Aixtron Q1 2026 Earnings Review | Opto Revised Up Yet Again
And this is probably the largest one yet
This is why you never sell a well-positioned company based on multiples alone.
Aixtron is a revisions machine. I really love their management team. They give us so much color on these calls and makes things really easy for us analysts.
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Contents
Earnings Presentation and Prepared Remarks
Interesting Call Comments
Opto Visibility and Revisions (!!!)
The Catalyst
Insane Tool Shipment Forecasts
Installed Base is No Problem
Epitaxial Tool Intensity
Capacity Math
Margins, Competition, Operating Leverage
Earnings Presentation and Prepared Remarks
This was basically the preliminary revenue release with a few extra tidbits attached. I won’t go into detail on the specific financials because most of it is covered in the preliminary earnings release, which I also did a review of.
The first piece of new information with specific revenue breakdown by tool and market. Opto is 51%, which is pretty expected, but what really surprised me was that the share of LED and GaN SiC power was only 17% of revenues. GaN was only 10% of order intake. This just shows you how crazy weak the power market is right now. We’re seeing a massive rally across all the power electronics names like ON Semi and Navitas because of 800 VDC, and eventually that’s going to flow to Aixtron, but they’re not talking about it and no one else is talking about it. This is definitely something to keep in mind.
The reason they’re not talking about power is because they only get orders when one of their customers needs serious levels of production. Their customers only need serious production when they have a major design win with a system integrator like Nvidia. Since the design wins haven’t happened yet, the demand isn’t there and the orders haven’t come through. All the 800 VDC talk is still theoretical.
Interesting Call Comments
First is the Malaysia site. They’re building a new greenfield fab in Malaysia, and there has been lots of speculation on why they’re doing this. Very interestingly, they said this has nothing to do with opto demand. In fact, they are not capacity constrained at all. I’ll get their actual capacity numbers later, but the only reason that they’re building a Malaysia fab is to serve their Asian customers for cheaper. That’s it.
The other thing that had a lot of speculation was on their convertible bonds. They issued 450 million euros of converts, and the way they described it on the call was low-key a little concerning. They just said it was too good of an opportunity we couldn’t pass it up, which sort of implies that they think their stock is overvalued. At the same time, when an analyst asked if it was going to be used for buybacks, they said maybe in the future but not at this share price level. Like, straight up. Kind of sad that they don’t believe in their own company as much as some of us do, but as you’ll see later on, they contradict their own bearishness with the most insanely bullish Opto forecasts. It makes for a very funny contrast.
I think it’s just the conservative Germans in them. Should be noise (but I am heavily biased due to my massive position). LOOOL
Opto Visibility and Revisions
This was the first call they really spelled out the Opto bull case, kind of the equivalent of Lumentum’s call in November 2025. Before that, it was all “demand is strong, our customers need capacity, but never ‘this is an inflection point and a regime shift.’ Today, that changed. For the first time, they said that growth continues into 2027 and beyond. The first time they mentioned and separated scale up, scale out, and scale across. They’re finally repeating what Lumentum has been telling us for half a year.
They turned into believers! This was because of a very specific and obvious catalyst that caused them to be unable to ignore the signals of explosive growth any longer. As a result, they materially increased their tool shipment forecasts. WAY higher than any of us modeled. Although they didn’t change their full-year guidance because it was already dropped in the preliminary release, I fully expect them to do so on their next earnings call.