MaxLinear, Inc. Common Stock Citi Global TMT Conference

Great. Sounds good. Well, thanks for having us, Kelsey, and thanks for seeing everybody joining us today. A little bit of background on MaxLinear. The company's really founded as a mixed signal semiconductor company. We started an effort in infrastructure about five to six years ago, and that's been a labor of love in the beginning, and we really started to get some solid traction here in the market over the last few years. This most recent quarter, it was over 50% of our revenues. That's been the focus of our data center business, as well as our storage accelerators and some of our wireless infrastructure. We also have several other end markets, broadband connectivity and industrial markets. But over the last several years, as far as R&D dollars and product focus, it's been around the data center and the infrastructure business.

Sure. We're participating in all those scale up and scale out. Let's maybe step back a little bit and talk about where revenue comes from today and then where it's going. This year, the mix between 400G and 800G, primarily DSPs. That business is growing nicely this year. The midpoint of our guidance for the optical piece of it is $220 million. The mix of that business today is probably 70% 800G and probably 30% 400G. Getting to the end of the life on the 400G. I think most of the market data says that will slow down next year, but 800G, I feel like will grow nicely this year as well as next year. Then some debate on what happens in 2028.

Our new product, Rushmore, customers are qualifying that product, working with those solutions today, expected to go to market mid-next year. We're working with tons of customers right now with that particular ramp. If it starts mid-next year, it probably goes into full scale production in the following year. I guess one thing I would add there is we also have our Washington TIA that sells alongside of that. Just from a pure ASP standpoint, if you look at 800G, most of the market data will say ASPs are running, I don't know, $35 to $50 probably, versus a 1.6T, which is probably $80 to $100 plus the cost of the TIA, which pushes it above $100. Right now, the market environment is such that pricing is holding very good.

I don't expect that to change right now, given the constraints that we're seeing throughout next year. I don't anticipate pricing coming down much, between now and the end of next year anyway.

Right. No, it's a good question. Yeah, because going into the year, I think we had said that we'd be north of $100, and then each quarter we've raised. So what's changed? I think it's a few things. The market continues to grow. You guys have all probably seen the growth in transceivers this year versus the beginning of the year. So that's clearly one. But I think our share that we were anticipating has gone up more than probably what we had expected. We've seen new customers come on that were not planned for. I just think it's a handful of things. I don't think it's one in particular, but several things.

We've also tried to be a little bit conservative entering the year, just from the standpoint that with supply constraints being what they are, we don't want to over-commit to investors, nor do we want to over-commit to customers. I think we've tried to be just conservative on those expectations.

Sure. Look, visibility is very good. Again, back to, I think there's a big gap between supply and demand here. Visibility is strong from the standpoint, customers are coming in. We quote 26 to 28 week lead times for our optical products. That's fairly consistent, but I will say that customers have come in placing orders throughout all of next year, or at least at a minimum, given us forecasts so that we can go out and plan. As all of you know, TSMC and all of the other folks in the supply chain need forecasts, need planning. In order to secure that capacity for next year, we need to see those orders upfront. You're in an environment where you're getting those orders right now.

Sure. Yeah, look, there's two big players in this market that we've competed against for a long time. I started out talking about our mixed signal expertise, but that expertise is really what allows us to bring technically unique solutions that are very differentiated. Our current 800G solution runs about 20% less power than a comparable module from one or the other of those two competitors. You have to start there, right? We've always had that technical differentiation, and we continue to have it. I think a couple of things that have changed or that have allowed us to maybe further gain share, further penetrate the market is, look, over the last couple of years, we've done a lot in broadening the portfolio itself. So now we have our retimers, we have our Washington TIAs, we have drivers.

We're broadening out the portfolio, and that makes a big difference to the customer base because they want to work with less suppliers at the end of the day. So they want to see more capability out of us. I think the third thing was just simply that we've been in production for now 18 months, mass production, and I think that's, it's always a bit of a challenge, this chicken and the egg thing. They don't want to design you in, especially big customers Yeah without seeing you in production.