Best Smidcap Ideas: Notes From The Road With Our Best Idea

Research evidence excerpt

Best Smidcap Ideas: Notes From The Road With Our Best Idea

TD Cowen Semtech Corp.

Global Research June 22, 2026

What Is The Bear Case & The Risks To Our Call?

(1) Share loss in optical content (TIAs, drivers); (2) Further delay in executing IoT

Systems divestiture; (3) Geopolitical tensions interrupt/impede ability to secure InP

substrate supply.

Not New, But Important Bottom Line: Signal Integrity is a Key Enabler

of Higher Connectivity Speeds…Copper OR Optics

The bottom line, in our view, is that investors should not lose sight of the broader

technical point: as connectivity speeds move from 800G to 1.6T and beyond, signal

integrity becomes an increasingly important gating factor across both copper and

optical links. At higher data rates, the channel budget gets tighter, insertion loss

becomes more difficult to manage, and the analog circuitry that conditions the signal

becomes central to whether the link works reliably at acceptable power and latency.

Said differently, the debate should be less about any single implementation detail

and more about the growing value of high-performance analog mixed-signal design

in enabling the next generation of datacenter connectivity. Questions such as

whether linear equalization can support bidirectional SerDes over a given cable

architecture are technically relevant, but can become too narrow if characterized as

a binary yes/no. The larger point is that bidirectional SerDes over copper is hard and

making it viable requires precisely the kind of signal integrity expertise where

Semtech has long differentiated itself. In that sense, CopperEdge should be viewed

less as a binary near-term revenue question and more as another expression of the

same core competency that already underpins Semtech’s leadership in optical