Fund.TBD
Swing Trader, Technical/Fundamental Analysis
nLIGHT's aerospace and defense business is booming, which made this a great report. The caveat is longer term: revenue growth will slow as it divests one of its two slow-growth or shrinking business lines, and algorithms may punish the shares after the Q3 or Q4 report, a problem for October 2026 or early 2027. x.comÂ
nLIGHT's opportunities are huge, but supply-chain problems could last longer than the market prices in, so it is only worth adding on a significant drop. Weapons restocking should help its laser sensing business, and a new JLWS award brings $44M in 2026 with a $627M ceiling. But Q3 guidance is much weaker because China is holding optical components in customs, which the CEO called political football. At a rich multiple, it could languish in the $40s until the next big win. x.com x.com x.com … Show more
LightPath Technologies trades at 6.3x FY2027 analyst revenue, half nLIGHT's 13x on essentially the same small-cap defense photonics setup. NDAA Section 834 requires the Pentagon to drop optical glass from China, Russia and others by 2030, and LightPath holds the only US chalcogenide glass licensed from the Naval Research Laboratory. After Q3 revenue rose 109%, analysts lifted FY2027 revenue 27% to $106M. Risks include G5 earnout charges, a $200M shelf and a plant in China. x.com x.comÂ
nLight has pivoted from industrial lasers to a lean, high-margin defense play, with high risk and high reward. It is a core winner in high-energy laser defense, where its HELSI-2 prototype-to-production work drove record FY2025 revenue of $261 million, up 31%. It raised about $200 million in February 2026 to expand aerospace and defense capacity, cutting reliance on the cyclical industrial market. x.comÂ
nLIGHT looks close to solving the parts issue that cut $1.5 billion from its market cap, judging by its aggressive hiring. It is urgently trying to fill up to 85-90 manufacturing positions on a worldwide workforce of 800, including a 24/7, six-shift push for cleanroom fab specialists. A manufacturer facing an existential supply halt would not hire like that, so it should be ready to hit the ground running once the issue is fixed. x.com x.comÂ
nLIGHT sits in the hot fiber-optics space, is nearly profitable and posted triple-digit EPS growth last year. All analysts rate it a strong buy, with an $88 target. x.comÂ
Defense is the sector money is likely to rotate into heavily over the coming weeks and months, favoring nLIGHT and LightPath. Per @BlackScholesMan, the Iran war exposed serious shortfalls in Western defense that need to be plugged, and the money will follow. x.comÂ
Laser defense is arriving as regulators approve it, and nLIGHT is the US pure play on that shift. The FAA has greenlit laser sentry guns against attack drones in US airspace, per @zerohedge. nLIGHT is developing lasers up to 1MW, the strongest in development, at only about a $3.5B market cap, while AeroVironment, despite its Locust system, is too diversified for laser exposure. x.comÂ
nLight is the differentiated, vertically integrated player, while AeroVironment operates in the commoditized 20-30 kW range. nLight has just launched a scalable platform spanning 70 kW to 1 MW whose power levels share many components and subsystems, creating manufacturing, procurement and engineering efficiencies that should be fantastic for gross margins. nLight even supplies components to AeroVironment, whose incremental economics look doubtful, as its last quarterly report clearly showed. … Show more
Electro Optic Systems, nLIGHT and LightPath are defense stocks to own as forward multiples may compress with no high-profile conflicts in sight. US and European rearmament is unchanged and earnings should grow solidly for two to three years, but upside may take patience. Well-managed, profitable firms with backlog growth in the fastest-growing niches should hold up better than cash-burning drone makers. EOS's UAE joint venture, laser contract and $124 million RWS contract add optionality. x.comÂ
When wars drag on, the sensors and components inside weapons platforms make the money, which favors nLIGHT, LightPath and RFHIC. On March 3, after US and Israeli strikes on Iran, KOSPI crashed 7.24% while sensor makers such as RFHIC rallied alongside platform names. RF power amplifiers inside radars such as Cheongung-II's are the bottleneck, and RFHIC signed a KRW 50.6 billion amplifier contract with Raytheon Canada. The same InP, GaAs and GaN wafers go into lasers, radars and IR sensors. x.com … Show more
