Fabless Chipmaker MaxLinear Prepares for Next Week’s Modest IPO

in cable TV set top boxes, digital televisions, mobile handsets, personal computers, netbooks, and in-vehicle display systems. “We believe that several favorable trends, across multiple target markets, are contributing to the increase in revenue opportunity for providers of RF receivers and RF receiver SoCs [systems on chips],” the company says.

As a fabless semiconductor company, MaxLinear uses third-party contractors in Asia for manufacturing and assembly. All of its chips are made by United Microelectronics Corporation, or UMC, at foundries in Taiwan and Singapore.

MaxLinear says it generated roughly $51.3 million in revenue in 2009, and 99 percent of its sales were in Asia. Before 2009, most of MaxLinear’s revenue came from sales of its mobile handset digital television receivers in Japan, with the balance generated by global sales of its digital television RF receiver chips. Its biggest customers are Panasonic (23 percent), Murata (13 percent), and MTC (12 percent).

Last year, the company sold more chips for use in digital set top boxes (made in Asia and sold in Europe) and in automotive navigation displays and digital TVs. MaxLinear says its future revenue growth will depend on the company’s ability to expand—particularly in markets for cable set top boxes, automotive entertainment, Internet Protocol TV, and personal computer TVs. Competitors include a variety of large and small semiconductor companies, including Analog Devices, Broadcom, Entropic Communications, Silicon Laboratories, and Xceive.

The company says its success also depends on the continued services of Seendripu, MaxLinear’s chairman and CEO, Curtis Ling, the chief technical officer, and Madhukar Reddy, vice president for IC and RF Systems Engineering.

As a final note, I’m told that the “quiet period” for an IPO ends when the underwriters’ over-allotment option has been exercised, closed, or expires unexercised. It depends on the language of the company’s agreement with its underwriters, but the option usually can be exercised for 30 days after the IPO. I’m guessing the ice on Alaska’s Nenana River won’t break until April 27—and maybe MaxLinear will talk with me sometime in May.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.