$LITE CEO Says Company Can Supply Only 30% of Current Optical Demand

$LITE CEO Michael Hurlston says optical demand is accelerating so quickly that the company can currently supply only about 30% of what customers are requesting.
The imbalance is being driven by rapid adoption of co-packaged optics, or CPO, and near-packaged optics, or NPO.
Both architectures increase the need for high-performance lasers as AI data centers push toward faster and more power-efficient interconnects.
According to Hurlston, demand is now running far ahead of available production capacity.
That creates a favorable pricing and utilization environment for optical component suppliers, but also means customers may face persistent shortages.
Management does not expect industry supply to fully catch up with demand until around 2030.
The bigger thesis is that AI infrastructure bottlenecks are expanding beyond GPUs and memory into networking and optical components.
For $LITE, that could mean several years of structurally tight supply if data-center buildouts continue at the current pace.