Astera Labs reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat on top and bottom lines, but shares plunged as much as 10% as revenue came short of some analysts’ expectations.
Here’s how the artificial intelligence infrastructure and semiconductor company did compared to LSEG consensus estimates:
- Earnings per share: 58 cents vs. 51 cents expected
- Revenue: $271 million vs. $250 million expected
Revenue in the fourth quarter rose 92% year over year. However, some analysts were expecting the company to report revenue in excess of $280 million for the period.
Astera Labs reported $45 million in net income for the quarter, an 82% increase from $24.7 million the year before. The company said it expects first-quarter revenue to come between $286 million and $297 million, higher than Wall Street expectations of $259 million.
“We started the company eight years ago to really service the cloud and AI infrastructure space,” Astera Labs CEO Jitendra Mohan told CNBC on Tuesday. “And fortunately for us, the space is on fire.”
Mohan attributed the earnings beat to growth in its Scorpio fabric switch and its Taurus ethernet cables, which accounted for 30% of total revenue collectively.
“Increasingly, the bottleneck is shifting from compute to connectivity, and connectivity is where we play,” Mohan said. “So it gives us a lot of opportunity to continue to grow and beat the overall market growth rate in the AI space.”
In addition to reporting earnings, the company also announced that finance chief Mike Tate will be stepping down. Desmond Lynch, currently the finance chief at semiconductor company Rambus, will replace Tate, effective March 2. Tate will remain at Astera Labs as a strategic advisor to the CEO.
Additionally, Astera Labs on Tuesday said it had issued a new warrant for Amazon to buy about $466 million in the chip company’s stock. Amazon owned $43 million in Astera Labs shares as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing.
Astera Labs also announced a research and development center in Israel on Monday.
“We are really bottlenecked by the availability of resources more than anything else,” Mohan said. “So opening a design center in Israel is one step towards getting access to the talent pool that is available.”
Astera Labs was founded by former Texas Instruments executives in 2017. The company went public in 2024, and has inked deals with Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Amazon as customers of its chips.
— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report
WATCH: AI is still in the early stages of development, says Astera Labs CEO
