Subsequently, Starboard Value LP, one of Marvell's shareholders, acquired a 10.7% interest in Mellanox Technologies, a leading provider of server and storage end-to-end connectivity solutions. Mellanox Corporation has been working on the development of InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect products , Providing customers with high bandwidth, low latency, scalability, energy saving and cost advantages of the product. Mellanox completed the acquisition of the famous Infiniband switch maker Voltaire company by the end of 2010, making Mellanox in HPC, cloud computing, data centers, Enterprise computing and storage markets have gained more comprehensive capabilities. Broadcom, Intel, Cavium, Mellanox, Marvell compete to some extent.In June last year, Cavium acquired server and storage network connectivity product provider QLogic, trying to Construct a large company with $ 1 billion in annual revenue and compete with competitors such as Broadcom, Intel and Mellanox in the storage and networking markets.
Aggressive investor Starboard, which took over a 10% stake in Mellanox, urged the company to try to increase revenue and profitability, according to Mellanox's 2017 Q3 earnings release at the end of October showing Mellanox Q3 posted sales of $ 226 million, GAAP gross profit margin was 65.7%, an increase of 65.1% over the same period of last year; non-GAAP gross profit margin was 70.7%, a slight decrease from 71.8% of the same period last year; GAAP operation Revenues were $ 6.6 million and operating income was $ 14.5 million in the third quarter of 2016. GAAP net income was $ 3.4 million compared to net revenues of $ 12.0 million in the third quarter of 2016. Starboard believes that Mellanox spends too much on research and development Other companies are trying to increase revenue, compared with their peers Mellanox sacrificed profit margins, the radical investors want the company to improve its operations, and informed sources said Starboard's move is also conducive to the Marvell acquisition negotiations.