PLX Technology: Fiscal 1Q12 Financial Results

PLX Technology, Inc. announced first quarter revenues of $25.4 million and a GAAP net loss of $7.4 million, or $0.17 per share (diluted).

"Our product revenue grew five percent in the quarter, driven by a 12 percent growth rate in PCI Express. Our overall revenues were within our guidance range, but toward the lower end as some IP revenue slipped into Q2 due to ongoing strategic combination activities," said Ralph Schmitt, PLX president and CEO. "Our bookings strengthened progressively through the first quarter, indicating that a market recovery is underway and providing a higher level of backlog as we entered the second quarter. As a result, we are optimistic that we will see growth in Q2."

PLX announced in a separate press release that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (IDT), and a summary of the terms of the agreement can be found in a Form 8-K, which will be filed by PLX and posted on the PLX Technology Website. Under the terms of the agreement, PLX may solicit superior proposals from third parties for a period of 30 calendar days continuing through May 30, 2012. It is not anticipated that any developments will be disclosed with regard to this process unless PLX’s Board of Directors makes a decision with respect to a potential superior proposal. There are no guarantees that this process will result in a superior proposal.

"This is an exciting new chapter for PLX," said Schmitt. "The board’s decision to move forward in combination with another leading technology company will help reduce risk and accelerate shareholder value. The announced combination with IDT strengthens our position in data center interconnect solutions and offers substantial business and technology synergies that will allow us to better service our customers and leverage exciting growth opportunities in our space."     
                                
Product Highlights and Strategic Direction
"We were pleased to see the successful first quarter rollout of Intel’s Xeon Processor E5-2600 product family because it is a significant milestone for the entire data center ecosystem and directly impacts PLX’s new product portfolio of PCI Express Gen3 switches and 10GbE transceivers," said Schmitt. "Xeon E5 enables the long-awaited Gen3 standard, which translates to numerous new design opportunities across the enterprise market as well as consumer motherboards. Further, Intel’s recent deployment of the new X450 Ethernet controller that is based on 10GBase-T technology is quite significant as it will fully enable the emerging 10GbE Base-T infrastructure and ultimately help drive the ramp of PLX design wins to market."

During the first quarter, PLX announced a new 10GBase-T physical layer (PHY) device that is optimized for Top-of-Rack (ToR) network switches. The TeraPHY TN8045 10GBase-T transceiver, a quad-port PHY, is housed in a small 25mm-square package that is space-optimized to allow for 12 devices to fit side-by-side in a standard 48-port 10GbE ToR switch. 10GbE is replacing the ubiquitous 1GbE standard. Data centers are being enabled with this higher-speed connectivity via PLX’s 10GBase-T TeraPHY technology due to its 10-fold performance increase, as well as its seamless use of low-cost standard copper Ethernet cabling, EMI features, security tools, and energy efficiency. 10GBase-T PHYs are a fundamental building block of common data center hardware, including Ethernet switches, network interface cards (NICs), and network adapters. PLX innovation enabled the industry’s first 10GBase-T equipment, and its 10GBase-T PHY portfolio is designed into numerous platforms. Increasingly power-efficient and feature-rich PLX PHYs designed on a 28-nanometer node are now in development.

PLX’s ExpressLane PCIe Gen3 switch family, designed on a 40nm process node, includes broad lane counts ranging from 12 up to 48, and port counts of three up to 12. The devices began sampling in November 2010 with production shipments in Q1 2011, and are compliant with the PCI-SIG Base Specification 3.0. Board and system designers can take advantage of the latest PCIe specification – 8 gigabits in both directions (Tx/Rx), per lane – thus enabling one PLX 48-lane Gen3 switch to manage 768 gigabits of full peer-to-peer bandwidth. High-performance PCIe Gen3 is enabling new markets due to its low cost and extensive market adoption. PLX initiatives include the expanding role of PCIe in enterprise storage using SSD, and re-tooling data center architectures by adopting small ExpressFabric clusters to replace costly IB and other.