JON FORTT: Marvell Technology striking a deal this morning to buy data center player Inphi for
$10 billion in cash and stock. Marvell down 3%, Inphi up 27% at this time. It will be $8 billion, that deal, if you dont include assumed debt. With us now, first on CNBC, Marvells CEO Matt Murphy. Matt, good morning. This is just a
giant deal, just in relative size, more than a third of your market cap if Im reading it correctly. And Inphi specializes in data center broadband; moving massive amounts of data quickly inside data centers, between data centers. Why is this
so important to do right now?
MATT MURPHY: Yeah, good morning Jon. Its great to see you. Were very excited, and youre right.
Inphi is the leading company in interconnect technology both inside the data center, and to your point as well as connecting data centers worldwide. They also have a very strong and growing position in 5G for whats called backhaul
and midhaul and fronthaul connectivity. And if you look at the combined company, revenue of Inphi, about 70% of their revenue actually comes from both cloud infrastructure as well as 5G, and Jon as you know thats very
consistent with Marvells strategy in terms of our market focus.
JON FORTT: Now as we saw from Intels results and some others, cloud
companies are still buying infrastructure, but theres been downward pressure on a lot of the pricing. At the same time, though, Inphis got this pulse-amplitude modulation technology that its pushing cutting-edge, along with
optical, allowing to move a lot more data a lot more quickly. Is your sense that you can get not only continued and growing revenue, but also better margins from the cloud giants with this kind of technology.
MATT MURPHY: Right, well you nailed it, Jon. First of all this transition in optics and moving to this new modulation technique, which is called
pulse-amplitude modulation, or PAM, its a once-in-a-generation type of transition thats happening. And thats being driven by the cloud players, specifically, and Inphi has a leadership position there. Their
business is extremely strong. Their most recent quarter which they announced this morning, their revenues were up 92% year-over-year, and if you look out to next quarter which they also guided, that would imply another 80% up, year-over-year. This
companys been growing about 40% a year. They have a very strong outlook as well for calendar 21, and thats really on the back of exactly what you said, which is this very strong demand in build-out in the cloud, and in particular
the optics that connect all of the key pieces of equipment in the data center. Its a key item in terms of how the data centers architected and defines the overall throughput of the data center. In terms of margins and profitability,
its a premier company in the semiconductor industry. Its not normally a household name, but in the chip industry its one of the highest regarded companies in our space. Gross margins are in the mid-60s, which is accretive to
Marvell. Its also, this deal is gonna be accretive to us
JON FORTT: Mhmm.
MATT MURPHY: in operating margins and in revenue growth, and earnings by the way. So it ticks the box on all four fronts and adds some very
unique, special capability to us.
JON FORTT: So in a way, Im going to do a weird thing and ask you to speak for Inphi. So why do this
deal with Marvell when theyre growing the way they are, they have the margins they do? Sometimes we see M&A from desperation, but some of the M&A weve been seeing these days is not that. What makes now a key time to do this and
what makes Marvell the right partner for them.
MATT MURPHY: Sure. Yeah. No, this is very much a combination of two growing companies. Were
both well positioned for growth. The CEO of Inphi is Dr. Ford Tamer. Hes been the CEO there for 9 years. Hes going to be joining the Marvell board as part of this transaction. They were not looking to sell. They have a great plan on
their own. But as we got to talking and we shared our vision of being the leading chip company in the world that moves data, stores data, processes data and secures the worlds data, the move piece of it fit extremely well and their view that
the cloud and 5G were going to be two of the most important markets for Inphi were very consistent with ours and so as we started talking, we came up with a number of opportunities to drive revenue synergies and incremental growth over the long
term, as well. So I think its going to be a great fit. Were going to integrate the Inphi team into the Marvell family and I think together we can accomplish great things in two of the most important markets with long term secular growth
trends, which is 5G and the cloud.