Marvell Third-Quarter Earnings: What Wall Street Is Saying

Marvell matches analysts' third-quarter-earnings expectations and misses on revenue.

Author:: Tony Owusu
Publish date:: Dec 4, 2020 8:59 AM EST

Shares of semiconductor producer Marvell Technology (MRVL) - Get Report dropped Friday after its report of third-quarter earnings.

The company reported earnings of 25 cents a share on revenue of $750 million. Analysts were expecting profit of 25 cents on revenue of $750.1 million.

Here's what Wall Street is saying.

Oppenheimer (Affirms Outperform Rating and $50 PT)

While not quantifying the magnitude of constraints, management highlighted shortages in wirebond, substrate and wafer level (at more than one node). Constraints are expected to linger into the fiscal first quarter and are impacting networking more than storage. Other semi growth peers, including Nvidia and Monolithic Power Systems have noted similar supply issues. We attribute shortages to supply-chain under-investment earlier this year as covid clouded visibility. The stronger-than-expected recovery has exacerbated the problem. Despite shortages, Marvell's networking segment came 3% ahead of expectation.

- Rick Schafer

Morgan Stanley (Affirmed Equal-Weight, PT Raised to $42 From $40)

Changes to the model are at the noise level, none of which resolves the debate around Marvell -- does the company's exposure to 5G infrastructure and cloud warrant an even higher multiple, for a stock that has moved up substantially without sustained positive revisions to EPS? We have been somewhat skeptical, mostly due to the relatively small exposure to cloud, but Inphi does solidify Marvell's cloud presence if and when that deal closes.

Jefferies (Affirmed Buy, PT Raised to $53 From $47)

[Marvell] has unique visibility into 2021 as they are currently supply constrained and have multiple design wins ramping within networking and storage. ... MRVL's storage business posted [a quarter-over-quarter] decline of 5% in the October quarter due to weakness in Fibre Channel business. For [the January quarter, management] expects storage revenues to rebound with quarter-over-quarter growth in both Fibre Channel and cloud storage. Marvell's networking business grew 10% quarter over quarter with strength across 5G, cloud, enterprise and automotive market.