poLight ASA ($PLT)

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to poLight's first quarter presentation. Yes. So together with me today is, as usual, CFO, Joakim Bredahl; and Board Chair, Grethe Viksaas. Agenda, as usual, key events, introduction to poLight, market review, financial review, outlook and Q&A. During the Q&A, since this is also webcasted, please if you ask question through the portal, please leave your credentials so that we can contact you, if needed to clarify the question. Key events, less events this quarter compared to last quarter, but I will say it's still a very strong quarter, we feel and also both when it comes to activity revenue, but also when it comes to market activity. So we're quite happy with the progress. We received a follow-on purchase order for TLens related to barcode, nice business, existing customer. That was more or less NOK 1 million. We launched in the Industrial segment, we launched MLens, which is the -- based on the M12 standard, which has received quite some interesting feedback and market interest, I'll come back to it. We have also a follow-on purchase order for TLens worth approximately NOK 1 million, which is quite a number of TLenses. This is to support a qualification program, meaning qualification program, there is a qualification of a camera module planned into an OEM product. So this is a proof of continued progress for this customer. TWedge continues to create a lot of interest. We received a PO worth approximately NOK 1.1 million, 7th of March from the customer. We are in engagement with the customer discussing potential mass production ready unit, come back to that. Also in the Industrial segment, 2 new products was released during the quarter. We are not allowed to -- I can say it's a new customer, but I can't say who it is. We did participate at CES and Photonic Best successfully, a lot of meetings and a lot of interest. After the quarter, in the beginning of April, we also received a very strategic PO for TLens, quite a lot of TLenses. This is TLenses, which has a price kind of compatible with mass production price. So it's meaning it's starting to mature quite a bit. And this is related to, of course, to an existing customer, which is still listed under PoC, but the PoC is maturing every day. Okay. Very quickly on poLight. So focusing on growth markets, consumer and industrial, main focus, AR/MR and barcode machine vision. But of course, we also look at other things, any wearable laptop, webcam. But I see majority of our effort and our support is related to AR/MR. It is basically where we believe will be the big uptake on volume and where the innovation is happening. So this is super important and a fantastic good fit for our technology platform. Yes, our technology platform can be described by being extremely fast, millisecond response time. It can be super compact, constant field of view, there is no breathing due to changing focus for the TLens as an example. Extremely low power consumption. It's basically the driver which is taking -- is kind of charging the TLens, which is taking the pore, which is very limited. And there is no technology close to the speed we have and the power consumption we have. That's the fact. That's also why we are, I would say, so should I say, nicely positioned in the AR/MR space where compactness, speed, power consumption is critical. So we have been around for a while, 2005, listed Oslo Stock Exchange in 2018. At that point of time, no customers, only many technical problems. Today, we have many customers and less technical problems, no -- not 0, but less. We headquarter in Norway. Tønsberg, employees in Finland, France, U.K., U.S., China, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines. So quite a distributed team. We are around 50 people and increasing. So we will leave the year with maybe close to 60 or something like that. So we are building step-by-step the organization, which is important, which I will come back to in the outlook. So that's a little bit about poLight. Our technology platform is best described by 2 thin glass membranes with a gel, a polymer in between. The first product to the market is TLens, a tunable lens, which is shown on the upper left corner on that slide, where you have, as I said, 2 glass membranes and polymer in between. Polymer, this is the AF product. This is replicate the function of the human eye, you can say. So it's -- we are bending the membrane, the top membrane, a MEMS device. By bending, it shapes the polymer. So basically shapes the lens, which is what also your eye muscle will do with your lens. So this is the tunable autofocus device, which is competing with such as VCM, voice call motor. But the very same technology platform can also realize other products, as an example, TWedge, which instead of squeezing that polymer shaping that lens is basically instead of bending that top membrane, it's actually making a wedge. So it's tilting it, meaning that the beam coming in will be spared to right or the right, depending on how you tilt. That's TWedge. TWedge is the same technology platform used for different application, meaning different things can be, but the main focus is for AR/MR displays. TWedge is in development, TLens is in mass production. We are a fabulous company, which is nearly correct because we do manufacture polymer in headquarter, very scalable and easy to do, take little resources and little equipment. So we do that ourselves. We get MEMS wafers from a MEMS partner. In this case, it's for TLens, it's an 8-inch wafer having more than 2,000 dies. This is shipped to assembly partner. So we -- today, the assembly partner producing TLens for the different customer here today is happening at the Philippines. And they are dicing, dispensing, testing so that the fully tested TLens with or without a package is coming out from that manufacturing. We are also in the process of establishing capability at QTech in China for a similar activity. So then we deliver the camera module, our lens, either they integrate it into the camera in -- between the lens stack like the bottom camera there or on top on the fixed focus camera with a package to run. Typically, the industrial cases is using the add-on design on top, whereas the more compact high megapixel devices is using the bottom concept of having TLens in between the 2 lens stacks. But really, the sales and marketing activity we do is heavily, I would say, towards the product owners. So we are communicating with the product owners and the product owners is then hopefully getting convinced to use TLens and they will then kind of tell the camera module guy what camera and what actuators to use. So that's how we work. Yes. As I said, we are targeting the growth market, momentum market, extreme focus on AR/MR, but also keep an eye on other consumer devices or applications. After that, more time also spent on machine vision and barcode scanning. The M12 release is an attempt to increase activity in that space, making it easier for market -- for customers in that market to implement TLens. We have said in many years, and I think it's still the case, we believe that there are other market areas we can contribute to. Two examples are automotive and health care. But I would say that when it comes to automotive, it's a tough market, slow-moving market, very competitive market. we really don't see that we don't have any high activity. We get contacted now and then by name good brands, and we do talk to them, but we don't invest a lot of time in that market segment because we believe that for most of the applications, we need a bigger TLens. For the health care, actually from -- after having a few relatively slow year or 2, I would say, we now see a little bit more activity on the health care side related to type endoscope application. Let's see. The endoscope application is interesting, but also currently, they're using a relatively low megapixel sensors, which doesn't need a lot of high-quality AF most likely. But there is a trend that, that megapixel will increase and then maybe AF will be more needed. We use very little time on those emerging use cases. We use most of the time on the momentum markets and particular AR/MR and also a little bit on the machine vision side and barcode side. Yes, this slide is becoming more and more busy, and that's what we like. I said last time, maybe I have to consider to split it into 2 pages, and that will probably happen soon, I hope. But as you can see, we now have -- we have 2 new design wins during the quarter in the industrial. And we have quite a good references now in all market segments, both in AR consumer in general and industrial. So those 2 kind of momentum markets, we are step-by-step getting more and more references, which is helping us a lot in the sales situation. I think we now have around 43 design wins in total. Okay. Market review. On consumer side, and then I've kind of segmented into comments related to TLens and next slide will be TH. As I said, AR/MR focus. And that as I said before, we are being evaluated and tested by many AR/MR players. They are very often -- if you look at the products out there today, they're very often using a fixed focus. But our understanding for different reasons due to optics, due to camera specification trends, AI, which is heavily need, of course, quality input to have a good results from the AI engine and different use cases, that will, in some mean that they will step-by-step need more advanced cameras, including AF. This is our clear understanding with many of the players in this segment is that they have cameras with AF on their road map. And of course, we are engaged with many of them. And I would say that when we see that -- when we are focusing so much on the AR/MR space, and you will see kind of the activity slide later, it's -- I would say it's a very fair statement to say that this is an extremely promising application for TLens and TWedge. We will never be alone. I mentioned that before. So there will be other attempts. The main competitor today is Fix focus, but I'm sure there will be other players who is coming with technology, which is good because competition is what the OEM wants. So we need just to perform and deliver, and we will be, for many players, preferred choice. That's how we see it today. Many of the AR/MR cases we are supporting on the consumer side, are definitely maturing. Of course, there are issues. Of course, there are things to be solved, both on our side and on customer side. This is new technology going to very advanced compact designs. So there are always kind of challenges to be solved. But I think there are reasons to believe, which I also will comment in the outlook that we are approaching important milestones, very important milestones. And there is reasons to believe and hope and pray that we will, throughout this year, have new evidence that this is a market which will be very important for poLight. In the quarter, 2, I would say, very important news and POs. We have already mentioned them in the key events, just quickly repeat. 1 million NOK POs for a qualification program for TLens and NOK 2.4 million actually a relatively high volume meant for preparing for real products priced at kind of a mass production type pricing. So this is promising. But as I said, there are always -- you're not in before you're in and the market is still kind of -- the customer is still kind of preparing for a product, which may face situations like delays or other challenges. So you never know. But at the moment, it looks very promising. On the TLens side, again, consumer related. I think it's fair to say that the interest continues. We have said since day 1 that we really would like customer commitment before we move all the way with TWedge. And that's what we have been trying. We have been selling technical samples for quite some millions now, and we are still doing that and supporting customers in integrating TLens. So now we are -- I think we are starting now to more engage with the customer discussing when do we need a mass production unit? Are you willing to commit? So we are in that discussions now with some of the key players. We did receive another sizable contract during the quarter, which we announced the 7th of March, which is NOK 1.1 million. We had some of order intake on TWedge samples of NOK 1.7 million. And mind you, this is a very high number for selling samples. And last quarter, we had like NOK 3.5 million. So it's really, really -- when we price these samples, it's, of course, to be selective to who we work with because we cannot work with too many. And so we're using price mechanism to kind of make sure that the appetite is correct and the intention is correct. So we're using that price for that. And we have been very successful in doing that. We are charging a lot for per sample. So let's see. We have a design now we are at TS 5, fifth revision of prototype. We are now starting an activity to plan the next phases. And as I said, hopefully, we can get some engagement and financial contribution from some of the key players. We are talking about a handful of players, which we engage with, all, I would say, known names. And many of them are actually moving quite fast towards wanting to implement this into a future product. And in that sense, we need to make a decision whether we move with a full development program or we wait. So far, we said we wait until we have decent commitment. This is what we are continuing to say. And of course, but there are challenging discussions, of course, when you ask for money, they ask for rights. And we would like to keep as open as possible to work with everybody. So we are hesitating to -- we need to carefully kind of position the company in the right way in these discussions. One way -- one other new application. It has surprised me to see how many different applications TWedge can -- and how many pain points it can solve. You may have seen that recently a press release related to Vistalab, which is a laser-based display actually. And what they're saying is that they use -- you can see T-Weds in the second most bottom layer on that picture on the bottom right side. And they say that this is important for their solution for the quality of the display as it reduces the perceived coherence artifacts, which is typically a physics related to a laser-based display. We know that some of the customers we talk to OEMs are having engagement with this company, and they have also asked us to kindly support them. So it's quite an interesting case also. Who knows how this -- I've said many times, the display technology in the AR/MR space is maybe so far the most complex and the unknown what will be the main path. You may remember that we were in an LBS program, which is also laser. And that has kind of, yes, stand still, I would say. This is a new initiative. They have shown demos showing TLens' impact on the quality, and it's quite visible. So let's see. I would say LCOS, micro LED is maybe still kind of the technology which is most looked at, but there are other alternatives. In a way, we don't care as long as it seems like all the display solutions seems to would like to use TH, which is good. Yes. Here is the activity plot. As you can see here, no change in design win or design in. I said even though I said that there are cases in the AR/MR space, which, in a way, are approaching a different phase of the development. But so far, we would like to be prudent and still qualified as a very mature PoC. So if you look at PoC activity, it's out of these 23 PoCs, 19 is related to glasses of different ships. But you can also see there are some laptop and some other variables in the PoCs. So we do facilitate some PoCs also in that area. And it's early to say. But of course, if you can get into a laptop application, that's already an existing significant volume, but it remains to be seen whether we can build a camera, which gives, TTL thickness of the camera, which is not destroying the kind of the mechanical ID perspective in a limited space. And also, there needs to be a clear value. There needs to be a clear use case value. And the use case value is basically that what we have heard is that it's basically about more people around a device sitting at different positions. showing a closer to the camera, a business card or a QR code or whatever, and then you need to kind of be able to focus. So there are business cases, and we don't know yet if those cases are strong enough. But we are engaged with a quite high-end leading OEM who is actively considering and actually have done the first POC and now considering to start the next level of PoC. So it can be very interesting. At least this is what I'm saying. We are focusing heavily on AR/MR. But of course, we are not neglecting other potential cases, which also can use TLens. Same, if you look at the planning PoC, they are both laptop and there are a lot of AR/MR. AR/MR is also heavily, I would say, enterprise -- many enterprise application. I just wanted to show these pictures I got from their friend Nissan in SNE. And so they are -- you may have seen it on the link. They are quite vocal on they are very active in the market. They are very -- they are building partners. Many, many partners have signed up now signed up and they have showed strong interest in using this platform. It's an amazing high-end platform. It's amazing. I will soon get on device. And -- and it's -- if you look at the partners on the mentioned -- development partners mentioned, you can see there are big names. And of course, poLight is one of them. So they have really built a platform which can be used for many things. The first and foremost application they're focusing on is the medical. And here, you can see kind of a -- they are quite light actually, taking into consideration the -- all the technology inside the glasses, they are only a few hundred grams, 200, 300 grams. So quite light. And like I don't know how many -- a good handful of cameras and 2 of them are RGB, which is on the middle picture there shows one of the applications for that, stereoscopic magnification -- where we -- TLens is a key element. Very nice partner, very, I would say, a very professional team. And I just had a meeting yesterday with the Nissan, and he is very motivated to push this out to market. They are already supplying units to the development partners, making the software and applications around it. They are a platform provider. So I think this market could -- this platform could potentially go into market -- other market segments, but this is the focus as of today. Very interesting case. Yes. And this is all AR/MR including enterprise, including -- sorry, consumer. So here, you see there are 6 design wins. The latest one is the snake, which I just talked about. And the remaining is PoCs and planning PoCs. And as I said, 19 of those related to consumer, both on PoC and planning PoC. Barcode, yes, step-by-step, going in the right direction. We have been working -- as an example, we have been working with one company for -- I don't know for a long time, it must be 8 years plus. And now they finally have kicked off a program with poLight. It's one of the, I would say, well-known players in the market. So this -- to move these players is quite challenging, and they're using the very thorough. They're using a lot of time. And so it's just an example of how long time it can take before they find the optimal use cases in their portfolio. So -- but it's a steady business for us, increasing a little bit year-by-year. We hope we also got 2 design wins this quarter. We got repeat orders from existing customers, which is always good. In addition to that, we launched M12. Again, M12 is something we believe will make it easier for customers to use TLens. So instead of buying only a TLens and integrate themselves doing a lot of design work and have costing a lot of NRE, they now can buy a solution where we sell an M12 lens, as you can see on the right side of this slide. We have different lenses with different focal length. I think the 6 and 7.5 is already shipping, where soon in summer, I think the other 2, 13 and 19 will be shipping. So these are -- if you look at the picture, you can see the flex coming out. That is basically the unit, how it looks like. So it's a size of my ton, and it can be screwed directly into an M12 interface and there you go. No need for big RRA, no need for big development inside that lens stack is 2 TLenses. So this does 2 things. We hope it will scale that market quicker for us. And we also hope that -- hope it will also bring us up to a more a solution provider than a component provider, which is a part of our strategy. We have already shipped -- start shipping to a couple of 1, 2 handfuls of players. And now in sum, we have 26 design wins in Barcode machine vision, 23 still shipping, and that is shared between 7 companies. Yes, I don't need to go into those details. Health care, yes, there are signs of activity still. We are still supporting some POCs. As you remember last time or last time before that, maybe we removed all the -- no, sorry, university activity. So that's why the number 5 is significantly -- is 9 less than a couple of quarters ago. But we are seeing some old customer on the endoscope side coming back to us and want to restart something. So there are signs that there are things now maybe restarting on the endoscope side. So let's see. And of course, the Mini2P is -- yes, it's kind of giving us a decent -- we just, I think, yesterday or during the weekend, we sent another significant quote to a customer in the Mini 2P space. We not long ago, we got a quite big PO from another customer. So they remind you, there are 3 commercial companies now shipping Mini 2P solution, and they are representing a nice contribution to the company, not at least on the gross margin side since the price point is very high. Yes, I said many quarters now that very little happens in automotive and also we don't really run around and position us heavily. But lately, there has been a few cases coming to us for very well-known brands who want to talk to us. We don't know what, but there are signs that somebody -- there can be some activity there, but it's not something we, as a company, focus on and run after. But you never know. Yes. So here is maybe better to show this. This is a revised [indiscernible] slide. Thank you, Oyvind, for pushing us in that direction. But I've added here the design-in and design win. Actually, it's my CFO, I couldn't know how to do it. But you can see it's quite interesting to see that solid line shows kind of design wins development compared to the planning PoC and PoC completed PC volume. So you can see that, that line is ending up at around 42, I hope. And the bottom line is the design-in, which, of course, will be up and down. So quite an interesting curve, and we keep pushing for more to come. With those words, Joachim, I would like you to talk through the financial review.

Thank you. So the previous quarter, I was very happy to stand here in front of you and say it was an all-time high record revenue for a quarter. And I'm even happier to say that in Q1, we are at another all-time high revenue for a quarter with NOK 11.4 million with a gross margin of 7.9%. So that's a 70% gross profit. Part of the explanation behind that is significant NRE in the quarter, NOK 4.2 million. But even if we rinse away the NRE, we have a 50% gross margin. So it's quite good. The we could say that -- I mean, it's 11.4 million. That's more than 50% of the full year revenues for 2025. So that's also a promising outlook on 2026. But we can't look -- we have to look at each quarter sort of in isolation and every quarter will not necessarily look like this. So it's -- this is not something we can guarantee. But we're very happy for every quarter we can come here and say that we have significant revenue, at least in a historical context for poLight. When we come to the OpEx side, I think there are 2 items that are worth mentioning. It's -- one thing we did from 1st of Jan this year was to start reporting presales customer support, which has previously been reported as R&D because it's very technical. But we have started reporting it as sales and marketing expenses instead. We feel this is a better reflection of how the organization works and where we put an effort. So the R&D expenses, although on the surface, they may look quite similar from to last year -- same quarter last year, they are actually higher, which is much due to some advanced R&D programs, but also just more time spent in R&D. And that also explains the increased sales and marketing expenses, at least a lot of it during the quarter. If we then shift our eyes to the balance sheet, the cash balance of just north of NOK 260 million is the most significant number. And in the other end, the intangible assets of starting to close to 0 means that we have written off this over time, and that will be the case until we start capitalizing the -- some more development, which I mean, that could happen at a given milestone. These are -- this is a very milestone-based assessment. Yes, the inventory is slightly down, NOK 2 million down from last quarter. And that's a plus/minus movement because the inventory obsolescence provision that we have, which is -- we write down the inventory over time. for prudency. And then there's the cost of goods sold. And then there's a slight increase in the inventory when we assemble products. So an assembled product has a higher inventory value than wafer, which is most of our inventory. The cash burn in the quarter, if we -- there's one thing that stands out a bit in this slide, which is that it's significantly lower than in the same quarter last year. So if we look at why that is, it's a combination of things. But of course, one thing is a significant contribution from -- the operating loss was lower in this quarter than 1 year ago. So that's a significant contribution. Also, the working capital increased, but it increased less than it did in the same quarter last year, NOK 3.1 million this quarter versus NOK 8.8 million last year. So that's also a big contributor. And on the other hand, we had CapEx, so we had NOK 3.6 million in investments into -- and that's mainly into R&D equipment in the headquarters in Tønsberg. So that's our cash development and ending up at NOK 262 million basically. And that concludes the financial review. So you can sit down for long. Tell us a bit about the outlook.

Yes. Thank you, Joakim. Yes. Outlook, one slide and then Q&A. As I said in the beginning is that we feel that we had a strong quarter, both when it comes to activity level, market interest, PoCs maturing and revenue, of course, as Joachim explained. And we don't -- we are quite optimistic also on the future. And if you don't see it on my body language, I'm going to repeat it. It's an extremely encouraging place to be, I have to say. We have been working now for so many years to position ourselves, and we really feel that this is paying off. We have a tremendous good opportunities, not only for 1 product, but for 2 products. TLens, when we talk to the market and when we see all the engagement we have and we understand the road map of our customers and when we see how things are progressing, yes, it's tough, it's demanding, it's tough customers. We are a small team who's working like crazy to try to be professional and responsive. And that is really tough work, I have to admit. But when we see all these cases and the opportunities and when you add then what people believe about this market, it's going to be a fantastic opportunity Lenska for poLight for many years for TLens. TLens is already in mass production. TLens is a different story. But I think I've never seen -- I've been CEO for more than 30 years. I think I've never seen such a market push for a technology like TWedge. It's quite amazing. And so now it's -- we need to understand and we need to see if it's possible to turn that interest into money because going all alone, completely alone, financing everything ourselves with the shareholder money, which we try to take care of a lot, it's, of course, a high risk. So we need to see that there is -- that interest is converted to money somehow so that we can get backing in that. If you think about the TLens, we did it completely alone, but TLens has many applications, many customers. TWedge is today a very narrow market, which, yes, can grow heavily. But also the way we design TWedge is so dependent on the lead customers. how they want to integrate it into their system. So we cannot stand alone go there without close cooperation with customers. And we have that. But to take it to mass production is a different ball game. We need huge investments in development side and on the manufacturing side. So that's why we are trying really hard to get that commitment from the market in such a way that we don't give away the company's future. It's a balancing act. Generally speaking, as I said, I think one of the main challenge we have today is not that we don't have enough customer to support and mature, but it is that it's a capacity. And this is why the Board is also supporting us to build more in the -- of the organization to build capacity with suppliers. And that's going to increase the cost. At the same time, that's the only way to successfully ramp. That's the only way. We are already very small. And before QTech invested in poLight, there were many question marks whether is it possible for this small company to be sustainable? Can they -- will they survive? After the investment from Q-Tech, many of these questions has been less clear and less concerning. -- but we need to continue to build. And we need to, of course, capitalize on what QTech can do together with us, but we also need to build internally poLight resources, capacity and IP. But we do that to secure the investment we have made for so many years. Thank you. Okay. Joakim, will you help me with the Q&A session?

I will.

And if there is anybody from the audience who would like to ask a question, our Board Chair will have a microphone, which we will hand over to you so that everybody can listen to the project -- sorry, question.

So I tried to categorize them. We'll start with the questions that we got in -- before we started. On March 7, there was a stock exchange announcement that poLight has received a PO on TWedge from a leading AR platform company. Can you explain what the difference is between an OEM and a platform company?

Good question. A platform company, what we try to say that is maybe not a company who would you see being a brand you will see in the shop, but it could be a company who supply some of the technology platform, which another OEM will use.

In the same stock exchange announcement, you say that all the customers you're engaged with within TWedge are still working with you to qualify for various applications. Can you explain a little more about what this actually means, such as what different types of applications TWedge can actually be used for? You've mentioned some already in your presentation.

Yes. So yes, we have talked about this a little bit before, and I think maybe also the -- some statements in the report. But it's amazing. When we engage with the customer, we see that there are different needs and very often it starts with a resolution announcement that they want to increase the resolution in display without losing brightness. That is kind of the starting point for Oblation and for TWedge. But we see that there are other kind of use cases, which they also are liking a lot, and that could be motion brewer when you move your head, which you do quite fast, actually faster than you can imagine. There are some motion brewer, and that's TWedge can help to reduce that effect. In, say, like in microLED, there are typically some dead pixels. So those dead pixel can -- will be actually also smoothened out a little bit by TWedge. So there are -- those are 2 examples, and I'm sure there are others. But of course, also the customer which we engage with are keeping these kind of things relatively close, but there are different applications, so -- which is good because if you take an investment in a component and if that component can help you solve more than one problem, the sustainability and the likelihood of that component stay in and willing to pay for it is higher.

Another question about TWedge. You recently delivered TWedge technical samples to a leading AR platform company and mentioned ongoing discussions to fund the product development phase. Are you looking to form an exclusive strategic partnership to fund this? And what is the realistic time line for securing this funding and reaching mass production readiness for TWedge?

Good question and difficult discussions. As I said, when you start to ask the customer for money, they always -- what's in it for me. We try to balance that. Of course, we need to be respectful for that position. At the same time, we need to protect our company, our shareholder value that we are not being locked into a situation where we have to say no to a lot of other customers over a long time. So this is a balancing act. And I don't have the answer where it will end today, but we're trying hard to make a decent deal for the company and the shareholders. And when it comes to time, difficult to say, but there are one very active dialogue ongoing, and they would like to start the program. So -- but hopefully, the -- we were hoping to start something actually mid -- within mid this year, if possible.

A number of patents have now appeared from QTech on the production and/or use of TWedge. Does this mean that QTech is thinking of building up the possibility of producing TWedge or possibly offering complete solutions that include TWedge?

Yes, that could be -- we don't know that in detail, but this is typically -- everybody we work with will always try to, in a way, protect themselves by doing innovation on system level or what have you. But so yes, so that could be that QTech has some ideas on system level, we still like to protect. So -- but -- and this is not unique for Q-Tech. Many of the players we're working with both for TLens and for TWedge is having that approach, which is understandable, protect their solution on system level in a way. Very often though, the protection on system level is much more difficult than protection on component level because there are always ways of coming around a system level patent. But anyway, so when it comes to production, the comment on production, I think any -- if you look -- we are trying to think about manufacturing assembly on TWedge very much as we think about TLens. So in a way, capitalizing on the way we do TLens and benefit then on also how we do TWedge. Of course, in that context, QTech establishing their TLens line together with us is, of course, also making them capable of manufacturing based on that technology platform, which also will mean that it will be possible for them to also manufacture a TWedge. So at the same time, I can say for the Philippines that they are also very capable of doing assembly on our technology platform. And likewise, they can also do TWedge. So -- and hopefully, we will need more than one assembly partner for TWedge. So yes, maybe.

Okay. Moving on to TLens. On 7th of April, a new purchase order on TLens was received from a consumer OEM for AR/MR. Can you say something about which of the project customers this is for? Is it the QTech backing top tier? Is it for the top tier with camera development project you lead? Or is it for the leading OEM as the customer from whom the PO came on November 24, 2025? Or is it yet another customer, the new one?

I know that you are so eager to understand who is what. And as I said, on this particular press release, I talked to the top guy on sourcing side and discussing how to phrase it. And they are so afraid, if I say anything, which can give any hint who it may be. And this I have to respect. So my answer to this is no comment.

We have said what we could. Referring to the same press release, though, this is from another person. The purchase order announcement describing the customer as a consumer OEM for AR/MRUs. Without the qualification stage language that is seen in previous announcements, can you help us understand what stage this customer relationship is at? Is it a production level delivery? Or does it still sit within a qualification framework?

I would say it's -- as I think I say in the press release that it's a very much maturing POC. That's what I can say.

Moving on. M12 is mentioned here, you can talk about lots. M12 is mentioned in many places online, both on LinkedIn by several players as well as on various websites. M12 can also be purchased in an online store. How is the interest in M12 now? And can you say something about how many customers have bought samples of it?

Yes. Yes, as I said in the presentation, it's a good interest actually coming in M12, early days, of course. And we just kind of saw some inventory coming in the other day from our partner. So good interest. How many? I think we have facilitated maybe between, yes, around 8-ish customer already. And we think that will grow. And hopefully, we will see some decent activity towards end of the year.

What is the status of the camera development project with the top tier? Is it long until samples of the proposed camera for them is delivered?

No. It's moving along. There have been challenges, of course, and capacity constraints. But I think those cameras should be not many months away. So maybe next time we talk, we have some initial results. Yes.

What is the status of the L3 TLens? Is ST Micro running the process on this? Or is it in-house?

Yes, good question. It has been -- we have now a program with a technology partner, which is moving well, and we just started the next phase, focusing on the outstanding technical issues before we can kind of freeze the first design and then start moving into mass production. So that's when we freeze the design and we start to -- and say this is the design of the L3 TLens. And now we kick off a mass production program. At that point in time is when ST starts to enroll themselves. ST is already together with us with a technology partner and looking us over the shoulder, seeing that what we do together is compatible with their processes in the fab. But they are not -- have not been -- they have not been running the program. That program has been running by us and a technology partner. But step by step, the manufacturing partner in ST will more and more be involved when we're getting closer to mass production planning.

Progress onto projects, but that's covered in your presentation, I think. In the report, you mentioned that the AR/MR consumer OEM case is approaching an important milestone but still has design challenges to resolve. Could you elaborate on whether these challenges are related to the integration of the TLens specifically or if they are broader system-level challenges for the OEM? Furthermore, does this push the expected commercial launch for this specific OEM? And how should we think about the time line for resolving them?

Good question. Yes. How should I answer to that? Just I'm trying to be a little bit generic in the way I answer. TLens is for many of the players now a new technology. They have been used to AF, but they have been used to other AF and typically VTM. So when they start to design an optical system using TLens, which is new for them, there may be kind of conditions they don't fully have understood or characteristic of our TLens, they not fully have understood. So meaning that the first goal will be potentially not very optimized design because of the knowledge or lack of knowledge of the characteristic of our technology. That often lead to system-level challenges, which need to somehow be handled. Very often, it's too late to do a fundamental redesign. So they need to find solutions around it. This is a generic answer. This we see very often. And very often, there are solutions, but the better solution is for them to be aware of all these characteristics and design according to it from the day 1. But this is not always easy because the ecosystem is not mature enough using the TLens. That will, of course, change. But very often, we find by supporting them, we do find -- again, on generic, we do find solution how to handle that. For this particular customer, they also experience things like that. But they also -- there are always -- when you go into that phase stages of design, there will be other system level, what should I say, challenges, which arise late in the program and which can potentially delay and even cancel. There's no sign of that for this case, but you never know. So I would say there are likely hopefully nothing that can be so bad that it will not be sold, but there are issues, as I say, and those issues have different characteristics and different reasons. But the team is working hard to support and also the customer is working hard to make it happen because they have invested huge money in designing this project, of course. I don't think this is anything -- this is still the business as usual when you come with new technology, and there are treating problems which need to be solved and they will be solved. Will it have consequences for time delay, for project? We don't know. But of course, we don't hope so. And today, we cannot only see that they are continue to planning and doing what they were meant to do as before, meaning starting and planning for production. That's what's happening today. But how long time that will take to solve, of course, they cannot go into production with big problems. So this we don't know. But luckily, we have a good support team, and we -- the customer is very mature. So they will likely find a solution. But as I said, that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. We never know. You never know before the project out in the shop.

So jumping a bit here back to the TLens lead-free TLens. Regarding the ongoing development of the lead-free TLens material, is this R&D effort driven by a strict and explicit requirement from a specific Tier 1 customer? Also, will the transition to lead-free materials require a lengthy requalification process for OEMs that are already in the late stages of testing the current TLens?

As I said before, the reason why we do this is that we strongly believe that moving away from lead will benefit us in the market. That's the reason. And then, of course, there are some players out there which already have a very strong position when it comes to not using any components with any content of lead. So our job is to have as big market opportunity as possible. Our job is to be ESG-friendly. And that means that both from a market perspective and removing lead is key activities. Many of manufacturing partners is moving in that direction. And of course, we are not the manufacturers. So we also need to follow the manufacturing partner strategy.

Can you give us an update on where the QTech line stands in terms of qualification and what milestones remain before it's certified for mass production delivery?

Yes. We are -- there are some -- still some things to be sorted out, but they are manufacturing lenses. Those lenses are going through a qualification reliability test at poLight. So far, things looks, I would say, promising. There are some optimization activity ongoing in the line to improve the manufacturing, to stabilize everything. And that will be ongoing for, yes, some more months. I don't know how many before we stamp it to qualify.

There's another question here. Can you explain a little bit how the yield work at the QTech line is going, might be a bit early.

Yes. The yield -- the initial yield doesn't look so bad actually. Of course, we are using all the experience we have from the Philippines line, but I think we will do fine. QTech is a very experienced high-volume manufacturer. So I think what's needed now for that line to stabilize in high yield is to run volumes. That's the only way to get stabilized high-yield numbers is volume over time. And of course, that means that -- we need to load that line. And hopefully, we will need all capacity we need. But remember, that line is also specifically meant for a particular U.S. customer, as you know.

Okay. Moving on to the questions that are coming through the question portal. I'm following poLight closely. I'm curious to see if there's any update regarding the Iris recognition application, the enterprise customer that was mentioned in late 2025.

No. It's actually standing a little bit still for whatever reason. We don't really know. But we are still in, but they haven't really released that product yet.

Then we have talked about recruitment. Regarding your recent recruitment processes, have you filled the 2 positions that have recently been advertised in Norway for quality manager and senior project manager?

There are high activity in interviewing people. And I can say for sure, no because anybody being employed in poLight needs to meet me, and I haven't met them. So the answer is no. But there are -- I know there are a short list of candidates being interviewed for both these positions.

Let me see, I think this question -- well, it has -- could you give some color on where the QTech lens assembly line and test line stands today in terms of operational readiness. We have answered that, but -- and how the support work is expected to evolve during 2026. Should we expect the NRV-related contribution from this engagement to continue at similar levels going forward?

I think we will be engaged in supporting QTech for a few more quarters, we believe. And in that context, there will be some NRE contribution, whether maybe it will be a little bit less than '25. But yes, there will be activity for a quarter or 2, I believe. It's a good process, by the way. It's -- we have been moving manufacturing line now and established several times. And it is -- you can say many say, but it's so simple. It is not so simple. It's a very, very sensitive little component, optical component. And there are so many small things in the manufacturing process, which can go wrong, which is good because that is difficult to copy.

In the report, you note that the customer program behind the recent NOK 2.4 million follow-on order is approaching an important milestone, which certain design challenges to be solved. No, these we've answered. And this QTech production... Has QTech attracted more customers than the one triggering their poLight and production line investment?

In general, I would say that the relationship to QTech and the fact that they are heavily invested in poLight, which, of course, means that they really, really see poLight as a promising future, and they would like to see that happening, means that QTech is really trying to help poLight to get successful. So I've said -- I try to say that in a simple way that we have over the night, we suddenly got a big friend, an anchor, a father in the ecosystem through QTech. And I would say that the support we get from QTech when it comes to customer and promoting is huge. And then also, we have brought we are the owner of the technology. We have also brought, I would say, QTech something because there are -- as the OEM who kicked off this push to trigger QTech to invest, it's basically -- we can see that also that the fact that QTech now is seen as a partner of poLight is also giving them new leads and new customers. So it goes both ways.

Then 2 questions that are quite related. Has it been hard to find and attract new employees? Or is it progressing according to plan?

We are doing a lot of recruitment now. And I would say, yes, it is hard. I mean, as I said, I've been CEO for too long time. And the most difficult I do, yes, is to find people and to recruit people and to understand that you recruit the right person. So we are spending a lot of time and a lot of eyes internally before we decide. But generally speaking, finding people is difficult. We are fighting with many big companies, many big OEMs. And so the pressure on salary is very high. So I'd say it's very difficult. So far, I'm quite happy to see the interest we received, but there are some positions which are really, really difficult to fill. We are using specialized recruitment services to help us. Those Norwegian position, we also go into Finn. But -- and like the specialized recruitment services, they are working really hard, and they are calling hundreds of people and screening, and we end up talking to maybe 10. So it is tough. But so far, I'm quite happy with what we achieved, but there are some key positions, which is difficult. Also, we are recruiting in China. And that's also very, very difficult. You have the language issues, you compete with the big OEMs, the rich OEMs. So it's -- but also, we have done a couple of very good recruitment in China. We are planning to double that team. So, so far, so good, but it takes a lot of time. It's really, really time consuming to recruit and to employ people. And then when you get in, it's 6 to 12 months before you get anything out. So it's not a quick fix.

And then sort of related to that, you communicated in connection with the Q4 report that operating expenses would trend higher during 2026 to support organizational scaling. Looking at Q1 '26, costs came in relatively contained relative to that guidance. Should we view the current quarterly cost run rate as a fair baseline? Or do you still expect material step-ups during the year as additional hires and supply chain investments come through?

Maybe you will answer to that.

Yes. So -- and it's very related to the previous question. So -- but we are we are actively recruiting and are actively recruiting quite a few people. So -- and that will mean higher OpEx. And then if you go -- just compare quarter-to-quarter, there can be sort of one-offs within the quarter that will affect the OpEx, like bonus payments could affect the OpEx. And so if you compare Q4 to Q1, that typically kicks in and then it's maybe difficult to find a baseline. But we do expect that the base OpEx will increase during the year. And it's sort of two-sided. You never want to take on cost too early, but then you also want to get people in. So it's -- hopefully, the cost -- the run rate cost will increase faster rather than later. But that's all due to recruitment.

But of course, the only reason is that we want to increase the top line. And to increase the top line, we need to have a stronger or better organization.

And then we have one final question. Which is not really about us. The coming Samsung Galaxy glasses are equipped with a 12-megapixel autofocus camera. Any comments on what technology is used there? Do we know?

No comments. No. No comments.

And that was the last question.

Okay. Thank you, Joachim, for supporting that. Grethe is ready with a microphone. If there's any question from the audience, and it seems not to, and I would be amazed if there were any existing or any more questions. Okay. Thank you all for following us today. Again, another long quarterly presentation, 1 hour 10 minutes. It's not record. No, it's not record. So -- and thanks for you visiting us on the web. See you maybe at the Annual General Meeting, 20th of May in Tønsberg. And Tønsberg is a beautiful town to visit those days, and we have a relatively new and good headquarters. So you're welcome to come there. And then at least, we will see you again 6th of August with a nice hand and fully rested. So take care, so long. Thank you.