All right. Welcome, everybody, and thanks for being here today. My name is Marco Lagos. I run the U.S. Semiconductor Investment Banking business for Morgan Stanley. I am here today with someone I've had the privilege of knowing for a long time, CFO of MaxLinear, Mr. Steve Litchfield. Steve, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Yeah. Any disclaimers or anything you want to get out of the way with folks before we start?
I wish I had to.
All right.
Disclaimer: No, we're good.
Okay. Great. Look, it's kind of a big year for MaxLinear. Later this month, you'll be 15 years as a public company. You've also now going to hit a significant milestone here. You've been around since July 2018 with the company. Lots happened in that period of time. We've had COVID. We've had a couple of supply chain disruptions. You've done a little M&A. Can you talk about where things were when you started, what you saw as an opportunity, and how things have evolved over that period of time?
Yeah. Yeah, you're right. There are lots of ups and downs. No doubt about that. I don't know if I reflect on that. I mean, we've made a lot of progress. I mean, to your point, we've done a couple of acquisitions. I think over that time, probably the most important thing we've done is really grown that infrastructure business that we have. Our infrastructure business is kind of focused on data center wireless infrastructure primarily. Those are kind of the two big end markets. It's a space that we invested probably six, seven years ago, and we've grown it north of $150 million. It's a good, sticky market, long product life cycles. It really plays to our differentiation with analog mixed signal capabilities.
It is just very differentiated, and I think it is something that we can really grow the value proposition for the company going forward.
Got it. Yeah, talk about the business looks very different from when you first went public and when Kishore first sort of started down this journey. What does the composition look like today? You talked about sort of things that you're good at. What are the core competencies that you feel have sort of carried through over time?
Sure. Yeah, no, you're right. It is very different than where we started. I mean, I shouldn't say that different. I mean, technology-wise, it is that analog mixed signal thread that runs through really everything that we do. That's the differentiation, even whether it's the DSP that we're working on today or whether it's tuners that we used to sell when the company went public. I mean, we started out kind of this TV tuner space, but really that's evolved dramatically, kind of moved in the broadband connectivity. We have Wi-Fi, Ethernet products. I mean, that's one of the big growth drivers for the company as well. Then kind of moving a little bit later into the infrastructure side. It was all kind of based on that analog mixed signal capability.
Got it. You are getting to sort of, I think, what a lot of folks want to hear about. I do not know if you heard, but AI is kind of a big deal.
Yeah, it turns out.
How do you think strategically, absent MaxLinear, right, how do you and sort of the team, the management team, the board think about AI as an opportunity for the company? And sort of where can this go for you folks?
Yeah. Naturally, I mean, yeah, you're right. AI is transforming all of our lives, right? While we're using it a lot internally in a lot of different capacities, I think externally where we see it the most, or where we have most exposure anyway, is in the data center with our PAM4 DSP, some of the TIAs, some of the other products there. That's really where we've been growing on the AI side. I mean, we've got some pretty cool Wi-Fi. We have a MaxAI product that utilizes AI. I would say where we've got the most exposure and where I think investors see us the most is more on the data center with the PAM4 DSP. That's fairly new. Last year, we were expected to grow at $10 million-$30 million.
We exceeded that number, and I think we're on track to grow nicely again this year. Hopefully, we can get close to doubling that again and then kind of keep that train going in 2026 as well.
Yeah. I mean, and that's not sort of the only leg to the stool around data center for you guys. Obviously, there's a lot of different sort of products. Can you talk about a few of the other products and initiatives and where you've kind of had some program wins and things like that?
Yeah. I mean, as far as, okay, so again, maybe the biggest piece is around the TIA and the DSP, right? And we talk about wins and where we're winning, what we're doing with the customer. I mean, we're really focused around the end data center customer, whether it means a U.S. hyperscaler or kind of a tier one data center player or a Chinese data center player. I mean, all of these are very important end customers to us, and we engage with them closely, but we also have to naturally engage with the module vendor as well. I mean, we end up working closely with the module guys, really working out kinks. We want to win there. And where we've seen some success is, I mean, when we win, get qualified.
I mean, we're in production in a couple of cases with kind of end data center customers. Those module guys go off and sell our products elsewhere. That is super helpful. It kind of expands the sales footprint that we have to some degree.
Got it. Just from a technology standpoint, we talked a little bit about one of the things where I think the company was early was optical, right, and thinking about that sort of opportunity. What did sort of the team see? As you invested probably before a lot of other folks, it was a big long putt, a big bet, but we're now sort of at the turning point of that. What did folks see way back then and kind of how was that specific part of it, the optical?
Yeah. I mean, I'd probably bring it back to that analog RF capability that we had. That is that differentiation. We came in early with the 400 gig. There was, I mean, Inphi was kind of the main player in the market at the time. They went on to kind of, they were there early in the 200 gig market. We chose to enter later in the 400 gig side and kind of hit it right at the beginning of COVID. Ultimately, that 400 gig market really did not happen. I think I want to say Amazon may have been the only big guy. The other guys stayed at 200, and they jumped to 800. I think that's important just because we also said, "Okay, second generation, we need to move to 800." It is 100 gig per lane. We moved with our Keystone product.
We moved to 5 nanometer when a lot of the market moved to 7 nanometer. That was a risk that the company took. I think it's paid off. We got to lower power. Power is ultimately the differentiator that we bring. I get plenty of investors asking us all the time, "Why do we win? Why do we win against big guys like a Marvell and a Broadcom?" It is on power. That is differentiated at the node level, but I would probably emphasize that the architecture itself is really how we differentiate. Right now, modules are running about 20% lower power than the competition. You guys have all heard about these guys and the power challenges that we have buying nuclear reactors for their data centers. I mean, this is a big deal, and it's why they want to see lower power. I mean, there's other performance criteria, but I would say by far the number one reason for them choosing MaxLinear is because of power.
Let's talk about that go-to-market for a little bit, just for a moment, right? Especially with hyperscalers and a lot of the folks that are infrastructure customers. It seems like you're taking sort of a multi-angle approach to that. MaxLinear has always been an engineering company, right? It's kind of known for its engineering DNA. How do you approach? How early do those conversations with the customer start? How embedded are you on sort of co-designing things together? I'm assuming if it's power, it's got to be early, but maybe talk a little bit about that sort of cycle.
Yeah. I mean, you're right. I mean, you have to be in there early. Even if I go back to that 400 gig, that first product that we won, we ultimately needed to get the 800 gig product, have to get the 1.6T product as well. Even where we're winning designs today, I think it's, while we're winning an 800 gig design today, it's critical that they see a roadmap that has a 1.6T solution that is lower power that they can use going forward. The roadmaps, I mean, not new to anyone in this room, I'm sure. We've got to have the roadmaps to support this. As a smaller guy, we get the questions like, "Oh, are you able to support this? Are you going to 3 to 2 nanometer?" Absolutely. I mean, we've been able to afford that.
We've jumped ahead in the past, and we can continue to do that. I'm not worried about the ability to kind of keep up with the roadmap. It's not easy, and we've got to execute. As a smaller company, we've got to remain very focused and not try and do too much. I think those customer relationships become super critical. I mean, we've got to have those, and we've got to have them again. I'll emphasize at the data center level, but we've also, I mean, the module vendors as well that are kind of acting on your behalf, working through the kinks on the technical front. We've got to make sure we're solving firmware and software issues for them, with them. I think what we find is that once you do solve those problems and they're coming back, they understand your DSP, you can get integrated quicker.
You're shortening the cycles a little bit.
That's right. That's right.
Let's talk about that for a minute. There's a lot of sort of this co-development, this conversation, cyclical, and evolves over time. What is it about how much visibility do you have as far as how far ahead? Much of it obviously has to do with the customer relationship and how much they share with you. You folks probably have pretty good visibility into their roadmaps and align yourselves with that. What does that look like? These products, I assume, are sticky and have really long cycles. Just quantify sort of the duration of that job.
I mean, on the data center side, I mean, yeah, the visibility is relatively good. I think at a high level, I mean, the part that we don't have perfect visibility in is how fast these guys are going to ramp 800 gig data centers, right? Even as I look at forecasts for this year, kind of get pressed in either direction, where do we see upsides? I mean, if these guys ramp on time and everything's good, then we hit or exceed our numbers. If one of these bigger data centers pushes a quarter or two, it does change the numbers dramatically, right? You kind of have to weigh that into the equation. You want to be conservative in those expectations.
Maybe on the more tactical level, I'm not sure if this is what your question was, but look, we've got 20, I mean, I guess in our optical product line, it's probably 24-week lead times. You can imagine we're kind of booking business out in Q3 right now. That gives you a little bit of visibility. It's not perfect. The customers try and hedge that to the extent they can and still hit their time frames? Of course. That does help. I would even maybe broaden that comment out a little bit beyond the data center. I mean, across all of our product lines, on average, we probably quote 18-20-week lead times. That means customers are booking ahead. Now, over the last, whatever, 12-18 months, we've not had that visibility, right? That certainty hasn't been there.
It's been challenging from a forecasting standpoint to know exactly what's coming. Behaviors are also, I mean, customers are terrible about this. They've expected you over the last 12 months to have product on the shelf or to be somewhere in the channel. I think we finally cleaned all that up. I mean, we, the industry, have kind of cleaned that up. We don't see that inventory in the channel. Now we're working with customers trying to make sure that they understand if they have a product they're expecting to ramp in Q3, if they haven't placed those orders, there's a likelihood that they can't get the product. I'm not saying that we're going back to supply chain crisis. I'm not going that far but b ehaviors need to kind of get calibrated again that there may not be that inventory in the channel. We got to make sure that they understand that. I would say that behavior is starting to change now, which is helping out with the visibility.
Yeah. Interesting you brought up the supply chain. Again, in agreement with you, we're not talking about sort of any issues there. On the supplier side, where you're the customer, right, and you're talking about 2-nanometer or 3-nanometer advanced technology nodes, all this noise around compute, NVIDIA and AMD, connectivity with Astera and Credo, and then folks like yourselves and other companies around power and other sort of specialties, how do you sort of make sure that you have capacity, that you receive what you need from your manufacturing partners? How do you work with them to sort of assure that?
Yeah. It's pretty straightforward. Look, I know there's bigger players. There's always been bigger players. I mean, I guess the main way, I mean, we do diversify our supply chain. We have multiple foundry partners. We work with TSMC and UMC and Samsung. It's just like anything else. We've got to forecast our business to the best that we can. They can handle upsides to a certain degree. A lot of our markets aren't big consumer markets that drive tons of volumes. We're not in a handset space. I mean, we're not skewing things in any direction in a big way. A lot of it is manageable by our existing supply chain. I don't see that much of a problem on that front.
Yep. That's great. In this environment, that's a nice to have.
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Let's talk about that for a minute. We spent some time talking about infrastructure, but taking a step back again, what does sort of the business composition look like today? What's the business mix today? How big can infrastructure get to be? Sort of without guiding out in the future, but how big can it be for you guys?
Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned we've grown it to north of $150 million. Look, this business can be $300- $500 million over the next three or four years. That's driven by data center. It's driven by storage accelerator, and it's driven by wireless infrastructure. Those are kind of the three big ones. Yeah, it can be very sizable. That's the infrastructure side. I mean, we still have our broadband connectivity business and then, to a lesser extent, our industrial business as well.
Let's talk about those two businesses because we want to just quickly kind of talk about the rest of the company. You and I have had a conversation about there's been such a shine on AI and data center, and everything's been pretty, in general, over the last 12 months, good performance for those folks. That hasn't been the case in some of the other end markets. Yet, I think you folks in those other end markets have performed okay. How is that business feeling from a stabilization standpoint? Where do you feel like we are kind of in the health of those other businesses right now?
Sure. I would say the broadband connectivity set, so we've talked a lot about infrastructure. Broadband connectivity, look, we've been in a two-year cyclical downturn. It's been not much fun, to be quite honest. I mean, probably not entirely surprising. The supply chain crisis went way too far. We doubled, triple ordered. Now, finally, we're seeing less than a quarter's worth of inventory in the channel. It feels pretty good. I would say that we're kind of through that. Thought we would see it, frankly, kind of mid-last year. Took longer than expected, but now we've had probably six quarters in a row of improved bookings. Book-to-bill ratios are back to good levels. Backlog, starting backlogs, kind of going into quarters is significantly higher than we have been. I think all of that is kind of trending in the right direction.
I mean, so there's kind of two pieces of our broadband business. We've got the cable side and the PON side. We've had very little exposure to PON over the years. Three years ago, we were doing single-digit millions for our PON business. Last year, it was probably $50-$60 million. I think we'll be north of $100 million over the next, call it, 18 months. I think we're making really good traction. We had a big win with one of the big North America telcos. We announced that on our earnings call in January. Really exciting, kind of $40-$50 per gateway. It'll ramp in 2026. New business for us. I mean, we're selling probably five chips into that box. I think it's early days on that.
That is one of the reasons why we're confident that we can continue to grow this PON business. The other side of broadband has been cable. Cable's been one that we've been exposed to for a number of years. It's also kind of in this downturn, lots of inventory out in the channel. I would say on the cable side, we're also seeing an upgrade cycle go on. The last two years, they've spent a fair amount of money on upgrading the network itself. Getting that infrastructure built out to accommodate DOCSIS 3.1 Ultra or DOCSIS 4.0. Now that that's, I won't say it's completely done, but we're kind of coming to the end of that. What typically happens, these service providers will start to transition over to the CPE side, which is where we play. That transition is starting to happen.
It'll happen kind of the tail end of this year and next year. You will continue to see that recovery. That is, it's been a long time coming. I would say that between that and the new PON wind, our broadband business should recover nicely this year.
That's great. That's really great. Industrial?
Yeah. Industrial's still tough. I mean, I think that's consistent with a lot of the peers. I know there's kind of, I don't know, one peer will talk about things improving. The next one will say it's terrible. I mean, let's be honest, it hasn't been that good. I don't think we're quite out of the woods from my perspective on industrial. We guided it to be down this quarter. I think it'll grow the rest of the year. It's a big diversified product portfolio or a market for that matter. I think it'll improve in the second half over the first half, but that's the one area. I think everything else in our business feels pretty good right now. Infrastructure feels really good with new products, with the industry doing well. Broadband finally got some recovery in tail winds along with Wi-Fi 7 and PON winds.
We've got a lot of new product offerings that are taking off. Ethernet's another new product offering that we've had that we've not had historically. That's an upgrade cycle, like 1 gig going to 2.5 gig switches in the market. We used to sell this into gateways, and those are naturally seeing an upgrade cycle from 1 to 2.5. We're also seeing that in the enterprise market. We're seeing it in the industrial market. You see a lot of factory automation. Factory floors have these 1-gig switches all over the place, and they're all being upgraded. It's a good opportunity for us. It's just one of several wins that we have.
Right. It sounds like there's sort of a diversity of things that are more things going well than the stuff that's kind of tougher. With that said, right, MaxLinear, you're a certain scale company, and you're not a behemoth as far as your revenue and your resources. There's a lot of.
I'm not offended by that.
Yeah. Is there a sort of innovation? We've seen you be very nimble about decision-making and channeling resources to the right opportunities. How do you, as kind of CFO, think about making tough decisions across where to put your OpEx dollars in R&D? We're seeing the gross margin sort of turn back up to where it's been historically, and maybe now those decisions won't be as hard. How have you sort of navigated that? How do you think about it?
Sure. Yeah. No, it's a really important point. Look, maybe I'll talk a little bit about those gross margins that you just mentioned. I mean, we do focus on the areas where we can drive 60%-65% gross margins. I think we've been pretty successful in that. I think we will continue to be going forward. How do we allocate OpEx dollars, R&D dollars? Clearly, it's in those areas that have the bigger growth profile, right? I mean, I talked a lot about infrastructure. That's where most of the dollars are going. I think the good thing is we're in product areas that have longer product life cycles, kind of five to seven years. We're not in the consumer product where we're cranking on this kind of treadmill to some degree. We're having to do a chip kind of every five, six years.
That helps out a lot. There are other areas that are more demanding. I mean, optical is one of those areas, right? It's very demanding. It's also a big growth market with a lot of incremental growth. That makes a lot of sense. We did talk a little about what we've done with OpEx. We did do some cuts kind of mid-last year, Q3 of last year. We made those cuts. Really, that was kind of just getting the cost structure in line. I don't feel like that's going to hurt us at all going forward from a cost perspective. I mean, I mentioned that we have long product life cycles. Every now and then, you'll get two or three that are all kind of stacked on top of each other. We had that.
We finished our DOCSIS chip. We finished our PON chip. We finished our Wi-Fi 7 chip. We did all these data center chips as well. Those have all kind of come off. The good thing is, and we're not.
You are talking about the investment cycle.
I'm talking about the investment cycle. No longer do you have to spend or whatever, put 200 guys, 200 ASIC engineers on a next-generation product. Now you've got 20 application guys out in the field designing those products in. That's the stage that we're in right now and much more efficient. If I look forward while we're dialing that back, I think we can continue to grow the top line. I mean, our long-term goal from an operating margin standpoint is 30%. We hit that 30% at a much higher revenue level. I think from an efficiency standpoint, I think we can, if the company gets back to $600 million-$700 million, I think we can do that 30% operating margin target. I think we're a lot more efficient.
If you look at the markets that we play in, I mean, they're higher gross margin, and they don't have these gigantic investments either.
That is what I was kind of referring to when I was talking about sort of scale. I think where you are in an innovation-focused cycle where the speed of innovation matters, this agility you guys have, this engineering DNA is actually quite helpful. Shifting gears to sort of more, I guess, common events or current events, rather. Geopolitical temperature, environment. Obviously, every day there is something new 25% tariffs.
New today.
Today. Yeah. That's right. There is a lot of focus in semis and in our sector around China and Taiwan as well. I'm sure there are conversations at the board level and the C-suite around what is kind of the best-case scenario of everything that's happening with the current U.S. administration, the dynamics cross-border between the two countries and regions. What's the worst-case scenario? What's the best-case scenario? How do you guys kind of think about that macro?
Sure. You said something earlier about being nimble. I think in this environment, everyone has to be nimble. I mean, if I think of tariffs and kind of export control in general, we've gone through our own challenges over the years. In 2019, we went through some really big tariff challenges where we had some big customers in China that moved out of China. Fortunately, that's kind of behind us at this point. We also lost a fair amount of wireless infrastructure sales because of that. It was anticipated to be a big growth cycle for us. Having gone through that, at least we somewhat know what we're up against, although every day that changes, it seems. At least from a tariff standpoint, it feels okay. Now that could change.
We've got a lot less exposure to China. It's not zero, but it's a little bit less. Hopefully, less exposure. I also think that we don't have leading-edge, whatever, AI processors that are kind of at the forefront or kind of in the crosshairs of some of these administrative challenges. Now, we've had other lower-end things where we've been shipping. Last year, we got hit by, it's probably $15 million-$20 million worth of revenue that we were shipping under a license that we can no longer ship. That's behind us. We don't ship a lot at this point under these licenses. We don't do sensitive military defense type of work. I always describe us as we're kind of that middle-of-the-road guy that hopefully can navigate in this environment and not be impacted too much by it.
Yeah. That is where some of this 2019 pain is actually now probably putting you in a better position.
Yeah. Having been through that pain, yes, I agree with you.
Okay. Okay. What are you prepared for now? What are you doing organizationally? Is there more sort of a thought being given to actively exiting certain regions or certain products? Is there any active management of things that you're doing today, or do you feel like things are kind of at a stable place?
Yeah. I don't know. I think if anything, from an organizational standpoint, I mean, we just continue to focus on the customer side and kind of application side, making sure that we've got resources that are supporting customers. Software and firmware are so important today in all of our end markets. We've got to keep those people or the people in the field in front of those customers in their labs, making sure that we're supporting some of the ramp, some of the integration efforts that need to happen. I would say that's the one area that geograph.
The development, sort of the product development part of it.
The product development side of it, I think if anything, always looking to realize more efficiencies. Look, it's tough to find really good talent around the world. I mean, we're competing every day for that good talent. We have to continue to do that. We've always kind of differentiated ourselves a little bit by having design done in our remote locations. It's not all done at corporate in North America. It's done in the region. It's done in India. It's done in Singapore. It's done in Israel where they have architecture ownership. That's been a way for us to attract talent around the world because you can go to work for a really big company that's working on some low-end design in India, whereas you could also come to MaxLinear and you can do the entire architecture itself. You have a broader set of opportunities with us. That is one of the reasons why we've been able to attract people.
Got it. From just within the same sort of geopolitical broader topic, but talking more about M&A regulatory stuff, you in particular have been a good acquirer of businesses over the years, both here and at your prior company. How has kind of how you think about M&A and strategy and potential targets and what things to pursue, how has all that changed as the temperature has risen here on sort of CFIUS and SAMR and those sorts of things?
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it's been tough, I mean, trying to navigate those regulatory waters. I think we've all seen the industry pull back on that front. I think we've all tried to execute within that environment. At the end of the day, boards are kind of nervous. Shareholders are nervous about kind of taking some of these riskier actions. Look, I mean, I think our business is about scale. I mean, I think you do have to continue to look at acquisitions. I know we will continue to look at acquisitions, but it's not easy. I think we've got to be smart about it, be prudent with those decisions, which is never easy. At the same time, sitting back doing nothing isn't a good option either. I mean, we've all got to keep moving forward and creating shareholder value.
Yeah. Got it. It's a little bit of a tricky question. When you think about sort of the board and the management team, having to think very hard about it, is it more about the opportunity cost, management bandwidth, time spent on something that ultimately maybe doesn't happen, or is it more optics and political capital being used to do something that maybe pokes the wrong person in some office in Washington and the IRC?
Yeah. That's a tough question. Both are important, right? I mean, the optics, I mean, no one wants to waste time on things that can't get done. I don't think that's good for anyone. At the same time, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think from a MaxLinear standpoint, we've just got to continue to stay focused as a smaller company, not trying to do too many things. We can't go off and acquire things in another area. I mean, we really need to stay, build more, I mean, just build products organically and then complement them with things where in an application within a customer or an end market that you're already in, that enables you to leverage.
When you say about sort of going outside to a really distant area, you're not talking geography. You're talking product competency.
Correct. That's correct.
All right. Now that we've touched on M&A, but capital allocation in general, it takes a lot of your time thinking about sort of capital allocation strategy and prioritization. Starting with sort of liquidity and where MaxLinear is today, how do you feel about your liquidity position today relative to peers in general, comfort about what may or may not come in the future in your cash position?
Sure. Yeah. Liquidity is good. I feel like we're in a good position. With this downturn, revenues have come down. Revenues come down. The cut that I referred to a little bit earlier in Q3 of last year, we did burn cash in Q3 and Q4 of last year. Now kind of got that big piece behind us. There were some severance costs, all the one-time expenses that we had to incur there. A lot of that's behind us. There'll be a little bit more in Q1. First half, we probably burned a little bit of cash. Second half, we grow cash. We've got a revolver. I mean, I think the liquidity is fine. No issues as far as that concerned. I mean, if you think of capital, as we think about, we do have a little bit of debt.
As far as what do we do with that excess cash if I look out another year? We do have the debt, buybacks and things like that. I think it's a little premature to start thinking about that. I mean, at some point in time, we'll kind of get back in the acquisition market as well.
Right. As I think about sort of pecking order, right, it's pretty clearly delevering. Then obviously beneath that, or not beneath it, but after that is more returning actual cash to shareholders, dividends or buybacks. Where does, and you said M&A will continue to be important. What about sort of does organic investment trump all of it? How do you kind of think about that as part of the?
I mean, today, the answer is yes, definitely, right? I mean, we are investing heavily in the business, and we're excited about the opportunities that we have before us. I think that is primarily our focus. We want to stay there for now. As cash grows, then we can kind of start to look at other alternatives beyond that.
Got it. Last question before I open it up to the audience. What is it, if you had one thing that you feel like investors miss or get wrong about MaxLinear that you kind of want to make sure people get right or something that you want to make sure people hear about MaxLinear, what is that?
I kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier, but it's back to that infrastructure business, I think. It's often kind of discounted. I mean, it's an organically grown business that's doing, call it mid-60% gross margin that is growing in a really sticky area of big growth. I think that a lot of people look at past product lines that we've done and kind of overlook that area for us. I think over time, I mentioned that $300 to $500 million. That's a big business for us that I think will be very valuable going forward. I think that's the one that I usually mention.
Awesome. All right. Let's open it up to any questions from the audience.
Yes.
We got one over here.
Yeah.
We had the ChatGPT moment a couple of years ago, and it looks like China kind of had their DeepSeek movement a month ago. You guys have exposure there. Are you seeing any incremental pickup in your China business? Thanks. I'd say that, I mean, China business is going well. I don't know if there's been a pickup since then, but I think it's been consistent as well. I don't think it's a negative. I think it's going pretty well.
Great. Anybody else?
Where'd you get your tan? That's cute.
No. In my office. In my office.
Yeah.
All right. Oh, we got one more question. Sorry.
You have.
Hold on one sec for the mic, please. Sorry.
Now you have some competitors like they are promoting the LRO, LPO, basically saving power, right? You just mentioned like one of your competencies is like 20% lower power. Does MaxLinear go for any of them or you still maintain the full DSP solution? Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, it's a great question, actually. That's exactly, I would say, that as this market gets a lot bigger, there's a lot of different flavors. I mean, you mentioned LPO, LRO. There's a lot of different ways to kind of solve these problems. I think we have all the IP building blocks, whether you want to use a full DSP on both ends or one end only or neither. We've still got drivers and TIAs even in that circumstance, right? I think our opportunity is to continue to stay close, work with our customers to grow that business in whatever flavor that ends up looking like, right? All the talk now is around CPO. You can talk about LPO. We can talk about Coherent Life. We can talk about all of these flavors.
The market's getting a lot bigger. I think our set of tools that we have to work with, with our customers, I think is the way to solve the problem. I do not think we care. I mean, we can debate the value proposition that each one of those gets and what is the timeline that each of them roll out in because there are a lot of these newer technologies that are brand new that probably take a little bit longer to implement. At the end of the day, we got to just kind of stay focused, work with our customers in order to grow that revenue.
Great. A great question to wrap up. We got one more quick question here. We're at time after this. Yeah, go ahead.
In the traditional cable side, we used to have a lot of two-box customers instead of a household that's consolidated to one. Has that market just kind of permanently shrunk or is there an opportunity for it to kind of come back and get back to prior peak levels?
I think it is growing. I mean, I think I was mentioning earlier about the cable market and the spending, the upgrades that are ongoing right now. I absolutely see opportunities. I'm not saying that that's going to it's off to the races or anything, but that upgrade cycle, I mean, these guys are trying to compete against the telcos. They have spent a lot of money to date trying to upgrade the network. Now you're going to see the CPE upgraded. Then we see a DOCSIS 4.0 or a DOCSIS 3.1 Ultra where you've got a 50% increase in ASPs. Whatever that unit growth rate looks like, I think you're going to see some good growth out of MaxLinear.
Awesome. Steve, thank you so much. This was great. Thank you, audience, for your time.
Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.