increase the number of African-American/Black employees and Hispanic employees by the end of calendar year 2025, and to increase the number of women and underrepresented groups within our management teams.

Organization

We were incorporated in California in May 1996 and reincorporated in Delaware in March 1999. Our corporate headquarters are located at 2121 RDU Center Drive, Suite 300, Morrisville, NC 27560 and our telephone number is (408) 579-2800.  We electronically file our Securities Exchange Commission (“SEC”) disclosure reports with the SEC and they are available free of charge at both www.sec.gov and www.extremenetworks.com.

Our corporate governance guidelines, the charters of our audit committee, our compensation committee, our nominating and corporate governance committee and our code of business conduct and ethics policy (including code of ethics provisions that apply to our principal executive officer, principal financial officer, controller and senior financial officers) are available on the Investors section of our website at investor.extremenetworks.com under “Corporate Governance.” These items are also available to any stockholder who requests them by calling (408) 579-2800.  

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Item 1A. Risk Factors

We face a number of risks and uncertainties which may have a material and adverse effect on our business, operations, industry, financial condition, results of operations or future financial performance. While we believe we have identified and discussed below the key risk factors affecting our business, there may be additional risks and uncertainties that are not presently known or that are not currently believed to be significant that may adversely affect our business, results of operations, industry, financial position and financial performance in the future.  

Risks Related to Our Business, Operations, and Industry

We purchase several key components for products from single or limited sources and could lose sales if these suppliers fail to meet our needs.

We currently purchase several key components used in the manufacturing of our products from single or limited sources and are dependent upon supply from these sources to meet our needs. At present, semiconductor chips are currently in high demand with limited supply, which is resulting in higher component costs, higher delivery costs for expedited shipments, and significantly longer than usual lead times for these components. If we are unable to mitigate these effects, this could have a material adverse effect on our ability to meet customer orders. Our principal sole-source components include:

Our principal limited-source components include:

We use our forecast of expected demand to determine our material requirements. Lead times for materials and components we order vary significantly, and depend on factors such as the specific supplier, contract terms and demand for a component at a given time. If forecasts exceed orders, we may have excess and/or obsolete inventory, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. If orders exceed forecasts, we may have inadequate supplies of certain materials and components, which could have a material adverse effect on our ability to meet customer delivery requirements and to recognize revenue.

Our top ten suppliers accounted for a significant portion of our purchases during the year. Given the significant concentration of our supply chain, particularly with certain sole or limited source providers, any significant interruption by any of the key suppliers or a termination of a relationship could temporarily disrupt our operations.  Additionally, our operations are materially dependent upon the continued market acceptance and quality of these manufacturers’ products and their ability to continue to manufacture products that are competitive and that comply with laws relating to environmental and efficiency standards. Our inability to obtain products from one or more of these suppliers or a decline in market acceptance of these suppliers’ products could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. We do not have any material agreements fixing long-term prices or minimum volume requirements from suppliers. From time to time we have experienced shortages and allocations of certain components, resulting in delays in filling orders. Qualifying new suppliers to compensate for such shortages may be time-consuming and costly and may increase the likelihood of errors in design or production. In addition, during the development of our products, we have experienced delays in the prototyping of our chipsets, which in turn has led to delays in product introductions. Similar delays may occur in the future. Furthermore, the performance of the components from our suppliers as incorporated in our products may not meet the quality requirements of our customers.

The extended factory closures in China and Mexico and the disruption of distribution facilities in El Paso, Texas in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak reduced the capacity of our supply chain and may continue to do so. See also the risk factor below, “The coronavirus outbreak has had, and continues to have, a materially disruptive effect on our business.”

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Our dependence on a few manufacturers and third parties for our manufacturing, warehousing, and delivery requirements could harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.

We primarily rely on our manufacturing partners: Alpha Networks; Senao Networks; Foxconn; Delta Networks, Wistron NeWeb Corporation, Sercomm Corporation, Quanta, and select other partners to manufacture our products. We have experienced delays in product shipments from some of our partners in the past, which in turn delayed product shipments to our customers. These or similar problems may arise in the future, such as delivery of products of inferior quality, delivery of insufficient quantity of products, or the interruption or discontinuance of operations of a manufacturer or other partner, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business and operating results. In addition, any natural disaster, pandemic, or business interruption to our manufacturing partners could significantly disrupt our business. While we maintain strong relationships with our manufacturing and other partners, our agreements with these manufacturers are generally of limited duration and pricing, quality and volume commitments are negotiated on a recurring basis. The failure to maintain continuing agreements with our manufacturing partners or find replacements for them in a timely manner could adversely affect our business.  We intend to introduce new products and product enhancements, which will require that we rapidly achieve volume production by coordinating our efforts with those of our suppliers and contract manufacturers.

As part of our cost-reduction efforts, we will need to realize lower per unit product costs from our manufacturing partners by means of volume efficiencies and the utilization of manufacturing sites in lower-cost geographies. However, we cannot be certain when or if such price reductions will occur. The failure to obtain such price reductions would adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results.

In addition, a portion of our manufacturing is performed in China and is therefore subject to risks associated with doing business outside of the United States, including geopolitical risk and the possibility of additional import tariffs. The United States government has previously announced import tariffs on goods manufactured in China. These tariffs, depending upon their ultimate scope, duration and how they are implemented, could negatively impact our business by continuing to increase our costs and by making our products less competitive. We may not be able to pass such increased costs on to our customers. In addition, any relocation of contract manufacturing facilities to locations outside of China may increase our costs and could impact the global competitiveness of our products.

The coronavirus outbreak has had, and continues to have, a materially disruptive effect on our business.

The novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has spread around the world and has resulted in authorities implementing numerous measures to try to contain the virus, such as travel bans and restrictions, quarantines, shelter-in-place orders and shutdowns. The spread of COVID-19 and new variants continues to have, a material negative impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Current and potential impacts include, but are not limited to, the following:

The global outbreak of COVID-19 continues to rapidly evolve. The extent to which COVID-19 and new variants impacts our business will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted with confidence, such as the speed and extent of geographic spread of the disease, the duration of the outbreak, travel restrictions and social distancing in the affected areas, business closures or business disruptions and the effectiveness of actions taken in the affected areas to contain and treat the disease.

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We depend upon international sales for a significant portion of our revenues which imposes a number of risks on our business.

International sales constitute a significant portion of our net revenues. Our ability to grow will depend in part on the expansion of international sales. Our international sales primarily depend on the success of our resellers and distributors. The failure of these resellers and distributors to sell our products internationally would limit our ability to sustain and grow our revenues. There are a number of risks arising from our international business, including:

Any or all of these factors could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Substantially all of our international sales are United States dollar-denominated. The continued strength and future increases in the value of the United States dollar relative to foreign currencies could make our products less competitive in international markets. In the future, we may elect to invoice a larger portion of our international customers in local currency, which would expose us to greater fluctuations in exchange rates between the United States dollar and the particular local currency. If we do so, we may decide to engage in hedging transactions to minimize the risk of such fluctuations.

We have entered into foreign exchange forward contracts to offset the impact of payment of operating expenses in local currencies to some of our operating foreign subsidiaries. However, if we are not successful in managing these foreign currency transactions, we could incur losses from these activities.

There are compliance risks associated with complex tariff regulations and export control laws.  If we fail to comply with these laws and regulations, we could incur penalties and sanctions from governments, and could be restricted from exporting products.

Local laws and customs in many countries differ significantly from, or conflict with, those in the United States or in other countries in which we operate. In many foreign countries, it is common for others to engage in business practices that are prohibited by our internal policies and procedures or U.S. regulations applicable to us. Although we have implemented policies, procedures and training designed to ensure compliance with these U.S. and foreign laws and policies, there can be no complete assurance that any individual employee, contractor, channel partner, or agents will not violate our policies and procedures. Violations of laws or key control policies by our employees, contractors, channel partners, or agents could result in termination of our relationship, financial reporting problems, fines, and/or penalties for us, or prohibition on the importation or exportation of our products and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

To successfully manage our business or achieve our goals, we must attract, retain, train, motivate, develop and promote key employees, and a failure to do so can harm us.

Our success depends to a significant degree upon the continued contributions of our key management, engineering, sales and marketing, service and operations personnel, many of whom would be difficult to replace. We have experienced and may in the future experience significant turnover in our executive personnel.  Changes in our management and key employees could affect our financial

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results, and our prior reductions in force may impede our ability to attract and retain highly skilled personnel.  We believe our future success will also depend in large part upon our ability to attract and retain highly skilled managerial, engineering, sales and marketing, service, finance and operations personnel.  The market for such personnel is competitive in certain regions for certain types of technical skills.

A number of our employees are foreign nationals who rely on visas and entry permits in order to legally work in the United States and other countries.  In recent years, the United States has increased the level of scrutiny in granting H-1B, L-1 and other business visas. Compliance with United States immigration and labor laws could require us to incur additional unexpected labor costs and expenses or could restrain our ability to retain skilled professionals.  Any of these restrictions could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial conditions.

If we fail to anticipate technological shifts, market needs and opportunities, and develop products, product enhancements and business strategies that meet those technological shifts, needs and opportunities in a timely manner or if they do not gain market acceptance, we may not be able to compete effectively and our ability to generate revenues will suffer.

The markets for our products are constantly evolving and characterized by rapid technological change, frequent product introductions, changes in customer requirements, evolving industry standards, and continuous pricing pressures.

When we announce new products or product enhancements that have the potential to replace or shorten the life cycle of our existing products, customers may defer or cancel orders for our existing products; in addition, ending sales of existing products may cause customers to cancel or defer orders for our existing products. These actions could have a material adverse effect on our operating results by unexpectedly decreasing sales, increasing inventory levels of older products and exposing us to greater risk of product obsolescence.

We cannot guarantee that we will be able to anticipate future technological shifts, market needs and opportunities or be able to develop new products, product enhancements and business strategies to meet such technological shifts, needs or opportunities in a timely manner or at all. If we fail to anticipate market requirements or opportunities or fail to develop and introduce new products, product enhancements or business strategies to meet those requirements or opportunities in a timely manner, it could cause us to lose customers, and such failure could substantially decrease or delay market acceptance and sales of our present and future products and services, which would significantly harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Even if we are able to anticipate, develop and commercially introduce new products and enhancements, we cannot assure that new products or enhancements will achieve widespread market acceptance.

If our products do not effectively inter-operate with our customers’ networks and result in cancellations and delays of installations, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

Our products are designed to interface with our customers’ existing networks, each of which have different specifications and utilize multiple protocol standards and products from other vendors. Many of our customers’ networks contain multiple generations of products that have been added over time as these networks have grown and evolved. Our products must inter-operate with many or all of the products within these networks as well as future products in order to meet our customers’ requirements. If we find errors in the existing software or defects in the hardware used in our customers’ networks, we may need to modify our software networking solutions to fix or overcome these errors so that our products will inter-operate and scale with the existing software and hardware, which could be costly and could negatively affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, if our products do not inter-operate with those of our customers’ networks, demand for our products could be adversely affected or orders for our products could be canceled. This could harm our operating results, financial condition and damage our reputation, and seriously harm our business and prospects.

Industry consolidation may lead to stronger competition and may harm our business, financial condition, and operating results.

There has been a trend toward industry consolidation in our markets for several years. We expect this trend to continue as companies attempt to strengthen or hold their market positions in an evolving industry and as companies are acquired or are unable to continue operations. Companies that are strategic alliance partners in some areas of our business may acquire or form alliances with our competitors, thereby reducing their business with us. We believe industry consolidation may result in stronger competitors that are better able to compete as sole-source vendors for customers. This could lead to more variability in our operating results and could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Furthermore, particularly in the service provider market, rapid consolidation will lead to fewer customers, with the effect that loss of a major customer could have a material impact on results not anticipated in a customer marketplace composed of more numerous participants.

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The cloud networking market is rapidly evolving. If this market does not evolve as we anticipate, our target end customers do not adopt our cloud networking solutions, or we are unable to effectively transition to a cloud-based model, we may not be able to compete effectively, and our ability to generate revenues will suffer.

The cloud networking market is the fastest growing segment of the networking industry. The market demand for cloud networking solutions has increased in recent years as end customers have deployed larger networks and have increased the use of virtualization and cloud computing. Our success may be impacted by our ability to provide successful cloud networking solutions that address the needs of our channel partners and end customers more effectively and economically than those of other competitors or existing technologies.  If the cloud networking solutions market does not develop in the way we anticipate, if our solutions do not offer significant benefits compared to competing legacy network switching products, if end customers do not recognize the benefits that our solutions provide, or we are unable to successfully pivot our business to a cloud-based model, then our potential for growth in this cloud networking market could be adversely affected.  In addition, if the transition to a cloud-based model takes a significant amount of time, we run the risk of affecting our current core revenue streams.

When our products contain undetected errors, we may incur significant unexpected expenses and could lose sales.

Network products frequently contain undetected errors when new products or new versions or updates of existing products are released to the marketplace. In the past, we have experienced such errors in connection with new products and product updates. We have experienced component problems in prior years that caused us to incur higher than expected warranty, service costs and expenses, and other related operating expenses. In the future, we expect that, from time to time, such errors or component failures will be found in new or existing products after the commencement of commercial shipments. These problems may have a material adverse effect on our business by causing us to incur significant warranty, repair and replacement costs, diverting the attention of our engineering personnel from new product development efforts, delaying the recognition of revenue and causing significant customer relations problems. Further, if products are not accepted by customers due to such defects, and such returns exceed the amount we accrued for defective returns based on our historical experience, our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be adversely affected.

Our products must successfully inter-operate with products from other vendors. As a result, when problems occur in a network, it may be difficult to identify the sources of these problems. The occurrence of system errors, whether or not caused by our products, could result in the delay or loss of market acceptance of our products and any necessary revisions may cause us to incur significant expenses. The occurrence of any such problems would likely have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition.

We must continue to develop and increase the productivity of our indirect distribution channels to increase net revenues and improve our operating results.

Our distribution strategy focuses primarily on developing and increasing the productivity of our indirect distribution channels. If we fail to develop and cultivate relationships with significant channel partners, or if these channel partners are not successful in their sales efforts, sales of our products may decrease and our operating results could suffer. Many of our channel partners also sell products from other vendors that compete with our products. Our channel partners may not continue to market or sell our products effectively or to devote the resources necessary to provide us with effective sales, marketing and technical support. We may not be able to successfully manage our sales channels or enter into additional reseller and/or distribution agreements. Our failure to do any of these could limit our ability to grow or sustain revenues.

Our operating results for any given period have and will continue to depend to a significant extent on large orders from a relatively small number of channel partners and other customers. However, we do not have binding purchase commitments from any of them. A substantial reduction or delay in sales of our products to a significant reseller, distributor or other customer could harm our business, operating results and financial condition because our expense levels are based on our expectations as to future revenues and, to a large extent, are fixed in the short term. Under specified conditions, some third-party distributors are allowed to return products to us and unexpected returns could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

In some cases, our channel partners and other indirect distribution channels were negatively impacted by COVID-19 and the resulting economic decline could continue.  If the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates or continues at a level that causes concern within other markets, our sales could be impacted.

The sales cycle for our products is long and we may incur substantial non-recoverable expenses or devote significant resources to sales that do not occur when anticipated.

The purchase of our products represents a significant strategic decision by a customer regarding its communications infrastructure. The decision by customers to purchase our products is often based on the results of a variety of internal procedures associated with the evaluation, testing, implementation and acceptance of new technologies. Accordingly, the product evaluation process frequently results in a lengthy sales cycle, typically ranging from three months to longer than a year, and as a result, our ability to sell products is subject to a number of significant risks, including risks that:

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We rely on third-party providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform for services needed to deliver our cloud solutions and other third-party providers for our internal operations. Any disruption in the services provided by such third-party providers could adversely affect our business and subject us to liability.

Our cloud solutions are hosted from and use computing infrastructure provided by third parties, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.  We do not own or control the operation of the third-party facilities or equipment used to provide the cloud services. Our computing infrastructure service providers have no obligation to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms or at all. If we are unable to renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms, or if one of our computing infrastructure service providers is acquired, we may be required to transition to a new provider and we may incur significant costs and possible service interruption in connection with doing so. In addition, such service providers could decide to close their facilities or change or suspend their service offerings without adequate notice to us. Moreover, any financial difficulties, such as bankruptcy, faced by such service providers may have negative effects on our business, the nature and extent of which are difficult to predict.

If these third-party service providers experience service outages, performance problems or errors, this could adversely affect the experience of our customers.  Our agreements with third-party computing infrastructure service providers may not entitle us to corresponding service level credits to those we offer to our customers. Any changes in third-party service levels at our computing infrastructure service providers or any related disruptions or performance problems with our solutions could adversely affect our reputation and impact our customers’ operations, result in lengthy interruptions in our services, or result in potential losses of customer data. Interruptions in our services might reduce our revenues, cause us to issue refunds to customers for prepaid and unused subscriptions, subject us to service level credit claims and potential liability, or adversely affect our renewal rates.

Additionally, if a third-party service provider fails to maintain compliance with standards such as SOC2 or ISO27001, it could affect the underlying controls that we maintain, or that our customers rely upon.  This could entail additional costs to compensate for the lost controls, or have a negative impact on revenue.

We rely on third-party cloud service providers such as salesforce.com and Oracle to support internal operations.  Disruptions to such service or data breaches of those services could impact our ability to maintain efficient operations and to provide services to our customers.

System security risks, data breaches, and cyber-attacks could compromise our proprietary information, disrupt our internal operations and harm public perception of our products, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

In the ordinary course of business, we store data, including intellectual property, and our proprietary business information and that of our customers, suppliers and business partners on our networks. In addition, we store information through cloud-based services that may be hosted by third parties and in data center infrastructure maintained by third parties. The secure maintenance of this information is critical to our operations and business strategy. Increasingly, companies, including us, are subject to a wide variety of attacks on their networks and/or cloud-based services on an ongoing basis. Despite our security measures, our supply chain, information technology and infrastructure may be vulnerable to penetration or attacks by computer programmers and hackers, or breached due to employee error, malfeasance or other disruptions. In addition, our products and services may be the targets of cyber-attacks that attempt to sabotage or otherwise disable them, or our cybersecurity and other products and services ultimately may not be able to effectively detect, prevent, or protect against or otherwise mitigate losses from all cyber-attacks. Any such breach could compromise our products, networks or cloud-based services, creating system disruptions, slowdowns or even shutdowns, and exploiting security vulnerabilities of our products, and the information stored as part of our operations could be accessed, publicly disclosed, lost or stolen, which could subject us to liability to our customers, suppliers, business partners and others, could require significant management attention and resources, could result in the loss of business, regulatory actions and potential liability, and could cause us reputational and financial harm. In addition, sophisticated hardware and operating system software and applications that we produce or procure from third parties may contain defects in design or manufacture, including "bugs" and other problems that could unexpectedly interfere with the operation of our networks. This can be true even for “legacy” products that have been determined to have reached an end of life engineering status but will continue to operate for a limited amount of time.

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If an actual or perceived breach of network security occurs in our products, network or in the network of a customer of our networking products, regardless of whether the breach is attributable to our products, the market perception of the effectiveness of our products could be harmed. In addition, the economic costs to us to eliminate or alleviate cyber or other security problems, bugs, viruses, worms, malicious software systems and security vulnerabilities could be significant and may be difficult to anticipate or measure. Because the techniques used by computer programmers and hackers, many of whom are highly sophisticated and well-funded, to access or sabotage networks change frequently and generally are not recognized until after they are used, we may be unable to anticipate or immediately detect these techniques. This could impede our sales, manufacturing, distribution or other critical functions, which could adversely affect our business.

Risks Related to Financial Matters

We cannot assure future profitability, and our financial results may fluctuate significantly from period to period.

We have reported net income for the first time in our eight most recent fiscal years. Even in years when we reported profits, we may not have been profitable in each quarter during those years. We anticipate continuing to incur significant sales and marketing, product development and general and administrative expenses. Any delay in generating or recognizing revenue could result in a loss for a quarter or full year.  Even if we are profitable, our operating results may fall below our expectations and those of our investors, which could cause the price of our stock to fall.

We may experience challenges or delays in generating or recognizing revenue for a number of reasons and our revenues and operating results have varied significantly in the past and may vary significantly in the future due to a number of factors, including, but not limited to, the following:

Due to the foregoing and other factors, many of which are described herein, period-to-period comparisons of our operating results should not be relied upon as an indicator of our future performance.

We may not realize anticipated benefits of past or future acquisitions, divestitures and strategic investments, and the integration of acquired companies or technologies may negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations or dilute the ownership interests of our stockholders.

As part of our business strategy, we review acquisition and strategic investment prospects that we believe would complement our current product offerings, augment our market coverage or enhance our technical capabilities, or otherwise offer growth opportunities. In the event of any future acquisitions, we could:

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These actions could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and operating results or the price of our common stock. For example, on August 6, 2021, we executed a put option agreement to acquire Ipanematech SAS, the SD-WAN division of  InfoVista SAS, for EUR 60 million in cash consideration.

There can be no assurance we will achieve the revenues, growth prospects and synergies expected from any acquisition or that we will achieve such revenues, growth prospects and synergies in the anticipated time period and our failure to do so could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results. Moreover, even if we do obtain benefits in the form of increased sales and earnings, these benefits may be recognized much later than the time when the expenses associated with an acquisition are incurred. This is particularly relevant in cases where it would be necessary to integrate new types of technology into our existing portfolio and new types of products may be targeted for potential customers with which we do not have pre-existing relationships.

Our ability to realize the anticipated benefits of any current and future acquisitions, divestitures and investment activities also entail numerous risks, including, but not limited to:

In addition, we may not be able to successfully integrate any businesses, products, technologies, or personnel that we might acquire in the future, and our failure to do so could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and operating results.

We may not fully realize the anticipated positive impacts to future financial results from our restructuring efforts.

We have undertaken restructuring efforts in the past to streamline operations and reduce operating expenses. Our ability to achieve the anticipated cost savings and other benefits from our restructuring efforts within expected time frames is subject to many estimates and assumptions and may vary materially based on factors such as market conditions and the effect of our restructuring efforts on our work force. These estimates and assumptions are subject to significant economic, competitive and other uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control. We cannot assure that we will fully realize the anticipated positive impacts to future financial results from our current or future restructuring efforts. If our estimates and assumptions are incorrect or if other unforeseen events occur, we may not achieve the cost savings expected from such restructurings, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.

Over time we expect the average selling price of our products to decrease, which is likely to reduce gross margin and/or revenues.

The network equipment industry has traditionally experienced an erosion of average selling prices due to a number of factors, including competitive pricing pressures, promotional pricing and technological progress. Over time, we anticipate the average selling prices of our products will decrease in the future in response to competitive pricing pressures, excess inventories, increased sales discounts and new product introductions by us or our competitors. We may experience decreases in future operating results due to the erosion of our average selling prices. To maintain our gross margin, we must develop and introduce on a timely basis new products and product enhancements and continually reduce our product costs. Our failure to do so would likely cause our revenues and gross margin to decline.

Our stock price has been volatile in the past and may significantly fluctuate in the future.

In the past, the trading price of shares of our common stock has fluctuated significantly. This could continue as we or our competitors announce new products, our results or those of our customers or competition fluctuate, conditions in the networking or

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semiconductor industry change, conditions in the global economy change, particularly in light of the COVID-19 impact, or when investors change their sentiment toward stocks in the networking technology sector.

In addition, fluctuations in our stock price and our enterprise value to sales valuation may make our stock attractive to momentum, hedge or day-trading investors who often shift funds into and out of stock rapidly, exacerbating price fluctuations in either direction, particularly when viewed on a quarterly basis.  These fluctuations may adversely affect the trading price or liquidity of our common stock. Some companies, including us, that have had volatile market prices for their securities have had securities class action lawsuits filed against them. If a suit were filed against us, regardless of its merits or outcome, it could result in substantial costs and divert management’s attention and resources.  

Intense competition in the market for networking equipment and cloud platform companies could prevent us from increasing revenues and attaining profitability.

The market for network switching solutions is intensely competitive and dominated primarily by Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company, Juniper Networks, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Arista Networks, Inc., Commscope Corp., and Ubiquiti Inc. Most of our competitors have longer operating histories, greater name recognition, larger customer bases, broader product lines and substantially greater financial, technical, sales, marketing and other resources. As a result, these competitors are able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products. In addition, they have larger distribution channels, stronger brand names, access to more customers, a larger installed customer base and a greater ability to make attractive offers to channel partners and customers than we do. Further, many of our competitors have made substantial investments in hardware networking capabilities and offerings.  These competitors may be able to gain market share by leveraging their investments in hardware networking capabilities to attract customers at lower prices or with greater synergies. Some of our customers may question whether we have the financial resources to complete their projects and future service commitments.

We may also face increased competition from both traditional networking solutions companies and cloud platform companies offering IaaS and PaaS products to enterprise customers. In particular, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform may provide enterprise customers with a cloud-based platform of data center computing and networking services.

For example, we have encountered, and expect to continue to encounter in the future, many potential customers who are confident in and committed to the product offerings of our principal competitors. Accordingly, these potential customers may not consider or evaluate our products. When such potential customers have considered or evaluated our products, we have in the past lost, and expect in the future to lose, sales to some of these customers as large competitors have offered significant price discounts to secure these sales.

The pricing policies of our competitors impact the overall demand for our products and services. Some of our competitors are capable of operating at significant losses for extended periods of time, increasing pricing pressure on our products and services. If we do not maintain competitive pricing, the demand for our products and services, as well as our market share, may decline. From time to time, we may lower the prices of our products and services in response to competitive pressure. When this happens, if we are unable to reduce our component costs or improve operating efficiencies, our revenues and gross margins will be adversely affected.

One of our key differentiators is the quality of our support and services.  Our failure to continue to provide high-quality support and services could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

We intend to invest in engineering, sales, services, marketing and manufacturing on a long-term basis, and delays or inability to attain the expected benefits may result in unfavorable operating results.

While we intend to focus on managing our costs and expenses, over the long term, we also intend to invest in personnel and other resources related to our engineering, sales, services, marketing and manufacturing functions as we focus on our foundational priorities, such as leadership in our core products and solutions and architectures for business transformation. We are likely to recognize the costs associated with these investments earlier than some of the anticipated benefits and the return on these investments may be lower, or may develop more slowly, than we expect. If we do not achieve the benefits anticipated from these investments, or if the achievement of these benefits is delayed, our business, financial condition, and operating results may be adversely affected.

Our credit facilities impose financial and operating restrictions on us and if we fail to meet our payment or other obligations under our 2019 Credit Agreement (as defined below), the lenders under such 2019 Credit Agreement, as amended, could foreclose on, and acquire control of, substantially all of our assets.

Our 2019 Credit Agreement imposes, and the terms of any future debt may impose, operating and other restrictions on us. These restrictions could affect, and in many respects limit or prohibit, among other items, our ability to:

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Our 2019 Credit Agreement also requires us to achieve and maintain compliance with specified financial ratios and certain liquidity and revenue metrics. A breach of any of these restrictive covenants or the inability to comply with the required financial ratios or metrics could result in a default under our 2019 Credit Agreement. The lenders under our 2019 Credit Agreement also have the right in the event of a breach of the restrictive covenants to terminate any commitments they have to provide further borrowings.

Further, our 2019 Credit Agreement is jointly and severally guaranteed by us and certain of our subsidiaries. Borrowings under our 2019 Credit Agreement are secured by liens on substantially all of our assets, including the capital stock of certain of our subsidiaries, and the assets of our subsidiaries that are loan party guarantors. If we are unable to repay outstanding borrowings when due or comply with other obligations and covenants under our 2019 Credit Agreement, the lenders under our 2019 Credit Agreement will have the right to proceed against these pledged capital stock and take control of substantially all of our assets.

Our cash requirements may require us to seek additional debt or equity financing and we may not be able to obtain such financing on favorable terms, or at all.

Our 2019 Credit Agreement may not be sufficient for our future working capital, investments and cash requirements, in which case we would need to seek additional debt or equity financing or scale back our operations. In addition, we may need to seek additional financing to achieve and maintain compliance with specified financial ratios under our 2019 Credit Agreement, as amended.  We may not be able to access additional capital resources due to a variety of reasons, including the restrictive covenants in our 2019 Credit Agreement and the lack of available capital due to global economic conditions. If our financing requirements are not met and we are unable to access additional financing on favorable terms, or at all, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

Uncertainty about the future of the London Interbank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”) could impact the cost of our borrowing and ability to mitigate interest rate risk.

Certain of our financing instruments involve variable rate debt, thus exposing us to the risk of fluctuations in interest rates. Our 2019 Credit Agreement provides for interest to be calculated based on the London Interbank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”), however, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates LIBOR, announced in 2017 that it intends to phase out LIBOR by the end of 2021. With the expected discontinuation of LIBOR, the U.S. Federal Reserve has begun publishing a Secured Overnight Funding Rate, an index based on transactions in the Treasury repurchase market. At this time, we cannot predict how markets will respond to this or other proposed alternative rates or the effect of any changes to LIBOR or the discontinuation of LIBOR. The overall financial market may be disrupted as a result of the phase-out or replacement of LIBOR, which could increase our cost of borrowing and could impact our ability to enter into hedging arrangements to mitigate interest rate risk.  If LIBOR is no longer available or if our lenders have increased costs due to changes in LIBOR, we may experience potential increases in interest rates on our variable rate debt, which could adversely impact our interest expense, results of operations and cash flows.  

We are exposed to the credit risk of our channel partners and some of our end customers, which could result in material losses.    

Most of our sales are on an open credit basis, with standard payment terms of 30 days in the United States and, because of local customs or conditions, longer in some markets outside the U.S. We monitor individual end-customer payment capability in granting such open credit arrangements, seek to limit such open credit to amounts we believe the end customers can pay and maintain reserves we believe are adequate to cover exposure for doubtful accounts.  Any significant delay or default in the collection of significant accounts receivable could potentially result in an increased need for us to obtain working capital from other sources, possibly on worse terms than we could have negotiated if we had established such working capital resources prior to such delays or defaults. Any significant default could adversely affect our results of operations and delay our ability to recognize revenue.

A material portion of our sales is derived through our distributors, systems integrators and value-added resellers. Some of our distributors, systems integrators and value-added resellers may experience financial difficulties, which could adversely affect our collection of accounts receivable. Our exposure to credit risks of our channel partners may increase if our channel partners and their end customers are adversely affected by global or regional economic conditions. One or more of these channel partners could delay payments or default on credit extended to them, either of which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

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If we do not adequately manage and evolve our financial reporting and managerial systems and processes, our ability to manage and grow our business may be harmed.

Our ability to successfully implement our business plan and comply with regulations requires an effective planning and management process. We need to ensure that any businesses acquired are appropriately integrated in our financial systems. We need to continue improving our existing, and implement new, operational and financial systems, procedures and controls.  Any delay in the implementation of, or disruption in the integration of acquired businesses, or delay and disruption in the transition to, new or enhanced systems, procedures or controls, could harm our ability to record and report financial and management information on a timely and accurate basis, or to forecast future results.

We are required to evaluate the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting on an annual basis and publicly disclose any material weaknesses in our controls.  Any adverse results from such evaluation could result in a loss of investor confidence in our financial reports and significant expense to remediate, and ultimately could have an adverse effect on our stock price.

Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires our management to assess the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and to disclose if such controls were unable to provide assurance that a material error would be prevented or detected in a timely manner. We have an ongoing program to review the design of our internal controls framework in keeping with changes in business needs, implement necessary changes to our controls design and test the system and process controls necessary to comply with these requirements. Because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within our Company will have been detected.

If we or our independent registered public accounting firm identifies material weaknesses in our internal controls, the disclosure of that fact, even if quickly remedied, may cause investors to lose confidence in our financial statements and its stock price may decline. Remediation of a material weakness could require us to incur significant expenses and, if we fail to remedy any material weakness, our ability to report our financial results on a timely and accurate basis may be adversely affected, our access to the capital markets may be restricted, our stock price may decline, and we may be subject to sanctions or investigation by regulatory authorities, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or NASDAQ. We may also be required to restate our financial statements from prior periods. Execution of restatements create a significant strain on our internal resources and could cause delays in our filing of quarterly or annual financial results, increase our costs and cause management distraction. Restatements may also significantly affect our stock price in an adverse manner.

Our revenues may decline as a result of changes in public funding of educational institutions.

A portion of our revenues comes from sales to both public and private K-12 educational institutions. Public schools receive funding from local tax revenues, and from state and federal governments through a variety of programs, many of which seek to assist schools located in underprivileged or rural areas. The funding for a portion of our sales to educational institutions comes from a federal funding program known as the E-Rate program. E-Rate is a program of the Federal Communications Commission that subsidizes the purchase of approved telecommunications, Internet access, and internal connection costs for eligible public educational institutions.  The E-Rate program, its eligibility criteria, the timing and specific amount of federal funding actually available and which wi-fi infrastructure and product sectors will benefit, are uncertain and subject to final federal program approval and funding appropriation continues to be under review by the Federal Communications Commission, and we cannot assure that this program or its equivalent will continue, and as a result, our business may be harmed. Furthermore, if state or local funding of public education is significantly reduced because of legislative or policy changes or by reductions in tax revenues due to changing economic conditions, our sales to educational institutions may be negatively impacted by these changed conditions.  Any reduction in spending on information technology systems by educational institutions would likely materially and adversely affect our business and results of operations.  This is a specific example of the many factors which add additional uncertainty to our future revenues from our end-customers in the education sector.

Regulatory, Tax and Legal Risks

 Our employees may engage in misconduct or other improper activities, including noncompliance with regulatory standards and requirements, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.

We are exposed to the risk of employee fraud or other misconduct. Misconduct by employees could include intentional failures to: 

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The precautions we take to detect and prevent misconduct may not be effective in controlling unknown or unmanaged risks or losses or in protecting us from governmental investigations or other actions or lawsuits stemming from a failure to be in compliance with such laws or regulations. If any such actions are instituted against us, and we are not successful in defending ourselves or asserting our rights, those actions could have a significant impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations, including the imposition of significant fines or other sanctions.

Our operating results may be negatively affected by legal proceedings.

We have in the past, currently are and will likely in the future pursue or be subject to claims or lawsuits in the normal course of our business. In addition to the risks related to the intellectual property lawsuits described above, we are currently parties to other litigation as described in Note 10 to our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this Report. Regardless of the result, litigation can be expensive, lengthy and disruptive to normal business operations. Moreover, the results of complex legal proceedings are difficult to predict. An unfavorable resolution of a lawsuit in which we are a defendant could result in a court order against us or payments to other parties that would have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial condition. Even if we are successful in prosecuting claims and lawsuits, we may not recover damages sufficient to cover our expenses incurred to manage, investigate and pursue the litigation. In addition, subject to certain limitations, we may be obligated to indemnify our current and former customers, suppliers, directors, officers and employees in certain lawsuits. We may not have adequate insurance coverage to cover all of our litigation costs and liabilities.

Claims of infringement by others may increase and the resolution of such claims may adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results.

Our industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent claims and related litigation regarding patents, copyrights (including rights to “open source” software) and other intellectual property rights. As we have grown, we have, and may continue to, experience greater revenues and increased public visibility, which may cause competitors, customers, and governmental authorities to be more likely to initiate litigation against us. Because of the existence of a large number of patents in the networking field, the secrecy of some pending patents and the issuance of new patents at a rapid pace, it is not possible to determine in advance if a product or component might infringe the patent rights of others. Because of the potential for courts awarding substantial damages, or internationally prohibiting us from exporting, in the case of China, or importing our products, in the case of Germany, the lack of predictability of such awards and the high legal costs associated with the defense of such patent infringement matters that would be expended to prove lack of infringement, it is not uncommon for companies in our industry to settle even potentially unmeritorious claims for very substantial amounts. Furthermore, the entities with whom we have or could have disputes or discussions include entities with extensive patent portfolios and substantial financial assets. These entities are actively engaged in programs to generate substantial revenues from their patent portfolios and are seeking or may seek significant payments or royalties from us and others in our industry.

Litigation resulting from claims that we are infringing the proprietary rights of others has resulted and could in the future result in substantial costs and a diversion of resources and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. We previously received notices from entities alleging that we were infringing their patents and have been party to patent litigation in the past.

Without regard to the merits of these or any other claims, an adverse court order or a settlement could require us, among other actions, to:

In addition, our products include so-called “open source” software. Open source software is typically licensed for use at no initial charge but imposes on the user of the open source software certain requirements to license to others both the open source software as well as modifications to the open source software under certain circumstances. Our use of open source software subjects us to certain additional risks for the following reasons:

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We believe even if we do not infringe the rights of others, we will incur significant expenses in the future due to defense of legal claims, disputes or licensing negotiations, though the amounts cannot be determined. These expenses may be material or otherwise adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results.

We rely on the availability of third-party licenses.

Some of our products are designed to include software or other intellectual property, including open source software, licensed from third parties. It may be necessary in the future to seek or renew licenses relating to various aspects of these products. There can be no assurance that the necessary licenses would be available on acceptable terms, if at all. The inability to obtain certain licenses or other rights or to obtain such licenses or rights on favorable terms, could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Moreover, the inclusion in our products of software or other intellectual property licensed from third parties on a nonexclusive basis could limit our ability to protect our proprietary rights in our products.  Further, the failure to comply with the terms of any license, including free open source software, may result in our inability to continue to use such license.

Failure to protect our intellectual property could affect our business.

We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws and restrictions on disclosure to protect our intellectual property rights. However, we cannot ensure that the actions we have taken will adequately protect our intellectual property rights or that other parties will not independently develop similar or competing products that do not infringe on our patents. We generally enter into confidentiality, invention assignment or license agreements with our employees, consultants and other third parties with whom we do business, and control access to and distribution of our intellectual property and other proprietary information. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or otherwise misappropriate or use our products or technology, which would adversely affect our business.

Failure of our products to comply with evolving industry standards and complex government regulations may adversely impact our business.

If we do not comply with existing or evolving industry standards and government regulations, we may not be able to sell our products where these standards or regulations apply. The network equipment industry in which we compete is characterized by rapid changes in technology and customers' requirements and evolving industry standards. As a result, our success depends on:

In the past, we have introduced new products that were not compatible with certain technological standards, and in the future, we may not be able to effectively address the compatibility and interoperability issues that arise as a result of technological changes and evolving industry standards.

Our products must also comply with various U.S. federal government regulations and standards defined by agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, standards established by governmental authorities in various foreign countries and recommendations of the International Telecommunication Union. In some circumstances, we must obtain regulatory approvals or certificates of compliance before we can offer or distribute our products in certain jurisdictions or to certain customers. Complying with new regulations or obtaining certifications can be costly and disruptive to our business.

If we do not comply with existing or evolving industry standards or government regulations, we will not be able to sell our products where these standards or regulations apply, which may prevent us from sustaining our net revenues or achieving profitability.

Our provision for income taxes and overall cash tax costs are affected by a number of factors, including reorganizations or restructurings of our business, jurisdictional revenue mix and changes in tax regulations or policy including recent U.S. tax legislation, all of which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are a multinational company subject to income tax as well as non-income-based taxes in various jurisdictions including Ireland, where we have an operating company supporting our business in most non-United States jurisdictions.  Our income taxes are subject to volatility and could be adversely affected by several factors including earnings that are lower than anticipated in countries that have lower tax rates and higher than anticipated in countries that have higher tax rates, expiration of or lapses in the research and development tax credit laws, transfer pricing adjustments in the various jurisdictions we do business, tax effects of nondeductible

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compensation, including stock-based compensation, changes in accounting principles and imposition of withholding or other taxes on payments by subsidiaries or customers.  

Significant judgment is required to determine our worldwide provision for income taxes.  In the ordinary course of business, there are many transactions where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain.  Additionally, our calculations of income taxes payable, currently and on a deferred basis, are based on our interpretation of applicable tax laws in the jurisdictions in which we are required to file tax returns. Although we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, there is no assurance that the final determination of our income tax liability will not be materially different than what is reflected in our income tax provisions and accruals. Changes in tax laws and regulations and the interpretation of such laws and regulations, including taxation of earnings internationally, the introduction of base erosion and anti-abuse tax and the disallowance of tax deductions for certain expenses, as well as changes that may be enacted in the future could materially impact our tax provision, cash tax liability and effective tax rate. This includes the potential impact of recently proposed US corporate tax legislation if enacted.  The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international association of 37 countries including the United States, has proposed changes to numerous long-standing tax principles.  These Base Erosion and Profit Shifting proposals, or BEPS Action Plan, include fifteen Actions to address BEPS in a comprehensive manner and represents a significant change to the international corporate tax landscape. These proposals, as adopted by the associated countries, will likely increase tax uncertainty and may adversely affect our provision for income taxes.

A change in our future effective tax rate, including from the release of the valuation allowances recorded against our net US and Irish deferred tax assets may create volatility in our calculated tax expense. Our future effective tax rate in particular could be adversely affected by a change in ownership pursuant to Section 382 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.  If a change in ownership occurs, it may limit our ability to utilize our net operating losses to offset our U.S. taxable income and therefore create a material adverse impact on our results of operations.  On April 26, 2012, we adopted the Amended and Restated Rights Agreement between the Company and Computershare Shareholder Services LLC as the rights agent (the “Restated Rights Plan”), which was extended annually through 2021, to help protect our assets. On May 17, 2021, we adopted an Amended and Restated Tax Benefit Preservation Plan (the “2021 Tax Benefit Preservation Plan”), which is subject to shareholder approval. In general, this does not allow a stockholder to acquire more than 4.95% of our outstanding common stock without a waiver from our Board, who must take into account the relevant tax analysis relating to potential limitation of our net operating losses. Our 2021 Tax Benefit Preservation Plan is effective through May 17, 2024, unless it is rejected by shareholders, in which case, it will terminate on May 17, 2022.

Finally, we are subject to the examination of our income tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service, Irish Revenue, and other tax authorities globally. Although we regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes, there is no assurance that such determinations by us are in fact adequate. Changes in our effective tax rates or amounts assessed upon examination of our tax returns may have a material, adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Provisions in our charter documents and Delaware law and our adoption of a stockholder rights plan may delay or prevent an acquisition of Extreme, which could decrease the value of our common stock.

Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws and Delaware law contain provisions that could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us without the consent of our Board. Delaware law also imposes some restrictions on mergers and other business combinations between us and any holder of 15% or more of our outstanding common stock. In addition, our Board has the right to issue preferred stock without stockholder approval, which could be used to dilute the stock ownership of a potential hostile acquirer. Although we believe these provisions of our certificate of incorporation and bylaws and Delaware law will provide for an opportunity to receive a higher bid by requiring potential acquirers to negotiate with our Board, these provisions apply even if the offer may be considered beneficial by some of our stockholders.

Our bylaws, as amended, provide that, unless we consent in writing to an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the exclusive forum for any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, any action asserting a breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any of our directors, officers, other employees or stockholders to us, any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law, our certificate of incorporation or our bylaws, any action to interpret, apply, enforce, or determine the validity of our certificate of incorporation or bylaws, or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine. Our bylaws further provide that the federal district courts of the United States shall be the exclusive forum for any cause of action arising under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”). The choice of forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers, other employees or stockholders, which may discourage such lawsuits against us and our directors, officers other employees and stockholders. Furthermore, the enforceability of similar choice of forum provisions in other companies’ certificates of incorporation has been challenged in legal proceedings, and it is possible that a court could find these types of provisions to be inapplicable or unenforceable. While the Delaware courts have determined that such choice of forum provisions are facially valid, a stockholder may nevertheless seek to bring a claim in a venue other than those designated in the exclusive-forum provisions, and there can be no assurance that such provisions will be enforced by a court in those other jurisdictions. If a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur

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additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could adversely affect our business and financial condition.

Our 2021 Tax Benefit Preservation Plan provides that if a single stockholder (or group) acquires more than 4.95% of our outstanding common stock without a waiver from our Board, each holder of one share of our common stock (other than the stockholder or group who acquired in excess of 4.95% of our common stock) may purchase a fractional share of our preferred stock that would result in substantial dilution to the triggering stockholder or group. Accordingly, although this plan is designed to prevent any limitation on the utilization of our net operating losses by avoiding issues raised under Section 382 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, the 2021 Tax Benefit Preservation Plan could also serve as a deterrent to stockholders wishing to effect a change of control.

Compliance with laws, rules and regulations relating to corporate governance and public disclosure may result in additional expenses.

Federal securities laws, rules and regulations, as well as NASDAQ rules and regulations, require companies to maintain extensive corporate governance measures, impose comprehensive reporting and disclosure requirements, set strict independence and financial expertise standards for audit and other committee members and impose civil and criminal penalties for companies and their Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers and directors for securities law violations. These laws, rules and regulations and the interpretation of these requirements are evolving, and we are making investments to evaluate current practices and to continue to achieve compliance, which investments may have a material impact on our financial condition.

General

Natural or man-made disasters, acts of war or terrorism, pandemics, technological disruptions or other events beyond our control could disrupt our operations and harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We have major offices in North Carolina, California, New Hampshire in the United States, and in Bangalore, India, Thornhill, Canada, Shannon, Ireland and Reading, United Kingdom.  Historically, each location has been vulnerable to natural disasters and other risks, such as earthquakes, fires, floods and tropical storms, which at times have disrupted the local economy and posed physical risks to our property. We have contract manufacturers located in Taiwan and Mexico where similar natural disasters and other risks may disrupt the local economy and pose physical risks to our property and the property of our contract manufacturer.  Global shipping could be disrupted by natural disasters, which would impede our ability to get product to our customers.  Climate change may exacerbate the frequency or severity of such natural disasters.

In addition, the continued threat of terrorism and heightened security and military action in response to this threat, or any future acts of terrorism, may cause further disruptions to the economies of the United States and other countries. If such disruptions result in delays or cancellations of customer orders for our products, our business, financial condition and operating results will suffer.

Civil unrest, riots, pandemics and other systemic disruptions could disrupt demand for products, supply chain, or distribution and could negatively impact our costs or revenue. Such disruptions to the availability or integrity of utilities, transportation infrastructure, or the internet could have significant macroeconomic impacts, decreasing demand for our products and impacting our ability to get them to market.  As a result, our financial situation and operating results would be negatively affected.

See also, “The coronavirus outbreak has had, and continues to have, a materially disruptive effect on our business.”

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Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments

None.

Item 2. Properties

Our corporate headquarters is located in Morrisville, North Carolina where we currently lease approximately 54,530 square feet of space under a lease agreement that expires in fiscal year 2023.

In addition to our headquarters in Morrisville, we lease additional sites in the United States, including facilities in Salem, New Hampshire and San Jose, California for research and development, sales and marketing and administrative offices. Outside the United States, we also lease office space in various other international geographic locations for research and development, sales and service personnel and administration in other Americas, EMEA and APAC, including Bangalore, India, Chennai, India, Markham, Canada, Reading, United Kingdom, and Shannon, Ireland.

As of June 30, 2021, we have leased approximately 1.0 million square feet of space with various expiration dates between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal 2028. We believe that our current facilities are sustainable and adequate to meet our current needs and the productive capacity of such facilities is substantially being utilized or we have plans to utilize such capacity.

Item 3. Legal Proceedings

The information set forth under the heading “Legal Proceedings” in Note 10, Commitments and Contingencies, in Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of Part II of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, is incorporated herein by reference.

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

Not Applicable

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PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Common Stock Market and Dividends

Our common stock trades on the Nasdaq Global Market and commenced trading on Nasdaq on April 9, 1999 under the symbol “EXTR”.

As of August 20, 2021, there were 172 stockholders of record of our common stock.  Because many of our shares of common stock are held by brokers and other institutions on behalf of stockholders, we are unable to estimate the total number of stockholders represented by these record holders. We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock and do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future.

Certain information regarding our equity compensation plan(s) as required by Part II is incorporated by reference from our definitive Proxy Statement to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the solicitation of proxies for our year ended June 30, 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders no later than 120 days after the end of the fiscal year covered by this report.

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STOCK PRICE PERFORMANCE GRAPH

The following performance graph and related information shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or to be “filed” with the SEC, nor shall such information be incorporated by reference into any future filing under the Securities Act or the Exchange Act, each as amended, whether made before or after the date hereof and irrespective of any general incorporation language in any such filing, or otherwise subject to the liabilities under the Securities Act or Exchange Act, each as amended, except to the extent that we specifically incorporate it by reference into such filing.

Set forth below is a stock price performance graph comparing the annual percentage change in the cumulative total return on our common stock with the cumulative total returns of companies comprising the NASDAQ US Benchmark TR index and the NASDAQ US Benchmark Computer Hardware TR Index commencing July 1, 2016 and ending on June 30, 2021. The NASDAQ US Benchmark TR index replaces the NASDAQ Stock Market (US Companies) Index and the NASDAQ US Benchmark Computer Hardware TR index replaces the NASDAQ Computer Manufacturers Index in this analysis and going forward, as the CRSP Index data is no longer accessible. The CRSP indexes has been included with data through 2020. The comparisons in the graph below are based on historical data and are not intended to forecast the possible future performance of our common stock.

Comparison of Five-Year Cumulative Total Returns

Performance Graph for Extreme Networks, Inc.

Data and graph are calculated from CRSP Total Return Index for the Nasdaq Stock Market (U.S. Companies) and Nasdaq Computer Manufacturers Securities, Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP), Booth School of Business, and The University of Chicago. Index data Copyright NASDAQ OMX, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

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Item 6. Selected Financial Data  

The selected consolidated statement of operations data for the years ended June 30, 2021, 2020 and 2019 and the consolidated balance sheet data as of June 30, 2021 and 2020 are derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The selected consolidated statement of operations data for the years ended June 30, 2018 and 2017 and the consolidated balance sheet data as of June 30, 2019, 2018 and 2017 are derived from our audited financial statements not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected in the future. The selected financial data below should be reviewed in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 and related Notes, as well as Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”.

The following table sets forth selected consolidated statement of operations (in thousands, except per share amounts):

The following table sets forth selected consolidated balance sheets data (in thousands):

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Quarterly Financial Data (Unaudited)

Quarterly results for the years ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 are as follow (in thousands, except per share amounts).

Quarterly and year-to-date computations of per share amounts are made independently. Therefore, the sum of per share amounts for the quarters may not agree with the per share amounts for the year.