Organic Revenue: Organic revenue reflects net sales calculated under GAAP excluding net sales from acquired business owned for less than four full quarters. The company believes organic revenue provides useful information for evaluating the periodic growth of the business on a consistent basis and provides for a meaningful period-to-period comparison and analysis of trends in the business.
Non-GAAP operating earnings, non-GAAP EPS and non-GAAP operating margin each excludes highlighted items, including share-based compensation expenses and intangible assets amortization expense, as follows:
Highlighted items: The company has excluded the effects of highlighted items including, but not limited to, acquisition-related transaction fees, tangible and intangible asset impairments, reorganization of business charges, certain non-cash pension adjustments, legal settlements and other contingencies, gains and losses on investments and businesses, Hytera-related legal expenses, gains and losses on the extinguishment of debt and the income tax effects of significant tax matters, from its non-GAAP operating expenses and net income measurements because the company believes that these historical items do not reflect expected future operating earnings or expenses and do not contribute to a meaningful evaluation of the company's current operating performance or comparisons to the company's past operating performance. For the purposes of management's internal analysis over operating performance, the company uses financial statements that exclude highlighted items, as these charges do not contribute to a meaningful evaluation of the company's current operating performance or comparisons to the company's past operating performance.
Hytera-Related Legal Expenses: On March 14, 2017, the company filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (the “Court”) against Hytera Communications Corporation Limited of Shenzhen, China; Hytera America, Inc.; and Hytera Communications America (West), Inc. (collectively, “Hytera”), alleging trade secret theft and copyright infringement and seeking, among other things, injunctive relief, compensatory damages, and punitive damages. On February 14, 2020, the company announced that a jury decided in the company's favor in its trade secret theft and copyright infringement case. In connection with this verdict, the jury awarded the company $345.8 million in compensatory damages and $418.8 million in punitive damages, for a total of $764.6 million. In a series of post-trial rulings in 2021, the Court subsequently reduced the judgment to $543.7 million, but also ordered Hytera to pay the company $51.1 million in pre-judgment interest and $2.6 million in costs, as well as $34.2 million in attorneys' fees. The company continues to seek collection of the judgment through the ongoing legal process.
On December 17, 2020, the Court held that Hytera must pay the company a forward-looking reasonable royalty on products that use the company’s stolen trade secrets, and on December 15, 2021, set royalty rates for Hytera's sale of relevant products from July 1, 2019 forward. On July 5, 2022, the Court ordered that Hytera pay into a third-party escrow on July 31, 2022, the royalties owed to the company based on the sale of relevant products from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2022. Hytera failed to make the required royalty payment on July 31, 2022. On August 1, 2022, Hytera filed a motion to modify or stay the Court’s previous July 5, 2022 royalty order, which the Court denied on July 11, 2023. On August 3, 2022, the company filed a motion seeking to hold Hytera in civil contempt for violating the royalty order by not making the required royalty payment on July 31,2022. On August 26, 2023, the Court granted the company's contempt motion. As a result, on September 1, 2023, Hytera made a payment of $56 million into the third-party escrow. In addition to the September 1, 2023 payment of $56 million, Hytera has made de minimis quarterly royalty payments into the third-party escrow from October 2022 through January 2024. The aggregate amount paid into escrow will not be recognized until all contingencies are resolved and such amount is released from escrow.
Following the February 14, 2020 verdict and judgment in the company's favor, Hytera subsequently filed several notices of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (the "Court of Appeals"), including a notice of appeal filed on August 2, 2022 which appealed the orders related to the jury's verdict as well as the Court's royalty order. The company filed its cross-appeal on August 5, 2022. The Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on the parties' appeals on December 5, 2023.
Separate from the company's litigation with Hytera, on May 27, 2020, Hytera America, Inc. and Hytera Communications America (West), Inc. each filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California (the “Bankruptcy Court”). On February 11, 2022, the Court entered an order to confirm the liquidation plan for the two Hytera entities and the distributions were made on February 25, 2022 to the creditors, including a distribution of $13 million to the company. On December 22, 2022, an additional distribution of $2 million was made to the company as well as an assignment of various delinquent accounts receivable of the bankrupt Hytera entities. The gains for the two monetary distributions were recorded to Other charges (income) in the company’s Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Management typically considers legal expenses associated with defending the company's intellectual property as “normal and recurring” and accordingly, Hytera-related legal expenses were included in both the company's GAAP and non-GAAP operating income for fiscal years 2017, 2018 and 2019. The company anticipates further expenses associated with Hytera-related litigation; however, as of 2020, the company believes that these expenses are no longer a part of the “normal and recurring” legal expenses incurred to operate its business. In addition, as any contingent or actual gains associated with the Hytera litigation are recognized, they will be similarly excluded from the company's non-GAAP operating income, consistent with the company's treatment of the approximately $15 million of proceeds realized in 2022. The company believes after the jury award, the presentation of excluding both Hytera-related legal expenses and gains related to awards better aligns with how management evaluates the company's ongoing underlying business performance.
Share-based compensation expenses: The company has excluded share-based compensation expense from its non-GAAP operating expenses and net income measurements. Although share-based compensation is a key incentive offered to the company’s employees and the company believes such compensation contributed to the revenue earned during the periods presented and also believes it will contribute to the generation of future period revenues, the company continues to evaluate its performance excluding share-based compensation expense primarily because it represents a significant non-cash expense. Share-based compensation expense will recur in future periods.
Intangible assets amortization expense: The company has excluded intangible assets amortization expense from its non-GAAP operating expenses and net earnings measurements, primarily because it represents a non-cash expense and because the company evaluates its performance excluding intangible assets amortization expense. Amortization of intangible assets is consistent in amount and frequency but is significantly affected by the timing and size of the company’s acquisitions. Investors should note that the use of intangible assets contributed to the company’s revenues earned during the periods presented and will contribute to the company’s future period revenues as well. Intangible assets amortization expense will recur in future periods.
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable federal securities law. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and generally include words such as “believes,” “expects,” “intends,” “anticipates,” “estimates” and similar expressions. The company can give no assurance that any actual or future results or events discussed in these statements will be achieved. Any forward-looking statements represent the company’s views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing the company’s views as of any subsequent date. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from the statements contained in this release. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, Motorola Solutions’ financial outlook for the first quarter and full-year of 2024; and the impact of the CMA’s remedies order regarding Airwave (including the company's actions in response). Motorola Solutions cautions the reader that the risks and uncertainties below, as well as those in Part I Item 1A of Motorola Solutions’ 2022 Annual Report on Form 10-K, Part II Item 1A of Motorola Solutions’ 2023 Third Quarter Report on Form 10-Q, and in its other SEC filings available for free on the SEC’s website at
www.sec.gov and on Motorola Solutions’ website at
www.motorolasolutions.com/investors, could cause Motorola Solutions’ actual results to differ materially from those estimated or predicted in the forward-looking statements. Many of these risks and uncertainties cannot be controlled by Motorola Solutions, and factors that may impact forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: (i) the impact including increased costs and potential liabilities, associated with changes in laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection, information security and cybersecurity; (ii) challenges relating to existing or future legislation and regulations pertaining to artificial intelligence (“AI”), AI-enabled products and the use of biometrics and other video analytics; (iii) the impact of government regulation of radio frequencies; (iv) audits and regulations and laws applicable to our U.S. government customer contracts and grants; (v) the impact, including increased costs and additional compliance obligations, associated with existing or future telecommunications-related laws and regulations; (vi) the evolving state of environmental regulation relating to climate change, and the physical risks of climate change; (vii) impact of product regulatory and safety, consumer, worker safety and environmental laws; (viii) impact of tax matters; (ix) increased areas of risk, increased competition and additional compliance obligations associated with the expansion of our technologies within our Products and Systems Integration and Software and Services segments; (x) the effectiveness of our investments in new products and technologies; (xi) impact of catastrophic events on our business or our customers' or suppliers' business; (xii) social, ethical and competitive risks relating to the use of AI in our products and services; (xiii) the effectiveness of our strategic acquisitions, including the integrations of such acquired businesses; (xiv) increased cybersecurity threats, a security breach or other significant disruption of our IT systems or those of our outsource partners, suppliers or customers; (xv) our inability to protect our intellectual property or potential infringement of intellectual property rights of third parties; (xvi) risks relating to intellectual property licenses and intellectual property indemnities in our customer and supplier contracts; (xvii) our license of the MOTOROLA, MOTO, MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS and the Stylized M logo and all derivatives and formatives thereof from Motorola Trademark Holdings, LLC; (xviii) our inability to purchase at acceptable prices a sufficient amount of materials, parts, and components, as well as software and services, to meet the demands of our customers, and any disruption to our suppliers or significant increase in the price of supplies; (xix) risks related to our large, multi-year system and services contracts (including, but not limited to, with respect to the ESN and Airwave contracts); (xx) the global nature of our employees, customers, suppliers and outsource partners; (xxi) our use of third-parties to develop, design and/or manufacture many of our components and some of our products, and to perform portions of our business operations; (xxii) the inability of our subcontractors to perform in a timely and compliant manner or adhere to our Human Rights Policy; (xxiii) the inability of our products to meet our customers’ expectations or regulatory or industry standards; (xxiv) increasing scrutiny and evolving expectations from investors, customers, lawmakers, regulators and other stakeholders regarding environmental, social and governance-related practices and disclosures; (xxv) inability to attract and retain senior management and key employees; (xxvi) impact of current global economic and political conditions in the markets in which we operate (including, but not limited to, inflation); (xxvii) impact of returns on pension and retirement plan assets and interest rate changes; (xxviii) inability to access the capital markets for financing on acceptable terms and conditions; (xxix) exposure to exchange rate fluctuations on cross-border transactions and the translation of local currency results into U.S. dollars; and (xxx) the return of capital to shareholders through dividends and/or repurchasing shares. Motorola Solutions undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement or risk factor, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
