Research|Optics: Conference Season Takeaways - Supply Tightness with Rising Prices; CPO/NPO and Scale-Across Accelerating

In this note we summarise conference-season optics takeaways across recent investor conferences.

Lumentum

• Lumentum mentioned that laser demand still exceeds supply. They expect shortages to last another couple of years. New orders are coming in at the higher prices already agreed or above.
• CPO volumes continue to rise on schedule. Optical scale-up should start in H2 2027 and grow in 2028. Lumentum sees a roughly equal split between CPO and NPO in optical scale-up, with external lasers in all CPO systems and at least half of NPO systems.
• Coherent is the only other supplier Lumentum sees in high-power CPO/NPO lasers. Dr. Wupen Yuen, President of Global Business Units at Lumentum, expects Coherent to solve the challenges of making these lasers reliably at volume, but gave no additional color. Customers need a second supplier ramping during 2027, possibly in H2, to meet 2028 scale-up demand. Chinese competition is still mainly in lower-power CW lasers for pluggables. Lumentum sees little new competition in merchant EMLs.
• Capacity is being added in San Jose through 2027, the UK from 27Q2 and Greensboro (the site acquired from Qorvo) from 28Q2. The timing depends mainly on customer qualification.