TLDR
- Marvell reports Q4 earnings Thursday after close; analysts expect 79 cents EPS on $2.21B revenue
- Data center revenue forecast at $1.63B, up 19% year-over-year
- Hyperscalers collectively raised capex to ~$645–$650B for 2026, boosting chip demand
- Amazon’s Trainium 2 chips are ramping now; Trainium 3 and Microsoft’s Maia accelerators due later in 2026
- MRVL stock is down 13% over 12 months and 7.5% year-to-date
Marvell Technology is heading into Thursday’s earnings report with Wall Street watching closely. Analysts tracked by FactSet expect adjusted earnings of 79 cents per share on revenue of $2.21 billion for the fourth quarter.
Marvell Technology, Inc., MRVL
That compares to 60 cents per share and $1.82 billion in revenue from the same period last year — a revenue jump of around 21%.
The data center segment is where the action is. Analysts expect that unit to generate $1.63 billion, nearly two-thirds of total revenue, up 19% from last year.
Marvell CEO Matt Murphy set the tone in January, saying the company’s short-term bookings were “on fire.” He also noted that its backlog visibility was expanding.
Since then, things have only gotten louder on the demand side.
All four major hyperscalers — Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta — have raised their capital expenditure forecasts for 2026 to a combined $645–$650 billion. That’s a lot of data center hardware to build.
J.P. Morgan analyst Harlan Sur says he expects “continued solid momentum” in Marvell’s custom chip program with Amazon. The company works with Amazon on its Trainium chips, which are ASICs — application-specific integrated circuits designed for AI workloads.
Amazon’s Trainium 2 is currently ramping. Trainium 3 is expected to follow in the middle of this year. Microsoft’s Maia accelerators are on track to ramp in the second half of 2026 into 2027.
Optical and Networking Also in Focus
Beyond custom chips, Sur also flags strong demand for Marvell’s optical digital signal processors — components that convert electrical signals into light for fast, low-latency data transmission inside AI data centers.
Stifel analyst Tore Svanberg noted that hyperscalers are flagging compute capacity constraints through most or all of 2026 while raising capex guidance above consensus. He rates Marvell as a Buy with a $114 price target.
Marvell’s scale-up networking business is also expected to get a lift starting in 2028, following its recent acquisitions of Celestial AI and XConn, completed earlier this month.
Risks Still on the Table
Not everyone is fully bullish. Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland says the long-term sustainability of Marvell’s custom chip business is still “debatable.”
One concern: Marvell could lose some of its Amazon business to Alchip, a Taiwanese custom chip designer. There’s also growing noise about hyperscalers moving toward customer-owned tooling, where they control more of the manufacturing process and can swap out suppliers.
Marvell’s stock has dropped 13% over the past 12 months and 7.5% so far this year.
For Q1, analysts are looking for revenue of $2.3 billion and adjusted EPS of 74 cents.
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