ROK, §1A diff (2017 → 2018)

Item 1A. Risk Factors In the ordinary course of our business, we face various strategic, operating, compliance and financial risks. These risks could have an impact on our business, financial condition, operating results and cash flows. Our most significant risks are set forth below and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Our Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) process seeks to identify and address significant risks. Our ERM process assesses, manages, and monitors risks consistent with the integrated risk framework in Internal Control - Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO). We believe that risk-taking is an inherent aspect of the pursuit of our strategy. Our goal is to manage risks prudently rather than avoid risks. We can mitigate risks and their impact on the Company only to a limited extent. A team of senior executives prioritizes identified risks and assigns an executive to address each major identified risk area and lead action plans to manage risks. Our Board of Directors provides oversight of the ERM process and reviews significant identified risks. The Audit Committee of the Board of Directors also reviews significant financial risk exposures and the steps management has taken to monitor and manage them. Our other Board committees also play a role in risk management, as set forth in their respective charters. Our goal is to proactively manage risks in a structured approach in conjunction with strategic planning, with the intent to preserve and enhance shareowner value. However, the risks set forth below and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and other risks and uncertainties could adversely affect us and cause our results to vary materially from recent results or from our anticipated future results. Adverse changes in business or industry conditions and volatility and disruption of the capital and credit markets may result in decreases in our sales and profitability. We are subject to macroeconomic cycles and when recessions occur, we may experience reduced, canceled or delayed orders, payment delays or defaults, supply chain disruptions or other factors as a result of the economic challenges faced by our customers, prospective customers and suppliers. Demand for our hardware and software products is sensitive to changes in levels of industrial production and the financial performance of major industries that we serve. As economic activity slows, credit markets tighten, or sovereign debt concerns arise, companies tend to reduce their levels of capital spending, which could result in decreased demand for our products. Our ability to access the credit markets and the costs of borrowing are affected by the strength of our credit rating and current market conditions. If our access to credit, including the commercial paper market, is adversely affected by a change in market conditions or otherwise, our cost of borrowings may increase or our ability to fund operations may be reduced. We sell to customers around the world and are subject to the risks of doing business in many countries. We do business in more than 80 countries around the world. Approximately 45 percent of our sales in 2018 were to customers outside the U.S. In addition, many of our manufacturing operations, suppliers and employees are located in many places around the world. The future success of our business depends in large part on growth in our sales in non-U.S. markets. Our global operations are subject to numerous financial, legal and operating risks, such as political and economic instability; prevalence of corruption in certain countries; enforcement of contract and intellectual property rights; and compliance with existing and future laws, regulations and policies, including those related to exports, imports, tariffs, embargoes and other trade restrictions, investments, taxation, product content and performance, employment and repatriation of earnings. In addition, we are affected by changes in foreign currency exchange rates, inflation rates and interest rates. The occurrence or consequences of these risks may make it more difficult to operate our business and increase our costs, which could decrease our profitability and have an adverse effect on our financial condition. An inability to respond to changes in customer preferences could result in decreased demand for our products. Our success depends in part on our ability to anticipate and offer hardware and software products that appeal to the changing needs and preferences of our customers in the various markets we serve. Developing new hardware and software products requires high levels of innovation, and the development process is often lengthy and costly. If we are not able to anticipate, identify, develop and market products that respond to changes in customer preferences and emerging technological and broader industry trends, demand for our products could decline. We rely on suppliers to provide equipment, components and services. Our business requires that we buy equipment, components and services including finished products, electronic components and commodities. Our reliance on suppliers involves certain risks, including: • poor quality or an insecure supply chain, which could adversely affect the reliability and reputation of our hardware and software products; • changes in the cost of these purchases due to inflation, exchange rate fluctuations, taxes, tariffs, embargoes and other trade restrictions, commodity market volatility or other factors that affect our suppliers; • intellectual property risks such as challenges to ownership of rights or alleged infringement by suppliers; and • shortages of components, commodities or other materials, which could adversely affect our manufacturing efficiencies and ability to make timely delivery of our products, solutions and services. Any of these uncertainties could adversely affect our profitability and ability to compete. We also maintain several single-source supplier relationships, because either alternative sources are not available or the relationship is advantageous due to performance, quality, support, delivery, capacity, or price considerations. Unavailability of, or delivery delays for single-source components or products could adversely affect our ability to ship the related products in a timely manner. The effect of unavailability or delivery delays would be more severe if associated with our higher volume and more profitable products. Even where substitute sources of supply are available, qualifying alternative suppliers and establishing reliable supplies could cost more or result in delays and a loss of sales. Failures or security breaches of our products, connected services, manufacturing environment, supply chain, or information technology systems could have an adverse effect on our business. We rely heavily on information technology (IT) in our hardware and software products, solutions and services for customers, manufacturing environment, and in our enterprise IT infrastructure. Despite the implementation of security measures, our IT systems are vulnerable to unauthorized access by nation states, hackers, cyber-criminals, malicious insiders, and other actors who may engage in fraud, theft of confidential or proprietary information, or sabotage. These systems could be compromised by malware (including ransomware), cyber attacks, and other events, ranging from widespread, non-targeted, global cyber threats to targeted advanced persistent threats. Given that our hardware and software products and services are used in critical infrastructure, these threats could indicate increased risk for our products, services, manufacturing, and IT infrastructure. Recent global cyber attacks have been perpetuated by compromising software updates in widely-used software products, increasing the risk that vulnerabilities or malicious content could be inserted into our products. In some cases, malware attacks were spread throughout the supply chain, moving from one company to the next via authorized network connections. Our hardware and software products, solutions, and services are used by our direct and indirect customers in applications that may be subject to information theft, tampering, or sabotage. Careless or malicious actors could cause a customer’s process to be disrupted or could cause equipment to operate in an improper manner that could result in harm to people or property. While we continue to improve the security attributes of our hardware and software products, solutions and services, we can reduce risk, not eliminate it. To a significant extent, the security of our customers’ systems depends on how those systems are designed, installed, protected, configured, updated and monitored, much of which are typically outside our control. Our business uses IT resources on a dispersed, global basis for a wide variety of functions including development, engineering, manufacturing, sales, accounting, and human resources. Our vendors, partners, employees and customers have access to, and share, information across multiple locations via various digital technologies. In addition, we rely on partners and vendors for a wide range of outsourced activities, including cloud providers, are part of our internal IT infrastructure and our commercial offerings. Secure connectivity is important to these ongoing operations. Also, our partners and vendors frequently have access to our confidential information as well as confidential information about our customers, employees, and others. We design our security architecture to reduce the risk that a compromise of our partners’ infrastructure, for example a cloud platform, could lead to a compromise of our internal systems or customer networks, but this risk cannot be eliminated and vulnerabilities at third parties could result in unknown risk exposure to our business. The current cyber threat environment indicates increased risk for all companies, including those in industrial automation and information. Like other global companies, we have experienced cyber threats and incidents, although none have been material or had a material adverse effect on our business or financial condition. Our information security efforts, under the leadership of our Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Product Security Officer, with the support of the entire management team, include major programs designed to address security governance, product security, identification and protection of critical assets, insider risk, third-party risk, and cyber defense operations. We believe these measures reduce, but cannot eliminate, the risk of an information security incident. Any significant security incidents could have an adverse impact on sales, harm our reputation and cause us to incur legal liability and increased costs to address such events and related security concerns. There are inherent risks in our solutions and services businesses. Risks inherent in the sale of solutions and services include assuming greater responsibility for successfully delivering projects that meet a particular customer specification, including defining and controlling contract scope, efficiently executing projects, and managing the performance and quality of our subcontractors and suppliers. If we are unable to manage and mitigate these risks, we could incur cost overruns, liabilities and other losses that would adversely affect our results of operations. New legislative and regulatory actions could adversely affect our business. Legislative and regulatory action may be taken in the various countries and other jurisdictions where we operate that may affect our business activities in these countries or may otherwise increase our costs to do business. For example, we are increasingly required to comply with various environmental and other material, product, certification and labeling laws and regulations. Our customers may also be required to comply with such legislative and regulatory requirements. These requirements could increase our costs and could potentially have an adverse effect on our ability to do business in certain jurisdictions. Changes in these requirements could impact demand for our hardware and software products, solutions and services. Compliance with increasing privacy regulation, such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), could increase our operating costs as part of our efforts to protect and safeguard our sensitive data and personal information. Failure to maintain information privacy could result in legal liability or reputational harm. Our industry is highly competitive. We face strong competition in all of our market segments in several significant respects. We compete based on breadth and scope of our hardware and software product portfolio and solution and service offerings, technology differentiation, the domain expertise of our employees and partners, product performance, quality of our hardware and software products, solutions and services, knowledge of integrated systems and applications that address our customers’ business challenges, pricing, delivery and customer service. The relative importance of these factors differs across the geographic markets and product areas that we serve and across our market segments. We seek to maintain acceptable pricing levels across and within geographic markets by continually developing advanced technologies for new hardware and software products and product enhancements and offering complete solutions for our customers’ business problems. In addition, we continue to drive productivity to reduce our cost structure. If we fail to achieve our objectives, to keep pace with technological changes, or to provide high quality hardware and software products, solutions and services, we may lose business or experience price erosion and correspondingly lower sales and margins. We expect the level of competition to remain high in the future, which could limit our ability to maintain or increase our market share or profitability. We rely on our distribution channel for a substantial portion of our sales. In the United States and Canada, a large percentage of our sales are through distributors. In certain other countries, the majority of our sales are also through a limited number of distributors. We depend on the capabilities and competencies of our distributors to sell our hardware and software products and services and deliver value to our customers. Disruptions to our existing distribution channel or the failure of distributors to maintain and develop the appropriate capabilities to sell our hardware and software products and services could adversely affect our sales. A disruption could result from the sale of a distributor to a competitor, financial instability of a distributor or other events. We face the potential harms of natural disasters, pandemics, acts of war, terrorism, international conflicts or other disruptions to our operations. Our business depends on the movement of people and goods around the world. Natural disasters, pandemics, acts or threats of war or terrorism, international conflicts, power outages, fires, explosions, equipment failures, sabotage, political instability and the actions taken by governments could cause damage to or disrupt our business operations, our suppliers or our customers, and could create economic instability. Disruptions to our IT infrastructure from system failures, shutdowns, power outages, telecommunication or utility failures, and other events, including disruptions at third party IT and other service providers, could also interfere with or disrupt our operations. Although it is not possible to predict such events or their consequences, these events could decrease demand for our hardware and software products, solutions or services, increase our costs, or make it difficult or impossible for us to deliver products, solutions or services. Intellectual property infringement claims of others and the inability to protect our intellectual property rights could harm our business and our customers. Others may assert intellectual property infringement claims against us or our customers. We frequently provide a limited intellectual property indemnity in connection with our terms and conditions of sale to our customers and in other types of contracts with third parties. Indemnification payments and legal expenses to defend claims could be costly. In addition, we own the rights to many patents, trademarks, brand names and trade names that are important to our business. The inability to enforce our intellectual property rights may have an adverse effect on our results of operations. Expenses related to enforcing our intellectual property rights could be significant. Claims from taxing authorities could have an adverse effect on our income tax expense and financial condition. We conduct business in many countries, which requires us to interpret and comply with the income tax laws and rulings in each of those taxing jurisdictions. Due to the ambiguity of tax laws among those jurisdictions as well as the uncertainty of how underlying facts may be construed, our estimates of income tax liabilities may differ from actual payments or assessments. We must successfully defend any claims from taxing authorities to avoid an adverse effect on our operating results and financial condition. Our business success depends on attracting, developing, and retaining highly qualified personnel. Our success depends in part on the efforts and abilities of our management team and key employees. Their skills, experience and industry knowledge significantly benefit our operations and performance. Difficulty attracting, developing, and retaining members of our management team and key employees, including employees with the necessary technological expertise, could have a negative effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. Potential liabilities and costs from litigation (including asbestos claims and environmental remediation) could reduce our profitability. Various lawsuits, claims and proceedings have been or may be asserted against us relating to the conduct of our business, including those pertaining to the safety and security of the hardware and software products, solutions and services we sell, employment, contract matters, and environmental remediation. We have been named as a defendant in lawsuits alleging personal injury as a result of exposure to asbestos that was used in certain of our products many years ago. Our products may also be used in hazardous industrial activities, which could result in product liability claims. The uncertainties of litigation (including asbestos claims) and the uncertainties related to the collection of insurance proceeds make it difficult to predict the ultimate resolution. Our operations are subject to various environmental regulations that are concerned with human health, the limitation and control of emissions and discharges into the air, ground, and water, the quality of air and bodies of water, and the handling, use and disposal of specified substances. Our financial responsibility to clean up contaminated property or for natural resource damages may extend to previously owned or used properties, waterways and properties owned by unrelated companies or individuals, as well as properties that we currently own and use, regardless of whether the contamination is attributable to prior owners. We have been named as a potentially responsible party at cleanup sites and may be so named in the future, and the costs associated with these current and future sites may be significant. We have, from time to time, divested certain of our businesses. In connection with these divestitures, certain lawsuits, claims and proceedings may be instituted or asserted against us related to the period that we owned the businesses, either because we agreed to retain certain liabilities related to these periods or because such liabilities fall upon us by operation of law. In some instances, the divested business has assumed the liabilities; however, it is possible that we might be responsible for satisfying those liabilities if the divested business is unable to do so. Failure to identify, manage, complete, and integrate acquisitions and technology investments may adversely affect our business. As part of our strategy, we may pursue acquisitions of or investment opportunities in businesses as well as the purchase of technology from third parties. In order to be successful with these transactions, we must identify attractive acquisition or investment opportunities, successfully complete the transaction, and manage post-closing matters, such as integration of the acquired business or technology. We may not be able to identify or complete beneficial acquisition or transaction opportunities given the intense competition for them. Even if we successfully identify and complete such transactions, we may not be able to successfully address risks and uncertainties inherent in such transactions, including: • difficulties in integrating the purchased operations, technologies, products or services, retaining the acquired business’ customers and achieving the expected benefits of the acquisition, such as sales increases, access to technologies, cost savings and increases in geographic or product presence, in the desired time frames; • loss of key employees of the acquired business; • legal and compliance issues; • difficulties implementing and maintaining consistent standards, controls, procedures, policies and information systems; and • diversion of management’s attention from other business concerns. Future acquisitions and technology investments could result in debt, dilution, liabilities, increased interest expense, restructuring charges, and impairment and amortization expenses related to intangible assets. We own common stock in PTC Inc. and are exposed to the volatility, liquidity and other risks inherent in holding that stock. We own common stock of PTC Inc. (PTC), a Nasdaq-listed company, that we acquired for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.0 billion. We present this investment on our Consolidated Balance Sheet at its fair value at the end of each reporting period, less a valuation adjustment pending registration of our shares of PTC common stock (Shares) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, which, per a registration rights agreement entered into with PTC, must occur no later than July 19, 2019. The fair value of the Shares is subject to fluctuation in the future due to the volatility of the stock market, changes in general economic conditions, and the performance of PTC. We will recognize all changes in the fair value of the Shares (whether realized or unrealized) as gains or losses in our Consolidated Statement of Operations. Accordingly, changes in the fair value of the Shares can materially impact the earnings we report, which introduces volatility in our earnings that is not associated with the results of our business operations. In particular, significant declines in the fair value of the Shares would produce significant declines in our reported earnings. While there is an established trading market for shares of PTC common stock, there are limitations on our ability to dispose of some or all of the Shares should we wish to reduce our investment. Until approximately July 19, 2021, we are subject to contractual restrictions on our ability to transfer the Shares, subject to certain exceptions. In addition, we are subject to certain restrictions on our ability to transfer the Shares under the securities laws. Further, the reported value of our Shares does not necessarily reflect their lowest current market price. If we were forced to sell some or all the Shares in the market, there can be no assurance that we will be able to sell them at prices equivalent to the value of the Shares that we have reported on our Consolidated Balance Sheet, and we may be forced to sell them at significantly lower prices. Finally, our equity position in PTC is a minority position which exposes us to further risk as we are not able to exert control over PTC. Increasing employee benefit costs could have a negative effect on our operating results and financial condition. One important aspect of attracting and retaining qualified personnel is continuing to offer competitive employee retirement and health care benefits. The expenses we record for our pension and other postretirement benefit plans depend on factors such as changes in market interest rates, the value of plan assets, mortality assumptions and healthcare trend rates. Significant unfavorable changes in these factors would increase our expenses. Expenses related to employer-funded healthcare benefits depend on laws and regulations, which could change, as well as healthcare cost inflation. An inability to control costs related to employee and retiree benefits could negatively impact our operating results and financial condition. Item 1B.