Iqe Share Discussion Threads

[fullbright] 29/8/2017 08:15

Not to be confused with "The Ford Probe", which was another sleek model that I once had the misfortune to own, I hear that Ford are about to introduce a new recycled retro model ... The Ford Pube.

The Ford Pube is, by all accounts, being assembled using old Corsairs. For those old enough to know !!

Anyway, I'm finding all this pubic hair talk a little bit vulva, to be honest, so I'm off out on the bike.

[suejarvie] 29/8/2017 07:10

It's probably another one of B7s aliases, he posts under numerous handles! an odd character for sure.

[desperate dan] 28/8/2017 23:19

LOL, the ones between the teeth can be particularly annoying can't they?!

Thanks for your response.

[jehovajira] 28/8/2017 22:07

Thanks to you all for the warm welcome, I truly appreciate it. I was reticent to comment because there are so many on this board that are so well informed and so well spoken, but I just wanted to tip my hat and say hello. I will keep my ear to the ground over here and post as I hear things...as the saying goes, I'm betting the farm on IQE and I truly believe that great things are coming!!!

[sheep_herder] 28/8/2017 22:06

I'm not sure if our new friend from across the pond is serious or is just trying to prank those 20 people who liked his post. Lol

Good try though. Another one for the filter.

[picobird] 28/8/2017 21:06

/jehovajira - like others on this board we welcome newcomers with a wealth of knowledge. Thank you for taking the time to explain this awesome technology.

[grabster] 28/8/2017 20:07

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REACHING U.S. INVESTORS?
.
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Advfn has a sister site in the USA - with stock discussion facilities on bulletin boards. Nobody appears to have set up a thread for LSE:IQE yet. Would somebody here care to do so? I am a registered contributor so could do it myself - but I would rather it be done by someone with a better technical understanding of what the header should say.

To do so, register (free, and maybe upgrade later)




Once that thread is up and running, with a bit of informative content, there's nothing to stop anyone here going onto the threads of the US companies that IQE sells to, drawing attention to the new IQE thread and explaining why.

PS: there are some 'industry specific' categories, including this one for photonics

where IQE might be OK to mention among existing discussions (though again that is best done when an IQE thread is established for folk to click through to)

[nurdin] 28/8/2017 20:07

His commentary on PLUS500 is absurd!He has been bearish on them ever since their flotation in 2013 at £150m price tag..Today the stock is valued at over £1bn and would still be cheap at double the price! Yeh sell...

[desperate dan] 28/8/2017 19:54

jehovajira,

Thanks for an interesting post and for your input.

I'm sure I speak for many on this thread in extending a warm welcome to you.

There has been a recent comment made by the CEO of increased interest and communication from the USA, reported here by one of our most respected contributors.

It goes without saying that any feedback from you regarding IQE's exposure in the US would be very much appreciated.

[pyglet] 28/8/2017 19:38

Let me remind you of a piece in the last trading statement: As part of its expansion plan the Group announces that it has agreed a heads of terms for the lease of a new premises in South Wales. The lease is with the Cardiff City Region, which has a goal of supporting the development of the Compound Semiconductor Cluster in South Wales. This lease provides the infrastructure needed for IQE's expansion in a highly cost effective manner. The lease is for 11 years, and provides IQE with an option to extend the lease or purchase the freehold. In parallel, the Group has placed orders for new MOCVD equipment.Why? Because growth is expected to be phenomenal.

[grabster] 28/8/2017 19:25

wording of that link sounds negative - but text is positive and rates IQE a BUY
And in his final sentence he uses words that echo the title of this thread - so maybe he's been looking here!

Thus:



It’s a little frustrating to fail to notice the potential of a business before its shares go on a terrific rise. Worse still — and positively chastening — is if a company rockets after your research has led you to a negative view.

Shares of IQE (LSE: IQE) and Plus500 (LSE: PLUS) have more than doubled over the last six months and they’re now among the biggest companies on AIM. Cardiff-based semiconductor wafer specialist IQE has only recently come on to my radar, while Israel-domiciled online trading platform Plus500 is a company I’ve been bearish on ever since reading its 2013 stock market admission document.

Huge re-rating

IQE has been at the forefront of the compound semiconductor industry for more than 25 years. It has a wealth of patented intellectual property and is recognised as the leading global supplier of advanced wafer products and services.

Until recently it had traded on a rather depressed price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, for example, a forward P/E of nine on a share price below 20p when my Foolish friend Rupert Hargreaves pointed out the value in the stock three years ago. Today, the shares are at 140p and the forward P/E is 43.

Explosive growth potential

What’s changed? Summer speculation that IQE technology will feature in the new iPhone 8 certainly hasn’t done it any harm. However, the shares had been rising strongly well before this with investors seemingly beginning to recognise a huge volume opportunity that looks to be opening up. All manner of companies are bandying about the phrase du jour ‘Internet of Things’ but few with as much justification as IQE.

After a quarter of a century, it looks to me like the company’s time has come. A share price of 140p and P/E of 43 could look very cheap in a few years time and I rate the stock a buy.

[pyglet] 28/8/2017 18:34

With so much hype at the moment I can see 150 this week possibly tomorrow. Is this the "bet the farm on it" stock of AIM? Answers on a postcard!

[thereptile] 28/8/2017 17:45

Thank you jehovajira

All good stuff, spread the gospel over your side of the pond

[jehovajira] 28/8/2017 16:44

Good afternoon gents, writing from the other side of the pond where interest, I'll wager (have already wagered shall we say) has yet to hit...but I'm watching with intense interest for the day when the brand IQE suddenly becomes noticed by big money institutions here in the U.S...as a former tech who works/worked with lasers I would like to add just a bit of hands on info..a laser is, essentially, pulsed light, even a laser that is strong enough to cut steel or knock a plane out of the sky. The difference between an LED (light emitting diode) and a VCSEL is the mirrors, VCSELs are focused light pulses so when they exit the cavity they not only have a light component, they have a wee bit of heat or are emitted as light and heat. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to do that thing they do such as cure paint, burn hair, etc. I apologize if this is parochial or elementary for some but it's important to understand the differences.
This technology is absolutely cutting edge and about to take over the world, I read a fascinating report about the future of VCSELs...



Comparing Laser Types - VCSELs vs Fabry-Perot Diode Lasers
The basic design of a diode laser used in telecommunications has been around for a long time. It is really just a solid-state laser diffused into a semiconductor wafer with a size of a few hundred microns (a few tenths of a millimeter) or not much larger than a grain of salt! The cavity is basically a LED diffused into the wafer parallel to the surface of the wafer. The wafer must be cleaved at the ends of the cavity and coated as mirrors to create the laser. The mirrors on the end of the cavity are different; one being about 95% reflective, becoming the back facet, the other 95% transparent, allowing the light to escape. (The name Fabry-Perot refers to the mirrored surfaces on the ends, similar to a Fabry-Perot interferometer.)

The diode laser emits light out the side of the chip in a oval pattern.The wavelength can be set by the semiconductor processing, with devices available at 630-650 nm used in laser pointers and visual fault locators for fiber optics, 790 nm used in CD players, 850, 1310 and 1550 nm used for fiber optic transmission systems (with some 1625 coming online in the "L band" for DWDM), 980 and 1480 nm for pump lasers in fiber amplifiers, plus numerous other wavelengths for other uses. These devices tend to be fickle in operation, with great care required to keep them from "blowing up." In a normal fiber optic package, you will find a back facet detector just to stabilize them in operation. Some lasers also include optical elements in the chip to stabilize the wavelength for critical applications like DWDM where the wavelength must be ultra stable.

The biggest problem with diode lasers is cost. In order to find out if a device is good, it is necessary to dice the wafer and mount the chip before it can be powered up to test. If it's good, it will be packaged for sale; if not, it's discarded. The yield of a wafer is the other key to costs and the yield may be low.

For years, researchers have been working on creating a laser that works like a LED, emitting light up out of the wafer, perpendicular to the surface. It took years, but the VCSEL (Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser) was finally perfected. Instead of coated mirrors on the cavity, it uses epitaxial layers grown on the wafer to create mirrors on the surface with a LED sandwiched in between. These epitaxial layers can even create lenses to focus the light into a tight cone, perfect for coupling to fibers.

But the biggest advantage of the VCSEL is in testing. A completed wafer can be tested in a wafer probe machine, where each device is contacted by microscopic electrical probes and current applied. If it's good, it can be seen on a camera and measured. Thus good devices can be detected before the wafer is diced and bad ones marked automatically for discarding. This means that a VCSEL does not have to be diced and mounted in order to be tested, a major savings in cost.

The other cost savings with VCSELs comes in coupling to fibers. The tight beam couples easily to fiber without optics, while the divergent beam of the diode laser requires focusing optics. Also, the VCSEL does not require a back facet monitor like a diode laser; it can be driven like a LED, but at much higher power levels with a much lower drive current.


VCSELs have everything going for them. Simplicity, high power at low current drive, ease of coupling, good spectral characteristics, high bandwidth (~ 5 GHZ now) and LOW COST! Why don't we use them for all fiber optic communications systems? They simply are not yet available at the proper wavelengths. 850 nm is now readily available, but the first 1310 nm devices are just being made in labs. It will take a year or more before they become readily available Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel already use 850 VCSELs for their low cost version.

You can bet that the 1310 devices will be incorporated in every system appropriate as soon as possible to take advantage of the lower cost ( we estimate about 25% as much as a F-P laser.) 1310 VCSELs could be the key to cost justification of fiber to the home (FTTH).

Fotec offers test sources using both Fabry-Perot diode lasers and VCSELs to closely simulate the actual system source for more accurate testing.

For more information on diode lasers, see Sam Goldwasser's articles at: hxxp://repairfaq.cis.upenn.edu/sam/laserdio.htm

Fotec,inc./Fiber U 151 Mystic Ave, Medford, MA 02155. Tel: [phone] (US & Canada) or 781-396-6155; Fax: [phone]; e-mail: [e-mail]

Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet or GbE, as the name says, is Ethernet scaled up to gigabit speeds, providing a migration path from Ethernet at 10 Mb/s to Fast Ethernet at 100 Mb/s and then on to gigabit speeds for network backbones. It has a data rate of 1 gigabit per second (Gb/s, a billion bits per second) and a baud rate of 1.250 Gb/s including the data encoding.

These speeds require laser transmitters, since LEDs run out of steam at a few hundred Mb/s (millions of bits/second). Two fiber optic standards are approved: 1000BASE-SX for short wavelength lasers over multimode fiber and 1000BASE-LX for long wavelength lasers over multimode or singlemode fiber. The short wavelength standard will typically be met with a 850 nm VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser), a new type of device that offers high performance and very low cost. A CD laser may also be used. Long wavelength lasers will be standard 1300 nm singlemode transmitters.

Blessings to all and happy trading!

[steptoes yard] 28/8/2017 15:56

I discuss it regularly with fellow commuters. Mainly in the evenings as it's not really a hot topic in the mornings.

[toffeeman] 28/8/2017 15:54

That's interesting Steptoe - how do you know these facts :)

[blueeyes13] 28/8/2017 14:51

12 Sep is launch date for new iPhone according to CNBC reporting just now :Apple to hold product launch event on Sept. 12; iPhone unveiling expected: Dow Jones, citing sources