JPMorgan has reaffirmed its "Overweight" rating on Marvell Technology (MRVL.US), maintaining a price target of $90—slightly below its December 8 closing price of $92. Analyst Harlan Sur dismissed recent market skepticism, stating, "There’s too much noise, but not a single customer order has been lost." His remarks directly address speculation about potential disruptions in AI chip collaborations with Amazon and Microsoft, which Sur labeled as mere "distractions."
During a private briefing, Marvell’s management reassured the market: AWS’s Trainium 3 XPU ASIC chips have secured full-year orders through 2026, while Microsoft’s 3nm Maia AI XPU ASIC remains on track for mass production in late 2026, scaling into 2027. Both companies have also begun early-stage design work for next-gen 2nm solutions, signaling deeper collaboration on multi-generation AI custom chips rather than any weakening in partnerships.
Beyond core chips, Marvell is expanding its "adjacent" business. Supporting components like SmartNICs and CXL controllers for AI applications are projected to generate revenue starting in 2025, with annual income from these segments expected to reach $2 billion by 2028—equivalent to Marvell’s entire 2019 revenue.
In optical networking, Marvell’s 1.6T PAM4 DSP chips will see bulk shipments to Nvidia and Google next year, while legacy 800G products continue steady growth alongside new GPU/XPU projects. The company remains the leading supplier for 1.6Tbps DSP chips, anticipating robust 2024 shipments. Its copper cable business, featuring 100G/200G per-lane Active Electrical Cable (AEC) DSP chips, has already hit a $100 million milestone this year, with next year’s performance poised to double.
Looking further ahead, Marvell’s "scale-up" networking strategy targets a $16 billion+ addressable market by 2030. Proprietary technologies like Celestial optical interconnect and UALink/ESUN switch chips have secured early positions in next-gen rack-scale solutions for cloud providers, with revenue streams expected from 2027 onward.
Management expressed both puzzlement and frustration over market doubts but emphasized confidence in Marvell’s triple growth engines—AI computing, networking, and storage—backed by order expansion, capacity upgrades, and R&D innovation. JPMorgan reiterated its advice to investors: ignore short-term noise; Marvell holds irreplaceable advantages in AI custom chips and optical networking.
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