MaxLinear, Inc

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.

Q4 2025 Earnings Call — January 29, 2026

Analyst Tori Sponberg (Stifel): I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the time for DSP business. So there's obviously a lot of headlines and things out there on LPO and CPO, but, you know, you seem to be seeing, you know, more and more correction, more and more design wins. Sounds like, you know, Rushmore is getting pulled in somewhat. So, could you just walk through some of those dynamics, you know, because obviously that will give us better confidence about the continuous growth of PAMFOR in 26 and 27.

Executive Kishore (Title): Obviously, you know, this is a pretty significantly confidence-boosting growth that we are seeing. We were guiding to $110 to $130 million. That's, you know, that's a very positive statement about our traction. And we are in the initial phase of the ramp of our 800 gig product solution. And it really picks up more steam and energy in the second half. The market as a whole is still a pluggable market, which is going very, very fast. And the LPO deployments as such are very niche-y right now. I really look at the LPOs per se as a very small fraction of the market and not long term. The LROs, for example, I think they have got some traction, but there'll be a market that is substantially pluggables and there'll be a fraction of the market in LROs and LPOs will be sort of, you know, very, very controlled environment limited deployments potentially an 800 gig but less so on 1.6 terabytes. So that's our view of the marketplace. Obviously, there's a market that's also beyond that, which is as the scale-up continues, there will be electrical retimers, and that's going to be a huge volume in the scale-up world as well.

Talking of CPOs, people are doing CPOs today as sort of, you know, that's your feat in the market, but it still is early innings for CPO. And in the long term, there will be a market that is going to be more varietal than just pure CPOs. You know, the O in the CPO being many number of ways of doing it. Obviously, there's a silicon plane within the CVO market as well. That is what I call a wide IF fast throughput through the optical, and we expect ourselves to be a player as the market evolves. As MaxLinear, we are very focused and disciplined, and PAM4 is a huge growing market. We are developing a strong foothold, though we are not the incumbents. But I think today in the world, we can safely claim we're the top three deployers of PAM-4 DSP. And, you know, as the market strengthens, you know, we hope to branch out and diversify our offerings of what you all know is a very, very robust technology portfolio. I hope that gives you some sense of our technology positioning.

From a growth point of view, you know, this year we expect that, you know, there could even be upside depending on how the ramps proceed beyond the one that we feel fairly confident on the visibility and the outlook we have based on the bookings so far in 2026. I hope that answers your question.

Analyst Tori Sponberg (Stifel): Thank you, Kishore. And as my follow-up, I had a question on the broadband business and how should we think about, you know, the trajectory there has been moved throughout the year. You did mention you expected 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're guided to be down seasonally in Q1, but, you know, will it sort of decline every quarter this year? Is it going to be more of a moderate decline? Any more color there would be very helpful.

Executive Kishore (Title): 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'll 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 in the wind 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. I think the PON is a substantial opportunity, the new tier one that's ramping. And based on the ramp itself, there is potential for growth, for, you know, not to see a downturn, so to speak. And PON is going very nicely, and we're grabbing market share. And we have many number of designs that we did not have before that will really kick steam in 27 as well.

Analyst David Williams (Benchmark Company): Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the solid execution. 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?

Executive Kishore (Title): So, David, this is early innings for us, right? I mean, we have to say that. And the big, big entree is right now with the PAM4 transceivers. This year, we could do anywhere between 4 to 6 million units of PAM4 transceivers. But on the other hand, the data center is not just a PAM4 world. There are compute tracks. There are communications between data centers. And that market still will grow as the data center clusters increase and the number of data centers increase as well. So we talked about this exciting design with the tier 1 OEM who is applying to tier 1 data centers and using PON as a control play layer, not where the data itself is going to be with data centers. And there we are clearly the leaders in the PON silicon offering, and so we should be very well positioned. So that could be a few. That market size, some of these OEMs have talked about hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the silicon plate. So that's one opportunity. So it won't happen in this one year. It will roll out over the next two years. Hopefully, we'll start seeing in 27, and then it grows beyond that.

And then there's the other thing where these racks have become really, these compute racks and server racks have become very, very, very sophisticated. They have their own telemetrics. Even the racks are being controlled with microcontrollers and so on and so forth. So you need industry of quality, sort of, you know, transceivers, serial bridges, and so on and so forth, and even smart, you know, smart power management and stuff, and then overall controlling the rack. So, the rack itself is a huge beast by itself. So, we're beginning to start getting design wins in that, and that could be a pretty huge play for rack, if you will. So, at this point, you know, I am not very what I call I don't want to provide market sizing at a level that, you know, we need as a team. But that market is very, very huge. There are a number of players. But we have the portfolio depth to participate in all the big spend that is happening as data centers are being built out.

Analyst David Williams (Benchmark Company): Great. Thanks for the color there. And then maybe just finally 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.

Executive Steve (Title): Yeah, David, absolutely. No, I think the board took some actions last quarter, authorizing $75 million of buybacks, 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 three 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.

Analyst Ross Seymour (Deutsche Bank): Hi, guys. Thanks for that question, and congrats on the strong end to the year beginning of this one. Because you're on the optical side, a couple of different questions have already been asked, but the competitive landscape, how are you envisioning that going from Keystone to Rushmore? Do you think your positioning gets even stronger? Are there, you know, the different technologies coming in create more competitive pressure? Just how do you think MaxLinear is positioned as we look forward?

Executive Kishore (Title): Thank you, Ross. I won't call you Tori, but just jokingly, a very, very good question. You know, both of you are complimented. So the strengthening is absolutely a word I love. On the next generation 1.6 terabit, our position is strengthening. We're gaining some ground and strengthening versus the competition. And I really feel that we are actually now speeding up a bit related to where we were. And we are now, you know, we feel that we will really start pulling our weight as 1.6 terabit rolls out. And beyond that, what we call our big sky product, 4 gig, 400 gigabit per lane, you know, I think we show our capabilities, our strong, low-power implementation capabilities, integration, and our very, very well-developed, you know, RF mix signal skills. I think we will strengthen our position, and we are strengthening. In certain geographies, at 800 gig, we have strengthened our relative position. Within the U.S., just the timing of our product offerings, we got late at the number three. And, you know, from there, you're fighting to get to the number one and number two. It takes a little bit of a taller order, and income busy has incredible value. So I hope that puts things in perspective.

Analyst Ross Seymour (Deutsche Bank): It does. Thank you very much. And I guess pivoting over to Steve, just on the margin front, it sounds like you guys have a strong growth here, especially on the infrastructure side coming in 2026. How should we think about both gross margin trajectory just directionally and OPEX?

Executive Steve (Title): Yeah, I mean, look, on the gross margin side, I mean, we've been talking about the improvement. We've been demonstrating that over the last four quarters. So we're seeing – As you're aware, the product mix is kind of moving in our favor as infrastructure products typically drive a higher gross margins. Remain confident that we can exit the year at the, you know, kind of starting with a six versus a five. We did guide to the 59.5 at the midpoint of our guidance. I mean, you've got some headwinds with cost increases that are out there, but that being said, I think the mix longer term throughout the year will move in our favor and we'll see some nice improvements. With regard to the OPEX question, look, I don't want to necessarily guide for the whole year, but I mean, I think you've heard from us in the past. Typically, we want to grow OPEX about half the rate of the top line. That being said, I don't think we necessarily – we've been really dialing things back a little bit. We're seeing some nice improvements in efficiency for lots of reasons. And so I actually think we'll see a little bit lower than that. So maybe it's in the 4% to 5% increase this year.

Analyst Tim Savageau (Northland Capital Markets): Thanks. All right, go ahead. Yep, sorry. 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 to 70 million. And can you give us any color there?

Executive Steve (Title): Yeah, so Tim, I think, so as you know, we don't break out these numbers. I think the guidance that Kishore shared earlier is kind of evidence of what you've seen over the last three years of this doubling that we saw. I mean, keep in mind three years ago we were doing less than $20 million of revenue. And so I think we're really pleased with the progress we've made and very excited about, you know, where we're at. I would probably maybe take the opportunity to – I mean, some of the background of where we exited the year, where we're entering this year. I mean, we mentioned in the prepared remarks about the visibility that we have, the backlog that we have. It's in a much better position, I mean, across all of our businesses, but particularly in the optical side. As you know, we've got 28-week lead times. And really confident in this kind of first half of the year where you've already got backlog. We're, you know, pushing to get some upsides in here. And we've already seen a lot of success on that front.

Analyst Tim Savageau (Northland Capital Markets): Okay, great. I think we might have talked a little about this last quarter. But just based on the, you know, comments early in the call, I just want to make sure I'm hearing this right. Do you guys think you can go faster than 30% overall in 26? Was that the comment? Because I think the comment was go faster in 26 than 25. Or is there some more nuance or detail around that?

Executive Steve (Title): So, Tim, I mean, look, as you know, we don't guide the whole year, and we're not going to do it here. We're not going to start today, I guess I would say. But clearly you see from, you know, the – mainly the infrastructure growth, but we're seeing a lot of good traction on the PON side. We're seeing industrial multi-market really see a nice recovery this year. So I'm confident that we can outgrow the industry in 2026.

Analyst Sam Feldman (BNP Paribas Asset Management): Hi, this is Sam Feldman on for Carl Ackerman. Thanks for taking my question. On optical DSP, do you expect RAM to be linear throughout the year? And is there a reason for the $40 million range?

Executive Kishore (Title): Hey, 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.

Analyst Sam Feldman (BNP Paribas Asset Management): Got it. Any follow-up? Can you discuss the timing and growth within broadband for the second major tier one North American carrier in calendar 26?

Executive Kishore (Title): Yeah, so it'll, look, we've already started shipping some products. We mentioned that we'd even start in Q4. It'll be still pretty minor in Q1 and start more in earnest in Q2 and Q3. Obviously, if you have good visibility based on the lead times of the supply chain, and the bookings that we have in place.

Analyst Christopher Roland (Susquehanna International Group): Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. 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?

Executive Kishore (Title): Hey, Chris, that's a very good question. It's a very broad statement. I think it's broadly true as well across the various categories, honestly. I mean, if you look at optical transceivers, our revenue forecast reflects that we are gaining share, right, in some form. If you just go by the units, I mentioned 46 million units of transceiver opportunities. Then you see that on the PON side, it's a very, very large Tier 1 player. And in that particular category, we are gaining share versus our competition. On cable as well, we're beginning to gain share that, you know, many years ago was ours. We're gaining share against our competition. And then when you go to storage accelerators, a completely new market that we are paving the path forward with hardware acceleration and compression, so that we have established incumbency as, and that market itself is poised to grow both on the cloud side and the appliance side. And then what else? I mean, it's broadly correct statement, but actually now that you asked the question, I think about it and say, you know what? Damn right, you know? So that would be my response to you.

Analyst Christopher Roland (Susquehanna International Group): Excellent. And then back to DSP, you know, we track the transceiver market pretty closely and, you know, 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?

Executive Kishore (Title): Hey, 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, you know, 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.

Analyst Quinn Bolton (Needham & Company): I'll offer my congratulations as well. In the past, you guys have sort of said your GSP 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?

Executive Kishore (Title): You know, it's very, very hard to parse. Usually, we already scale up and scale out, you know, they're broad categories, right? There are short reaches and long reaches and mid-reaches, and usually the short reaches are in what you would call the scale-up network, and the longer ones are usually on the scale-out side. So that's happening on the 800-gig side. And so, yes, we are shipping in the scale-up side now, but – I still feel that most of it is still in the scale-out network, the traditional scale-out network.

Analyst Quinn Bolton (Needham & Company): Sorry, just so we're clear, you're shipping in, I guess, what I would call front-end networks, 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 would just say I'll leave it here. It's just leave it at scale-up networks, and is a smaller portion of the revenue that's starting, and most of it is scale-out networks.

Analyst Quinn Bolton (Needham & Company): And then I guess, Kishore, you gave us some numbers, both revenue forecast for 26 for optical DSP, and you said that could equate to 4 to 6 million units. If I just do the math, it seems like it could imply an ASP of $25, which seems pretty aggressive. Can you just talk about the pricing environment? Do you guys feel like you're pricing below some of the other peers in the market? Is that helping you to gain share? Do you think you're pricing, you know, in line with others in the market?

Executive Kishore (Title): I mean, that's – I think your conclusions are – what you're going is absolutely not true. We try to be very competitive in the marketplace, and we try to ride the product competitiveness of our product, right? And so I don't think in this market you win by pricing. You win, your performance is a must. And it is such an exciting worldwide great phenomenon that's going on. Pricing is the last thing that they would make decisions on, especially in a very, very sophisticated technology. So I think anybody says they're bidding on pricing, they really are not looking in the right market.

Analyst Alec Valero (Loop Capital Markets): Hey, thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask, what do you see as being the biggest opportunities to gain market share in 2026?

Executive Kishore (Title): I think it's very, very clear, right? We started with optical transceivers as a category that is very meaningful. We have talked about our gains in the storage accelerators in the infrastructure market. We've talked about, I'm listing the sequence of the value, right? Then where the growth is coming, the PON market share, market revenues increases. And the fourth one is the wireless infrastructure growth. I mean, I'm exactly laying down the sequence of where the big growth in absolute dollars are coming. And I think they'll hopefully track the percentages as well.

Analyst Alec Valero (Loop Capital Markets): Got it. Super helpful on that. And just a quick follow-up. You sparked my curiosity on scale-up. I know you mentioned it's small for now, but I wanted to ask you if you can maybe provide some more color on the opportunities there for scale-up.

Executive Kishore (Title): Look, it's a very, very concentrated market from a scale-up point of view, right, if you really look at it. However, it's a huge opportunity inside the rack, if you will, right, the compute systems. And the scale-up opportunity is not just PAM4 interconnects, but there are PAM4 Ethernet retimers and so on on those things, which we have not hit upon. At the UFC, we will be announcing our electrical retimers for the Ethernet product category, and then there is the CPU opportunities as well, right? So it's all playing for us. It's very, very early innings, and right now, let's stay focused. It is a heavy growth engine for us, and we're very excited about it.

Analyst Tori Sponberg (Stifel): Yes, thank you. Just two quick follow-ups. 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, you know, does it have other subsegments growing fast enough to actually make it a growth segment in 26?

Executive Kishore (Title): Hey, Tori. Yes, connectivity certainly grows this year. Wi-Fi will grow this year as Wi-Fi 7 starts to ramp. And then, you know, a lot of our Ethernet products that are transitioning to a nap gig certainly grow this year as well. So both of those.

Analyst Tori Sponberg (Stifel): Understood. And my last question is sort of going back to the opportunities beyond DSPs. So, you know, you've talked about, you know, having products for AECs. Obviously, you have the high-speed analog products to go after LPO, LRO, and so forth. But, you know, you continue to call those out as very niche markets. So, I guess my question is, you know, if you do see those segments getting more traction, you know, how long would it take for you to become a more material player in some of those areas?

Executive Kishore (Title): Very good question, Tori. So I just want to lay the landscape of the sort of what I call the derivative product roadmap, right? You start with the PAM-4 DSP products. And I know LRO is not an analog product. It is a DSP product. So the LROs is a natural derivative. It doesn't take us long to get there, and we will be pursuing that opportunity. In a short while, we'll have something to show as well. I think there is some traction because in the marketplace, the LROs, because it has led beyond just one particular speed node, if you will. So 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 grow much stronger as the speeds increase and the power increases benefits that LROs will deliver. And I think there are some people who are beginning to try them out. And then, you know, 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.

Analyst Tori Sponberg (Stifel): Great. Thank you.

Executive Leslie Green (Title): 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.