Key points
- Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF) grew its share count about 17% in two days in early July: a SEK 700 million stock sale on July 1, then a lender's $12 million debt-to-equity conversion on July 3.
- An insiders' lockup tied to an earlier capital raise, covering the CEO, CFO and three directors, expired Thursday, July 16, the same week shares kept sliding.
- SIVEF closed at $3.46 Thursday, bounced 6% Friday to $3.67, and is down roughly 67% from its 52-week high of $11.25. The company still hasn't rebutted Ningi Research's short report.
We wrote about Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF) on July 15, when a short seller's revenue allegations and a CEO-led round of insider buying were pulling the stock in opposite directions. I said then that untangling those two stories mattered more than picking a side. Since then, there are two new developments to untangle, and neither one is the CPO story.
Sivers grew its share count by 17% in two days
On July 1, Sivers resolved a directed share issue of 12,280,701 new shares at SEK 57 each, a 9.7% discount to the prior closing price, raising about SEK 700 million. The deal was oversubscribed by institutional investors in Sweden and abroad. Sivers itself said the raise diluted existing shareholders by about 3.3% on a fully diluted basis. The company said the cash is earmarked for expanding manufacturing capacity for its InP laser chips and optical amplifiers, plus more field and R&D staff, all pointed at the AI datacenter and automotive LIDAR pipeline it keeps citing.
Two days later, on July 3, Sivers' lender Bootstrap Europe exercised its right to convert a $12 million loan into equity at SEK 4.77 a share, a conversion price fixed back in February when the stock traded for a fraction of what it's worth now. That added another 22.8 million shares. Between the two deals, Sivers' ordinary shares outstanding went from about 304 million to roughly 355 million in 48 hours, an increase of nearly 17%.
Short seller Ningi Research, the firm whose June report we covered last time, was not impressed by the SEK 700 million raise either. In a follow-up note, Ningi argued the stated rationale didn't add up: a full new fab typically costs somewhere between SEK 1.2 billion and SEK 3 billion, far more than what Sivers actually raised, and the manufacturing equipment involved reportedly has lead times stretching into 2027. Institutional investors bought into the placement anyway, and it was still oversubscribed.
Then the insider lockup expired
On top of both of those deals, a separate lockup tied to an earlier capital raise back in April came off on Thursday, July 16. CEO Vickram Vathulya, CFO Heine Thorsgaard, and directors Bami Bastani, Karin Raj, and Todd Thomson, the same five who bought shares together on July 9 under the board's own compensation program, had agreed not to sell any of their personal holdings until that date. We haven't seen a filing showing any of them actually sold. The lockup lifting just means that, for the first time since April, they legally could.
Shares fell hard that week. SIVEF traded around $4.39 when we published our last piece on July 15. It closed at $3.46 on Thursday. Friday, the stock bounced 6% to $3.67, which still leaves it down about 67% from its 52-week high of $11.25, with a market cap of roughly $1.0 billion. This stock moves fast, so treat any single price here as a snapshot, not current.
What's still unresolved
Nothing about the underlying legal and regulatory situation has changed. Sivers still hasn't published a detailed rebuttal to Ningi's original claims. Sweden's Economic Crime Authority is still investigating the leak that let an anonymous account reveal the company's Nasdaq listing plans early, and that listing vote is still on ice. Rosen Law Firm and Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman are still soliciting shareholders for a possible securities class action, and neither firm has filed one yet. On the other side of the ledger, the company's sales pipeline is still growing, up 77% year to date to $799 million by its own count, and the CPO design work with GlobalFoundries and O-Net/Enablence hasn't changed either.
What it means
Two dilutive deals in 48 hours and an insider lockup expiring in the same stretch is a lot of new supply hitting a stock that was already under pressure, and it's a reasonable, mechanical explanation for why shares kept falling even without fresh news on the fraud allegations themselves. That's a different thing from saying the allegations were right. The raise and the loan conversion both look like a company doing what a cash-tight, small-cap semiconductor firm does when a listing plan is stuck in regulatory limbo: shore up the balance sheet any way it can. Whether that turns out to be a sign of strength or just survival probably depends on whether the CPO partnerships eventually turn into real orders, and that part of the story hasn't moved either way this week.
Related coverage
- Our original Sivers Semiconductors piece: the short report, the leak probe, and the insider buying
- A similar pattern the same week: Ondas (ONDS) and its own share-unlock volume spike
- AAOI and the AI optics story
Sources
- Sivers Semiconductors, Directed Share Issue of Approximately SEK 700 Million
- Sivers Semiconductors, Lender Bootstrap Europe Exercises Conversion Right
- MarketScreener, Sivers to issue 22.8 million shares after loan conversion
- MarketScreener, Sivers raises SEK 700m in a directed share issue with a 9.7 percent discount
- Ningi Research, Sivers Semiconductors: Dubious Revenue Accounting
- StockAnalysis.com, SIVEF stock quote
This is general market commentary and opinion, not investment advice. Markets can go down as well as up, and you can lose money. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decision.
