Marvell Stock Had A Huge Year And Still Sits Well Below Its High

Marvell Technology (MRVL) stock returned 235.9% over the past year, climbing from $62.18 to $208.83. The company kept raising what it expects to sell, and buyers repriced it each time. Then the shares pulled back, and they now sit well below their best.

Marvell Kept Raising What It Says It Will Sell

Marvell finished fiscal 2026 with about $8 billion of revenue, by its CEO’s own count. It now guides fiscal 2027 revenue to roughly $12 billion and fiscal 2028 to approximately $18 billion. The fiscal 2028 target rose $1.5 billion in one quarter, from $16.5 billion.

The growth comes from one place. Data centers made up 79% of revenue in fiscal Q2 2027, and management lifted its fiscal 2027 growth outlook for that business to approximately 60% from approximately 50%. Underneath sit the optical DSPs and switching chips that carry traffic between AI accelerators, plus the custom silicon Marvell designs to an individual hyperscaler’s specification. Broadcom (AVGO) returned 19.0% over the same window, NVIDIA (NVDA) returned 34.1%, and AMD (AMD) returned 181.4%, a spread wide enough that this wasn’t one theme lifting every AI chip stock equally, even as the whole group moved.

But It Is Winning More Work That Carries A Thinner Margin

The custom business is ramping hardest, and it pays least per dollar of sales. Management guided fiscal Q3 2027 non-GAAP gross margin to between 57.5% and 58.5%, down from 58.9% in fiscal Q2 2027, and named the custom ramp as the reason for the step down. The CFO’s preliminary view is that fiscal 2028 sits in that same range.

So revenue travels from roughly $12 billion to approximately $18 billion and, from fiscal Q3 2027 on, gross margin does not move. What improves sits lower down. Non-GAAP operating margin widened 180 basis points year over year in fiscal Q2 2027, and management expects that same non-GAAP measure to reach a 38% to 40% target range by fiscal Q4 2027. That comes from operating costs growing slower than revenue.

The newest work shows where that revenue comes from. An expanded agreement with one large hyperscaler covers AI inference accelerators and XPU attach parts: storage controllers, network interface controllers, memory interface controllers. Management says revenue from those programs through fiscal 2028 already sits inside the targets above, and that the programs still ahead will contribute much more significantly in fiscal 2029.

So What Are You Paying For At This Price?

Marvell carries a market capitalization of about $187.4 billion against $9.45 billion of trailing twelve-month revenue, close to 20 times sales. Set that against the approximately $18 billion management expects in fiscal 2028, and it is still over ten times. You are paying for the fiscal 2028 number arriving on schedule and at the margin management described.

The shares reached $316.35 in the past 52 weeks and trade at $208.83, about a third below that, while both outlooks went up at the latest report. So the open question is not whether management still expects the growth. It is whether a price that has already booked several years of it leaves you anything.

You Just Did A Quarter Of Work On One Stock

Working out why this one ran, and what the price now assumes, meant reading a guidance history, a margin guide, and a customer agreement. You would still have to settle how long the AI infrastructure build-out lasts.

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