<SEC-DOCUMENT>0000930413-16-006251.txt : 20160329
<SEC-HEADER>0000930413-16-006251.hdr.sgml : 20160329
<ACCEPTANCE-DATETIME>20160329162044
ACCESSION NUMBER:		0000930413-16-006251
CONFORMED SUBMISSION TYPE:	DEFA14A
PUBLIC DOCUMENT COUNT:		1
FILED AS OF DATE:		20160329
DATE AS OF CHANGE:		20160329
EFFECTIVENESS DATE:		20160329

FILER:

	COMPANY DATA:	
		COMPANY CONFORMED NAME:			BENCHMARK ELECTRONICS INC
		CENTRAL INDEX KEY:			0000863436
		STANDARD INDUSTRIAL CLASSIFICATION:	PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARDS [3672]
		IRS NUMBER:				742211011
		STATE OF INCORPORATION:			TX
		FISCAL YEAR END:			1231

	FILING VALUES:
		FORM TYPE:		DEFA14A
		SEC ACT:		1934 Act
		SEC FILE NUMBER:	001-10560
		FILM NUMBER:		161535621

	BUSINESS ADDRESS:	
		STREET 1:		3000 TECHNOLOGY DRIVE
		CITY:			ANGLETON
		STATE:			TX
		ZIP:			77515
		BUSINESS PHONE:		9798496550

	MAIL ADDRESS:	
		STREET 1:		3000 TECHNOLOGY DR
		CITY:			ANGLETON
		STATE:			TX
		ZIP:			77515
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<P STYLE="font: bold 10pt Times New Roman, Times, Serif; text-align: center"><FONT STYLE="font-size: 24pt">BENCHMARK ELECTRONICS, INC.</FONT><BR>
(Name of Registrant as Specified in Its Charter)<BR>
(Name of Person(s) Filing Proxy Statement, if other than the Registrant)</P>

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<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify">Benchmark Electronics, Inc. made
the following letter from Gayla Delly, President and Chief Executive Officer, available to its shareholders as part of its
2015 Annual Report, which is being mailed to shareholders on March 29, 2016.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify">To Our Shareholders:</P>


<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">Benchmark had a solid year in 2015, supported by the strength
of our business model, focused strategic execution and strong operational performance. Against a challenging macroeconomic backdrop
for our industry, we made significant progress on our strategic priorities, made targeted and meaningful investments for the future,
and finished 2015 with strong year-over-year profitability gains and free cash flow generation.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">Building on our progress in 2015, we continue to advance our
long-term strategy and believe we have a tremendous opportunity ahead. We continue to reshape our portfolio towards higher-growth
and higher-margin businesses, strengthen our positioning relative to our competitors, and remain committed to delivering value
to all Benchmark shareholders through a disciplined capital allocation strategy.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify"><B><I>Our Strategic Priorities:</I></B></P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Portfolio Management. </B>Our top strategic priority is to
continue shifting our portfolio to the higher-value end markets of Medical, Industrials (including aerospace and defense), and
Test &amp; Instrumentation. Our longer term goal is to achieve a 70% business mix in higher-value markets, and our new bookings
support a 10% annual growth rate in these markets as we progress towards this target. These higher-value markets have greater outsourcing
opportunities, longer product life cycles and contract terms, and provide significant growth and margin potential well in excess
of traditional markets in our sector. We have significant capabilities to leverage our leadership position in these markets to
continue to win new business and expand revenue streams and margins.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">As we evolve our portfolio, we remain committed to offering highly
differentiated, customer-focused solutions to customers in our traditional computing and telecommunications end markets. We will
continue to maintain and build close relationships with these clients, and seek to increase our market share by understanding,
anticipating and meeting their needs.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Investment in Productivity &amp; Efficiency. </B>Our lean
operating initiatives have<B> </B>improved the quality and efficiency of our operations. Accordingly, in the fourth quarter of
2015, we established our long-term operating margin target of 5%. Along with our portfolio transition, we are raising customer
awareness of our capabilities and engaging earlier in the product development process, leading our engagements with engineering
solutions for full product design and long life-cycle manufacturability. Our customers see significant value in early engagement
with engineering and value-added solutions, which drive richer and more cohesive relationships.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">Our mission is to remain focused on our core competencies, while
strategically expanding our services in ways that ensure longer term sustainability and success. In addition to our lean operating
initiatives, we employ discipline and rigor to our investment analysis, continually evaluating our existing abilities while seeking
growth opportunities that align with our customers&rsquo; priorities and expected future needs. Our </P>

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<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">long-term goals are clear,
and we are dedicated to reaching them in spite of short-term headwinds. We expect to achieve our objectives through disciplined
focus on our operational excellence initiatives, ongoing optimization of our cost structure, and best-in-class execution across
internal business priorities, including working capital management.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Balanced Capital Deployment. </B>The strength of our balance
sheet and our proven ability to generate cash throughout business cycles provides an excellent opportunity to drive profitable
growth and return capital to shareholders. Our goal centers around a balanced deployment of capital through targeted organic investments,
close-to-core or highly adjacent M&amp;A, and share repurchases. We invest organically to drive growth and extend our business
model with our customers based on our rigorous customer care process. Further, strategic acquisitions have historically been a
key component of our growth strategy, and we will continue to prudently and opportunistically seek out companies that complement
our higher-value market focus, create new engineering opportunities, and deliver attractive returns on our investment. Finally,
complementing our investments in internal and external growth opportunities, we will maintain our target of returning greater than
50% of free cash flow to shareholders through share repurchases.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify"><B><I>2015 Achievements:</I></B></P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Continued progress on our portfolio transformation. </B>We
are very pleased with the progress we made across our portfolio in 2015. For the full year, we achieved a record 55% of revenues
from our higher-value markets, up from 50% in 2014. Our new bookings mix also shifted towards higher-value sectors, which supports
our longer-term goal of generating at least 70% of our revenue and bookings from these sectors. To further capitalize on opportunities
in our target markets, we revitalized our go-to-market activities by adding new global sales leadership. With these enhancements,
we are excited and optimistic about our long-term top line and margin growth <I>even</I> in a difficult operating environment.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Enhanced profitability. </B>Throughout 2015, we maintained
our focus on improving operating efficiency and increasing our capabilities, resulting in enhanced profitability. Our 2015 operating
margin showed strong growth over 2014. Our increased operating margins reflect the success of our strategy to increase sales in
higher-value markets, deliver greater value for our customers and execute on our operational excellence initiatives. We also continue
to invest in design engineering talent and solutions. During the second half of 2015, we added incremental engineering leadership
and have recently integrated our three regional design centers under one global leadership team. These actions provide a stronger
platform to drive profitable growth and support our 5% operating margin target.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Increased cash flows and returned capital to shareholders.
</B>For the full year, we had strong operating cash flows of $147 million, of which we deployed $38 million toward capital expenditures.
We repurchased 3.1 million shares for $68 million, which represented 63% of annual free cash flow &ndash; well in excess of our
annual target of returning greater than 50% of free cash flow to shareholders. Our track record of consistently returning capital
to shareholders through share repurchases, which now stands at 34 consecutive quarters, remains unmatched in our industry. At the
end of 2015, we had $135 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization.</P>

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<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Acquired Secure Technology. </B>Strategic acquisitions continue
to complement our organic growth initiatives. In November of 2015, we acquired Secure Technology, a market leader that specializes
in providing engineered and ruggedized products for complex industrial, aerospace and defense applications. Secure adds meaningful
engineering strength in these targeted markets and directly aligns with our strategy to broaden our engineering capabilities. With
Secure&rsquo;s catalogue of engineered technology and proprietary solutions, we have increased our tools to accelerate and build
upon our strategy to diversify our business and cost effectively deliver solutions to customers in our higher-value target markets.
The Secure integration is proceeding according to plan, and is expected to be EPS- and cash-flow accretive in 2016. From a cost
perspective, we are successfully realizing manufacturing, procurement and corporate overhead synergies. We are pleased to have
Secure&rsquo;s talented team on board and look forward to capitalizing on the Secure transaction to create substantial value for
Benchmark shareholders and customers.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify"><B><I>Our Future Plans:</I></B></P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0; text-align: justify">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">We are excited about the opportunities to continue our transformation
toward higher-value end markets and shape our portfolio to deliver steady, profitable growth. Our expected new program ramps will
result in a greater higher-value technology mix with a more stable customer base, creating a significant opportunity for Benchmark
and its stakeholders. As we look ahead, we will continue to operate with discipline and an unrelenting focus on shareholder value
creation. Based on our success in 2015, we are as confident as ever that we have the right strategies and capabilities in place
to transform Benchmark into a faster-growing, more profitable business.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">On behalf of the Benchmark Board and management team, I thank
our dedicated employees for their commitment to providing exceptional services and solutions to our customers, while executing
on our initiatives. We also greatly appreciate the loyalty and support of our shareholders, customers and suppliers.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">We expect 2016 to be an even more exciting and successful year
for Benchmark, and we look forward to reporting on our continued progress.</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0 0 0 4.5in "><u>/s/ Gayla J. Delly &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</u><BR>
President and Chief Executive Officer</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">&nbsp;</P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0"><B>Additional Information and Where to Find It</B></P>

<P STYLE="font: 10pt Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; margin: 0pt 0">Benchmark has filed a definitive proxy statement with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission (the &ldquo;SEC&rdquo;) with respect to the 2016 Annual Meeting and is mailing the definitive
proxy statement and accompanying white proxy card to its shareholders. <B>Benchmark shareholders are strongly encouraged to read
the definitive proxy statement, the accompanying white proxy card and other documents filed with the SEC carefully in their entirety
when they become available because they contain (or will contain) important information.</B> Benchmark, its directors, executive
officers and other employees may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Benchmark shareholders in connection
with the matters to be considered at Benchmark&rsquo;s 2016 Annual Meeting. Information about Benchmark&rsquo;s directors and executive
officers is available in Benchmark&rsquo;s definitive proxy statement for its 2016 Annual Meeting. Shareholders may obtain a free
copy of the definitive proxy statement and any other documents filed by Benchmark with the SEC free of charge at the SEC&rsquo;s
website at www.sec.gov. Copies also are available free of charge on Benchmark&rsquo;s website at <I>www.bench.com</I> under &ldquo;Investor
Relations &ndash; Annual Reports&rdquo; or by contacting Benchmark Investor Relations at (979) 849-6550.</P>

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