POET Technologies Inc. (PTK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, shareholders and guests. Welcome to today's 2025 Annual Special Meeting of POET Technologies Inc. My name is Kevin Barnes. I'm the VP of Finance and Administration and Treasurer and Controller of the company. And by holding this meeting virtually, we have allowed our geographically diverse shareholder base an equal opportunity to participate at the meeting. As noted in our information circular, today's meeting is conducted virtually via the meetingnow.global platform, which will only allow registered shareholders to participate in voting. Please note, if you have already voted, you do not need to vote on the resolutions as they are read. The meeting today will be just about 2 hours long where we will first handle the formal part of the meeting chaired by Glen Riley, Chairman of the Compensation Committee, followed by a video presentation and then CEO summary and finally with the Q&A session. With us today, we have management and Board representation, namely Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, Tom Mika, myself Kevin Barnes, Raju Kankipati, along with the chairs of the various committees, namely Glen Riley and Bob Tirva. The agenda for the formal part of the meeting will cover the topics that you see before you. If you haven't already done so, we will be asking you to vote on the following agenda items namely election of directors, the appointment of auditors and the approval of the amended Omnibus Plan. At this point, I'd like to turn the meeting over to Glen Riley, Chair of the Compensation Committee to chair the formal part of the meeting. Glen, will you take over, please?

Thank you, Kevin. Hello, and welcome all to the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders of POET Technologies, Inc. My name is Glen Riley. I'm the Chair of the Compensation Committee of POET Technologies, and this meeting now will come to order. As noted in the notice of meeting and accompanying Management Information Circular, this year's annual general and special meeting is available online using the meetnow.global meeting platform, which allows registered shareholders or their proxy holders to vote in real time as well as submit questions and comments to be read and addressed at the meeting. If you have a question or comment, please submit it through the meeting platform by clicking on the messaging icon. I will now ask Thomas Mika, the Chief Financial Officer and Secretary of the company to act as Secretary of the meeting. I wish to point out that only shareholders of the company or their appointees by proxy are allowed to move and second the adoption of resolutions and to vote at this meeting. To this end, shareholders who are in attendance or their proxy holders have been provided with an opportunity to electronically vote for, against or withhold vote where applicable. The voting platform is now open for voting on all resolutions should any shareholder choose to change his or her vote. The voting platform will allow you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait until conclusion of discussion on each resolution prior to casting your vote. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. Once discussion on all items of business have concluded, I will give you a minute to enter your votes and then declare voting closed at the end when all formal business items have been discussed and voted on. There are several matters that must be dealt with at this meeting. In order to expedite these and leave more time for our presentation, and questions after the formal meeting, I have arranged for certain persons to make and second the formal motions and will call on these persons at the appropriate time. The first item of business will be the appointment of a scrutineer to report on the shareholders present in person and the number of shares represented in person and by proxy at the meeting.

Mr. Chairman, I move that Vanessa Lee of Computershare Investor Services, Inc. be hereby appointed scrutineer of this meeting.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Are there any questions or comments? I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the formal notice of meeting. In accordance with the notice and access rules under NI 54-101, the company has made its proxy-related materials, including the Notice of Meeting available to shareholders using the notice and access method. As such, shareholders received a proxy form and/or voting instruction form only. The notice of meeting and the management information circular are and have been accessible from the company's website or from SEDAR. The proof of mailing of the proxy form has been filed with me by the Secretary of the company. I direct that a copy of such proof of mailing be annexed to the minutes of the meeting as a schedule. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution dispensing with the reading of the formal notice of meeting?

Mr. Chairman, I move the beginning of the notice of this meeting be dispensed with.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Are there any questions or comments? I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the meeting attendance. The scrutineer has provided me with the preliminary report on shareholder attendance represented at this meeting. The scrutineer reports that there are present at this meeting in person or by proxy shareholders holding [ 21,093,046 ] common shares, which represents 26.97% of the total issued and outstanding shares available to vote. Accordingly, I declare that the requisite quorum of shareholders is present and that the meeting is duly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. I direct that the scrutineer's final report on attendance be annexed to the minutes of the meeting. The next item of business is the reading of the minutes of the previous shareholder meeting. The last meeting of shareholders of the company was the annual and special meeting held on June 21, 2024. And the minutes of such meeting were filed in the minute book and are available for inspection. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution dispensing with the reading of the minutes and that the minutes be taken as read and verified is correct?

Mr. Chairman, I move that the reading of the minutes of the last meeting of shareholders be dispensed with and the minutes be taken as read and verified as correct.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Are there any questions or comments? I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the presentation of the financial statements. I now present to the meeting the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, 2024, together with the auditor's report thereon. Copies of such statements were filed on SEDAR+ posted on the company's website and mailed to those shareholders who had requested a copy. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution dispensing with the reading of the auditor's report.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the reading of the auditor's report be dispensed with.

Mr. Chairman, I second that motion.

Are there any questions or comments? I declare the motion carried. Next item of business is the election of directors of the company. It is now in order to proceed with the election of directors to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. The number of directors to be elected at this meeting have been set at 5. Will someone please nominate those persons whose names appear as nominee directors in the management information circular of the company?

Mr. Chairman, I nominate Suresh Venkatesan, Glen Riley, Theresa Lan Ende, Jean-Louis Malinge and Robert Bob Tirva as directors of the company to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed.

The company's bylaws provide that in addition to any other applicable requirements for a director nomination to be made by a shareholder, the nominating shareholder must have given timely notice thereof in proper written form to the Corporate Secretary of the corporation at the principal executive offices of the corporation not less than 30 days prior to the date of the Annual Meeting of Shareholders. No nominations were received from a nominating shareholder. 5 persons have been nominated to fill the 5 director positions. Since no further notices of further nominations have been received by the company, I would now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution approving the election of the 7 nominees.

Ms. Chairman, I move for the election of the nominees. They are actually 5 nominees whose names have been read as directors of the company for the ensuing year to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected or appointed.

Mr. Chairman, I second that motion.

Are there any questions or comments? If you are entitled and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not done so already, please do so now. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. I'll provide a minute now for those to vote. [Voting]

Voting is now closed, and I declare those 5 persons nominated to have been duly elected as directors of the company to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors and the authorization of the directors to fix the remuneration of such auditors. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution appointing Davidson & Company LLP as the auditors of the company until the close of the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until its successor is appointed and authorizing the directors to fix their remuneration during this period.

Mr. Chairman, I so move.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Are there any questions or comments? If you are entitled and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not done so already, please do so now. As before, if you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. We'll now take a minute for voting. [Voting]

I declare that Davidson & Company LLP have been duly appointed as auditors of the company to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders and that the directors have been duly authorized to fix their remuneration. The next item of business is to consider and if thought fit to pass a resolution to approve and authorize among other things, the adoption of an Omnibus equity incentive plan, as more particularly described in the circular. In accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Omnibus incentive plan must be approved by a majority of votes cast for such resolution, excluding 232,632 shares held by insiders of the company and their associates and affiliates who would be considered eligible participants in such a plan, if adopted. The full text of the resolution and the terms of the Omnibus plan are as more particularly described in the circular. The resolution approving the Omnibus plan is defined in the circular as the Omnibus plan resolution. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of the Omnibus plan resolution as set out in full in the circular.

Mr. Chairman, I so move.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Are there any questions or comments? If you are eligible and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not already done so, please do so now. And as reminded before, if you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. We will now take a minute for voting. [Voting]

I declare the motion regarding the Omnibus equity incentive plan carried. At this point in the meeting, all registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders should have submitted their votes on the motions brought forth at this meeting. If you have not already voted, please complete the electronic ballots now. We will take 1 last minute for final votes. [Voting]

Voting is now closed on all items of business. I direct that the final tabulation of the voting results be included in the meeting minutes and that the final voting results be included in a report on voting results which will be posted on SEDAR+ under the company's issuers profile in due course following today's meeting. The formal business of the meeting is now concluded. After the termination of the formal business of the meeting, the company will provide shareholders and guests with an update on operations through a brief video presentation and summary remarks by our Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan. At which time, we will address questions from shareholders. Before the meeting is terminated, are there any additional formal business items to be considered? As there are no additional business items, I will now ask that someone move that the formal part of this meeting be terminated and that someone second the motion.

Mr. Chairman, I move the meeting be terminated.

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Are there any questions or comments? I declare this meeting to be terminated. As we move into the informal portion of today's meeting, the company is pleased to share an inspiring and informative video. Immediately following the video, our CEO, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, will offer his concluding remarks, after which we will open the floor for a question-and-answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please submit them through the meeting platform, but we kindly ask that you wait until the presentation has concluded. We now invite you to enjoy this special video presentation entitled A Triumphant Transformation. [Presentation]

Thank you. This is Suresh Venkatesan. It's been a pleasure and it's a privilege to welcome you to POET Technologies' Annual General Meeting. Thank you for your continued trust, commitment and support as we pursue our mission to reshape the future of Photonics through our groundbreaking optical interposer platform. The past year has been transformative for POET Technologies. And as the video stated, Triumphant in many ways too, we've moved forward with purpose and precision, execute on our strategic road map, and advancing from innovation to commercialization. We've had significant momentum from product readiness to strategic customer engagements to expanding our footprint across the photonics ecosystem. We successfully transitioned from development to revenue-generating engagements with multiple Tier 1s and strategic customers. Our Optical Interposer platform was validated in several proof-of-concept and prototype deployments, underscoring its performance, versatility and value across AI and data center markets. We are no longer talking about what our Interposer can do. We are now demonstrating what it is doing in the hands of global leaders. Notably, we achieved critical design-ins with major industry players, paving the way for volume ramp in late 2025 and beyond. These engagements are not just wins. They are testaments to the uniqueness and scalability of our technology. First, our collaboration with Mitsubishi, a household name in laser component is a major milestone, as you saw in the video. We're working with them to integrate a unique 2x200 gig EML into our terralite line of optical engines, enabling 1.6 terabits per second transmission for next-generation optical modules. This partnership elevates POET's standing in the industry. It gives us a seat at the table and road map discussions with some of the world's largest hyperscalers. And importantly, it's a model of how a supplier can innovate on top of our innovation, making for a powerful and mutually reinforcing collaboration. Our collaboration allows us to leverage long-standing relationships with Tier 1 module companies and end users and allows us to expand our engagements beyond those that we're working on today. This is exciting, and it gives us a vehicle to deploy our technology more broadly, leveraging one with the heft and presence of Mitsubishi. Our customer base continues to expand. Adtran is progressing steadily with their module design and has been adding some of the largest end customers to their growing list of design wins. We're proud to be part of that value chain. Luxshare Tech and Foxconn Interconnect technology continue to be highly engaged partners and we're expanding our portfolio of potential products with them as they sample our products and work with our team on customized solutions. Lessengers is a new customer announced during our successful appearance at this year's OFC conference. They have completed their module design and we're starting to provide them with additional optical engines so that they can complete their qualification. They are a client we can grow as they expand their product portfolio as well. We initiated our first shipments to Celestial AI and expect to ship to our outstanding purchase orders this year with NationGate as our module bring up partner even while we work towards succeeding generations as a solution for improved scale and cost. We now have sample purchase orders across more than 10 customer engagements, and we're working tirelessly to fulfill that demand even as we finalize qualification of our new production facility. From an operational and manufacturing standpoint, this year marked the start of qualification for our new optical engine manufacturing facility, a key enabler of our scale-up strategy. The facility housed Globetronics is designed for flexibility and high yield and supports both internal production and customer-specific module assembly. This is a key element in meeting both immediate backlog and future volume requirements. Early results have been highly promising in terms of yield and performance. We're also strengthening our strategic partnerships with industry-leading OSATs and module integrators to ensure supply chain readiness and scalability. This includes a partnership with NationGate, a leading contract manufacturer for POET's fiber attack solutions and our external light source module assembly. More on that in a moment. With Globetronics and NationGate, POET can produce more than 1 million units per year. And that will be the minimum needed based on the robust and enthusiastic feedback we have received from customers as they integrate our optical engines into their devices and witness for themselves the exceptional results. From a technology perspective, our engineering teams delivered major enhancements to the Optical Interposer platform, including improved coupling efficiency between passive and active photonic elements, higher channel densities for 400 gig, 800 gig and beyond and integration of new active components like the EML lasers and the 2x200 EML lasers and modulators tailored for AI and high-performance computing. These innovations reinforce POET's leadership in hybrid photonic integration and the ability to deliver solutions that are compact, cost-effective and power efficient. One of the more exciting developments this year has been the creation of our smart FAU or smart Flex Alignment Unit. This is a novel integration concept that dramatically simplifies the incorporation of optical isolators whether in module assembly or an external light source packaging. It sits at the output of our optical engine and significantly reduces complexity and cost, especially in high channel count applications. Smart FAUs will be produced in collaboration with NationGate by the end of this year, and we expect them to become a key differentiator in high-volume module designs. We also continue to make good progress with our Blazar solution, which is a novel laser architecture designed for low-cost multi-wavelength applications. Blazar in conjunction with the Smart FAU promises to dramatically reduce cost and complexity of external light sources, which will go through significant growth starting in 2027. Innovation remains our engine. We've expanded our patent portfolio with several new filings over the past year, covering not just the core of our optical interposer, but also new device concepts like the Smart FAU, integration architectures and advanced packaging technicals. Our IP strategy ensures long-term defensibility and value creation as we scale. Interposer solutions for optics are now considered and dispensable as the industry moves towards 3.2T. As leading companies contemplate solutions and architectures for 400 gig per lane using indium phosphide components, POET has squarely in the discussion on co-development and co-architectures that will result in competitive solutions and architectures. We cannot be happier with our current engagement and position in the ecosystem. In the past year, POET Technologies has not only advanced technologically, we have also been honored by the broad industry for our innovation impact and leadership. Here are the 2 of the accolades we proudly received, 2025 Lightwave plus BTR Innovation Award. Our Terralite 1.60 optical engine received top honors in this joint award program for its ability to deliver scalability, energy efficiency and integration flexibility for hyperscale data centers and AI workloads. 2025 AI Breakthrough Award for hardware innovation, POET was named among the top innovators enabling next-generation AI infrastructure with specific recognition for our ability to reduce optical interconnect complexity while increasing bandwidth density. These 2025 awards build on a strong foundation of prior recognition. Together, these honors validate not just what we're building, but how we're building it with technical leadership, strategic foresight and a focus on solving the most pressing challenges in high-speed optical connectivity. In 2024, we consolidated our development footprint in Singapore, transitioning out of both Super Photonics in China and Allentown in Pennsylvania. We continue to expand the team in Singapore in response to expanding development requirements and the need to continue penetrating the market with additional customers. We maintain financial discipline while making focused investments in R&D, customer engagements and infrastructure. We secured additional funding, positioning us well for the next stage of growth. Growth companies need strong balance sheets. As we look at the AI landscape, whose growth has surpassed everyone's expectations, and exploit on our leadership position in Integrated Photonics, having a strong balance sheet for the first time in our history. Both establishes our staying power and the ability to scale in the minds of our customers. And to this -- or add to this our historically high share value and the number of opportunities for inorganic growth also expands exponentially. While POET is not in a position to provide forecasts at the AGM, we're extremely bullish on our customer engagements. They are trending in the direction necessary to make POET a commercial success. Our pipeline of NRE revenue is a window into volume sales, and we're now more than excited as that book is building. To that point, we are actively expanding our sales team in Malaysia and China to meet the growing interest in our products. Looking ahead, the surge in demand for photonic solutions driven by AI, edge computing and high-speed networking represents an enormous opportunity. POET is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this wave with a differentiated platform, growing customer validation and a product road map aligned with industry mega trends. We are executing on every front. Commercial engagements are converting to real business. Manufacturing capacity is coming online. Our technology continues to evolve with market-leading innovations, and we're forging industry relationships that place POET at the center of the next wave in Photonics from AI and hyperscale to telecom. In the coming year, our priorities include converting design wins into volume production contracts, completing customer qualifications and shipping initial volumes, scaling up our manufacturing operations, qualifying our new manufacturing facility and optimizing costs and expanding our product portfolio to include multi-wavelength and co-packaged optics solution using Blazar and smart FAU innovations. We have a clear vision, strong momentum and unwavering commitment from a world-class team. None of this would be possible without the extraordinary dedication of the POET team, the guidance of our Board and the confidence of our shareholders. We're building something rare and valuable, a platform company at the frontier of Photonics, and we're doing it with integrity, vision and resolve. Thank you for being on this journey with us.

So Suresh, we'll now present you with some questions from shareholders. The first is, do you have enough manufacturing capacity to meet demand?

Absolutely. I mean we spent a better part of this quarter, moving equipment, of course, from super photonics, but also making some additional investments in capital equipment that allows us to seamlessly deliver at wafer scale 1 million optical engines a year. Now as the demand grows beyond that, I think the relationships that we have in Penang, allows our contract manufacturers to make additional investments for capacity expansion. So it really places us in a good position with regards to capacity and requirements over the next 12 months and beyond.

And what steps has the company taken to ensure stability and scalability across packaging, testing and supply chain partners as those volumes increase?

I think one of the key things, I mean, apart from all of the political noise around the geographic issues with China and manufacturing there, one of the things we wanted to do as we transitioned out of Super Photonics into Globetronics was to ally with an OSAT that has decades of experience building semiconductor products. We intentionally allied with a semiconductor OSAT because what we're trying to do the [indiscernible] Photonics. So what we've done is taken a somewhat different approach than traditional OSATs or traditional contract manufacturers. We went with a fab and fab model, where we have our own clean room inside of Globetronics where we do all the differentiated optics assembly and let Globetronics and the OSAT community handle the electronics assembly that is also required as part of our optical engines. So allying in that context with people or contract manufacturers that have done this, build billions of units for very large companies, gives us a manufacturing stability, right? And -- and we've been able to see the manufacturing capability with our capital first, right? And as that ramps up and the business starts growing, then it allows our OSAT partners to make additional capital investments on their own, which is already being done in the context of Globetronics. So I think from a stability perspective, I don't think we've been more stable. And for the first time, we've really made that commitment in terms of semiconductor style wafer-scale production, which Super Photonics wasn't going to do for us. And scalability is taken care of by 2 really well-established contract manufacturers in Penang and Globetronics and NationGate. And then between the 2 of them, they have tremendous -- not just clean room space, but tremendous capital capability to continue to expand our manufacturing base.

Okay. We have a question on the CPO module. CPO module was shown during a 2022 presentation with the recent buzz surrounding NVIDIA CPO plans. Is there a future offering that POET is still pursuing in that area?

Yes. CPO has been around for a while, right? People have talked about it for almost 5 years now. And now it's slowly starting to become real with not just NVIDIA, but also Broadcom and several other customers. And co-package of optics is kind of a generic term, but largely revolves around having an external light source and then your pick, which in the context of many companies is a silicon photonics-based solution. So our presence in the CPO market is to provide the high-value solution into CPO, which is the external light source. And we've also been taking our time with our investments as well as our development in that space because you don't want to be too ahead of the market either. But now that we feel that, that market is going to be real and it's going to be large in volume, probably starting production ramp in 2026, but really starting to hit really high numbers in 2027 and beyond. That's the projections of the industry for CPO. So I think the development of the Smart FAU, the development of Blazar solutions, for example, are all POET trying to get ready to intercept in 2026, what we expect to be a relatively dramatic growth trajectory in external light source requirements. And there are also some other partners that we can work with to generate these modules for us. And that's another big reason why we did the deal with NationGate. So yes, POET is getting ready with extremely competitive solutions for the external light source module, and we're innovating and creating the right solutions that would allow us to be a big player. I was invited at the OFC as you guys know, to give a talk on multi-wavelength solutions for CPO. So I think we're clearly in the mix in terms of solution providers for the space.

Okay. This next question is for our CFO, Thomas Mika. Tom, the question is about the delisting from the TSX Venture Exchange. And when will that happen and what factors remain to be resolved before it happens?

Thanks, Adrian. On the TSXV delisting, the company is committed to doing that. We have delayed that primarily for what I would call administrative reasons, plus the fact that we were engaged in offering the latest one being the USD 30 million capital raise. Now that, that's completed, we have to make application to the venture exchange to actually do the delisting. That application includes a review of all the monies due to the venture exchange, and we'll have a conversation with them about that. We don't believe we owe anything. They may take a different view. But we'll get through that. And we expect that to be done, I would think, probably by the mid -- by mid-August assuming that there are no issues that are raised by the venture exchange. I just wanted to add to -- that the fact that I'm seeing a lot of questions about revenue guidance and timing of POs and when revenue is expected. And I just want the shareholders to appreciate that neither the Ontario Securities Commission nor the SEC regards a shareholder meeting as the appropriate means for fair disclosure. So we really can't answer those questions in this forum. The right forum for providing revenue guidance is in a quarterly review and in a press release related to our quarterly -- quarterly financial statements. We're also not in a position, given that we don't have much of a backlog of large orders to provide much revenue guidance. So I wouldn't be expecting to see anything once we report on the June quarter. Regarding questions about competitors and a comparison of our technology to competitors' technology. We don't have all of the information on what competitors are offering. So I think that until we have that information, if we ever have had information, it's probably unwise for us to make comparisons between our technology and other companies' technologies, just wanted to make that clear. We're not holding back. It's just that we don't have the information. And in the case -- in the case of the revenue guidance, we're not in a position to do that at this forum. So we can go to the next question, please.

And the next question still on delisting, and I think this might be for Kevin Barnes to answer. What do shareholders need to do to prepare for the delisting?

Thanks, Adrian. The delisting is -- it's an action that kind of takes place in the background. This is where the -- we work with the exchange and the exchanges to coordinate it. So shareholders really don't need to do much. They warrant holders, there is a questionnaire that they had to complete and some documents that they've had to go through, and we've certainly received a fair bit of communication back from the warrant holders on this. So at this point, it's between the exchanges and really the brokers, the holders of your security is that all of this activity takes place in the background. So shareholders don't need to worry about too much from their end. This will take place quite seamlessly for them.

Okay. And back to Suresh with a question on our product, can you comment on the feedback on Blazar, whether it was received at the OC meetings or since?

Yes, for sure. I mean there -- it was exciting. I think it's kind of opened a few fairly large players eyes into what we're doing. That was our first prototype demonstration and we're now kind of preparing ourselves to make a real product, right? And that means not just the engine, but the module, the firmware, the software associated with how the engine works because it's fundamentally a different laser. And we're also trying to build the ecosystem around game chip providers because we need to make sure that we're working with people who have the ability to deliver game chips and high volume for us to have a good solution. So I think there's a supply piece to it that we're working on, and then there are some technology pieces. But I think the interest is unmitigated. I mean it's been very, very well received in terms of what we're doing. I think we just have to put our heads down and convert it to a real product, that meets all of the specifications and get it into a module form factor that meets the customers' requirements in terms of cost and scale and performance. But I think everything is pointing in the right direction. I mean it's -- thanks to our ability to be able to pursue multiple things. We've been able to get some good people on board and working to convert this leadership position into a leadership portfolio.

Okay. And can you comment on the relationship with Celestial AI, current status, any delivery of samples?

Yes, we've -- I mean, we've announced that there is a production purchase order that we had received and we're working, like I said in my presentation, to deliver to that PO this year through our partner, NationGate. We're transferring technology to them as we speak. And so the optical engines will be assembled at Globetronics and then the optical modules will be assembled at NationGate. So yes, we're working our way through that. And then obviously, we continue to engage with the industry at large on what competitiveness means in the ELS segment and looking at some innovations, like I said, with the Smart FAU, et cetera, that can be a dramatic differentiator for POET in that space, right? So it's not just about the hybrid laser. It's about how it can be packaged. Many times in optics, we find even today that we can make a really good laser and can be low cost, but then it's subject to a very, very complex packaging process and packaging capability and technology that makes it much, much more expensive than it needs to be. So I think our innovations not just address the laser, but also the packaging, right? And so that the total solution that we deliver is the best for the industry. So I think we're making progress there, and I'm very pleased with the progress we've made, right? I think a year from now at the OFC, we expect to have it in product form as opposed to a prototype form, which I think would be really, really important for us here.

Now that the facility in Malaysia at Globetronics is up and going, have we hosted any customers there?

Several, actually. So obviously, the way I look at this journey that we've been through POET, right? It's been an idea first and prove to me that the idea can work, prove to me that this technology can function, prove to me that the product even works. And then you kind of -- you work your way through all of these prove to me, prove to me, right? Show me. And the final piece is show me that you can manufacture. I mean -- and -- and then so we're at that step now, right, which is -- we're not talking about technical capability of the technology. We're talking about, can I now manufacture it in really high volume and scale. And so people do want to come and see what we put together. So we've posted multiple visits already and a few more visits planned in July, August, where people do want to come and ensure, right, obviously, before they make a supply commitment that includes POET in their supply chain that we actually -- I mean this is real. So I think it's all good. And I think the fact that we have this now going and we kind of waited until about the end of April because all of the equipment need to be up and running and brought up. And I think we and Globetronics we worked with a hectic pace. I mean -- it wasn't that long ago when we decided that we were going to close down Super Photonics and moved all of our equipment out right. So I think we've moved it as fast as we can while advancing our technology and manufacturing. So we're -- we're happy with that. We're happy that customers are wanting to come see what we're doing. Of course, we've made the video. And so that will be used as collateral as we go through our sales and marketing pitch in the future, right? So for customers to kind of vet their appetite, if you will, on what it is that we've been able to put in place.

Okay. And a question here on the tariffs, is POET affected by the tariffs?

No. I mean, not significantly, right, given if you just kind of work through the numbers.

Okay. And we'll ask about [ POET's highlight ]. What is it about [ POET's highlight ] that is gaining such interest?

Well, I mean it's 1.60 for starters, right? So that's new. And the one fewer people are working on it, and it's not yet in high volume production at any particular module vendor. So a lot of module vendors are looking for solutions for 1.60 and they're starting to make their decisions around who they will use and what kind of technology they wanted to achieve. So this having all of the background with 400, 800 and then putting 1.60 out allows us to kind of get in grounds up into the design cycle. So that's number one. Number two, we do have the backing of a big player, right? And I think that's a big deal. So we're able to get into meetings that we otherwise would have struggled to get into because Mitsubishi is also keen on promoting this laser and its use. And to POET's advantage, that laser can only exist in an integrated optical engine form factor. It's difficult to use that laser in that form using conventional assembly techniques. So it marries that laser to the interposer, which is a good thing for POET, especially since we have someone like Mitsubishi marketing it for us, right? So I think there are -- so it's gaining a lot of interest with some players that we wouldn't otherwise have been able to access, so which is really good for us. And I think you just have to go through -- 1.60s right at the beginning. So I think that's one big reason why we're getting a lot of interest there.

Okay. Great. Suresh, thanks so much valuable and important information there. It's just after 11. And I think we can end it here.