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2026-08-29

Serenity turns critic on his top pick: Sivers' earnings call underwhelms even a true believer

Serenity, the stock-picker whose framework centers on buying the small upstream suppliers that feed the AI buildout, spent Friday dissecting an earnings call from the company he considers his single highest-conviction holding — and he came away frustrated.

The name at the center. Sivers Semiconductors (SIVE) is a tiny Sweden-listed maker of indium-phosphide (InP) continuous-wave lasers — the light source that co-packaged optics (CPO) and silicon photonics need as the industry moves optics next to the switch and GPU dies. Serenity treats it as the overlooked "laser chokepoint" of the optical-interconnect supercycle and has said he owns a meaningful slice of the company itself. His enthusiasm today was pointed inward, at management's communication rather than the business.

What he flagged. Serenity argued the call buried the two disclosures that actually matter: six new pluggable-transceiver customer engagements, and Sivers securing capacity across two foundry suppliers during an industry-wide bottleneck. In his framework, scarce foundry allocation plus average-selling-price hikes is precisely the operating leverage worth pressing management on — the way he says U.S. analysts grill peers such as Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI), the Texas-based vertically integrated transceiver maker he also owns.

He was harsher on the CFO, characterizing answers on a potential U.S. dual listing and M&A as evasive and lawyerly. Serenity has long contended that Sivers is penalized by a Swedish investor base fixated on trailing revenue and cash burn, when the story is really about 2027–2028 capacity ramps. He wants a firm Nasdaq listing timeline (his stated target: completed by the first half of 2027) rather than open-ended "evaluation."

A strategic disagreement. Serenity also questioned how Sivers is deploying roughly $70M in fresh capital. He would rather see it fund the dual listing and acquisitions to push downstream — into optical engines and transceivers — than spend on hybrid manufacturing now. His model is Broadcom (AVGO), the hyperscaler-networking giant he uses as a barometer for optical demand, and its willingness to buy IP aggressively. He dismissed the risk of competing with customers, arguing that qualified laser supply is so scarce that incumbents like Lumentum (LITE) and Coherent (COHR) — the large-cap photonics names he benchmarks Sivers against — would simply redirect lasers to their own use, leaving few alternatives. His bottom line: Sivers should "blitzscale" like a U.S. growth company and aim to become the next Lumentum, not settle into being valued like a European component vendor.

He wove in GlobalFoundries (GFS), the U.S. silicon-photonics foundry he uses as ecosystem validation, arguing a better interview would have explored CPO scale and downstream end-customer opportunities running through it.

The takeaway. Nothing today suggests Serenity is trimming; his complaint is about pace and messaging, not the thesis. Still, it is a notable shift in tone — his biggest bull turning into his sharpest critic, pressing his favorite name to act with more urgency.

*This is derived commentary, not investment advice.*

Generated by the claude-opus-4-8 pipeline. Derived content; not investment advice.