Coherent's revenue for 2024 is $5.301 billion

International laser giant Coherent's Q4 2024 sales exceeded expectations, reaching a historic high!
Recently, Coherent released its highest quarterly sales data in history, mainly due to the demand for optical transceivers in artificial intelligence data center applications. For the three months ending December 31, the company's revenue was $1.43 billion, a year-on-year increase of 27% and a 6% increase from the third quarter of 2024. According to statistics, Coherent achieved a revenue of 5.301 billion US dollars for the whole year of 2024.

This data is higher than the guidance range provided by Coherent in November, and after the latest announcement, Coherent's stock price rose by 12% in pre-market trading. In addition, Coherent's pre tax profit increased from a loss of $37 million a year ago to $128 million.

Coherent believes that since last year, the demand for artificial intelligence data centers has driven a 79% increase in data communication related sales. Now, more and more customers are increasing their deployment of 800 Gb/s, and the next generation 1.6Tb/s products are still expected to start mass production later this year.

Coherent CEO Anderson stated during an investor conference call discussing the latest performance: Although we are focused on a growth rate of 1.6 Tb/s, we are also investing and innovating for the future. We are developing a 3.2 Tb/s transceiver and investing in key element technologies, which form the foundation of our transceiver roadmap and can support various forms of optical data transmission.

In addition, Coherent's indium phosphide (InP) equipment production (centered around the company's large wafer manufacturing plant located in Sherman, Texas) doubled year-on-year in the latest quarter. This has led to rapid year-on-year growth in Coherent's 800 Gb/s transceiver products, some of which are based on EML, while others are based on continuous wave (CW) lasers combined with their silicon photonics solutions.

With the $33 million chip bill funding confirmed in December, Coherent's InP production capacity will continue to grow to meet the expected long-term sustained demand in the data center market.

Anderson stated that in addition to investing heavily in laser development, including 200 Gb/s vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL) and high-power CW lasers for silicon photonics, the company is also committed to supporting technologies, including optical lens arrays, garnet crystals, isolators, micro optics, thermal management solutions, and a new "optical path switch" platform for data centers. This platform has significantly expanded our target market for data centers, receiving the first customer order for this differentiated new platform in the fourth quarter.

Although AI related transceiver sales currently dominate, Coherent's laser division also announced a 6% year-on-year increase in sales, partly due to stronger pull from the industrial sector.

The market demand for the company's giant excimer laser system for annealing organic LED displays is one of the main reasons, as the technology eventually shifts from smartphone screens to larger applications in laptops as larger scale OLED factories enter production. This means a significant increase in the total surface area of OLED screens, and Coherent's excimer laser is a key driving factor in manufacturing high-quality OLED screens.

For Coherent's new "EDGE" fiber laser platform, it was launched at the EuroBLECH trade show in Hanover, Germany in October 2024 and has now achieved its first sale.

At present, Coherent's stock price is trading slightly above $100 on the New York Stock Exchange, recovering most of the value lost immediately after the release of DeepSeek AI development results, when the company's stock price fell by 20%.

Source: OFweek