Investing.com - Shares in Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL) slumped by more than 15% in premarket U.S. trading on Thursday after the chipmaker’s financial guidance and quarterly results failed to excite investors hoping for strong artificial intelligence-driven growth.
The company, which manufactures custom AI chips for major cloud providers that help large language models quickly process reams of information, has been boosted by supply constraints at industry-leader Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). The backlog has forced some mega-cap technology firms like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) to look beyond Nvidia -- and at alternatives like Marvell and peer Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) -- for their chips.
Earnings per share in the fourth quarter came in at $0.60 on revenue of $1.82 billion, compared with analysts’ projections of $0.59 and $1.8 billion, respectively.
Revenue at its key data center division jumped by 78% from a year earlier to $1.37 billion, underpinned by the group's custom AI chip business, which provides services to help cloud firms build their own custom processors. The total custom chip is tipped to have grown to up to $10 billion in 2024, Reuters has reported, citing data from research firm 650 Group, while Marvell executives have estimated that it could expand to as much as $45 billion by 2028.
"[I]t's a nice trajectory here. We've got AI that's sort of outgrown the total. It's the majority driving the business. Data center is now a significant total portion of overall Marvell," said CEO Matthew Murphy in a post-earnings call with analysts.
For its first quarter, per-share income was guided in a range of $0.56 to $0.66 on revenue of $1.875 billion, plus or minus 5%. Estimates had called for an outlook of $0.6 and $1.87 billion.
"There’s really nothing ‘bad’ in the release, although obviously ‘inline’ isn’t good enough for this type of a name, especially after the company beat by a much larger margin back in December," analysts at Vital Knowledge said in a note to clients.
In December, upbeat fourth-quarter projections sent shares in Marvell to all-time highs. But the stock has since retreated from those heights, falling by more than 20% so far this year.
(Yasin Ebrahim contributed reporting.)
