Marvell Technology soars up 278 percent in debut

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (Nasdaq: MRVL) stormed up 41 5/8, or 278 percent, to 56 5/8 Tuesday in its initial public offering.

It priced 6 million shares at $15 a share, above its raised range.

Marvell, which makes integrated circuits which store and transmit digital data at high speeds, raised its range to $12-$14 per share from $9-$11 a share.

The company's financials look worthy of Billy Crystal's approval, despite a short operating history. Fiscal 2000 sales were up 282.9 percent over the previous year's. Sales were of two primary items -- read channel and preamplifier products, which began shipping in June 1999.

The company turns a profit as well; for the year ended January 31, the company had net income of $13.1 million on revenue of $81.4 million, as opposed to a loss of $959,000 on revenue of $21.25 million in 1999.

Marvell has some big name customers, though revenue is highly concentrated in Samsung , which accounted for 36 percent of sales in fiscal 2000. Seagate (NYSE: SEG) accounted fo 24 percent, Hitachi for 14 percent, Fujitsu for 14 percent and Toshiba for 10 percent.

The company's competitors include Cirrus Logic (Nasdaq: CRUS), Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), NEC (Nasdaq: NIPNY), STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN).

As Marvell expands its presence in the broadband data communications market, it also expects to compete with Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM).

Goldman, Sachs & Co., Lehman Brothers and J.P. Morgan & Co., are underwriters for the offering, which will leave about 82.5 million shares outstanding in the company. >