Marvell Technology shares fell 8% in premarket trading on Thursday after the chipmaker raised its fiscal 2028 revenue target but offered little granularity to justify a stock that has more than doubled this year. The move coincided with a second-quarter beat that came in $39 million above the company's own May guidance, yet the market's reaction underscored how far the bar had moved.
The numbers and the baseline
Revenue rose 37% year on year to $2.7 billion in the fiscal second quarter. Data center revenue, the segment most tied to AI infrastructure spending, accelerated to 46% growth. For the full fiscal 2028, Marvell now sees revenue growing about 50% to around $18 billion, up from a prior forecast of $16.5 billion. The company did not break out the assumptions behind the new number, leaving analysts to model the implied trajectory on their own.
The Google overhang
Investor focus had shifted last week to a partnership with Google that allows the search giant to purchase up to 58.97 million Marvell shares at $206.58 each, a potential $12.2 billion commitment spread through fiscal 2033. The agreement covers chips that work with Google's TPU systems, including AI inference processors, storage controllers and network interface cards. The market had hoped the deal would translate into a clearer, nearer-term earnings lift. Instead, the outlook discussion was thin on how and when those volumes materialize.
Valuation and the neutral call
Goldman Sachs described the quarter as an incremental positive but kept a neutral rating, citing a valuation premium to peers and limited visibility on Marvell's ability to add new custom-chip customers beyond its existing roster. The stock is up 184% year to date, a run that prices in not just current demand but a durable expansion of the total addressable market. Thursday's drop suggests the market is no longer willing to extrapolate without a roadmap.