The work is fascinating, thanks. Although you provide a lot of circumstantial evidence, is it fair to say it's still inevitably quite speculative re precisely how indispensable PlanOptik tech or know-how is or will be to the LITE/Google supply chain or how that will impact company earnings? Is the implication that you think PO are currently the sole supplier of the MEMS glass being used? Especially, there is so far fairly little signal from P4O's numbers the last couple years...
Thanks for your comment! Yes that’s fair and accurate. I don’t have or expect any direct confirmation given how guarded this sort of business relationship would be, including key performance numbers of PlanOptik components in the actual product application. The reason I wouldn’t anchor on past earnings here is that this market is still very small up to this point in time and PlanOptik’s prior component ASP would have been unremarkable. If this market takes off according to projections for 2027 on then both the volume and ASP will be orders of magnitude higher than past. The thesis for me boils down to 1) great and highly applicable tech, 2) relationships with tier 2 MEMS foundries (Silex, Teledyne DALSA) that are confirmed to be in these markets, 3) logistics, and 4) behavioral signaling. As to logistics, PlanOptik is neighbors in Elsoff to BTE Born who makes functional optical coatings including AR coatings that OCS requires, creating a very convenient setup on top of the glass packaging tech. For behavioral, several things, but among them the company paid for their own booth at photonics west last month instead of the subsidized German pavilion with dozens of others per usual. The company is very conservative and risk averse on spend so I take that as an indicator, but circumstantial as you said. Another is an update to their product pages on the website for glass wafer, patterned glass wafer, glass substrate, etc. with optical mentions now everywhere. And a third is that Carsten Wesselkamp was promoted to VP 4/2025 and his Linkedin explicitly mentions photonics packaging, key photonics industry accounts, etc. Would definitely do your own diligence. It’s also very fair to wait on a clear earnings inflection.
The work is fascinating, thanks. Although you provide a lot of circumstantial evidence, is it fair to say it's still inevitably quite speculative re precisely how indispensable PlanOptik tech or know-how is or will be to the LITE/Google supply chain or how that will impact company earnings? Is the implication that you think PO are currently the sole supplier of the MEMS glass being used? Especially, there is so far fairly little signal from P4O's numbers the last couple years...
Thanks for your comment! Yes that’s fair and accurate. I don’t have or expect any direct confirmation given how guarded this sort of business relationship would be, including key performance numbers of PlanOptik components in the actual product application. The reason I wouldn’t anchor on past earnings here is that this market is still very small up to this point in time and PlanOptik’s prior component ASP would have been unremarkable. If this market takes off according to projections for 2027 on then both the volume and ASP will be orders of magnitude higher than past. The thesis for me boils down to 1) great and highly applicable tech, 2) relationships with tier 2 MEMS foundries (Silex, Teledyne DALSA) that are confirmed to be in these markets, 3) logistics, and 4) behavioral signaling. As to logistics, PlanOptik is neighbors in Elsoff to BTE Born who makes functional optical coatings including AR coatings that OCS requires, creating a very convenient setup on top of the glass packaging tech. For behavioral, several things, but among them the company paid for their own booth at photonics west last month instead of the subsidized German pavilion with dozens of others per usual. The company is very conservative and risk averse on spend so I take that as an indicator, but circumstantial as you said. Another is an update to their product pages on the website for glass wafer, patterned glass wafer, glass substrate, etc. with optical mentions now everywhere. And a third is that Carsten Wesselkamp was promoted to VP 4/2025 and his Linkedin explicitly mentions photonics packaging, key photonics industry accounts, etc. Would definitely do your own diligence. It’s also very fair to wait on a clear earnings inflection.