Wolfspeed Closes Fiscal 2026 Wednesday. Its Own Filings Say the Year Cannot Be Shown in One Column.

by Leah Avraham · August 17, 2026

Previews Correspondent, Earnings Dispatch

Wolfspeed reports fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 results on Wednesday. In an August 5 announcement the company said it will conduct a conference call and audio webcast to discuss its fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 results on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time — an hour after the close of regular New York trading — with chief executive Robert Feurle and chief financial officer Gregor van Issum, and said the earnings release would be posted to its investor relations site alongside the webcast. The announcement did not say what time the release itself would cross. The harder question is what "full year fiscal 2026" will look like on the page, because the silicon carbide maker's own filings say the year cannot be presented as a single set of numbers.

The reason is a calendar coincidence. Fiscal 2025 ended June 29, 2025. The latest Form 10-Q gives June 30, 2025 — the first day of fiscal 2026 — as the petition date on which Wolfspeed and its subsidiary Wolfspeed Texas LLC filed for relief under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, and September 29, 2025 as the effective date on which the plan became effective, the company emerged and fresh-start accounting was applied. Fiscal 2026 ends June 28, 2026. Everything on or before the effective date belongs to what the filings call the Predecessor; everything after belongs to the Successor. The split is not a presentational choice: fresh-start reporting requires it of any company that qualifies for it on emergence from Chapter 11, and Wolfspeed's statements mark it with what the 10-Q calls a "black line," used, in the filing's words, "to emphasize the lack of comparability between amounts presented after the Effective Date and amounts presented for all prior periods." Non-additive columns are the required consequence of that accounting, not a sign of anything irregular.

The third-quarter 10-Q, for the period ended March 29, 2026, shows how that looks. Its statement of operations runs five columns, and three of them are pieces of fiscal 2026: a predecessor stub of June 30 to September 29, 2025; a successor period of September 30, 2025 to March 29, 2026; and the successor quarter of December 29, 2025 to March 29, 2026 inside it.

The 92-day predecessor stub is the one that looks least like an operating result. Wolfspeed booked $196.8 million of revenue against $273.9 million of cost of revenue, a gross loss of $77.1 million and an operating loss of $161.4 million. A line called reorganization items, net then contributed a credit of $563.4 million, and the stub finished with net income of $420.2 million — earnings per share of a positive $2.69 basic and $2.22 diluted, on 156.2 million basic and 189.1 million diluted weighted average shares. That credit was not cash. In reconciling the stub's net income to operating cash flow, the same period's statement of cash flows removes $625.6 million of non-cash reorganization items, and the stub still used $22.4 million of cash in operating activities.

The successor's first six months point the other way. Revenue of $318.7 million against $437.0 million of cost of revenue produced a $118.3 million gross loss, a $272.7 million operating loss and a $270.5 million net loss — a loss of $8.27 per share, basic and diluted, on 32.7 million weighted average shares. So the two stretches of fiscal 2026 disclosed so far carry per-share results of opposite sign, on share counts differing by roughly a factor of five. The filings never add them. Neither should anyone reading Wednesday's release.

Revenue is the one line where adding across the line at least means something physical, and even there the company does not do it: $196.8 million in the stub plus $318.7 million in the successor's six months is $515.5 million of product shipped in roughly the first nine months of fiscal 2026, against $560.6 million reported for the comparable stretch of fiscal 2025. That sum is this publication's arithmetic, not a figure Wolfspeed presents.

For the quarter being reported Wednesday, the company's own guidance, issued with the third-quarter release on May 5, is the cleanest anchor available: revenue of $140 million to $160 million, gross margins expected to remain negative, and operating expenses expected to be approximately flat with the third quarter. Third-quarter revenue was $150.2 million, down from $185.4 million in the year-ago quarter — a comparison that spans the black line. If the fourth quarter lands inside the guided range, the successor's nine months from September 30, 2025 through June 28, 2026 would total roughly $458.7 million to $478.7 million. That addition stays inside one reporting entity across contiguous periods, the only kind the presentation supports.

Fresh-start accounting also reset the cost side. Net property and equipment fell from $3,916.5 million at June 29, 2025 to $717.1 million at March 29, 2026. The cash flow statement makes the consequence explicit: depreciation and amortization was $69.3 million in the 92-day predecessor stub and $68.3 million across the successor's entire first six months. Roughly the same depreciation charge now covers twice the calendar. Even with that lighter load, the company reported third-quarter GAAP gross margin of negative 27 percent and non-GAAP gross margin of negative 21 percent; the year-earlier quarter's filed figures work out to a GAAP gross margin of about negative 12 percent.

Interest makes the same point. Interest expense, net was $85.4 million in the March 2025 quarter, $0.7 million in the in-court predecessor stub, and $52.1 million in the March 2026 successor quarter. Three consecutive fiscal periods, three capital structures.

The balance sheet Wolfspeed brings into Wednesday is not the one it took into bankruptcy. Cash and cash equivalents were $695.1 million at March 29, 2026, with $469.7 million of short-term investments alongside — the third-quarter release described the combination as $1.2 billion of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, and the two balance sheet lines sum to $1,164.8 million. Long-term debt stood at $922.2 million and convertible notes, net at $798.3 million. Total stockholders' equity was $1,021.7 million, against negative $447.1 million at June 29, 2025. In that release van Issum said: "Our third-quarter actions represent another major step in strengthening our balance sheet. We successfully reduced our highest-cost first-lien debt by 43%, decreased the total debt by $97 million and thereby reduced the annual interest expense by an estimated $62 million." The release separately puts the refinanced first-lien amount at approximately $476 million. Capital spending has fallen alongside all of it: purchases of property and equipment were $104.0 million in the 92-day predecessor stub and $67.8 million across the successor's whole six months, against $1,059.5 million in the first nine months of fiscal 2025.

The share count is the other thing Wednesday's release will move. The plan issued 25.8 million successor shares on the effective date. The count was 27.4 million at December 28, 2025 and 48.3 million at March 29, 2026, and the statement of stockholders' equity accounts for all 21.0 million of the increase in the March quarter: 16,852,000 shares from the settlement of an equity forward, 3,250,000 issued under an at-the-market offering program, and 871,000 contingent shares. The 10-Q cover page reports 48,339,081 shares outstanding as of May 1, 2026, against the 39.3 million weighted average used for the March quarter's loss per share, so Wednesday's per-share figures will rest on a larger denominator than the quarter before them. Convertible notes carried at $798.3 million remain outstanding above that.

Three things are worth checking in the documents rather than the headline on Wednesday: whether the fiscal 2026 Form 10-K presents the year as separate predecessor and successor columns rather than one, what the successor period's nine-month totals are, and whether any fiscal 2027 outlook accompanies a quarter the company has already said will carry a negative gross margin.