Finisar's Sherman plant which is hiring people with Aixtron experience is the new fab funded under Apple's $390M for VCSEL manufacturing. Finisar said it in its June 14 CC that it would spend $100M in its fiscal Q1 (May-July) for capital equipment (read my previous posts on Finisar). It is possible that part of it is already in Aixtron's Q1 115M euros order backlog. However, Bernd stated in the last CC: "Günther Hollfelder okay, great. And given the size of the orders and the number of tools, can you comment on what was the largest order you had in the first quarter and then how many tools it was to get an idea how this structure is behind this large order number? Bernd Schulte Yes. We mentioned before in previous call, that in laser, you have a different orders behavior than in LED. Laser typically customer order, smaller, single digit amount in orders, sometimes order one by one, other maybe up to five business (pieces?), the maximum we have been so far in terms of individual order." So the largest Laser (VCSEL) order received so far is only 5 tools. The Sherman plant with a $100M equipment spending is most likely more than 5 tools. If this hypothesis is right, then there are new orders from Finisar to Aixtron after Aixtron's Q1. We cannot rule out the possibility that Finisar has put in new orders in this quarter. NOTE: AIXTRON MUST STRAIGHTEN THE WEB SITE ASAP, IT HAS BEEN LONG ENOUGH! I have to go to Seeking Alpha web site to dig out Aixtron's 2018 Q1 CC transcript because it is missing from Aixtron's site. 2017 and older archives are available, but not 2018.
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