AXT's indium phosphide business is at China's mercy, since its expansion inside China lets Beijing decide every line item on every purchase order. Per a report shared by @wallstengine, US officials are pressing China over delayed InP export approvals as the material becomes an AI data center bottleneck, and AXT says export permits are its biggest challenge. The stock was rejected at resistance despite that news. x.com  x.com  x.com 

AXT cannot be the dominant indium phosphide substrate supplier when its customers' supply depends on the Chinese government's export permitting. Lumentum has locked up InP supply for several years with Sumitomo, a larger competitor that does not face the same export restrictions. Doubling down on manufacturing in China is an odd choice given continuous permitting roadblocks. Substrate pricing is unlikely to go parabolic, despite Serenity's claims of 10x+ price increases. x.com  x.com 

AXT is a speculative add on the market's sharp drop, because indium phosphide wafer prices have reportedly risen a lot lately. x.com 

AXT's bull case hinges on supply rather than demand, and China holds many of the cards. Demand is growing strongly, but China can reasonably be expected to favor its own industry and permit exports only where they serve its broader interests, which argues against overly optimistic forecasts. @larmatrade notes over half of revenue is now domestic Chinese; if half of demand is Chinese, AXT should to some extent be valued like a Chinese company, and the market is likely to price it so over time. … Show more

Indium phosphide substrates, AXT's business, should never become tight despite explosive demand, because Chinese capacity comes online quickly. InP demand should grow nearly 6x from 2026 to 2030, a 56% CAGR, driven by ultra-high-power CW lasers for co-packaged optics and InP photonic chips. Yet Yunnan Germanium alone should make nearly half of all InP production by 2030, so demand never fully exceeds substrate supply, which is bad for AXT. x.com 

AXT's indium phosphide substrate chokepoint gives it pricing potential, though its Coherent agreement caps annual wafer-price increases. Channel checks suggest increases of 50-60% in Q2 2026, 10% in Q3 and over 10% in Q4. With supply agreements to Lumentum and Coherent, AXT probably becomes No. 1 ahead of Sumitomo Electric. A SanDisk-style hike now looks less likely because of the annual cap, whose percentage is redacted. x.com 

AXT is a stock nobody should own because of its China risk, but it is not a long-term short. It sits at a major choke point with 40% market share in InP lasers, so unless China turns the lights off, the stock can still rally to higher extremes; gains from shorting it this week are worth taking. x.com 

AXT's permit-backed Q4 outlook weakens the near-term operating objection to the Sell case. Q3 revenue reached $73.4M at 56% GAAP gross margin; management guides to about $90M in Q4 from business permitted or not needing permits. InP contributed $54.3M and backlog exceeds $500M, though much spans years. The remaining test is whether 2027 capacity becomes qualified, permitted shipments at durable margins. x.com  x.com  x.com 

AXT is the upstream chokepoint of the photonics buildout, supplying the indium phosphide substrates every high-speed laser needs amid a massive global shortage. About 600,000-700,000 wafers shipped in 2025 against demand of 1.5-2 million, and AXT holds roughly 36% of a market three firms control. Record revenue rose 164% to $47.6M and gross margin hit 45% from 8.2%; Lumentum prepaid $87M to reserve capacity through 2031. The real risk is China, where slow export permits caused a guidance miss. … Show more

AXT priced its secondary offering a steep 22.5% below the prior close, another sign the company is less legitimate than its choke-point story suggests. It follows the appointment of a CFO who had served a five-year officer ban. x.com