Serenity@aleabitoreddit
I'm long $TSEM, the $TSM of photonics.
My top two picks for CPO are $SOI and Tower Semi.
Given the $NVDA GTC catalyst on new photonic related architecture next week:
I expect Tower Semi to get a huge catalyst.
Nvidia laready directly collaborated with Tower to scale 1.6T silicon photonics last month (hint hint for GTC), likely pushing the downstream players to use it.
And now, Tower is the leading supplier of 1.6T SiPh PICs and the primary foundry for scale-up CPO architectures. (the other being global foundries)
From my forward est:
2028 Forward P/E: ~16.8x to ~18.1x
(Tower set a target $2.84B revenue by 2028, with ~31.7% operating margin, ~$750M in net profit)
The thing to note is over 70% of their planned SiPh capacity is already reserved through 2028. And photonics haven't even ramped up yet.
So, I expect them to strongly beat earning projections due to extreme photonics scaling + allocations price hikes that's not modeled into projections.
Also, $TSEM is heavily de-risked by 70% of capacity already being reserved. MC is likely due to $TSEM being a very obscure upstream player in the photonics supply chain.
But I expect the $NVDA GTC conference to be that catalyst that brings it to premium valuations.
I'm long $TSEM as an asymmetrical upside for upstream photonics foundry layer.
