Sales Surge at Marvell Tech

Updated from 4:25 p.m. EDT

First-quarter sales grew more than 40% year over year at Marvell Technology (MRVL Quote), helping the company to top analysts' expectations.

Thanks to a recent acquisition, the company also offered better-than-expected sales guidance for coming quarters.

Investors cheered the news, bidding up the company's shares by $3.05, or about 6%, to $52.76 in after-hours exchanges.

In the quarter ended April 29, the chipmaker earned $75.3 million, or 23 cents a share, on sales of $521.2 million, Marvell reported after the bell Thursday.

Those figures were up from the previous year, when the company earned $63.5 million, or 20 cents a share, on $364.8 million in sales.

That the company's earnings growth trailed its revenue growth was due in part to an accounting change; like other public companies, Marvell began expensing stock options this fiscal year.

Without those costs as well as amortization and acquisition-related charges, the company would have earned $141.1 million, or 44 cents a share, up from $84.2 million, or 27 cents a share a year earlier.

On this basis, analysts had forecast that the company would earn 42 cents a share on sales of $516.9 million, according to Thomson First Call.

The company had predicted that it would post sales ranging from about $513 million to $518 million, but didn't give an earnings target.

In its current, second quarter, Marvell expects sales of about $580 million to $585 million, including a $30 million contribution from the printer semiconductor business it recently acquired from Avago Technologies.

Although the company didn't offer a specific earnings target, its guidance implies a per-share profit, excluding stock options and other costs, of about 44 cents to 45 cents a share.

The Street had previously forecast earnings of 45 cents a share on sales of $549 million in the current period, but that estimate may not have included the printer semiconductor business.