POET Technologies Inc.

I'm not sure what to think... Two years before commercialization of the AOC?! Can't believe it, I'm crying.

It's makes me think about thi quote from Catch Me If You Can:

Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse.

February 14, 2015

The Company completed its ‘3rd Party Foundry’ 40/100-nm transfer milestone consisting of completing the critical layers of the Transistor Fabrication Process. This flow process will allow the Company to generate more complex prototypes and test structures. As the POET process node size shrinks, this facilitates new industry innovations and furthers development work. This new epitaxial flow process includes new innovations in the POET prototype fabrication process.

These innovations were necessary to continue the optimization work of the 100 and 40-nm foundation devices of our technology. “This is a significant step for our ‘lab-to-fab’ transition where this new flow at our ‘3rd Party Foundry’ accelerates and adds repeatability and quality to our manufacturing process necessary for our next two significant milestones expected at the end of Q1 (2015): a 100-nm ring oscillator and a 50 GHz VCSEL,” says Dan DeSimone, chief technical officer.

September 30, 2015:

8:58 – First, we have recently in this quarter successfully demonstrated functional 980 nanometer (nm) VCSELs utilizing the POET epitaxy and POET process at the UConn labs. Improvements in epitaxial quality have shown a three-times improvement in critical performance parameters of the VCSEL, and we expect to maintain that improvement trajectory over the next quarter through further improvements in epitaxy and processing in order to achieve commercially acceptable specifications.

19:30 – Even more important is our first demonstration of small-signal modulation of our unique Digital Opto-Electronic Switch – acronymed DOES – lasers. We have achieved modulation frequencies presently of up to 8 GHz which readily enables 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) operation of the transceiver products. As we improve the VCSEL characteristics over the coming quarter we expect to further improve our small-signal frequencies’ response as well.

20:05 – Secondly, and this is a significant change for us, the VCSEL transceiver market today is centered at 850 nm wavelength. The quickest path to validation and adoption of any new technology is to prove its benefits in existing sockets. To that end, we had now focused our internal activities this quarter to assess the scalability of our platform to the 850 nm wavelength. We had demonstrated that critical pieces of the POET IP are scalable to 850 nm. And this is really good news, because it enables the company to participate in the large existing market at 850 nm. While we will be developing both 980 nm and 850 nm platforms in parallel, we will now be shifting our short-term focus to realize 850 nm.

34:52 – Answer: We are on plan to commercialize the POET VCSEL in 2016. We have made significant progress in the development of the POET VCSEL, and in the quarter ending today, we recorded a 3X improvement in laser output power. And we are on a trajectory to another sizable improvement within the next quarter, as we transition our fabrication to external sources. We expect to announce core integration of the VCSEL with electronics in the second quarter 2016, which will then set the stage for prototypes to be designed.

Conference call 16-02-16

19:34 – We are also on track to demonstrate integrated 10 gigabit per second transmit and receive components that incorporate the FETs, VCSELs, and detectors by the second quarter of 2016. These milestones will allow us to provide functioning prototypes to the market in the second half of 2016, as per our plan. These advances are at the heart of our mission to deliver the next generation of transceivers and providing the performance of light at the cost of copper. With that I’ll turn it back to Suresh.

April 4, 2016

Multiple 6-inch wafer lots of VCSELs and transistors were also processed at the foundry. Testing and characterization of these devices is underway and POET expects to require further development cycles through additional wafer processing to fully achieve the true potential for these integrated opto-electronic devices. Announcements will be forthcoming on the performance of these devices, over the next months, as development progresses.

February 16th, 2016

Conference call 16-02-16

24:26 – Answer: So we’re still not providing revenue guidance at this stage of our development, and we have therefore not yet provided a precise timeline for this. The prospect clearly exists for POET to generate NRE or other revenue as early as this year. Generally speaking we would expect NRE or sales of engineering samples to be our initial sources of revenue. And licensing opportunities are of course expected to be in the mix as well.

25:17 – Answer: As we said on September 30th, our plan is to introduce these optical engines – what we call optical engines – they are single-chip monolithically integrated optical transceivers, and for explicit applications in short reach and very short reach data communications in the form of active optical cables, or what are called AOCs. Ahead of that, we will clearly market and sell individual components, like for example the detectors, opportunistically. Not only to drive early revenue, but also to vet our solutions in the market. We believe that the POET solution could provide an immediate margin of expansion to customers using our solutions, even in otherwise low-margin or commoditized product lines, so we are extremely bullish about our market penetration here. We are all trying to complete our first devices in the current quarter. Our next quarter remains the target for basic component-level functionality. And that’s the basis, if you will, for prototypes in the second half of the year just as Subhash mentioned earlier when we talked about our on-going milestones. It remains early in our evolution at this point to precisely define and provide a roll-out for our first product. However, we do expect this to feature our unique ability to integrate optical components along with control electronics. So we’re talking about VCSEL-based, monolithic, single-chip optical transceivers.

37:32 Second: POET is on the march. We’re marching towards our first application and our first revenue. We are in active and advanced discussions to expand the POET applications portfolio to include sensing and microdisplay technologies. We’re also in an advanced discussion for an NRE-based multi-phased technology, licensing and transfer agreement with a prospective client.

Fourth: POET is on a very big mission. More and more prospective customers and strategic partners are showing a great deal of interest.They are asking, as we are, to achieve critical proof points in a commercial environment.

MARKETWIRED, April 4, 2016

As previously announced, POET intends to commercialize its integratedresonant cavity detector as its first product and demonstrate this prototype by the end of 2016. 6-inch detector wafers based on the POET platform, recently fabricated at POET’s foundry supplier, demonstrated superior responsivity parameters relative to best-in-class performance. POET’s detectors differ from conventional devices in that they are resonant cavity designs, which enable greater sensitivity in detector applications. Benchmark parameters, such as responsivity, on POET’s detector device far exceed the performance of detectors in the market today. At a bias voltage of 3.3V, POET detectors have demonstrated a room temperature thyristor enhanced saturated responsivity of 13A/W at an input optical power threshold of less than 200mW and at an aperture of 10mm. This is about 20X higher on a 3X smaller device relative to typical 850nm PiN diodes. These results from the first set of detector wafers produced at the production foundry provide critical proof points for POET to introduce a differentiated detector product to the market later this year.

THM 2016-06-04

00:14:47 – The DenseLight acquisition, which is now closed, the BB Photonics acquisition is ongoing – we just announced it today and we probably go to a closure over the next week – accelerated our product time to revenue by about 18 months. So we do expect NRE revenue in the company over the next year. The product revenue – we have it today. You can actually see products with the DenseLight brand at the back, and we have also a single six-inch wafer from Wavetek that is up there, which we’re in the lab testing and characterizing as we are moving forward.

01:07:42 – Product sales, anticipated NRE revenue in the next twelve months, we talked about that. And really what I am happy to say is for the first time, I want to announce to you guys: We do have a basic fundamental platform now for profitable revenue growth going forward, we’ve got products today that can grow, we’ve got applications that are growing, we’ve got new technology and new IP, that is going to continue to provide us differentiation in the future.

01:28:19 – Q: Regarding past discussions on NRE – you had those slides – obviously there’s sensitivity on details, but is there some confidence, over the next twelve months or so, that perhaps we could see something there that could help with the burn rate and cash flow, that alleviates the need for financing?

01:28:42 – Suresh Venkatesan: We would not have put it on a chart if I didn’t think it was possible. Yes, we are confident that we can close something. And yes, that’s the modeling we are doing financially and that’s what we want to spend the next three months and we are really putting a robust plan together. If the financing does come in, then yeah, we don’t need to go to the capital market for financing, because the NRE can do that for us.

01:24:48 – Q: At the last news release we were talking about a functional prototype VCSEL transceiver by the end of the second quarter. Is that timeline still in effect?

01:24:58 – Suresh Venkatesan: Oh, a full-fledge transceiver, I mean, the plan is for the end of the year. I think we talked about integrated VCSELs and detectors in the second quarter, and I think we are on plan to do that.

Aug. 30, 2016- Outlook for Second Half of 2016

POET expects revenue in the second half of 2016 to exceed $2,000,000, driven primarily by the increased sales of sensor products weighted toward the end of the year. The Company is unlocking the potential of a newly acquired portfolio of products, technology, fab operations, and customer base through investments in growth markets. POET plans to announce several new products in the second half of the year, which is expected to support continued growth into 2017. The Company also expects the DenseLight business unit to reach positive operating cash flow by the first quarter of 2017, helping to fund POET’s future product roadmap.