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SIVE

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Delisted Jul 31

@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Following the Lumentum / Marvell deal: My opinion is that independent Western laser players, like $AAOI, $COHR, and $SIVE became a lot more strategically valuable. $MTSI and $SMTC should get some attention too as emerging laser players in 2027. If I had to guess: 1. Companies competing against Marvell, or not in the $NVDA ecosystem bandwagon, such as $AMD, are likely going to rethink their relationship with $LITE. If getting bottlenecked by Nvidia capacity agreements wasn't enough... Incentives around qualifying + bringing up other laser players, seems very necessary now. Since you generally don't want competitors like Marvell to have influence or visibility over your roadmaps, IP, capacity, pricing, etc. even if there is a "firewall". 2. $MRVL acquiring Lumentum opened pandoras box in a way of acquiring a critical chokepoint all your competitors + buyers use. $LITE was used by your major hyperscalers and across AI supply chains. Now, your leaders might wonder if weaponizing capacity agreements might not be as effective.... If someone else can just buy the entire company. There's only a few major public merchant Western players out there, and I'm also sure many others will want to follow the Marvell / Broadcom route via vertical integration, given I think $MRVL saves around $1B+ in costs/year. So M&A premiums likely went up. $SMTC was actively looking to buy laser capacity via M&A so I'm sure they're looking at $SIVE given their 100M CW DFB laser expansion + tiny MC. $JBL also probably wants to vertically integrate down the road too so $SIVE is also an acquisition target for their 1.6T program. $AMD was looking for ELSFP + CW capacity given Nvidia bottlenecks, so I'm sure they've looked at $AAOI. can go on and on about other ASIC players (like in Taiwan) that likely are looking at vertical integration too. Since multiple players use a small subset of laser suppliers, if competitors just go ahead and buys them... There's a lot pressure to M&A for their own supply chain defensibility. TLDR: Independent laser suppliers should capture a material strategic revaluation since $MRVL + $LITE, sets a new precedent + implications. We'll see what happens.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

I actually thought $MRVL would buy $SIVE given smaller MC, but they went ahead and bought $LITE instead. Since it looked like Marvell was heading the Broadcom direction with vertical integration and needed lasers. As you said, $SIVE / $AAOI are much more strategically valuable now (both as independent suppliers + M&A prospects). Never crossed my mind Lumentum would get bought... but this sets an example for other players on what you can do now.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Considering $LITE (that is sold out into 2029) is going to get swallowed up by $MRVL next week. I see $AAOI / $SIVE / $COHR are going to be a lot more strategically valuable in the West. Both for M&A prospects (which deserves a premium) so companies can vertically integrate like $AVGO. + players are going to be incentivized to qualify other light sources not owned by their competitor. $AAOI has a ton of optionality to supply CPO lasers in 2027 if they buy transceiver laser supply merchant, since they have the technology now. But 2028 they'll have capacity available AFAIK. AOI also had a lot of opportunities to sign LTAs but didn't, so there's a lot more uncertainty alongside the series of $600M ATMs. But we'll see how they're doing, especially with their 1.6T shipments... Laser chokepoint part of the optical supply chain is extraordinarily strong
@ParadisLabs 1 click

Paradis on X

Initial notes on $MRVL's rumoured $LITE acquisition: 1. Why?! - $LITE's CEO has said they're sold out into 2029. So do management think the InP laser shortage is shorter than what their orders suggest? Need more clarity on why Lumentum would green light this. - With lasers sold out into 2029, I think owning the fab might be the only way $MRVL can guarantee supply for FY28 growth. So maybe Marvell and Lumentum have different reads on the InP laser shortage? 2. This has to be mostly stock. - $MRVL has ~$3.9B cash vs. $5.0B debt. Combined run-rate EBITDA is circa $7-7.5B (my numbers), so I think staying investment grade caps new debt at around $15-20B. - At a ~30% premium that leaves $85-90B+ paid in stock, with $LITE holders owning ~30% of the combined company. - I feel that’s a lot of Marvell to hand over. 3. I think the strategy is much better than the reaction. - $MRVL are essentially buying the part of the optical link that survives the move to CPO which is a pretty smart hedge on their own DSP franchise. - Marvell announced Inphi around 6 years ago (~$10B in cash + stock), and that deal built the core of MRVL's optics business. - This is basically the same move just one layer down, from DSP to laser, stacked on Celestial AI. - Probably a good signal that Marvell are running the same optics playbook again? 4. Dilution. - $MRVL trades on about 52x run rate EPS. - $LITE is about 60x on its FQ1 guide at tonight's AH price and about 70x with a 30% premium. - That's ~15% dilutive to Marvell's run-rate EPS (my rough napkin math number) assuming a 30% premium, ~$17.5B of new debt at ~5%, and the rest in stock at $228. (Again, very rough numbers). - It only turns accretive if Lumentum keeps outgrowing Marvell at today's guided rates (+24% q/q vs +15%) for another five or six quarters. - I think that's achievable while the laser shortage lasts, but I feel the whole deal ends up being a bet on how long that is. 5. Fewer lasers on the open market. - If LITE's output gets prioritised for $NVDA and Marvell's own modules, everyone else buying LITE EMLs and CW lasers gets tighter allocation. - I think that's bullish for laser pricing at $COHR and for other laser sources like $SIVE (lol). - Feels like the module makers that depend on LITE lasers are the quiet losers. 6. Channel conflict. - Marvell is the leading DSP supplier to 800G/1.6T module makers, and LITE already sells its own modules through Cloud Light. - I think Innolight and Eoptolink start shifting DSP share to $AVGO and $CRDO? - I feel hyperscalers will push harder to second-source lasers from $COHR.
@aleabitoreddit 1 click

Serenity on X

Few things: - $SIVE is targeting T1 hyperscaler deployments for pluggables, CPO, NPO. Not quite sure what you mean by Tier 2. They have direct engagements with hyperscalers but currently are more upstream by qualifying with companies like Ayar, $JBL, $GFS, O-Net that eventually likely ends up -> $AMZN / $MSFT for example. On financing: - Colo players like $CIFR still need $1B+ of financing for their sites. - Neoclouds like $CRWV need billions of financing to buy GPUs. Higher rates + less support for financing makes it more challenging for these players. $SIVE already raised 700M SEK for their buildout and largely rely on external foundries, so they don't have financing constraints. There's pressure on players that need currently need financing for capex, but markets group up everyone in AI sector indiscriminately. The second nuance is whether or not this effects the end customers in terms of demand. I'd argue optical sector is insulated, even if overall AI capex from hyperscalers decreases, I see optical content still rising and aggregate demand rising. And this is especially the case with new incoming players going through their first qual cycles.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

I think it's always helpful to learn what's going on in the supply chain, even if you're not an investor in lasers or $SIVE. There's a lot of dynamics + game theory that goes on in supply shortages like: - Expanding supplier # during shortages -> more opportunities for others. - or as seen with $LITE sold out into 2027 -> causes other hyperscalers to sign LTAs -> capacity sold out into 2029 -> hyperscalers approach $MTSI / $AAOI + others for their own ramps or different opportunities from supply procurement info like $JBL 1.6T LRO program scaling up in H2 2027 from upstream disclosures.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Yes, I like $SIVE. It's a fun company to cover, since there's a lot of supply chain alpha here. But the company completely Tall Poppy Syndromed itself last earnings. And it's clearly shown in the drawdown. Bit of a longer consolidated thought and some scattered bits of supply chain info: - Sivers has 100M CW DFB laser capacity coming online Q4 2027 during an industry shortage. And very large allocations from foundries online (they were doing these quals with Win Semi + 2 others back in 2023/2024), so they can actively monetize the bottleneck today. The other interesting reason why bottlenecks are important (aside from ASP hikes), is because qualifications convert much faster + more likely given incentives around supply scarcity. -> As one example, module makers have expanded the amount of suppliers, eg. (lightcounting cited companies expanding to 5-7+ suppliers from 2-3). Innolight, for example last month responded to a question addressing tight 1.6T DFB laser supply in 2026–2027: - Innolight was actively introducing new suppliers last month and are planning to sign 2-3 year-long contracts to lock upstream capacity -> This is while your biggest merchant laser companies making up the world's 600m+ EML/CW laser capacity like $COHR have redirected lasers to their own programs. $LITE sold out into 2029, Landmark also locked a lot of their capacity into 2027-2029. $AAOI was an expected player, but ended up redirecting lasers into their own transceiver programs too. And this coincides with times $SIVE has tremendous capacity available now + actively engaged with Chinese pluggables players (not saying it's Innolight, but just shows Chinese makers like Cambridge/Eoptolink are actively trying to secure laser capacity). - Fun to note, before $JBL was announced, Sivers had and has ongoing direct engagements with hyperscalers as well. We saw that hyperscalers approached $MTSI and $AAOI for laser capacity from their earnings transcripts (and hilariously got turned away from AAOI due to shortages). So the odds pluggable makers or hyperscalers end up converting to capacity agreements with $SIVE seems a materially higher. Just a little rant: for all the sellside/retail trying to model revenue, you can't just slap on a stupid 25-35% CAGR on NRE revenue since it's close to 0 revenue now. Especially when they scale up to maybe 300M laser capacity (extrapolated from 2:1 external/internal capacity). It's also not the same as $POET having OE packaging capacity at scale, since lasers are in a genuine shortage. So capacity is more likely to convert like how $AAOI is sold out, $LITE is sold out into 2029 We've already seen what revenue that laser capacity brings in since $LITE cited $5B in laser capacity from just one 2028 fab alone in Greensboro (on higher end ranges). And whatever lasers Sivers sell, they're targeting ~50-60+ blended gross margins long term on maybe $3-6 for lower range lasers to $6-$12 for high end custom deployments. But no disclosures around capacity -> revenue conversion yet from Sivers. Now here's the thing people don't really understand, "why no revenue?" for current opportunities? $SIVE pre 2024 focused on custom development for future architectural shifts like CPO. For custom deployments: - We finally got conversion from 1 of their 4 or so lidar customers this week with ~ $AEVA. - ~ $APPL was confirmed ongoing earlier this year with an explanation that "It takes tremendous amount of trials and algorithms way beyond just what we supply to them". - All their customers from 2023-2024 like Ayar and 3 others, probably achieve volume in 2028 as CPO takes off. Custom high end lasers programs are extremely sticky but take many years and are mainly NRE. And as seen with CPO scale up, faced delays with commercialization over the years. So $SIVE from the CEO shift in 2024 realized "okay" let's ramp revenue with mass commercialization products today like 70mW/100mW/200mW lasers for 800g/1.6T pluggables. And that's where they found $JBL and all your other large pluggable players today during the shortage. Now... the work Sivers did in 2023-2024 earlier: Such as $AAPL, Ayar, $AEVA, other lidar/CPO players. And their new mass commercialization opportunities like $JBL, $GFS, and many pluggables/NPO suppliers in engagement now. Have all their inflection points converges 2027 onward, which is why I find the company compelling. Where I think management went completely wrong was messaging and near-term execution: - Deciding to focus on current tiny contracts like Seminex, AllSpace, Tachyon orders felt like the entire focus recently in earnings, shareholder letters, and media commentary -> Brutal honesty to $SIVE management, majority of Western audiences literally don't care and it's immaterial to the valuation. $SIVE moved 0% on all of the Seminex/AllSpace/Tachyon order announcements, and even dropped in price. But rallied like 50% on $GFS and something similar on $JBL announcement. The reason why most took long positions in the first place was CPO. So if $SIVE wants to go answer questions to Swedish media about "Why are you bleeding out" and defending that with cellular orders explaining pipeline conversion. That's not going to help people stay long during drawdowns. -> Second part was not committing to NASDAQ listing in a certain timeframe and actually executing. - If there's delays, sure, just say it, but non-committal lawyer-like language is infuriating to hear, especially from the CFO. I think they'll have that opportunity next month earnings to correct everything. So wrapping up: - There's nothing I see remotely close to $SIVE, in terms of % of global CW laser capacity they're coming online with relative to MC. - They have a ton commercialization paths, from O-Net, $POET, $JBL, Ayar, $GFS, $AAPL, $AEVA, and many potential hyperscaler/pluggable engagements. Even if one or two fall through, the breadth of ongoing quals is so deep + current laser bottleneck is severe, that it's more likely than not many will convert to production. It's clear $SIVE wants to focus on dominating the laser chokepoint first, and ended up using their 700m SEK fundraise for capacity expansion. But they should focus on communicating the billions in potential economic scale from that laser capacity conversion. And execute on it.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Exciting, $SIVE gets their first production orders for CW DFB lasers with LiDAR. “We are pleased to see this strategic program advance from design-win to production”. With opportunity for expansion given the speculated customer $AEVA is moving into CPO/NPO optical sources for hyperscalers and leveraging existing technology. But this is great commercial validation of technology and execution so far. That’s 1 qualification converted of many more to come, especially for AI DCs from $GFS to $JBL.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

I don't think it's unclear, but I do think segments outside of photonics are noise for what drives valuations (which I don't think management understood). Next earnings, $SIVE should use laser capacity revenue ceiling from foundry allocations + existing fabs as the core metric alongside customer qualification diversity. Not defending what the definition of a revenue pipeline is and using current term cellular AllSpace contract revenue as an example. Potential volume from $GFS probably dwarfs revenue from other segments. Talking about existing qualification cycles is enough since investors how they convert given 1.6T/NPO/CPO transitions are coming up.
@aleabitoreddit 1 click

Serenity on X

Last major $SIVE disclosure was 100M CW DFB laser capacity Q4 2027. And a new foundry partner (that makes 2 including Win Semi). Expected $JBL revenue coming in H1 2027 (with lasers for Jabil's 1.6T LRO scaling up H2 2027). There's channel checks along the way like CIOE where Sivers was engaged with Chinese pluggable makers + laser ASPs being raised. 70mW/100mW ranges were the most tight to Chinese pluggable makers, which was surprising. Biggest industry read through was $LITE selling out into 2029, making agreements for 2030, and having hyperscalers pay for capacity expansion for 2031. I don't think anyone has enough information to do any sort of accurate modeling for $SIVE like you can for $AAOI given they don't release product breakdown + capacity targets by quarter. The 200mW NPO lasers Sivers is sampling is likely different ASP than your 70mW lasers shipped to pluggable makers. And your custom CPO lasers are different pricing too. Like all sampling/qualification players from $AEHR to $AAOI back in 2025, usually the risk/reward comes in whether qualifications convert and what new customers they have, which is always a risk. In a bull case, if $SIVE comes online with 300m laser supply (2:1 implied ratio, already has "tremendous" supply online from likely US fab) during a structural shortage. Pluggable players like $JBL, 6 other vendors. $GFS as the reference design laser for their CPO/NPO platform. Your minor players vendors like $POET, $AEVA and other players end up scaling. And all the other custom products they hinted they were working on in the past for CPO years back. I think the probability that they cook is higher since there's so many ongoing qualifications during a bottleneck. We've already seen ownership changes from Swedish investors to US/International retail from $SIVE shareholder disclosures. My guess is that trends institutional from retail before US listing next year amid the market correction. Think people forgot institutions have already financed their expansion, which was a 700M SEK round 100%+ ago (multiple times oversubscribed). And that $SIVE uses primarily external fabs, so it's not the same as a lot of the major financing concerns affecting Neoclouds. Anyway, up to management execution, I'm not running Sivers so no clue what other companies are working with them now, whether it's Cambridge or some other US player like Semtec. TLDR: - Just need to wait for earnings for more disclosures around qualifications + partners, only so much public can guess from channel checks and supplier mapping. Not quite the same as $LITE CEO where you can see the guy on Fox news or Bloomberg interviews every week (which is a good thing)
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Nobody said $SIVE was going to be the sole laser provider for Ayar for all generations. 2nd gen Supernova was 16x wavelength that they confirmed Sivers. Ayar is expected to do multi-vendor for lasers, would be stupid not to. Originally disclosed suppliers were $LITE, $MTSI, and $SIVE, but there's probably only a few companies that can do this new design. For their new demonstration at OCP it's 8x 200mW range, $LITE is probably the closest one technologically to Ayar's OCP announcement, with 8x 250 mW demonstrated at ECOC just last month that they're targeting availability later in 2027. I don't see anything where $MTSI has demonstrated remotely similar capabilities yet. Macom were saying they were still working on 75 mW qualifications targeting production H2 2027. $SIVE has lower power 8/16 channel specs, and individual 200 mW lasers for NPO. I think this might relate to their Seminex partnership for UHP multi channel variants that they were targeting for 2027 so high confidence they'll meet technology specs eventually, more of a matter of timing. But basically new announced configuration from Ayar, can't really make any assumptions here yet, will need to wait for earnings of these players.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

What oversupply? Even in the lower end ranges that they're focusing on, Chinese pluggable makers like Innolight are still bottlenecked for 70-100mW ranges from ECOC channel checks. Cambridge wouldn't be going out financing suppliers with convertible loans for scarce laser capacity. Suppliers wouldn't be raising ASPs if there was overcapacity. Also not all CW lasers are the same. China is a ways away from from scaling UHP lasers needed for CPO, which is why there's still premiums given to $LITE, $COHR, $SIVE. $LITE lasers are sold out into 2029 and they're starting negotiations into 2030. I don't think anyone genuinely believes that China will flood the laser markets medium term, even both $LITE / $AAOI CEO said there was a difference between comments made and what they're actually seeing. From AOI on China: "of them, they are working maybe 70 mW or very few can really do 100 mW. For 300 mW laser, especially DWDM spec, we don't see that." "Not in the next two, three years, especially the demand is so big. Okay? Even combined AOI, Lumentum, Coherent, Broadcom all together, it's still very tough to meet the customer demand in the next few years" From Lumentum last month: "At least at the moment, we see no impact from any Chinese laser supply." But whenever markets want a correction people just blindly point to China with memory or optics while ignoring what's actually occurring with demand imbalances + LTAs spanning many years and constantly extending.
@aleabitoreddit 2 clicks

Serenity on X

Sure... Random train of thoughts on markets now, optics like $LITE / memory + $IREN / Anthropic. On Memory: - Demand visibility on $MU / Samsung / SK Hynix extend into 2030-2031. Samsung has LTAs covering 70% of their capacity into 2031 (likely with SK Hynix type price floors)... and their operating profit is already absurd. There's a consensus that shortage in 2027 will be much more severe than 2026... Even $SNDK expends gross margins to exceed 80% entering 2030. You're going to hear Acer and other CEOs that want memory prices to go down cite bear cases like CXMT/YMTC, and Chinese players. But just looking at supply procurement that $NVDA is doing + hyperscalers, demand visibility is absurd for the next 5 years. And by that time, cumulative FCF coming in from these take/pay + pricing floor contracts might exceed some of their entire marketcaps so it feels like there's some baseline. Near-term is always volatile (IV dropped a ton across $EWY to $DRAM to $MU), so people with call options likely got nuked, along with underlying prices. But if Samsung is 3x 2027E, has 5 year LTAs with 70% of capacity committed from hyperscalers, and price floors, it's kinda hard to see these names suffer a sustained crash... For optics: - $LITE is literally sold out into 2029, starting discussions into 2030. With demand visibility lasting into 2031… with hyperscalers largely funding the capacity buildout. Their 2028 Greensboro fab expansion was ~$5B in UHP laser capacity revenue alone, yet it’s basically allocated toward $NVDA (50%+ with options for more) and co from channel checks. Existing supply chain bottlenecks are extremely severe as optical content/XPU skyrockets entering 2027-2028. So everything from DSPs/TIAs, photodiodes, lasers, InP/SOI substrates, wafers (epi, SOI, etc) are expected to go brrr. And what does that imply to anyone else with enormous amounts of capacity coming online like $AAOI + $SIVE + $MTSI capacity expansion in 2027? Or other players like Sumitomo / Furukawa? But again it's not quite the same situation as memory since the BOM % is extremely low in a cluster... If micron/samsung raised another 2000% hyperscalers would go bankrupt. But doing that for InP substrates seems possible. Or a 100% increase on CW laser content. I actually thought $LITE was overvalued at $100B+ MC, relative to capacity expansion on your smaller optical players to their respective MCs. So I chose to position accordingly (But lumentum does deserve premiums for demand visibility). For the companies leading the charge like $NVDA / $AVGO / $MRVL: - Nvidia has 70% forward revenue growth FY2028 which is supply constrained growth. - Broadcom 100% Y/Y for 2027/2028 which is also supply constrained growth. - Marvell FY2031 upgraded guidance to $70B-$90B from $46B analyst projections... They all seem to be very happy.... and read through on demand for next 2-3 years is enormous (also echoing what $INTC CEO said today on the panel with $AVGO CEO). So you have overwhelming growth on memory + photonics + from the leaders... But the nuance is not everything in the AI supply chain get the same economic benefit. HBM/Laser/CPU/MLCC and other players in the bottlenecks look to be printing money. And seem to be the largest beneficiaries of the current bottlenecks. Test players are also getting price hikes + capacity allocated by players like $NVDA, but economic impact seems a tad lower than other players since forward P/E for many I modeled were still in the 45x+ range even if you hiked prices like 10-30%. As for capex intensive players... there's some like $IREN ($25-30B for 2027) that despite a deal with Anthropic ended up dropping. I don't think markets seem to appreciate players spending a lot of money + ongoing financing (think they're like halfway through their $6B ATM). Just some hopium for $IREN investors, $NBIS also signed a deal with $META at the start of the year (but markets didn't care at all, since Nebius dropped to ~$70-80 at the lowest point?). But did 6 months later, as the time to revenue inflection gets closer and you're past the ATM/capex window, markets would likely care more. I don't think it's irrational but at the same time, the fundamentals have improved from Mirantis acquisition to others. I also think it was known for awhile it was either OpenAI/Anthropic from CEO comments earlier too? But either way to be a more risk-off environment where funds seem to be rotating to larger names as a flight to safety. $CRWD / $PLTR as just two example, but my take is that the valuations of these rotations are reaching clown levels. And that certain AI supply chain beneficiaries in comparison are undervalued now. I was thinking markets would just rotate to names that are extremely profitable like Samsung or names that have <2X P/E, so it was surprising to see $KOSPI and some legacy memory players get sold off today. Since all of this is colliding with uncertainty about sht macro environments and renewed sustainability concern of AI capex/commitments from frontier labs like OpenAI/Anthropic from due to that FT piece recently. I've always been sounding the alarm about the contractual backlog OpenAI has with $CBRS, $MSFT, $ORCL and others earlier in the year. But OpenAI did just raise $122B or so , so I don't quite think they're at risk of going down anytime soon. I also don't think overall capex can just exponentially go up, but even if it stalls / hovers around a certain point or even drops... Capex toward certain areas like optics will still explode as hyperscalers fight over allocations when CPO scale up comes about, but might drop in others where more capacity comes online like test or DRAM. So it's a lot more nuanced than capex down = everything down or vice versa. I also slightly agree with community agreements that open weight models wouldn't lessen demand on AI infrastructure (otherwise $NVDA wouldn't be funneling funds into Reflection), but all the contractual obligations that Anthropic has might get messy if their models/company get cannibalized. Either way, I'd expect some of these frontier lab valuations to likely compress but I do think Jensen knows what he's doing though to avoid contagion. But basically: - Extremely difficult market now, can't just throw money at any AI supply chain company like $GLW and expect it to go up. There's cause for concern of rate hikes mixed with financing per $AVGO CEO but not to the point you just blindly sell off everything. Also I think markets are stupid and ties baskets together so that leads to mispricing + individual buying opportunities with certain chokepoints too. If capacity + demand is visible and forward p/e compresses like $AAOI to single digits off hundreds or thousands of percent growth from hyperscalers off $471m transceiver revenues and hundreds of thousands of monthly ELSFP capacity. Or $SIVE coming online with 100M+ laser capacity + multiple foundries with ASP hikes on lasers. I wouldn't lump them into other AI supply chain names in IP like $RMBS or others. My take is that AI supply chain beneficiaries with closer inflection points, demand visibility, and forward P/E compressing due to economic leverage would likely outperform medium term despite current volatility. TLDR: - Memory strongest risk/adjusted return with LTAs + pricing floors extending to 2030's + buybacks. - My opinion is that optical supercycle for 2027-2028 with CPO/NPO is going to look absurd relative to capacity coming online of smaller suppliers. - Overwhelming fundamentals/growth colliding with sht macro + media scares - Markets are stupid and groups things in baskets and sells them all off together or buys overvalued names, creating short/long opportunities I'd give a prayer to people on short term options given underlying drop + IV decline, but there could be a reversal... who knows. Most valuable thing right now is time.
@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

Markets often miss second order implications until it shows up in direct statements. - If $LITE is completely sold out... (largely due to $NVDA bottlenecking everyone else, eg. securing Greensboro capacity), where else do your other companies like $AMD / hyperscalers / etc. get their supply procurement? - $SIVE is coming online with like 1/6th of the world's current laser capacity by themselves. (100M+ cw dfb lasers vs. 608M EML/CW globally per Trendforce). Not even including their partner foundries that they're targeting 2:1 for. - $AAOI is coming online with a ton of capacity too next year enough to produce 400k ELSFP + $471m/month of transceivers. Then combine that with other supply chain statements like "Having 2-3 suppliers used to be the norm, now it is 5-7" from Lightcounting. So as long as your products actually work + can scale, it's hard to see anyone else with capacity not get qualified into your supply chains. Since optical component shortages are a massive bottleneck now.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Woooow... $LITE CEO went out on Bloomberg today and stated: Lumentum is "effectively sold out through nearly 2029". From our perspective, "Completely Sold Out, there's no end in sight". With demand visibility from hyperscalers that carries them out into 2030, 2031. The implications of these statements are enormous for photonics and remaining laser suppliers with capacity coming online like $SIVE, Sumitomo Electric, to $AAOI. What a crazy bottleneck that's unfolding.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

"Potential FCC rules on optical transceivers more likely to come at 3.2T" - $LITE, $AAOI, $COHR, $SIVE. Morgan Stanley met with Washington officials: - Restrictions would likely start at 3.2T modules made in China (800g/1.6T would be left alone) - Potential restrictions would likely keep laser market tight (combining US DSPs + lasers could meet the 65% US value threshold per MS) - Chinese modules could qualify if 65% of bill of materials is US content. Chinese modules using US DSPs and lasers are already near that level - Analysts expect the positive impact on laser pricing... to be more important than any broad redistribution of transceiver market share. - Analysts don't expect this to bottleneck hyperscaler AI buildouts, they name InP substrate supply as the key variable to watch (hello $AXTI ) TLDR: Component suppliers in general are really positive. Like $SMTC probably winner here for TIAs/drivers (I don't think this was listed), maybe $MXL for DSPs too. $AAOI another large beneficiary. $SIVE is high-key alpha for laser beneficaries since they have "tremendous capacity" coming online, and that points to US foundries (they haven't formally disclosed location). Since previous slideshows show 2 US foundries 1 Taiwan foundry (Win Semi) in terms of their capacity partnerships. And it's process of elimination. From CIOE Channel checks it does look like they're starting to work with Chinese pluggable players, (so they'd avenues moving forward as US supply chain component beneficiaries). Of course $LITE / $COHR would be happy. TLDR: Western supply chains for Lasers / DSPs / TIAs / others are already bottlenecked but qualified capacity becomes even more important.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

So update from $LITE + Win Semi ( $SIVE ) foundry: Lumentum in a meeting with Stifel at ECOC 2026 stated: - $NVDA Spectrum-6 CPO UHP demands increased materially. - NPO as larger than CPO, with multi-wavelength external lasers lifting ASPs (Sivers offers multi wave length DFB arrays, read through on higher valued products) - Demand for UHP lasers continues to exceed supply Just a status update in terms of how the optical bottleneck is going (laser prices going up, demand exceeds supply). Digitimes also reported today Win Semi ( $SIVE foundry ) was expanding capacity for CW lasers. - "CW products... are expected to gradually emerge in the second half of 2026", with meaningful revenue contribution likely coming in 2027 and 2028. - Win has strengthened inventory management for InP substrates while moving toward 6-in InP wafers for ongoing process testing. Currently relies on Tier-1 International suppliers. - Many of this was spent on DUV tools from $ASML but (Win Semi's orders spanned machinery, equipment, and fab engineering work) So that answers a lot of questions about Sivers' partner "how is this company securing InP substrates", "4in vs 6in", "production timing" TLDR: - NPO > CPO (per Lite), multi-wavelength lasers going brrr for prices - demand > supply (continuation) - Not sure why people have been bear posting Win Semi when turns out they have everything needed to mass produce CW lasers.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Memory LTAs span until 2031. $AVGO expects 100% supply constrained growth Y/Y for next 2 years. $NVDA expects 70% supply constrained growth next year (implying year after that demand keeps up). $SIVE CEO said there's a massive demand supply imbalance for lasers for at least the next 3-5 years. I think semi supply chain growth needs to be re-accessed year by year, but at least for the next year and half I see unprecedented growth.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

$SIVE and $AAOI, yes for a 2027 timeframe. That's the nuance. Sivers you're coming on with 100M CW DFB laser capacity + 2 external foundries (maybe 300M in total), and all my supply chains mapping maps to larger hyperscaler suppliers. AAOI you're coming on with $471m transceiver revenue + 400K ELS units for 2028 timeframe. With hyperscalers + demand eating up all their capacity. There's just a $600m ATM which presents overhang near term. $NBIS already got re-rated but it's very positive upcoming for Q4 2026 (esp. with price hikes). Legacy memory like $ESMT + (some I haven't named yet) + regular memory names like Samsung, I do think will strongly outperform near term. And obviously CPUs names like $INTC $AMD $ARM as of recent.

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