Burak Finance
Head of Analytics, Growth Investor, PLTR/NBIS/RKLB
Soitec offers a barbell in semiconductors, pairing a cyclical recovery with hyper-growth exposure. As smartphone and auto inventories normalize, its core business should recover, while it also gains explosive exposure to AI edge and cloud infrastructure and to EV silicon carbide adoption, making it a powerhouse for 2026 and beyond. x.com
Soitec is priced as a dying smartphone wafer supplier after a 70%-plus drop, but it is effectively an AI photonics monopoly. It is the only volume-qualified supplier of photonics-SOI wafers, used by TSMC, Tower and GlobalFoundries, and re-qualifying a supplier takes fabs 12-24 months. The selloff was inventory-driven and is reversing. Capex is done and utilization is below 60%, so photonics demand from Tower's capacity expansion and TSMC's packaging ramp should drive sharp margin gains. x.com
Soitec looks compelling again because the market misunderstands its book value, its underutilized fabs and the wafer area co-packaged optics will need. Depreciation on idle capacity is compressing earnings. @WalterA09213626, whose post is quoted, notes the share price fell from an all-time high of €200 to €116 over the past month. x.com
Soitec's discount likely won't last until 2027, because a 300% increase in silicon area for co-packaged optics is too strong a catalyst for the market to ignore for two years. Per @michaelsikand, a pluggable or LPO transceiver uses about 50 square millimeters of photonics-SOI per chip versus about 200 for a CPO switch package, with CPO production ramping in 2027. x.com
Soitec now looks overextended after a rapid run, and a pullback is likely. The AI photonics bottlenecks behind the thesis are real, but it is hard to judge what premium each name deserves, which makes the stock hard to value at these levels. x.com
Soitec holds a monopoly on the Photonics SOI wafers the AI photonics trade runs through, yet trades at just 3.6x forward EV/revenue. Silicon photonics chips in AI data centers, from transceivers to Nvidia switches and Broadcom ASICs, are built on it via its proprietary Smart Cut process; GlobalWafers exits by 2027 and Shin-Etsu sells little. Optical interconnect grows from about $10 billion to over $70 billion by 2030, and top customer Tower Semiconductor targets 5x capacity by end-2026. x.com
Soitec is an attractive name in the photonics supply chain. Per @HyperTechInvest, it trades at 14x forward EV/EBITDA, the lowest among key photonics suppliers, versus 33x for Coherent, 45x for Lumentum and 120x for Applied Optoelectronics. @zephyr_z9 flags a risk of demand destruction in mobile. x.com x.com
Soitec holds a near-monopoly on photonics-grade SOI wafers, the irreplaceable base for mass-produced silicon photonics in AI data centers, giving it 5x potential. SOI's oxide layer keeps light in the top silicon waveguide, and Soitec is the only supplier certified by TSMC, GlobalFoundries and Tower, with over 80% share. Revenue fell 22% year over year on customer destocking, and a CEO exit and withdrawn guidance are noise; 1.6T and CPO should drive the ramp over 2-3 years. x.com x.com
Soitec's Q1 shows its photonics wafer monopoly turning into growth. It makes the Photonics-SOI substrate under nearly every silicon photonics chip, from TSMC's COUPE to Applied Optoelectronics and Coherent transceivers and Nvidia and Broadcom CPO switches, with 95%+ share. Photonics-SOI sales doubled to over half the €65M Edge & Cloud AI segment. Revenue of €113M rose 23% at constant currency versus 15% guided, Q2 guidance is 30%+ versus 4% expected, and its Singapore 300mm fab qualified early. … Show more
Soitec is now a bet on its future photonics ramp, since the next few quarters will be bad too. Buying today means buying that photonics story, with the weaker mobile segment carried along with it. x.com
Soitec will recover because it is literally the foundation for expanding co-packaged optics capabilities and is too big to stay down. x.com
Europe's AI and tech names are the ones worth owning through 2030, unlike its boring banks, automakers and pharma. Picks: Nebius as a neocloud; Rolls-Royce for SMRs; Sivers, IQE, Aixtron, Nynomic and Soitec in photonics; BESI, ASML, SUSS MicroTec and LPKF in chip tools; Arm, Infineon and STMicroelectronics in chips; ABB and Schneider Electric in automation and power; Nokia in AI networking; Scottish Mortgage. Spotify is a great company but not a buy until next year amid the SaaS selloff. x.com … Show more
