Latest from Agoracom: mcnai thoughts on SA POET potential takeover target
Takeover? Ahmed Abdelazim on Seeking Alpha today
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4815664-poet-technologies-revenue-inflection-still-on-track-but-takeover-could-change-landscape?mailingid=41235826&messageid=2800&serial=41235826.2562&source=email_2800&utm_campaign=rta-stock-article&utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha&utm_term=41235826.2562
"Potential Takeover Target? Aside from POET’s approaching revenue inflection, I believe the company could be a takeover target by Coherent, given the complementary nature of both companies’ optical transceivers and the presence of previous key Coherent executives in POET’s management team and board. On May 13, POET appointed Ghazi M. Chaoui as senior VP of global manufacturing and digital transformation. In this role, Chaoui is directly responsible for overseeing all operations related to order fulfillment, while ensuring the development and implementation of efficient and cost-effective manufacturing operations and systems. On that note, Chaoui had served as Coherent’s Chief Procurement Officer as his last role before joining POET. After two months, on July 7, POET appointed Sohail Khan as a board director. Khan has extensive M&A experience as he negotiated the sales and purchases of several companies as CEO of Agere Systems. Meanwhile, Khan last served as executive VP, Wideband Gap Electronics and President of SiC, LLC, divisions of Coherent. In my opinion, Khan’s appointment is especially interesting since his prior role at Coherent likely provided him with insights into the technological gaps and the competitive landscape of this sector. At the same time, Khan’s extensive M&A experience could be a sign that POET is considering a potential sale. Overall, both appointments could be pre-acquisition moves by Coherent as the appointment of Chaoui ensures efficient and scalable operations and the appointment of Khan brings in the financial and legal expertise required to execute an acquisition transaction. It should also be noted that POET has been relatively quiet in terms of sharing updates, aside from its Q2 earnings update, since Khan’s appointment. This represents a significant departure from its rate of updates earlier this year, with multiple press releases highlighting its progress being shared monthly. While the lack of updates could be simply due to a lack of material news, the combination of the timing and the recent appointments makes a potential takeover a plausible explanation for POET’s recent public silence. A key factor that makes POET an attractive takeover target for Coherent is the Optical Interposer platform and the patents related to it to aid its market efforts in optical transceivers. Last April, Coherent demonstrated a 1.6T optical transceiver that incorporates its 200G vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) and photodiodes. This type of laser emits light perpendicularly from the top surface of the chip, making it suited for short-reach applications." |
