Lumentum Says AI Optical Capacity Is Sold Out Into Early 2029, Lifting Shares to a 52-Week High

LITE CEO Michael Hurlston said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Tokyo on Friday, Oct. 9, that the company's optoelectronic parts are effectively sold out through early 2029, as technology companies race to build faster AI data centers. That pushes the sold-out horizon about a year past April, when Bloomberg reported Lumentum's orders were filled through 2028. According to Investing.com's account of the interview, Lumentum cannot meet about 70% of demand for some products through next year and roughly 30% of demand for certain products through 2028.

The bottleneck is manufacturing capacity, not orders. EML chip supply is running more than 30% short and the pump laser business remains sold out despite capacity expansion, Startup Fortune reported. Lumentum has added a fab in Greensboro, North Carolina and is expanding in Japan, but new laser capacity takes about three years to bring online, per Investing.com, so meaningful relief is unlikely before 2029. The demand backdrop is already visible in results: fiscal fourth-quarter revenue rose 109% year over year.

The stock swung hard around the comments. Lumentum fell 5.6% to $1,048.60 in mid-day trading on Thursday amid broad profit-taking in optical names, then rebounded Friday, trading up 6.86% at $1,120.53 mid-session with an intraday high of $1,143.00, a new 52-week high. Early prints ranged from a 4.3% gain to more than 8%, and SentiSense data showed the shares up 6.7% at $1,119.05 in early afternoon trading. Optical peers moved with it: Coherent (COHR) rose 3.5% in premarket trading.

Insider selling is the counterweight. CFO Wajid Ali sold 24,542 shares on Oct. 1 at an average of $1,048.50, about $25.73 million, and insiders sold 94,496 shares worth about $86 million over the past quarter with no purchases, per MarketBeat. A TipRanks headline tied insider sales to a plunge, but that framing matches Thursday's drop, and the largest recent sale came a week earlier. Analysts remain constructive: SentiSense consensus shows an average price target of $1,161.96 from 26 analysts, with 22 Buy and 4 Hold ratings. The things to watch are how fast the Greensboro and Japan capacity ramps, and whether the sold-out position translates into pricing power or simply a longer wait for revenue.