Applied Optoelectronics raises its guidance for Q3 2016

12 Sep 2016

Positive revision follows substantial, increased demands from datacenter connectivity sector.

On the up: AOI has revised up its Q3 forecast on the back of new business.

Applied Optoelectronics Inc. (AOI), a Texas-based developer of fiber-optic access network products for the internet, datacenter and fiber-to-the-home markets, has revised the guidance for trading in its third quarter of 2016, which ends September 30th.

Highlights of the company’s new forecast include the following:

Revenue to be in the range of $63.0m to $65.0m, above the previous guidance of $56.0m to $59.0m.
Gross margin in the range of 30.5% to 32.0% remains the same as the prior outlook.
Net income in the range from $4.7m to $5.2m, up from the prior outlook of $2.9m to $3.8m.
Earnings per share in the range of $0.26 to $0.29, using a weighted-average fully diluted share count of approximately 18.0 million shares. This is above the prior outlook of $0.16 to $0.21 per share.
(All above figures are non-GAAP).

Dr. Thompson Lin, AOI’s founder, president and CEO, commented, "Customer demand for our datacenter products has accelerated in the latest quarter and has outpaced our prior expectations. So we are increasing our third quarter guidance in order to reflect the increased demand."

The prior outlook referenced above was provided in the company’s statement released on August 4, 2016.

New business

At the end of August, AOI announced that it had received initial orders for its 40 Gbps QSFP+ and 100 Gbps QSFP28 optical transceiver modules from a new hyper-scale datacenter customer (unnamed).

Dr. Lin commented at the time, “After an extensive period of product testing and qualification, we are pleased to provide our products to a new large datacenter customer. The initial orders we have received, totaling more than 10,000 transceivers of various product types, are for delivery over the next couple of quarters, and represent a compelling opportunity to develop a long-term relationship with this new customer.”

AOI’s optical transceivers are predominantly deployed in intra-datacenter applications and are used for high-speed switching and routing connectivity. AOI has invested over $70 million in the past year on state-of-the-art production and R&D facilities at its headquarters in Sugar Land, TX, USA, to enable cost-effective, high volume production for its datacenter and CATV broadband product lines, including in-house laser diode and light engine production.