MaxLinear, Inc. Q4 FY2025 earnings call

• 2025 was an inflection year with 30% revenue growth, profitability, and positive cash flow. Repurchased $20 million of common stock in Q4.
• Infrastructure revenue grew 30% full year and 76% in Q4, driven by data center optical interconnects, wireless infrastructure, and storage accelerators. Keystone PAM4 DSP ramping in data centers.
• Rushmore PAM4 TIAs and 200-gig per lane DSPs expected to start production end 2026. Secured first PON data center design win.
• Panther hardware storage accelerator SoC family gaining design wins, expected to double revenue in 2026.
• Broadband and connectivity: strong Q4, but cable revenue expected down in 2026 due to DOCSIS 4 transition. Ethernet market expected strong in 2026.

Fourth quarter total revenue was $136.4 million. Infrastructure revenue was approximately $47 million, broadband revenue was approximately $58 million, connectivity revenue was approximately $18 million, and industrial multimarket revenue was approximately $14 million. GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins for the fourth quarter increased to approximately 57.6% and 59.6% of revenue respectively.

• Q1 2026 revenue expected $130M - $140M.
• GAAP gross margin 56% - 59%, non-GAAP 58% - 61%.
• GAAP operating expenses $85M - $90M, non-GAAP $58M - $64M.
• Interest and other expense: GAAP $2.1M - $2.7M, non-GAAP $2M - $2.6M.
• Tax provision: GAAP $4M, non-GAAP $0.8M.
• Share count: basic ~88M, diluted ~91M.

• Forward-looking statements involve risks outlined in SEC filings, including uncertainties in projecting future changes like stock-based compensation and impairments.
• Supply chain constraints could impact outlook.

Q: Congrats on the results here. Kishore, I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the PAM4 DSP business.

A: So thank you, Tore, for the question. Obviously, this is a pretty significantly confidence boosting growth that we are seeing...

Q: Congrats on the solid execution. I guess maybe first, just around the data center opportunity. Obviously, the DSP is doing really well, but you've got other components that are going into that segment as well. Can you help us kind of understand maybe what the magnitude of opportunity within the data center is and where you're playing and kind of how you think that plays out through the year in addition to the DSP?

A: So David, this is early innings for us, right? I mean we have to say that. And the big entree is right now with the PAM4 transceivers. And this year, we could do anywhere between 4 million to 6 million units of PAM4 transceivers, right? So -- but the other hand, the data center is not just a PAM4 world. There are compute tracks. There are communications between data centers. And that market itself will grow as the data center clusters increase and the number of data centers increase as well. So we talked about this exciting design win with the Tier 1 OEM who is supplying to Tier 1 data centers and of using PON as a control play layer, not where the data itself is going through between data centers. And there, we are clearly the leaders in the PON silicon offering. And so we should be very well positioned. So that could be a few -- that market size, some of these OEMs have talked about hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the silicon play. So that's one opportunity. So it won't happen in 1 year. It will roll out over the next 2 years. Hopefully, we'll start seeing in '27 and then it grows beyond that. And then there's the other thing where these racks have become really -- these compute racks and server racks have become very, very, very sophisticated. They have their own telemetrics. Even the racks are being controlled with microcontrollers and so on and so forth. So you need industrial quality sort of transceivers, serial bridges and so on and so forth and even smart power management and stuff and then overall control in the rack. So the rack itself is a huge beast by itself. So we are beginning to start getting design wins in that, and that could be a pretty huge play per rack, if you will. So at this point, I am not very what I call -- I don't want to provide market sizing at a level that we need to ascertain. But that market is very, very huge. There are a number of players, but we have the portfolio depth to participate in all the big spend that is happening as data centers are being built out.