NEW YORK, March 9, 2026, 11:45 AM EDT
- Lumentum climbed roughly 10.6% during late-morning trading in New York.
- The company is set to join the S&P 500 before the opening bell on March 23, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
- Nvidia’s $2 billion preferred-stock investment and multiyear purchase pledges, first announced March 2, set the stage for the move.
Lumentum Holdings surged roughly 10.6% Monday, bucking the slide across U.S. equities as buyers piled in before the photonics group’s upcoming S&P 500 inclusion later this month. Shares recently changed hands near $617.81 in New York.
The inclusion is key: when a company joins the benchmark, index and exchange-traded funds that follow the S&P 500—representing trillions—often pile in. For Lumentum, the shift marks a swift jump out of the S&P MidCap 400 and straight into the headline large-cap index.
Lumentum, Vertiv, Coherent, and EchoStar are set to move into the S&P index lineup, S&P Dow Jones Indices said. The changes take effect before markets open on March 23. They’ll take the spots of Match Group, Molina Healthcare, Lamb Weston, and Paycom Software in the regular quarterly reshuffle.
Lumentum is extending momentum from last week’s Nvidia tie-up. According to a filing, Lumentum raised $2 billion by selling convertible preferred shares to Nvidia via private placement. The two firms have also locked in a multiyear collaboration and purchase agreements, focusing on advanced optics for AI systems.
Photonics shifts data with light instead of electrons. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is calling AI “the largest computing infrastructure buildout in history.” Lumentum, for its part, said the agreement will help bankroll a new U.S. fab and push forward research into future optics. Reuters
Lumentum gave investors more data to chew on with its latest results. Back in February, CEO Michael Hurlston called the company “only at the ‘starting line’” for demand around optical circuit switches and co-packaged optics, a light-driven data-link tech. Second-quarter revenue jumped 65.5% to $665.5 million, and Lumentum put its third-quarter revenue outlook in a range of $780 million to $830 million. Lumentum Investor Relations
Other stocks hit by the same index shuffle moved higher Monday, but didn’t match the surge. Coherent tacked on roughly 3.7%, while Vertiv advanced 7.8%.
Still, the bet is heavily tied to robust AI spending and Lumentum managing its capacity ramp-up without tripping up. The company flagged in its filings that unpredictable demand, geopolitical turbulence, or hiccups in scaling up production could all weigh on performance. Nvidia’s preferred shares, meanwhile, are locked up until U.S. antitrust waiting periods run out.
Lumentum, headquartered in San Jose, builds lasers, modules, and optical subsystems for AI, cloud, and telecom applications. Back in February, the company reported its optical circuit switch backlog had shot past $400 million and also disclosed a new co-packaged optics deal, valued in the hundreds of millions, slated for delivery in the first half of 2027.
