Hello, everybody, and welcome to Q&A session for poLight after Q4 result was announced last week. Even though the Q&A session was an extensive session also during the Tuesday's presentation, I said to you, Joakim, that there cannot possibly be any more questioning to be asked, but there is apparently. Welcome.
Yep.
There's been a good quarter for us. I'm not gonna go through slides, but as you can have probably seen, both on the AR-MR, both actually on the TLens side and the TWedge side, we have a very good progress in the quarter. We also... Several of the, I would say, the POCs related to AR-MR and TLens matured significantly during the quarter. We see that going forward also. We expect those two processes to continue. Hopefully in 2026 we will also see some meaningful milestone being passed. TWedge also very high interest. Engaging now with the customer who are stating very much commitment in planning to with the TWedge product.
We also started a discussion of regarding taking the kind of from moving from technical samples to production-ready device, and we are discussing when that should be ready with the customers and whether it's possible to also get some financial support. This is ongoing as we speak, and hopefully middle of this year we can start a more kind of dedicated program together with some specific customers. Also on the industrial healthcare side, there was some good progress in the quarter. Without going into the details, we repeat orders on machine vision barcode, new design wins in in barcode, new design win on an endoscope device.
The diversification in various use cases, the TLens is going into is not stopping to surprise us, to be honest. It's quite amazing to see how many applications the TLens can be a useful device. As I said, for this year, we do expect a continuing good activity. We definitely closed 2025 with a very high momentum. We had Q4 with the all-time high revenue, even though still small numbers, it's definitely a step in the right direction. We are feeling that 2026, we continue that good momentum, very high activity, although has been somewhat less news flow in the first quarter.
We definitely see a lot of what should I say, demanding activities related to these various customers, both in the AR-MR and industrial side. I think that's summarizing the essence. Just maybe adding in the end, we have a lot of activity ongoing, and we have a high load in organization, and we need to continue to develop the organization going forward to be able to capitalize on all the opportunities we have and also to build a strong organization to support many demanding customer interaction. Okay. We are ready for Q&A.
Yes. I just want to say that, you'll find, if you have questions during the Q&A, you can enter them in. There's, there should be a field below the video window. We will also... Some of you have sent in questions in Norwegian, and, we've translated them as good as we can. If, if you feel that we haven't captured the essence, please do send in a question to specify. Okay, let's start off. We'll categorize a bit, Øyvind. We'll start-
Mm-hmm
with AR-MR, MR, TLens related.
Mm-hmm.
Here we have several questions in one, but I'll take one at a time.
Mm-hmm.
You talked during Q4 that, Q4 presentation, that poLight hopes to show us meaningful progress in 2026 in Q4. No, there was talk in Q4.
Mm-hmm.
What does meaningful progress mean?
Yeah. Very good question. I deliberately was by design, I was unclear on that one because it's difficult to predict. You know, you know how it is. There are customer out there which is kind of deciding the tempo in the qualifications and the development side. They also, they are deciding the strategy for design-ins and which component is in and out, and also when they're gonna do that, and also finally when they're gonna release something to the market.
It's basically our own kind of assessment, which is kind of we try to reflect. When I say meaningful progress, if you look at 2025, I think we have shown the market and the investors that we clearly have established a very strong position in the AR/MR. That's one thing. We also see the global kind of picture of the AR/MR market has matured throughout 2025. These are all good things. And many of the POCs we have been saying the last quarters has shown good progress, are starting to be more mature. That progress, we assume, will continue in 2026. How far will it go? Will it go all the way to that we have a confirmed design-in or design win?
As I said, it's completely impossible for us to judge with any kind of high certainty. What we do feel for sure is that we are in many interesting cases, and if current plan is still to be executed from the customer side, then there will be a clear progress during the year. How clear and how far, I cannot commit or comment to more than that. Only saying that we do expect that we will be in cases which are continue to be mature. I think it's also fair to mention when we talk about this is that, you know, there is always a risk that there are delays. There's always a risk that customer decide to do something else.
Typically, customers, they do have a plan B, and they have a plan A, and sometimes even a plan C. We feel that some of the cases we are involved in, our reading is that we are plan A, but plan A can shift to plan B, and plan A can be delayed. I think it's also prudent to say that there are always risk until we are in a product which is shipping to market, there are still opportunities for setbacks. poLight has seen that before in the smartphone world, and we need to be... Yeah, we need to kind of also take that into consideration.
I feel positive about 2026 and we will of course do everything possible to kind of show meaningful progress, meaning showing something which is maturing significantly and hopefully, potentially, come to a stage where there will be announcement. As I said, that is kind of impossible to be 100% sure of this, of course. That was a long answer to a short question.
Well, you were talking about the future, and that's not always easy to talk about.
Yeah. No, that's true.
I'll give you an easier question now, which is about the past. How would you describe the development of poLight's position in the AR market through 2025?
I think, honestly, I think it's been fantastic. You know, us sitting on the inside seeing what this organization has managed with our technology bases is quite impressive, I feel. I have to give a lot of credit to my team, which has been supporting now for a long time, very demanding customers. You know, we are playing in Premier League where the customer are big, they are demanding, they have a lot of resources, and they are very fundamental in their kind of assessment of the new technology.
We have actually decided, sorry, managed to come into a situation both with the TLens and the TWedge concept, where actually we have been seen as a very important supplier to their future. I think one example which I like to use is the fact that based on a big OEM in the US who had worked for us for many years and which have kind of decided that we are the best fit, but they were concerned about the size of the company. And they wanted also a...
wanted their kind of strategic partner to become so, kind of invested in poLight, in all means, or both as a shareholder, but also that they invest in the technology and are being capable of actually manufacturing TLens. These are typically what today, those big guys, they don't like to have small suppliers, and if they have to, they need to somehow try to have a setup around that small supplier which they trust. For them, of course, it's a major cost in rolling in new technology, and they can't take that risk if they see significant risk elements of that technology or that company go away. The fact that they kind of said that managed to convince Q- Tech to invest in poLight is a huge milestone.
It's, it's... I would say that it's the best validation we can get, next after having a lot of design wins in the consumer AR market. This is the best validation we and the shareholders can get. I think that only that event, I feel, speaks for itself when it comes to 2025.
In continuation of that, there's a question here. How would you describe the work with the top-tier OEM that has backed Q-Tech? Can you say more about how this customer works with follow-up against you in testing, et cetera?
Yeah. The first thing I would say is that this company are very capable, very demanding. They are used to kind of managing big sub-suppliers, and now we are kind of in the middle of that. we are not being treated differently or nicer or softer because we are small. You know, we have to perform at the standards they accept, expect, sorry. that is really, really tough, I have to say. again, back to my organization, the effort my organization have put into this case and this customer is enormous, you know. It's basically enormous. It's extreme sport, I used to say. The customer, from their side, they have also delivered.
Just after announcing the deal with Q-Tech, they immediately started programs. They also delivered on promises. They were afraid of starting that before they saw a strategic investor in poLight. Day after, they did kickoff. They also have delivered, and they're spending also a lot of resources and money in investing in this technology. They don't do this for one case, huh. They do this for platform going forward.
Very good. Sorry. The NOK 5 million order to help develop a camera module. You said, "Here we are actually kind of on the top, advising and managing all the suppliers, lens makers, or camera modules, how to integrate TLens in an optimal way. So this is, I would say, a little bit, like a platform-type development. We have high hopes that this will, over time, that this can be deployed in many different customers." That was your quote from some sort of AI transcript. Did you mean you hope it will be used in many of that customer's products, or did you really mean that this design can be used for other customers as well as an off-the-shelf camera module design?
Both.
Yep.
Mm.
Exactly.
Yep.
Good. That's a long question.
I hope. I actually, I hope.
Long question, short answer.
Yes.
Good. Next question. You mentioned that some consumer AR/MR POCs may approach important milestones. Oh, wait, this is close to something we've had before. That you hope to reclassify certain POCs to a more advanced stage. Can you be more specific about what a milestone means operationally? Is it a design freeze, a volume commitment, a supply agreement? How many of the 19 consumer AR/MR POCs do you realistically expect to convert in 2026?
I think I answered that.
-detailed
I feel. I think we answered to that. What I can say is that, I mean, when it comes to volume commitment, after 12 years in this company, you don't normally get that. You get the volume they are managing to sell, and very rarely I've heard about any commitment on that side. Milestone could be, it could be different things, just to kind of elaborate a little bit more on that. It could be that we are getting, yeah, more TLens orders for more detailed qualification or for trial manufacturing to study yield. So that could be one kind of milestone.
It could be that we get information that they now have design freeze, and we are in still. We are kind of in a design-in stage. We don't know, but maybe some of them will even release something this year, and then it's a design win. I think all these milestones are possibilities, but as I said, completely out of control of the company, poLight.
Next question. In previous communications, it was suggested that poLight was involved in all next generation AI/AR glasses, projects that require autofocus. In the recent Q&A, your tone seemed a bit more nuanced, acknowledging that other AF solutions may emerge. If we see upcoming OEMs, OEM launches featuring autofocus functionality or marketing of such, can investors still reasonably assume that poLight's involvement or has the competitive landscape for small form factor autofocus evolved to a point where other technologies are now viable alternatives?
Sorry, I'm on the end of a 2-month cold. I've said many times that we will never be alone in the market. We do feel, however, that many of the key players seems to be, what should I say, investing more with us than other technologies. They seem to be liking our technology best. Now I'm of course interpreting them, and it's, of course, a subjective statement from my side, but that's the way we see it. There are many, many players. I don't know, wondering if it was something post-CES, there was somebody writing that there were how many? 60 or 70 active programs in various OEMs.
Many of them will use FixFocus for sure in the beginning, I'm sure. Even some of them will, I'm sure, will also evaluate other, cheaper, more well-established technologies such as VCM. Even though power consumption, compactness, speed is, there's nobody close to what we can do. Sometimes, there are other priorities in, within the different OEMs and with the different tiers OEMs, I would say. Again, we do feel we have a strong position. Will we be alone? No.
During the Q4 presentation, you mentioned that several current POCs are, in reality, closer to a design-in phase. To help investors better understand the near-term potential, can you provide more color on the maturity of the active POCs and how many of these have completed technical verification and are now primarily dependent on the customer's commercial launch timeline rather than further R&D? You've touched upon this. Can we go into detail on that?
Yeah, I can try. It's really sometimes difficult to judge. Of course, we try to understand all the activity, processes, and status within our customer as much as possible. At the same time, it's difficult sometimes to have the full visibility. We don't know everything, what they're thinking and what they're doing. Just a little bit on the definition side. Proof of concept is the phase where they come and evaluate the technology. Sometimes it can be very short between proof of concept and actually design win. If you look at the smartwatches back in the days, that went super quick from POC to directly into product.
If you look at those big AR-MR activities we are having at the moment with the major customers, that POC phase is, it feels like it's endless. It's so fundamental also what they want to test. We can say that there are some of these POCs which then our definition that when a customer moves from kind of assessing the technology to actually starting a real program where they have kind of initially decided that I'm gonna use component A, B, C, and D in that new program. If we are a part of that product-related development, then we say it's a design-in. Then it's a design win when there is a market release.
That transition from POC to design-in is sometime a little bit difficult to judge. What I can say is that some of the cases we are active in for sure is about real products. You can say, "Okay, why don't you classify them as a design-in?" I could in a way, at the same time, I would like to be more, see the full picture. I would like to kind of tick off some technical, kind of, milestones, which I know is important for the customer. It could be reliability tests, it could be system-level testing.
Even though we are in a program where we are planned to be used, and in that sense, you could define that as a design-in, I do see still too many milestone, which I would like to see behind me before I qualify it as a design-in. I feel it's better to do that a little bit carefully and that we are thoughtful in, on that because it's not nice to classify design-in and then go back next quarter and say it's not a design-in anymore. It's a little bit better to be careful and to see the full picture to yeah, before we classify those major activities as a design-in.
You can claim me to be vague and inconsequent in what, not very consequent in what we're doing, it's a complete assessment, total assessment of a situation which I feel still I would like to see some more maturity before that is a milestone I will define as a design-in. It looks promising.
As a final question now about POC. Historically, transitioning from POC to design win and consumer has been a challenge for poLight. Looking back at 2021 to 2022, the company had around 14 POCs in the segment without achieving a major commercial breakthrough. What are the fundamental differences between the 23 POCs in your current pipeline and those from 3 years ago? Can we expect a higher success rate in turning POCs into design wins?
Of course, we hope so. I think both the market, if I can answer to AR/MR in specific, both the market, the product definition, is completely different today than three years ago. You know, three years ago, or four years ago or whatever, we knew that we were a good fit for AR/MR, but AR/MR market didn't exist in many ways. It was on the drawing table. It was on everybody's investment plan, it really didn't was any significant market. I remember back in the days that when we wanted to kind of position ourself for that market, you who have followed us for some time, you have noticed that we quarter by quarter or emphasize this market more and more.
When we try to engage the camera module guys to support us to come with a solution, a PUC program for the different OEMs, we had hard time even convincing the camera module guys because they were so focused on the smartphone, and they basically neglected our AR/MR. Like, "Ugh, we heard about it for so many years, never happens." This is completely changed now. You know, all the major guys on the camera module side is now running after that market like crazy. Even though for some part of the market, it's still small, but everybody see that this is coming now. It's a huge difference between CES 2024 and CES 2026.
Mm.
I think that the maturity is different for the market as such and also for the players and the ecosystem.
The difference in the big difference in the POCs is mainly in the maturity of the players that are-
Yes
... in that POC.
Yes.
This is the last question we have on AR/MR, at least for now. Do you see signs that AI model vendors like OpenAI or Google AI, Meta AI may impose functional requirements on the camera optics or quality in glasses, which in practice will force OEMs more towards autofocus solutions so that the AI models can limit the waste?
It's a very good reflection, I feel, and I, I think so. It's exactly that. If you have some kind of intelligent model, and you push in data, and you expect to get something good quality out, in addition to having a good model, you need, you need to have a good input. A good input is a high-quality picture, sensing, and, we know that, of course, when optics change, megapixels increase, F-number go down, AF is a, is a must. I was sitting with one of the big guys and discussing the need, and we tried to kind of learn when we talk to a customer, what's the use case, why do you need it, blah, blah.
He said, "You know, there are many reasons why we need it, but one of the reasons are pure physics." It's pure, basically the fact, the specification of the camera, how that will evolve, will force the need for AF if you want to have a high quality. I think also from a AI perspective, which is already here with us, I think that will actually drive the need for higher quality, input quality, which we will be a part of.
I said that was the last AR/MR question. That was wrong. We just got one more in, we'll see what you can just reply to this. Regarding the NOK 5 million AR camera design order, you mentioned that this module architecture could potentially be made available to other customers. Given that the OEM is funding the development through NRE, what is the strategic rationale for them to allow a shared design that could benefit their competitors, does poLight retain the IP rights to this specific module solution?
I can't say so much more on that case, to be honest. It is basically, there are different players in the ecosystem and what I can say is this has the potential to become a platform, a design which other can use. That doesn't have to be like that, but it can be like that. More than that, I cannot say, because if I say more now, you will potentially understand what and how and who, and that will be to the big damage for poLight. Please, don't try to trick me into that corner. It's a very, it's a very strategic important activity.
Also nice that we are sitting in the, in the role we are sitting in this program. It's remains to be seen if we can do it well. I expect Next time we meet that I will have some more information on this program when it comes to performance at least.
Mm-hmm. Good. I think we'll also maybe leave the question about IP rights. I think that also goes too deep.
Mm-hmm.
into the business model. Yeah.
Yeah. We own all the IP related to TLens.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, moving on to TWedge.
Mm-hmm.
The Q-Tech agreement de-risked TLens for tier one customers is a similar strategic partnership involving both equity and manufacturing or no option you are pursuing to finance with the TWedge roadmap towards mass market adoption?
I think we have to repeat that question, Joakim, because you. It was some bad line there.
Oh, sorry. The Q-Tech agreement de-risked the TLens for a tier one customers.
Mm-hmm.
Is a similar strategic partnership involving both equity and manufacturing support an option you are pursuing to finance and accelerate the TWedge roadmap towards mass market adoption?
Yeah. So, first of all, how we manufacture TLens and where we manufacture TLens is a decision to be made. In the end of the day, it may be manufacture several places as we do for TLens now or soon. When it comes to financing, TWedge, mainly we have been talking about, we have financed, at least part financed the activity so far by selling technical samples. That's often the, what should I say, easiest, and we've been selling those samples quite, for quite, a lot of money. In this quarter we had, yeah, NOK 3.5 million in order intake related to selling technical samples. A few handful in a way.
It's quite significant money we collect through that, selling the technical samples. I would say that, but of course, there's a big difference between doing what we do today and making a TWedge into commercial, mass produced product. That will take a lot of investment. What we are trying to convey to those customers we are working with is that for us to do that, we need some kind of commitment/investment from some of the players. We are discussing that now.
I don't expect that we have any clarity in the situation, next couple of months. Maybe end of Q2, I don't know, maybe beginning of Q3, we have some clarity on whether it's possible to get financial support to bring it to the next level, which is more like a product and freeze design. Then also in the end of the day, then start the mass production preparation. That would be a program I would say will take us quickly two years from where we are today. It will take a lot of investment. I doubt that we will be in a position to take that investment organically. We need some kind of commitment. We need some kind of financial support, NRE.
Whether that will be one day combined with somebody investing, we shouldn't rule out, of course. That is not the on the table today, I will say. The on the table today is that we are discussing a program where we are asking people to contribute to that program to finance us to the next step.
Good. There's a few other questions that are quite similar to this.
Mm-hmm.
There's one I think this one sums up most of it. You're now asking customers for financial support to start a specific TWedge programs. How is the immediate response from the big guys to this? Are they ready with testing qualification? Is it so that you are selling a spot in the line here, so some people get this development, some customers will get this development before others?
Yeah. Anyway, good question. I guess everything can be on the table. Yes, it can. Say if there is say one customer who are willing to now invest money in so that we can start a real program, they may ask for something back. That something back could be that we do a particular design for them used based on the platform we have today, but they would like to have it, like, little bit smaller there and a little bit bigger there and a little bit, you know, whatever. They would like maybe have a very particular design for their application, and they want us to kind of only do that for them, that particular design. That could be one thing.
Another thing could be that they would like to have some, yeah, exclusivity. They want maybe to be alone for the next 12 months or something like that. We will of course try to maneuver in that landscape to have as much as freedom to operate as possible of course. We always try to avoid exclusivity and at least exclusivity which actually in reality limit us. That we will always try to avoid. There could be exclusivity deals which is in practice not really harming us or limiting us. So it's difficult to say where we end. All options are on the table, but I think that the most important thing is that we get somebody to kind of commit.
Without that commitment, I doubt that we will bring that organically to market. We need somebody to guide us through the process and also. Then the market, at the moment, the market of this TWedge is quite special and quite small. And for us to kind of move without any strong guidance from customers will be very, very risky. That's why we are. Maybe we need to kind of continue sampling. You know, like, today we have TS5 on the table, maybe we need to go TS6, and that the funding we get is kind of based on selling samples. That is the, call it the simplest thing.
That phase needs to convert to something design freeze if we're gonna be able to. Today, customers telling us, "We need a real program." Sorry, "We need a commercial product available in one and a half to two years from now." We are telling, and then we cannot, we have to stop fiddling around. We have to stop doing TS5 or TS6 or TS7. We need to freeze design, and we need to move full speed ahead. If we don't do that, there will be no product in two years from now. That's why we're trying to force the customer to kind of understand that.
They also, even though they are so far have been very positive, they also, of course, are uncertain on when the market will be there for advanced AR glasses and what should be the spec. I can say that for some of these customer we are dealing with, they are relatively mature, and they are saying basically, "We rely on you, poLight and TWedge, for our product to be successful." That is a direct quote from one of the big guys to us, "We rely on you guys.
Good. I mean, just a sort of public service announcement. We have answered 11 questions, and there are 17 left. We have 20 minutes left of the broadcast, and we are running.
Okay. We need to do some selection then.
We need to make some selection. I'll ask this final one on TWedge, and then we'll move on. In the consumer category, including AR/MR, there are 23 POCs and 24 planned POCs, planning POCs. In the footnote of the presentation, it states, "Including TWedge, POCs 9 and planning POCs 3." 12 out of a total of 47 POCs plus planning POCs in consumer are related to TWedge. How many different customers do these 12 represent, and are any of these customers that are not involved in TLens?
This is a question on TWedge and who they are. I would say that many of the guys on testing us and considering us on TWedge is actually also having activity with us on TLens. It's not a complete one-to-one, but many have that. There are, I would say at least to give a number, at least 60%, I would say, is also having TLens activity. Some of the customer having can have more than one POC or planning more than one POC, so there is not kind of a one-to-one customer POC. There could be also somebody who's having different POC.
Of course, there are different application of TWedge, and, there could be a kind of a POC particular looking at this and other POC looking at something else. So yeah.
Good. So many of these questions that there are several questions blocked into one. Some of these have been answered. It's, it's a bit on the path to mass production. Are there any technical or commercial.
I was thinking-
No. We are now, we now moved on to the production and supply chain category.
Okay. Okay.
This doesn't mention TWedge.
Mm-hmm.
Are there any technical or commercial steps you expect to complete this year that could be important on the path to mass production?
Sorry, was that related to TLens or TWedge or both?
This is in general. Well, expected to be mass production in terms of high volumes, I guess.
Yeah, okay. No, if we, this year, are or do manage to get into the maturity of the PC is such that we are moving towards, and will we be a part of the consumer AR/MR product, that, of course, has the potential of representing the biggest opportunity we have had as a company. Of course, that's which is in our planning. When we have due diligence from audits from customers, and those particular AR/MR customers, they are going into the details. What does it take for you to ramp up to a certain number per month? What do you need to do? Can you please show us a plan? We have those plans.
Of course, we plan from an investment perspective, as an example, we are investing on more test equipment so that we. Those are very expensive equipment, you know, very expensive. We're now taking investment in the manufacturing site where we buy new test equipment which we consign to our partner. That's an element of showing that we invest and that we are capable of ramping. Many of the other equipment at the manufacturing site are quite normal type standard equipment, which typically a relatively short lead time on, and also relatively the assembly partners we have, they have a lot of different machines so they're more easy to get hold of.
Say, as an example, the bottleneck today is basically testing the TLens before shipping it out, because we test all TLenses being sent to customer is being tested for many, many parameters. Now these days, we have taken the decisions to invest in more capacity on the test side. That's one of the things we need to show these big guys when they are doing audit, is that we have this capacity today, here are the bottlenecks, and here what we do to handle the bottlenecks. That's one important thing we do. Another important thing we do is, of course, Q-Tech. We are enable Q-Tech to build and assemble and test TLens.
At Q-Tech, we have invested in again, a separate test machine, which we consign to them for fully qualify and test and then quality check the products being shipped out for customers. Quite a massive investment on the manufacturing side, specifically related to the final test machine, which is crucial and which we own as poLight, our technology. We are doing many of these things. Of course, we also build and strengthen our organization to be able to support our manufacturing partner, both in the Philippines. We now have a team of soon 10 people in the Philippines. You can say that's a lot when we were fabless.
Yes, we are fabless, but we also have to have the whole supply chain and the logistic around it is our responsibility. Our test machine is our responsibility. We do the same in China, where we are establishing key resources to be able to support Q-Tech in the process of not only establishing themselves, but also on a running basis. There will always be things you need to do, test, there is a failure, you need to find out what's the root cause, and you need to have people and equipment.
We actually also now installing a lab in China so that we can quickly turn around and do failure analysis locally in China, not having to go all the way to headquarter and turn spec to do that. We are investing heavily in the supply chain with the belief that we soon will be, soon is a maybe too positive word, but that we this year are getting, approaching a situation where we have possibilities of coming into consumer AR/MR product, which of course trigger different volumes than this company ever have seen.
Mm-hmm. Øyvind, you mentioned Q-Tech here. There's a quick question. I think we can answer this quite quickly. The status of the Q-Tech dedicated production line, is it operational? What's the estimated capacity of it?
This, it's under a qualification. That is as we speak, they have produced units. Those units are now going through a qualification process in at poLight's headquarter, which are being compared to units produced at in the Philippines. When that process is finalized, then that line is kind of qualified, and then they can start to produce to customer, customers, potentially. That's the process. Capacity there is limited by only having one test machine. That depends on what to be tested, the specification. It's, we cannot be precise on the number.
If you're gonna have a, kind of, very high volume, in that line through that U.S. OEM, they need to be invested in more final test capacity, for sure.
Okay. Well, I think we'll move on to a bit of a different... We have some questions here categorized as financials and costs. Now, first one is there a plan for a new capital market day in 2026? This is a question we got after the Q&A finished on the quarterly presentation, and we answered it then. I can do that, and you can rest your voice for a bit. This is, we know that the wish for a capital market day definitely exists, and we also want to hold a capital market day. It's a lot of work to set one up. There's a lot of planning involved.
We need to make sure that the available resources are there. This is, it's a hectic year. We are hoping to hold a capital market day in 2026. We're looking into where and how that should be to make it as good as possible. I think that's about as much we can say. The right answer to is there, do you have your plan for a capital market day in 2026 is no, there's no date yet. We are hoping to plan one. Next question. You said, the company can see the need for about 15 new employees in 2026.
Can you elaborate on what parts of the organization that has the most urgent need to hire more people, and where will they be located mainly?
It is for we need more technical capable people in both on the technical, I would say of support interfacing customers. It's our experience that it is quite demanding to come with a new technology and try to kind of guide customer through the design process and evaluation process. We have some very unique specialists in the team, which are used on all sites, in Asian time zone, in US time zone, in the weekends, in the vacations. That is a little bit like a unhealthy situation, to be honest. We need to kind of bring more people having the potential of becoming a specialist in poLight. That's something we are working on.
Those could be kind of FAEs, meaning Field Application Engineers based in U.S. or China. They can be specialists based in somewhere in Europe. It could be more a part of R&D, but it could also be a part of model operation. That's obviously the. Of course, we need to, generally speaking, strengthen a little bit our capacity to project manage different activities and different customers. That's an area of investment. We also need to make sure that we have resources, free resources to do important innovation programs. If you go only a few years back, we spent a lot of resources from the so-called R&D in that customer-facing interaction.
We need to try to build that more customer support interaction and such that we do not misuse R&D resources to do innovation. We're having a big programs now in poLight, TWedge, TLens, lead-free driver. We have many programs which is camera model level programs, M12. We have never invested so much in technology as we do now. We need to make sure that we do that right, and that also means that we make sure that we have dedicated resources also on that side. Yeah. A little bit all over the place, to be honest. Me and Joakim is trying to save the money so we can use it to something good or elsewhere in the organization.
We don't plan to grow so much, Joakim.
Okay. There's a question here, and I perceive it's about something else than it's actually the essence of it, I think we'll answer it anyway. You have communicated an expected unit price of around or even below $1 for TLens in high volume markets. Given that the US dollar has depreciated by more than 15% against the Norwegian kroner over the past year, how many TLens units do you now need to sell per quarter to achieve EBITDA break even on product sales alone, and when do you expect to have production capacity in place that is fully scaled to handle this volume? To me, this question is asking us basically when are we EBITDA positive, and this is a question we have chosen not to answer.
We have internal models to project when that can occur and when we can be cash flow positive, how long funding will take us. This model has several sensitivities. Yes, we plan for several scenarios. When it comes to the value of the US dollar, that is part of one of several macro developments that is beyond our control and because, I mean, it fluctuates over time. Given the level of our revenue right now, it's not an operational problem. If the dollar continues to devaluate over the next 5 to 6 to 10 years, that's a different scenario. These are all what-if scenarios, and we'll plan for those.
We'll also handle surprising events like tariffs, if and when they should occur.
Mm.
This is all part of our risk planning, and yes, we have definitely discussed scenarios where the dollar depreciates heavily and what effect that will have on our top line. We'll not go into a deep discussion on number of units to be EBITDA positive right now. There's also a question about the current burn rate. How long are we financed without any further capital needs? We answer this question quite regularly. It's something we will get back to if there's ever a change. We that we are internal base case projection, we have no further capital need.
There are several uncertainties in the projections, and we can. It's sort of hard to. It's kind of never say never situation. Also there can be other instances where other scenarios that occur that where we will want to do that. That's, I think that's about what we can say about that. It's more or less the same answer every time.
Mm.
Let me see. I think we have one final question I think we can answer.
Mm-hmm.
What competing autofocus technologies are you most frequently benchmarked against?
That really depends on market. If you look at, if you look at the industrial market, there are various liquid lens technologies which is all, I would say, more mature and more established in the industrial market than we are. There are other tunable optics, and there is also VCM, of course. On the, on the AR-MR side, I think, what should I say? I think what we see mostly being discussed is potentially using VCM maybe, but, maybe even more not using AF at all. We do know also that there are tunable optics based on liquid, which are also talking to this market, but as far as we know, we haven't seen any major activity to... on the camera side and the vibration side, based on that.
Maybe fixed focus and AF in that sense.
Okay. We can have one final question because this is quite a short answer to it.
Mm-hmm
... has anyone shown signs of wanting to buy poLight? What do you think if anyone actually wants to? I mean, this is a question about governance, isn't it? This is really not something we're at liberty to discuss, if or if not this has happened. There's a process for these kinds of things. A bid would come in, the board would evaluate, and then, see if there's a relevance to the bid, if it's good, if it's something that it's worth going to the market with. Then everyone would know about it. Before that, it's not actually an event that is worthwhile talking about. We obviously-
Our focus is. Yeah, our focus is to develop.
Yeah
... and then, as good as possible and show shareholder value as good as possible. That's our focus. Being publicly listed, of course, you're always exposed to processes like that, which Joakim can explain, will be handled according to the governance structure if it happens.
I think we'll close off because our next meeting has just started.
Yeah.
Uh-
Has started, yes. Everybody, thanks a lot. I have to say, I'm super impressed by your interest in poLight. We are extremely happy to have all these questions, even if you feel that some of the questions we do not answer the way you hoped or wanted. We try our best to answer as good as we can and stay within kind of the framework we are living under. If you have any other question, you know the where to pose those question in the investor web portal. Have a great day.
You know, wait, actually, we had one question here. We'll answer that quickly because that was sent in before the Q&A.
Oh.
It wasn't in this list, so we forgot about it. That's the question about Analyst G roup taking up analysis on the company and why this is something we've chosen to do now.
Yeah, do you want to answer that?
I can answer that. It's basically, it's not something that there's a specific reason why we've done it right now. It's not very sort of important that the timing is right now. Over time, we have discussed with several professional investors. We see that they want to see an analysis of the company by a third party. Mostly it's because they want to value the company using a DCF, so a discounted cash flow.
Since we don't provide a discounted or the cash flow for them to do that, having an analyst who sets up a financial forecast based on their market knowledge, based on what we say publicly, and our reports, is something that at least then an investor can look at, and they can make their judgments based on that and see if they want to adjust that cash flow and that valuation. It's basically something that we think it's a maturing system you have to take as a company. We wanted to see an analysis from the major houses. It's hard to see that in this company right now.
We were thinking one analysis is better than no analysis. Then we'll see how it works and how investors use it, and we'll evaluate going forward. At least for now, that's why we've chosen to do that. Yeah. We've been impressed by what Analyst Group have managed to do with this quite specific niche market. Yeah, that's what we can say so far.
Yeah. Super. Have a great day.
Have a good day.
Bye-bye.