Maxlinear, Inc Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Thank you, Diego. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss MaxLinear's fourth quarter 2025 financial results. Today's call is being hosted by Dr. Kishore Seendripu, CEO, and Steve Litchfield, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer. After our prepared comments, we will take your questions. Our comments today include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements relating to our guidance for the first quarter of 2026, including revenue, GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin, GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses, GAAP and non-GAAP interest and other expense, GAAP and non-GAAP income taxes and basic and diluted share count. In addition, we will make forward-looking statements relating to trends, opportunities, execution of our business plan and potential growth and uncertainties in various product and geographic markets, including, without limitation, statements concerning future financial and operating results, opportunities for revenue and market share across our target markets, new products, including the timing of production and launches of such products, demand for and adoption of certain technologies and our total addressable market. These forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties, including risks outlined in our Risk Factors section of our recent SEC filings, including our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, which we filed today. Any forward-looking statements are made as of today, and MaxLinear has no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. The fourth quarter 2025 earnings release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at maxlinear.com. In addition, we report certain historical financial metrics, including, but not limited to, gross margin, income or loss from operations, operating expenses, interest and other expense and income tax on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. We encourage investors to review the detailed reconciliation of our GAAP and non-GAAP presentations in the press release available on our website. We do not provide a reconciliation of non-GAAP guidance for future periods because of the inherent uncertainty associated with our ability to project certain future changes, including stock-based compensation and its related tax effects as well as potential impairments. Non-GAAP financial measures discussed today are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for comparable GAAP financial measures. We are providing this information because management believes it is useful to investors as it reflects how management measures our business. Lastly, this call is also being webcast, and the replay will be available on our website for 2 weeks. And now let me turn the call over to Dr. Kishore Seendripu, CEO of MaxLinear. Kishore?

Thank you, Leslie, and wishing you all a very happy New Year and good afternoon. For MaxLinear, 2025 marked a clear inflection year with resurgent growth. We delivered 30% revenue growth year-over-year, driven by strong execution and accelerating adoption of our newest products across multiple high-growth end markets. We delivered profitability and positive cash flow ahead of plan. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased $20 million worth of our common stock, reflecting our confidence in our sustained growth expectations and market momentum. Bookings remain robust, visibility continues to improve, and we are entering '26 with strong momentum across our portfolio. We are executing against a focused strategy that is working and will drive sustained strong growth in '26 and '27, investing in high-value multiyear growth markets where performance, power efficiency and integration matter most. These include data center connectivity, wireless infrastructure, storage acceleration, PON broadband access, Wi-Fi 7 and Ethernet end markets. Our infrastructure business is scaling rapidly. Revenue grew 30% for the full year and 76% in Q4 year-on-year, driven by strong growth in data center optical interconnects, wireless infrastructure and early but meaningful contributions from storage accelerators. Importantly, multiple new design wins are now entering production, positioning us to grow faster in '26 than we did in '25. In 2026, we expect to achieve a significant and exciting milestone. Our infrastructure category should emerge as the single largest contributor to our overall revenues. In high-speed data center optical interconnects, our Keystone PAM4 DSP family is now ramping at major hyperscale data centers in both the U.S. and Asia, supporting 400-gig and 800-gig deployments, both for scale-up and scale-out applications. Additional customer ramps are expected throughout the year. Based on this improved visibility, we expect Keystone to generate about $100 million to $130 million in revenue in '26 with potential upside along with a further step function increase in run rate as we move into 2027. Power efficiency has been a defining competitive advantage for MaxLinear, and we are extending that leadership with Rushmore, our next-generation family of PAM4 TIAs and 200-gig per lane DSPs targeting 1.6 terabit interconnects. Rushmore is foundational for the next wave of data center optical architectures, including LRO, electrical retimers, AECs, LPOs and co-packaged optics. With Keystone validating our execution performance leadership, customer engagement for Rushmore is accelerating faster than expected. We expect Rushmore production revenue ramp starting at the end of 2026. We expect a strong showing at OFC in March this year. Also, cloud data centers are now deploying 10-gigabit XGS-PON as a robust dedicated fail-proof control plane conduit for managing high-speed data traffic between data centers. In Q4, we secured our first PON data center design win addressing this application with a major Tier 1 U.S. OEM provider to Tier 1 data centers in this next-generation design. Recently, we also won analog serial transceiver and bridge interface designs for rack management in AI servers at two major U.S. data centers. This is further evidence of how MaxLinear's broad and deep technology portfolio comprising optical interconnect storage accelerators, PON and analog offerings is growing inside the AI data center. Within infrastructure, our Panther hardware storage accelerator SoC family continues to gain design win traction with Tier 1 network appliance and cloud service providers. Ongoing storage and hybrid memory constraints for AI scale-up and compute are reinforcing the value of Panther's hardware-based compression, high throughput and ultra-low latency memory data access. In Q3 and Q4, we started sampling Panther 5 to leading customers and our partners, including Advanced Micro Devices or AMD. Panther 5 delivers unprecedented ultra-low latency at 450 gigabits per second throughput and PCIe Gen 5 connectivity. Based on our engagements, we expect strong accelerator revenue to at least double in 2026 versus 2025 and potentially again in 2027. In wireless infrastructure, increasing carrier CapEx spending is expected to drive sustained demand through 2026 and beyond as the need for cloud and edge AI functionality continues to grow. Additionally, our Sierra 5G wireless access single-chip radio SoC and our millimeter wave and microwave backhaul transceivers and modems are seeing robust OEM customer design-in activity and deployments in multiple Tier 1 carriers are going as per plan. Moving to broadband and connectivity, we delivered another strong revenue quarter across fiber PON, cable DOCSIS and Wi-Fi, driven by the early increases in service provider CapEx spend and continued booking strength and incremental demand. In Q4, we began the large-scale deployment of our single-chip fiber PON and 10-gigabit processor gateway SoC plus tri-band Wi-Fi 7 solution with a second major Tier 1 North American carrier. This was a significant competitive win that expands content per box, fiber PON revenue and market share in 2026. In cable broadband, after a strong 2025, we expect a seasonally soft first half and cable revenue to be down in '26 as the industry transitions and pending a multiyear DOCSIS 4 upgrade cycle starting at the end of 2026. Additionally, in the stand-alone Ethernet market, we expect 2026 to be strong as our 2.5 gigabit Ethernet switch and PHY portfolio expands into commercial, enterprise and industrial applications. In summary, we entered 2026 with multiple growth engines ramping simultaneously, driven by expanding customer adoption and secular market trends moving in our favor. Our investments over the past several years have uniquely positioned MaxLinear to deliver sustained growth, operating leverage and long-term shareholder value. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and confident in our ability to execute. With that, let me now turn the call over to Steve Litchfield, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer. Steve?

Thanks, Kishore. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $136.4 million, up 8% from $126.5 million in the previous quarter and up 48% from $92.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Infrastructure revenue for the fourth quarter 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. The delta between GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin in the fourth quarter was primarily driven by $2.6 million of acquisition-related intangible asset amortization. Fourth quarter GAAP operating expenses were $93.5 million and non-GAAP operating expenses were $59.2 million. The delta between GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses was primarily due to stock-based compensation and performance-based equity accruals of $28.1 million combined and acquisition-related costs of $6 million. GAAP loss from operations for Q4 2025 was 11% and non-GAAP income from operations in Q4 was 16% of net revenue. GAAP and non-GAAP interest and other expenses during the quarter was $2.9 million and $2.8 million. In Q4, net cash flow from operating activities was approximately $10.4 million. As Kishore mentioned, we were active in our buyback program in Q4, repurchasing approximately $20 million of our common stock. As such, we exited Q4 of 2025 with approximately $101.4 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash ahead of our 2025 plan. Our days sales outstanding was down in Q4 to approximately 31 days. Our inventory was down by approximately $8 million versus the previous quarter with days of inventory improving to approximately 130. This concludes the discussion of our Q4 financial results. With that, let's turn to our guidance for Q1 of 2026. We currently expect revenue in the first quarter of 2026 to be between $130 million and $140 million. Looking at Q1 by end market, we expect to see growth from infrastructure, but some seasonal declines in broadband connectivity and industrial multi-market. We expect first quarter GAAP gross margin to be approximately 56% to 59% and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 58% to 61% of revenue. We expect Q1 2026 GAAP operating expenses to be in the range of $85 million to $90 million. We expect Q1 2026 non-GAAP operating expenses to be in the range of $58 million to $64 million. We expect our Q1 GAAP interest and other expense to be in the range of approximately $2.1 million to $2.7 million. We expect our Q1 non-GAAP interest and other expense to be in the range of approximately $2 million to $2.6 million, with FX volatility being the primary risk. We expect a $4 million tax provision on a GAAP basis and a non-GAAP tax provision of approximately $0.8 million. We expect our Q1 basic and diluted share count to be approximately 88 million and 91 million, respectively. In closing, with strong bookings and improving visibility, we expect to see solid growth in 2026, driven by new design wins and expanding content opportunities across our product portfolio. We believe we are well positioned, well in large and growing markets that will be transformative to our business as well as continue to innovate on high-value solutions for our customers that solve next-generation challenges. We will continue to focus on our investment in areas of strategic importance and are confident that we will build a solid foundation to deliver sustainable growth and profitability in 2026 and beyond. With that, I'd like to open up the call for questions. Operator?

And your first question comes from Tore Svanberg with Stifel.

Congrats on the results here. Kishore, I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the PAM4 DSP business. So there's obviously a lot of headlines and things out there on LPO and CPO, but you seem to be seeing more and more traction, more and more design wins. It sounds like Rushmore is getting pulled in somewhat. So can you just walk through some of those dynamics because obviously, that will give us better confidence about the continuous growth of PAM4 in '26 and '27.

Thank you for the question, Tore. We are experiencing significant growth that boosts our confidence. We had previously projected $110 million to $130 million, which indicates a positive trend in our traction. We are just starting to ramp up our 800-gig product solution and need to gain more momentum in the second half of the year. The overall market is growing rapidly, albeit as a pluggable market, while LPO deployments currently remain niche. I view LPOs as a small part of the market and not a long-term focus. LROs are gaining some traction, but they will make up a minor portion of a substantially pluggable market, and LPOs will likely have limited deployments in 800 gig, less so in 1.6 terabits. We also see a larger market developing as the scale-up progresses, including electrical retimers, which will have high demand. Currently, people are exploring CPOs as a way to enter the market, but it's still early days for CPO. In the long term, there will be a more varied market than just pure CPOs, with the 'O' in CPO having multiple approaches, including a silicon aspect. We anticipate being a player in this evolving market. At MaxLinear, we will maintain focus and discipline in the growing PAM4 space. We are establishing a strong presence, even though we are not the incumbents. Presently, we rank among the top 3 providers of PAM4 DSP. As the market matures, we aim to expand and diversify our offerings from our robust technology portfolio. I hope that provides clarity on our technology positioning. From a growth perspective, we see potential upside this year, depending on how ramp-ups progress, based on the bookings we've seen for 2026. I hope that addresses your question.

Yes. No, that's great color. And as my follow-up, I had a question on the broadband business. And how should we think about the trajectory there as we move throughout the year? You did mention you expect it to be down year-over-year because of the sort of transition to DOCSIS 4.0 or the industry waiting for 4.0. What type of decline are we talking about? I know you guided to be down seasonally in Q1, but will it sort of decline every quarter this year? Is it going to be more of a modest decline? Any more color there would be very helpful.

Maybe, Tore, I'll take that one. So we did mention that the seasonality certainly plays a role. We're also seeing the upgrade cycle, right, in DOCSIS 4.0. That probably starts in the latter half of the year. And so it will come down in the first half of the year and then probably start to build in the second half. So overall, for the year, I do expect it to be down. We did talk a lot about the PON business, right, and the win that we have there. So we are excited about that. But even with that, it's still early days in it. And so that's why we do expect to see the broadband business down for the year.

Yes. I think the PON is a substantial opportunity, the new Tier 1 that's ramping. And based on the ramp itself, there is potential for not to see a downturn, so to speak. And PON is going very nicely, and we're grabbing market share. And we have many designs that we did not have before that will really kick steam in '27 as well.

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?

So David, this is just the beginning for us. We have to acknowledge that. The main focus right now is on the PAM4 transceivers, and this year we could produce between 4 million to 6 million units of them. However, the data center landscape involves more than just PAM4. There are various computational elements and communication needs between data centers. That market will expand as the number of data centers and clusters increases. We previously mentioned an exciting design win with a Tier 1 OEM that supplies to major data centers and is utilizing PON as a control layer, rather than for data transfer between centers. In this area, we are clearly leading with our PON silicon. We anticipate that this could represent a significant market for us, with some OEMs estimating the value of our silicon in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This opportunity will not materialize overnight; it will develop over the next two years, with more visibility expected in 2027 and beyond. Additionally, the complexity of compute and server racks has grown tremendously. These racks now feature their own telemetry systems and are managed by microcontrollers. This creates a demand for industrial-quality transceivers, serial bridges, and advanced power management solutions, as well as comprehensive control systems within the racks. The rack market itself is substantial, and we are starting to secure design wins there, which could be a significant opportunity per rack. At this moment, I prefer not to provide specific market sizing estimates, but the market is indeed vast. There are several players, but we have a robust portfolio that positions us well to engage in the significant expenditure associated with the development of data centers.

And then maybe just secondly, for you, Steve. Just looking at the share repurchase authorization, that clearly signals some confidence, I think, in the growth trajectory, but also on the potential arbitration there. So maybe if you could just kind of speak around the share repurchase authorization and how we should be thinking about that and what you're telegraphing to the Street.

Yes, David, absolutely. No, I think the Board took some actions last quarter, authorizing $75 million of buyback, took action on it in the quarter, felt the stock was a good place that we wanted to act on it. But frankly, I think the Board really wanted to just convey the confidence in the balance sheet. The cash flow improvement, we've talked about it running ahead of plan. It has run ahead of plan now for 3 quarters in a row. Revenue stability and the outlook that we have from the business continues to improve. And so I think our actions kind of follow that and including the mention of the arbitration as well.

Congratulations on a strong finish to the year and a solid start to this one. Kishore, we've already covered several questions on the optical side. Regarding the competitive landscape, how do you see the transition from Keystone to Rushmore? Do you believe your market positioning will strengthen further? Do new technologies entering the market pose additional competitive challenges? How do you view MaxLinear's position as we look ahead?

Thank you, Ross. That's a great question. I really appreciate both of your perspectives. I like the word strengthening in relation to the next-generation 1.6 terabit; our position is indeed improving. We're making progress and becoming more competitive. I feel we're actually gaining momentum compared to where we were before. As we start rolling out the 1.6 terabit, we believe we'll be contributing significantly. Looking ahead, with our major product, the 4 gig, 400 gigabit per lane, we will showcase our capabilities, including our strong low-power implementation skills, integration, and well-developed RF mixed signal expertise. We are reinforcing our position, especially in certain regions, and we've seen improvements in our relative standing in the 800 gig market. In the U.S., we entered late as the third player, and moving up to the top spots of one or two is quite challenging, especially since incumbents have a significant advantage. I hope this provides some clarity.

On the gross margin side, we've been seeing improvements over the last four quarters, with some positive trends. The product mix is shifting in our favor, as infrastructure products generally yield higher gross margins. I am confident that we can end the year starting at around 6% instead of 5%. We projected a midpoint of 59.5% in our guidance, although we face some challenges due to rising costs. However, I believe the mix will favor us in the long run, leading to significant improvements. Regarding operating expenses, I am not committing to the entire year, but typically we aim for operating expenses to grow at about half the rate of revenue growth. Nevertheless, we have been tightening our spending and improving efficiency, so I actually expect a lower increase than that, estimating around 4% to 5% this year.

Congrats on the numbers. And first question was where did we end up '25 in terms of optical DSP revenue? I think you were guiding $60 million to $70 million. And can you give us any color there?

Yes, Tim. We don’t break out these numbers, but I believe we’re consistent with what we’ve achieved over the past two to three years. The guidance that Kishore shared earlier reflects the doubling we’ve experienced over the last three years. It's important to remember that three years ago, our revenue was under $20 million. We are very pleased with our progress and excited about our current situation. I want to highlight some background regarding how we ended last year and how we are entering this year. In our prepared remarks, we mentioned our visibility and backlog, which is in a much stronger position now. This is true across all our businesses, especially in the optical segment, where we have 28-week lead times. We are confident about the first half of the year, as we have already accumulated backlog and are working toward additional upsides, with considerable success already observed.

Okay. Great. I think we might have talked a little about this last quarter, but just based on the comments early in the call, I just want to make sure I'm hearing this right. So do you guys think you can grow faster than 30% overall in '26? Was that the comment? Because I think the comment was grow faster in '26 than '25? Or is there some more nuance or detail around that?

So Tim, as you know, we don't provide guidance for the entire year, and we won't start doing that today. However, it's clear from the infrastructure growth that we're seeing good momentum on the PON side. Additionally, the industrial multi-market is experiencing a strong recovery this year. Therefore, I'm confident that we can outpace industry growth in 2026.

On optical DSP, do you expect the ramp to be linear throughout the year? And the reason for the $30 million range?

Sam, so I mean, actually, just to kind of follow on what I was just speaking about. I do think it will grow throughout the year as we have new programs that will come on, and we have share gains that will continue to gain traction throughout the year. But I would also say that it will be very strong right out of the gate in Q1 and Q2 because we do have really good visibility, and we have a few customers that are ramping right now. Yes. We have already begun shipping some products, starting in Q4. It will still be relatively minor in Q1, but we expect to ramp up more significantly in Q2 and Q3.

Obviously, we have good visibility based on the lead times of the supply chain and the bookings that we have in place.

So in your press release and also in your prepared remarks, you talked about gaining market share. I think it was a general comment across your product set. But I was wondering if there are some specific kind of needle-moving opportunities like in broadband? Are you gaining share versus Broadcom? Like what were you specifically trying to highlight there as actual revenue moving opportunities?

That's a very good question. It's a broad statement, but I believe it's largely accurate across various categories. Looking at optical transceivers, our revenue forecast indicates that we are gaining market share to some extent. We have identified 4 million to 6 million units in transceiver opportunities. Additionally, on the PON side, a significant Tier 1 player is starting to ramp up, and in this category, we are increasing our share against the competition. In the cable sector, we are regaining share that we held years ago, again competing effectively against others. Furthermore, in storage accelerators, we're entering a new market with hardware acceleration and compression, establishing a strong position that is expected to grow on both the cloud and appliance fronts. Overall, I think your statement holds true, and upon reflection, I stand by that response.

Excellent. And then back to DSP, we track the transceiver market pretty closely, and we underestimated growth in the market there. It's, I think, growing faster than anyone expected, at least in terms of expectations for '26. You did suggest that there could be upside to your optical number, but why don't you even have more confidence there just given the upside in demand? And then maybe paired with that, are there any supply chain constraints that you're seeing out there that would lower your outlook?

Chris, so look, I mean, I think we're very excited about the ramps that are underway, right, that have already started and we're picking up traction. I mean Kishore spoke about the share gains, I mean, where we've won against the competition. So we're seeing that in the beginning of the year. So really excited about those. Great visibility into future ramps that are coming with some of the new customers, new wins. You mentioned supply chain. Yes, certainly, there's supply chain tightness out there. We're not concerned about that. I mean we're working with our suppliers. We've seen improvements thus far. So we haven't had any trouble. As you also know, even outside of the optical world, 80-plus percent of our business is really not exposed to that tightness. So that's good. Optical side certainly is. But we've had a lot of success there, and we're very confident in the outlook for this year.

I'll offer my congratulations as well. I guess, Kishore, I just wanted to ask, I think in the past, you guys have sort of said your DSP wins were more for front-end networks. As you start to ramp the 800-gig products here, are you starting to see some of those designs moving into the scale-out networks? Or do you think we need to wait for the Rushmore 1.6T product before you start moving into scale out?

It can be quite challenging to differentiate between scaling up and scaling out as they are broad categories. Typically, short reaches fall under the scale-up network, while longer reaches are generally associated with the scale-out side. Currently, we are making progress on the 800-gig side in the scale-up category. However, I believe that a significant portion remains in the traditional scale-out network.

Sorry, just so we're clear, you're shipping in, I guess, what I would call front-end networks that the sort of the storage networks driven off the GPU? Or are you starting to ship in the GPU to GPU scale-out?

That's a more detailed question, but I'll leave it here. It's just that scale-up networks represent a smaller portion of the revenue that's starting, while most of it is from scale-out networks.

Just two quick follow-ups. And yes, this is Tore, not Ross, and I'm a big Ross fan. So first of all, the connectivity segment, how should we think about the puts and takes there this year? Because obviously, part of connectivity is tied to cable or broadband, yet you also have the Ethernet business, obviously, that's doing quite well. So should we think of connectivity as also being down this year? Or does it have other subsegments growing fast enough to actually make it a growth segment in '26?

Connectivity is expected to grow this year. Wi-Fi will see growth as Wi-Fi 7 begins to ramp up. Additionally, many of our Ethernet products transitioning to 2.5 gig will also experience growth this year. So we anticipate positive growth from both areas.

I just want to remind you that cable is a significant part of the market where we have revenues that are not paired with Wi-Fi. There is a sort of dissociation and association, so it depends on how that trends as well. Very good question, Tore. So I just want to lay the landscape of the sort of what I call the derivative product road map, right? You start with the PAM4 DSP products. And I know LRO is not an analog product. It is a DSP product. So the LRO is a natural derivative. It doesn't take us long to get there, and we will be pursuing that opportunity. And in a short while, we'll have something to show as well. And I think there is some traction because in the marketplace for LROs because it has legs beyond just one particular speed node, if you will, like. So with the LPOs have limited niche nature to it because the amount of reach that the LPOs can reach is quite constrained and has to be very structured and controlled. So I do believe that, that is a sequence in which it works out for us, at least. And I think that the market revenues in LROs grows much stronger as the speeds increase and the power benefits that LROs will deliver. And I think there are some data center people who are beginning to try them out and then there'll be a follow-through on that. So for us, the next 12 months is a place where we will start taking advantage of the product offerings and do these derivative product offerings.

Thank you, Diego, and thank you all for joining us. This quarter, we will be presenting at a number of financial and industry conferences. Details will be posted to our Investor Relations site, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

This concludes today's call. All parties may disconnect.