MaxLinear - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings and welcome to the MaxLinear First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Leslie Green, Investor Relations. Thank you, Leslie. You may begin.

Leslie Green (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss MaxLinear's first quarter 2024 financial results. Today's call is being hosted by Dr. Kishore Seendripu, CEO, and Steve Litchfield, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer. After our prepared comments, we will take questions. Our comments today include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law, including statements relating to our guidance for the second quarter of 2024, including revenue, GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin, GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses, GAAP and non-GAAP interest and other expense, and GAAP and non-GAAP diluted share count.

In addition, we will make forward-looking statements relating to trends, opportunities, execution of our business plan, and potential growth and uncertainties in various product and geographic markets, including without limitation, statements concerning future financial and operating results, opportunities for revenue and market share across our target markets, expected production ramps and timing for the launches of new products, our design win pipeline, demand for and adoption of certain technologies, our serviceable addressable market, the effects of cost reduction measures, and product announcements. These forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties, including risks outlined in our risk factors section of our SEC filings, including our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31st, 2024, which we intend to file later today. Any forward-looking statements are made as of today, and MaxLinear has no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

The first quarter 2024 earnings release is available on the Investor Relations section of our website at maxlinear.com. In addition, we report certain historical financial metrics, including but not limited to, gross margin, operating margin, operating expenses, and interest and other expense on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. We encourage investors to review the detailed reconciliation of our GAAP and non-GAAP presentations and the press release available on our website. We do not provide reconciliation of non-GAAP guidance for future periods because of the inherent uncertainty associated with our ability to project certain future changes, including stock-based compensation and its related tax effects, as well as potential impairments. Non-GAAP financial measures discussed today are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for comparable GAAP financial measures.

We are providing this information because management believes it is useful to investors as it reflects how management measures our business. Lastly, this call is also being webcast, and a replay will be available on our website for two weeks. And now, let me turn the call over to Dr. Kishore Seendripu, CEO of MaxLinear. Kishore?

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Thank you, Leslie, and good afternoon, everyone. Our Q1 revenues were $95.3 million, posting a non-GAAP gross margin of 60.6%. Overall, we believe that our revenues have reached a bottom, and we are now poised for sequential growth in 2024. Our conviction is the result of improving market conditions and exciting new product launches in high-growth markets, including optical data center interconnect, enterprise Ethernet and storage accelerators, 5G wireless, multi-gigabit PON broadband access, and Wi-Fi connectivity. All of these new products have been launched to the market today and will begin to reshape our revenue profile towards high-value data infrastructure applications. While this market recovery driving improved revenues, a strong fiscal discipline will help us position to deliver highly favorable leverage in our business model.

Highlighting our infrastructure business, which we believe is on track to become a $300 million-$500 million business over the next several years, led by solid traction in the high-speed optical interconnect market. Coming into 2024, we expect to deliver revenue in the $10 million-$30 million range for the year. We now expect to exceed the high end of that revenue range in 2024. As we demonstrated and announced at the Optical Fiber Conference in San Diego, our 5nm CMOS Keystone 800Gb PAM4 DSP is in several reference designs for virtually all of the leading module makers, including Jabil for silicon photonics-based pluggable modules and Optomind for LRO modules, which we announced last month. Collectively, we are building an exciting AI-related design win portfolio within the hyperscale and large enterprise markets.

Early-stage revenues have already begun, and we expect new production ramps later in the second half of the year to drive meaningful run-rate growth in 2025. The ongoing adoption of AI in the cloud is providing a strong catalyst for the transition to 800Gb and beyond speeds. During Q1, we were very pleased to announce a Rushmore family of 200Gb per lane, PAM4 SerDes, and DSPs. Built on Samsung's leading-edge CMOS, it delivers best-in-class power consumption, doubles the data rates, and significantly reduces latency across optical transceivers, active optical cables, and active electrical cables. Industry estimates indicate that shipments of PAM4 DSPs are expected to grow at a CAGR of 50% through 2027, providing an exciting opportunity for us to significantly grow our revenue and market presence over the next several years.

In 5G wireless infrastructure, the expanding global rollout of new millimeter wave, microwave, and hybrid backhaul technologies to upgrade the data rates of wireless transport links continues to drive our growth and our silicon content per platform. At Mobile World Congress in February, we announced our new and differentiated Sierra family, a single-chip platform for 5G Open RAN radio units for both massive MIMO and macro base station solutions. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. We expect our growing portfolio of wireless backhaul and access infrastructure products to drive significant revenue expansion over a multi-year cycle. Within our infrastructure revenues, our Panther III series hardware storage accelerators for the enterprise All-Flash array and hybrid storage enterprise appliance systems are providing exciting incremental growth opportunities, particularly with the growth in high-speed computing and AI.

Our Panther III DPU is the only hardware-based solution in the market delivering 12:1 ratio data compression, ultra-reliable data protection, low latency, and low power performance. This month, we were excited to announce a collaboration with Dell Technologies to integrate our Panther III storage accelerator into Dell's PowerMax storage platform to deliver unparalleled performance gains for mission-critical workloads. We are currently in production ramp with this solution and expect additional customer product ramps later this year. We are confident that we can double our storage-related revenues in 2024 with continued strong growth through 2025 and beyond. In Ethernet connectivity, with the recent launch of our new Octal 2.5Gb Ethernet PHY and switch products, we expanded our addressable market by $300 million to include both the enterprise and small and medium business switch markets, in addition to our traditional gateway and router markets.

Customers are expected to upgrade today's more than 2 billion copper 1Gb Ethernet ports to 2.5Gb Ethernet speeds over time, using the existing standard Cat5 cabling. We are seeing exciting design win activity for our solution, including a Tier One North American enterprise OEM customer that is expected to ramp to production in the late 2024. As we look ahead, we believe our Ethernet business could reach $100 million over the next 18 to 24 months. Turning to broadband, we continue to gain traction in the fiber PON market with new design wins driving our growth. As many of you know, in 2023, we began ramping our single-chip integrated fiber PON +10Gb processor gateway SoC and connectivity solutions with a major Tier One North American service provider, but now ramping a new opportunity with the second major Tier One North American service provider.

Together, these wins confirm our competitive product offering and demonstrate significant growth opportunities for us in the coming years. Last year, our PON revenue was approximately $50 million. We expect to be able to more than double that over the next two years. In connectivity, our Wave 700 single-chip tri-band quad-MIMO Wi-Fi 7 device continues to do extremely well in qualifications. We expect service providers to begin their initial rollout late this year, with their adoption peaking in two to three years. For MaxLinear, Wi-Fi 7 has the exciting potential to drive significant ASP growth and higher attach rates in a broadband access platform versus previous generations. Overall, as we finally project a return to sequential revenue growth, it is both gratifying and exciting to see years of product development and business execution begin to culminate in our next stage of growth as a data-centric infrastructure company.

Across our portfolio, we have the right solution production today to meet high-value market trends and drive significant revenue growth. With that, let me turn the call over to Steve Litchfield, our Chief Financial Officer, Chief Corporate Strategy Officer. Steve?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Thanks, Kishore. Total revenue for the first quarter was $95.3 million, down from $125.4 million in the previous quarter, including both product and IP revenues. Broadband revenue for the quarter was $33 million, connectivity revenue was $10 million, infrastructure revenue was $33 million, and our industrial multi-market revenue was $20 million. GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin for the first quarter was approximately 51.7% and 60.6% of revenue. The delta between GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin in the first quarter was primarily driven by $8.2 million of acquisition-related intangible asset amortization. First-quarter GAAP operating expenses were $123.9 million, and non-GAAP operating expenses were $74.8 million. The delta between GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses was primarily due to stock-based compensation and performance-based equity accruals of $24.2 million combined and restructuring costs of $22.6 million related to the workforce reduction initiated in Q4.

Non-GAAP loss for operations for Q1 2024 was 18% of net revenue. GAAP interest and other expense during the quarter was $0.5 million. Non-GAAP interest and other expense during the quarter was $0.6 million. In Q1, cash flow generated in operating activities was $16 million. We exited Q1 of 2024 with approximately $193 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash. Our day sales outstanding for the first quarter was approximately 121 days. Our gross inventory was down versus the previous quarter, with inventory turns at 0.9x. This concludes the discussion of our Q1 financial results. With that, let's turn to our guidance for Q2 of 2024. We currently expect revenue in the second quarter of 2024 to be between $90 million and $110 million. Looking at Q2 by end market, we expect infrastructure, connectivity, and industrial multi-market to be up, while broadband will be expected to be down.

We expect second-quarter GAAP gross margin to be approximately 52.5%-56.5%, and non-GAAP gross margin to be in the range of 58.5% and 61.5% of revenue. Gross margin continues to be relatively stable, with the expected range being driven by a combination of near-term product, customer, and end-market mix. We expect Q2 2024 GAAP operating expenses to be in the range of $103 million-$113 million. We expect Q2 2024 non-GAAP operating expenses to be in the range of $72 million-$78 million. We expect our Q2 GAAP and non-GAAP interest and other expense to be in the range of approximately $0.5 million-$1 million each. We expect our Q2 GAAP and non-GAAP diluted share count to be approximately 83.5 million. We're pleased to show progress on our new products, expanding our position in these exciting new growth markets.

Our customer traction and design win momentum are producing tangible results that will be increasingly evident in our business in the coming quarters and will reshape our future as a data infrastructure company. The world is undoubtedly moving towards accelerated data architectures, and MaxLinear's core competency centering around seamless integration and low power efficiency is perfectly suited. Our optimism and sense of purpose within this new generation of technology is high, and we remain deeply committed to delivering strong value to our customers and our shareholders. With that, I'd like to open up the call for questions. Paul?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull up our questions. Our first question is from Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director)

Hey, guys. Congratulations on the infrastructure progress, especially on optical. I guess I wanted to start there. Can you give us some sense the revenue ramp this year exceeding now $30 million, how concentrated or diversified is that $30 million? Is that over several module partners? Is it pretty concentrated with one or two? And I guess, more importantly, as you start to get into volume production in the second half of the year, what kind of growth could you be looking at in calendar 2025? Would that business double or more as you hit volume production for the full year on some of these design wins? Thanks, and then I got a follow-up.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Hey, Quinn. Yes. At our Optical Fiber Conference in San Diego, we demonstrated a number of top-tier OEM module makers and OEMs themselves whose products we had on demo, all for our 800Gb Keystone product line. As we speak, the design-in velocity is pretty strong, and the revenues we have described as shifting our high end of the range for our forecast for this year is driven by more than one customer. I would like to say that those are initial revenue ramps with some good confidence developing on the performance and the stability of the solution. So I think that there's more to come, actually. This is just the beginning, but it is not concentrated in one customer.

As you were inquiring about, heading into 2025, you can imagine that even many more of these customers will be launching into production, while some will be maturing into a peak run rate based on how we exit Q4. So I expect that we should see a multiplier effect of the revenues of 2024 heading into 2025 and 2026. And we hope to be in pretty much all the major platforms out there that are going to be pulling in with the back end of the data, be it AI, or the front end with all the major data center players in the market.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director)

It sounds like certainly line of sight towards $100 million kind of run rate sometime in either 2025 or 2026 based on those comments.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

That's my expected optimism, naturally, right? So based on these revenues, that would not be something that would be far out in projecting.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director)

Got it. And then I just wanted to step back. In the script, you both, I think, sounded more confident that revenue has reached the bottom, that you'll see sequential growth through the year. And I guess I was just wondering if you could provide some more detail. What gives you confidence that revenue rebounds sequentially or grows sequentially through the year? Is that based on design win ramps? Can you give us some sense what you're seeing in terms of bookings activity? Is backlog starting to build? Is visibility into the second half starting to extend? Any of those types of comments would be helpful. Thank you.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

So I'll take this question, and then I will hand it over to Steve a little bit more color. But there are two things happening, right? Firstly, we have been undershipping the market throughput demand for a while now. And as we look at the sell-through process of the product right now, it's very clear that the rate at which we're shipping has now fallen behind what the sell-through rate is in the channel, so to speak, right? So we feel optimistic that a process has started where we are going to develop the ability to now start shipping more, and you're going to start seeing some equilibrium developing between sell-through and sell-in revenues, if you will. So that's the reason. And that is on the existing designs that have been shipping for the last few years. These are our new product revenues.

And then there's the other leg to our revenues, which is the new products which we talked about, be it optical, be it infrastructure products, Ethernet, storage accelerators. They're all going to be ramping as well. So I think as a combination, while we cannot speak for the trajectory or the next second half of the year, but we definitely feel we have entered a phase of sequential growth in 2024 now. So I would say that is the color. Steve, would you want to take the question on the bookings or anything like that, the color on that?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah. I think, Kishore, you covered it. I think we're definitely feeling a lot better about bookings. That's kind of been over multiple quarters. We've seen improvement on that front. And I think the other aspect is some of the new products that Kishore mentioned are going to be ramping in the second half of the year, including some of the optical products. Those orders have already been placed. So we've got visibility, and so we're starting to see those improvements.

Quinn Bolton (Managing Director)

Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Christopher Rolland with Susquehanna International. Please proceed with your question.

Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. The long-term infrastructure guide, the 300-500, was pretty interesting. When we get there, what does this look like in terms of components? Is the majority DSP in your estimate, or how does it break down?

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

So, Chris, we have been talking about a $500 million revenue for infrastructure for quite some time now. Really, there are three major legs of growth vectors for our infrastructure revenue. And firstly, today, the revenue is about give or take. Let's say it's at a $200 million run rate for the infrastructure revenues. And it comprises primarily of our wireless infrastructure revenue and a little bit of infrastructure and Ethernet. And then if you now layer on top of that the optical products, which we talked about could be in the next three-five years, somewhere between $100 million-$300 million, depending on our market share. And then over and above that, you layer in a storage accelerator, which we've been very confident that we will do somewhere between $50 million-$75 million of revenue over the next two years.

Then the recent activity and design wins for Ethernet on the enterprise side, we have a number of legs of growth drivers. So I do not expect it to be DSP PAM4 dominated. However, I would conclude that the DSP PAM4, if it's not the number one, it would be number two, next to our wireless infrastructure, followed by a storage accelerator and Ethernet enterprise solutions. So I think there are a few more components to those revenues, but I just want to highlight the big chunks of revenues for infrastructure. And we feel really excited that all these years of dredging on the development for the last several years is now fully in the marketplace and will gather traction.

Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks for that, Kishore. Secondly, do you now believe you have a good view into inventory at various levels in the supply chain? Where do you think inventory, in terms of subsegments, are normalized or close to normal, and where do you think there's still work to be done? Thanks.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, Chris, I'll take that one. So look, I think we've continued to see improvements on the inventory side, I mean, particularly in the channel. We're making progress on our own inventories. But specifically, your questions around channel inventory, I think we've seen a lot of improvement. Our biggest headwinds have been broadband and connectivity. As we've stated, I think this is playing out more or less where we expected that we would still see some headwinds kind of through the first half of this year. I think that's still the case. But I think we're making good progress. We're really seeing channel inventory come down. Industrial multi-markets probably be the other area that we definitely saw softness last quarter, would expect to see some continued headwind, particularly in some of the China markets.

But that being said, it doesn't feel quite as bad as some of the challenges that we've had on the broadband and connectivity side.

Christopher Rolland (Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Thanks, Chris.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Tore Svanberg with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)

Yeah. Congratulations on the progress on the infrastructure side. So I do have questions there, but I want to start with the DSOs. So they're still quite elevated. Is this just purely linearity where customers are basically ordering really last minute, or anything else going on there, Steve?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

The simple answer is yes. I mean, I think we continue to see linearity to be a challenge. As much as that's a bad thing, you're also starting to see some encouraging signs there that I mentioned last quarter about some last-minute shipments. This is where customers don't have great visibility, and at the very end, they recognize that they don't have the right products to be shipping. So we've definitely continued to see that. Those are some of the signs that I think give us confidence that we're now on track to kind of work our way out of this, right, that the inventory levels are getting down to lower levels, the bookings have improved. Those are the encouraging signs, albeit the quarter was definitely still back-end loaded.

Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)

Very good. I thought connectivity had bottomed, but I guess it came in at $10 million this quarter. Could you talk a little bit about what's going on there? I mean, are they still really that much excess inventory, or would you say that $10 million is sort of like a firm bottom in that part of the business?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah. No, no. I understand your comment, believe me. We continue to talk about both of these kind of together, at least right now anyway, as far as the inventory that's sitting in the channel. So that's continued to be challenging. We're seeing good, encouraging signs out there on broadband as well as connectivity, Wi-Fi specifically. Kishore included in some of his comments around Wi-Fi 7. But certainly, Wi-Fi 6 is going to continue to ship in volumes over here for the next couple of years. So that's going to continue. But then a majority of our design activity right now is on Wi-Fi 7. And then don't forget Ethernet. Ethernet is something that's getting a lot of traction in our gateway products as they upgrade from 1Gb to 2.5Gb. But you're also seeing this in the enterprise space, in the industrial space.

I think we really got a great product that's ramping at the right time. We'll see a lot of growth and revenue growth from that in 2025 specifically, as we do have a couple of new customers that'll be ramping.

Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)

Great. If I could just finish up, a question for you, Kishore. So obviously, Keystone finally seeing some good traction. Now, you announced the Rushmore last month, 200Gb per lane. I mean, it sounds like this product is going to be much more, let's say, target more segments of the market, right? So I think you mentioned going after the AEC market, potentially LRO. Help us understand the difference between those two product offerings and how broad you can become in 200Gb.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

So Tore, I just want to clarify that even our Keystone product is a pretty broad application. I think in my part of the script, I was trying to refer that even the 200Gb will be pretty broad. At the OFC conference, we demonstrated active electrical cables. We demonstrated Y-junction copper cables. And we have also demonstrated a number of other configurations and use cases. And we also demonstrated LROs, right, in the conference. So in fact, we may be one of the first ones who have demonstrated a fully functional LRO for the market. So what I was trying to get to at the 200Gb per lane is that we are going to do the same thing for the Rushmore product line as well. So yes, the spread is now pretty broad.

Those tertiary markets by themselves are large in a dollar way, but as a percentage share of the market, even though they're smaller, so we'll be playing in all of those markets.

Tore Svanberg (Managing Director)

Yeah. Thanks for clarifying. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question is from David Williams with Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

David Williams (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. I guess, Kishore, if you kind of talk about your focus on the data infrastructure side, and should we think that maybe there's other segments or portions of the business that maybe aren't as positive or maybe do not fit that as well going forward, or is this really a should we just consider this everything kind of growing and fitting into that bucket of data infrastructure as you go forward?

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Could you repeat that question for me, please? I missed the early part of it.

David Williams (Equity Research Analyst)

Sorry. Just about the data infrastructure focus here and if there's other segments of the business today that maybe do not fit that bucket as nicely?

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Well, no. I think the buckets we talk about are pretty pure and clean. There is no part of the data center infrastructure that is not directly a PAM4 DSP-related product in our portfolio. Typically, it is a PAM4 DSP along with a TIA. We have the laser drivers fully integrated in our solution. So it is a very clean fit to the PAM4 DSP addressable market.

David Williams (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. And then maybe, Steve, just how the bookings trended over the last few months and if there's any way to kind of disaggregate maybe some of the legacy products relative to the new products, just to get an idea of how the older products are the demand is picking up there. Thank you.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, David. I mean, with regard to the bookings, we've definitely seen multiple quarters of improvements on the bookings front. Some of the newer products now, we mentioned in our prepared remarks about how these are all in the market in some form or fashion, some at earlier stages than others. So several of those, I mean, like the optical one that I mentioned a little bit earlier, if it's going to ramp in the back half of the year, we need to have orders now. So we're definitely seeing that happen. Some of the broader market offering that we do have that we've seen inventory in the channel, we are seeing kind of more recent bookings pick up, which kind of gives us confidence that we'll see some continued improvement in Q3 and Q4 later this year. Maybe next question?

Operator (participant)

Our next question is from Ross Seymore with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Ross Seymore (Managing Director)

Hey, guys. Thanks for having me ask the question, and congrats on returning to growth. First, I want to ask about the cyclical side of things. You talked even in the prior question, Steve, about some better visibility as bookings come up. And I know you're still working through inventory on the broadband and connectivity side. But now that the bookings have improved, do you have any better ideas to kind of what a normalized revenue run rate is for those businesses? Because they're down so much. Was the prior high artificial? Is the current low artificial? Where do we meet in the middle? Any sort of color on that would be helpful.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, Ross, as you know, we've been talking about this a lot and recognizing as customers kind of burn through the rest of that channel inventory, kind of what that revenue run rate that you return to. So we're watching that closely. I mean, there's some other dynamics that start to influence that. I mean, if I think of broadband specifically, we've talked a lot about the PON business, so that'll start to influence that. The higher content per box starts to influence that as comes into play. Market share, I would say, for the most part, hasn't changed too much. There's not a lot of customers in this market, so those dynamics really haven't changed. There's a limited set of competitors on the Wi-Fi side as well.

It's a story that's still early days, albeit our Wi-Fi or our connectivity revenues in general were not as strong in the quarter. I do feel confident that we're with the newer products, with the higher ASPs, that over the next couple of three years, Wi-Fi 7 gets traction in the market, that you're going to see nice revenue growth coming from those parts of the business.

Ross Seymore (Managing Director)

I guess as my follow-up then, the OpEx side of things, you guys run a tight ship on that. You always have. But with all these opportunities that Kishore talked about, are those things where the predominance of the OpEx has already been spent, or is that something that you think you need to ramp the OpEx to take advantage of all these data center infrastructure opportunities?

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Look, there are one or two product areas, Ross, where we still will be at a pace of investment where we need to catch up and leapfrog the market, right, especially the new markets we entered. However, most of the initiatives that we started into five to six years ago, be it wireless infrastructure, optical data center, the big TAM-defining products have already been launched now. They're showing good, healthy momentum. So it would be normal sustaining R&D work to get to the next generation of products. And the time cycles of these markets outside of the data centers are pretty, what I call, nothing aggressive. So I would say outside of the data center, our investment pace is going to be quite moderated. And so I don't see an extraordinary step up just to keep up with the next product outside of the optical data center markets.

Ross Seymore (Managing Director)

Got it. If I could take in one more, I think I know the answer, but any update on the arbitration process, either in timing or any other news?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, really nothing meaningful to update as expected, Ross.

Ross Seymore (Managing Director)

That's what I thought. Thank you.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, no problem. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question is from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Tim Savageaux (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, good afternoon. Sorry. I wanted to go back to the optical data center market opportunity and try to get a little more color on what's led you guys to kind of increase your guidance range for the year. I know you had a good OFC show, or I guess how recent is this sort of renewed confidence or increased confidence? And to what do you attribute that? I'm thinking of factors, whether it's a bigger-than-expected market opportunity, stronger-than-expected competitive position. As you look across those, how would you describe what's led to this increase in estimate?

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

So Tim, I think you have seen a developing optimism and positive tone starting in Q4 last year. To be honest, now looking backwards, we had backlog to sort of support that developing optimism. The concerns we had was, is it going to be one customer or two customers or three customers? Are we going to have an accumulating roster of customers going into production? At this point, we did not expect to, at that point in Q4, that we will get to the conference place where we are, where we already shipped product that would indicate that we are definitely onto the 10-30 and then now a developing conference that will exceed that.

So I think the backlog is the first way to look at the situation saying, "Hey, there's backlog already somewhere where we can meet the numbers that we had originally forecasted, number one. Number two, and there's more sockets that are converting. And the ones that have been converted are ramping strongly, and they're inquiring about lead times and bookings." So that's what it's done. It's really the facts on the ground. And so yeah, in Q4, we had some backlog to support some developing optimism, honestly. So it's just been that every quarter, we have strengthened our confidence as we started shipping in numbers.

Tim Savageaux (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. And maybe somewhat along those lines, as you look at your guidance for Q2, to the extent you're looking for some sequential growth at the middle of the range, should we assume that that's new product-driven? And you've mentioned a number of whether it's storage, Ethernet, or data center, or are there other factors at work? Obviously, you got broadband coming down. And then as you look toward the higher and lower end of your ranges, kind of what are the swing factors driving that range?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, Tim, so you're right. I mean, we kind of highlighted where we thought the end market growth would be from. It's certainly some of these newer products that we've been talking about. They will definitely have an impact on Q2. But I'd say overall, it's probably the recovery itself that's probably helping a little bit more in Q2. And some of the newer products kind of have a layering impact throughout the year.

Tim Savageaux (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thanks very much.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Thanks, Tim.

Operator (participant)

Our next question is from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Ananda Baruah (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, thanks, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I guess two, for me, if I could, the new products that you have ramping through the year that you highlighted and maybe just you can even keep it to sort of Ethernet, optical, and storage if you want, if those are the most important ones. But I guess the question is, when during the year, first half, second half, should we expect each of those to begin to make an impact? And I know, Kishore, I know you talked about collectively, they each making an impact and giving you sequential growth. But do you think for the year, there's kind of one so do you think there's sort of one or two in particular that will make the most meaningful impact, or is it collectively through the year also? Thanks. And I have a quick follow-up.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, Ananda, maybe I'll take a stab at it. I mean, look, the storage accelerator business, we've been in this business for a while. We have a new product that's ramping this year. It'll start kind of mid-year and then definitely grow throughout this year and into next year. I mean, a lot of these customers take a little bit longer to ramp because there's multiple product families. But really encouraging signs as we get more design wins and see more traction there. I mean, the optical front, I think we've been talking about. I mean, one of the big drivers around optical is 800Gb. And so 800Gb is certainly going to start this year, but you're going to see more of those volumes happen in 2025, which is exciting, right? I mean, but the work itself, that work's going to be done this year.

These are really long qualifying cycles. So that work's being done right now. A lot of those opportunities are being awarded right now. So we've got to close on those opportunities. You'll certainly see that revenue contribute in the back half of this year. But it's also going to be a big driver in 2025. On the Ethernet side, Ethernet, I would say, there's some existing 2.5Gb business that's recovering kind of on the gateway front as the inventory improves. But then some of the newer products, like in the industrial markets, specifically in the enterprise Ethernet market, that's where we're seeing a lot more adoption. We got a couple of really large customers that'll be ramping probably more in 2025 than in 2024.

So again, each of them kind of have their own time frame that they're coming in, but we have a lot of confidence around each one of them.

Ananda Baruah (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

That's super helpful context, Steve. I guess the follow-up is just sort of your guys' long-term 35% op margin target. What needs to happen over the next kind of couple of years for you to achieve that? I think the last time you were sort of kissing that, Steve, sort of quarterly revenue run rate was high $200 million, $280 million+. So with the new products, do you still need to get back to that revenue level to sort of approach the mid-30s operating margin? Any context, it would be helpful. Thanks a lot.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

So Ananda, there is first and foremost, right, there was a lot of spend even when we were kissing, as you call, the 35% operating margin, right? There was a lot of investment that was being spent in the new areas that we have entered five years ago from a development perspective. Secondly, we had acquired our connected home business, and there was a lot of what I called old stale products that really needed to be upgraded, which usually in the silicon world means a redo, right? So the OpEx that you saw had the burden of all of these big undertakings on our own organic side and the ones we had to undertake organically from the acquisition front. So first and foremost, now the OpEx is being brought into control, or what I want to call not control, is now being right-sized for a normal cadence of investment.

So that's the first and foremost benefit of this downturn, if you will. And then when the revenue is growing, so you start getting leverage out of that because we have already got much of this product portfolio behind us. So I think that's going to accelerate the march toward the 30%-35% operating margin. So Steve, if you want to add any color on that beyond.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

No, I think that's right. I mean, maybe I refresh some history here, but we also had a pretty clear path getting to that number, to that over 30% number, long before we saw $1 billion worth of revenue. So I'm confident that we can get back at a much lower revenue run rate than the $1 billion you referenced.

Ananda Baruah (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Nice. Okay. That's awesome context, guys. Thanks a lot.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Great. Thanks, Ananda.

Operator (participant)

Our next question is from Karl Ackerman with BNP Paribas. Please proceed with your question.

Karl Ackerman (Managing Director)

Yes, thank you. Steve, I think you said broadband will be down on revenue in FQ2, but you're starting to see an improvement in bookings. Are those bookings on the cable side or more on fiber? I ask because you've been more weighted toward cable and coax and fiber, and some investors have worried that the declines in broadband are more cyclical in nature. So I guess as you address that question, could you discuss your design engagements with customers on PON that can help drive a much larger recovery in broadband as we think about not just the second half of this year, but also going into fiscal 2025?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah, Karl, great question. You're exactly right. We've been more exposed on the cable side, but we're certainly seeing recovery on both PON and cable. I mentioned earlier the excitement around the PON side, but we're seeing plenty of activity on the cable side, and there's lots of hype around some of the upgrades that are happening in that market. I mean, I don't think we really care one way or the other where that growth comes from in broadband. There's certainly tons of investments happening out there that we'll be able to benefit from.

Karl Ackerman (Managing Director)

Yeah. Okay. For my follow-up, you introduced several new optical products leveraging your existing 5nm 800Gb DSP technology, including half retimed and full retimed DSPs, really for, well, AEC and AOC products. I guess given the confidence that you have on this ramp this year and next year, is most of that coming from half retimed DSPs and AEC products? Will that be the strongest growth that you see this year?

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

I don't think anybody would volunteer that half retimer would be any meaningful revenue in this category of products. I would say it's fully driven by full-rate retimer products, if you will, the 800Gb PAM4 or 400Gb PAM4 single lane, 100Gb, right? So that would be it. It's pretty simple. Other than the customer designing with the various optics they use becomes a pretty challenging problem, right? So the DSPs need to be versatile to manage all the various optics every customer uses and then the yield management of that. So I don't see a half retimer being a big revenue generator, at least through 2025.

Karl Ackerman (Managing Director)

Very helpful. Thank you.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Thanks, Karl.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Suji DeSilva with Roth MKM. Please proceed with your question.

Suji DeSilva (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, Kishore. Hi, Steve. Just maybe a little bit of follow-up on some of the recent questions here. But broadband declining, but connectivity increasing, I thought kind of mentally those were kind of coupled in terms of in the same boxes in broadband. But maybe that's the wrong way to think about it. Can you just talk about that potential disconnect in the guide?

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Yeah. So you're right. They're fairly connected. A lot of the gateways, of course, incorporate our Ethernet or Wi-Fi products. And so they normally trade together, but I mean, they vary a little bit too. I mean, we can certainly go out. I mean, there's a lot of opportunities to win more connectivity business. In Wi-Fi, I mentioned a little earlier in the session around Ethernet and some of the opportunities that were growing in the Ethernet market with 2.5Gb adoption within the enterprise market, within the industrial market. So from time to time, yeah, I mean, they don't necessarily always trade together.

Suji DeSilva (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. That's helpful, Steve. And then my other question's on the optical side. I'm just trying to draw a path from the prior effort, 400Gb and now 800Gb. Is that lead customer continuing and kind of building on the traction you had with that customer? Do you have additional customers or different customers? Just to understand how the customer base and traction is developing here.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

I just want to clarify here that the end customers who are driving 400Gb versus 800Gb is a completely different sequence now. They are not the leaders anymore in terms of trying to move aggressively ahead with the higher speeds right now. I would say that is a different set of customers driving 800Gb PAM4 revenues, 100Gb per lane, or 400Gb PAM4 revenues with 100Gb per lane. It's a totally different set of customers, but there's only a few set of customers in the marketplace. It's a very small group.

Suji DeSilva (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah. Kishore, can you just remind us the competitive landscape and your advantages quickly? I know we talked about it OFC, but a refresher would be helpful.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Yeah. So from our perspective, we are the only solution that has got a 5nm CMOS PAM4 DSP with integrated laser drivers. That's fully in production and is increasingly qualified by others. Now, we were not the first ones with 800Gb PAM4. Our competitive solutions are in 7nm. Therefore, the incumbent has the advantages for the competition to continue from being ahead on the timing, on the sampling of the product. But the good news here is that outside of the NVIDIA market base, supplier base, and the rest of the data centers are moving at a normal cadence of adoption of 800Gb PAM4. So we are not late to the market. We are in the beta phases of trials and qualifications.

So we feel that we have not lost any timing-related positioning with our 5nm solution, even though we are later by several months compared to our competition about two years ago, right? So the big disadvantage is the lack of incumbency. The advantage is the product superiority where the power is significantly lower than our competition by almost 30%. And so whether it's a module or the chip level positioning, it can vary between 20%-30% in power reduction. So the low power matters a lot, and that is a big advantage. I think everybody needs to meet the performance requirements and go through the interop cycle. And frankly, even today, that is the biggest mountain we are climbing now, even as we are recording revenue with victories in increments as we ship these products.

Suji DeSilva (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Appreciate the color, Kishore. Thanks.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Thanks, Suji.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our final question will be from Richard Shannon with Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

Richard Shannon (Senior Research Analyst)

Well, thanks, guys, for taking my questions. Maybe I'll throw one out here in the storage space. So you reiterated your comments about kind of revenues doubling this year and getting to $50-$75. And I think you've said in the past and today that this is largely based on a single customer. I guess a couple of interlocking questions here. First of all, is the announcement with Dell last week, is that this single customer? And then maybe we can talk about building new customers to help maybe provide upside to those numbers over time, how that's going.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

So I think that we note the current shipments of Panther III are based off a single customer. It would be a fair conclusion based on a press release, I suppose. However, we have always talked about expanding our accelerator products beyond the enterprise market and over time into the data centers with partnerships with other players, right? So when we talk about a $50 million-$75 million revenue, it is true that that revenue forecast is based substantially, almost wholly on enterprise storage appliance market and not data center-based market revenue.

Richard Shannon (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Fair enough. Thanks for that clarification. Second question is in wireless infrastructure. You talked about, I think, for at least a couple of quarters now, talking about calendar 2025 being a strong year. Obviously, you've had some inventory burn here on both sides of that business. I guess my question just from a modeling perspective is, can calendar 2025 be a record year for wireless infrastructure? Seems like you're down fairly strongly, and revenue run rates would seem like a big bar to jump, but just curious whether you think that's possible.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Oh, I would say that 2025 will not be the record year. It will be a growing year, and I think we'll continue to grow our wireless revenues from our current levels to doubling of those revenues based on the roadmap and the products we are launching. So I believe from an infrastructure, if it's a $500 million revenue, you should see between wireless infrastructure optical being 80%-90% of the revenue and the remaining 20%, if you will, of being Ethernet that we've already talked about. But if you're in Ethernet storage, but each of those individuals have a bigger potential than that, it's undefined. So $500 million of revenue for infrastructure is sort of an imbalance of things based on timing and how the TAM develops, so to speak. No, absolutely not.

2025 is not going to be a record year because that would be a good thing and will grow beyond that.

Richard Shannon (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Appreciate the perspective, guys. Thank you.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Thank you.

Steve Litchfield (CFO and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer)

Thank you, Richard.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Kishore Seendripu (CEO)

Thank you very much. With that last question there, I just want to wrap up this session here. I would like to thank you all. We hope that this quarter we're going to see you again. We will be present at the Stifel's Cross-Sector Insight Conference in Boston and with Northland Capital Markets' Virtual Growth Conference as well. With that, thank you all for joining us today once again, and look forward to speaking with you soon. Bye.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.