$AAOI has finished a $500m ATM In April.. $600m ATM in June. Then filed another $600m in August.
It's out of my control if management wants to abuse this trash repeated ATM structure. Instead following
$AXTI like LTA prepayments and using that to fund buildout.
Or taking private placements like
$NVDA + Nebius for $2B and using that to fund buildout.
Or convertible notes at 40% premiums.
It's really hard for the stock to break out of $100 or $150 or $200 if there's $600M of selling pressure at those levels (and maybe expectations of future ATMs).
I had the same criticism with
$IREN with their $6B ATM, which is why it's been rangebound for half a year. And I'll say the same thing with my own thesis names too.
I see
$AAOI operationally very bullish for 2027, with $471m/month transceiver revenue. 400k ELSFP units/month entering 2028.
The revenue ramp is absurd and can compress to single digit forward P/E.
But I find it hard to get excited over funding infinite ATMs during the buildout, when you're sacrificing opportunity cost with names currently profitable like
$SNDK or Samsung.
I think a lot of retail investors conflate stock performance with how a company is doing operationally.
$AAOI is capitalizing on a bottleneck with high demand visibility, but stock has been going nowhere near-term with repeated ATMs.
I do expect AOI to strongly outperform (especially in 2027) if they stop issuing these stupid ATMs.