COHR

PARTIAL · earnings event · tier RESOLVED

Registered claim

At its 2026-08-12 Q4 FY26 print Coherent discloses dollar-quantified indium phosphide substrate capacity commitment or explicit InP supply-constraint language from company-primary disclosure, AND reports revenue at least 3% above the frozen pre-print consensus snapshot, AND reports non-GAAP gross margin of at least 41.0% against the 39.6% Q3 FY26 base.

Registered 2026-08-01.

Resolution spec

Spec registered 2026-08-01.

• [A] CORE · Coherent discloses, in company-primary disclosure at the 2026-08-12 Q4 FY26 print, either a dollar-quantified indium phosphide substrate capacity commitment (naming the AXT-Tongmei 6-inch MDSA, the Sherman InP fab expansion, or an explicit InP dollar figure) or explicit InP supply-constraint language.
  kind: dated binary event · event date 2026-08-12 · evidence: primary source
• [B] confirm · Q4 FY26 revenue at least 3% above the frozen pre-print consensus snapshot.
  kind: numeric threshold · Q4 FY26 total revenue (USD) >= 3
  baseline 1980 (consensus snapshot, frozen 2026-08-07)
  note: COHR Q4 FY26 revenue consensus ~$1.98B (co. guidance $1.91-2.05B midpoint; analyst consensus per Yahoo Finance/Investing.com), fetched 2026-08-07
• [C] confirm · Q4 FY26 non-GAAP gross margin at or above 41.0%, versus the 39.6% reported for Q3 FY26.
  kind: numeric threshold · Q4 FY26 non-GAAP gross margin (percent) >= 2.5
  baseline 40 (consensus snapshot, frozen 2026-08-07)
  note: COHR Q4 FY26 non-GAAP gross-margin consensus 40.0% (co. guidance 39-41% midpoint; Q3 FY26 actual 39.6%), fetched 2026-08-07

Verdict rule: HIT if leg A and leg B and leg C. PARTIAL if leg A, either leg B or leg C, and not both leg B and leg C. MISS if not leg A, or both not leg B and not leg C.

As frozen: HIT = A && B && C; PARTIAL = A && (B || C) && !(B && C); MISS = !A || (!B && !C)

Tier history

• 2026-08-01: MEDIUM (initial). Trigger: First assessment for this context. The prediction was seeded today by the catalyst-prediction-seeding phase against the 2026-08-12 Coherent Q4 FY26 catalyst and registered born-with-spec at the medium default. Its core leg - a dollar-quantified InP substrate capacity commitment or explicit InP supply-constraint language - sits directly on cap-inp-epiwafer-substrate-oligopoly, which held today with no modification after its 2026-07-31 narrowing to a time-bounded pricing-power claim. That narrowing is the relevant standing context: the lockup structure is confirmed, the scarcity is time-bounded, and Coherent is one of the named counterparties. Medium is the correct entry tier.

Evaluated daily since registration: 12 evaluations. The 1 that moved the tier is listed above.

Resolution receipt

Verdict: PARTIAL. Resolved 2026-08-13.

Rule: HIT if leg A and leg B and leg C. PARTIAL if leg A, either leg B or leg C, and not both leg B and leg C. MISS if not leg A, or both not leg B and not leg C.

As frozen: HIT = A && B && C; PARTIAL = A && (B || C) && !(B && C); MISS = !A || (!B && !C)

• [A] PASS: On its Q4 FY26 earnings call Coherent stated indium phosphide 'continues to be our primary constraint' and that it is 'really just constrained by the ramp of the indium phosphide production', and detailed doubling internal InP output year over year by the September quarter. This is explicit InP supply-constraint language in company-primary disclosure at the 2026-08-12 print.
• [B] PASS: actual_raw=2045.5 vs frozen baseline 1980 → 3.31% >= 3. Q4 FY26 total revenue reported at $2,045.5M.
• [C] FAIL: actual_raw=40.2 vs frozen baseline 40 → 0.50% >= 2.5. Q4 FY26 non-GAAP gross margin reported at 40.2%.

Autopsy

Resolved PARTIAL on 2026-08-13. The call asked Coherent for three things at its June-quarter print: explicit indium phosphide supply-constraint language or a dollar-quantified capacity commitment, revenue at least 3% above a frozen pre-print figure, and non-GAAP gross margin of at least 41.0%. The first two were satisfied and the third was not, which the verdict rule maps to partial.

The central condition landed cleanly and it landed with unusual force. Management said on the call that indium phosphide "continues to be our primary constraint" and that the company is "really just constrained by the ramp of the indium phosphide production," while detailing a doubling of internal output year over year by the September quarter. That is the strongest statement of the constraint the record holds from a named optical leader, and it arrived one day after a second optical leader independently described converting a fab to indium phosphide and naming an external substrate partner. The two disclosures together moved the whole substrate picture from a supplier-side inference to a customer-side statement.

Revenue of $2,045.5M cleared its bar at 3.3%. Gross margin of 40.2% did not clear 41.0%.

This record has to carry an honest complication about how those two financial conditions were built, because it affects what their pass and fail mean. Both baselines were frozen from figures that were, on inspection, the midpoints of Coherent's own guidance rather than independently compiled analyst estimates. The company had guided revenue to $1.91B to $2.05B, whose midpoint is $1.98B, the figure frozen as the revenue baseline. It had guided gross margin to 39% to 41%, whose midpoint is 40.0%, the figure frozen as the margin baseline. Both conditions therefore asked Coherent to beat its own guidance rather than to beat the market's expectation. The margin condition asked for the exact top of the guided range, which the company approached at 40.2% and did not reach. That is a beat-your-own-guide test failing at the top of the guide, not a company disappointing the market.

The verdict stands as scored and is not revisited; a resolution that could be reopened once its inputs were re-examined would not be a record. What follows the finding instead is a rule: a frozen baseline must be an independently compiled estimate, and where the frozen figure sits within a quarter of a percent of the company's own guidance midpoint, the resemblance is now flagged automatically before the test is sealed. The guidance range itself is now recorded alongside the baseline, so a threshold that lands outside the guided range is visible at authoring time rather than at resolution.

For the underlying view this is confirming rather than complicating. The claim that indium phosphide is the binding constraint on optical interconnect scaling gained its clearest primary-source statement here, and the argument tracking substrate concentration was strengthened the same day on the strength of it. What failed was one financial threshold that was measuring the wrong thing.