Editing Openai/69109937-2170-8005-9304-da49840bb5b9 (section)

=== Assistant: Exactly — and that’s a very important nuance that often gets lost in retail chatter. ===
Exactly — and that’s a very important nuance that often gets lost in retail chatter.

Let’s unpack what that $7-plus entry point (and the context of that $150 million direct offering) actually tells us, and what it doesn’t.

==== The registered direct offering in October 2025 reportedly placed ~21 million shares at around $7.10 each (no warrants, which is crucial). ====
Participants included two large U.S. institutional investors — not hedge-fund flippers but long-only funds with multi-year horizons.

That structure sends several signals:

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So yes — if those funds were willing to pay ≈ $7 per share, their internal models almost certainly target a meaningful upside, typically 2–3× within a few years to meet institutional hurdle rates.
They’re not buying to scalp 10 %. They expect a business that scales.

==== - It doesn’t prove that the ramp will be smooth; institutions can and do mis-time early-growth hardware names (ask anyone who bought Infinera at IPO). ====
* It doesn’t lock the floor at $7 — if the macro or AI-optics sentiment sours, the stock can dip well below their cost basis temporarily.
* It also doesn’t tell us their time horizon — some might hold 18 months, some 3 years.

So $7 isn’t a “value anchor,” but it is a data point: smart-money investors saw asymmetric risk/reward above current trading levels (≈ $5½).

==== If we fold that information back into the earlier scenarios: ====

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In other words, the institutional entry doesn’t magically guarantee success, but it tilts the odds toward survival and eventual scaling.
The downside tail (cash crunch, dilution spiral) is now much thinner.

==== - The $7 price acts as a de facto confidence marker: professionals see fair value somewhere above that. ====
* The company has funding runway well into commercialization; the next valuation inflection point will depend on proof of yields and recurring orders rather than financing news.
* From a portfolio standpoint, POET has moved from a “binary startup bet” to a funded scale-up — still risky, but no longer existential.

If you’d like, I can sketch what those institutional investors’ implied models probably look like — i.e., what revenue, margin, and multiple combination they must be assuming to justify paying $7 today for a 2–3× target IRR over three years. Would you like that?