Overview
- Multiple plaintiff firms have filed notices and press releases about the complaint titled City of Southfield Fire and Police Retirement System v. Cogent, and investors have until September 21, 2026 to seek appointment as lead plaintiff.
- The complaint alleges Cogent repeatedly misstated demand for its optical wavelength business and that a large portion of the publicly touted wavelength order backlog never converted into paying customers.
- The filings trace a chronology of corrective disclosures that include a February 27, 2025 backlog reduction, a November 6, 2025 pause in buybacks and a 98% dividend cut, and CEO David Schaeffer’s May 4, 2026 concession that customers were delaying acceptance of provisioned wavelengths.
- Plaintiffs link those disclosures to steep market losses, saying CCOI fell from over $86 a share in November 2024 to under $17 after the class period and that pledged CEO stock and lender sales created added downside risk for investors.
- The case is at an early procedural stage in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with no class certified yet and could prompt discovery into backlog accounting, dividend policy, provisioning practices and executive stock‑pledging.