Company: MWA
Filing Date: 2025-11-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001350593-25-000066
Chunk: 286

Company: Mueller Water Products, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-11-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 286
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Normal operations at our key manufacturing facilities may be interrupted.

Some of our key products, including fire hydrants, iron gate valves, service brass products, specialty valves and repair products are manufactured at a single facility or a few facilities, which depend on critical pieces of heavy equipment that cannot be moved economically to other locations or sourced quickly.  We are therefore limited in our ability to shift production among locations.  The operations at our manufacturing facilities may be interrupted or impaired by various operating risks, including, but not limited to:

•Catastrophic events, such as fires, floods, explosions, natural disasters, new and ongoing public health crises, severe weather or other similar occurrences,

•Terrorist attacks, governmental instability, national emergencies, wars, mass shootings or other acts of violence,

•Interruptions in the delivery of raw materials or purchased parts, shortages of equipment or spare parts or other manufacturing inputs,

•Adverse government regulations, including trade protection measures and import or export duties or licensing requirements, 

•Equipment or information systems breakdowns or failures,

•Maintenance outages to conduct maintenance activities that cannot be performed safely during operations, 

•Prolonged power failures or reductions,

•Violations of our permit requirements or revocation of permits,

•Release of pollutants and hazardous substances to air, soil, surface water or ground water,

•Labor disputes, and

•Cyberattacks and events.

The occurrence of any of these events may impair our production capabilities and adversely affect our sales, profitability and cash flows.

Any inability to protect our intellectual property or our failure to effectively defend against intellectual property infringement claims could adversely affect our competitive position.

Our business depends on our technology and expertise, which were largely developed internally and are not subject to statutory protection.  We rely on a combination of patent protection, copyright and trademark laws, trade secrets protection, employee and third-party confidentiality agreements as well as technical measures to protect our intellectual property rights.  The methods we employ to protect our intellectual property rights may not adequately deter infringement, misappropriation or independent development of our technology, and they may not prevent an unauthorized party from obtaining or using information or intellectual property that we regard as proprietary or keep others from using brand names similar to our own.  The disclosure, misappropriation or infringement of our intellectual property could harm our competitive position.  In addition, our actions to enforce our rights may result in substantial costs and the diversion of management time and other resources.  We may also be subject to intellectual property infringement claims from time to time