What Happened?
Shares of materials and photonics company Coherent (NYSE: COHR) fell 4.9% in the afternoon session after an executive sold a large block of shares. Executive Vice President Giovanni Barbarossa sold 60,706 shares of common stock for a total of $9.7 million. The shares were sold at a price of $160.00 each. While large insider sales can sometimes cause concern among investors about a company's outlook, the transaction was carried out under a pre-arranged trading plan that was put in place in December of the previous year. Following the sale, the executive still held 163,158 shares in the company.
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What Is The Market Telling Us
Coherent’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 45 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 20 days ago when the stock dropped 5.8% on the news that new trade tensions and disappointing earnings from major tech companies weighed heavily on investor sentiment.
A key driver was the news that the White House is considering new restrictions on Chinese exports that use U.S. software, a move that could significantly impact technology companies. This uncertainty over escalating trade tensions created a broad sense of worry in the market. Simultaneously, shares of the semiconductor giant Texas Instruments dropped 6% after its latest earnings and future revenue forecast both came in weaker than expected, which is a big concern for the health of the tech industry. This poor performance from Texas Instruments immediately dragged down the entire semiconductor sector, causing other major chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices and Micron Technology to also see significant declines. Compounding the bad news, streaming service Netflix saw its stock slump 9% after it missed its earnings targets, partly blaming a tax dispute in Brazil. The combined effect of renewed trade war fears and the direct evidence of underperformance from influential companies in the technology sector was enough to push the major market indexes lower.
Coherent is up 57.7% since the beginning of the year, and at $158.67 per share, it is trading close to its 52-week high of $166.72 from November 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Coherent’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $2,711.
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