BlockBeats News, August 14th. Analyst qinbafrank published a comparison between the two leading companies in the US stock market's photonics sector, Coherent (COHR) and Lumentum (LITE). The difference in their positioning determines different investment logics: Coherent is the scale and platform leader in the US stock photonics industry, with advantages in scale, product breadth, manufacturing platform, long-term technology stack, and customer coverage; Lumentum, on the other hand, is a profit density and profit elasticity leader in the AI optical value pool, excelling in growth rate, gross margin, operating leverage, current operating quality, and net liquidity.

The size gap between the two leaders is rapidly narrowing. In the full year of FY2026, Coherent's revenue is 2.36 times that of Lumentum. By the fourth quarter of FY2026, it had dropped to 2.03 times, and in the midpoint guidance for the first quarter of FY2027, it further narrowed to 1.84 times. Calculated based on the midpoint of the next quarter's guidance, Coherent's revenue is approximately 1.84 times that of Lumentum, but the implied Non-GAAP operating profit is only about 1.04 times. With revenue about 2.03 times that of a quarter, Coherent only generates approximately 1.62 times the Non-GAAP gross profit, 1.21 times operating profit, and 1.08 times net profit of Lumentum. This set of comparisons clearly demonstrates that Lumentum is significantly superior to Coherent in profit quality and operating leverage, while the gap between them in revenue and profit scale is rapidly narrowing.