Marvell Technology pulled back 4.6% on Wednesday to $198.70, the first meaningful retreat since the blowout May 27 earnings print that sent the stock to $208.26.
The selloff lands in a market where analysts are still scrambling to catch up. The day before the print, a cluster of firms lifted targets aggressively. HSBC made the sharpest move, upgrading to Buy from Hold and doubling its target to $300. Morgan Stanley, holding at Equal-Weight, raised to $172 from $103. Susquehanna went to $230 from $100. Citigroup, Stifel, and Wells Fargo all pushed targets into the $195–$215 band. Even the sceptics moved: TD Cowen raised its Hold target to $190 from $90. The direction of travel is unanimous — every firm that updated in the past week lifted numbers. The live target cluster now runs from $172 to $300, with the post-reaction price of $198.70 already above the cautious end of the range. Morgan Stanley's $172 Equal-Weight target now sits below the current price, a configuration that typically invites debate about whether the cautious rating can hold.
The bull case rests on data centre momentum. Marvell's interconnect business guided to over 50% year-over-year growth in FY27, well above prior expectations. The data centre segment grew 9% sequentially. Communications recovered 2% sequentially, broadening the rebound beyond AI infrastructure alone. Bears counter with margin risk: sequential gross margin compression of roughly 25 basis points introduces uncertainty about whether top-line strength translates cleanly to the bottom line. Hyperscaler spending concentration is the other worry — with revenues heavily weighted toward a small number of cloud customers, any deceleration in cloud capex would hit Marvell harder than more diversified peers.
Short positioning adds little pressure here. Short interest is just 3.7% of the free float, and the lending market is deeply relaxed — availability runs above 7,400%, meaning borrow supply dwarfs current short demand by a wide margin. Cost to borrow has fallen 36% over the past week to just 0.16%. The ORTEX short score of 32 reflects a moderately covered position, not an aggressive short thesis. Options positioning is also neutral: the put/call ratio of 1.25 is marginally below its 20-day average of 1.27, with a z-score of -0.76 — no unusual hedging demand in either direction. Insiders were net sellers into the rally, with the CEO selling roughly $13m worth of stock on May 20 alone, but these moves appear tied to scheduled award-and-sell plans rather than a directional read on fundamentals.
Compared with semiconductor peers, MRVL's Wednesday pullback was notable. AVGO added 1.9% on the day. ON jumped 9.3%. MPWR rose 4.6%. The divergence suggests Wednesday's move was specific to MRVL — likely profit-taking after a 27% rally from the May lows — rather than a sector-wide rotation.
The earnings are now in the rearview, but the real test is whether the fresh $300 HSBC target and the cluster of Street upgrades can anchor expectations at a higher level — or whether the stock, now trading above the cautious end of the range and below the optimistic end, drifts into the valuation debate that the print itself hasn't yet resolved.
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