PLX: Fiscal 3Q11 Financial Results

   
PLX Technology, Inc. announced record third quarter revenues of $31.1 million and a GAAP net loss of $4.2 million, or $0.09 per share (diluted).

"While the business environment was challenging during the quarter, continued healthy demand for our differentiated product portfolio allowed us to once again achieve record revenue levels," said Ralph Schmitt, PLX president and CEO. "10 Gigabit Ethernet had a strong quarter and PCI Express Gen3 had record design wins as customers are starting to gear up for the Intel Romley launch. We also saw some seasonal strength in our storage business driven by the uptake of FireWire products used in Apple-based systems."

"This quarter we took steps to reduce operational costs, including announcing the divesture of our Abingdon, UK Design Center shortly after the close of the quarter," said Schmitt. "Further streamlining our business and focusing on PLX leadership in PCI Express and 10 Gigabit Ethernet allows us to concentrate more on the fast-growing data center and cloud services markets."

Product Highlights and Strategic Direction
During the third quarter, PLX released its third-generation 10 Gigabit Ethernet family into full production. This milestone ushers in a fundamental shift in the global transformation of data center connectivity, from Gigabit Ethernet to 10 Gigabit Ethernet performance over standard, low-cost cabling. The family is fabricated on a 40-nanometer process node and consists of single-, dual- and quad-port integrated 10GBase-T transceivers. Multiple PLX customers have tested and qualified these products as they prepare for production. With the market’s broadest 10GBase-T physical layer (PHY) portfolio in production, followed by next-generation 28nm products, PLX is well positioned to support this market as it develops.

The company also expanded its PCI Express Gen3 switch family during the quarter to eleven products with five new high-performance, feature-packed devices, compliant with the PCI Express Gen3 r1.0 Specification. The new switches blend innovation and high port counts to enable new, more powerful designs in servers, storage and communications platforms. With the debut of these five new switches, PLX now offers Gen3 devices ranging from 12 to 48 lanes, and three to 18 ports.

"PLX was the industry’s first vendor to launch PCI Express Gen3 silicon more than one year ago and this leadership position has placed PLX at the forefront of Gen3 reference designs by worldwide CPU, GPU and endpoint vendors who have been validating their own silicon and systems using PLX Gen3 devices," said Schmitt. "Numerous Tier-One server and storage OEMs have multiple designs underway in products that will ramp into production the first half of 2012."

PLX announced the inclusion of four more unique PCIe Gen2 devices on the PCI Special Interest Group’s (PCI-SIG) PCI Express 2.0 Integrators List, passing all compliance testing required by leading global OEMs. These PLX devices are for cost-conscious, energy-sensitive, form-factor-restrictive markets, including digital televisions, set-top boxes, home gateways, security systems, cable modems, multi-function printers, video surveillance and other control-plane and embedded applications. The PLX portfolio of 26 PCIe Gen2 devices is listed as compliant and includes selection of switches.

PLX also announced its latest direct attached storage (DAS) USB 3.0-to-SATA controller has passed compliance with the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) and is now listed on the forum’s SuperSpeed USB integrators list. PLX has six devices listed on the USB-IF’s USB 3.0 integrators list and a total of 40 USB-compliant devices therein, reflecting the company’s experience in this globally used technology.

PLX teamed with industry leaders, including Avago and Marvell, at the Intel Developer Forum to showcase expertise in PCIe Gen3, optical and SSD performance. The first demonstration highlighted the data center readiness and ubiquity of PCIe. Breaching PCIe’s dominant inner-box connectivity, PLX PCIe Gen3 switches, together with Avago’s fiber optic modules, extended traffic box-to-box for 30 meters over optical cable with amazing x8 connectivity at 64Gbps. This performance alone challenges other connectivity choices by eliminating the complicated, latency-ridden conversion of standards. The second demonstration focused on the performance of Marvell’s SSD controllers, enabled by PLX PCIe switches, in an enterprise storage application. Aggregate performance of four SSD cards reached 2.5 million IOPs.

Business Outlook

• Net revenues for the fourth quarter ending December 31, 2011, are expected to be between $28 million and $32 million
• Gross margins are expected to be approximately 58 percent
• Operating expenses are expected to be approximately $22.2 million. Included in operating expenses are share-based compensation and acquisition-related amortization charges of approximately $3.9 million