Uni-Pharm Earnings Call: CW Laser Capacity in High Demand, Substrate Supply Issues Minor

Uni-Pharm (3081-TW) held its earnings conference call this afternoon (12th) and released its self-compiled financial results for Q2 and the first half of 2026, along with an outlook on future strategies. Benefiting from robust demand for silicon photonics products and increasing shipments, the company achieved record-high profitability in Q2. Driven by AI data center demand, silicon photonics production capacity is now extremely tight. CW Lasers represent the largest segment within datacom applications, prompting the company to continuously expand capital expenditures and outsource manufacturing.

Uni-Pharm’s Q2 financials showed improvements across all three key profitability ratios, marking the second consecutive quarter of strong performance. With data center demand continuing to grow, the company stated that silicon photonics demand remains very strong. As capacity ramps up at both Uni-Pharm and its downstream foundry partners, silicon photonics product shipments are expected to keep increasing over the coming quarters.

The company noted that CW Laser production capacity is currently extremely tight, with foundry capacity far below internal demand. It confirmed that some orders are indeed being outsourced to external foundries. With AI data centers continuing to be built out, CW Lasers hold significant advantages in the future development of optical communications, which is why the company continues to expand capital expenditures. The company’s primary production focus remains on CW Lasers.

Regarding the global shortage of indium phosphide (InP) raw materials, Uni-Pharm stated that although affected by Chinese export controls, it has maintained ongoing contact with alternative suppliers, and substrate supply issues are currently not significant.

Uni-Pharm emphasized that future AI applications in data centers will transition from traditional scale-out architectures to optical interconnects, gradually extending to EMLs and photodiodes (PDs) on the receiver side. EMLs and CW Lasers each have their own application advantages and are not mutually exclusive. Different optical transmission technologies also offer distinct benefits.