By Tess Stynes 

Broadcom Corp. said its first-quarter earnings rose 27% as the chip maker reported stronger revenue and some decline in operating expenses.

Shares rose 3% to $45.30 in recent after hours trading as the results topped expectations.

For the current quarter, the company forecast revenue of $2.025 billion to $2.175 billion. The midpoint of the guidance topped estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters for $2.07 billion.

Broadcom Corp. and so-called merchant-chip suppliers have been churning out new chips to help devices like switching systems move data between computers and the Internet. Products from such chip suppliers are increasingly popular among network-hardware companies that don't want to design semiconductors themselves.

Broadcom, the biggest maker of chips used in networking boxes, recently announced high-performance additions to a chip line that it expects to be widely used in both switching systems and routers that help direct Internet traffic.

Chief Executive Scott McGregor said the latest results were driven by strength in the high-end smartphone and broadband access markets.

Overall, Broadcom reported a profit of $209 million, or 34 cents a share, up from $165 million, or 28 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items such as asset write-downs and year-earlier asset sale gains, per-share earnings rose to 64 cents from 33 cents. Analysts expected per-share earnings of 60 cents.

Revenue increased 3.7% to $2.06 billion from the prior quarter. Analysts expected $2.01 billion.

Research and development expenses fell 15% and overhead costs declined 4.3%.

Broadcom last year decided to exit it cellular baseband unit--which designs chips used in connecting smartphones, tablets and other mobile electronics to wireless networks. Broadcom was aiming to save about $700 million a year with the move.

Write to Tess Stynes at tess.stynes@wsj.com

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