Nvidia-Backed Lumentum Reports Earnings Tuesday. Here’s How Much the Stock Could Move

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Lumentum (LITE) reports fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 results Tuesday afternoon. Options traders are pricing in a swing of up to 13% in either direction by the end of the week after the release. The optical and laser components maker comes into the report with its stock up sharply for the year, an investment from Nvidia (NVDA) behind it, and analyst forecasts calling for revenue to roughly double.

What the options market is pricing in

Based on options prices ahead of the report, Lumentum shares were seen moving as much as 13% higher or lower by the end of the post-earnings week. From the stock’s level of about $892 on the Friday before the release, a move of that size points to a range of roughly $778 on the downside to about $1,000 on the upside.

The stock had climbed more than 140% since the start of the year, though it had pulled back from its May highs. That run followed a series of positive developments: the Nvidia investment, plus upbeat comments from executives and analysts about demand tied to artificial intelligence. A drop toward the low end of the implied range would erase part of those gains. A move to the high end would put the shares above $1,000.

What analysts expect from the quarter

Estimates compiled by Visible Alpha called for:

• Revenue: $989.91 million, just over double the figure from the same quarter a year earlier.
• Adjusted EPS: $2.98, more than triple the year-ago result.

Sentiment was largely positive. Of the nine analysts tracked by Visible Alpha, seven rated the stock a buy and two were neutral. Their mean price target, just under $1,110, implied about 25% upside from the pre-earnings Friday level.

Why Lumentum is tied to the AI buildout

Lumentum makes optical components used inside data centers. That has made it a “pick-and-shovel” AI stock: it doesn’t sell AI models or chips to end users, but it supplies hardware that large tech companies need as they expand computing capacity. Its sales have risen alongside that spending.

Morgan Stanley analysts named Lumentum, Corning (GLW) and Coherent (COHR) as the clearest beneficiaries of a shift in data center design. Operators are moving away from traditional wiring and toward optical connections to link hardware, particularly in the “scale-up” networks that tie AI processors together. Light-based links can carry more data over longer distances than copper. For Lumentum, that turns a design choice into a source of component demand.

Because Lumentum’s growth story rests on AI capital spending, its results and guidance are often read alongside reports from chipmakers such as Nvidia. For context on the chip side, see Nvidia’s latest earnings results and coverage of how AMD’s new AI chips could compete with Nvidia.

How to read an expected move

An expected move comes from options prices, not from an analyst forecast. Traders usually estimate it from the cost of an at-the-money straddle, meaning a call and a put at the same strike and expiration. Dividing that combined premium by the stock price gives the move the market is pricing in.

Hypothetical example: if a stock trades at $100 and the at-the-money call and put expiring that week cost a combined $13, the implied move is about 13%, or roughly $87 to $113.

The figure has limits:

• It has no direction. It describes the size of a likely swing, not whether the stock will rise or fall.
• It isn’t a cap. Shares can move further than the implied range.
• It reflects the window priced. Here that window ran through the end of the week after the report, not only the first trading session.

The same method appears in our previews of Palantir’s expected earnings move and Microsoft’s expected earnings move. After a release, comparing the actual move with the implied one shows whether the results surprised the market by more or less than options traders had expected.