{
  "@context": "https://orbyd.app/schemas/dossier.v1.json",
  "ticker": "QUIK",
  "name": "QuickLogic Corporation",
  "url": "https://orbyd.app/dossiers/QUIK/",
  "json_url": "https://orbyd.app/dossiers/QUIK.json",
  "status": "DORMANT",
  "current_conviction": "LOW",
  "graded_conviction": "LOW",
  "archetype": {
    "code": "a6",
    "n": 6
  },
  "current_thesis": "The eFPGA/defense royalty squeeze has fully unwound: QUIK is ~$13, roughly 47% below the $24.33 June high, and the $18 shelf broke exactly as the Russell inclusion passed. July's post-quantum IP announcement drew no bid — good news into no demand. Broken tape; the read now hinges on the ~2026-08-11 Q2 print, not the story.",
  "invalidation_trigger": "A daily close below $11.50 confirms the post-index unwind is extending and opens the $9–10 zone; secondary break: Q2 revenue on the ~2026-08-11 print landing under the $5.4M low end of the $6M ±10% guide, or another equity raise disclosed alongside it.",
  "catalyst_date": "2026-08-11",
  "outcome": "INVALIDATED",
  "outcome_date": "2026-06-24",
  "invalidation_fired": true,
  "themes": [
    "ai-chips-memory",
    "quantum-computing"
  ],
  "tags": [],
  "sources": [],
  "notes": [
    "Q2-2026 earnings est. ~2026-08-11 — hard blackout: no fresh entries inside 3 trading days of the print.",
    "Retail-squeeze microcap: 1%/name cap if ever traded, never average down, no adds on weakness.",
    "No public-peer cluster (Achronix/Menta/Flex Logix private) — single-name squeeze; cluster-confirmation momentum exemption does NOT apply here.",
    "Prior dossier's $18 daily-close invalidation TRIGGERED in early July — the squeeze leg is confirmed broken, treat any bounce as counter-trend until a higher low forms.",
    "Active dilution: $6.4M Q2 ATM raise + revised $10M credit line. Any new raise = the $168M funnel is not converting to cash.",
    "Q1-2026: rev $5.05M (+16.5% YoY) but MISSED $5.62M consensus by ~10%; non-GAAP loss $0.08 vs -$0.0476 expected.",
    "Analyst consensus PT ~$23.67 across 4 analysts vs ~$13 spot — an 82% implied gap that price is ignoring. Thin coverage, stale targets; do not treat as support.",
    "FY2025 revenue DECLINED to $13.77M from $19.65M; TTM revenue $14.50M (-20.8%). The 50-100% FY2026 growth guide requires a very large H2 — that is the whole equity story."
  ],
  "body_markdown": "## Current Thesis\nThe squeeze is over and the unwind is orderly, which is the worse kind. QuickLogic ran roughly +400% off a $4.80 low into a $24.33 high on a genuine story — eFPGA Hard IP licensing for AI-ASIC and chiplet designs, an Intel 18A contract, rad-hard defense silicon, and a record $168M sales funnel disclosed on the 2026-05-12 Q1 call. The acute driver was Russell 2000/3000 inclusion, confirmed 2026-06-02 and effective at the open 2026-06-29. Price faded into that date rather than through it, lost the $19 shelf beforehand, and has kept bleeding since: $16.26 on 2026-07-06, $14.84 on 2026-07-13, $12.50 on 2026-07-18, ~$13.00 on 2026-07-19. That is a ~47% drawdown from the high with no shakeout candle and no volume climax — passive money bought the add, discretionary money sold into it, and the marginal buyer has not shown up since. The 2026-07-16 PQSecure post-quantum announcement, a legitimately good IP-validation datapoint, produced no bid at all. When a levitating microcap stops responding to its own good news, the narrative is no longer setting the price. Market cap has compressed to ~$237M on 18.22M shares against $14.50M TTM revenue — still ~16x sales for a business whose 2025 revenue *fell* to $13.77M from $19.65M. The entire equity case now rests on one number: whether the H2 hockey stick implied by the 50–100% FY2026 growth guide shows up on the ~2026-08-11 Q2 print.\n\n## Bull Case\n- **Q2-2026 guided to $6M ±10%** on the 2026-05-12 call — roughly +62% YoY against ~$3.7M — with non-GAAP gross margin ~42% ±5%, opex ~$3.3M, and management reiterating 50–100% FY2026 growth plus H2 non-GAAP profitability and positive cash flow.\n- **Intel 18A exposure is contracted, not aspirational** — QUIK is delivering Hard IP for a very large 18A eFPGA core, with the customer ASIC test chip targeted to tape out in 2H-2026 and a potential multimillion-dollar commercial award flagged for Q3-2026.\n- **Post-quantum validation, 2026-07-16** — PQSecure's CRYSTAL-1000C core (NIST FIPS 203 ML-KEM / FIPS 204 ML-DSA) was placed and routed inside QUIK eFPGA Hard IP already shipping in customer ASICs on the 18A node. That is a concrete new addressable use case for reprogrammable crypto in defense and infrastructure SoCs.\n- **$2.7M GlobalFoundries 12LP discrete FPGA Hard-IP contract** signed, revenue recognized Q2-2026 through Q1-2027, eval kit late 2026 — booked backlog rather than funnel.\n- **RadPro rad-hard FPGA** on GF 12nm, silicon-proven and demonstrated to Defense Industrial Base evaluators at HEART, GOMACTech 2026 and Chiplet Summit 2026 — sovereign-silicon programs carry multi-decade tails once qualified.\n- **Analyst gap** — four covering analysts rate it Buy with a ~$23.67 average target against a ~$13 quote, an 82% implied upside. Thin coverage cuts both ways, but no downgrade cycle has started.\n\n## Bear Case\n- **The index catalyst came and went and price is 47% lower.** Inclusion was effective 2026-06-29; the stock has made lower highs and lower lows in every week since. A fully telegraphed passive event that produces distribution rather than absorption removes the last non-fundamental buyer from the tape.\n- **Good news no longer moves it.** The PQSecure release on 2026-07-16 landed mid-slide and the stock closed the week around $12.50. That is the cleanest available signal that the retail cohort that drove the re-rate has exited.\n- **Revenue is going backwards on a trailing basis.** TTM $14.50M is -20.8% YoY; FY2025 was $13.77M versus $19.65M in 2024; net loss $14.83M. The +16.5% Q1 growth is measured off a collapsed base.\n- **Q1-2026 missed.** $5.05M revenue against $5.62M consensus (~10% short) and a non-GAAP loss of $0.08 versus -$0.0476 expected. Guidance credibility is the specific thing at risk into August.\n- **Dilution is live.** A $6.4M Q2 ATM raise plus a revised $10M credit line; a company burning cash while guiding to H2 profitability has an obvious incentive to sell stock into strength — and the strength is now gone, which makes any further raise more punitive.\n- **Growth-constraint commentary from Q1** cited heavy dependence on mature products and slower-than-expected SensiML adoption in industrial IoT, the exact drag that turns a $168M funnel into a slow-converting pipeline.\n- **~$237M cap on $14.5M TTM revenue** leaves no valuation floor to catch a guide-down. There is no cheapness to buy here, only a lower multiple than three weeks ago.\n\n## Setup & Price Structure\nStructurally broken. The high is $24.33; the $19 shelf failed pre-inclusion; the $18 level that defined the post-earnings recovery base broke in the first week of July and has not been reclaimed. Price is now ~$13 after a five-week, near-uninterrupted slide, below every meaningful moving average, with each attempted stabilization giving way within days. Volume has not spiked into the decline — this is absorption failure rather than capitulation, which typically means the low is not yet in. The nearest structural reference below is the $9–10 area where the spring advance accelerated. On the upside, nothing matters until price reclaims and holds above the mid-$16s and puts in a higher low; a bounce that stalls under that is a counter-trend rally inside a downtrend. This is the beginner-trap zone in its most expensive form: the fundamentals read better than they did in June, the analyst targets are 80% above spot, and a cost-basis-anchored buyer sees \"half price.\" None of those are entry signals. The tape is the signal, and it says distribution.\n\n## Catalyst Calendar (next 30 days)\n- **~2026-08-11 (est.)** — Q2-2026 results and call. The binary: revenue against the $6M ±10% guide, and whether the 50–100% FY2026 growth and H2 profitability targets are reaffirmed, trimmed, or quietly dropped. Q1 was reported 2026-05-12, so the date is an estimate from the reporting cadence, not a confirmed announcement.\n- **Ongoing through Q3-2026** — potential multimillion-dollar Intel 18A commercial eFPGA award, flagged on the Q1 call as a Q3 event. Unscheduled; would land as a press release.\n- **2H-2026** — customer ASIC test chip tape-out on Intel 18A using QUIK Hard IP. No fixed date.\n- **Any time** — further ATM issuance or credit-line disclosure. Given the burn rate and the collapsed share price, this is a live risk inside the window rather than a scheduled event.\n- No confirmed conference appearances, PDUFA-style deadlines, or index events inside the next 30 days.\n\n## What Would Change Our Mind\nThe bearish read on price is a tape read, and tape reads are refutable. A daily close below $11.50 would confirm the unwind is extending toward the $9–10 area and settle the question. Conversely, the constructive path is specific and observable: a Q2 print at or above the $6M guide midpoint on ~2026-08-11 with FY2026 growth reaffirmed and no new equity issuance, followed by a reclaim of the mid-$16s that holds on a retest and builds a higher low. That combination would rebuild the base and make the name interesting again on the eFPGA-royalty story rather than on squeeze mechanics. Anything short of that — a revenue print under the $5.4M low end, a softened FY guide, or a fresh raise disclosed alongside results — extends the downtrend and keeps the name uninvestable. Also worth watching: whether the four covering analysts hold their ~$23.67 average target through the print. Stale targets on a halved stock get cut, and the cut itself is usually a late-cycle event that marks capitulation.\n\n## Correlation Notes\nQUIK has no tradable public-peer cluster — Achronix, Menta and Flex Logix are all private — so there is no cross-confirmation available and no read-through from a peer breaking out or breaking down. That isolation matters: momentum setups in this book earn size on cluster confirmation, and a single-name squeeze cannot supply it. Directionally the name floats with small-cap semiconductor risk appetite and with the Russell 2000 given the June inclusion, but the beta relationship is unreliable at this cap size; the -9.12% session on 2026-06-23 came against an S&P down only 1.44%, which is the correct mental model — idiosyncratic flow dominates index beta by a wide margin. Read-throughs worth tracking are the Intel 18A foundry ramp narrative (customer tape-out cadence, external-customer announcements) and defense-electronics procurement newsflow around rad-hard silicon, both of which drive the fundamental case without driving the daily print. The post-quantum cryptography theme is a genuine adjacency after the 2026-07-16 PQSecure work, but it is a 2027+ revenue story at best and is currently doing nothing for the stock.",
  "first_seen": "2026-05-07",
  "last_analyzed": "2026-07-19T11:22:15+00:00",
  "last_synthesized": "2026-07-19",
  "last_update_source": "watchlist_research",
  "license": "Content © orbyd. Cite the canonical URL."
}