“My job is not to stay independent. My job is to do whatever we can to create the maximum value.”
That was Gregor van Issum, Wolfspeed’s CFO, on a call with me last Friday afternoon. The man running the balance sheet of the only fully-built 200mm silicon carbide device fab on US soil told me, unprompted, that maximizing value is the only mandate and independence is one option among several. He then pulled up his notes and walked me through numbers I have not seen in a published model on this name.
I have spent three weeks underwriting Wolfspeed as an asset-vs-replacement-cost mispricing in The Watt Tax. The call did not soften that frame. It hardened it.
Behind the paywall, in the CFO’s own words: the exact dollar-per-megawatt SiC content for the 800V rack and the next generation up (the number I have not found in a published sell-side model), cross-checked against the BofA Global Research AI power semi model Vivek Arya published this week; why Wolfspeed is already printing data-center revenue at roughly 10 percent of the company while the eight named cohort suppliers BofA tracks sit at zero in CY25; the five markers from the call that establish this is a legitimate competitor with relationships and shipping product, not a bankrupt comeback story; the real Mohawk Valley utilization figure and why it is the bull case; the Apollo step-up clock that triggers in June and why Gregor will not let it set his refi timeline; the on-the-record signal that a competitor “valued far beyond us” is infringing Wolfspeed’s IP; the cleanest way this trade breaks and what I am watching; and how I am sized. This is the work. If you want the number, step inside.
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