Let {Y
i }
i≥1
be a sequence of {0, 1} variables which forms a Markov chain with a given initial probability distribution and one-step transition probability matrix. Define Nn to be the
number of trials until the nth success (‘‘1’’) in {Y
i }
i≥1
. In this paper, we study the distribution of the random variable T =
Nn
i=1
X
i , where {X
i }
i≥1
is a sequence of independent and
identically distributed random variables having a common phase-type distribution. The
distribution of T is obtained by means of phase-type distributions