Company: BHE
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-025644
Chunk: 49

Company: BENCHMARK ELECTRONICS INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 49
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 loss of customers and contracts; damage to the Company’s reputation and/or otherwise harm its business. We also expect to incur substantial costs in the future to satisfy customer requirements (including costs arising from the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program) and to mitigate against cybersecurity attacks as threats are expected to continue to become more persistent and sophisticated. If our systems for protecting against cybersecurity risks prove not to be sufficient, we could be adversely affected by, among other things: loss of or damage to intellectual property, proprietary or confidential information, or customer, supplier, or employee data; interruption of our business operations; and increased costs required to prevent, respond to, or mitigate cybersecurity attacks. These risks could harm our reputation and our relationships with customers, suppliers, employees and other third parties, and may result in claims against us. These risks could have a material adverse effect on our business, consolidated results of operations and consolidated financial condition.

Any delay in the upgrade of our information systems could disrupt our operations and cause unanticipated increases in our costs. 

We are currently upgrading our IT infrastructure and ERP system, which we anticipate will take several years. Failure to complete the upgrade timely or at all could leave us with sites without the systems capability to flexibly support future customer requirements for manufacturing capabilities and data driven analytics, as well as result in unanticipated increases in costs.

Financial Risks

Our level of indebtedness may limit our flexibility in operating our business and reacting to changes in our business or industry, or prevent us from making payments on our debt or obtaining additional financing.

As of December 31, 2024, our total outstanding debt (excluding unamortized debt issuance costs and finance leases) was $257.0 million, all of which represented borrowings under our credit facility). Our level of indebtedness could have important consequences. For example, it could:

•increase our vulnerability to general adverse economic and industry conditions;

•impair our ability to obtain additional debt or equity financing in the future for working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions or other purposes;

•require us to dedicate a material portion of our cash flows from operations to the payment of principal and interest on our indebtedness, thereby reducing the availability of our cash flows to fund working capital needs, capital expenditures, acquisitions and other purposes;

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•expose us to the risk of increased interest rates since the term loan has a variable rate;

•limit our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, changes in our business or industry;

•place us at a disadvantage compared to