MaxLinear Launches a Price Cut for Cable, Weeks After Its CEO Sold $50 Million of Stock
Puma 9, launched 28 September, cuts the cost of cable modem gear by 30 to 50 percent, a gift to operators and a knife aimed at Broadcom's 60 percent market share. The $90 stock, up 459 percent in a year, is priced on neither: it rides the AI optics that doubled revenue in eight quarters.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
A cable chip whose one pitch is a discount
MaxLinear launched Puma 9 on 28 September: an 8-nanometer modem chip that runs DOCSIS 3.1, 3.1+ and 4.0 on one piece of silicon 1. The headline feature is a price. Gear built on it should cost 30 to 50 percent less than rival DOCSIS 4.0 equipment, and no more than a legacy 3.1 box 1. Devices arrive in 2027, the chip ditches Intel's x86 cores for ARM, and the company claims "multiple commitments" 2.
The $8.4 billion rides on the other half of the company
That valuation 4 belongs to optical interconnects wiring AI data centers, not cable modems. The market's verdict on the launch was a shrug: the stock closed at $90.00, down 4.1 percent, about 30 percent below its 52-week high of $128.30 3. GuruFocus pegs intrinsic value at $20.86 a share against that price, a 331 percent overvaluation call 3. The shares first went vertical in April, up 84 percent in a day, on the optical story 9.
Second-quarter revenue came in at $168.8 million, up 55 percent, led by infrastructure up 145 percent to about $85 million; broadband brought about $45 million 5. Management raised its 2026 optical outlook to $210 million to $230 million and guided the current quarter to $210 million to $220 million 5. Analysts see broadband at $190 million this year, down 7 percent, while infrastructure heads toward $398 million 4.
Puma 9 lands in the shrinking half.
Revenue doubled in eight quarters, and the driver is AI optics
- Revenue
- Estimate
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q3 '24 | $81.1M |
| Q4 '24 | $92.17M |
| Q1 '25 | $95.93M |
| Q2 '25 | $108.81M |
| Q3 '25 | $126.46M |
| Q4 '25 | $136.44M |
| Q1 '26 | $137.19M |
| Q2 '26 | $168.85M |
| Q3 '26E (estimate) | $215M ($210–220M) |
The sellers were inside the building
Chief executive Kishore Seendripu sold 591,454 shares across two August trades for about $50.4 million, at prices near $85 6. Insiders as a group sold $60.6 million over twelve months and bought none 3; a running tally puts the recent wave at $57 million 7. The pitch is a price cut; the sellers were the people who make the chips.
Broadcom already holds roughly 60 percent of the DOCSIS chipset market to MaxLinear's 40, and only about 8 percent of modems shipped are DOCSIS 4.0 2. MaxLinear lost $73 million, $245 million and $137 million across 2023, 2024 and 2025 6.
Three straight years of losses, the worst a $245 million deficit in 2024
Data
| Net income | |
|---|---|
| 2023 | -$73M |
| 2024 | -$245M |
| 2025 | -$137M |
What the optimists hold, and the date that decides it
The bull case has receipts: a return to GAAP profit, two cents a share, after at least seven straight losing quarters 58; an optical outlook raised twice since April 59; and Dell'Oro's Jeff Heynen crediting Puma 9 with "materially lower deployment risk and capital expenses" for operators 1. He also expects it to do nothing to speed the DOCSIS 4.0 network upgrades themselves 2.
The partners announced are equipment makers, Askey, Gemtek and FRITZ!, building boxes, with Mediacom still "evaluating" 1. Earnings land 27 October 6. Named Puma 9 commitments there, not adjectives, would settle whether the discount buys share or just a cheaper market.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
