MaxLinear, Inc

Q2 2026 Earnings Call — July 23, 2026

Tori Svander (Seafull): Yes, thank you and congratulations on the strong results. Kishore or Steve, you know, you raised the optical transceiver revenue by more than $50 million for this year. Could you talk a little bit about what's driving that? You know, maybe talk a little bit about the, you know, regional nature of that and also if you could give us a sense for the mix between 400 gig and 800 gig. Thank you.

Kishore (Executive): We're obviously very excited about the growing infrastructure business and especially about our success with our RAMs per phone and 800 gigabit optical PAM4 business. So, you know, as we entered the year, we were more constantly reporting gigabit revenues, but all the revenue growth we are seeing now is driven by 800 gigabit PAM4 success for us. This will continue to 2027. And as we move later into 2027, our 1.6 terabit Rushmore will start to generate revenue and will drive growth beyond 27 to 28 and 29. So yes, 800 gigabit is now substantially going to be a bigger portion of our run rate revenues moving forward. With regard to our end customers, we do not share a particular customer name. We have not done that. However, our customers span both U.S. and Asia, hyperscalers and Tier 1 data center customers and OEMs. And at this point in time, we are beginning to see more and more traction and revenue growth that will span both the regions, including the United States.

Tori Svander (Seafull): Very good. And as my follow-up, just thinking about some of the, you know, extension of products that, you know, you're now sampling, you know, whether it's, you know, Washington and Aperna, you talked about 27 contribution. But I'm just curious, you know, should the ramp be mainly in 28? Or could you potentially start to see some ramps with TIAs and re-timers already in 2027?

Kishore (Executive): So, you know, we, our Rushmore product line, our Annapurna and even our TIAs for the 1.6 terabit or 200 gigabit per lane speed has been sampling now. It's customer, it's in the customer call phases and designing process. So we expect revenue to start generating in 2027. We expect the ramps at one or two opportunities to start somewhere in the second half of the year and then layer on top of that through 28 to 29. So yes, we do have some expectations of 1.6 trillion revenues and for the TIAs as a companion and for Annapurna active electrical cables in 2027. Sounds good. I'll go back in line. Thank you.

Cody Ackrey (Benchmark Company): Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the strong results and guidance. Maybe if I just get one point of clarification, the increase in the optical outlook, the $50 million increase, that is all just Keystone. Is that correct? That's not counting any Washington or Annapurna revenue in 26?

Steve (Executive): That's correct, Cody. That's very correct. It's all driven by Keystone product family. Ann, can you just talk about the visibility you have to that, the order visibility, the backlog builds that's looking into the second half? Can you just give us some color on the extension of your order trends?

Ann (Executive): Yeah, Cody, I can answer that one. Look, I mean, I think this probably goes without saying, but kind of across most of our businesses right now, I mean, the visibility is very good. I mean, kind of given some of the tight supply and just the continued increasing demand, visibility is good. It's going out, you know, on or about six months anyway. So naturally, that gives us the confidence to go and raise these numbers.

Cody Ackrey (Benchmark Company): Thanks for that, Steve. And then just lastly, can you talk about wafer prepayments, maybe the amount that you did in Q2 and any expectation for Q3? And I guess if you can just walk through some of the puts and takes for your gross margin improvement, you know, things like your mix and your incremental supply constraints and any kind of expedite fees that you may be paying off.

Steve (Executive): Sure. Yeah, not a problem at all, Cody. Maybe just hit the prepayment real quick. Certainly with this increased demand and some of the making sure that we're securing wafers and products for our customers going out, we've certainly started to prepay in a lot of cases. So that was up a little bit in the quarter. We expect that to continue next quarter as well. But, you know, that's all against a product that has backlog out a couple of quarters, right? So comfortable with that. Your question with regard to gross margins. So, you know, a little ahead of schedule here. We're excited about hitting the 60% level in our guidance for Q3. As you're probably aware, the mix of our infrastructure products historically has been well above the corporate average. That continues to be the case today. I do see that continue to expand over the next year or two as our infrastructure business grows, as our 800, 1.6T products start to contribute further. We've been a little bit cautious. We've shared this with investors that you know, just the input cost, the wafer cost increases, the packaging test increases that we're seeing out there. We're certainly, you know, kind of careful as we're seeing this across the board. Some cases you can pass this along to customers, and so we've just been a little bit cautious on this front, but certainly we see improvements from here.

Cody Ackrey (Benchmark Company): Thank you, guys. Steve, I just want to add, you know, you can look at the revenue ramp we've had throughout 2026 and raised expectations, especially with the advanced nodes in 5 nanometer. You know, Keystone is the only 5 nanometer SOC shipping in volume for the 100 gig per lane speeds. At least we were the first ones. You know, we have gotten our forecast when it kept going up. And I must say that our Foundry and OSAT partners have been incredibly supportive in making sure that we can meet the surging demand as our calls went through and we started laying more and more customer product ramps on our optical products. So yes, supply is tight, but I think having strong relationship and constant communications with our primary partners and OSAT has been incredibly helpful and that goes a long way in meeting our demand.

Cody Ackrey (Benchmark Company): Excellent. Thank you, guys.

Joe Quattrochi (Wells Fargo): Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Maybe on the optical side of the revenue guide up, how should we think about the revenue run rate of that in the second half as we're just thinking about the trajectory into 2027?

Steve (Executive): Sure, Joe. Look, I mean, we, you know, as new quolls kind of come through production ramps start, I mean, we started out with a great, you know, run rate going into the year. I think that's just continued to improve. Obviously, raising this number here, you know, kind of sets expectations for 27 as well. So, you know, you would expect that. There's not a stair step. I mean, we continue to see as more customers' qualifications get completed, move into production volumes, you're seeing those numbers go up, and I would expect that to continue into next year.

Joe Quattrochi (Wells Fargo): Thanks. And then maybe on the broadband side, maybe just any update there in terms of what you're seeing from a demand perspective and just kind of some of the timing for some of these transitions. Has anything changed there?

Steve (Executive): Yeah, not a whole lot of changes. I mean, as you know, we've been gaining share on some of our pond programs. That's gone exceptionally well this year. I think as we look out the back half of this year and next year, you know, telco, capex spend continue to be good. Our customers continue to be, you know, rolling out in a lot of cases new programs. If you recall, we've got kind of content increases and a couple of other things. So, yeah, I would say everything's on track on that front.

Suji Da Silva (Roth Capital Partners): Hi, Kishore. Hi, Steve. Congratulations on the strong progress here. I know you're growing very strong in optical in 26, but I'm trying to understand 27 a little bit. Just, you know, what's the share opportunity, Kishore, as Rushmore grades happen from Keystone? Do you guys have an advantage that it perhaps even grow your share, or should we expect that it holds from the success you have in Keystone?

Kishore (Executive): So, Suji, obviously the kind of growth we are seeing comes from two factors, right? The market itself is going very, very strongly, and the fact that we have raised our expectation for 26 revenue, which means a higher run rate expectations getting towards second half of 26, which has implications for 27 as well. It's a matter of as and when we learn about the ramps and how strong the ramps are, we're upgrading our revenue expectations. So it's happening in both ways, right? One is through the TAM growth and the other one is through market share growth. So, yes, on both fronts, performance differentiation and increasing traction with successful rollout of our products and various other customers is having a knock-on effect of more, what I call, more acceleration in the ramps that they are seeing. With regards to Rushmore, obviously, Keystone is a foundational product for MaxLinear. This was the first major one that went to mass rollout from MaxLinear's point of view, even though it represents our third generation of technology. But Rushmore at 1.6 terabit is now sampling. It's got performance and power advantages that are very, very substantial.

And at the same time, it has also got supply chain diversification that is very unique with MaxLinear versus our competition. So if you roll in all these factors, we feel very optimistic and actually, frankly, very excited about Rushmore and the upside potential of ASP increases with the enhanced speeds. So I think that the same customers that are using Keystone are eagerly working towards deploying our 1.6 terabit. And obviously the call interrupt cycle is a bit longer and natural at higher speeds, but we feel we're very well positioned to be successful with 1.6 terabit Rushmore as well as a successor to Keystone offering. The important thing is my own forecast for the industry is both 800 gigabit and 1.6 terabit will be one of the workhorse speed nodes for a long time to come. So even as Rushmore runs, Rushmore comes online, Keystone will still be having a lot of growth engine and capacity moving forward.

Suji Da Silva (Roth Capital Partners): Okay, sweet. Later on. Great, thanks. And then my other question is on the TIA driver market, the Washington product and so forth. In the 1.60 platforms, are you seeing more kind of creative sort of CPO, LPO architectures that drive higher attach rate and make better use of your products as they break out some of the components there?

Kishore (Executive): I think you have to look at that for the first time we are actually positioning and marketing Washington as both a standalone TIA and paired with Rushmore. Obviously, the first success we'll have is a paired offering with our own Sirtis, and PAM-4 DSP, maybe Rushmore. Having said that, as you go to higher speeds, our deep RF expertise is very, very valuable and differentiated. and it's got a lot of potential to be used as a standalone product working with other DSPs and at the same time being designed into LPOs and LRO type of applications. So at this stage, I would say preliminary, we expect our first traction to come from our own pairing with our own device.

Quinn Bolton (Needham & Company): Hey, Steven, Kishore. I'll offer my congratulations as well. I wanted to follow up on CJ's question just on Rushmore. As you look at the qualification programs you're engaged in now, is that a sort of expanding set or expanding opportunity? Do you think you are sort of going after more 1.6T modules at your customers than, say, you were before? Originally looking at on 800 gig, I'm just kind of wondering, you know, can you tell from the qualification activity whether you think your share continues to increase with Rushmore?

Kishore (Executive): So, wow, very, very good question. And I'm actually very pleased with where we are. From where we started in Keystone today, I can safely say that we are now comprehensively designed across the board of all of the optical module players, you know, on the 800 gigabit solution across the board. So in a sense, 1.6 terabit now has to systematically get designed to each of those customers where we have laid the foundation with Keystone and then developing their modules, calling them, and then interropping them. So if anything, Keystone has created the footprint for us to roll out 1.6 terabit. Obviously, it's a very multifaceted play in terms of calling 1.6 terabit Rushmore, and it's just being designed in with the module makers. Then it leads to the next phase of calls with the data center operators, and that's when the revenue ramps would start. So we expect this to happen towards the second half of next year, and with some initial revenue ramps starting in 27.

Quinn Bolton (Needham & Company): Got it. And then, Kishore, as you look at the broadband, sort of the CPE gateway business, and you talk to your customers, do those CPE boxes tend to use a fair amount of memory? Is the rising cost of memory causing any sort of delays and rollouts or perhaps lower units? Or do you think that the CPE business is able to absorb the memory cost increases?

Kishore (Executive): So at this point in time, we do not have not seen on our solution platforms, you know, effects of memory as being a major driver in their decisions on using a product. If anything, we have been able to share gains because our solution actually integrates a lot of, you know, different implementations, different solutions use, competition uses a lot more external memory than we do. So we actually save our customers a lot more money due to the integrated solution with on-chip memory and, you know, incorporated. So we have not seen much impact with our customers. Obviously, they're absorbing the cost of the memory, and they're able to pass it on to their operator customers. So there is some juggling going on, but at our own level, we have not seen what I call real tangible impact on the volumes that we were expecting and forecasting for this year and looking into next year. You have to keep in mind that the lead times are pretty long these days, so you get fairly strong visibility based on backlog and bookings.

Tim Savage (Northline Capital Markets): Hey, good afternoon, and Congrats as well, especially on the guide. Wow. And my first question is kind of about that, which is in terms of what you're seeing here, can you maybe try to be more granular between, you know, overall market growth, uptick in unit volumes, broadly speaking, being a driver here versus share gain on Max Linear's part maybe at the expense of capacity-constrained competitors. I don't know if there would be another factor, but I'd love to have you weight those two in terms of what you're seeing in the step function here these couple of quarters.

Steve (Executive): Okay. Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I don't know that we can, it's hard to break out. I guess from our perspective, I mean, what we're confident in, I think what we are seeing is that we are seeing more market share gains. Certainly the market's growing nicely, but we're seeing our share go up. I think, you know, part of the rationale from seeing our guidance go up is that we've been able to take additional market share. And so we're seeing that in the short term. And we think you'll also see that, you know, throughout next year as newer programs start to ramp.

Tim Savage (Northline Capital Markets): Got it. And kind of following up on the guidance, I guess would it be, I think it's about $45 million. Would it be fair or perhaps conservative to say the majority of that sequential growth is coming from optical in Q3?

Steve (Executive): Yeah, I guess I would just say that the majority of it's coming out of infrastructure, certainly. I mean, we're seeing growth across that end market, call it much more so than some of the others. The others are going up as we guided, but a lot of that growth is coming from infrastructure. And certainly we upped our optical guide. So that number goes up as well.

Tim Savage (Northline Capital Markets): Got it. And when you talk about growth across the rest of the segments, I assume you're referring to sequential growth there, not year over year.

Steve (Executive): I was. Yeah, just reflecting the guidance.

Tim Savage (Northline Capital Markets): Great. And last question for me. Looks like no 10% customers here. And I imagine that, you know, Old Broadband guys are kind of falling off the list. But as we move forward and you continue to ramp in optical, do you have the prospect of having one or more of these module guys as a 10% customer in the near future or in the future in general? Thanks. That's it for me.

Steve (Executive): Yeah, so I think we mentioned this before, Tim. Look, I think we've talked about being in a lot of customers. Kishore just mentioned that again as well. We've got a number of module guys, a number of data centers that we're supplying product into today. But over time, yeah, I do think you'll expect to see more concentration. I think that's well understood as we go into next year. I don't think that'd be surprising at all.

Christopher Roland (Susquehanna): Hi, guys. Congrats on the results and apologize if this has been asked as I joined late. But in terms of the composition, customer composition, particularly moving forward for DSP, is there any movement in terms of the balance between hyperscalers versus module makers and then also North America versus like Eastern guys? Or is it still incredibly broad-based?

Steve (Executive): Yeah, you might have just missed this question because it was just before you. We continue to see growth. I mean, Kishore mentioned in the prepared remarks that we're seeing growth out of both regions. So, from a geography standpoint, we're certainly seeing growth on both sides. As far as concentration itself, as mentioned previously, there's not a 10% customer, but I do expect, as we've talked in the past, I think you'll see a little more concentration as we move forward. I mean, there's not tons of these customers. So I think it will be understandable that you'll see some more concentration as we move forward.

Christopher Roland (Susquehanna): Okay. But just to be clear, you don't have one marquee customer pushing?

Steve (Executive): So, Ken, we don't have a 10% customer. It's a little broader base, but you should expect there's a handful of customers that are going to drive the most volumes over the next, call it, six quarters.

Christopher Roland (Susquehanna): Okay, perfect. And then as a follow-up, I think it's been some time since you've given some long-term metrics for the model more broadly. I think at one point in time we talked about 65% gross margins. Do you have any sort of an update for your longer-term model, including what a path might look like to 65%? Does that still hold for you guys?

Steve (Executive): Yeah, so I don't think the target has changed. We certainly feel like with the product mix, the end market that we participate in, that that's still the right goal, and I think there's a path to certainly get there. Raise the number for our Q3 guide goes up a little bit ahead of schedule, so that's good. I think that reflects just our infrastructure business in general, growing at a faster rate than some of the other end markets, and they do have gross margins that run ahead of the corporate average. You know, right now we're seeing lots of increases of cost, right? I mean, whether it be on the waiver side or just test assembly, packaging. So, you know, so doing our best to pass some of those costs along. But, you know, where you're paying premiums in some cases, you know, meeting customer demands. So we're paying a little bit more right now. But I certainly think that there's a strong path to see continued growth out of our gross margins.

Ananda Barua (Loop Capital Markets): Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Really appreciate it. Same for me. I apologize if it's been asked. I jumped on late as well. I guess the CSP question, you know, sort of as you look out the next couple of years, guys, and you think about what the drivers of growth are, in any way to help us think about order of magnitude, sort of the growth comes from bigger customer participation, i.e. hyperscalers versus price lifts, from going to 1.6T and 3.2 versus just broader growth in the marketplace. Any help there would be useful. Thanks.

Kishore (Executive): Yeah. Hey, Anand, that's... We answered that question too, you know, as best we could. It's going to take all of those factors to play in our growth expectation plans. It's going to be share growth. There is going to be TAM growth. There is going to be TAM unit growth. And there's going to be ASP growth as we go to higher and higher speeds. At the same time, our footprint inside the data center is increasing. Now we are also offering a broad comprehensive product portfolio of TIAs, drivers, and at the same time, for active electrical cables, we have our Annapurna offering, and also for onboard retimers, right? So as that product portfolio expands and broadens, it can address a number of architectures that include CPOs, NPOs, LPOs, LROs, and other implementations both for optical and electrical scale-up and scale-out implementations. So it's going to take all of those and the good news is that the offering has become more comprehensive and we continue to work towards that to expand that SAM, if you will, of the larger footprint. and we feel we are really making excellent progress getting these into the pipeline and then eventually they will result in multi-year revenue growth and expansion for MaxLinear.

Ananda Barua (Loop Capital Markets): Yeah, that's really helpful, Kishore. Thanks for that. That's really helpful. I guess a quick follow-up is and maybe this also was a talk too earlier on the call, so I apologize if it was. But anything notable either on the technical side of things or on the relationship side of things of note that sort of is helping you move the ball forward over the last 90 days that we should be aware of, that would be useful context for us to be aware of. and that's it for me, thanks.

Kishore (Executive): On the DSP, DSP business, thanks. Look, everybody matters, right? We are really building on the successful penetration ramp that is happening on Keystone and that itself is a self-reinforcing driver and force actually. So if you really look at the larger picture in the larger landscape today, with the track record of the millions of units of shipments and optical transceiver PAM-4 DSPs. There are only three players right now, and we are one of them. So I think that track record is really, really important. And then having the next generation offering with Rushmore and expanding the product portfolio, all of this play a role into how things move around, how we build relationships. You also have to keep in mind that we are now not just talking about, you know, electrical and PAM-4 optical offerings, the TIS drivers, active electrical cables, and onboard retimers.

We also have storage accelerators now in our portfolio that will get more and more important as this agency AI becomes very important and the storage bottlenecks that prevent increasing the number of agents, right? That's very important how we expand that hardware acceleration and compression is going to be very, very important to expand the agents and at the same time reduce the time to first token which all involves lower latency and improving power consumption. So I think we're also showing other parts to the portfolio, including our XGS font for control plane for the data centers. It's going to take a lot of stuff to put together to continue to expand our relationship with the end customers. If you look at our two big competitors, right, they're very large companies and they have a lot to offer to our end customers as well. So it's going to take, you know, working away, chipping away with more offerings that, you know, we could be a full-blown comprehensive player in the data center infrastructure.

Carl Ackerman (BNP Paribas): Yes, thank you, Dylan. Two, if I may, I'm going to quote a bit from the Questions with respect to Optical, which is well covered, and you've certainly done very well this quarter on that. Could you discuss some of the key drivers for your industrial and multi-market business into the second half of next year? I know you mentioned it was going to grow sequentially into September, but I ask because while this area has improved, you're still halfway from the run rate business you achieved in 2023, and that appears to be Margin Accretive for you. And so if we could just talk about the drivers of that, that could also drive revenue into 20, the second half, into 2027 would be very helpful.

Steve (Executive): Yeah, sure, Carl. I can take that. The industrial business has definitely been recovering. Last year was very weak. We started to see, you know, you're seeing nice year-over-year improvements this year. I think I would expect that to continue next year. I mean, you're starting to hear more improvements. More of the industry itself starting to recover, so that's good. And I think we've talked about this a little bit before. Some of this has driven some of the China business. We're actually seeing good pricing improvements in that region, so I would expect pricing as well as new products to contribute to that growth.

Carl Ackerman (BNP Paribas): Got it. If I may have a follow-up, within broadband, could you discuss the mix of revenue on fiber today and whether you see that crossing over from cable broadband. Is that something that can occur in 2027? Can you just talk about the growth process between fiber and cable? Within that would be helpful. Thank you.

Steve (Executive): Yeah, good question, Carl. Yeah, you're right. We've been talking about this. I mean, this is an area that is still relatively new. We're a relatively new player, but we've now won the top two guys in North America. So the second guy is ramping this year on track, as we had talked about. So it's definitely growing nicely, the pond business specifically. And as we, I would expect that to continue next year. It's hard to say when the crossover will be. I mean, I would guess 27, but it may push out into 28, frankly, because, you know, some of the upgrades that are happening in the DOCSIS world are also growing. So we're seeing, you know, seeing decent growth on both sides, and it's good to see that Telco's kind of, you know, with some spending there.

Tori Sondberg (Steve Ford): Yeah, thank you. Just had a follow-up and I'll ask a question that has not been asked. So looking at the filing, looks like your purchase obligations went up about $40 million, but then you also have an other obligations item that I think went up even more than that, $45 million. Can you just explain a little bit, you know, the difference between those two? I mean, you talked about obviously the wafer prepays and so on and so forth. I'm sure there's stuff you've got to do on the back end as well, but any more color on the difference in those two? Because obviously it's a pretty important increase in both items.

Steve (Executive): Yeah, yeah. I mean, so obviously the purchase obligations are probably the bigger takeaway. We did have some pre-payments. I mean, with the stock price increase that we saw on the quarter, there were a handful of payroll accruals that had to be done as well. And so that's a portion of it around stock comp. But again, the majority is the prepayments. And as we had kind of talked about a little bit earlier, that portion obviously supporting growth in Q4 and into Q1 as those lead times, like we're starting to place orders now for Q1. And that's the majority of those numbers and those commitments.

Tori Sondberg (Steve Ford): Got it. And then last question. So there was a little bit of discussion about the long-term model. I mean, you're going to be at 30% operating margin this quarter or at least close to it. I know you've been here before, but how should we think about, you know, that sort of number now sort of being more the baseline going forward, especially in relation to your OPEX guidance?

Steve (Executive): Yeah, I mean, look, I don't want to guide beyond the quarter that we're in, but I think you know our long-term goal is to be between 30% and 35% operating margins. You're absolutely right. You know, kind of headed in that direction, you can kind of see the model starting to move there pretty quickly. I mean, profitability is good. You know, we're seeing good growth next year on the top line. Gross margins are favorable from an OPEX standpoint. Yeah, we'll see some increases in OPEX definitely supporting, you know, the growth in these areas. But as we've talked about, the operating leverage I think is compelling. It's exciting to kind of see you're right. We've been here before. But, you know, we want to continue to show this kind of long-term sustainability of these profit margins.

Tori Sondberg (Steve Ford): Great. Thank you very much.

Management: Thank you. There are no further questions

at this time.

I'd like to hand the floor back over to Leslie Green for any closing remarks.

Leslie Green (Management): Thank you, Paul, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call. This quarter, we will be presenting at a number of financial conferences and virtual events. The details will be posted on the Investor Relations page of our website, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon. Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines

at this time.

Thank you again for your participation.

Q1 2026 Earnings Call — April 23, 2026

Analyst Tori Sandberg (Stiefel): Thank you, and congrats on the momentum here. Kishore, you mentioned optical DSP revenue now tracking to 150 to 170. I think that's about $30 million, $40 million higher than what you had expected before. Just wondering, you know, what transpired, you know, in per quarter, you know, to see such a, you know, steep increase. Is there new customers? Are you basically just seeing steeper ramp at existing customers? You know, any more color you can add on that additional revenue would be great. Thank you.

Executive Kishore: At the time when we set the guidance, we obviously are looking at a number of ramps, at a number of customers, and we were being conservative. And at the same time, we were also fairly optimistic internally that we should be seeing strong growth coming in the latter half of this year. Now, with all the visibility and the lead times that are necessary for providing the product, we have very good visibility. The ramps are setting in very nicely, both across 400 gig and 800 gig solutions. So I just think it's all about timing of the ramps and the success of the calls and our ability to scale up to meet the demand, the surging demand we are seeing now.

And as a follow-up for you, Steve, so you mentioned that prepayment for wafer capacity. I'm just wondering, are you sort of done with that now? Or, you know, should we expect more cash outflows in the coming quarters? And I also noticed you increased the revolver by 30 million. So, you know, anything you can say here on the balance sheet and cash position going forward? Thank you.

Executive Steve: Consistent with what we raised back in Q4 of last year, we knew we would have some working capital needs kind of going in Q4 as well as Q1, so that certainly played out the way that we expected. Are we through it entirely? I mean, I guess to some degree it depends on how much demand continues to improve, right? As that demand improves, certainly we may continue to see some prepayments, but we do, you know, you'll start to see this inflect as the revenues increase. Second part of your question on the revolver, yeah, we did have a revolver that was expiring in June. So, we renewed the revolver. We did, took it up slightly, a pretty minor move for the size of the company and the direction of the company.

Analyst Joe Quattrari (Wells Fargo and Co.): Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just to follow up on that, I guess, you know, can you talk about just your supply chain and capacity to support the growth that you're seeing? You know, clearly the mix of your growth is a bit different than maybe previously when you were at kind of similar revenue levels.

Executive Kishore: I mean, look, I mean, I don't think it's any surprising when there's some supply constraints out there. But, I mean, I think we planned well for this and worked really closely with the partners on this front. I think we've seen really good success, and we expect to continue to see that going forward.

Okay. And then as a follow-up, can you talk maybe a little bit about the puts and takes on the gross margin guidance? You know, why wouldn't we see maybe a little bit more leverage on the sequential revenue step up that's pretty significant here?

Executive Steve: Yeah, no, I mean, obvious question. I think this is consistent with what we've been seeing. You've heard my caution on this, Joe, and it's a little bit of the input cost. So certainly there's some concerns out there, waiver costs, packaging, et cetera, are moving up. A lot of cases, you know, the industry, ourselves included, have been able to pass along these costs. And so we expect that to be the case. But just kind of given the uncertainty out there, I think we just want to remain cautious. But you're absolutely right from the understanding that the infrastructure business typically does drive a higher gross margin. So we're very optimistic as we look out, you know, the rest of this year and even into next year in that being a positive influence on our gross margins.

Analyst Tim Savage (Northland Capital Markets): Hi, and congrats on the results and especially guidance. Question on the infrastructure side, and I know that's mostly data center driven, but looks like you grew something, you know, mid-30s sequentially in Q1. And I imagine data center was a big driver there. Given what you're guiding to, do you expect some sequential growth of a similar magnitude in Q2 infrastructure?

Executive Kishore: Yeah, I think, Tim, from my standpoint, I mean, we obviously didn't, we don't typically guide in markets in that level of detail. We did say that it was going up. We did emphasize in our prepared remarks that I mean, as we look at this year, now clearly the infrastructure business has much bigger growth drivers. We have a lot of new products that are ramping with some new customers. So we would certainly expect infrastructure to be a much bigger driver of growth in the coming year.

Okay. And to follow up once again, given the step up we're seeing in Q2, do you have any comments about overall revenue growth expectations for 26? Looks like we could be tracking, I don't know, 35, 40%, but any comment from the company?

Executive Kishore: Yeah, I mean, look, we only got one quarter, and we're not going to change that here today. We are very excited about the growth potential that we have and these new customers and the new product ramps. And, yeah, so I think – and, frankly, with the visibility that we have, we start to roll into 27 as well. I mean, I think we're excited to see the growth in 26 and even backlog starting to build into 2027.

Analyst: Yeah, good afternoon, guys. Really appreciate the question. And yeah, congrats on doing all the work to get to this place with DSP. It's cool to see it play out.

Executive Kishore: You guys are very welcome.

Analyst: Kishore, you mentioned, just this first question is a DSP question. You mentioned to one of the prior questions that around magnitude of step up and guide that you guys had baked in some conservatism, sort of that program start ramp here, and that that contributed to sort of the magnitude of step up and guide. Can you guys tell though – I guess what I'm also – what I'm wanting to ask is can you tell if the market ramp feels bigger than what you guys had originally anticipated as distinct of conservatism? And I guess what I'm just – let me just ask that question. Do you have any sense that if the market ramp feels bigger, if the market TAM feels bigger? And then I have a quick follow-up as well. Thanks.

Executive Kishore: So let me answer the first question. Obviously, the TAM expansion is real, or the SAM expansion even more so, the PAM4 DSP expansion is very real as both, you know, U.S. and China Harper scalers are deploying very, very rapidly. And depending on the architecture implementation, the amount of PAM4 DSPs use can vary completely based on the GPU configurations. And so scale up and scale are both equally growing very strongly. So the extent that we are conservative, it's in the balance of thing that's our general positioning as a company, right? So I don't think that's behaviorally any different from us. Do we expect more upsides? Absolutely. We do expect more upsides. That is compensated all the programs reaching full run rates. So I hope that answers the first question.

So your second question, please.

Analyst: Oh yeah, on Panther. You had mentioned Panther benefiting from some of the memory dynamics in the marketplace. Can you just walk us through is that walking through the ways in which Panther is holistically benefiting? Is it as simple as, you know, memory's short, Panther provides performance, and you've been waiting here at Panther as well, so you're benefiting? Or are there more sophisticated, nuanced reasons as well that Panther is benefiting?

Executive Kishore: Yeah. You know, there's always obviously been sophisticated nuance to Panther, right? And now, of course, memory is fashionable, right? Not three years ago when we got punished for some of our actions. But, you know, 60% of the data center spend is in memory. But all memory is not equal. As the AI engine moves forward, accelerates, low latency, high capacity memory access is super important. So the big benefit of Panther is it's an accelerator, so it reduces latency dramatically and the power efficiency that brings to it, so it enables much more capability than just a memory compression, right? So I really feel that the performance part related to low latency, high bandwidth access enablement that Panther provides is the key differentiator.

Thus far, our use of Panther has been really at the enterprise appliance level, if you will, but now these enterprise storage appliances are getting increasingly deployed into mainstream cloud centers. So I really feel there's much more to come with Panther 5 and Panther 6 in the future, and this is just the beginning of our Panther roadmap product family. So we expect this year the revenues to double. We have said that before. And hopefully next year as well, we got very strong growth based on the visibility we have.

With all that said, do you feel bigger about the ultimate TAM potential for Panther? Big picture.

Executive Kishore: In the big picture, you know, absolutely Panther has a lot of potential. But Panther as it is today, would not be sufficient, right? The world and the deployment models evolve, so there'll be more investment required, but the TAM is pretty huge, and we just have to keep on converting more of the TAM into our SAM, and that will drive our roadmap.

Analyst Christopher Rowland (Susquehanna International Group): Hey guys, thanks for the question. Congrats on the strong results and I apologize if this was asked, but in your prepared remarks or actually in the press release you talked about for optical multiple hyperscalers and previously I think your messaging around optical was it was very broad-based. I think, you know, at OFC we see all the design wins across so many different optical vendors. But this seems like it's a big change and might be changing customer concentration. Perhaps if you could talk a little bit about that. Are you now diversifying around these key hyperscaler opportunities? Is it like one or two or all of them? And... And, yeah, if you could elaborate a little bit as to what seems like is a pretty meaningful change here, that would be great.

Executive Kishore: It is pretty broad-based, our design, because all the module vendors in the world, so we have designs. We've always maintained that we have designs across all the module vendors. It's taken a while to map the module vendors' victories with the various end data centers while we ourselves had to sort of do the business development work that creates the pull for various module vendors. So even at the end, customers, it's pretty broad-based. Obviously, we'll be concentrating on a few during the ramps, and as the ramp expands into 2027, we'll have other data centers that come online. But even as we speak now, it's a pretty broad-based success. Is there more work to do to expand further? Yes, I think we are only halfway there to our – end data center diversification across all the hyperscalers. So there's more work to be done, but what Keystone provides is an affirmative statement of Max Glee's ability to successfully get through the interops, supply product at scale. Remember, we were worried about our ability to supply. And provided a scale where it's very confidence-boosting in terms of our credibility as a world-class chip supplier.

Analyst Christopher Rowland: Thank you for that, Kishore. Maybe a quick follow-up, I guess. If you could perhaps talk about... 1.6T, like how you think design wins and the ramp will go there is 800, just kind of the beginning. You know, they're qualifying on 800, and then they have plans to use you guys at 1.6, and they've communicated these plans. And then you also mentioned scale up, optical for scale up. In your press release as well, I don't think there's a huge transceiver usage for scale up right now, mostly scale out, so if you could talk about that and what that means for you guys that'd be great as well.

Executive Kishore: So, you hit many, many number of topics here, right? So there are going to be different deployment models for scale up to start with, right? There are many, many different product categories on scale-up that are discovered. Having said that, the optical transceivers, 30% of the market is for scale-up, right? And that's a pretty substantial part of the TAM, and 70% is for scale-out today. Our participation in scale-up derives from, you know, from the optical transceivers as well as now the new offering in 1.6 terabit for electrical retimers, which is onboard retimers, and for the active electrical cables as well. Those are all scale-up-based applications.

So, I hope that answers your question of where our scale-up opportunities are coming from. They're really in that 30% of the TAM I talked about. So moving forward to 1.6T, the critical thing to keep in mind is that, you know, there is enormous confidence out there. We're shipping Keystone to major data centers today, and they're ramping very strongly in 2026. And we are now rolled out our 1.6 terabit Rushmore product in Annapurna family for electrical applications. And I think that this level of execution apart and the success with the cloud relationships, module partnerships, and the call and interrupt completion is creating a far more pull for our 1.6G participation than I would have guessed at this point in time.

So in a sense, we hope that by the end of the year, we'll have called them 1.6T and start transitioning, not transitioning, I just want to keep this point that 800G 1.6 terabits will probably be one of the most long-lasting interconnect applications in the data center world. So having 1.6T will actually expand our ability to garner more revenues and more market share.

Analyst Richard Shannon (Craig Hallam Capital Markets): Well, thanks, guys, for taking my question. Maybe I'll follow up on the topic of DSP here and ask a question a slightly different way here, which is obviously your 400 and 800 gig with Keystone are going very well. And I've heard some relatively positive comments about Rushmore so far here. I'd love to get a sense here since it seems like you're gaining some very nice share in Rushmore here, excuse me, in Keystone. To what degree is this conveying directly or could it convey directly to success in Rushmore? And how do you view the potential revenue trajectory over a period of time relative to what you've seen so far with Keystone?

Executive Kishore: Thank God for Keystone, right? So it's, you know, everything valuable takes a long time. It has taken us a long journey through two, three generations of investment. Now we are into Rushmore. And the success of Keystone makes us an incumbent, right? And the power of incumbency is the ability to have the relationships with the cloud customers, the module makers, the confidence in your ability to supply, and the quality of your product. On the 1.6 terabit solution, I dare say we are in the top tier on the performance category. And our customers acknowledge that. So they are readily going to develop solutions that would be quickly, you know, move to the next phase with calls, et cetera, with the data center folks.

As you know, we are not the first ones with 1.6 terabit relative to our incumbent competitors, two of them. So I really feel it bodes very, very well. And with 1.6 terabit, you expect the ASPs to increase, right? So clearly for the same units or even expanding units that are happening, the TAM dollars substantially increase. So as the mix becomes more and more 1.6 terabit, I really believe that it'll have an uplifting effect on our revenues and gross margins, even as our market share expands.

Okay, Kishore, thanks for that detail. My following question is on the cable and broadband space here. Just generally, I'd love to get a sense of your expectations for the trajectory of this year. Last call, you talked about a soft first half. Certainly, your starting point shows that here. And then talking about calendar 2016 being down, which I completely believe here. But I want to get a sense of any update on that and whether you have any visibility into when DOCSIS 4.0 starts to have an impact.

Executive Kishore: Right. You know, we had a spectacular growth here in 25 for broadband grew about 75 percent. And so we had a pullback in Q1, which is also some seasonality built into it. But happy to say that looking forward, all our businesses are growing, actually, you know, which is sort of a tailwind that we, as our data center-centric and infrastructure revenues grow, we also have other segments of our diversified portfolio really generating some positive momentum as well. So I'm happy to share that we expect our broadband business to continue to start growing from Q2 and into 2027.

And I think cable DOCSIS 4.0 certifications that happen, but some of the operators are still delayed on their network readiness. However, a big growth is coming with UltraDocs in 3.1 and 4.2 into 2027. The one thing that's happened post-COVID is that, you know, during the down period, right, we have been winning market share in broadband, which bodes very well for our fiber play. In fact, fiber pawn business continues to grow through Q1, Q2. And we started major deployment with the major tier one operator in North America. And that's happening in the second half of the year, for which we've already done pre-shipments. And then later we have European deployments. I think it's all good. It's all growing, and we've been waiting for a time to recover through the COVID slowdown. I think we feel very good about that.

Analyst Carl Ackerman (BNP Paribas Asset Management): Yes, thank you. I have two qualifications, if I may. Kishore, we're just going back to the – you spoke briefly about cable and broadband just now, but could you be more specific with respect to the June quarter guide? It seems like most of the growth is coming from infrastructure, but can you talk about what your outlook is for broadband, connectivity, and multi-market, and whether they can all grow on a sequential basis in June quarter two?

Executive Steve: Carl, yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, I think we mentioned earlier – All four end markets will be up. I mean, I do expect, you know, a lot of that growth to be from infrastructure, just seeing the inflection that we're seeing from particularly some of the data center products. So, yeah, that is our expectation.

Analyst Carl Ackerman: Got it. Okay. And then just to follow up on Chris's earlier question, is much of your optical DSP growth coming from hyperscaler-owned designs, and therefore you are qualifying with them directly? Or is your hyperscaler exposure predominantly through module vendors providing a merchant solution?

Executive Kishore: Both.

Analyst Quinn Bolton (Needham & Co.): Thank you, guys. Let me offer my congratulations on the nice results and outlook. Kishore, I guess I wanted to follow up on Tim's question earlier about just the breadth of the growth in the infrastructure business and Q1. Was it predominantly from the optical DSPs or did you see a good contribution from Panther, the wireless access products as well?

Executive Steve: Quinn, I'll jump in here on this one. Look, so really across the board, I mean, we saw some really good growth from all of the products within the infrastructure segment. I would say from here, you start to see kind of data center really break out. I mean, the other product lines absolutely contribute. Kishore mentioned earlier about Panther. Panther is going extremely well. Wireless infrastructure, which was pretty soft last year, talked about the improvements. We expect to see more of that this year. I mean, those are probably the top three or four products there.

Got it. And then I know sometimes gross margin takes a couple of quarters to reflect your product mix because you've got a flow product, you know, sitting in inventory, but you had a, you know, I think 30-ish percent increase in infrastructure in the quarter, maybe a 25% decrease in broadband quarter-on-quarter. I would have thought that would have been a nice tailwind for you. Gross margins were relatively flat. So just wondering, was there anything that sort of held back a gross margin given the mixed shift, or do you think it's just sort of a timing issue? Obviously, the go-forward look and the mixed infrastructure sounds like it's a nice tailwind to gross margin, just trying to think when we might start to see it show up in the income statement.

Executive Steve: Yeah, look, I mean, we came in, you know, more like right at our guidance, what we had talked about. The mix is definitely continuing to improve. I mentioned a little earlier in a separate question about just input costs. I think we're just trying to be cautious as we look forward. But I do, just as you stated, yes, I do believe it's a tailwind, especially as you move into 800 gig, 1.6T, all of those have higher gross margins. So we will certainly continue to see nice benefits on the gross margin side as infrastructure gets to be a larger percentage of our business.

Analyst Suji De Silva (Roth Capital Partners): Hi, Kishore. Hi, Steve. Congratulations on the progress here. You talked about 2Q, some of the optical stepping up here. Are the programs all commencing RAMP, or are the other programs phasing in and starting in 3Q, 4Q, just to give us a set of layers across the year, or really are we in RAMP for all of the key programs already?

Executive Kishore: Hi, Suji. There are different product cycles with different RAMPs, and they're all kicking in now, and there'll be some more that'll catch up later in the end of the year. So, you know, it really took a while for them all to start deploying with the drop calls and everything complete, so now we're strengthening, we're seeing strength in each of these layerings based on the bookings we have.

Okay, that's helpful, Kishore. Thank you. And then, Kishore, you mentioned in the prepared remarks, I believe I heard wireless infrastructure having playing a part in data center connectivity, maybe data center interconnect or something along those lines. Can you help us understand that opportunity and how big that is as a niche or can that become a mainstream opportunity?

Executive Kishore: Yep. You know, if you look at the prepared remarks, I talked about 5G access and transport, and you have seen a number of announcement investments where there's a lot of AI at the edge and AI-enabled network infrastructure. So we see a lot of the telecom infrastructure people on the wireless now gathering some momentum about deployment increases, and especially that means that it changes the transport overhaul, backhaul stuff, as well as certain elements of the access will change as well. So this should all provide us a tailwind on the wireless infrastructure infrastructure.

Now, the growth mechanisms in wireless infrastructure, the rates of RAMPs will never match those of the data centers. However, you now started seeing, you saw the announcement between NVIDIA and, you know, Marvell, and you're seeing now genuine interest to move towards AI in the DU side of the network on the edge in the wireless side as well. So we should definitely benefit as being one of the top two players in the wireless infrastructure space.

Analyst: Okay, very helpful, Kishore, thanks. Operator, do we have one more question?

Analyst Tori Sandberg (Stiefel): Yeah, thank you. Just two quick follow-ups, especially on your new products. So, Kishore, first of all, on Annapurna, obviously this starts with 1.6T, but I'm just wondering, you know, if you could talk a bit about Max Center's positioning there. Are you going to go after all the standards? Obviously, there's Ethernet standards, there's UA-Linked. Are you going to participate perhaps also with some end-to-end fusion protocols? Just trying to understand exactly where you're trying to intersect the market with Annapurna, especially in the retail world.

Executive Kishore: Especially, you know, I know there's a lot of hoopla about AECs because of success of one very successful company on AECs. But if you look at the market size opportunity for a silicon player, the AEC, the retimer market electrical for AI scale it inside the compute server is humongous as the speeds increase. So you're going to see a lot of retimers. Currently, our retimer offering is Ethernet-based, naturally. However, the fundamental physics and the challenges of doing a very, very demanding PHY for the electrical retimer application is done now. So with regard to adding the various standards, that's just an interface game. Now, you can imagine this also lends itself to, you know, other chiplet sort of stories and things like that. So we're laying the framework and the groundwork of building a platform from which we'll have the optionality chase where the SAM and the TAM goes. So at this point, we are in the electrical retimer market for Ethernet-based application.

Analyst Tori Sandberg: That's very helpful. And on Washington, I mean, I assume that obviously gets sold with either Keystone or Rushmore, but are you seeing designs as well where your KIAs are perhaps participating on other people's DSP platforms?

Executive Kishore: Right now, Rushmore and Washington are sampling. Customers are using them, but they're very, very excited about the performance. But honestly, I mean, the TIA is beyond the TIA for Rushmore, right? If you think of an LPO strategy, the TIA is a fundamental block. If you think about, you know, LRO strategy, the TIA is a fundamental block. And, you know, Max Day is very well known for his great RF analog skills. So the CPO markets, if they're going to be bare bones, then, you know, the TIA and drive is a natural fit. If they go more sophisticated on the half DSB-based one, we already have the platform offering. But the real question comes as you go towards XPOs, CPOs, and the various manifestations of it. So the full offering is super important. So Washington is the first step in the direction of a fundamental platform that will have multiple derivatives and incarnations.

Analyst Tim Savage (Northland Capital Markets): Thanks. Quick follow-up for me as well. And that's on the hyperscale win for PON, which sounds like the data center management stuff. I guess, can you talk a little bit more about the timing there and how significant this opportunity? When would you expect this design win to ramp? Could it be a needle mover of some sort? Thanks.

Executive Kishore: So absolutely, you know, we just secured the win, so we expect a ramp. It is a lot of, you know, qualification that goes through it. So sometime in 27, it ramps, starts ramping. But how big that can be today, I think, you know, this is one of the first of its kind sort of, you know, what I call a very, very interesting development where the data centers are seeing the value of a dedicated, reliable link to control the entire data center network, right? So we expect this time to expand to over hundreds of millions of dollars, but currently our expectation that at our revenues, it's going to be quite a bit of needle mover, even in the next year itself, in the second half on a run rate basis.

Analyst Richard Shannon (Craig Hallam Capital Markets): Hi, guys. Just have one follow-up from me here, and let's dig in a little bit on the TSP side here. I want to get a sense of how big the other applications outside of what most people assume, and I certainly do, would be the duplex optical DSP being a big part of it, but how could the rest of that business, that LOR, LPO, CPO, AEC, Retimer, et cetera, how big can that be in a year or two? Can that be 10 or even 20% of that total portfolio? Any sense of that would be great. Thank you.

Executive Kishore: So, you know, we're still in the early innings of how this whole market is going to play out, whether it's CPOs or whether it is, I know people get excited, but still, I think we are three years or out away from determining that. At this point, it's a very small share of the market from a unit's point of view, okay, from a silicon unit's point of view. So I don't expect it to be a huge part of our revenues, but from a TAM-wise, I would rate the optical transceiver DSPs to be the number one TAM, substantially overwhelming the rest. Second would be electrical retimers when that happens, and the third would be AECs. And AECs is C as we go story because there is a certain level of point-in-time application nature to the AEC, and that itself will evolve. So I would rank them in that order, but at this point it's going to be massively overwhelmed by revenues in the optical transceiver PAM4DSP.