Iqe Share Discussion Threads

[sheep_herder] 15/6/2018 11:39

Sweenoid, indeed, does sound promising for the 2020+ time frame once IQE have equipment to service the market. I'd hope the share price might be £2 by the start of 2020.

[fuji99] 15/6/2018 09:22

How many IQE's with so much experience and expansion going on do we have around, in the UK in particular ?
This is where all should start.

[paradores] 15/6/2018 08:44

As always, most grateful Sween.

The trend towards 3D and mass-market application of high quality VCSEL is irrefutable. With that the risk of a significant short squeeze only increases. What to do? How to mitigate..?

"O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.."

[sweenoid] 15/6/2018 07:57

From Sweenoid- who spent the entire of his youth and childhood, in THE most deprived ( Docks area) of Newport- it was poor and rough!

Grity- don’t focus on US corporate results , quarterly reporting and comparing 1/4 to 1/4 are meaningless in the long scheme of things , remember if they compared to the same 1/4 LAST YEAR ( for their business we are INTERESTED in) it would be significantly better

Look at the big picture, in other words not a quick snapshot

Anyhow

Finisar - who will be one of our big competitors had a CC last night re their earnings, some interesting comments.


If you don’t want to read it have a look at my ‘points of interest’ below, but a quick summary ( by me) reads

“VCSEL market is going to be very healthy and large, Android smartphones are obviously coming on board thick and fast, VCSELS winning over EE lasers, Finisar woefully behind IQE, they are optimistic in their timeframes in terms of entering into volume production- see answers , in their big Sherman facility, all gone quiet on Apple investment? . Essentially confirms what we already know and Finisar seem to be saying that it is VCSEL module production rather than wafer construction is going to be their raison detre?, all in all, yet another positive indicator for IQE.

Some quotes from CC and a few notes from me.

I don't think the customers seem nearly as excited about edge emitters as they were, let's say even a quarter ago. So we're working on all the different aspects of 3D sensing you've got structured light, we've got time of flight. Those are our focus areas and certainly that's where we see much more of the customer traction.

In addition, we have closed a number of design wins for our VCSEL's in consumer and automotive applications. Our opportunity funnel will continue to increase in areas beyond automotive and handsets. We continue to make progress with respect to uplift of the building and the ordering and receipt of capital equipment for VCSEL laser fab in Sherman, Texas for 3D sensing applications and still expect to be qualified and in production using 6 inch wafers by the end of the calendar year, which we expect to significantly increase our production capacity. - from me - wildly optimistic;-)

Yes. I think we've said fall and I think October I'd say is generally the earliest we'd expect it, (VCSEL production at Sherman) but I think a lot is going to depend on customer quals and things that are somewhat out of our control. But we're currently planning to be early fourth quarter to be online.- me- this sounds very optimistic given what else they are saying, as they have to qualify machines and wafers and validate, starting from zero- mmmmm challenging;-)

This more or less sums up their position as way behind IQE in this answer

Near term, I'd say it's mostly handset. As we talked about in the remarks, we talked about an automotive design win we definitely see a lot of activity in that sector. But I think production is in calendar year 2019 maybe early 2020. Some of the other opportunities are not as big, but we see production volumes happening even at the end of this year and some of these more specialized areas that involve 3D Sensing. But we're definitely starting to see additional traction in the handset stays which is the highest volume opportunity.

From numerous comments regarding ‘handset opportunities ‘ it’s obvious that the entire ANDROID community is going 3D sensing and as per Drew Nelson response to my question at the AGM it’s going to be majorly if not entirely with VCSELS and NOT EE lasers- great for our margins

Another pointer to the fact that IQE strategy and roadmap is so further advanced than Finisar is to be found in this answer

And I think as we get Sherman online certainly more of the revenue of the company will be coming from the 3D sensing opportunity and that's component based. I think that there is opportunity for us which we haven't done in the past to sell our components into traditional optics opportunities. At this point, we haven't fully explored that and so how that's going to contribute for us down the road, we don't know. I think you touched on another point which is the manufacturing footprint. I think that has something again that's very much under review.

Later...
S

[grity] 14/6/2018 22:43

Is it due to finisar loosing business to US ? Hopefully we won't be saying the same in September!



Revenue Details for the Fourth Quarter of Fiscal 2018:

Sales of datacom products decreased from $266.1 million to $248.0 million, or by $18.1 million, or (6.8)%, compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2018, primarily due to a decline in revenues for our VCSEL laser arrays for 3D sensing applications.

Sales of telecom products decreased from $66.3 million to $62.1 million, or by $4.2 million, or (6.4)%, compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2018, primarily due to the full three-month impact of the annual telecom price reductions.

[dr_smith] 14/6/2018 19:13

juluman:
I don't live or work in Wales, but it is great to read of such high employment potential for a deprived part of UK. There have been so many industries lost over the decades, shipbuilding, mining, motor m/f and so on, it is nice to eventually have some new growth industries to help offset the downward spiral.
Subject of course to the Welsh planning officers letting it all happen. ;-)

[coppertrader] 14/6/2018 18:59

shorts reducing from 9.1 to 8.39. GSA capital have gone back under the teportable threshold and Marshall Mace have reduced too.

[juluman] 14/6/2018 18:50

Page 65 of the 5G Report:
“IQE is ideally positioned to provide components to the emerging 5G ecosystem, from 5G handsets to ubiquitous IoT devices. Currently some 80% of its revenues are being obtained from existing 4G devices. It is worth noting that although the UK does not have big chip manufacturing factories based in the country, UK councils in the Cardiff Capital Region are set to develop a foundry for technology behind 5G in Newport, which could create about 2,000 high skilled jobs in five years. Funding of nearly £38m has been announced for the facility to make compound semiconductors. The factory will be owned by the councils and is projected to create £375m of private sector investment over the next five years”.

[mad foetus] 14/6/2018 17:58

How many machines do we have at the moment?How many will we have at end of year?how many did we have at end of 2017?How much do we make from each one?

[dr_smith] 14/6/2018 17:51

I thought that berber1..and I think so did others, but expansion has to be tempered with revenue offsetting investment costs to keep some shareholders happy, and potentially, buyers needing to buy from an under-sourced market will be incentivised to offer IQE forward sales contracts with development money upfront, to ensure their respective supply.
My own thought, but that would mean less up front money from IQE and forward long term supply contract would be a double whammy. :-)

[dr_smith] 14/6/2018 17:44

Funny old day, shorters got up at 9.00 went for a walk round the park, popped back home in the afternoon for uncrossing trades, near back to start position.
The day volume was about 5% up on average.
Boring stuff for us LTH, but provides curious interest. :-)
Thank-you for links Sweenoid, though too long for my lazy eyes so have to resort to humour.
On question of AR and VR, I heard a song about it:

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see

come on.. you can singalong too.

gotta go now...nurse says its time for my medication ;-)

[berber1] 14/6/2018 17:38

IQE, are very cautious about their expansion, if they were so confident with all this technology , they would expand faster in preparation for the future exponential demand, and the market can see that. Even with these ten new machines their yearly income won't grow that much to push the share price up.The share price will linger at these levels, at the mercy of TRowe. It could not attract any major investors apart the vulture "TRowe", and he is exploiting this situation to the maximum, they provide ammunition to shorters to screw the company, and not give a damn about IQE. we need more forward and ambitious management that believe in what IQE does and that can expand the company faster,and attract more institutional investors

[maxibrit2] 14/6/2018 16:44

It is a great read, thank you, very educational.

IQE is named on page 21, along with Newport Wafer Fab (of which DN is a Director I think)

[richardc77] 14/6/2018 16:43

Interesting read Dave, thanks.

I doubt VR will be big, missed the boat, but AR will be.

[sweenoid] 14/6/2018 16:02

The 5G Nation

I advice anyone interested in 5G to read this report, it’s based on a U.K. perspective. I have scanned the report and then focused on what I find interesting
It’s a great read, but don’t go in expecting to see IQE named, obviously the ‘catapult ‘ is central to U.K. plans.

If it’s all too much, just be reassured that 5G is going to be a goldmine for IQE, both in terms of provision of the necessary infrastructure , but also in the smartphones/pads and whatever other devices emerge that will utilise 5G. It’s impossible to imagine the effect 5G will have on our daily lives and it’s coming closer and closer. Drew Nelson, our CEO once again said at the AGM , it’s coming sooner than Many imagine, obviously he has a global perspective.....because he will have been talking to many of the global ‘players’ :-), he knows you know.

A few quick giveaways - in years to come we will all be talking about the ‘tactile’ internet , go read something about that- fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

The ‘killer’ applications for 5G are going to be AR and VR - augmented and virtual reality, it’s astonishing to realise that ultra Fidelity VR consumes 50 Times the bandwidth of a high definition video stream! These killer Apps are of course totally dependent on Compound Semiconductors in particular VCSELS, and with their widespread adoption in ‘world- facing’ camera arrays ensures that all those reactors in Newport are going to be kept rather busy

Have a butchers



As a quick ‘aside’ the applications for 3D sensing in automotive and industrial applications abound- remember AMS believe that industrial 3D sensing will be even bigger than wireless and automotive ( even with the huge demand of LIDAR) ! As such this paper is interesting - just read the abstract ;-)



Later.....
S

[paradores] 14/6/2018 10:38

Interims rule - generally read no news as good news ;o)

There will already be good 2H order visibility.

July 2017 Trading Update "..it remains early into the start of the mass-market adoption of our technology, it is possible that with the current contract momentum, a more significant upgrade to current market expectations could be delivered for 2018..."

[mad foetus] 14/6/2018 09:57

Shorters don't have to close, longs don't have to sell. Whether they want to is another thing. What we need is news and proof that the 60% compound annual growth in photonics is happening and clarity on when it will feed through to improving EPS. Once we can start seeing that EPS is growing strongly the share price will motor and there will be a scramble to close shorts. But I sense the market is waiting for evidence that the jam will arrive tomorrow. If I was the company I would be announcing every machine that is commissioned.

[adejuk] 14/6/2018 09:18

shorters do not have to close until the stock is asked for by rowe.
meantime they can play with this till it is £100

[jugu] 14/6/2018 08:12

IQE presented yesterday,
But only some presentations are available.

[potential] 14/6/2018 02:03

With almost 10% of these shares sold short or about 70 Million shares sold short, that will eventually have to be bought back, and with only about 4Million shares traded today (so far) and less than 2 Million of those bought and further the share price increases over 5% on such low volume you can imagine that the shorters will be scratching their heads and wondering how to get out of this without losing their or their clients money. It looks like a short squeeze is on the cards. I hope the private investors keep hold of their shares until at least 190 the hl target.

[terry topper] 14/6/2018 00:52

Thanks also pi0110 for your advice.

Good luck with IQE - pity you were so late but I'm sure that you'll be in profit soon.
I wonder if you were so condescending with investors who were talking about IQE at 22p a year or so before you invested at about 5x that price!

[terry topper] 14/6/2018 00:41

Thanks Nick

That's really helpful - I am sure that Stockopedia's system works so well that they have chosen to share it with the whole world rather than make lots of money for themselves.

Would you be interested in buying a bridge by the way - I may be able to get you a share of the Forth Bridge?

Also importantly, these are, as described, my 'punts', they are not tips and are not intended as such.

[pi0110] 13/6/2018 22:52

Well for starters, apart from an equity raise at the end of last year to invest in new equipment for their expansion IQE don't print their own shares to dilute their holders to homeopathic proportions. They are already profitable and growing.

They are in an incredible new growth industry with explosion in 5G technology, 3D photonics, power switching and soon to be autonomous cars bearing upon us. They are currently world leaders in these wafer technologies. They have a strong valuable number of patents with a very wide range of semi conducting elements and are well ahead of the competition.

They are expanding their foundry in Cardiff and employing dozens more staff and are actively engaged in VCSEL qualification programmes with over 10 additional key VCSEL chip manufacturers as well as their current customers.

So quite apart on that scale.