Expect a dead stock and no news over the next 6 months, folks. It's going to be a heavy burden for some imo. I'm sorry but that's my honest opinion and it's based on far more than tea leaves.
The Evidence - see for yourself there is no 'twisting' of facts here. This is just basic interpretation:
1. No transceiver demo. That nearly says it all. The potential partner (possibly the Tier1) apparently isn't convinced the tech is ready. Whatever that demo was - it falls short of what deems the tech to be seen as 'ready to go'. Dr Lebby recently said very clearly there are issues that are causing an impasse. But it is very telling that he has given no detail on what the issues are. "Reliability" and "Scalabiity" are incredibly broad descriptions that could include dozens or hundreds of details - or just one or two that stop everything. Nor has he said how long it could take to resolve them to potential customer's satisfaction -- ie when is enough - enough?. It's already a year longer than our 'guru' thought it would be and we are nearly as in the dark now as we were back then. People, THIS IS THE REASON HE REFUSED TO GO OVER GOALS LAST YEAR imo. He didn't want shareholders to know how far away they really were. And, IMO that is still the case.
2. Demo at the ASM announcement. It's a tell that even by ASM nothing should be expected, so they are trying to buoy hopes by doing a show and tell for shareholders.
3. Dr Lebby just said they will be showing potential customers demos like the one at OFC over the next 6 months. This is a tell to not expect anything for 6 months. Why ELSE did he say 6 months? No reason. He is re-setting shareholder expectations just like he said he would in the 4th qtr commentary, after having badly missed meeting expectations that were raised from the Dec 4 letter. He KNOWS there will be nothing exciting by ASM and he just doesn't want to deal with all that frustration--so he is dangling the 'demos and prototypes' carrot for the next 6 months..imo. If he had said "couple of months" shareholders would be chomping at the bit for ASM news, and the stock would collapse when it doesn't happens.
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But what about the technology and recent announcements? The idea that the modulator technology is NOW ready, is likely to be very wrong for these reasons:
1. The 10K says they are still developing the tech in house for 200Gbps. This implies that it is nowhere near being done or confirmed by a foundry.
2. Within a month of saying they are implementing 200Gbps with several foundries they completely backtracked by changing it to "planning to implement". Nobody with a brain does this by accident. This is a correction to the first and means they are still in the early stages and likely haven't even created any successful modulators for 200Gbps anywhere other than in their own lab.
3. He never said it was ready. The poling comments were off-the-cuff and not even in a PR or 8k, leaving much leeway for uncertainty about yields and consistency. And he could easily say they have created high yield, high volume modulators on many wafers in 200mm foundries that have been confirmed to run 200Gbps. He hasn't. If you read the PR closely it says the test was "based on ..a DESIGN" which LEVERAGES.the 200mm wafer modulators...all wiggly words. that are consistent with points #1 and #2.
It is POSSIBLE their communication is so bad or they are trying so hard to be coy that it is misleading, and that they did it at one foundry. But all of the messaging points the other way..There likely are still plenty of hurdles (ie he said reliability testing and scalability are issues) -]otherwise they wouldn't be resetting shareholder expectations so dramatically just after OFC and going into ASM.
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