¹Excludes share-based compensation, amortization of intangibles, acquisition and integration-related costs, intellectual property rights (IPR) litigation costs, non-cash deferred royalty revenue and equal and offsetting non-cash prepaid royalty amortization, start-up costs, restructuring and disposal costs, (gain) loss on assets, gain on investment, and an adjustment of income taxes for cash basis.

²Reflects the conversion rates applicable to RFMD and TriQuint shares in their business combination that resulted in the creation of the Company.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

In addition to disclosing financial results calculated in accordance with United States (U.S.) generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), Qorvo's earnings release contains some or all of the following non-GAAP financial measures: (i) non-GAAP revenue, (ii) non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin, (iii) non-GAAP operating income and operating margin, (iv) non-GAAP net income, (v) non-GAAP net income per diluted share, (vi) non-GAAP operating expenses (research and development, marketing and selling and general and administrative), (vii) free cash flow, (viii), EBITDA, (ix) return on invested capital (ROIC), and (x) net debt or positive net cash.  Each of these non-GAAP financial measures is either adjusted from GAAP results to exclude certain expenses or derived from multiple GAAP measures, which are outlined in the “Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Financial Measures" tables, attached, and the "Additional Selected Non-GAAP Financial Measures And Reconciliations” tables, attached.

In managing Qorvo's business on a consolidated basis, management develops an annual operating plan, which is approved by our Board of Directors, using non-GAAP financial measures.  In developing and monitoring performance against this plan, management considers the actual or potential impacts on these non-GAAP financial measures from actions taken to reduce costs with the goal of increasing gross margin and operating margin.  In addition, management relies upon these non-GAAP financial measures to assess whether research and development efforts are at an appropriate level, and when making decisions about product spending, administrative budgets, and other operating expenses. Also, we believe that non-GAAP financial measures provide useful supplemental information to investors and enable investors to analyze the results of operations in the same way as management.  We have chosen to provide this supplemental information to enable investors to perform additional comparisons of our operating results, to assess our liquidity and capital position and to analyze financial performance excluding the effect of expenses unrelated to operations, certain non-cash expenses and share-based compensation expense, which may obscure trends in Qorvo's underlying performance.

We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures offer an additional view of Qorvo's operations that, when coupled with the GAAP results and the reconciliations to corresponding GAAP financial measures, provide a more complete understanding of Qorvo's results of operations and the factors and trends affecting Qorvo's business.  However, these non-GAAP financial measures should be considered as a supplement to, and not as a substitute for, or superior to, the corresponding measures calculated in accordance with GAAP.

Our rationale for using these non-GAAP financial measures, as well as their impact on the presentation of Qorvo's operations, are outlined below:

Non-GAAP revenue.  Non-GAAP revenue excludes non-cash deferred royalty revenue.  We believe that the exclusion of this non-cash adjustment to revenue provides management and investors a more effective means of evaluating our historical and projected performance.

Non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin.  Non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin exclude share-based compensation expense, amortization of intangible assets, non-cash deferred royalty revenue, non-cash prepaid royalty amortization, and adjustments for restructuring and disposal costs.  We believe that exclusion of these costs in presenting non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin gives management and investors a more effective means of evaluating Qorvo's historical performance and projected costs and the potential for realizing cost efficiencies.  We believe that the majority of Qorvo's purchased intangibles are not relevant to analyzing current operations because they generally represent costs incurred by the acquired company to build value prior to acquisition, and thus are effectively part of transaction costs rather than ongoing costs of operating Qorvo's business.  In this regard, we note that (i) once the intangibles are fully amortized, the intangibles will not be replaced with cash costs and therefore, the exclusion of these costs provides management and investors with better visibility into the actual costs required to generate revenues over time, and (ii) although we set the amortization expense based on useful life of the various assets at the time of the transaction, we cannot influence the timing and amount of the future amortization expense recognition once the lives are established.  Similarly, we believe that presentation of non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin and other non-GAAP financial measures that exclude the impact of share-based compensation expense assists management and investors in evaluating the period-over-period performance of Qorvo's ongoing operations because (i) the expenses are non-cash in nature, and (ii) although the size of the grants is within our control, the amount of expense varies depending on factors such as short-term fluctuations in stock price volatility and prevailing interest rates, which can be unrelated to the operational performance of Qorvo during the period in which the expense is incurred and generally is outside the control of management.  Moreover, we believe that the exclusion of share-based compensation expense in presenting non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin and other non-GAAP financial measures is useful to investors to understand the impact of the expensing of share-based compensation to Qorvo's gross profit and gross margins and other financial measures in comparison to both prior periods as well as to its competitors.  We also believe that the adjustments to profit and margin related to non-cash deferred royalty revenue, non-cash prepaid royalty amortization and restructuring and disposal costs, do not constitute part of Qorvo's ongoing operations and therefore the exclusion of these items provides management and investors with better visibility into the actual revenue and actual costs required to generate revenues over time and gives management and investors a more effective means of evaluating our historical and projected performance.  We believe disclosure of non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin has economic substance because the excluded expenses do not represent continuing cash expenditures and, as described above, we have little control over the timing and amount of the expenses in question.