nLIGHT, Inc. ($LASR)

Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the nLIGHT, Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to John Marchetti, Vice President of Corporate Development and Head of Investor Relations. John, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss nLIGHT's first quarter 2026 Earnings Results. I'm John Marchetti, nLIGHT's VP of Corporate Development and the Head of Investor Relations. With me on the call today are Scott Keeney, nLIGHTs Chairman and CEO; and Joe Corso, nLIGHT's CFO. Today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements, including financial projections and plans for our business, some of which are beyond our control, including the risks and uncertainties described from time to time in our SEC filings. Our results may differ materially from those projected on today's call, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. During the call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. We have provided reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release and in our earnings presentation, both of which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. I will now turn the call over to nLIGHT's Chairman and CEO, Scott Keeney.

Thank you, John. Q1 represented an exceptional quarter for nLIGHT with total revenue, gross margin and adjusted EBITDA comfortably beating our expectations. First quarter revenue of $80 million grew 55% year-over-year and was driven by aerospace and defense revenue of $55 million, which grew 69% year-over-year. I'm particularly pleased with the continued expansion of our products gross margin and record adjusted EBITDA in the quarter. Product gross margins were a record 44%, an increase from 33% in the same quarter a year ago. And our adjusted EBITDA was a record $14 million in the quarter. The expansion in our gross margins and the record adjusted EBITDA demonstrate the leverage that is inherent in our model and reinforces our commitment to growing the business profitably. I would like to focus my prepared remarks today on important developments within our Directed Energy market, which continues to be the most strategic and highest growth opportunity for nLIGHT. Directed Energy remains a key priority for the U.S. and allied governments, driven by the need for highly scalable, low-cost per shot solutions to counter a rapidly evolving threat environment. Our focus remains on supporting customers across a broad range of power levels and mission profiles, and we are increasingly engaged not only as a laser supplier, but also as a system-level partner. Importantly, we are seeing growing customer demand for solutions that emphasize the three keys to success in Directed Energy. Power scaling, high brightness and atmospheric correction, areas where we believe our 2-decade investment in laser technology provides a meaningful competitive advantage and where we have consistently delivered for our customers. And today, we officially launched our HADES portfolio of scalable beam combined high-energy lasers and effectors with integrated atmospheric correction. Production-ready HADES is designed around nLIGHT's vertically integrated laser technology stack, encompassing semiconductor laser diodes, fiber amplifiers, beam combination and atmospheric correction. The platform architecture enables system growth to hundreds of kilowatts while maintaining pristine beam quality through advanced atmosphere correction, providing defense customers with a common modular foundation that scales from near-term operational deployments to higher power systems capable of addressing increasingly sophisticated and demanding threats. Each system can be integrated with existing beam directors, sensors and battle management architectures, enabling rapid deployment across a broad range of military platforms and battlefield environments. One example of this power scaling is the work we are doing on the production of the 1-megawatt CBC high energy laser as part of HELSI-2. We remain on track with this program. And importantly, this laser is based on the same architecture that we use across all our HADES portfolio of CBC lasers, demonstrating the scalability of the platform to deliver solutions that address a wide range of mission scenarios, from counter UAS through counter cruise missile and more. We also continue to make progress on the U.S. Navy's HELCAP program, where we're combining the 300-kilowatt CBC laser that we delivered under the HELSI-1 program with an nLIGHT advanced beam control system that incorporates our proprietary adaptive optics for atmospheric correction. This work will help accelerate the development and deployment of future multi-hundred kilowatt systems over the coming years. Looking ahead, we remain encouraged by the pipeline of directed energy opportunities, including follow-on production content, upgrades to existing platforms and new prototype programs that should position us for continued growth over the next several years. Importantly, we have seen the U.S. government follow up on these program successes with increases to budgets associated with Directed Energy. There's currently nearly $400 million in each of the 2027 and 2028 budgeted for Directed Energy prototypes and procurement. The overall annual budget for Directed Energy laser weapons increases to approximately $1 billion in each of the 2 fiscal years with the inclusion of high-power multi-hundred kilowatt direct energy prototypes that are expected to be funded through the science and technology portion of the budget. We continue to believe that our differentiated CBC high-power laser technology, combined with our advanced atmospheric correction capabilities and our U.S.-based manufacturing positions us favorably to win meaningful new awards in the coming months and years. The growing pipeline of opportunities in our Directed Energy markets was a primary driver behind our decision to raise additional capital through a follow-on equity offering during the quarter. We raised over $190 million after fees and expenses, which combined with our existing cash leaves us with approximately $330 million on our balance sheet. We intend to use a portion of these proceeds to build out and equip our new 50,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Longmont, Colorado, invest ahead of our demand and supply chain and increase staffing to help accelerate new directed energy product development. In summary, our strategy remains consistent. Leverage our vertically integrated technology platform, execute with discipline on existing programs and invest to accelerate and support long-term growth and value creation. We believe this approach positions nLIGHT well not only for the remainder of 2026, but for the multiyear opportunities ahead. Let me now turn the call over to Joe to discuss our first quarter financial results.

Thank you, Scott. We had a very strong first quarter. We delivered our fifth consecutive quarter of product revenue growth and exceptional operational execution enabled us to generate record products gross margins in the quarter. Continued operating expense discipline enabled much of the incremental gross margin to fall through to adjusted EBITDA, which is also a quarterly record. At the same time, our continued focus on working capital management and targeted CapEx enabled us to generate positive operating cash flow for the third consecutive quarter. We significantly strengthened our balance sheet through a well-received equity offering in February, and we remain on healthy financial footing to pursue the growth opportunities we have in front of us. Turning to the numbers. Total revenue in the first quarter was $80.2 million, an increase of 55% compared to $51.7 million in the first quarter of 2025, and down 1% compared to the fourth quarter of 2025. Aerospace and Defense revenue was $51.1 million in the quarter, up 69% year-over-year. A&D growth was driven by record A&D products revenue, which grew 98% year-over-year and 10% sequentially. Development revenue of $22 million, grew 38% year-over-year as we continue to execute on multiple Directed Energy and laser sensing programs. The quarter-over-quarter decline of 16% was primarily due to the successful delivery of our 50-kilowatt DE M-SHORAD high-energy laser effector in the fourth quarter of 2025, partially offset by continued increases associated with our work on HELSI-2. First quarter revenue from our commercial markets, which include industrial and microfabrication was ahead of our expectations at $25 million, an increase of 32% year-over-year. Revenue from our microfabrication markets was slightly better than our expectations at $13 million. Revenue of $12 million from our industrial markets benefited from increased demand for additive manufacturing products and an increase in sales associated with last time buys for our cutting and welding products. As we announced last quarter, we are exiting our legacy cutting and welding markets, and we do not expect to generate material revenue from these markets after the second quarter. Total gross margin in the first quarter was 33.1% compared to 26.7% in the first quarter of 2025, and 30.7% last quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding the costs associated with stock-based compensation, total gross margin in the first quarter was 34.4%, up from 27.8% in the same period last year and 31.6% last quarter. Products gross margin in the first quarter was a record 43.6%, compared to 33.5% in the first quarter of 2025 and 37.3% last quarter. First quarter products gross margin was positively impacted by favorable customer and product mix driven by record product revenue from our A&D markets and an overall increase in volume. Non-GAAP product gross margin in the first quarter was 44.6%, compared to 35.1% in the first quarter of 2025 and 38.6% last quarter. Development gross margin was 5.1%, compared to 11.5% in the same quarter a year ago and 16.8% last quarter. The variability in development gross margin is primarily the result of contract mix and the timing of program deliverables in any given quarter. Non-GAAP development gross margin in the quarter was 7.2% compared to 11.5% in the same period a year ago, and 16.8% last quarter. GAAP operating expenses were $27.2 million in the first quarter, compared to $23.4 million in the first quarter of 2025 and $30.4 million in the prior quarter. The year-over-year increase in GAAP operating expenses is primarily due to higher stock-based compensation. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $17.1 million in the quarter, down from $17.8 million in the first quarter of 2025, and down from $18.4 million last quarter. We expect non-GAAP OpEx to remain in the $17 million to $19 million range for the balance of the year. The company achieved positive GAAP net income in the first quarter of $645,000, or $0.01 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $8.1 million, or $0.16 per share in the same quarter a year ago, and a loss of $4.9 million or $0.10 per share in the fourth quarter of 2025. On a non-GAAP basis, net income for the first quarter was $11.8 million or $0.20 per diluted share, compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $1.9 million or $0.04 per share in the first quarter of 2025, and a non-GAAP net income of $7.8 million or $0.14 per diluted share last quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was a record $13.9 million compared to $116,000 in the same quarter last year, and $10.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. We ended the first quarter with total cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and investments of $332.9 million, which includes approximately $191 million of net proceeds from our February follow-on offering. While revenue growth remains the primary objective for nLIGHT, we also want to manage working capital so that over time, we can grow profitability and cash flow faster than revenue. In the first quarter, our cash flow conversion days were 97 compared to 125 days during the first quarter of 2025. We generated $9.7 million in cash from operations during the quarter. Turning to guidance. Based on the information available today, we expect revenue for the second quarter of 2026 to be in the range of $75 million to $81 million. The midpoint of $78 million includes approximately $58 million of product revenue and $20 million of development revenue. We expect sequential growth from our A&D markets in the second quarter. Overall gross margin in the second quarter is expected to be in the range of 29% to 33%, with product gross margin in the range of 37% to 41%, and Development gross margin of approximately 8%. As we've mentioned previously, as a vertically integrated manufacturing business, gross margin is largely dependent on production volumes and absorption of fixed manufacturing costs. Finally, we expect adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2026 to be in the range of $8 million to $12 million. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Peter Arment with Baird.

Nice results. Scott, I was wondering if you could maybe give us -- you touched upon the funding environment, and you called out a few things around the directed energy. Just how should we think about kind of the timing of all that and how you're kind of expecting it? I know there's timing around all this can be lumpy, but what's your thoughts on that?

Yes. Thanks for the question. As we noted, the budget provides some insights into the importance of Directed Energy. And the data that we're showing is the President's budget. It will take time to work its way through Congress. But I do think that there is signal there, as we noted. And notably, we're seeing increases, particularly from OSW in the core directed energy from the Principal Director and various programs that are going on there. And I think that we do have insights into the priorities that Emil Michael has put forward that further reinforce this. But as you know, the budget process takes time to work its way through Congress, and we hope to have more insights in the coming quarters there. And certainly, you can read the comments from Secretary Hegseth and others with respect to Direct Energy.

Got it. And just as a quick follow-up. The product there, or the HADES scalable kind of high-energy lasers family that you launched, I guess, today and probably -- can you talk a little bit about just kind of the positioning there versus kind of some of your other products, just how you're thinking of that?

Yes. Thanks for asking that. It's something that we've been working on and very excited about this product family. It's our platform for scaling to higher power. And so we're starting with greater than 50-kilowatt class, but it will continue to scale, and that's one of the key benefits to coherent beam combining. It also provides for a brighter beam, a beam, laser beam that can be focused more effectively. And then finally, it provides for the ability to correct for the atmosphere. So all 3 of those features, we believe, are very important. And it also is in a form factor that is smaller than other products and one that we're -- we have integrated into the Stryker as we've talked about and can be integrated in other platforms. So it's an exciting announcement, and we will be making further announcements as we continue to migrate that product family.

Your next question comes from the line of Louie DiPalma with Blair.

As a follow-up to the question on HADES, can the HADES platform be integrated into aircraft as there was a defense contractor in Israel that recently discussed the incorporation of high-energy lasers into aircraft and helicopters? And it would seem to be a large addressable market. So you mentioned how HADES can be incorporated into the Stryker and other platforms. So I was wondering if you could provide some potential color on those other platforms. Scott?

Yes, absolutely. The platforms that we've talked about in more detail are the Army, the Stryker. And by the way, that's just one platform. What would ultimately be the right platform is to be determined, but I think it's a challenging platform to integrate. It's a very small space. Certainly, the Navy has a number of opportunities for integration. And so the small size of HADES is important for those. But as you noted, it becomes even more important as you look at airborne applications. And one of the topics that we talked a bit about is our leadership with respect to swap, size, weight and power. And so we have leading performance in that area, and that makes it -- makes us well -- it provides a very good foundation for airborne platforms also. Obviously, you'd engineer the product to be different in those platforms, but we do have leadership with respect to SWaP also.

And there also -- there seems to have been progress with the Army, the 30-kilowatt enduring high energy laser program. Is there the opportunity for you to serve as a supplier for that program, or other programs that are like below the 70 kilowatt threshold that you've established with HADES? And related to this, how do you view like competition, if there is competition between like the 70-kilowatt and above class versus the class of lasers below 70-kilowatts?

I think that's a very good question. And the short answer is, yes, we are excited about the work that we're doing with partners in the lower power space like the 30-kilowatt where we provide key components that go into that. And it is indeed different from HADES. It doesn't require the same level of sophistication with respect to the coherently combined sources for higher power. So we are partnered with others to provide those components at the lower power level. And as the requirements go up to higher power, that's where HADES comes in. And I think we're uniquely positioned there to provide not only the higher power, but also the higher beam quality and the atmospheric correction for those threats that require a more sophisticated laser source.

Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Siegmann with Stifel.

The sales margins were fantastic. It sounds like within products, both sensing and Directed Energy were increasing. Just hoping you could give a sense on kind of which horse was leading the pack in the quarter? And then thinking about how margins demonstrated 500 basis points of upside relative to your own high end of your guidance range for products. Should we think of that as just being the operating leverage of the higher sales? Or how much was it that maybe mix contributing?

Yes. Great. Thanks for the question, John. We had a good quarter across the board. All of our products fared well during the quarter from Directed Energy to laser sensing, even if you look at the end markets, our industrial and microfabrication markets performed well. As you think about the upside relative to the guidance, about half of it was just volume related, just leveraging overhead and selling more through the factory and keeping the factory more occupied. And then the other half was a combination of slightly higher margin. There can be a pretty big mix within any given quarter. And so this quarter, we saw very nice mix as we continue to control the cost. So I think, again, it was a good quarter that we were firing on all cylinders.

And maybe I'll slip one on HADES too, which has to be one of the best franchise names in defense right now. But you've talked a lot about how coherent is differentiated and scalable for high. But you introduced the 30 and the 10-kilowatt systems and talked about having proprietary beam quality that wouldn't be coherent. So maybe can you talk a little bit about what's differentiated in that class power and what is your company's right to win in those areas?

Good, Jonathan, thanks for the question. Yes, just to replay, there's only two ways to combine lasers to preserve a very bright coherent laser source, spectral beam combining and coherent beam combining. We have a very strong position that as you go up in power coherent beam combining is the best way to scale to higher power to provide a brighter source and to also then more effectively allow for atmosphere correction. For lower power, we do provide spectral beam combined sources. And again, we work with other partners to provide components and combined laser sources there, but we don't integrate it into the full what is known as typically the effector with the beam director in that space. So we have, again, as I mentioned, leading swap, size, weight and power. We have high reliability. We have lasers that are serviceable. There's a whole host of differentiation that we have that's a result of 25 years of building lasers for a broad range of industrial and defense applications that allows us to serve that market well. But we don't integrate as far forward in that -- in the lower power space. Does that help, Jonathan, answer your question?

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Palm with Craig-Hallum.

Going back to segment results, what drove -- I think most of the upside was actually in the industrial segment. So can you just maybe talk about what surprised you? I think Joe, you talked about some last time buys, presumably. Maybe that continues into Q2. But what are we now expecting for the full year whole relative to that $25 million to $30 million number you gave last quarter?

Yes. Thanks, Greg. The industrial -- upside in Industrial was a little bit better than we expected around producing revenue and taking orders for last time buys in our cutting and welding business. But the brighter upside spot really was additive manufacturing. We had a nice quarter in additive manufacturing, and we're seeing that business continue to show better growth than we had anticipated going into the quarter and into the balance of the year. As you know, it's difficult to predict. We don't guide for a full year basis because we don't have the amount of visibility that we do in the defense business. But I think relative to what we said during our last earnings call, things have gotten better. And so we're starting to chip away at that hole that we talked about, but there's still a lot of work that we need to do as we go through the year to really close that.

Yes. Okay. And then Scott, going back to some of the budget items, and I want to go back to some of the comments on the last call as well, talking about a number of new prototypes that you're going after different power levels. Can you give us maybe an update on -- I know timing is tough, but when would you expect, or when should we hear to expect more on some of those programs that you alluded to last quarter?

Well, I'd like to predict how Congress will work this year, but I've got enough experience to know that there are error bars around that. The budget numbers that we provided were the President's budget request, and that will work its way through the appropriations process in the coming quarters. We should have more insights this fall, but those -- that can be delayed. I think more specifically, there are opportunities for specific programs in the current budget that we certainly will announce when we're able to do so. The higher-level budgets, though, it will take time for that process to work itself out.

Okay. But just to be clear, the prototypes that you alluded to last quarter, was that not current fiscal year budget? Or was that for '27?

That was for '27. That was -- yes.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Troy Jensen with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Congrats on the stellar numbers here. Maybe just, I guess, a question for anyone. Just curious if there's any capacity constraints. And what I'm getting to is $81 million in revenues in December, $80 million in March. The high end of guide here is $81 million for June. What needs to happen for you guys to break through that level?

Short answer, Troy, is we are not capacity constrained today. We've really done a great job of improving both the capacity on the lasers that we're building, as well as the efficiency with which we are building those lasers. We've talked about what we were adding in long months. So today, capacity really is not an issue. What we need to continue to break through that $80 million threshold is demand signals from our customers, U.S. government, et cetera, which we're starting to get. But we've got no concerns at all today on capacity.

The new lands will be easily fulfill as they come in. Okay. And just, Joe, for you too, just on the gross margin guidance. I mean you guys kind of started the conference call here with highlighting 44% product gross margins, and it just seems like it should stay around this level. But what's really going to get it down to kind of the lower end of those kind of the guidance range? Or do you think it starts to creep higher here?

Yes. I think there's -- the primary factor of our margin is really volume, both the volume that we are putting through the factory and what we are selling through to the customer in any given quarter. And then beyond that, it's really just the mix of the products as we go through the quarter, right? On average, as we've gotten out of China as we've narrowed our focus, particularly with the last time buys with customers in cutting and welding. The overall product margins, or the BOM margins on the products that we are selling, are becoming less variable, but there is still some variability as we go quarter-to-quarter. And so that will also have an impact. But again, we're not talking about huge numbers here, Troy. So the margins can swing a couple of hundred basis points, and there's really not all that much to read into it. But we're happy that we've been able to get to a point today where we've consistently at 40% or above product gross margins.

Great. Okay. Just the last one here for Scott. If I remember correctly, I think the delivery date for the 1-megawatt laser was sometime in '26. So just correct me if I'm wrong. And what was the highest power you guys have shown to date and just kind of thoughts on that?

Yes, good. Yes. So that's -- thanks, Troy. It's referring to the HELSI-2 program that is targeting megawatt class laser. And HELSI-1, we exceeded over 300 kilowatts in that program that led to the award for HELSI-2. And we're tracking to that program. However, it's not a delivery of a product. It's a demonstration of that technology. And as soon as we're able to provide more insights into that, we'll certainly do so. I am comfortable saying that we're on track. And there's progress. We're learning a lot from what it takes to scale to much higher power levels and things are on track and going well.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to John Marchetti for closing remarks.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us this afternoon and for your continued interest in nLIGHT. We will be participating in several investor conferences over the next several weeks. We look forward to speaking with you during those events and throughout the remainder of the quarter. Have a great afternoon.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.