Item 1. Business
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
OVERVIEW
Dolby Laboratories creates audio and imaging technologies that transform entertainment and communications at the cinema, at home, at work, and on mobile devices. Founded in 1965, our strengths stem from expertise in analog and digital signal processing and digital compression technologies that have transformed the ability of artists to convey entertainment experiences to their audiences through recorded media. Such technologies led to the development of our noise-reduction systems for analog tape recordings, and have since evolved into multiple offerings that enable more immersive sound for cinema, digital television transmissions and devices, mobile devices, OTT video and music services, and home entertainment devices. Today, we derive the majority of our revenue from licensing our audio technologies. We also derive revenue from licensing our consumer imaging and communication technologies, as well as audio and imaging technologies for premium cinema offerings in collaboration with exhibitors. Finally, we provide products and services for a variety of applications in the cinema, broadcast, communications, and home entertainment markets.
COVID-19
Please refer to the Executive Summary section of Part II, Item 7 " Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" for information concerning the continuing effect of COVID-19 on our business.
OUR STRATEGY
Key elements of our strategy include:
Advancing the Science of Sight and Sound. We apply our understanding of the human senses, audio, and imaging engineering to develop technologies aimed at improving how people experience and interact with their entertainment and communications content.
Providing Creative Solutions. We promote the use of our solutions as creative tools, and provide our products, services, and technologies to filmmakers, musical artists, sound mixers, and other content creators and providers. Our tools help showcase the quality and impact of their efforts and intent, which in turn may generate market demand.
Delivering Superior Experiences. Our technologies and solutions optimize playback and communications so that users may enjoy richer, clearer, and more immersive sound and sight experiences.
REVENUE GENERATION
The following table presents a summary of the composition of our revenue for all periods presented. Previously reported revenues in the tables below reflect the adoption of ASU 2014-09. Refer to Note 2 " Summary of Significant Accounting Policies " and Note 3. "Revenue Recognition " for further detail.
Fiscal Year Ended
Revenue September 25,
2020 September 27,
2019 September 28,
2018
Licensing 93% 89% 89%
Products and services 7% 11% 11%
Total 100% 100% 100%
We generate revenue from licensing arrangements with over 500 electronics product OEM and software developer licensees.
Licensing
We license our technologies to a range of customers who incorporate them into their products for enhanced audio and imaging functionality whether it be at home, at work, on mobile devices, or at the cinema. Our key technologies are summarized in the table below. As it relates to AAC, HE-AAC, AVC, and HEVC, we jointly participate in patent licensing programs with other patent owners.
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Technology Description
AAC & HE-AAC An advanced digital audio codec solution with higher bandwidth efficiency used for a wide range of media applications.
AVC A digital video codec with high bandwidth efficiency used in a wide range of media devices.
Dolby® AC-4 A next-generation digital audio coding technology that increases transmission efficiency while delivering new audio experiences, including Dolby Atmos, to a wide range of playback devices.
Dolby Atmos® An object-oriented audio technology for cinema and a wide range of media devices that allows sound to be precisely placed and moved anywhere in the listening environment including the overhead dimension. Dolby Atmos is an immersive experience that can be provided via multiple Dolby audio coding technologies.
Dolby Digital® A digital audio coding technology that provides multichannel sound to a variety of media applications.
Dolby Digital Plus™ An advanced digital audio coding technology that offers more efficient audio transmission for a wide range of media applications and devices.
Dolby® TrueHD A digital audio coding technology providing lossless encoding for premium quality media applications.
Dolby Vision® An imaging technology combining high dynamic range and dynamic metadata to deliver higher color contrast, brighter contrast, and improved details for cinema and a wide range of media devices.
Dolby Voice® An audio communications technology with superior spatial perception, voice clarity, and background noise reduction that emulates the in-person meeting experience.
HEVC A next-generation digital video codec with high bandwidth efficiency to support ultra-high definition experiences for a wide range of media devices.
The following table presents the composition of our licensing business and revenues for all periods presented:
Fiscal Year Ended
Market September 25,
2020 September 27,
2019 September 28,
2018 Main Offerings Incorporating Our Technologies
Broadcast 41% 43% 41% Televisions & STBs
Mobile 21% 17% 16% Smartphones & Tablets
CE 14% 14% 15% DMAs, Blu-ray Disc devices, AVRs, Soundbars, DVDs, & HTIBs
PC 12% 10% 11% Windows and macOS operating systems
Other 12% 16% 17% Gaming consoles, Auto DVD, Dolby Cinema, & Dolby Voice
Total 100% 100% 100%
We have various licensing models: a two-tier model, an integrated licensing model, a patent licensing model, and collaboration arrangements.
Two-Tier Licensing Model . Most of our consumer entertainment licensing business consists of a two-tier licensing model whereby our decoding technologies, included in reference software and firmware code, are first provided under license to semiconductor manufacturers whom we refer to as “implementation licensees.” Implementation licensees incorporate our technologies in ICs which they sell to OEMs of consumer entertainment products, whom we refer to as “system licensees.” System licensees separately obtain licenses from us that allow them to make and sell end-user products using ICs that incorporate our technologies.
Implementation licensees incorporate our technologies into their chipsets that, once approved by Dolby, are available for purchase from implementation licensees by OEMs for use in end-user products. Implementation licensees only pay us a nominal initial fee on contract execution as consideration for the ongoing services that we provide to assist in their implementation process. Revenues from these initial fees are recognized ratably over the contractual term as a component of licensing revenue.
System licensees provide us with prototypes of products, or self-test results of products that incorporate our technologies. Upon our confirmation that our technologies are optimally and consistently incorporated, the system licensee may buy ICs under a license for the same Dolby technology from our network of implementation licensees, and may further sell approved products to retailers, distributors, and consumers. For the use of our technologies, our system licensees pay an initial licensing fee as well as royalties, which represent the majority of the revenue recognized from these arrangements. The amount of royalties we collect on a particular product depends on several factors including the nature of the implementations, the mix of Dolby technologies used, and the volume of products using our technologies that are shipped by the system licensee.
Integrated Licensing Model . We also license our technologies to software operating system vendors and to certain other OEMs that act as combined implementation and system licensees. These licensees incorporate our technologies in their software used on PCs, in mobile applications, or in ICs they manufacture and incorporate into their products. As with the two-tier licensing model, the combined implementation and system licensee pays us an initial licensing fee in addition to royalties as determined by the mix of Dolby technologies used, the nature of the
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implementations, and the volume of products using our technologies that are shipped, and is subject to the same quality control evaluation process.
Patent Licensing Model. We license our patents through patent pools which are arrangements between multiple patent owners to jointly offer and license pooled patents to licensees. We also license our patents directly to manufacturers that use our IP in their products. Finally, we generate service fees for managing patent pools on behalf of third party patent owners through our wholly-owned subsidiary, Via Licensing Corporation. By aggregating and offering pooled IP, patent pools deliver efficiencies that reduce transactional costs for both IP owners and licensees. The Via Licensing patent pools enable product manufacturers to efficiently and transparently secure patent licenses for audio coding, interactive television, digital radio, and wireless technologies. We offer our patents related to AAC, AVC, HE-AAC, HEVC, and other IP through a combination of patent pools and licensing directly to OEMs.
Recoveries. Licensing revenue recognized in any given period may include revenue from licensees and/or settlements with third parties where the use of our technology occurred in previous periods. Within the Results of Operations section of Part II, Item 7 " Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, " revenue attributable to previous periods' usage including settlements are collectively referred to as "recoveries." Such recoveries have become a recurring element of our business and are particularly subject to fluctuation and unpredictability.
Collaboration Arrangements.
Dolby Cinema: We partner with exhibitors to deliver a premium cinema offering with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos at new and pre-existing venues. We receive revenue at Dolby Cinema sites through a share of box office receipts, which is recognized as licensing revenue.
Dolby Voice: We enter into arrangements with audio and video conferencing providers where, in return for licensing our IP and know-how, we earn revenue based on access to our technology and services.
Products and Services
We design and manufacture audio and imaging products for the cinema, television, broadcast, and entertainment industries. Distributed in over 90 countries, these products are used in content creation, distribution, and playback to enhance image and sound quality, and improve transmission and playback. Additionally, some of our Dolby Cinema arrangements involve fixed or minimum amounts, which are typically included in products sales. We had also sold or leased hardware that facilitates the Dolby conferencing experience. As of the first quarter of fiscal 2021, we are winding down our conferencing hardware business and will focus our efforts towards software-based solutions, including through our developer platform.
Key products from which we generate products revenue are summarized in the table below:
Product Description
Cinema Cinema Imaging Products Digital Cinema Servers used to load, store, decrypt, decode, watermark, and playback digital film files for presentation on digital cinema projectors and software used to encrypt, encode, and package digital media files for distribution.
Cinema Audio Products Cinema Processors, amplifiers, and loudspeakers used to decode, render, and optimally playback digital cinema soundtracks including those using Dolby Atmos.
Other Dolby Conference Phone An integral hardware component of the Dolby Voice conferencing solution that enhances full-room voice capture, spatial voice separation, and playback.
Dolby Voice Room Video conferencing solution for huddle rooms and conference rooms that combines a camera product with the Dolby Conference Phone and Dolby Voice technology.
Other Products 3-D glasses and kits, broadcast hardware and software used to encode, transmit, and decode multiple channels of high-quality audio for DTV and HDTV distribution, monitors, and accessibility solutions for hearing and visually impaired consumers.
In addition, we offer various services to support theatrical and television production for cinema exhibition, broadcast, and home entertainment, including equipment training and maintenance, mixing room alignment, equalization, as well as audio, color, and light image calibration. We also provide PCS for products sold and equipment installed at Dolby Cinema theaters operated by exhibitor partners and support the implementation of our technologies into products manufactured by our licensees.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
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We have a substantial base of IP assets, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets developed based on our technical expertise.
As of September 25, 2020, we had approximately 13,200 issued patents and approximately 4,100 pending patent applications in more than 100 jurisdictions throughout the world. Our currently issued patents expire at various times through May 2045.
Some of our patents relating to DD technologies have expired, and others will expire over the next several years. While in the past we derived a significant portion of our licensing revenue from our DD technologies, this is no longer the case as revenues attributed to DD technologies have declined and are expected to continue to decline. The primary products where DD is widely used include DVD players (but not Blu-ray players), TVs, and STBs. We have transitioned a number of our DD licensees to DD+ technologies, an extension of our DD technologies, whose patents generally expire later than the DD patents. We are continuing to make progress in transitioning other DD licensees to DD+.
We pursue a general practice of filing patent applications for our technologies in the U.S. and foreign countries where our customers manufacture, distribute, or sell licensed products. We actively pursue new applications to expand our patent portfolio to address new technological innovations, and we also make strategic acquisitions of technology and patents from time to time. We have multiple patents covering aspects and improvements for many of our technologies.
We have approximately 1,200 trademark registrations throughout the world for a variety of wordmarks, logos, and slogans. Our trademarks cover our various products, technologies, improvements, and features, as well as the services that we provide. These trademarks are an integral part of our technology licensing program, and licensees typically elect to place our trademarks on their products to inform consumers that their products incorporate our technology and meet our quality specifications.
We protect our IP rights both domestically and internationally. From time to time, OEMs have failed to report or have underreported shipments of their products that incorporate our technologies. We have also had problems with implementation licensees selling ICs with our technologies to third parties that are not system licensees. We anticipate that such problems will continue to occur. Accordingly, we have taken steps in the past to enforce our IP rights and expect to continue doing so in the future.
Moreover, in certain countries, we have relatively few or no issued patents. For example, in China, Taiwan, and India, we have only limited patent protection for our Dolby technologies. Consequently, we may realize less revenue from those regions in the future. Maintaining or growing our licensing revenue in developing countries such as China, Taiwan, and India will depend in part on our ability to obtain patent rights in these countries, which is uncertain. Further, because of the limitations of the legal systems in many countries, the effectiveness of patents obtained or that may in the future be obtained is uncertain.
INDUSTRY STANDARDS
Several Dolby technologies have been adopted as the explicit or de facto industry standard for broadcast, discrete media, and online delivery in various markets worldwide.
Explicit industry standards are adopted through a standardization process whereby government entities, industry standards-setting bodies, trade associations, and others evaluate and then prescribe the use of a technology. For example, as global broadcast standards for digital, HD, and UHD television have developed, Dolby audio technologies have been adopted or mandated in various regions of the world, highlights of which are as follows:
• DD+ and HE-AAC are mandated for use in terrestrial broadcast across many countries including France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Turkey, and Russia. In addition, DD+ and HE-AAC are included in the digital terrestrial television specifications of emerging digital TV markets in Africa, Brazil, South-East Asia, and India while operators in China have selected DD and DD+ as optional technologies for transmissions using the country’s digital terrestrial television specification. In mobile devices, HE-AAC is specified for various applications in the 3GPP suite of standards, and is a de facto audio standard in entertainment services.
• DD+ is the de facto technology used by a wide range of pay-TV operators and streaming services worldwide and is included in popular operating systems such as iOS and Windows. It is also widely used by major OTT services such as Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix, and Amazon, and is included in the specifications of these services.
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• DD is mandated for HD broadcast in multiple regions including North America and South Korea, and for DVD players on a global basis.
• AC-4 is Dolby’s next generation of audio coding technology that has been adopted for implementation in certain regions by worldwide standards organizations including the DVB and ATSC. AC-4 has also been adopted or proposed in forthcoming regional and country standards in North America, Europe, and Latin America. The transition for AC-4 continues to gain momentum, and is already being supported in a number of TVs that are available worldwide from major manufacturers.
In addition, Dolby technologies have become de facto industry standards in many consumer entertainment products. De facto industry standards are adopted by industry participants when technologies are introduced to the marketplace and become widely used. For example, prior to the adoption of HD terrestrial broadcast standards mandating Dolby technologies, many European HD broadcasters began broadcasting in DD or DD+, leading OEMs to include these technologies in their televisions and STBs for the European market.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
We conduct R&D activities at numerous locations in the U.S. and internationally. Dolby’s history of producing innovative technology has created many forms of IP. This IP generates licensing revenue that enables us to fund and pursue further innovation.
The majority of our R&D resources are focused on developing leading audio and imaging technologies for consumer entertainment. Each of these technologies can support many offerings, and we anticipate bringing new innovations to market in the future.
R&D expenses included in our consolidated statements of operations were as follows (in thousands):
Fiscal Year Ended
September 25,
2020 September 27,
2019 September 28,
2018
Research & Development $ 239,045 $ 237,871 $ 236,794
PRODUCT MANUFACTURING
Our product quality is enabled through the use of well-established, and in some cases, highly automated, assembly processes along with rigorous testing of our products. Although we have some manufacturing facilities, we rely primarily upon contract manufacturers for the majority of our production capacity. We purchase components and fabricated parts from multiple suppliers; however, we rely on sole source suppliers for certain components used to manufacture our products. We source components and fabricated parts both domestically and internationally.
SALES AND MARKETING
Our marketing efforts focus on demonstrating how our solutions improve entertainment and communications experiences. We sell our solutions primarily using an internal sales organization to various customers in the markets where we operate. We promote our solutions and our brand through industry events such as trade-shows, film festivals, movie premieres, product launches, as well as through our website, public relations, direct marketing, co-marketing programs, and social media. In addition, we hold the naming rights to the Dolby Theatre, home to the Academy Awards® in Hollywood, California, where we showcase our technology and host high-profile events.
We maintain more than 20 sales offices in key regions around the globe. S&M expenses included in our consolidated statements of operations were as follows (in thousands):
Fiscal Year Ended
September 25,
2020 September 27,
2019 September 28,
2018
Sales & Marketing $ 335,933 $ 343,835 $ 309,762
CUSTOMERS
We license our technologies to a broad set of customers that operate in a wide range of industries, and we sell our professional products either directly to the end user or, more commonly, through dealers and distributors. Users of our professional products and services include film studios, content creators, post-production facilities, cinema operators, broadcasters, and video game designers.
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COMPETITION
The entertainment and communications industries are highly competitive, and we face aggressive competition in all areas of our business. Some of our current and future competitors may have significantly greater financial, technical, marketing, and other resources than we do, or may have more experience or advantages in the markets in which they compete. In addition, some of our current or potential competitors may be able to offer integrated systems in certain markets for entertainment technologies, including audio and imaging, which could make competing technologies that we develop or acquire obsolete. By offering an integrated system solution, these potential competitors may also be able to offer competing technologies at lower prices than we can, which could adversely affect our operating results.
Many products that include our audio and imaging technologies also include technologies developed by our competitors. We believe that the principal competitive factors in our markets include some or all of the following:
• Degree of access and inclusion in industry standards;
• Technological performance, flexibility, and range of application;
• Brand recognition and reputation;
• Timeliness and relevance of new product introductions;
• Quality and reliability of products and services;
• Relationships with producers, directors, and distributors in the film and television industry, with television broadcast industry leaders, with OTT industry leaders, and with the management of semiconductor and consumer electronics OEMs;
• Availability of compatible high quality audio and video content; and
• Price.
Certain foreign governments, particularly in China, have advanced arguments under their competition laws that exert downward pressure on royalties for IP, which can impact the licensing fees that we are able to collect. The regulatory enforcement activities in such jurisdictions can be unpredictable, in some cases because these jurisdictions have only recently implemented competition laws.
Our technologies, products, and services span the audio and imaging sectors of several distinct and diverse industries, including the broadcasting, mobile, consumer entertainment, personal computer, gaming, cinema, and communications industries. The lack of a clear definition of the markets in which our products, services, and technologies are sold or licensed, the nature of our technologies, their potential use for various commercial applications, and the diverse nature of and lack of detailed reporting by our competitors, make it impracticable to quantify our position.
HUMAN CAPITAL RESOURCES
As of September 25, 2020, we had 2,289 employees worldwide, of whom 1,037 employees were based outside of the U.S. None of our employees are subject to a collective bargaining agreement. Through our long operating history and experience with technological innovation, we appreciate the importance of retention, growth and development of our employees. We believe we offer competitive compensation (including salary, incentive bonus, and equity) and benefits packages in each of our locations around the globe. Further, from professional development opportunities to leadership training, we have development programs and on-demand opportunities to cultivate talent throughout the Company. We are also focused on understanding our diversity and inclusion strengths and opportunities and executing on a strategy to support further progress. We have created Employee Networks that are aligned around dimensions of diversity, such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other shared attributes, which we believe help build community and enable opportunities for development. We continue to focus on building a pipeline for talent to create more opportunities for workplace diversity and to support greater representation within the Company.
CORPORATE AND AVAILABLE INFORMATION
We were founded in London, England in 1965 and incorporated in the State of New York in 1967. We reincorporated in California in 1976 and reincorporated in Delaware in September 2004. Our principal corporate offices are located at 1275 Market Street, San Francisco, California 94103. Our telephone number is (415) 558-0200.
Our Internet address is www.dolby.com. We make available on our website, free of charge, our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to those reports, as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. Our
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SEC reports can be accessed through the Investor Relations section of our Internet website. The information found on our Internet website is not part of this or any other report we file with or furnish to the SEC. The SEC also maintains a website that contains our SEC filings at www.sec.gov.
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Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.