MW Marvell's stock rockets 18% as data-center business demand grows as 'at a record pace'
By Britney Nguyen
The chip maker said its results reflect 'robust AI-driven demand,' and some analyst view the upbeat outlook as conservative
Marvell's stock was up in after-hours trading on Thursday after an upbeat earnings report and full-year guidance.
Shares of Marvell Technology were standout gainers Friday, as the headed toward their biggest gain in nearly a year, after the company topped revenue and guidance expectations with its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report.
The chip maker also provided late Thursday an upbeat outlook, with fiscal first-quarter revenue expected to be $2.4 billion, plus or minus 5%. That was above the $2.3 billion in revenue that analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting.
Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer suggested management was being somewhat conservative with its guidance, as he believes growth is accelerating, with no sign of "air pockets."
"We view updated revenue targets as a floor, and are raising estimates," Schafer wrote in a note to clients.
Marvell's stock $(MRVL)$ shot up 18.1% in recent morning trading, on a day that both the chip sector SOX and the broader stock market SPX were dropping about 1% amid growing worries about the economy.
Basically, Marvell was acting as a haven for investors, after the company reported late Thursday revenue for the quarter to Jan. 31 of $2.219 billion, up 22% from the previous year, and slightly ahead of the FactSet consensus for $2.207 billion. The company also reported adjusted earnings per share that rose to 80 cents from 60 cents, to beat expectations of 79 cents, according to FactSet.
Analyst Simon Leopold at Raymond James said that while the earnings beats were "modest," he believes investor expectations were lower. Even with the stock's big rally, Leopold reiterated his strong buy rating.
Marvell CEO Matt Murphy said in a statement that the company's revenue for the latest full fiscal year of $8.195 billion, up 42% from the year before, was "driven by robust AI demand." Analysts had been expecting revenue of $8.185 billion, according to FactSet.
Murphy said the company anticipates year-over-year growth for its revenue "to accelerate" in the current fiscal year due to "continued strength in our data-center business." Bookings there are growing "at a record pace," he added.
Additionally, the custom chip maker's design wins with customers were a record in fiscal year 2026, Murphy said, and he expects that to continue.
See more: Why Broadcom's earnings report has Wall Street so upbeat on a bad day for chip stocks
Ahead of the print, J.P. Morgan analyst Harlan Sur said he was expecting to get reassurance that Marvell's lead custom chip program with Amazon.com (AMZN) is on track. Amazon's Trainium chips are one of the application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, that Marvell designs with its customers.
Additionally, Sur said he was anticipating demand for Marvell's optical digital signal processors and storage products to be strong amid the AI data-center buildout. The optical DSPs are used to convert electrical signals into light for high-bandwidth, low-latency data transmission in data centers.
Altogether, Amazon, Microsoft $(MSFT)$, Alphabet $(GOOGL)$ $(GOOG)$ and Meta Platforms (META) have raised capital-expenditures guidance for this year to $650 billion. Sur noted that Murphy had already said Marvell's short-term bookings were "on fire," and that its backlog and revenue were expanding, during their fireside chat at CES in January.
-Britney Nguyen
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March 06, 2026 10:29 ET (15:29 GMT)
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