Symantec 2016 Annual Report Download - page 106

plan to expand our international operations, but such expansion is contingent upon our identification of growth
opportunities. Our international operations are subject to risks in addition to those faced by our domestic
operations, including:
• Potential loss of proprietary information due to misappropriation or laws that may be less protective of
our intellectual property rights than U.S. laws or that may not be adequately enforced;
• Requirements of foreign laws and other governmental controls, including trade and labor restrictions
and related laws that reduce the flexibility of our business operations;
• Regulations or restrictions on the use, import, or export of encryption technologies that could delay or
prevent the acceptance and use of encryption products and public networks for secure communications;
• Local business and cultural factors that differ from our normal standards and practices, including
business practices that we are prohibited from engaging in by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and
other anti-corruption laws and regulations;
• Central bank and other restrictions on our ability to repatriate cash from our international subsidiaries
or to exchange cash in international subsidiaries into cash available for use in the U.S.;
• Fluctuations in currency exchange rates, economic instability and inflationary conditions could reduce
our customers’ ability to obtain financing for software products or could make our products more
expensive or could increase our costs of doing business in certain countries;
• Limitations on future growth or inability to maintain current levels of revenues from international sales
if we do not invest sufficiently in our international operations;
• Longer payment cycles for sales in foreign countries and difficulties in collecting accounts receivable;
• Difficulties in staffing, managing, and operating our international operations, including difficulties
related to administering our stock plans in some foreign countries;
• Difficulties in coordinating the activities of our geographically dispersed and culturally diverse
operations;
• Seasonal reductions in business activity in the summer months in Europe and in other periods in other
countries;
• Costs and delays associated with developing software and providing support in multiple languages; and
• Political unrest, war, or terrorism, or regional natural disasters, particularly in areas in which we have
facilities.
A significant portion of our transactions outside of the U.S. is denominated in foreign currencies. Accordingly,
our revenues and expenses will continue to be subject to fluctuations in foreign currency rates. For example, in
recent periods the U.S. dollar has strengthened significantly against the Euro and other major currencies, which
has adversely impacted our reported international revenue. We expect to be affected by fluctuations in foreign
currency rates in the future, especially if international sales continue to grow as a percentage of our total sales or
our operations outside the U.S. continue to increase.
The level of corporate income tax from sales to our non-U.S. customers is generally less than the level of tax
from sales to our U.S. customers. This benefit is contingent upon existing tax regulations in the U.S. and in the
countries in which our international operations are located. Future changes in domestic or international tax
regulations could adversely affect our ability to continue to realize these tax benefits.
Our products are complex and operate in a wide variety of environments, systems, applications and
configurations, which could result in errors or product failures.
Because we offer very complex products, undetected errors, failures, or bugs may occur, especially when
products are first introduced or when new versions are released. Our products are often installed and used in
large-scale computing environments with different operating systems, system management software, and
equipment and networking configurations, which may cause errors or failures in our products or may expose
undetected errors, failures, or bugs in our products. Our customers’ computing environments are often
characterized by a wide variety of standard and non-standard configurations that make pre-release testing for
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