Hornéd Cu of Wessex

SK HYNIX Q1’26 EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS 🔹 Revenue: $35.6B (Est. $35.1B) 🟢; +60% QoQ / +198% YoY 🔹 Operating Profit: $25.4B (Est. $24.6B) 🟢; +96% QoQ / +405% YoY 🔹 Net Profit: $27.3B (Est. $20.8B) 🟢; +165% QoQ / +398% YoY 🔹 Operating Margin: 72% 🔹 EBITDA Margin: 79% Q2 Guide: 🔹 DRAM B/G: high single% increase QoQ 🔹 NAND B/G: mid teen% increase QoQ (including Solidigm) Other Metrics: 🔹 HBM4: plan to ramp up volume in line with agreed schedule 🔹 CapEx: expected to increase significantly vs last year Financials: 🔹 Cash: $36.7B; Debt: $13.1B 🔹 Gross Profit: $28.2B; +85% QoQ / +313% YoY 🔹 EBITDA: $28.0B; +82% QoQ / +284% YoY 🔹 Non-operating Profit: $9.5B 🔹 Income Before Tax: $34.9B 🔹 Tax Expense: $7.6B 🔹 COGS: $7.4B 🔹 SG&A: $2.8B 🔹 CF from Operating Activities: $17.9B 🔹 CF from Investing Activities: ($4.9B) 🔹 Acquisition of PP&E: ($5.2B) 🔹 CF from Financing Activities: ($2.0B) FX used for USD conversion: $1 = ₩1,479 (mid-market; Apr 22, 2026)

THE OPTICAL PHOTONICS BOTTLENECK As AI clusters scale past copper’s physical limits, the bottleneck shifts to optical & these are the companies building that layer across the stack: 1. $AAOI building the transceiver layer of the AI network through vertically integrated U.S.-based InP laser manufacturing. It has already secured over $200M in its first volume 1.6T order from one hyperscale customer followed by another $124M in 800G orders from a second. 2. $AEHR building the reliability layer for the optical & AI hardware stack through burn-in & test systems. It just received a record $41M follow-on order from its lead hyperscale customer reinforcing the idea that Sonoma is becoming a key production burn-in platform for high-power AI ASICs. 3. $CRDO building the connectivity layer that helps AI clusters move data faster through active electrical cables, retimers & high-speed interconnect silicon. The DustPhotonics acquisition also extends that platform into silicon photonics before copper becomes a real constraint. 4. $LITE building the laser layer of the AI optical stack through EMLs, optical components & optical switching exposure. The setup is backed by a $2B $NVDA strategic investment & optical circuit switch backlog above $400M with orders reportedly extending through 2028. 5. $VIAV building the testing & validation layer of the optical stack through network instrumentation & photonics measurement tools. It is the picks-and-shovels layer of the transition because every high-speed optical buildout still needs to be tested regardless of which transceiver vendor wins. 6. $COHR building one of the core photonics bottlenecks through indium phosphide lasers, optical engines & communications components tied to next-gen AI networking. It also has a $2B $NVDA strategic investment behind it & is doubling InP device capacity into the 1.6T ramp. 7. $MRVL building the DSP & optical infrastructure layer through electro-optics, PAM DSPs, interconnect silicon & custom networking chips. The Celestial AI deal & NVLink Fusion exposure both strengthen its position as photonics becomes more central to AI cluster design.

TRUMP: MEXICO IS A LOST CAUSE - FOX

$TSM 80% CAGR. That is how fast TSMC CoWoS capacity is growing and that's not a typo. Advanced 2.5D/3D packaging is Moore's Law going 3D. The most critical bottleneck nobody is talking about. Give it 15 minutes if you want to learn why. You will not regret it.

New Quanta article looks at one of the coolest tiny machines in biology - the bacterial flagellar motor. It’s basically a microscopic spinning engine that bacteria use to move. After decades of trying to fully understand it, scientists are finally figuring out how it actually works. The motor is powered by a flow of charged particles (kind of like a tiny battery), which creates force and makes it rotate. So what looks like something alive and mysterious is really just an incredibly advanced microscopic machine running on the same basic rules as everything else. More broadly, the article addresses the idea of a "life force." It argues that no special force is needed to explain life. Instead, biological activity arises from physical processes that operate far from equilibrium, where constant energy flow keeps the system active and organized. The flagellar motor shows that living systems can be understood as energy driven, self organizing systems. What appears to be uniquely "alive" can be explained by standard physical laws, such as thermodynamics and molecular interactions. Physics pushed to an extreme level of complexity.