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Thursday, October 29, 2026

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@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

I think almost everything about my $AXTI thesis from 2025 was validated? From AXT's position in the InP substrate bottleneck... Being able to threaten the hyperscaler buildout (per Reuters)... $IQE has been flagging this as a major risk, VPEC and Taiwan epiwafer foundries have been crying over InP substrate bottlenecks. And there's even AXT direct confirmation of partnerships with $LITE and $COHR as the InP substrate supplier. AXT also stated $130m/quarter InP revenue capacity exiting 2027 (~$520m annualized) so that's a massive revenue inflection compared to previously. Now... the biggest question is: How much can AXT price hike? The substrates they make are just such a tiny part of the BOM... but can threaten hyperscaler buildouts with optics. So if they manage to price hike to $SNDK NAND degrees (which they can), then I think AXT could get re-rated a ton from here. But if they end up like Japanese ABF suppliers that are less willing to abuse their position, that's a different story. Will need to do more channel checks to see how that's coming along. But at the very least, I would argue there should be some valuation baseline just due to their critical importance (eg. upstream refinery ownerships, crucible processing, etc) + existing capacity revenue without hikes. TLDR: - Bottleneck thesis was at like ~$500m MC - Upside now comes from price hikes due to duopoly position + ownership of upstream bottlenecks in the InP substrate manufacturing process. (which they can due to low cost of InP substrates in overall costs) - Uncharted territory, we'll see (also a central part of geopolitical tensions so there's always risk there).
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Good question! Just some informal thoughts... there's three "moats" to look at for $SIVE: - Capacity - Qualifications (especially for custom DFB lasers) - Technological 1. For capacity, they're coming online with 100M+ CW DFB lasers Q4 2027 (global supply is roughly ~608M EML/CW lasers currently per Trendforce). Obviously by 2027 global capacity is going to grow a lot, with $AAOI, $AVGO (3x expansion), and others coming online. But if you extrapolate their 2:1 statement, that implies 300m lasers/year long term coming from their own supply + external foundries. This is incredibly valuable during a shortage that was quoted to be 3-5 years, and $LITE stating they already have demand visibility into 2031... And when suppliers have started to qualify many more (eg. 5-7 vendors vs. 2-3 earlier) due to bottlenecks. I'm sure a lot of how they achieve that staggering amount is due to their manufacturing process/yields (which is a moat). 2. For qualifications, if you look at 70mW/100mW pluggable lines with Chinese players, I'd argue this is more generic and moreso reverting back to a capacity argument and manufacturing process to achieve those numbers. Custom DFB arrays that they've been working on with Ayar (they hinted at 2-3 others back in 2023 like Celestial) take years for optical i/o related things and would be a moat if they finish quals. So it's not quite something you can hot swap or design out really easily for $MTSI or another company. But of course cpo scale up and such is mass volume in 2028, and we're still H2 2026. 3. People can always compare raw specs like power output, but it's probably way way more nuanced so easier to just point toward customer statements. With $JBL 1.6T LRO: "I think that there's the potential for a relatively dramatic moat with our LRO part…" from Jabil's EVP, especially related to power consumption. And $SIVE is my guess sole source in this line. Jabil is probably the most important testament to how their lasers perform in mass production scenarios maybe around Q2 next year. Ayar said something similar along the lines of "we couldn't do it without Sivers" for custom implementations.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Someone did ask “How is Serenity” this time around! So I’m happy. I’m just personally excited about $LITE selling out into 2029 and implications for optical peers like $AAOI. Not advice, but I personally think markets haven’t fully caught onto the scale of AOI’s ramp in 2027 + current bottleneck severity. It’s one of my largest positions right now for a reason! Also I’m looking forward to touching grass over the weekend. Apparently there was an OCP San Jose event… Maybe I’ll drop by if there’s a Kiss of Life group like at ICML.

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