Marvell Technology Inc. benefited from the worldwide shortage of computer chips, delivering second-quarter financial results today that beat Wall Street’s estimates and offering strong guidance for the next quarter.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker reported a profit of $284 million, or 34 cents per share, up from 21 cents a share a year ago, on revenue of $1.076 billion, up 48% from a year ago. That was better than expected, with analysts modeling earnings of 31 cents per share on sales of $1.066 billion.

However, the company reported a net loss of $276 million, or 34 cents a share, on higher operating expenses, compared with a loss a year ago of $88.2 million, or 21 cents a share.

Marvell makes a range of data storage and networking chips that are primarily sold to cloud computing providers and the automotive and communications industries.

Marvell President and Chief Executive Matt Murphy (pictured) said the company’s revenue was a new quarterly record, up 29% on a sequential basis. He said much of the growth was driven by data center chip sales to cloud infrastructure providers, which now represent 40% of its overall revenue.

The company’s second-quarter results were boosted by revenue from Inphi Corp., a maker of semiconductors for optical networks, that it acquired for $10 billion. That deal was concluded on April 20, executives revealed.

“I am pleased that standalone Marvell and the acquired Inphi businesses both contributed to our strong year-over-year revenue growth,” Murphy said.

Marvell took the opportunity to restructure the way it reports product revenue. Previously the company had three distinct segments – networking, storage and other. But as of this quarter it now reports revenue from five categories: data center, carrier infrastructure, enterprise networking, consumer and automotive/industrial.

Of those, it was the data center segment that performed best with sales of $434 million, up 40% from a year ago. The next biggest was enterprise networking with $223 million in sales, up 21%, followed by carrier infrastructure at $197 million, up 18%.

The other segments, consumer with $165 million in sales, and automotive/industrial at $57 million, grew by 16% and 5%, respectively.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, told SiliconANGLE he was impressed with Marvell’s 48% top-line growth. “It’s good to see the new product line breakouts that provide more details,” he said. “This should give investors more confidence as it reduces the mystery around what’s growing and what’s shrinking. That’s always a good sign.”

Marvell is expecting to expand again in the near future as it recently announced plans to buy Innovium Inc. for $1.1 billion. Innovium is a startup that sells a line of processors used by cloud providers to power their data center networking infrastructure. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2021.

For the next quarter, Marvell said, it’s looking at earnings of 38 cents per share on revenue of $1.145 billion, which is just ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of 37 cents per share in earnings and $1.135 billion in sales.

“We expect year-over-year revenue growth will accelerate in the third quarter, led by substantial contributions from the cloud data center market,” Murphy added. “In addition, we expect our 5G business to continue to grow with strong sequential revenue growth in the third quarter, and a significant step up projected in the fourth quarter.”

Despite all of the optimism, Marvell’s stock fell more than 3% in extended trading.

Photo: Marvell