一万亿市值的「易中天」，谁才是性价比之王？

Douyin blogger "Li Yien" has found his formula for viral traffic. Before commenting on the stock market each day, he always starts with a catchphrase: "As I always say, time will vindicate optical modules and computing power." After shouting this for over a year, his per-video likes have surged from two to three thousand all the way to forty to fifty thousand. The netizens flooding the comments only ask one thing: Now that you're "standing in the light," isn't it too late?

The three words stringing together this investor anxiety are "Yi-Zhong-Tian." This isn't a scholar from the CCTV program "Lecture Room," but rather a nickname for three A-share optical module leaders: XinYiSheng (Eoptolink), ZhongJiXuChuang (Zhongji Innolight), and TianFuTongXin (Tianfu Communication), taking one character from each name. Calculated from their April 2023 lows, Eoptolink has risen 16-fold, Zhongji Innolight 17-fold, and Tianfu Communication 10-fold. Those who bought in early have made a killing.

But as the story reached June 2026, the plot took a turn. On June 5th, "Yi-Zhong-Tian" collectively plunged, with Zhongji Innolight falling nearly 8% in a single day. On June 11th, Eoptolink approached its daily limit down during trading, triggering a correction in the CPO concept. Those scrambling to flee and those swarming to buy the dip completed a handover amid massive trading volumes.

The wealth-creation story has been told to death. The question no one seriously answers is this: If you had to pick just one of the three, which is the most valuable? In this article, we won't discuss "whether to get on board now." We'll only dissect one question: Among "Yi-Zhong-Tian," who offers the best value for money?

In this round of the optical module boom, nobody is looking at the current P/E ratio anymore.

The reason is simple. When a company's profits are still growing at triple-digit rates, calculating its P/E ratio using past twelve months' earnings yields a meaningless number. The market's pricing anchor has already shifted from "how much will they earn this year" to "how much can they earn in 2026 and 2027." As of early 2026, the stock price increases for the three companies since 2025 are Zhongji Innolight 428%, Eoptolink 410%, and Tianfu Communication 284%, with a combined market cap increase exceeding one trillion yuan. This trillion yuan buys not the present, but the expectations for the next two to three years.

So "value for money" here doesn't mean "which stock price is lowest," but requires breaking it down using three metrics. The first is PEG, which divides the forward P/E ratio by the growth rate, measuring "how much you pay for the same growth." The second is earnings quality, measuring how clean the profits are and how high the gross margin is. The third is the discount/premium for certainty, measuring how much extra the market is willing to pay for "stability" and how much it deducts for "uncertainty."

Measuring by these three metrics, the three companies yield three completely different answers. One is the value-for-money champion on paper, another is the expensive but stable certainty play, and the last is the most expensive certainty.

Eoptolink (XinYiSheng): The Value Champion on Paper, but Cheapness Has Its Reasons

Let's first look at the one that appears cheapest on the metrics.

Calculated by PEG, Eoptolink is the most cost-effective among the three. Its attributable net profit growth rate for 2025 was nearly 2.5 times year-over-year, significantly higher than Zhongji Innolight's 89.5% to 128% during the same period. Net profit in Q4 was still up 39% quarter-over-quarter, with its 1.6T products ramping up ahead of schedule. Despite such explosive growth, its valuation is the lowest. Based on the 2026 consensus analyst net profit forecast, its forward P/E ratio is only around 22.8 times, corresponding to a PEG of about 0.30, the lowest among the three. For the same unit of growth, you pay the least for Eoptolink.

It's not just cheap; the money it earns is also the "cleanest." In its 2025 results, Eoptolink's non-recurring gains and losses were only 33 million yuan, and its gross margin remained above 47%, thanks to the cost advantages brought by vertical integration. In terms of earnings quality, it even outperformed the larger-scale Zhongji Innolight.

At this point in the story, Eoptolink looks like a dark horse undervalued by the market. But this is precisely where you can't stop at the surface. Its cheapness is a discount, not a free lunch.

The market doesn't discount a high-growth company for no reason. What suppresses Eoptolink's valuation are several real risk points. Customer concentration is quite high, with performance heavily dependent on a few major clients. Overseas revenue accounts for 78%, directly exposing it to the tail risks of tariffs and trade restrictions. Most crucially, can the "dark horse's" explosive power be sustained? In terms of long-term technological narrative and forward-looking layout, its story isn't as strong as Zhongji Innolight's. The low P/E ratio given by the market essentially reflects a discount on "sustainability."

This discount is being partially repaired. In 2026, Eoptolink's stock price has already risen over 79%, and it is planning a Hong Kong listing. Capital is voting with its feet, pulling it from an "untrusted dark horse" towards a "re-priced leader." It's cheap, but the cheapness is converging.

Zhongji Innolight (ZhongJiXuChuang): Expensive Certainty

What about the expensive one? Where does its stability lie?

Zhongji Innolight's value proposition isn't cheapness; it's certainty.

A set of comparisons makes this clear. In Q1 2026, Zhongji Innolight reported single-quarter revenue of 19.496 billion yuan and net profit of 5.735 billion yuan. Its net profit in one single quarter exceeded its total for the entire year of 2024. During the same period, its gross margin for optical communication transceiver modules rose from 34.65% in 2024 to 42.61%, an increase of nearly 8 percentage points. Scale is growing, and profit efficiency is also improving – a posture befitting a market leader.

Supporting this certainty are market share and technological gaps. Zhongji Innolight secured over half of Nvidia's 800G optical module procurement. For the 1.6T generation, leveraging its first-mover advantage in completing Nvidia's validation, the market expects it to capture a 50% to 60% share. During the Q3 earnings call last year, company executives laid out the timeline clearly: "In Q3 this year, key customers will begin deploying 1.6T and continuously increase orders... We expect other key customers to deploy 1.6T on a large scale in 2026-2027." To handle these orders, the company is stocking up on chips and expanding production capacity both domestically and internationally.

The price for this is that it's the most expensive. Zhongji Innolight's trailing P/E ratio once reached 73 to 74 times, over 40% higher than Eoptolink's. What you pay for is a premium for "industry leader moat + technological leadership." This premium suits those who value certainty more and can afford the premium.

But certainty doesn't equal no risk, and its risks are more of the "black swan" variety. On June 8, 2026 (US time), Zhongji Innolight was added to the US Department of Defense's "1260H List." The company responded urgently, stating that the designation did not align with objective facts, that it is neither a military enterprise nor a military-civil fusion enterprise, and that it had no material impact on its operations, with orders, production, and supply chains all normal. Response aside, for a company with overseas revenue accounting for as high as 86.8%, geopolitics is the real sword hanging overhead. It may not affect fundamentals, but it can slash valuations on any given trading day.

Tianfu Communication (TianFuTongXin): The Most Expensive Certainty, Betting on the Next-Gen Architecture

After analyzing the two module makers, we're left with Tianfu Communication, which isn't even at the same table.

What makes Tianfu Communication special? It doesn't sell modules; it sells the "picks and shovels" (water).

An industry chain analogy is most intuitive. If Zhongji Innolight and Eoptolink are restaurants serving diners directly, Tianfu Communication is the supplier providing ingredients to the restaurants. It sells core components like optical engines and optical devices to downstream optical module manufacturers, who then assemble them into complete modules for shipment. It doesn't directly take orders from cloud vendors, but every high-end optical module contains its components.

Being upstream gives it the highest gross margin among the three, consistently maintained above 50%, and the most clear-cut competitive landscape. More importantly, it has bet on a long-term trend with high certainty: the CPO/NPO architecture. Some institutions estimate that in the value chain of a high-end 51.2T switch, the combined potential value of Tianfu Communication's components in FAU, precision lenses, and optical engine packaging could reach the order of $7,000 to $10,000.

Compared to the tens of dollars in component value per unit in the traditional pluggable era, this represents a complete transformation of both volume and price. Regardless of which module solution downstream cloud vendors ultimately choose, as long as data centers continue evolving towards more efficient and energy-saving architectures, the position of the "picks-and-shovels seller" remains stable.

Sounds great. But Tianfu's problem is also hidden within the phrase "picks-and-shovels seller." It has the lowest elasticity, the most expensive valuation, and is the easiest to misjudge expectations.

Its elasticity is low because its growth is a steady stream, not a pulse. Zhongji Innolight and Eoptolink directly benefit from the pulsed explosion of AI capital expenditure, giving them immense earnings elasticity. Tianfu's growth is stable but gentle. Its valuation is expensive because the market has already priced this certainty to the sky. As of February 10, 2026, its trailing P/E ratio was about 122 times, far higher than the other two. As for misjudging expectations, Q1 2026 just provided a brutal example. The consensus forecast by institutions for its quarterly net profit was between 780 million and 820 million yuan, but the actual figure was only 490 million yuan. This huge gap resulted from institutions applying the pulsed logic of module makers to an optical component company.

This precisely reminds anyone trying to rank "Yi-Zhong-Tian": Tianfu and the other two are not the same dish. Applying the logic of pricing a finished machine to price an engine manufacturer is fundamentally a misinterpretation.

So, we've analyzed all three. But the question of "value for money" has one hidden variable that no one has fully accounted for.

The Profit Pool Isn't in Their Hands

Let's go back to the table and ask a tougher question: Is the money "Yi-Zhong-Tian" makes actually "good money"?

The essence of an optical module is system integration. You procure optical chips, electrical chips, and optical components, then assemble them into a complete module using packaging processes. The barrier isn't the assembly itself. The real profit pools and moats are concentrated at the two ends of the industry chain: upstream laser chips and switch chips. Chinese manufacturers dominate the middle assembly process.

Therefore, claims like "Zhongji dominates Lumentum and Coherent" need to be viewed on two levels. In terms of module market share, it's true. Zhongji Innolight has indeed outperformed these two long-standing American manufacturers. But in terms of profit quality, it's a different story.

Lumentum and Coherent precisely guard the upstream. They hedge against supply shortages through vertically integrated laser chip supply, and the advantages of III-V platforms like Indium Phosphide (InP) and Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) in high-power applications remain real. Moreover, these two are not defeated opponents; they are upstream players quickly regaining strength. Lumentum's Q1 FY2026 (ending September 2025) revenue grew 58% year-over-year, with gross margins rising from 28% to 34%.

Coherent's single-quarter revenue in the same period reached $1.81 billion, up 21% year-over-year, with its Data Center and Communications business accounting for 75% of total revenue and growing over 40%. Its non-GAAP gross margin improved to 39.6%.

Here's the sharper point. The trillion-yuan valuation of "Yi-Zhong-Tian" hinges on betting on the architecture shift to CPO. CPO is inseparable from CW light sources and InP substrates, which are precisely the strongholds of US manufacturers. Coherent is doubling its InP production capacity. Its factory in Sherman, Texas, is the world's most advanced InP production line, specifically ramping up CW lasers for solutions including Nvidia's CPO.

The more "Yi-Zhong-Tian" bets on architecture upgrades, the more they expand the territory for upstream American chip companies. So, "Yi-Zhong-Tian" earns money from assembly and components; Coherent and Lumentum earn money from chips. The latter is thinner and slower, but more sustainable.

This is also why people talk about "Yuanjie High-Power Lasers" and "Yi-Zhong-Tian" together. Yuanjie Technology represents the effort of domestic laser chips to climb the industry chain. Its 100G EML passed customer validation in 2025 and entered mass production in 2026. Its CW 100mW high-power light source also achieved batch delivery, with Q1 revenue growing over three times year-over-year. If this layer can truly break through on the fattest point – EML and high-power laser chips – then "Yi-Zhong-Tian"'s moat will extend from assembly to chips, making the bond truly strong. If they can't climb up, no matter how good the value for money, they'll just be earning hard-earned money for assembly.

This is the true hidden variable for measuring the long-term value of the three companies: not whose PEG is lower, but whether China's optical module industry can snatch the profit pool from upstream.

Will time vindicate optical modules and computing power? Nobody knows. But at least, those standing in the light should first figure out which beam they are standing under.