TL;DR
IQE, the Cardiff-based compound semiconductor group, raised half-year revenue by 43% to £64.6m and converted a small adjusted EBITDA loss into a £6.0m profit, on the back of AI data-centre and defence demand. It also intends to quit AIM for London’s Main Market.
Where the growth came from
Photonics did the heavy lifting, reaching £38.5m on 45% growth. That division supplies the materials behind optical data transfer, which puts it about as close to data-centre construction as a UK-listed business gets; released American defence funding added to the pull. Wireless brought in £26.0m, a 40% rise. Fuller factories and a better product mix carried the adjusted figure into profit.
The group has not reached profitability before tax, though the shortfall came in at £12.6m against £18.3m. Its balance sheet has been transformed: a raise done during the strategic review left net cash of £30.2m where net debt of £23.5m stood twelve months earlier. Guidance for the year is unchanged — revenue growth north of 30%, and an adjusted EBITDA figure in the tens of millions, at the low end.
Capacity already installed will be switched over during the second half towards indium phosphide, the material used in the optical links inside AI clusters. Chief executive Jutta Meier framed the Main Market plan as a way of widening the shareholder base, and is aiming for admission in 2027’s opening half.
Looking forward
Two separate stories are being told here and it pays to keep them apart. Leaving AIM is not an AI development at all — it is one more company joining an established drift off the junior market, and the reasons are about liquidity and index eligibility rather than chips. The AI story is narrower and more useful. Britain lists very few businesses that sell into data-centre construction rather than buying from it, and IQE is among the small number whose results genuinely track the build cycle. That works in both directions: concentrated ordering from a handful of hyperscale buyers is what produced 45% growth in photonics, and it is the same concentration that would reverse it if capital budgets tighten.