Marvell Technology - Q4 2023
March 2, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good afternoon, and welcome to Marvell Technology's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need any assistance during the call, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded today. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ashish Saran, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Ashish Saran (SVP of Investor Relations)
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Marvell's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings call. Joining me today are Matt Murphy, Marvell's President and CEO, and Willem Meintjes, our new CFO. Let me remind everyone that certain comments made today include forward-looking statements which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. Please review the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in our earnings press release, which we filed with the SEC today and posted on our website, as well as our most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings. We do not intend to update our forward-looking statements. During our call today, we will refer to certain Non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between our GAAP and Non-GAAP financial measures is available in the investor relations section of our website.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt for his comments on our performance. Matt?
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Thanks, Ashish, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start by welcoming Willem, who is participating today in his first Marvell earnings call since being named CFO in January. Having previously served as Marvell's Chief Accounting Officer and Treasurer since 2018, Willem has deep institutional knowledge of our company and our end markets, which has helped him seamlessly transition into his new role. I look forward to partnering with him as we continue to execute on the many opportunities in front of us. Turning to our business results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. Revenue was $1.42 billion, growing 6% year-over-year above the midpoint of guidance, with better than expected results from our data center end market.
Sequentially, as our customers dealt with a broad-based inventory correction, revenue declined by 8%, with the majority of the reduction coming from storage products within our data center end market. The rest of our end markets held up relatively well in a worsening macroeconomic environment. Revenue grew sequentially in carrier, consumer, and auto industrial, and declined slightly in enterprise networking. Looking ahead to the first quarter, the inventory correction that we described last quarter has continued to impact near-term demand, along with typical seasonality for some of our products. As a result, at the midpoint of guidance, we are expecting consolidated revenue to decline by 8% sequentially and 10% year-over-year. In addition, coming out of the supply crunch, broadening inventory corrections are creating an unusual revenue mix.
In the first quarter, we expect storage to decline further and inventory correction to spread to a number of additional areas I will discuss later. At the same time, we are forecasting very strong sequential growth in revenue from 5G and a number of custom ASICs, but these have gross margins well below Marvell's corporate average. As a result, we expect a challenging gross margin outlook for the next few quarters. However, we are confident that once we emerge from the inventory digestion phase into a more normalized environment, we will be well positioned for our gross margins to recover. Willem will discuss our expectations in his prepared remarks. Let me move on now to discussing our end markets, starting with data center.
In our data center end market, revenue for the fourth quarter was $498 million, declining 13% year-over-year and 21% sequentially. Revenue was higher than anticipated, driven by better than expected results, primarily from our PAM4 DSPs and data center switches. As expected, our storage business was responsible for the bulk of the overall sequential decline in our data center revenue. Our results reflect a deceleration in the data center end market and the beginning of efforts by our customers to adjust their inventory to respond to a more challenging market conditions. We are expecting this trend to continue and are projecting lower demand to impact multiple data center products. We expect revenue in the first quarter from our data center end market to decline in the mid-teen sequentially on a percentage basis.
We project data center storage to decline again sequentially in the 1st quarter across HDD, SSD, and Fibre Channel, and also expect to see inventory adjustments to a lesser degree broadly impact the rest of our data center products. Slowdown in spending signaled this year by multiple large data center customers is also impacting the timing of the ramp of our cloud-optimized design wins. Our key design win projects remain intact, but the start of production for some of these programs is being delayed. As a result, the revenue ramp has shifted out by a couple of quarters compared to prior projections. Our lifetime revenue expectations from these design wins remain in the same range as previously communicated. While we work through the near-term dynamics in the data center, we remain confident in the growth outlook for this end market.
We are seeing data center customers prioritizing key growth areas such as AI and ML, with potentially much larger investment over the next few years. Our relationship with tier one cloud customers has continued to deepen as we engage with their architects on helping solve their most pressing challenges in their next generation data centers with optimized customer-specific solutions. One key example is the collaboration we announced with Amazon Web Services intended to enable cloud-first silicon design, extending the long-standing relationship between our companies. Marvell is a strategic supplier to AWS, delivering cloud-optimized silicon that helps meet the infrastructure needs of AWS customers, including the delivery of electro optics, networking, security, storage, and custom design solutions addressing multiple critical applications. We believe Marvell's leadership in essential silicon technologies helps AWS push the boundaries of data center performance, essential for driving their long-term growth.
Earlier today, we announced our new Nova optical DSPs and Teralynx 10 switches for next-generation data center networks. Nova is the first commercially available PAM4 optical DSP to provide 200 gig per wavelength, twice the throughput of existing solutions over the same physical fiber. This breakthrough, made possible by a significant improvement in electro-optics technology, enables the industry's first 1.6 terabits per second pluggable optical modules. These modules provide twice the bandwidth in a physical package similar to existing solutions, and are essential for the full deployment of 51.2T switches within the size and thermal density constraints of data centers. The higher performance enabled by this new 200 gig 5 nanometer PAM DSP helps to extend the lead in electro-optics Inphi established in driving the market from 25 gig NRZ, 50 gig PAM to 100 gig PAM.
The Nova platform provides a complete 1.6T solution, including DSPs, TIAs and drivers to the optical module ecosystem, reinforcing our expectations that pluggables will continue to remain the backbone of high-speed optical networking within data centers for the foreseeable future. Teralynx 10, a 5 nanometer programmable 51.2 terabit second solution, marks the latest in a series of cloud-optimized, low latency, high bandwidth switches designed for use in leaf and spine architectures. The switch was designed in close collaboration with leading cloud customers, and Teralynx 10 together with Nova creates a full platform to enable the next leap in bandwidth for cloud data centers. This is a tangible realization of the benefit of combining Marvell, Inphi, and Innovium into a single entity focused on data infrastructure.
This combination of 51.2T switches with 1.6T optics enables a quadrupling in bandwidth versus existing solutions. This significant breakthrough in capacity at a lower power and cost per bit will be a compelling TCO driver for customers to viably upgrade their networks to support the large increase in bandwidth they need for AI and other applications. For customers, the co-deployment of Nova-based pluggable modules and Teralynx 10 switches should reduce their risk and accelerate time to market. When combined with Marvell's extensive verification and interoperability testing, should also minimize their work in transitioning to a new technology. Turning to our carrier infrastructure end market, revenue for the fourth quarter was $275 million, growing 14% year-over-year and 1% sequentially. Marvell's wireless and wired businesses drove strong year-over-year growth.
We saw a strong demand for our wireless products as 5G adoption continued to expand. Our wired business benefited from carrier backbone bandwidth upgrades that accelerated during the pandemic. At Mobile World Congress, we announced our next generation 5 nanometer OCTEON 10 Fusion baseband processor. This customizable wireless platform has been adopted by leading base station OEMs to provide comprehensive in-line layer 1 acceleration. This new processor, along with our previously announced OCTEON 10 DPU, provides a complete processing platform for 5G base band, transport, and massive MIMO. At MWC, we continue to see strong interest from multiple customers and partners for our latest generation of 5G products for both conventional and cloud-based architectures. Moving on to our outlook for the next quarter.
For the first quarter of fiscal 2024, we are expecting significant growth in our wireless business, with revenue projected to increase by approximately 25% sequentially, driven by 5G deployments in multiple geographies and our customer specific product ramps. After an extended period of strong growth in our wired business, we are expecting revenue to decline in the double digits sequentially on a percentage basis. For the first quarter of fiscal 2024, we expect revenue from our overall carrier end market to grow in the mid-single digits sequentially and the mid-teens year-over-year on a percentage basis. Moving on to our enterprise networking end market.
Revenue for the fourth quarter was $366 million, with a strong 39% year-over-year growth, driven primarily by higher content and growing share of our merchant products, which drove the vast majority of our revenue in this end market in fiscal 2023. Sequentially, our revenue declined by 3% as we started to decrease channel inventory of our run rate merchant products, including further reductions in China. This was partially offset by growth in custom ASICs. Looking ahead to the first quarter of fiscal 2024, we are planning for additional reduction in channel and customer inventory of our merchant products and enterprise networking. However, we expect a strong ramp in custom ASICs to partially offset this decline.
As a result, we project our overall enterprise networking revenue to decline in the high single digits sequentially, while year-over-year growth is projected to remain strong in the high teens on a percentage basis. Turning to our automotive and industrial end market, revenue in the fourth quarter grew 25% year-over-year to $99 million. Sequential revenue growth accelerated to 18% as supply improved. Looking to the first quarter of fiscal 2024, we project continued sequential growth from our auto business to be more than offset by a decline in our industrial business. Year-over-year, we expect our auto business to continue strong growth of over 30%, offset by a decline from our industrial business.
For our overall auto and industrial end market, we expect revenue to decline approximately 10% sequentially and be flat to up slightly year-over-year. Moving on to our consumer end market. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $180 million, declining 3% year-over-year and growing 1% sequentially. Revenue from our consumer SSD controllers continued to grow, while we saw declines in legacy printer ASICs and HDD controllers. Looking ahead to the first quarter, which tends to be seasonally softer in the consumer end market, we are forecasting revenue to decline sequentially by approximately 10%. Fiscal 2023 was a very strong year for Marvell, with revenue growing 33% year-over-year to $5.9 billion, well above the industry and our long-term target model.
Revenue from cloud grew approximately 50% year-over-year. Annual revenue from 5G crossed over $600 million, auto crossed over $200 million. Important milestones for both end markets. During fiscal 2023, the first full year following the acquisition of Innovium, we drove a significant ramp in our data center switch revenue as a combined team. The Inphi portfolio continued to fire on all cylinders with a strong ramp of our 800 gig PAM4 DSPs and 400ZR data center interconnect products. We completed the acquisition of Tanzanite to accelerate our organic CXL development. Our enterprise networking business had a tremendous year, with revenue growing 51% year-over-year, reflecting the significant share in content gains we have driven over the last two years.
Through this period of rapid growth, we scaled the company in a thoughtful manner with non-GAAP OpEx growing 20% year-over-year, well below the 33% growth in revenue. Following another strong year for design wins, our opportunity funnel continues to expand with many large sockets that we believe Marvell is well positioned to win. While the broader semiconductor industry, including Marvell, is dealing with near-term headwinds, we are confident in our ability to weather this cycle and continue to execute over the long term. We remain laser-focused on capital allocation and improving efficiency. We are evaluating our customers' latest plans, assessing our level of investment across the portfolio, and redirecting resources to our best opportunities. As a result, we expect to reduce our OpEx in the second half of fiscal 2024. Over the long term, our prospects remain compelling.
We have conviction in our plan, and we will continue to invest to support our strategy. As fiscal 2024 progresses, we expect the headwinds from inventory digestion will begin to subside and mix will improve as demand patterns normalize. While storage has been impacted the most from inventory digestion, we are encouraged to see that customers have started to reduce their finished good stock, clearing the path for a recovery. Revenue from OEM customers in China has declined to less than 10% of total company revenue. As China reopens, we expect demand will recover and become a tailwind. In fiscal 2024, we expect data center switching and 400 ZR will continue to grow, and revenue from our cloud optimized silicon programs start to layer in.
In addition, we project our 5G and auto end markets will continue to grow in fiscal 2024. For overall Marvell, we expect revenue to start growing in the second quarter and gather momentum in the second half of the fiscal year. Longer term, we are confident that our focus on data infrastructure and exposure to diversified end markets with secular growth positions us well for the future. In our wireless end market, we expect content gains to layer in as 5G adoption continues worldwide. Our automotive opportunity continues to grow, we see a path to growing revenue to over $500 million annually over the next few years. In data center, we expect to open up new revenue streams from emerging CXL and AEC opportunities. We expect generative AI to drive a massive transformation in data center architecture.
We see a bigger opportunity for cloud optimized silicon for custom compute, a trend we have extensively discussed over the last couple of years. In addition to compute, the level of scaling in these generative models requires a significant innovation and technology leadership in networking infrastructure to interconnect AI supercomputers. This requires ultra-high bandwidth links with low latency and sufficient reach. Minimizing energy expended to move the massive amounts of data in these platforms is another important criteria. We believe these requirements are best met by high-speed optical connections. Last year, we launched the industry's first 800 gig PAM DSP and saw a huge ramp driven almost exclusively by AI applications. Our PAM DSP revenue from AI in fiscal 2023 more than quadrupled from the prior year.
As AI models continue to grow in complexity, we expect that they will require more and more low latency bandwidth. Earlier today, we announced the industry's first 1.6 terabits per second PAM platform, enabling a further doubling of bandwidth within the AI cluster. As investment in AI accelerates, we see this as a new growth engine for our electro optics portfolio. As you have often heard me say, our employees are Marvell's greatest resource. The culture they have built is the foundation of our ongoing success. In January, Glassdoor named Marvell as one of the top 100 best places to work in the U.S. for 2023. We are in the second highest ranking among semiconductor companies. In February, we were honored to receive the Great Place to Work certification.
These awards are a testament to our culture and dedication to creating a collaborative, compassionate, and respectful workplace while remaining focused on growth and execution. Thank our entire team for their contributions to Marvell to enable us to develop leading-edge, essential technology that helps power the world's data infrastructure.
Ashish Saran (SVP of Investor Relations)
With that, I'll turn the call over to Willem for more detail on our recent results and outlook.
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
Thanks, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start with a summary of our fiscal year 2023 results. Marvell's revenue grew significantly by 33% year-on-year to a record $5.92 billion. GAAP gross margin was 50.5%, and GAAP loss per diluted share was $0.19. Our Non-GAAP gross margin was 64.5%. Our GAAP operating margin was 4%. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 35.5%. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share grew 35% year-on-year to $2.12. We returned $319 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Moving on to our financial results for the fourth quarter. Revenue in the fourth quarter was $1.419 billion, exceeding the midpoint of our guidance, growing 6% year-over-year and declining 8% sequentially.
Data center was our largest end market, driving 35% of our total revenue. Enterprise networking was the next largest with 26% of total revenue, followed by carrier infrastructure at 19%, consumer at 13%, and auto industrial at 7%. GAAP gross margin was 47.5%. Non-GAAP gross margin was 63.5%, 50 basis points below forecast, primarily due to a change in revenue mix within certain end markets compared to our guidance. GAAP operating expenses were $650 million, including share-based compensation, amortization of acquired intangible assets, legal settlements, and acquisition-related costs. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $431 million. GAAP operating margin was 1.6%. Non-GAAP operating margin was 33.1%. For the fourth quarter, GAAP loss per diluted share was $0.02.
Non-GAAP income per diluted share was $0.46 at the midpoint of guidance. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow. During the quarter, cash flow from operations was $352 million. This included $56 million in payments for long-term capacity agreements. In fiscal 2023, payments for long-term capacity totaled $252 million. Looking ahead to fiscal 2024, we are currently anticipating significantly lower payments for capacity and a much-reduced headwind to operating cash flow. Inventory at the end of the fourth quarter was $1.07 billion, growing by $111 million sequentially. As we indicated in our prior call, we expected inventory to grow in the fourth quarter to support upcoming product ramps. Looking ahead to the first quarter, we expect inventory to start to come down and be a tailwind to operating cash flow over the year.
We returned $51 million to shareholders through cash dividends. As of the end of the fourth fiscal quarter, our cash and cash equivalents were $911 million, growing by $188 million from the prior quarter. Our total debt was $4.5 billion. Our gross debt to EBITDA ratio was 1.87 times, and net debt to EBITDA ratio was 1.49 times. $500 million of our total debt is due in June 2023. We are currently planning on paying this off using our cash balance and free cash flow, which we expect to improve our gross leverage. Turning to our guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2024, we are forecasting revenue to be in the range of $1.3 billion ±5%.
We expect our GAAP gross margin will be in the range of 44.1%-46.1%. We project our Non-GAAP gross margin will be approximately 60%. This guidance takes into account the adverse revenue mix we are expecting in the first quarter, and we are currently expect mix will remain challenging for a few quarters. Once we get through this period of inventory correction combined with cost improvement actions underway, we expect Non-GAAP gross margin to get closer to the low end of our target range by the fourth quarter. We project our GAAP operating expenses to be approximately $687 million. We anticipate our Non-GAAP operating expenses to be approximately $460 million. This forecast includes the step up from the prior quarter due to typical seasonality in payroll taxes and employee salary merit increases.
As Matt discussed, we intend to continue to invest prudently in our long-term growth initiatives while further improving efficiency and optimizing capital deployment. Altogether, we expect to reduce our Non-GAAP operating expense run rate by approximately $15 million a quarter in the second half of the year. We expect the full reduction to be achieved in the fourth quarter. Other income and expense, including interest on our debt, is expected to be approximately $49 million. For the first quarter, we expect a Non-GAAP tax rate of 7%. We expect our basic weighted average shares outstanding will be 858 million, and our diluted weighted average shares outstanding will be 863 million. As a result, we anticipate GAAP loss per share in the range of $0.12-$0.20 per share.
We expect Non-GAAP income per diluted share in the range of $0.24-$0.34. Operator, please open the line and announce Q&A instructions. Thank you.
Ashish Saran (SVP of Investor Relations)
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch tone phone.
Operator (participant)
If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. In the interest of time, please restrict yourself to one question only. If you have additional questions, please rejoin the queue. At this time, we will pause just momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question will come from Ross Seymore with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Ross Seymore (Managing Director)
Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me ask a question. Matt, I just wanted to ask about the general business conditions. In the last quarter, you talked about, in the October quarter, you said that things were weakening towards the end of the quarter and then throughout the January quarter. Can you talk about the linearity of demand, whether it be by end markets and/or geographies as you go through the end of the January quarter and thus far into the April quarter?
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yeah. Thanks, Ross, for the question. Yeah, we've seen the business conditions, you know, continue to weaken, I'd say, in the last couple of months. I'd say the breadth and some of the steepness of the decline, we've continued to see. You know, we had thought that storage was going to, you know, kind of bottom out last quarter. It's down again. There are some green shoots there just given what we see in terms of end customers', stock levels coming down, and we believe that throughout the year that's going to improve.
I'd say just generally in the storage area, broadly and then data centers, you can see from our guidance, not only in storage but a little bit broader, the inventory correction is still going on. At the same time, I think what's happened in the wireless business in 5G, that's continued to be very resilient, and growing, which is a positive. As automotive as well continues to be very strong for us, and we see that as a growing business again this year. That's on a great upward trajectory.
A lot of moving pieces, Ross, but I'd say the things that were weaker, you know, a quarter ago have continued to weaken a little bit more, and then the areas where we had some optimism, those have continued to do better. It's really interesting how these various end markets are kind of moving at different times. When you add it all up, basically, and you look out over the next few quarters, you know, we do see growth in the second quarter, and then as a result of really what we believe will be the inventory digestion and then normalization in the back half, plus continued strength in things like 5G and automotive, and then also our cloud optimized ramp and, in theory, you know, some of the China business should come back.
We're starting to be optimistic about the second half relative to the recovery. That's some of the moving pieces, and I agree. It's, we're in the infrastructure business, this doesn't move, you know, up and down typically as much as, say, a consumer business. It started in October. We're still going through the journey here in the January and April quarters, and then we see a recovery in the second half.
Ross Seymore (Managing Director)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Vivek Arya with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Vivek Arya (Managing Director)
Thanks for taking my question. Matt, I'm curious what second half recovery looks like. Is there the potential to get back to this kind of $1.5 billion-ish quarterly run rate, you guys were at? Then as part of that, I'm also curious to know what should be the updated view on this $400 million-$800 million in cloud optimized silicon? The one thing that I think Willem mentioned, that you will only be able to get to the lower end of the gross margin range. I'm a little confused that if there is the recovery, then why would you be at the lower end of the gross margin range? Kind of related questions. Thank you.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sure, yeah. No problem, Vivek. We'll treat it as one integrated question. Let me start with the cloud optimized ramp. As I said in my prepared remarks, you know, you can see sort of what's happening in the data center area. There's, you know, there is some delay, and there's some prioritization within those companies on how they're gonna deploy. We feel very good overall about the programs and the lifetime revenue of those programs, they have in aggregate shifted out by a couple of quarters.
If you just assume that, the plan for $400 this year was more back-end loaded as those ramped, then the effect of that, pushing out by a couple of quarters, we think it probably takes it down by about half. We don't know quite yet exactly, but just to give you big round numbers, I think that's a safe assumption, for now. The other question was around, you know, what does the second half recovery look like? I think it's too early to call it specifically at this point. I mean, we're still seeing a lot of volatility in the business as you can see from our first quarter guide.
When we step back and look at it from 30,000 feet and we also take the broad indicators from our customers, we do expect it, as we said, to start growing from Q2 and beyond. The question is how big is the recovery and what comes back? It's a little bit hard to call precisely where that's gonna be at this juncture. On gross margins, again, it really comes down to the mix. You know, historically, if you look, the company's actually had pretty stable gross margins. I mean, they've moved around a little bit, but in general, that's been a fairly predictable thing. You can see based on this downturn we're going through, just the volatility that's come in relative to the mix. We see that improving in the second half.
Again, I think it's too early to call the exact trajectory. Just in the abundance of, being prudent here, we're calling it, you know, getting up to the lower end of the range. Again, it's highly dependent on mix, product ramps, and what the end markets do. This is the best we know at this time.
Vivek Arya (Managing Director)
Thank you, Matt.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yep.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Toshiya Hari with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Toshiya Hari (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks so much for taking the question. Matt, I wanted to ask about generative AI and, you know, to the extent your customer conversations have evolved over the past couple of months. You know, you talked about the cloud-optimized opportunity being pushed out, but have you sensed any change in customer poll as it relates to AI? You talked about, you know, your exposure in compute and networking. You also talked about your PAM DSP business, specifically in AI quadrupling last year. Curious how you're thinking about that business in fiscal 2024. Thank you.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sure. Yeah. I think as we said in the prepared remarks, the impact of generative AI and the buzz around that is a real positive for Marvell. The ramp on our 800 Gig products really over the last few years was driven by AI clusters and AI applications. That's gone very, very well, and we see a tailwind there over time on our optics business. I'd also note we just announced today our 1.6 terabit per second product, which also has native 200 Gig per lane IO. That's a real product that's sampling, and it's gonna go into production, we believe, you know, sometime next year.
Again, the big pull there will be because of the doubling of the bandwidth, another ramp for us relative to AI. That, that under the hood, despite, you know, a lot of the chop in the other businesses, has been a real bright spot for us, and we're very encouraged on that outlook. Then in addition, some of these systems for AI clusters are gonna get, you know, data centers are gonna have to get rearchitected, quite frankly. We think that's also gonna drive the need for cloud-optimized silicon as well, to complement the GPUs that are used, as well as the optics. I think there's a broader opportunity here for sure.
I think this is a very bright spot for us, in the cloud. I think it's evolving very quickly.
Toshiya Hari (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Keith, did you wanna add anything to that?
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
No, I think the other thing I'd add is, you know, I think we're already starting to see requests from cloud customers to really accelerate the availability of our next-gen products, right? I think we've seen a distinct change in tone, I would say, over the last quarter or two, where as we introduced our 1.60 as an example, we're certainly getting requests that, "Hey, how quickly can it become available?" Because they see their bandwidth needs really expanding very, very quickly. I think it's very critical for us to get these products out even faster.
Toshiya Hari (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks, guys.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from C.J. Muse with Evercore. Please go ahead.
C.J. Muse (Senior Managing Director)
Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. It's just 15 part for you, Matt, so it won't take too long. Specific to data center, I was hoping we could drill a little bit deeper into kind of the trends you've seen year-over-year based on the implied guide. Roughly, I think down to $220 million. You know, is there a way to kinda parse through how much of that is storage, Preamplifier, Fibre Channel and other, and maybe help us better understand kind of the slowdown in other, what drove that? Then from here, you know, how to think about the different parts between kind of storage, other and the new products that you already kinda spoke about.
we have a pretty good idea there, but, yeah, any way to kinda frame that would be very helpful.
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, C.J.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yeah, sure.
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
Of course.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yeah, C.J., sure. I'll let Willem start off and then, you know, I can add to it as appropriate. Great question.
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
Hey, so I think first of all, you know, on a year-over-year basis, storage is much bigger part of that decline for Q1. The way we think about it, C.J., you know, we spoke originally about the $1.4 billion for storage, right? If you look at that on a quarterly basis, about 60% was data center. So on a quarterly basis, that's just over $200 million. And, you know, last quarter we obviously indicated that was down significantly. And this quarter, again, the decrease in data center was more in storage compared to the rest.
C.J. Muse (Senior Managing Director)
I guess, is there a way to frame what the other part is outside of storage? I mean, it certainly feels like roughly maybe $150 million out of the $220 million decline in storage. We'd love to isolate on that $70 million and how you see that part of your business recovering.
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
Hey, C.J., it's Ashish. Yeah, let me just add some more color. Yeah, I think if you look at the year-over-year, the much bigger portion of storage is, as Willem just walked through. If you think about all the other product lines, right, this include optics, as well as, you know, some of our networking products within data center, that's where we are seeing a much smaller decline in Q1. You know, these inventory corrections take typically a couple of quarters, right? I think you'll expect them to start to bounce back, I would say in the second half, and I think they get a lot bigger, right? The non-storage portion of data center really starts to recover in second half and gets a lot bigger.
On top of that, you know, even though we have pushed out some of the ramps for cloud optimized, on an incremental basis, you will see some additional revenue in the second half, right? Overall, non-storage is a big part of how we see data center recovering in the second half of the year.
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Joseph Moore with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Joseph Moore (Managing Director)
Great. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk about the gross margin pressure in the April quarter. You know, carrier being up mid-single digit is not that much incremental revenue. If you just give us some sense for the gross margin disparity between the carrier-centric custom business and the rest of it. Then I guess, you know, separate from that, as you ramp other parts of custom ASIC into cloud, you know, do you expect to see that be more like the corporate gross margin?
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
Yes. Let me start. The way to think about that is, I think in the prepared remarks was sort of said wired was down significantly, about 20%. That was offset by the growth in wireless. Net-net, you see a small growth there. But it's those two dynamics offsetting each other.
Joseph Moore (Managing Director)
Okay. I mean, it seems like still even 25% growth in 5G to cause a four-point margin disparity overall, it seems like
Willem Meintjes (CFO)
Yeah. Sure. Yeah, sure. I think the way to look at it, right, is overall we saw additional weakness in storage, right? Particularly in HDD and in Fibre Channel, which typically is a higher gross margin product for us. In addition, we've seen decrease in our merchant enterprise networking business, which is also a higher gross margin product. That with the growth in 5G and then also, we've seen some strong increase in our ASIC business, which both of those are, you know, typically slightly lower gross margin product. That in combination with certainly with the top line coming down, we've had some headwind from fixed cost absorption.
Overall, that's driving, the decrease that you're seeing.
Joseph Moore (Managing Director)
Okay.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Hey, Joe. Hey, Joe. Yeah. Let me add a couple things so that it's a very good question. First, fully agree with everything Willem said and the way he characterized it, which is fundamentally that we had some, you know, accretive to gross margin product lines, you know, decline fairly significantly and fairly rapidly. At the same time, we're seeing strong growth in product lines that are less than the corporate average, and it's moved the gross margin, you know, much more significantly than anything we've experienced in some time. Maybe just to take it from the top on a bigger picture for a second. Our custom business, you know, came from the purchase of Avera back in 2019.
We knew at that time that was gonna be a lower gross margin business, and that was fine. It's actually grown really well. The team has executed well. It's been a great growth driver for us, and we've been able to in fact, it's if you look, it's probably grown faster than the overall, you know, Marvell portfolio. At the same time, call it from 2020 to now, we've actually been able to increase and drive Marvell's gross margins up over that timeframe. We've had, you know, a balanced portfolio of different product lines and diversified product lines that have a wide range of gross margins that blend to something that's been very, very healthy and in general been very predictable.
The change was really the steepness and the breadth of the inventory correction we're dealing with. You have these growth drivers that are still kicking in on ASIC, also carrier, as you point out, has always been a lower gross margin business for us. We've been very transparent about that. Those are actually continuing to grow through this cycle quite significantly. Again, our highest margin product lines for various reasons, whether it's channel inventory correction or just customers doing their own inventory burn, those have come down a lot. That's why we think and we look at the numbers, you know, over the next few quarters, that should start to normalize again. I hope that's helpful to provide both the detail and then the bigger picture, Joe.
Joseph Moore (Managing Director)
That is. Thank you.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yep.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Matthew Ramsay with Cowen. Please go ahead.
Matthew Ramsay (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)
Thank you very much, guys. Good afternoon. I'm Matt, you guys talked about maybe the change in timing and the push out a bit of the cloud optimized $400 million for this year. When you look into next year, that $800 million that you guys have talked about for a while is not just, it's obviously not just one customer or one program, right? All of these hyperscale folks are going through different architecture changes, periods of digestion, and you can, there's a number of words probably to characterize it. I guess what I'm trying to get at is if things are delayed a couple of quarters in the early ramp of early programs, how are you thinking about that $800 million next year?
Are there some programs that are pushed a bit, some that are still on time? Maybe you could just wanna maybe walk through some of that dynamic. Then just a real quick clarification on a question that Joe asked. As we ramp these cloud optimized solutions, are those gonna be accretive to gross margin specifically? Maybe you could address that a bit. Thank you.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sure. for next year, you know, I'd say my high level answer is it's too early to call. you kinda nailed it. I mean, some of the programs are tracking as we thought. Some even might be a little bit ahead. Some have pushed out more than we thought. The net effect for this year, we're just trying to call it as we see it today on the shift. Now for next year, I don't, I don't know that it just keeps sliding. I think some of these are gonna ramp at their own pace. Quite frankly, It's too early to call it and to understand, you know, what's gonna happen, you know, four or five quarters from now, given how much is changing in the near term.
I guess I'm reticent to try to provide any more precision there. I mean, I think if you wanna be conservative, you could just sort of keep shifting it out a little bit. I think there's still a call option for growth for Marvell next year in this area, but we have to see how these programs play out. I think on the question of the margins, you know, it really depends on the program, you know. They're not all the same, and some are more custom in nature, that would be more traditional profile. Some are higher. We still see the blend for the overall company, you know, returning back to its, you know...
towards the low end of the range this year, and then we're gonna keep driving it towards our long-term model in the next year. You know, at this point, I think it's too early to call and kind of infer what that, the gross margins of those programs would be and then when they ramp versus what's gonna happen next year. I, as we get through the year, I think, Matt, we can give you more precision on that. We're not changing our long-term growth model at this point in terms of the financial model, whether it's gross margins or long-term revenue growth and operating margins.
Matthew Ramsay (Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst)
Thanks, Matt. I appreciate the color.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yep.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Jeremy Kwan (Associate VP and Equity Research)
Yes, good afternoon. This is Jeremy Kwan for Tore. I guess I wanna focus in a little bit on the custom silicon. It sounds like, you know, this business has proven more resilient than other areas of the data center. Is this a function of, you know, the nature of those programs and the NRE investments, you know, your customers have made, and maybe you get better visibility into true end demand? Also, is this resiliency reflected in some of your ongoing current custom programs, at maybe more specifically, you know, comparing the pushouts here relative to the rest of the data center business?
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sure. Yeah, a couple things that are going on. I think, as I said, one, because that business and team has done really well in terms of overall ASIC growth, those programs tend to still be ramping, there's not a lot of inventory that's been built that's been part of the growth. That would, you know, that would explain some of it. I'd also note that the breadth of the engagements we have, you know, in this traditional custom area are data center, but they're also in carrier, and they're also in enterprise.
You know, as Willem indicated, even within the enterprise segment, we've had some mix shift there just with the traditional merchant products, which are much higher gross margin coming down and then some of the ASIC stuff ramping up. Again, I think this is all gonna get normalized over time, but certainly, because of the growth in that area, it's proven to be very resilient. I think some of it is maybe because, sure, we've got NRE. You know, you get... I think there's just historically that team has had a that type of business has been one that's been, I think, a little bit easier to plan. It seems to be a little bit more predictable. I don't know.
I think in general, it's mostly 'cause there are new programs ramping.
Jeremy Kwan (Associate VP and Equity Research)
Can you talk about the pushouts here relative to the other segments? Has there been any significant changes there?
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sorry, say that again.
Jeremy Kwan (Associate VP and Equity Research)
I guess, has the custom programs been impacted by the pushouts you're seeing in other areas of data center?
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
No. I mean, again, I wouldn't say that's a major factor. I mean, and again, some of the cloud optimized programs that we talked about, those are custom, but in the short term, the data center impact has really been, again, more driven by storage and the impact on the rest of the portfolio, whether it be custom or optics or whatever, hasn't been as pronounced, but it's still going through its own correction.
Jeremy Kwan (Associate VP and Equity Research)
Great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Blayne Curtis with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Blayne Curtis (Managing Director)
Hey, thanks for answering my question. I just wanted to go back to, I just wanna understand what your message is on data center. I, you know, the, the hard drive is more of a correction, inventory correction at your customer. What are you seeing from just overall data center? 'Cause I thought the message last quarter was, you know, the PAM business and switching were actually kinda okay. When I guess when you were talking about cloud optimized pushing out and you said data center is softer, I'm trying to understand how those two relate, I guess. Then you mentioned architecture changes. If you could just elaborate a little more. I'm still kinda confused what you're saying on data center and why that's delaying the cloud ramp.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sure. Maybe I'll break it into two pieces. Let's go back to. 'Cause there's two separate issues we're talking about. Last quarter, when we signaled the weakness in data center, you know, it was very pronounced in storage, and we also said we were starting to see signs of inventory correction on the rest of the portfolio, but it was more muted.
You know, at that time, our expectation was that, you know, storage most likely was gonna at least flatten out, maybe go down a little bit more, and then there'd be again a continued more mild correction. I think what's happened is the data center, the storage in data centers continued to need more time to correct. That's declined again in the Q1 guide.
I would say the rest of the portfolio is now seeing more of a correction needed than we thought last quarter. That's in the short term right now, Blayne. You had storage down a little bit more, and then the rest of the portfolio, including those other product lines you mentioned in aggregate. I mean, within underneath, some of them are moving up and down, but the net effect is that there is an inventory correction going on in data center across the portfolio. Independent of that, we, as a separate issue, you know, we have been anticipating and, you know, a ramp of our cloud-optimized design wins, which have been gathered over the last few years.
That's still gonna happen this year, but it's been some of it has been pushed out by two quarters. We still see that kicking in at the end of the year and adding to growth. That's sort of separate than any inventory correction. That's just program execution by our customers, timing of their ramps, et cetera. On the third point, which is just all we were pointing out on the architecture stuff, was that as we see the growth in AI-based systems and AI-based clusters and AI-centric data centers, we think longer term, I mean, that's now outside the window we're talking about here, whether it's this year or next year, that's gonna be a significant growth trend, and that's gonna require both cloud-optimized silicon as well as our high-speed optics.
I think three pieces to it: short term, medium term, and long term.
Blayne Curtis (Managing Director)
Thanks, Matt.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Very dynamic overall, Blayne. I guess that's the punchline.
Blayne Curtis (Managing Director)
Good. Thanks.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yep.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)
Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. I guess my first is the 400-800, regardless of the push-out, or push-outs. Do you have any visibility into the composition, or can you elaborate on the composition of those wins around kind of maybe percentage storage versus network versus compute and, maybe even optics in there as well? Anything else that you can offer? Just any visibility into the composition would be great.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yeah. Hey, Chris. There's a couple challenges there. One is, you know, very high level of customer sensitivity on the nature of these programs. These are all NDA-based. They don't really want us discussing those. You know, ideally, over time, you know, if maybe we can get something more public out there, but until my customers give me the go ahead, not gonna do it. All I'd say is, just in general, maybe just to try to be helpful, it's really not much storage in there. This is really more custom compute, custom networking, accelerators, offload, that type of thing. That would be the bulk of it, I would say, those types of applications.
Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)
Okay.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
As we, and as we go along, Chris, I think when we get closer to these product ramps and things, I'm obviously hoping for our investors, we can continue to provide more transparency as these things materialize. It's a bit early to talk about that mix, and I'd prefer to do that as we got closer.
Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)
Sure. If you didn't like that question, you probably will like this one.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
I always love your questions, Chris. Go ahead.
Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)
In terms of AI, and you know, you talked about networking, you talked about optics there, and that all makes sense. I was wondering if you had any ability to also provide compute. At one point on your roadmap, you had AI cards. I think you kinda tabled that effort. Yeah, would love to know if you can provide compute into AI. The kinda second part of that question is, are you willing to guide beyond the 800? Do you have visibility into, let's say, beyond $1 billion, as it's been some time since you gave that $400-$800 number?
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Okay, maybe just real high-level answer to both of those. I think on the AI one, I think that is and will be an opportunity for custom and for cloud-optimized applications. I think that's a real thing, meaning people will wanna use things that are merchant, they'll wanna use some of their own special things and probably in combination. I think that's an opportunity that's part of the potential. As far as the long-term peak revenue from those, the wins, the 400, 800, yeah, I think we said when we won them, it would keep going 'cause typically you don't hit peak until, you know, many years into the ramp.
You know, with the design wins intact, the 800 becomes larger, you know, over time. You know, how big that is, I think it's too early to call, but certainly it would exceed the 800 on an annual basis just because, you know, really that was our view at the time as a year one, year two ramp would look something like that.
Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)
Awesome. Thank you, Matt.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yep.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Karl Ackerman with BNP. Please go ahead.
Karl Ackerman (Managing Director, Semiconductors, and Networking Hardware Equity Research)
Yes, thank you. I wanted to delve into data center, if I could, for a second there. It sounds like some of the softness relates to the rebalancing of optical modules at hyperscalers, and that's not a, you know, that's more of an industry comment, not just a company-specific comment. You know, I guess for Marvell, does that bleed into the July quarter as well? You know, bigger picture. How are you thinking about the 400 gig upgrade cycle for 2023, despite some of the near-term challenges? You know, does that influence your bigger picture view in terms of 2023 and then into 2024, given the broad product portfolio that you have to address both 400 gig and 800 gig? Thank you.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
I think, at this point, Karl, you're right. I mean, part of the inventory digestion we're seeing is our PAM products that sell to the optical module guys, and that's a business where, again, we're kinda one step back in the supply chain. We would see that, and we are seeing that and feeling it. When exactly that recovers, which quarter, it's gonna happen in the next few quarters. The question is the next, you know, this quarter, next quarter or the quarter after. It's in that, probably that timeframe because the underlying, you know, demand is still strong. I think your other question was...
Of course, the headwind we face now becomes a tailwind in the second half if that's the case. I think your other question, was it on the 400 gig ZR, or was it on the 400 gig inside data center PAM world?
Karl Ackerman (Managing Director, Semiconductors, and Networking Hardware Equity Research)
Just your broader portfolio on 400 gig and 800 gig, and I guess how you think about the upgrade cycle. Obviously it's soft for the market near term, but, you know, how do you think about your portfolio broadly as you think about that upgrade cycle over the next couple of quarters? Thanks.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yeah. I mean, we tend to think of the upgrade cycle as a, quite frankly, a multiyear rollout, right? We had a very strong year last year, and it's a, and it's a blend of products, right? From 200, 400, 800 inside data center, 400 ZR between data centers and now 1.6T announced. I'd say that the demand and the shift to PAM continues at a very strong rate.
You know, again, we have some inventory correction in the first half, that's more of a module-related issue and again, the slope of the hyperscale cloud guys', you know, revenue growth or CapEx growth kinda dropping, but not declining, just not at the same rate of acceleration.We think all that works its way through and, you know, end consumption continues to grow very strongly, last year, this year and the year after.
Karl Ackerman (Managing Director, Semiconductors, and Networking Hardware Equity Research)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Please go ahead.
Quinn Bolton (Senior Analyst)
Hey, Matt. I guess one clarification and then one question. The clarification, just you talked about the growth driven by AI clusters for high-speed optics. Do you guys, are you impartial to whether those AI clusters are connected through Ethernet or InfiniBand? Because I think different hyperscalers have different fabrics for those AI clusters. My question is, you guys have talked about the growth in PAM.
We've got the OFC show next week, and I think there's, you know, more talk now about the linear drive modules where you don't need the DSP or the DSPs in other parts of the line card. I'm just kind of curious if you could address, you know, do you see any threat from direct drive or linear drive modules going forward to that PAM4 business? Thanks.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sure. Yeah, no. It's an exciting time for optics at this point, given we've got OFC coming up next week. Yeah, on the first one, you know, in general, we're agnostic to both of those. We tend to just partner closely with the customers and design, you know, the solutions they need. It's the fundamental IP that really matters. As it relates to the disruptive technologies that are lurking around out there, I think that's been the history of optics. You know, our view is, pluggables is going to be, you know, the high volume, you know, de facto standard for many years to come. Certainly we're encouraged by showing demonstrations of our new product at 1.6T, you know, at OFC.
There's real people building systems around this. Of course, the ramp last year of 800 gig gives us confidence onto the ramp of 1.6T. We're paying attention to all of it, Quinn. I would say we've got a really excellent team that understands the trade-offs and understands the various architectures. Right now, we feel very confident in our approach and our solution set. I think coupled with our switch platform, which has now also been announced, you know, it's really a nice combination of the assets of Marvell plus Inphi plus Innovium, you know, all coming together in a single platform. More to come on that, and certainly we're happy to debrief with you and the rest of the team at and after OFC.
I think there's gonna be a lot of activity there.
Quinn Bolton (Senior Analyst)
Thank you, Matt.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Srini Pajjuri with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Srini Pajjuri (Managing Director)
Thank you. Hi, Matt. A question on your wireless business. Obviously, it's good to see that business doing quite well. You know, some of your peers have reported some weakness in that market. Just curious as to what's driving strength, you know, for you in particular. As you look out to the next few quarters, I mean, to the extent that you have visibility, you know, can you talk about the sustainability of that business? Because every time we see, you know, 20%-25% growth in any semiconductor business, we do start to worry about potential inventory build. If you can talk about, you know, what you're seeing out there, that'll be, you know, helpful. Thank you.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Sure. Yeah. No, I think, Srini, I think the big issue, especially with maybe some of the more larger incumbent players that have large carrier communications businesses. Especially in the wireless area, they tend to be, you know, have a combination of some legacy, let's call it like, you know, 4G LTE type of solutions, and then they've got new 5G chips that are ramping up, and then there's some mix of the two. But as you can see with carrier spending, you know, the bulk of it in wireless is just pretty much all going to 5G at this point. From a Marvell perspective, you know, we had very little legacy before on the older standard, and 5G is really where all the content gains rolled in.
That's continued to be, you know, a nice growth driver for us as a result. I'd say on top of that, and, you know, you've been around the block enough to see this as well, I mean, carrier tends to be a very lumpy business. It doesn't really historically ever move in a very linear fashion. It tends to be a little bursty at times, and certainly we're happy with the growth we're seeing, and we think that that's, you know, overall this year is gonna be a growth year for us in 5G, but certainly it can be a little bit lumpy.
I would say that this is not something that overall is, you know, this is kind of going according to plan in terms of the designs we won, you know, what the content we could capture would be. And finally, if you just look, and we said it, in the prepared remarks, you know, last year we crossed the $600 million mark in 5G, which was a bogey we had set several years ago.
We hadn't time-bound it, by the way, like it's gonna be in this exact year, this exact four quarters. We had left it a little bit open, but we're pretty happy that, you know, really just a few years after we talked about that goal, we were able to achieve it last year. Yeah, there's some bright spots for sure in the Marvell portfolio. 5G is one of them, and obviously automotive is another, and there's some good things going on. We just have to work through the issues in some of the other end markets. With that, I think, Ashish, is that our last question?
Operator (participant)
yes, it is, Matt. If you can, maybe end with some closing remarks, that'd be great.
Matt Murphy (President and CEO)
Yeah, perfect. Well, appreciate everybody's time on the call today. You know, when I look back at our last fiscal year, it was a great success for Marvell. I think. I was reflecting back, you know, looking at where we were back, let's say, in 2020, you know, during the pandemic, we were in the process of combining with Inphi. You know, I sort of look a few years later and I think in fiscal 2023, we, you know, ourselves, Inphi, and also, by the way, the Innovium team we brought in, really everybody executed extremely well. It was very strong growth, very strong margins, great growth overall.
Certainly, we're going through now after several years of extremely strong growth, you know, a correction in inventory that's more pronounced in some markets than others. We're managing through that very prudently and expeditiously, and doing that also in a partnership model with our customers to where we're trying to understand their real demand and get back to a point where we're shipping back to real demand. At this point, you know, we believe we're shipping below consumption, you know, of Marvell products. We wanna get back there.
When we do that, it'll also lead to the increase in recovery back in the gross margin profile, and then we can have all of our new wins that we've gotten and all the hard work our sales team, business unit team has done over the last few years, driving our design win funnel to recognize that growth. I'd say, you know, despite the short-term issues, we think very long term at Marvell, okay? I mean, I'm entering, you know, my seventh year as actually about to complete my seventh year as CEO. The prospects for this company are tremendous. We have conviction in our end markets and the long-term opportunity. The R&D investment that's needed to really execute the programs our customers want to is right in front of us.
We have an opportunity, I think, to really reassess and make sure that we're focused and laser-focused on the best opportunities. I think we've made capital allocation from day one a strategic priority for Marvell, and I believe we can come through this cycle as a much stronger company with our growth prospects intact, and actually have a better long-term opportunity doing really key programs for our customers with the best ROI. We're going through that whole process now, as we do always, and I feel very good about the future of the company. Appreciate the time today, everybody, and look forward to catching up post-earnings.
Operator (participant)
The conference has now concluded. Thank you very much for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.