Coherent (COHR) earnings: the option-implied expected move

An earnings report is a scheduled shock. Nobody knows the direction, but the options market prices the size, and the cleanest way to read that price is the at-the-money straddle.

Step one: pick the contract that spans the event. COHR reports on 12 August 2026. The first listed expiry after that date is 14 August 2026, 3 days out, so that is the expiry used here. An expiry that lands before the report would price everything except the thing you care about.

Step two: buy both sides at the money. With COHR trading at $329.40, the nearest strike is $330.00. Owning the $330.00 call and the $330.00 put together (the straddle) costs $40.05 per share. That position does not care which way COHR goes; it only cares how far.

Step three: divide by spot. $40.05 ÷ $329.40 = 12.16%. That is the implied move: the percentage travel the market is charging for, in either direction, by 14 August 2026.

Step four: read it as a band, and mind which band. Spot minus the straddle is $289.35 and spot plus the straddle is $369.45. That is the expected-move band, centred on the current price so it can be compared across names. The straddle itself breaks even at expiry measured from its $330.00 strike, at $289.95 and $370.05 before costs. The two coincide only when spot sits exactly on the strike, which here it does not.

And the volatility number. 168.5% is the front expiry's annualised implied volatility. It is a related quantity rather than the same one: it covers the whole remaining term, which holds ordinary session variance either side of the event as well as the event itself, while the 12.16% expresses the total premium in plain price units. Use the percentage move to compare COHR against another company.

The band is a price, not a forecast, and not a probability. A straddle premium carries volatility risk premium, skew, rates and whatever supply and demand did to it, so it is a market-priced measure of event uncertainty rather than calibrated odds. It says nothing about direction and nothing that binds the tape. Realised moves land outside these bands regularly, which is precisely what the seller is paid for.

These names report into the same session as COHR. When they share customers, suppliers or a sector, the first print is a read on the rest.

Names on the same calendar whose implied move is closest to COHR's 12.16%:

The expected move is what is priced; dealer positioning is how the tape behaves while it gets there.