LITE — expert X mentions

Now let's look at $LITE Market cap: ~$57B Next-quarter guide: ~$985M (+21.8% QoQ, +104.9% YoY) Next-12M revenue: $4.6–5.0B, 85–100% growth Exit margins: 48–50% gross, 37–40% operating Lite site at some of the most constrained layers of the optical buildout: > 800G and 1.6T transceivers > Optical circuit switches (OCS) > CPO external light sources > Pump lasers and DCI One nearterm growth driver is 1.6T. Carries roughly 2x the selling price of 800G, creating both unit growth and higher content per module. Demand is running ahead of supply. Essentially all current and planned capacity is spoken for, with multiple product lines sold out or capacity constrained. The other upside is mix. OCS, CPO, and pump lasers carry better margins than transceivers, which could push adjusted operating margin from 32.2% toward 37–40%. The risk is execution. Lumentum has to expand output, improve yields, and secure enough substrates, equipment, and assembly capacity to convert that demand into revenue. And as always, multiple compression. *Revenue and margins are my projections. NFA

@NullContex1s If $AAOI are projecting $1.4B a quarter q3 2027 ($471m/month), which is $5.6B revenue annualized, (targeting 40%+ gaap gross margins). And they’re a $8B MC… Or if personal $SIVE CW Win capacity projections are around ~$400m midpoint array revenue off 60% gross margins. And that’s a $1B MC. Just applying a low 20 fwd p/e might rerate optical names considerably. Even with other names like $LITE, they’re completely sold out for the next 2 years, and having that sort of demand visibility… Is not a bubble. Europeans tend to use TTM to value companies while optical names are 2027-2028 growth stories.

Thanks, love reading the comments! Goldman Sachs raised Innolight PT to 2581 RMB. Roughly 163.6% upside from current valuations. But the largest thing is its 2026–2028 earnings est revision raised by a whopping 65%/108%/119%, based on: - Much higher silicon photonics module volumes - scale out, scale up, scale across volumes - 1.6T/3.2T lifting blended ASP + margins - increase in AI capex This is typically very material read through on the optical sector since: I tend to think of Innolight as a $TSM (semi capex) type read on how the photonics landscape is doing. Eg. Higher silicon photonics penetration means more TAM for cw lasers like $SIVE (cw) / SOI wafer demand for $SOI. ASP hikes for future gen is positive for the other optical markers too. Think my other takeaway outside the report was Innolight stating 800g demand was growing more significantly than expected from their transcript on the 12th. Which in turn signals more demand for names like $AAOI to $LITE next earnings. TLDR: GS gives high earnings projections during a time of massive corrections. Fundamentally, broader photonics ecosystem should be happy when it’s ER time.

Morgan Stanley: Optical vs Copper How do you think about the optical scale up opportunity in 2027, 2028, 2029, etc, and how does that relates to the Nvidia ecosystem and roadmap? A: We believe a small scale out adoption next year, with small volumes accounting for 10-15% penetration with scale out. We do think there are some low adoption with CPO until Feynman in 2029. Small, single digit adoption of CPO in 2028 and really scaling in 2029. You took your TAM to $73B, 4x from a year ago, talk about the drivers of that and how that compares to consensus and buy side out there? A: Driven by CapEx data points being 2x we were expecting last year, that is one vector of growth. The other is the cluster sizes being discussed are the biggest rivers of scale up network . We have gone from 8 to 72, then from a couple 100s to 1000s in the next couple generations. This acts as a multiplier to scale up multiplier. Talk about the exposure among Lumentum, Coherent, and Corning. Are there nuances between who is more exposed, less exposed? A: For CPO within scale out, it is generally positive for Lumentum. Doesn't necessarily changed a whole lot for Corning. With Coherent, they have to balance it out with transceiver business they have. For Lumentum it is the most positive because of the one customer they have on the transceiver side being google and they are not going to be adopting CPO. For CPO within scale up, it is opportunity for all 3. This is where copper gets replaced with fiber and lit up by lasers and optical engines made by Coherent an Lumentum. In terms of overall exposure, Lumentum has a bigger catalyst because of larger AI/DC revenue. It would be incremental for both Coherent and lumentum. Lumentum #1, Coherent or Corning #2. Tell me about the Corning Glass Bridge announcement that got the stock excited? A: This is not a new announcement. It was a paper they released in 2025 and a presentation they did that refocused the market on this technology. It is already part of the $10B photonics target the company discussed couple of months ago. In terms of catalyst for optical space, OCP (Open Compute Project) coming in October has gone popular. What are you expecting to hear from this? A: We think this will be a catalyst because it provides more exposure into hyperscaler behavior. OCP will give us a chance to see hyperscalers roadmap, it will focus on CPO, NPO adoption and the vendors involved. Copper is still the story for 2026 and 2027. We have seen this continued enthusiasm for ASICs. How is copper well positioned for this dynamic? Who are the well positioned beneficiaries? A: Copper life can be extended with use of retimers and better SerDes. Copper has a lot of runway before switching to optics. We will likely see a hybrid environment before going to 100% optics. A large debate in scale up is what fabric and protocol will become dominant other than NVLINK as we get into new XPUs and alternatives to Nvidia GPUs ramping. A big debate here is between UALink and ethernet. Ethernet is dependent on Broadcom's new ASICs ramping in 2H2027 into 2028, we think Broadcom will have opportunity to bundle XPU solutions with networking portfolio and are very well positioned in ethernet. On UALink, this is high optionality for Marvell and Astera Labs. Astera has the scale up switch for Trainium 3, this is a PCIe based solution. We think customers will want to move to UA Link eventually. You consider Keysight as an agnostic winner in R&D, regardless of the copper vs optical timeline. Explain your thesis and why do you see it pulling ahead? A: Keysight really ways in multiple ways when it comes to AI. First, it benefits from different types of architectures being discussed which all need to be tested with their equipment in labs. Second, when you move to higher speeds (400g laser vs 200g), it requires more complicated testing. Third, when architectures change frequently, like every 2 years, that boosts their business. The variety of architectures being tested matters. $ALAB $NVDA $AVGO $MRVL $CRDO $SMTC $APH $KEYS $COHR $LITE $GLW $GOOGL

The #1 Communications Equipment Stock: Lumentum Holdings Reality Check 📊 Lumentum Holdings ($LITE) skyrocketed 164% over the last year, securing a $62 billion market cap and the #1 rank out of 39 communications equipment stocks. @CressTopStocks reveals why the quantitative scorecard shows this massive rally is backed by unprecedented fundamental growth. The Key Growth Signs:Cheaper - Despite Rally: Thanks to immense growth, its valuation grade improved from a "D+" to an attractive "B+" over the last six months—making it cheaper now than before the run. - Staggering Growth Multipliers: Boasts a flawless "A+" growth rate, driven by a projected 3-to-5 year forward EPS CAGR of 139% (dwarfing the sector average of 19%). - Massive Valuation Discount: Features a 96% forward ROE growth rate and trades at a massive 48% PEG ratio discount to its sector peers. Steven’s Take: "The stock is up a lot as well over the last year, up 164%... but if you look at the valuation framework for the company, it is a B+, which is a very attractive valuation compared to the sector. #investingtips101 #StockMarket #Lumentum #LITE #TechStocks #QuantTrading #SeekingAlpha 🔻 Watch the Full Replay on Seeking Alpha below!

These are some of the materials Lumentum shared today on scale-up at the CPO/NPO conference. There were many other interesting presentations as well. I’ll spend some time studying them and share my thoughts in either an article or a shorter post. https://t.co/bC98XIF2t4

BofA: Optical FAUs 🚀 CPO and FAU Market Outlook > Market Take-off: Nvidia's CPO switch volume is expected to remain relatively low in the near term. A meaningful volume is projected to take off in 2028–2029 as scale-up penetration increases. > Shipment Forecasts: BofA expects Nvidia CPO switch shipments to reach 14k units in 2026E, 52k in 2027E, and 190k in 2028E. > Massive TAM by 2030: The Total Addressable Market (TAM) for FAUs in Nvidia CPO switches is projected to reach US$8 billion by 2030E, based on an estimated 1.4 million CPO switch units. > BOM Contribution: FAUs are expected to contribute 5% to 10% of the CPO switch Bill of Materials (BOM), with an Average Selling Price (ASP) ranging from US$80 to US$200. ⚙️ Key Technical Barriers to Entry > Micron-Level Alignment: Pitch tolerance must be controlled at < +/- 0.5 um (for NPO) or even < +/- 0.3 um (for CPO) to prevent linear error accumulation and ensure low-loss transmission. > Automation Requirements: As channel counts rise from 20–36 to 60–100, manual alignment is becoming unsustainable. In-house automatic alignment and testing are critical for consistent quality and yield. ⚡ GlassBridge is Not an Immediate Threat > Early Stage: Despite market concerns, Corning’s wafer-based GlassBridge solution is in its infancy and unlikely to be adopted in current or next-generation CPO designs. > Existing Bottlenecks: GlassBridge faces horizontal "edge coupling" limitations, including misalignment with the Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) due to uneven surfaces, space constraints, extreme alignment requirements, and the inability to conduct wafer-scale testing. $GLW $MRVL $AVGO $HIMX $LITE $COHR $FN $NVDA $TSMC

@meikozz_2026 I don't see any fundamentally wrong. There's probably going to be large corrections from time to time flush out margin/leverage before things move higher. And this month seems like that time of year? $POET confirmed your big optical giants like $LITE, $COHR are completely sold out for the next 2 years, and likely into 2029 for photonics. Innolight confirmed 800g transceiver upward revisions 3 days ago, so that should be positive for $AAOI and the others. Samsung became the most profitable company in the world, and continues to project DRAM hikes for future quarters. $MU signed 16+ LTAs showing memory demand is structural... $META + hyperscaler capex plans are on the higher end of projections. I wouldn't conflate short term price movements with longer term trends. And as seen with $AEHR, recoveries tend to be extremely fast (eg. 1M of corrections wiped out overnight).

TLDR of Innolight investor relations takeaways: 1. "Overall, 1.6T market demand has not contracted; instead, 800G demand has increased significantly compared with previous expectations" Prob most important takeaway as a whole was 800G demand revision (also longer tail demand). Which is a bullish read through on US transceiver makers like $AAOI, $COHR, $LITE. Lot of new customers like neoclouds, AI model companies, contributing to overall demand rather than just hyperscalers, diversification always a bonus. 2. Innolight said the shortage covers the module supply chain broadly including: - Optical chips. - Electrical chips. - PCBs. - Other module materials From last ER, I think they singled out EMLs and CW optical chips as the most constrained. So Innolight's bottleneck list mention broadened since then. They expect some of the component availability to improve gradually from the second half of 2026 through the first half of 2027. Think a lot of this is already known from earlier though. But just some confirmation + easing timelines (EML is extremely bottlenecked, same with CW, this is probably talking about other components). 3. Innolight said module-production equipment is not the constraint. Equipment lead times remain relatively short. So this isn't really a bottleneck compared to others. 4. The overall proportion of silicon photonics continues to trend upward. Last year it was mainly 800G. This year, some 800G customers are further increasing their silicon-photonics proportion. 1.6T also added some new customers Positive for SiPH penetration eg. $SIVE / $JBL, since this shifts away from EML toward CW. Basically: main surprising takeaway is just 800g demand go brrr. Apart from that just reaffirming bottlenecks/timelines/market speculation.

@IrisWan39849142 $AAOI mainly gets revenue from pluggable, they’re developing/sampling related lasers but have no CPO design wins. Others like $MTSI look like they fell off the map for some reason with cpo lasers. CEO says “TBD” with commercial timing and it’s in reliability work right now. And fits the OSINT research done with Ayar removing Macom from their website. So would agree with MS that $SIVE, $LITE, $COHR imo are the three leaders to focus on for lasers.

Positive signs on the Substrate layer $AXTI $COHR $LITE $AAOI etc. We like to see more substrates being manufactured Helps minimize one of the gating factors for downstream production. Hopefully we hear on this next round of calls that they all have solid visibility in substrate supply over the coming quarters / years

Morgan Stanley note on CPO today. Key participants include: - $SIVE, $COHR, and $LITE in laser supply - Broadcom and Nvidia in switch platforms - Lightmatter, Ayar Labs, Marvell/Celestial, and POET in optical engines and photonics, - $TSM, $GFS, and $TSEM in silicon photonics foundry capacity I’ve covered all of these before, like Tower Semi. But I’m especially happy that Morgan Stanley validated my research that $SIVE is one of the critical global players in CPO. A small $1.5B laser company next to your two leading $60B+ companies… If you also synthesize Rosenblatt Securities recent note that China laser suppliers were quite far from having CPO lasers. This kinda magnifies importance of the three Western leaders of that laser chokepoint.

Morgan Stanley: Scale-Up Market Massive Expansion of the Scale-Up Market > 4x Market Surge: The AI scale-up network market is projected to reach a $70 billion+ opportunity by 2030, which is over four times the size estimated just a year ago ($17 billion by 2029). > The Scale-Up Moat: Scale-up networks are essential because they allow thousands of GPUs/accelerators to operate seamlessly as a single supercomputer system, eliminating communication bottlenecks during modern frontier AI model training. > Bigger Clusters: Cluster sizes are expanding rapidly. For example, NVIDIA’s roadmap has progressed from 72 GPUs in a single rack (Blackwell) to 144 GPUs (Vera Rubin), 576 GPUs (Rubin Ultra), and potentially over 1,000 GPUs with Feynman. The "Copper Wall" vs. Optical Transition > Copper is Staying Longer: Copper remains the preferred short-reach technology due to lower latency, lower power consumption, and lower cost. Innovations like PAM4/PAM6, advanced SerDes, and retimers are extending copper's life further than the industry previously expected. > Optics is Inevitable but Back-Weighted: As cluster domains push past a single rack, managing electrical signal degradation at high speeds becomes too inefficient. Morgan Stanley expects Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) to see meaningful adoption starting with the NVIDIA Feynman generation around 2028–2029. Recent market sell-offs surrounding delayed CPO adoption are viewed as overdone. Fabric & Ecosystem Protocol Debates > NVIDIA Dominance: NVLink remains the dominant proprietary fabric. NVIDIA is also deploying NVLink Fusion, which allows third-party CPUs and custom ASICs to tie directly into the NVLink ecosystem. > Open Alternatives Growing: Broadcom is spearheading Scale-Up Ethernet (SUE), while an AMD-led consortium is backing UALink as an open alternative. Morgan Stanley sees PCIe (e.g., via Astera Labs) acting as an important temporary bridge before hyperscalers migrate to native AI fabrics. > AWS & Google Outliers: Google relies on an Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) Torus topology. AWS has shifted to a flatter, highly efficient mesh network called Resilient Network Graphs (RNG) using passive optics to reduce router counts and power consumption. $AMZN $GOOGL $AMD $NVDA $CRDO $SMTC $AVGO $MRVL $LITE $COHR $GLW