|
Related Topics
|
Category: Flex (FLEX)
Date: 1 February 2021 Stock price of Flex (FLEX): $17.64 We take a more detailed look at Flex (FLEX) a manufacturing fir that helps a diverse customer base design and build products that improve the world. Through the collective strength of a global workforce across approximately 30 countries and responsible, sustainable operations, Flex delivers technology innovation, supply chain, and manufacturing solutions to diverse industries and end markets
|
|
We have the best brand portfolio in the industry, including six brands with more than $1 billion in revenue. We aim to position these desirable brands across many consumer segments. "
More About Automatic Data Processing (ADP)
Flex is the manufacturing partner of choice that helps a diverse customer base design and build products that improve the world. Through the collective strength of a global workforce across approximately 30 countries and responsible, sustainable operations, Flex delivers technology innovation, supply chain, and manufacturing solutions to diverse industries and end markets. As of March 31, 2020, our reporting business segments were as follows:
• High Reliability Solutions ("HRS"), which is comprised of our health solutions business, including surgical equipment, drug delivery, diagnostics, telemedicine, disposable devices, imaging and monitoring, patient mobility and ophthalmology; and our automotive business, including vehicle electrification, connectivity, autonomous, and smart technologies;
• Industrial and Emerging Industries ("IEI"), which is comprised of energy including advanced metering infrastructure, energy storage, smart lighting, smart solar energy; and industrial, including semiconductor and capital equipment, office solutions, household industrial and lifestyle, industrial automation and kiosks;
• Communications & Enterprise Compute ("CEC"), which includes our telecom business of radio access base stations, remote radio heads and small cells for wireless infrastructure; our networking business, which includes optical, routing, and switching products for data and video networks; our server and storage platforms for both enterprise and cloud-based deployments; next generation storage and security appliance products; and rack-level solutions, converged infrastructure and software-defined product solutions; and
• Consumer Technologies Group ("CTG"), which includes our consumer-related businesses in IoT enabled devices, audio and consumer power electronics, mobile devices; and various supply chain solutions for consumer, computing and printing devices.
These segments represent components of the Company for which separate financial information is available that is utilized on a regular basis by the Chief Operating Decision Maker (“CODM”). Our segments are determined based on several factors, including the nature of products and services, the nature of production processes, customer bases, delivery channels and similar economic characteristics. Refer to note 20 to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8, "Financial Statements and Supplementary Data" for additional information on our operating segments.
In March 2020, we announced a change in organization structure as part of our strategy to further drive growth and productivity with two focused delivery models. As a result, beginning in fiscal year 2021, we expect to report our financial performance based on two reportable segments (Flex Agility Solutions Group and Flex Reliability Solutions Group) and analyze operating income as the measure of segment profitability
We provide design, manufacturing and supply chain services through a network of over 100 locations in approximately 30 countries across five continents. We have established global scale through an extensive network of innovation labs, design centers, manufacturing and services sites in the world's major consumer and enterprise products markets (Asia, the Americas, and Europe) in order to serve the supply chain needs of both multinational and regional companies. Our services provide customers with a competitive advantage by delivering leading-edge manufacturing technology, supply chain expertise, improved product quality, increased flexibility, faster time to market, and overall value.
Our customers leverage our services to meet their requirements throughout their products' entire life cycles. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020, we had revenue of $24.2 billion and net income of $88 million. Flex offers solutions that span from initial design through ramp-up and volume manufacturing as well as through end of life and circularity offerings. This full range of capabilities provides our customers with expertise across the entire value chain. Technology innovation is at the center of delivering these end-to-end capabilities. We believe that the combination of our design and engineering services, advanced supply chain management solutions and manufacturing technology capabilities along with our global scale and regional presence provide us with a competitive advantage
• High Reliability Solutions ("HRS"), which is comprised of our health solutions business, including surgical equipment, drug delivery, diagnostics, telemedicine, disposable devices, imaging and monitoring, patient mobility and ophthalmology; and our automotive business, including vehicle electrification, connectivity, autonomous, and smart technologies;
• Industrial and Emerging Industries ("IEI"), which is comprised of energy including advanced metering infrastructure, energy storage, smart lighting, smart solar energy; and industrial, including semiconductor and capital equipment, office solutions, household industrial and lifestyle, industrial automation and kiosks;
• Communications & Enterprise Compute ("CEC"), which includes our telecom business of radio access base stations, remote radio heads and small cells for wireless infrastructure; our networking business, which includes optical, routing, and switching products for data and video networks; our server and storage platforms for both enterprise and cloud-based deployments; next generation storage and security appliance products; and rack-level solutions, converged infrastructure and software-defined product solutions; and
• Consumer Technologies Group ("CTG"), which includes our consumer-related businesses in IoT enabled devices, audio and consumer power electronics, mobile devices; and various supply chain solutions for consumer, computing and printing devices.
These segments represent components of the Company for which separate financial information is available that is utilized on a regular basis by the Chief Operating Decision Maker (“CODM”). Our segments are determined based on several factors, including the nature of products and services, the nature of production processes, customer bases, delivery channels and similar economic characteristics. Refer to note 20 to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8, "Financial Statements and Supplementary Data" for additional information on our operating segments.
In March 2020, we announced a change in organization structure as part of our strategy to further drive growth and productivity with two focused delivery models. As a result, beginning in fiscal year 2021, we expect to report our financial performance based on two reportable segments (Flex Agility Solutions Group and Flex Reliability Solutions Group) and analyze operating income as the measure of segment profitability
We provide design, manufacturing and supply chain services through a network of over 100 locations in approximately 30 countries across five continents. We have established global scale through an extensive network of innovation labs, design centers, manufacturing and services sites in the world's major consumer and enterprise products markets (Asia, the Americas, and Europe) in order to serve the supply chain needs of both multinational and regional companies. Our services provide customers with a competitive advantage by delivering leading-edge manufacturing technology, supply chain expertise, improved product quality, increased flexibility, faster time to market, and overall value.
Our customers leverage our services to meet their requirements throughout their products' entire life cycles. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020, we had revenue of $24.2 billion and net income of $88 million. Flex offers solutions that span from initial design through ramp-up and volume manufacturing as well as through end of life and circularity offerings. This full range of capabilities provides our customers with expertise across the entire value chain. Technology innovation is at the center of delivering these end-to-end capabilities. We believe that the combination of our design and engineering services, advanced supply chain management solutions and manufacturing technology capabilities along with our global scale and regional presence provide us with a competitive advantage
Flex Industry Overview
Our areas of expertise are design, manufacturing and supply chain services for a broad range of products, from medical devices, connected automotive systems and smart home appliances to cloud and data center infrastructures. As such, the closest broad definition of our industry remains the outsourced EMS industry. In recent years, we have seen an increased level of diversification by many companies, in the technology, automotive and healthcare industries along with the convergence of many industries being transformed by technology advances. Increasingly complex products require highly customized solutions, in turn resulting in significant changes to the overall manufacturing and supply chain landscape.
The estimated growth of the EMS industry for calendar year 2019 was minimal at approximately 1%. The intensely competitive nature of the electronics industry, the increasing complexity and sophistication of electronics products, and pressures on OEMs to reduce product costs and shorten product life cycles are all factors that encourage OEMs to utilize supply chain service providers as part of their business and manufacturing strategies. Utilizing global manufacturing and service providers allows OEMs to take advantage of the global design, manufacturing and supply chain management expertise of outsource providers, and enables OEMs to concentrate on product research, development, marketing, and sales. We believe that OEMs realize a number of important benefits through their strategic relationships with EMS providers, including:
• Improved inventory management and purchasing power;
• Access to worldwide design, engineering, manufacturing, and after-market service capabilities;
• Ability to focus on core branding and R&D initiatives;
• Accelerated time to market and time-to-volume production;
• Improved efficiency and optimized production costs;
• Improved product quality through advanced design and production at scale; and
• Reduced capital investment requirements and fixed costs;
We believe that growth in the EMS industry will be largely driven by the need for OEMs to respond to rapidly changing industries, markets and technologies, as well as the increasing complexity of supply chains and the continued pressure to be innovative and cost competitive.
Additionally, we believe that there are significant opportunities for global EMS providers to win additional business from OEMs in markets or industry segments that have yet to substantially outsource manufacturing. Finally, we believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting numerous new vulnerabilities and challenges for OEMs, which will require OEMs from all markets and industries to value and evaluate their supply chain resiliency, which may drive further growth opportunities
The estimated growth of the EMS industry for calendar year 2019 was minimal at approximately 1%. The intensely competitive nature of the electronics industry, the increasing complexity and sophistication of electronics products, and pressures on OEMs to reduce product costs and shorten product life cycles are all factors that encourage OEMs to utilize supply chain service providers as part of their business and manufacturing strategies. Utilizing global manufacturing and service providers allows OEMs to take advantage of the global design, manufacturing and supply chain management expertise of outsource providers, and enables OEMs to concentrate on product research, development, marketing, and sales. We believe that OEMs realize a number of important benefits through their strategic relationships with EMS providers, including:
• Improved inventory management and purchasing power;
• Access to worldwide design, engineering, manufacturing, and after-market service capabilities;
• Ability to focus on core branding and R&D initiatives;
• Accelerated time to market and time-to-volume production;
• Improved efficiency and optimized production costs;
• Improved product quality through advanced design and production at scale; and
• Reduced capital investment requirements and fixed costs;
We believe that growth in the EMS industry will be largely driven by the need for OEMs to respond to rapidly changing industries, markets and technologies, as well as the increasing complexity of supply chains and the continued pressure to be innovative and cost competitive.
Additionally, we believe that there are significant opportunities for global EMS providers to win additional business from OEMs in markets or industry segments that have yet to substantially outsource manufacturing. Finally, we believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting numerous new vulnerabilities and challenges for OEMs, which will require OEMs from all markets and industries to value and evaluate their supply chain resiliency, which may drive further growth opportunities
Services Provided By Flex
We offer a broad range of customizable services to our customers. We believe that Flex has the broadest worldwide product development lifecycle capabilities in the industry, from concept design to manufacturing to aftermarket services. We believe our key competitive advantages are our people, our processes, and our capabilities for making products, systems and solutions for our customers:
• Speed: Our sophisticated supply chain management tools and expertise allow us to provide customers with access to real-time information that increases visibility throughout the entire product lifecycle, reducing risk while accelerating execution. Our experience with new product introductions and manufacturing ramps provides customers with a time to market advantage.
• Scope: Our full range of services, from Sketch-to-Scale®, include innovation and design, engineering, manufacturing, forward and reverse logistics, and circular economy supply chain management. Our deep cross-industry knowledge and multi-domain expertise accelerate the production of increasingly complex products for increasingly interconnected industries.
• Scale: Our physical infrastructure includes over 100 facilities in approximately 30 countries, staffed by approximately 160,000 employees, providing our customers with truly global scale and strategic geographic distribution capabilities.
We offer global economies of scale in advanced materials and technology sourcing, manufacturing and after-market services, as well as market-focused expertise and capabilities in design and engineering. As a result of our extensive experience in specific markets, we have developed deep understanding of complex market dynamics, giving us the ability to anticipate trends that impact our customers' businesses. Our expertise can help improve our customers' market positioning by effectively adjusting product plans and roadmaps to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver high quality products that meet their geographic and time to market requirements. Our services include all processes necessary to design, build, ship, and service a wide range of products for our customers.
These services include:
Innovation Services.
We provide a comprehensive set of services that enable companies to successfully ideate, create new products and solutions, and gain access to new markets. These services span the entire product introduction and solution lifecycle by providing access to new cross-industry and technology platforms and building block technologies, accelerating innovation and product development from early concepts to final production-ready design, and providing advanced manufacturing and testing for new product introduction and market access to grow our customers' offerings.
Design and Engineering Services.
We offer a comprehensive range of value-added design and engineering services, tailored to specific industries and markets, and the needs of our customers. Our design and engineering services are provided by our global market-based engineering teams and cover a broad range of technical competencies:
• System Architecture, User Interface and Industrial Design;
• Hardware Design;
• Software Design; and
• Design for Excellence.
We are exposed to different or greater potential liabilities from our various design services than those we typically face in our core assembly and manufacturing services. See "Risk Factors—The success of certain of our activities depends on our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; claims of infringement or misuse of intellectual property and/or breach of license agreement provisions against our customers or us could harm our business." Systems Assembly and Manufacturing. Our assembly and manufacturing operations, which generate the majority of our revenues, include printed circuit board assembly and assembly of systems and subsystems that incorporate printed circuit boards and complex electromechanical components. We assemble electronics products with custom electronic enclosures on either a build-to-order or configure-to-order basis. In these operations, we employ just-in-time, ship-to-stock and ship-to-line programs, continuous flow manufacturing, demand flow processes, and statistical process controls. As our customers seek to provide greater functionality in physically smaller products, they increasingly require more sophisticated manufacturing technologies and processes. Our investment in advanced manufacturing equipment and our expertise in innovative miniaturization, packaging and interconnect technologies, enables us to offer a variety of leading-edge manufacturing solutions. We support a wide range of product demand profiles, from low-volume, high-complexity programs, to high-volume production. Our systems assembly and manufacturing capabilities includes the following:
Power Modules.
We offer a full-service power supply business that provides a range of solutions from custom to highly scalable system solutions. We have expertise in high efficiency and high-density switching power supplies ranging from 1 to 3,000 watts. Our product portfolio includes chargers for smartphones and tablets, adapters for notebooks and gaming systems, and power supplies for the server, storage, and networking markets. Our Power Modules business designs and manufactures a wide range of isolated DC/DC converters and non-isolated Point of Load (PoL) converters intended primarily, although not exclusively, for the Information and Communications Technology market, including Servers and High-Performance Computing applications. We also offer specialized power module solutions suitable for other markets. Our products are fully compliant with environmental and Energy Star requirements that drive efficiency specifications in our industry.
Logistics.
Through our Flex Global Services business, we provide after-market and forward supply chain logistics services. Our suite of services is tailored to customers operating in the computing, consumer digital, infrastructure, industrial, mobile, automotive and medical industries. Our expansive global infrastructure includes over 30 sites strategically located throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. We provide multiple logistics solutions including supplier-managed inventory, inbound freight management, product postponement, build/configure to order, order fulfillment and distribution, asset tracking, and supply chain network design.
Reverse Logistics and Repair Services.
We offer a suite of integrated reverse logistics and repair solutions that use globally consistent processes, which help increase our customers' brand loyalty by improving turnaround times and raising endcustomer satisfaction levels. Our reverse logistics and repair solutions include returns management, exchange programs, complex repair, asset recovery, recycling and e-waste management. We provide repair expertise to multiple product lines such as consumer and midrange products, printers, smart phones, consumer medical devices, notebook personal computers, set-top boxes, game consoles and highly complex infrastructure products
• Speed: Our sophisticated supply chain management tools and expertise allow us to provide customers with access to real-time information that increases visibility throughout the entire product lifecycle, reducing risk while accelerating execution. Our experience with new product introductions and manufacturing ramps provides customers with a time to market advantage.
• Scope: Our full range of services, from Sketch-to-Scale®, include innovation and design, engineering, manufacturing, forward and reverse logistics, and circular economy supply chain management. Our deep cross-industry knowledge and multi-domain expertise accelerate the production of increasingly complex products for increasingly interconnected industries.
• Scale: Our physical infrastructure includes over 100 facilities in approximately 30 countries, staffed by approximately 160,000 employees, providing our customers with truly global scale and strategic geographic distribution capabilities.
We offer global economies of scale in advanced materials and technology sourcing, manufacturing and after-market services, as well as market-focused expertise and capabilities in design and engineering. As a result of our extensive experience in specific markets, we have developed deep understanding of complex market dynamics, giving us the ability to anticipate trends that impact our customers' businesses. Our expertise can help improve our customers' market positioning by effectively adjusting product plans and roadmaps to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver high quality products that meet their geographic and time to market requirements. Our services include all processes necessary to design, build, ship, and service a wide range of products for our customers.
These services include:
Innovation Services.
We provide a comprehensive set of services that enable companies to successfully ideate, create new products and solutions, and gain access to new markets. These services span the entire product introduction and solution lifecycle by providing access to new cross-industry and technology platforms and building block technologies, accelerating innovation and product development from early concepts to final production-ready design, and providing advanced manufacturing and testing for new product introduction and market access to grow our customers' offerings.
- Innovation and Design Centers. Our Innovation and Design Centers specialize in supporting customer design and product development. Customers gain access to our design and engineering facilities, technical subject matter expertise, and rapid prototyping resources such as metal and plastic 3D printers and soft tooling capabilities.
- Cross-industry Technologies. Along with our portfolio of specific building block technologies in electrical/ electronics, electromechanical, and software, we also have deep technical expertise in cross-industry technologies including: Human Machine Interface (HMI), Audio and Video, System in Package (SIP), Miniaturization, IoT Platforms and Power Management.
- Systems Integration Services. Through systems integration, we design and integrate advanced data center servers, storage and networking equipment, and data center appliances. These systems provide engineering and design services with an emphasis on multivendor integration and open technologies that promote interoperability at a lower cost.
Design and Engineering Services.
We offer a comprehensive range of value-added design and engineering services, tailored to specific industries and markets, and the needs of our customers. Our design and engineering services are provided by our global market-based engineering teams and cover a broad range of technical competencies:
• System Architecture, User Interface and Industrial Design;
• Hardware Design;
• Software Design; and
• Design for Excellence.
We are exposed to different or greater potential liabilities from our various design services than those we typically face in our core assembly and manufacturing services. See "Risk Factors—The success of certain of our activities depends on our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; claims of infringement or misuse of intellectual property and/or breach of license agreement provisions against our customers or us could harm our business." Systems Assembly and Manufacturing. Our assembly and manufacturing operations, which generate the majority of our revenues, include printed circuit board assembly and assembly of systems and subsystems that incorporate printed circuit boards and complex electromechanical components. We assemble electronics products with custom electronic enclosures on either a build-to-order or configure-to-order basis. In these operations, we employ just-in-time, ship-to-stock and ship-to-line programs, continuous flow manufacturing, demand flow processes, and statistical process controls. As our customers seek to provide greater functionality in physically smaller products, they increasingly require more sophisticated manufacturing technologies and processes. Our investment in advanced manufacturing equipment and our expertise in innovative miniaturization, packaging and interconnect technologies, enables us to offer a variety of leading-edge manufacturing solutions. We support a wide range of product demand profiles, from low-volume, high-complexity programs, to high-volume production. Our systems assembly and manufacturing capabilities includes the following:
- Enclosures. We offer a comprehensive set of custom electronics enclosures and related products and services. Our services include the design, manufacture, integration and deployment of electronics packaging systems, including custom enclosure systems, power and thermal subsystems, interconnect subsystems, cabling, and cases. In addition to standard sheet metal and plastic fabrication services, we assist in the design of electronics packaging systems that protect sensitive electronics and enhance functionality. Our enclosure design services focus on functionality, manufacturability, and testing. These services are integrated with our other assembly and manufacturing services to provide our customers with improved overall supply chain management.
- Testing Services. We offer computer-aided testing services for assembled printed circuit boards, systems, and subsystems. These services significantly improve our ability to deliver high-quality products on a consistent basis. Our test services include management defect analysis, in-circuit testing and functional testing as well as environmental stress tests of board and system assemblies. We also offer design for test, manufacturing, and environmental services to jointly improve customer product design and manufacturing.
- Materials Procurement and Inventory Management. Our manufacturing and assembly operations capitalize on our materials inventory management expertise and volume procurement capabilities. As a result, we believe that we are able to achieve highly competitive cost reductions and shorten total manufacturing cycle times for our customers. Materials procurement and management consists of the planning, purchasing, expediting, and warehousing of components and materials used in the manufacturing process. In addition, our strategy includes having third-party suppliers of custom components located in our industrial parks to reduce material and transportation costs, simplify logistics, and facilitate inventory management. We also use a sophisticated automated manufacturing resource planning system and enhanced electronic data interchange capabilities to ensure inventory control and optimization. Electronic data interchange allows customers to share demand and product forecasts, deliver purchase orders and assists suppliers with satisfying just-in-time delivery and supplier-managed inventory requirements. There are a number of sources for these materials, including customers for whom we are providing systems assembly and manufacturing services. On some occasions, there have been shortages of certain electronic components, most recently for connectors, capacitors, LCD panels and memory (both DRAM and Flash). As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we experienced component shortages and other supply chain constraints in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2020, and such component shortages and supply chain constraints have continued to a lesser extent in the first quarter of our fiscal year 2021. See "Risk Factors—We may be adversely affected by supply chain issues, including shortages of required electronic components."
Power Modules.
We offer a full-service power supply business that provides a range of solutions from custom to highly scalable system solutions. We have expertise in high efficiency and high-density switching power supplies ranging from 1 to 3,000 watts. Our product portfolio includes chargers for smartphones and tablets, adapters for notebooks and gaming systems, and power supplies for the server, storage, and networking markets. Our Power Modules business designs and manufactures a wide range of isolated DC/DC converters and non-isolated Point of Load (PoL) converters intended primarily, although not exclusively, for the Information and Communications Technology market, including Servers and High-Performance Computing applications. We also offer specialized power module solutions suitable for other markets. Our products are fully compliant with environmental and Energy Star requirements that drive efficiency specifications in our industry.
Logistics.
Through our Flex Global Services business, we provide after-market and forward supply chain logistics services. Our suite of services is tailored to customers operating in the computing, consumer digital, infrastructure, industrial, mobile, automotive and medical industries. Our expansive global infrastructure includes over 30 sites strategically located throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. We provide multiple logistics solutions including supplier-managed inventory, inbound freight management, product postponement, build/configure to order, order fulfillment and distribution, asset tracking, and supply chain network design.
Reverse Logistics and Repair Services.
We offer a suite of integrated reverse logistics and repair solutions that use globally consistent processes, which help increase our customers' brand loyalty by improving turnaround times and raising endcustomer satisfaction levels. Our reverse logistics and repair solutions include returns management, exchange programs, complex repair, asset recovery, recycling and e-waste management. We provide repair expertise to multiple product lines such as consumer and midrange products, printers, smart phones, consumer medical devices, notebook personal computers, set-top boxes, game consoles and highly complex infrastructure products
Strategy of Flex
We help our customers responsibly build products that create value and improve people’s lives. We do this by providing our customers with product development lifecycle services, from innovation, design, and engineering, to manufacturing, supply chain solutions, logistics, and circularity offerings. Our strategy is to enable and scale innovation for our customers, maintain our leadership in our capabilities, and build extended offerings in high-growth industries and markets.
- Talent. To maintain our competitiveness and world-class capabilities, we focus on hiring and retaining the world's best talent. We have taken steps to attract the best engineering, functional and operational leaders and have accelerated efforts to develop the future leaders of the company.
- Customer Focus. We believe that building strong partnerships with our customer and delivering on our commitments strengthens trust and customer retention. Our customers come first, and we have a relentless focus on delivering distinctive products and services in a cost-effective manner with fast time to market. We are highly collaborative and leverage our global system and processes to operate with speed and responsiveness to provide our customers with a reliant supply chain partner.
- Market Focus. We focus on companies that are leaders in their industry and value our superior capabilities in design, manufacturing, and supply chain services. We focus on high-growth industries and markets where we have distinctive competence and compelling value propositions. Examples include our investments in specific technologies and industries including healthcare, automotive, industrial markets, and energy. Our market-focused approach to managing our business increases our customers' competitiveness by leveraging our deep vertical industry and cross-industry expertise, as well as global scale, regional presence and agility to respond to changes in market dynamics.
- Global Operations Capabilities. We continue to invest in maintaining the leadership of our world-class manufacturing and services capabilities including automation, new product introduction and large-scale manufacturing. We continue to capitalize on our industrial park concept, where we co-locate our design, manufacturing, and service resources globally in lower-cost regions, to provide a competitive advantage by minimizing logistics, manufacturing costs, and cycle times while increasing flexibility and responsiveness.
Competitive Strength of Flex
We continue to enhance our business through the development and expansion of our product and service offerings. We strive to maintain the efficiency and flexibility of our organization, with repeatable execution that adapts to macro-economic changes to provide clear value to our customers, while increasing their competitiveness. We have a focused strategy on delivering value to our customers through innovation and design services, manufacturing technology, supply chain solutions, and domain expertise. Significant Scope and Global Scale. We believe that global scale and regional capability are a significant competitive advantage, as our customers increasingly require a broad range of manufacturing and supply chain services and solutions globally. Increasingly, our customers are transitioning to regional based supply chains to take advantage of time to market and specific customization required to win in those markets. Additionally, our procurement and global supply chain capability provides us with an ability to use our worldwide supplier relationships to achieve leading-edge technologies, access, supply chain flexibility and advantageous pricing for our customers. Digitized Supply Chain Solutions. We offer a comprehensive range of worldwide supply chain services that simplify and improve global product development processes, providing meaningful time and cost savings to our customers.
We have deployed manufacturing operations in regions around the world to provide our customers with a wide array of solutions where our customers and/or their customers are located. As of March 31, 2020, approximately 81% of our manufacturing capacity was located in emerging markets, including Brazil, China, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine
- Long-Standing Customer Relationships. We believe that our long-term relationships with key customers is a result of our track record of meeting commitments and delivering value that increases our customers' competitiveness.
- Extensive Design and Engineering Capabilities. We have an industry-leading global design service offering, with extensive product design engineering resources, that provides design services, product developments, and solutions to satisfy a wide array of customer requirements across all of our key industries and markets.
- Geographic, Customer and End Market Diversification. We believe that we are operating one of the most well-balanced and diversified portfolio from a product, geographical and customer diversification perspective. We have no customer accounting for more than 10% and our ten largest accounted for 39% of our net sales in fiscal year 2020. We believe we are well-positioned through our diverse portfolio and global footprint to grow faster than the industry average.
- Customer and Product Innovation Hubs. We have established state-of-the art innovation hubs in the Americas, Asia and Europe, with differentiated offerings and specialized services for specific industries and markets. These innovation hubs offer our customers a geographically focused version of our design services, taking their product from concept to volume production and go-to-market in a rapid, cost effective and low risk manner.
- Industrial Parks; Cost-Efficient Manufacturing Services. We have developed self-contained campuses that co-locate our manufacturing and logistics operations with our suppliers in various cost-efficient locations. These sites enhance our supply chain management efficiency, while providing multi-technology solution value for our customers.
We have deployed manufacturing operations in regions around the world to provide our customers with a wide array of solutions where our customers and/or their customers are located. As of March 31, 2020, approximately 81% of our manufacturing capacity was located in emerging markets, including Brazil, China, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine
Customers of Flex
Our customers include many of the world's leading technology companies. We have focused on establishing long-term relationships with our customers and have been successful in expanding our relationships to incorporate additional product lines and services. As our business spans multiple end markets, we believe that we are well-positioned through our market diversification to grow faster than the industry average and successfully navigate through difficult economic times such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. As examples, we serve the following key customers across our diverse business groups: health solutions customers Abbott, Philips and Johnson & Johnson and auto customers Ford, Nexteer and Fiat Chrysler in our HRS segment; Teradyne, Dyson and Xerox in our IEI segment; Cisco, Nokia Solutions and Ericsson in our CEC segment; and Lenovo/Motorola, HP and Bose in our CTG segment. In fiscal year 2020, our ten largest customers accounted for approximately 39% of net sales. No customer accounted for greater than 10% of the Company's net sales in fiscal year 2020.
Backlog of Flex
Although we obtain firm purchase orders from our customers, OEM customers typically do not place firm orders for delivery of products more than 30 to 90 days in advance. In addition, OEM customers may reschedule or cancel firm orders depending on contractual arrangements. Therefore, we do not believe that the backlog of expected product sales covered by firm purchase orders is a meaningful measure of future sales.
Competition of Flex
Our market is extremely competitive and includes many companies, several of which have achieved substantial market share. We compete against numerous domestic and foreign manufacturing service providers, as well as our current and prospective customers, who evaluate our capabilities in light of their own capabilities and cost structures. We face particular competition from Asian-based competitors, including Taiwanese Original Design Manufacturing ("ODM") suppliers who compete in a variety of our end markets and have a substantial share of global information technology hardware production. We also compete with different companies depending on the type of service we are providing or the geographic area in which an activity takes place. We believe that the principal competitive factors in the manufacturing services market are quality and range of services; design and technological capabilities; cost; location of sites; and responsiveness and flexibility. We believe we are extremely competitive with regard to all of these factors.
Intellectual Property of Flex
We own or license various United States and foreign patents relating to a variety of technologies. For certain of our proprietary processes, inventions, and works of authorship, we rely on trade secret or copyright protection. We also maintain trademark rights (including registrations) for our corporate name and several other trademarks and service marks that we use in our business in the United States and other countries throughout the world. We have implemented appropriate policies and procedures (including both technological means and training programs for our employees) to identify and protect our intellectual property, as well as that of our customers and suppliers. As of March 31, 2020, and 2019, the carrying value of our intellectual property was not material. Although we believe that our intellectual property assets and licenses are sufficient for the operation of our business as we currently conduct it, from time to time third parties assert patent infringement claims against us or our customers. In addition, we provide design and engineering services to our customers and also design and make our own products. As a consequence of these activities, our customers are sometimes requiring us to take responsibility for intellectual property to a greater extent than in our manufacturing and assembly businesses. If and when third parties make assertions regarding the ownership or right to use intellectual property, we could be required to either enter into licensing arrangements or to resolve the issue through litigation. Such license rights might not be available to us on commercially acceptable terms, if at all, and any such litigation might not be resolved in our favor.
Additionally, litigation could be lengthy and costly and could materially harm our financial condition regardless of the outcome. We also could be required to incur substantial costs to redesign a product or re-perform design services. See "Risk Factors - The success of certain of our activities depends on our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; claims of infringement or misuse of intellectual property and/or breach of license agreement provisions against our customers or us could harm our business."
Additionally, litigation could be lengthy and costly and could materially harm our financial condition regardless of the outcome. We also could be required to incur substantial costs to redesign a product or re-perform design services. See "Risk Factors - The success of certain of our activities depends on our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; claims of infringement or misuse of intellectual property and/or breach of license agreement provisions against our customers or us could harm our business."
Employees of Flex
Our policies, philosophy and strategies support the inclusion of all people in our working environment. We’re committed to respecting the human rights of our employees and improving their quality of life. We encourage our people to engage in lifelong learning and growth. And we give them opportunities to perform to the best of their abilities. As of March 31, 2020, our global workforce totaled approximately 160,000 employees including our contractor workforce. In certain international locations, our employees are represented by labor unions and by work councils. Although we have experienced various work stoppages due to the pandemic outlined below, we have never experienced a significant work stoppage due to strike, and we believe that our employee relations are good. Our success depends to a large extent upon the continued services of key managerial and technical employees. The loss of such personnel could seriously harm our business, results of operations and business prospects. To date, we have not experienced significant difficulties in attracting or retaining such personnel. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we deployed our contingency and resiliency plans that are encompassed in our business continuity programs. Our resiliency advisory and crisis management teams defined work streams and set up “war” rooms with hundreds of employees, organizing across our global footprint, and coordinating and communicating with our suppliers and customers. Our leadership teams initiated enhanced health and safety measures across all facilities, as our foremost focus has been the health and safety of our employees. We modified practices at our manufacturing locations and offices to require personal protective equipment, sanitization measures, temperature checks and social distancing well before these measures were mandated. Our protocols to protect employees and safely operate our facilities have been in partnership with several governments, including in China, Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil and Europe. These measures also have enabled us to continue to conduct operations which are considered to be essential services, including but not limited to the manufacture of critical health care products.
Flex (FLEX) stock price chart over the last 5 years
The image below shows the stock price history of Flex (FLEX) Over the last 5 years the stock of Flex has increased by a decent 63.5%. No investor would say no to these kind of returns over a 5 year period.