After-Hours Reversal! Optical Communications Extends Its Rebound

Deep News11-11

On the morning of November 11, A-share optical communications stocks, driven by bullish capital, posted a long-awaited third consecutive day of gains.

The core sub-sectors also performed strongly, with the co-packaged optics index climbing 2.19% in tandem and daily turnover reaching a hefty 68.517 billion yuan.

Against the backdrop of the Shanghai Composite Index rising a mere 0.06% over the same period, the optical communications sector once again demonstrated powerful upside elasticity and independent excess returns.

Leading names spearheaded the move, with ZJ INNOLIGHT (300308) surging 6.09% intraday, Eoptolink Technology jumping 7.14%, and Yuanjie Semiconductor and T&S Communications both soaring more than 9%.

Meanwhile, Cambridge Technology locked limit-up on strong buying support, while Linktel Technologies and Tianfu Communication also notched notable gains of 7.22% and 5.36% respectively.

Extending the observation window to three trading days, ZJ INNOLIGHT (300308) has accumulated a gain of 11.58% since its close on November 6.

This solid阶段性 rebound has directly carved out clear weekly profit space for the entire sector.

However, widening the timeline further to the past twenty trading days, the underlying nature of this rally becomes evident.

ZJ INNOLIGHT (300308) still shows a deep drawdown of 27.89% over the past twenty sessions, and its year-to-date decline remains at 17.79%.

The sharp turn in market sentiment stemmed from a sudden dose of inflation cold air from overseas macro markets the night before.

The U.S. Labor Department reported that October CPI rose 0.4% month-on-month, exceeding the consensus estimate of 0.3%, while core CPI also posted an above-forecast 0.3% monthly gain.

More troubling, the core inflation gauge has been stuck stubbornly at 0.3% for a third consecutive month.

Because a prior federal government shutdown left some official base data missing, the government unusually withheld year-on-year figures this time, but that did nothing to ease market tightening anxiety.

Sticky inflation instantly ignited rate-hike expectations for the Federal Reserve, forcing a sharp correction to the previously mild dovish stance.

Fed Governor Waller said publicly in London that even if October inflation showed short-term cooling, the Fed should not hesitate to support another rate hike in December.

Waller further warned that if core CPI month-on-month remains at 0.3% or higher, the FOMC should even seriously consider a one-time aggressive 50 basis point hike.

His core argument centered on central bank credibility, arguing that too slow a pace of tightening would expose macro credibility to an unbearable risk profile.

As hawkish officials set the tone, CME FedWatch data swung violently.

Market pricing for a 25 basis point hike in December instantly jumped to a high range of 84.2% to 88.2%, while the probability of a direct 50 basis point hike also leaped from zero to 11.8%.

The steep climb in rate expectations directly triggered an indiscriminate selloff in the U.S. Treasury market.

The 2-year Treasury yield, a bellwether for short-term policy rates, surged 18.46 basis points in a single day to the dangerous edge of 4.742%.

The 10-year Treasury yield, the anchor for global asset pricing, was not spared either, rising a notable 11.17 basis points on the day to close at 4.996%.

During intraday trading, that yield even violently touched the psychological threshold of 5.025%.

The 30-year Treasury yield also rose 7.74 basis points in tandem, holding firmly at a high of 5.357%.

Extreme panic over tightening liquidity quickly transmitted to equity markets, with all three major U.S. indexes closing lower: the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq fell 0.30%, 0.38%, and 0.74% respectively.

Just as the macro liquidity gloom was suffocating the entire tech cohort, an after-hours earnings report from across the ocean delivered a breathtaking reversal of expectations.

Computing infrastructure giant CoreWeave officially delivered a third-quarter financial report far exceeding market expectations.

The data showed CoreWeave posted quarterly revenue of $3.661 billion, a massive 168% year-on-year surge, significantly above the consensus estimate of $3.56 billion.

On profitability metrics, loss per share narrowed to $1.27, also better than the expected loss of $1.46.

What energized bulls even more was the substantive improvement in profitability: adjusted operating income reached $379 million, with the corresponding operating margin exactly hitting the 10% threshold.

This profit realization milestone came a full quarter ahead of the company's previous official guidance.

Despite the impressive headline operating results, the bear case against this unicorn had long been locked on its high debt costs.

In the third quarter, the company's single-quarter net interest expense reached as high as $846 million, nearly doubling year-on-year and even surpassing its adjusted operating profit for the period.

The massive interest burden, combined with bond yields that once spiked to an astonishing 15.2%, was the root ailment behind CoreWeave's stock being cut in half over the past month, with cumulative losses exceeding 40%.

Facing intense short-selling pressure, CEO Michael Intrator unleashed a powerful combination of responses at the subsequent earnings call.

His first card was the certainty of cash flow recovery, explicitly announcing that the company would receive approximately $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits within the next three months.

Currently, 70% of its full-year booked deals have completed prepayment transfers, and its weighted average debt cost has also fallen sharply by 250 basis points year-on-year to 7.9%.

The second card was a resolute severing of the high-interest financing chain, with management publicly committing never to enter the unsecured debt market at current elevated yield levels.

Through flexible capital operations that delay drawing on term loans, the company successfully completed the replacement and repayment of over $4 billion in high-cost debt.

The third card pointed directly to the strongest endorsement of underlying demand: as of the end of September, the company's contracted but unrecognized revenue backlog had swelled to an unprecedented $132.5 billion.

At the end of June this year, that figure stood at $104 billion.

This explosive backlog reflects terrifying end-demand absorption capacity, with customer computing power demand exceeding ten times all available capacity through 2027.

This means the company's 2027 computing architecture is essentially sold out, and even its next-generation infrastructure planned for 2028 market launch has already been pre-booked by downstream giants.

The fourth card was a prudent offset against capital expenditure, with 75% of committed capex already tied to real money from investment-grade major clients and long-term enterprise contracts.

On this basis, management further raised its full-year revenue guidance to $13 billion to $13.3 billion, while revising the lower bound of capital expenditure upward by $2 billion to a range of $37 billion to $39 billion.

This confident earnings report and call communication directly shattered the market's bearish psychological defense, with CoreWeave shares surging about 8% in subsequent after-hours trading.

This strong spillover of sentiment provided direct and powerful fundamental support for the upstream optical module sector.

For a long time, the deepest concern in global capital markets was that massive AI capital expenditure could be instantly severed by elevated debt costs.

Now CoreWeave has proven with real prepayments, enormous long-term contracts, and fully sold-out forward capacity that the cash flow loop of computing infrastructure is still running at high speed.

Since the downstream AI capex chain has not broken, the massive orders and shipment pace in the hands of upstream optical module makers naturally will not face a sudden emergency brake.

The underlying logic of the sector's fundamentals received its most solid real-world closed-loop verification at this moment.

External regulatory disruption also brought positive signals of marginal easing. According to an exclusive report by Reuters citing three people familiar with the matter, Microsoft is applying intense, concentrated pressure on the Trump administration.

Microsoft's core demand is for the White House to completely abandon its previously proposed extreme plan to ban imports of optical transceivers from China.

Microsoft's core objection is straightforward: such trade-protectionist hard bans would further slow the overall construction timeline of U.S. data centers.

Microsoft currently has 35 data centers under accelerated construction in the U.S., with as many as 134 new projects in the planning and landing stage.

This real-interest博弈 from a North American mega-cap powerfully hedged the potential tail risk of the optical module supply chain at the geopolitical level.

Policy caution has won a valuable strategic buffer period for domestic export leaders.

The pace of domestic technological evolution has also not slowed. China's research and industry communities recently successfully completed the world's first 1,000-kilometer-class hollow-core fiber bidirectional real-time transmission verification.

The project achieved synchronized bidirectional 64 Tb per second ultra-large bandwidth signal transmission over a complex 1,007.48-kilometer route, with one-way latency suppressed to just 3.43 milliseconds.

This disruptive breakthrough in frontier communications technology directly stirred bullish ripples on A-shares, with related concept stocks such as Huamai Technology immediately locking limit-up.

The continuous expansion of technological boundaries keeps broadening the imagination space of the optical communications sector for mainstream capital.

Supply-side capacity expansion is also advancing at full speed. Domestic high-speed optical module core player Cambridge Technology publicly stated it plans to further expand annual high-speed optical module capacity by at least 10 million units before the end of 2027.

Such large-scale capital expenditure and capacity expansion directly reflect that industry prosperity is by no means a short-term flash in the pan.

The valuation coordinate system provides a rare safety cushion for current market博弈. After weeks of irrational deep selling, the valuation froth of industry leaders has been largely squeezed out.

ZJ INNOLIGHT (300308) currently has a trailing price-to-earnings ratio that has fallen to 22.72 times, while Eoptolink has dropped to an absolute low of 18.84 times.

Broadening the view to the entire optical communications sector, the overall trailing P/E stands at 38.08 times, while the average trailing P/E of the CPO co-packaged optics sector is 29.34 times.

Considering these names' double-digit deep declines over the past twenty trading days, market prices have clearly completed risk clearing ahead of fundamentals.

The real pressure that must be acknowledged still exists. The objective fact that U.S. Treasury yields approached 5% intraday does impose a hard constraint on the valuation ceiling of high-beta growth stocks.

Macro liquidity tightening is a sword of Damocles hanging over all high-valuation assets, and any blind optimism that ignores interest rate costs is extremely dangerous.

However, the macro rates that suppress valuation multiples and the industry trends that determine a company's stock price center must not be conflated in essence.

The previous brutal crash in the optical communications sector was essentially an extreme pricing of pessimistic expectations that AI capital expenditure could be interrupted by debt and regulation.

As CoreWeave puts real prepayments, fully sold-out forward capacity, and declining debt costs on the table, the jittery pessimism on the trading floor was instantly pushed back a large notch.

Macro rates cannot erase the real profits rolling onto corporate books.

The core confidence of current optical communications assets comes from valuation性价比 at just over twenty times earnings, corresponding to certain earnings growth next year.

At a time when the delivery pace of computing hardware shows no sign of slackening, the continued landing of core orders is the only anchor for the true direction of stock prices.

As institutional capital begins to flow back and build positions after the deep decline, the current position of tech stocks has ushered in an excellent risk-reward window.

Macro rates may periodically disturb the upper bound of valuation elasticity, but as long as the global computing infrastructure machine does not shut down for a single day, orders and earnings will reward true long-term patience with the most resilient cash flow.

Disclaimer: Investing carries risk. This is not financial advice. The above content should not be regarded as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation on acquiring or disposing of any financial products, any associated discussions, comments, or posts by author or other users should not be considered as such either. It is solely for general information purpose only, which does not consider your own investment objectives, financial situations or needs. TTM assumes no responsibility or warranty for the accuracy and completeness of the information, investors should do their own research and may seek professional advice before investing.

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