Key points
- Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF) grew its share count about 11% 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 covering the CEO, CFO and three directors expired Thursday, July 16. Two directors sold about 1.225 million shares in their own names, and three funds tied to one of them sold 7.6 million more, while the CEO bought 70,000.
- 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 11% 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 grew by 35,127,745 shares in 48 hours, an increase of about 11%.
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.
Update (July 26): Sivers' July 21 lock-up filing shows two board members sold into the expiry, not one. Chairman Bastani sold 275,000 shares on July 16, the day the lockup came off, alongside a 60,000-share donation to charity and a 70,000-share gift to family members, leaving him 381,360 shares. Director Thomson's personal investment account, Headwaters Capital, sold 950,000 shares through July 22 and gifted 50,000 to a charity, leaving him 477,027 shares and still the largest holder among board members. Kairos Ventures, whose Sivers stake Thomson also represents, reported sales of its own. Between them the two directors sold about 1.225 million shares in the week the lockup lifted. Vathulya went the other way, buying 70,000 more to bring his stake to 4,540,076. No transactions were disclosed for Thorsgaard, and Raj is not named in the filing.
Update (July 28): Sweden's Finansinspektionen keeps a public register of the managers' transaction notices that EU companies file under Market Abuse Regulation Article 19, and it puts a number on the Kairos sales the July 21 filing left open. Three Kairos funds tied to Thomson sold 7,614,914 shares between July 16 and July 22: Kairos Venture Opportunities I sold 5,511,453, Kairos Mixcomm SPV 1,843,562, and Kairos Venture Partners III 259,899. Kairos Venture Opportunities I distributed a further 1,215,930 shares to its own investors rather than selling them. Counting the funds alongside the 950,000 Thomson sold in his own name and Bastani's 275,000, about 8.84 million shares were disposed of that week, worth roughly $31 million at the prices reported to the regulator. The two directors' personal sales, the 1.225 million above, are the smaller part of it.
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 $1.3 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
- Sivers Semiconductors, Update on Expiry of Lock-up Undertaking and Insider Transactions
- 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
- Finansinspektionen, PDMR insider register, Sivers Semiconductors
- StockAnalysis.com, SIVEF stock quote
Follow-up: On August 4 the stock rose 18.86% on a Reuters report that the FCC is drafting a ban on US imports of new Chinese optical transceiver models.
Update, August 5, 2026: Two firms are named short sellers in the register again, Jane Street at 0.51% and D.E. Shaw at 0.62%, both dated August 4.
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.
