Soitec posts €592m FY26 revenue as AI photonics offset RF-SOI slump
Soitec, the Euronext-listed French manufacturer of engineered semiconductor substrates, reported full-year revenue of €592 million for fiscal year 2026 (ended 31 March 2026), a 34% decline on a reported basis and 30% at constant currency and scope. The drop was driven overwhelmingly by ongoing customer destocking in RF-SOI — the silicon-on-insulator wafers used in smartphone radio-frequency front-ends — alongside broad weakness in the automotive and industrial segment. Partially offsetting those headwinds was strong growth in Photonics-SOI, the company's substrate technology used in high-speed optical transceivers for AI data-centre infrastructure.
New chief executive Laurent Rémont, who formally succeeded Pierre Barnabé on 1 April 2026, described FY26 as a year of deliberate stabilisation. "Soitec has remained focused on disciplined execution, restoring positive Free Cash Flow and strengthening its financial position, as necessary steps toward sustainable, profitable growth," he said.
Revenue breakdown and AI momentum
The Edge & Cloud AI segment — which houses Photonics-SOI and FD-SOI products serving AI inference, IoT and connectivity applications — reached €214 million for the full year, up 8% at constant currency and scope, or 19% excluding the divested Imager-SOI line. Critically, Photonics-SOI alone crossed $100 million in revenue during FY26, ahead of the company's own schedule. Soitec attributed this to accelerating adoption of silicon photonics substrates in pluggable optical transceivers and growing qualification volumes for co-packaged optics (CPO), the architecture increasingly favoured in next-generation AI switch and accelerator designs.
Mobile Communications fell to €309 million, down 41% at constant currency and scope, as RF-SOI customer inventories remained elevated throughout the year. Soitec said the correction is progressing in line with expectations but that inventories have not yet normalised. A long-term supply agreement signed with Skyworks Solutions in March 2026 provides some forward visibility for its Piezoelectric-on-Insulator (POI) wafers, which address demanding RF filter requirements in 5G handsets. The Automotive & Industrial segment contracted 44% at constant currency and scope to €69 million, reflecting both end-market softness and supply-chain overstocking among electric-vehicle and industrial customers.
Despite the revenue decline, EBITDA came in at €151 million (25.4% margin), and the company returned to positive free cash flow of €63 million — a reversal from the negative €23 million recorded in FY25 — driven by a 41% cut in capital expenditure to €135 million and tight working capital management. The group recorded a net loss of €220 million, largely owing to €105 million of non-recurring asset impairments including charges related to SmartSiC assets and a facility extension in Singapore.
Market context and competitive positioning
Soitec occupies a specialist position in the semiconductor materials stack that is difficult to replicate quickly: its Smart Cut wafer-bonding process underpins both the RF-SOI and Photonics-SOI product lines, and the company holds approximately 4,800 patents. The Photonics-SOI pivot is well-timed. Silicon photonics for AI data-centre interconnect is a fast-growing segment, with major hyperscalers increasing spend on high-bandwidth optical links as GPU cluster densities rise. Competitors in the substrate and photonics wafer space include GlobalWafers and Shin-Etsu, but Soitec's differentiation in engineered SOI structures gives it a defensible position in the near term.
The RF-SOI correction is a sector-wide dynamic rather than a Soitec-specific problem: smartphone unit volumes have been soft, and Tier-1 fabless designers built substantial inventory buffers during the supply-chain disruptions of 2021–23. Soitec expects the correction to complete, though it has not given a specific timeline for full normalisation.
For FY27, Soitec guided Q1 revenue approximately 15% higher year-on-year at constant currency and scope, with capital expenditure budgeted at around €100 million — down from €135 million in FY26. The company has hedged roughly 95% of its FY27 foreign-exchange net exposure at an average rate of €1 to $1.19, providing some earnings visibility in an uncertain dollar environment. The full annual report and Universal Registration Document is expected to be filed with France's AMF on 10 June 2026, with investor day presentation materials already made available on the company's website.