Aixtron | Earnings Preview: Full Year 2026 Guide Incoming
They finna drop the entire 2026 guide on this call so a very long earnings preview is necessitated
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Good morning chip lovers and semi friends,
Tomorrow is Aixtron day.
This has been my favorite semiconductor stock for a while, and continues to be today. #1 top pick status.
Outline
Optoelectronics
800VDC GaN
China SiC Softness
Earnings Estimates
Q4 2025
Full Year 2026
Optoelectronics
Opto is easily the strongest near-term theme and the most likely way Aixtron beats estimates.
Let me remind you of what has happened to Aixtron’s biggest Opto customer so far this year.
LASERS GO PEW PEW PEW
“And that is a very tangible opportunity based on the customer engagements that we have. And that will we believe the scale-up CPO opportunity will dwarf the opportunity in scale-out. It will be orders of magnitude larger. And so we view that as all incremental TAM for the optical industry in general and certainly for us as well, since that network is 100% electrical today. All of that optical content and scale-up is incremental TAM.”
From Jim Anderson, Coherent CEO.
“While copper has long been the gold standard for scale-up for simplicity and cost, it is hitting a physical wall. An industry pivot is underway to bypass the scaling limits of copper. By late calendar 2027, we would expect our first scale-up CPO shipments replacing longer copper connections. We are already deeply embedded in design-in cycles for this, leveraging our ultra-high-power lasers and external light source modules. As we look into the not-so-distant future, it is only right to assume that optics begins to capture more and more of the connectivity, eventually subsuming copper. In response to these demand projections, we have initiated proactive capacity planning.”
From Michael Hurlston, Lumentum CEO.
Proactive capacity planning. Proactively ordering these mfers?
Scale-up CPO is coming. I’ve covered it in several of my articles, most notably this one. And we’ve seen Lumetum rally because of the massive pull-forward in Nvidia’s scale-up CPO plans.
These recent revisions mean we will need a shit ton more lasers, and those lasers need their InP to be MOCVD’ed by these machines. Those lasers must be high power and narrow linewidth (controlled wavelength), requiring more growth time, larger die area, and higher yield penalty, meaning higher epitaxial intensity and more machines. All this means any Aixtron opto estimates from last fall need MASSIVE revisions.
One key nuance for quarterly results is timing. Capacity “deployment” at LITE/COHR can reflect yield and throughput gains on already-installed lines, which does not immediately create new tool revenue. New revenue requires fresh tool orders, build/ship, and acceptance.
So this quarter’s revenue upside is more about pre-existing Opto order momentum converting to deliveries. On the other hand, the stock price upside should mostly come from the guide + new orders. Which is why I actually believe we might see this CPO upside starting to get reflected in their backlog this quarter. If it doesn’t, it should be in the next few quarters. But it’s coming for sure. Lumentum has said on both this quarter and last quarter’s calls that the more capacity they add, the further behind they fall in the demand supply imbalance.
2026 revenue consensus: 130-155M
My estimate: 144M (but I think this is too low now, haven’t updated it since EOY 2025)
Last quarter’s stance was directionally bullish but cautious on durability. This quarter, with external customer evidence now stronger, the bar is for management to show that Opto demand is not only strong but extending in time.
This is a supercycle.
800VDC GaN
The second major Aixtron theme, GaN for 800VDC, is well-known to be farther out. However, it is no less necessary. The datacenter absolutely needs to be redesigned for 800VDC and the GaN demand will follow.
In terms of the GaN chip shipping timing, the first meaningful 800V-related GaN chip shipments look like 2027, with bigger volume in 2028.
Consensus has Rubin Ultra ramping toward the end of 2027. This means we model 2027 as the first ship year, 2028 as the scale year.
So when do Aixtron tools need to be ordered? Well, obviously the tools are needed before the chips are made, so the likely order window is Q3 2026 to Q1 2027.
Aixtron order-to-revenue lead time is typically 6–9 months. So Aixtron revenue from this wave should start showing mainly in Q1–Q4 2027 (not all in one quarter).
Any upside from this market probably has to come from long-term guidance or TAM commentary.
In terms of estimates, sell-side has GaN at 150-160M in 2025 (vs my 163M), and 180-200M in 2027 (vs my 236M).
China SiC Softness
The trend is your friend. I always invest with the trend, never against. That means the optical and 800VDC probably help Aixtron more than you think, but the China insourcing trend is probably more powerful and devastating than expected too.
The sell-side largely considered SiC de-risked. We could still see a downside surprise though. I am not too worried about this, however, as the more positive revisions to Opto and GaN occur with negative revisions to China & SiC, China & SiC matters less and less to the total enterprise value. I mean, SiC is expected to be less than 10% of sales now. The entire re-rating since I published my first thesis on Aixtron was driven by Opto and GaN, so for Aixtron to give it back requires the bull case to break, not the bear case to get stronger.
My SiC forecasts are in-line with the sell-side. I expect less than 50M of SiC tool shipments in 2026, recovering to just under 100M in 2027. Anything above that is upside.
Earnings Estimates
Aixtron gives much more visibility than your typical corporate firm. They release the ENTIRE 2026 guide along with Q4 results this time of year.
Q4 2025
GM: 47-48%
EPS: 0.27-0.34
Revenue: 173M (guidance, consensus slightly below)
Order intake is an important metric that they report in their press releases, and an important one for us to track. Consensus has Q4 orders from 129M-137M. Again, I think any upside here should come from Opto. Sell side already expects 50% of order value to come from opto, so this is baked in to an extent but maybe we get even higher?
Full Year 2026
The most important number to track is the full year 2026 guide. 2025 revenue is 542.5M at the midpoint, and based on management commentary from the last call of flat-to-slightly down revenue for 2026, I project 520M. Consensus is slightly higher at 530-540M.
That’s also why sell-side has generally said that 2026 is de-risked. The soft guide came already so da bar be on da floor.
Next, we have gross and EBIT margin. 2025 OPM guide is 18%, and they say 2026 should be same or higher.
Consensus GM: 41.3-4.17%
Consensus OPM: 18%
Thanks for writing this, just bought.
Curious what you think about Aixtron and LITE relative stock performance mirroring what happened with ASML and TSMC majorly underperforming rel to NVDA in 2023 (although TSMC did double in 2024 while NVDA ~3Xed). Seems like we're in a similar moment with optics as we were with GPUs in early 2023