Marvell Technology Group Ltd.'s disappointing finish to its latest fiscal year has analysts debating how long it will take the company to bounce back.
The contrasting views emerged Monday as analysts dug deeper into bad news that the maker of digital storage devices and wireless chip maker released at the end of last week.
Marvell, whose U.S. operations are based in Santa Clara, Calif., said its revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter ending Jan. 28 would fall below management's previous estimates. The company blamed Thailand flooding that created a shortage of computer hard-disk drives and sluggish demand among its mobile customers, particularly in China.
Given that investors had already known about technology headaches caused by the disk-drive shortage for weeks, Marvell's letdown didn't come as a shock.
The question now is how long the trouble will linger.
Nomura Equity Research analyst Romit Shah expects a slow recovery for Marvell, although he suspects the latest quarter will mark a low point in the company's sales cycle. He fears Marvell will lose some business in the mobile device market. For that reason, Shah is maintaining a $13 price target on Marvell's stock, implying he expects shares to decline nearly 18 percent from Friday's close.
Kaufman Bros. analyst Mike Burton expects a comeback in the hard-disk drive market during Marvell's quarter ending in April. As evidence, Burton points to encouraging outlooks already issued by Marvell's biggest disk-drive customer, Western Digital Corp., and one of its rivals, LSI Corp. Burton maintained an $18 price target on Marvell's stock.
The shares were unchanged at $15.79 in Monday's afternoon trading. That left the stock slightly above its price before the company lowered its fourth-quarter projections.
At the mid-range of its guidance, Marvell's fourth-quarter revenue will be $740 million — down from an earlier forecast of $800 million The average estimate among analysts surveyed by FactSet had been $797 million. The analyst consensus has since fallen to $746 million.
Marvell is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter and annual results on Feb. 23.
