Still looks on schedule and Cloud based Data centers being in the cross hairs for one of there first possible orders.

Management Comments

Commenting on the Company’s recent progress, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan said, “The fourth quarter was a pivotal period for our Company, as we successfully achieved significant milestones on the path toward commercialization of new products based on the POET Optical Interposer platform. First, we released our first multi-product wafer (MPW) mask set for production, which was comprised of custom designs for specific applications and customers. Additionally, we completed and tested the designs of our newly launched product line, LightBar , a family of high-performance laser light source products for 400G FR4, 800G and Co-Packaged Optics applications in cloud data centers. We are very excited about the near-term opportunity for these products to serve as a spring-board for supplying products to large cloud-based data center customers that are aggressively seeking solutions with both higher speed and reduced cost.

“As evidence of further progress, in December we achieved an industry first with the successful test of our high-speed DML laser design ‘flip-chipped’ onto POET’s Optical Interposer platform, enabling the world’s lowest-cost and smallest 100G CWDM4 optical engine. This accomplishment is critical to the assembly of a single-chip, fully integrated optical engine that can be produced at wafer-scale in high volume. We also expanded our operations team and facilities in early 2021 with the appointment of Dr. Jinyu Mo as a Senior Vice President of Asia, coupled with the opening of a new product design and development center in Shenzhen, China.”

Dr. Venkatesan further stated, “Looking at the current landscape in early 2021, there have been broadly reported supply chain constraints throughout the semiconductor industry. This environment has introduced challenges related to the reliable and timely sourcing of lasers, which has resulted in delayed production schedules across the industry and also for POET’s alpha and beta samples. That said, we are continuing to work closely with our strategic manufacturing partners, while also exploring potential alternative sources in order to mitigate the impacts of these external supply constraints. I want to emphasize that we have continued to meet the product development milestones that are based on variables within our control, and we’ve encountered no new hurdles in terms of technological barriers or device performance. Importantly, we have a solid cash position and strengthened balance sheet following the successful financing activities completed in recent months, and we remain very optimistic about our advancement of POET’s product roadmap throughout 2021.”