Compare moats
Up to three covered companies, band by band. Every call is a curated editorial judgment, never a disclosed figure — and every band carries its cited basis.
| MaxLinear | Eli Lilly and Company | |
|---|---|---|
| Moat rating | none MaxLinear’s FY2025 10-K does not show a durable advantage. Its income statement reports revenue of $693,263 thousand in 2023, $360,528 thousand in 2024 and $467,641 thousand in 2025, with operating losses of $38,221 thousand, $223,352 thousand and $126,890 thousand. The risk factors say “Increased competition has resulted in price pressure, decreased demand, reduced revenue and profitability, and loss of market share”; the business section says competitors include “companies with much longer operating histories, greater name recognition, and substantially greater financial, technical and operational resources”; and because its products “often are building block semiconductors” it also faces integrated-circuit makers, “some of which may be existing customers or platform partners”. Two customers were 28% of 2025 net revenue and the ten largest 65%, and “substantially all of our sales to date have been made on a purchase order basis”. Gross profit held up - $385,663 thousand, $194,782 thousand and $265,814 thousand for 2023 to 2025 - and the AI optical ramp has lifted 2026 results, but a revenue base that nearly halved in one year and three straight years of operating losses do not evidence a moat. | wide Eli Lilly's FY2025 10-K states "Intellectual property protection is critical" and that compound patents provide roughly 20-year market exclusivity ("patents in each relevant country last for a period of 20 years"), warning that loss of patent protection causes a "severe and rapid decline in revenues." Backed by an 83.0% gross margin (up from 81.3% in 2024) and a fast-growing, patent-protected incretin franchise (Mounjaro +99%, Zepbound +175% in 2025), the economic moat is wide and durable. Source: LLY FY2025 10-K. |
| Moat type | none No single source of advantage in the 10-K is strong enough to name. MaxLinear has “over one thousand issued patents” and says consideration under intellectual property sale agreements “has previously been and is currently expected in the future be material”, but the same filing describes its products as building blocks that larger vendors can integrate, says some optical-interconnect customers are “module makers who are vertically integrated, where we compete with internally supplied components”, and claims only that “We believe that we compete favorably” on factors from product performance to price. Its RF-CMOS integration know-how is real, but nothing in the filing shows customers locked in or rivals unable to match it. | intangibles ip Per the LLY FY2025 10-K, the pharma protection "anticipated to be of most relevance" is "patents claiming the active ingredient (the compound patent)," supplemented by regulatory data protection, FDA approvals, and brands — i.e., intangible assets. The 10-K notes that without such protection, products face intense generic and biosimilar price competition that erodes revenue quickly. |
| Leadership | fast follower In its fastest-growing line MaxLinear is a second source. Deep Fundamental’s September 27, 2024 deep dive (https://deepfundamental.substack.com/p/deep-dive-optical-module-market) says “Marvell ($MRVL) and Broadcom ($AVGO) are two major suppliers of DSPs, with Marvell holding the top position in the market”, that “Coherent also sources heavily from Marvell, with Broadcom/ Maxlinear potentially serving as second supplier with 20-30% share”, and that MaxLinear offers “DSPs at about half the price of Marvell's if it can achieve a meaningful mass production volume of at least 100K units per month”. Keystone has since reached volume - management said on the Q2 2026 call that it “continues to ramp into high volume production at major hyperscale customers across U.S. and Asia” - but the 10-K names Broadcom, Qualcomm, Realtek, Skyworks, Credo, MediaTek, Marvell, MACOM, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Renesas, Microchip and Semtech as primary merchant competitors, and no third-party source found ranks MaxLinear first in any of its markets. | co leader Duopoly with Novo Nordisk: Novo's own FY2025 20-F names "Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly [as] the most significant companies measured by market share" in the global diabetes and GLP-1 markets. Lilly is ascendant — the 20-F concedes Wegovy's years-long US anti-obesity prescription lead "was overtaken by a competing GLP-1 based product in the beginning of 2025" (Lilly's tirzepatide) — but Novo still cites Ozempic as "the leading product by sales," so co-leader is the honest band. Sources: Novo Nordisk FY2025 20-F; LLY FY2025 10-K. |
| Pricing power | moderate Mixed. Gross profit has stayed in proportion through the cycle - the 10-K’s income statement shows $265,814 thousand on revenue of $467,641 thousand in 2025 - and the Q2 2026 release (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001288469/000128846926000050/a06302026exhibit991.htm) reports GAAP gross margin of 57.8% against 56.5% a year earlier, guiding Q3 to 57.0%-60.0%. But the 10-K says “From time to time, we have reduced the average unit price of our products due to competitive pricing pressures, new product introductions by us or our competitors, and for other reasons, and we expect that we will have to do so again in the future”, that under some distributor agreements “we provide protection for reductions in selling prices of the distributors' inventory”, and in optical DSPs it entered as the lower-priced challenger. | moderate Mixed. The LLY 10-K shows an 83.0% gross margin (up 1.7pp), evidence of strong list-price power on exclusive branded drugs; but it repeatedly notes 2025 revenue growth was "partially offset by lower realized prices" for both Mounjaro and Zepbound, alongside heavy PBM/formulary rebate pressure and default anti-obesity coverage restrictions (e.g., US self-insured employers "must generally opt in" for obesity-drug coverage). Net pricing power is therefore moderate, not strong. |
| Summary | MaxLinear is a fabless designer of RF, analog and mixed-signal communications SoCs whose core skill, per its FY2025 10-K, is combining broadband RF and analog front ends with digital signal processing in standard CMOS. It sells into broadband access (cable, fiber PON and DSL gateways - approximately 44% of 2025 net revenue), home connectivity (Wi-Fi, MoCA, G.hn and Ethernet), wired and wireless infrastructure including optical data-center DSPs, and industrial and multi-market interface and power products. After a downturn that took revenue from $693,263 thousand in 2023 to $360,528 thousand in 2024, the AI optical ramp is turning it around: the Q2 2026 release reports revenue of $168,847 thousand, up 55% year over year, with the infrastructure business up 145% on the Keystone PAM4 DSP ramp for 800G, and management raised its 2026 optical data-center revenue outlook to $210 million-$230 million on the call. The moat question is whether that growth rests on anything durable. In optical DSPs MaxLinear entered as a lower-priced second source to Marvell; elsewhere it competes with Broadcom, Qualcomm, Realtek and MediaTek, which can integrate the functions it sells; customers are concentrated; and the 10-K still carries the Silicon Motion arbitration over its terminated merger, whose outcome it says it cannot predict. On this record MaxLinear is a technically capable challenger without a moat. | Lilly's moat rests on patent-protected, FDA-approved branded medicines led by its tirzepatide incretin franchise: per the FY2025 10-K, Mounjaro ($22.97B) and Zepbound ($13.54B) together generated roughly 56% of 2025's $65.2B revenue (up 99% and 175% respectively), while compound patents confer ~20-year market exclusivity and support an 83.0% gross margin. Durable competition only emerges after patents and regulatory data protection lapse, at which point the 10-K warns generics and biosimilars drive a "severe and rapid decline in revenues." |
| Chain position | MaxLinear sells chips, much of it through Asian distributors, ODMs and module makers - products shipped to Asia were 82% of 2025 net revenue, including 49% to Hong Kong - that build cable modems, PON terminals, Wi-Fi gateways, base-station radios and optical transceivers for operators and hyperscale data centers. In the AI chain it sits beside the optical-module makers as a DSP supplier, competing with Marvell and Broadcom and, at vertically integrated module makers, with internally supplied components. | Upstream branded-drug originator. Per the FY2025 10-K, US distribution flows through three wholesalers (McKesson, Cencora, Cardinal Health), each accounting for over 10% of consolidated revenue, into consolidated PBMs/payers whose formularies and rebate demands constrain net price; Lilly is also expanding a direct-to-patient channel, LillyDirect. |
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| Long-horizon vote | +0.01 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. | +0.30 at weight 0.20 · swarm neutral Editorial prior, not backtested. |