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Earnings Call: Q3 2023

Nov 9, 2023

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Kopin Corporation third quarter 2023 earnings call. Please note that this event is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise, and after the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. I'd like to turn the conference over to Quinn Callanan, Investor Relations for Kopin. Please go ahead.

Quinn Callanan
Investor Relations, Kopin Corporation

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that during today's call, taking place on Thursday, November 9th, 2023, we'll be making forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the company's current expectations, projections, beliefs, and estimates and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Potential risks include, but are not limited to, demand for our products, operating results of our subsidiaries, market conditions, and other factors discussed in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Although the Company believes that the assumptions underlying these statements are reasonable, any of them can be proven inaccurate, and there can be no assurances that the results will be realized. The Company undertakes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements made during today's call. In addition, references may be made to certain non-generally accepted accounting principles or non-GAAP measures, for which you should refer to the appropriate disclaimers and reconciliation in the Company's SEC filings and press releases. Kopin Corporation's Chief Executive Officer, Michael Murray, will begin today's call with an overview of Kopin's progress within the company's strategy. Following Michael, Kopin's CFO, Richard Sneider, will review the company's third quarter results. I would now like to turn the call over to Michael Murray.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Thank you, Quinn. Good afternoon to everyone, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. I want to start with a brief explanation for rescheduling our call. A technical accounting issue was raised on revenue recognition of a development contract that required additional research to ensure proper accounting and was resolved earlier today. Moving on, I would like to welcome David Nieuwsma, who joined our board of directors this week. David joins us from Collins Aerospace, where he spent over 32 years in several key senior leadership roles and is a former Air Force officer. He understands our customers, our technology, and our culture deeply. We welcome David to the team and believe he will be a great asset for Kopin and our shareholders.

Now, I'm proud to announce that we've made significant progress on our transformation plan and turned in $10.6 million in revenue for the quarter, our fourth consecutive positive book-to-bill quarter at improved margins. Turning to our first strategic initiative, building the backlog, in the third quarter of 2023, we booked follow-on orders of approximately $12.8 million, $3.4 million, and a $1.9 million NRE order, as well as several smaller orders, which resulted in a book-to-bill ratio of approximately 2:1 for the quarter. We believe this is a record order level for Kopin over the last 10 years. Our continually growing order book translated into good third quarter revenues at $10.6 million, as compared to $11.7 million for the third quarter of 2022.

Our industrial revenue were down $1.4 million year-over-year due to continued weakness in the 3D automated test market, specifically in China. I'll now introduce Kopin to those who might be less familiar before diving more deeply into the events of the last quarter. Kopin is the only U.S. manufacturer of human-centric AR and VR application-specific optical solutions and microdisplays, used primarily to provide situational awareness for warfighters, for surgeons, and gamers alike. You can find our solutions in weapon sights, armored vehicles, pilot helmet visors, and soon, surgical head-mounted displays. The heart of these visual systems and solutions is composed of a microdisplay no larger than the human thumb. Kopin offers four different types of microdisplays, our proprietary AMLCD, FLCoS, OLED, and microLEDs, which are the absolute cutting edge of display technology.

Kopin is the vanguard of this technology and has developed a monochrome microLED and has a color version within reach. If a microdisplay is the heart of our application-specific optical solutions, then the software that controls the knobs of the solution, that's the brain. Software will be critical to the next stage in Kopin's growth as we adapt our technologies to each individual, unique user. Indeed, our new mission is to adapt technology to the user and not force the user to adapt to the technology. This compares to companies that require users to insert specialized lenses into their displays or systems to adapt that person's vision to the device. Software and artificial intelligence are new endeavors for Kopin, and we recognize that we lack certain capabilities to tackle these on our own. This recognition has led Kopin to partner with MIT CSAIL Lab.

This lab is the premier institution of technology and AI development. With this partnership, Kopin is looking to augment our internal software capabilities and to turbocharge our firmware, powering all of our products, and ultimately resolve the AR-induced nausea that currently bedevils users by allowing those knobs of the display to be turned either automatically or by the user. Custom optics and ruggedized solutions and housings are the eyes and skeletons of an application-specific solution. Arrays of custom optical lenses need to work harmoniously with the rugged housing to transmit crystal-clear image produced by our microdisplays, and that is where Kopin's expertise shines. The pairing of microdisplays, optics, housings, and firmware continue to progress our application-specific solutions far from where we began. But as I mentioned, empowering software and algorithms will drive Kopin into the future.

What is missing from this anatomical pairing is the optical nerve that transmits to the brain or the software, in this case, what the eyes see and what the user needs from the display to reduce eye fatigue, nausea, and enhance the user experience. Kopin has the solution to bridge this gap and enable AR and VR marketplaces. We recently patented a revolutionary new display architecture that will be embedded within what we refer to as our Neural Display. This architecture will feature a non-standard RGB pixel setup, as in OLED or microLEDs, but we've added several other elements, including sensors that relay to the firmware, what is happening with the user's situational environment, their ergonomics, and their eyes. As an example, are the user eyes dilating quickly, implying that they're in a state of fight or flight?

In that case, the display's brightness should go down quickly, and contrast must increase. Conversely, if the eyes of the user are reverting normally, the display should react in the opposite direction. This complete chain of heart, brain, optic nerve, eye, and skin and skeleton provides the framework that we will allow the future realization of augmented reality's yet unfulfilled promise. Other companies have their own approach to monitoring the status of a user's eyes that rely largely on an array of cameras pointed back at the user. Our approach incorporates sensors within the display itself, which has the benefit of reducing size, weight, power consumption, design complexity, and ultimately cost. We'll provide more information on this platform and our partnerships to deliver it to the market very soon.

Now, turning to the third quarter, we announced a follow-on order for one of our IP subassemblies to a Department of Defense prime contractor that integrates our IPs into a very sophisticated augmented reality module. This $12.8 million follow-on order represents a significant increase in year-over-year volume and revenue from this strategic customer, and we expect significant additional orders shortly for the same product. The order is scheduled for delivery in 2024, but we can deliver earlier if we're able to procure the necessary raw materials. If we receive this expected additional demand, Kopin will potentially ship triple the volume of weapon sights within the calendar year of 2024.

If so, we do not require additional machinery in our plant, but we may need to take additional steps to prepare and potentially reconfigure the production line and subsequently clean it in this quarter to support the significant increase in volume and demand. These orders are a result of improved customer relationships, program management focus, and the dedication to improving on-time, in-full processes, and a great customer who has been very patient and supportive of our transformation plan. We also received a $3.4 million follow-on order for our high-brightness liquid crystal display for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. With the F-35 scheduled for production through 2030, we expect additional orders over the program's life. This follow-on order extends our backlog of scheduled deliveries into the fourth quarter of 2024, providing steady production rates.

As we previously stated, the F-35 helmet is scheduled to transition to an OLED display. We're also in process of finalizing that required production tooling and contractual agreements to support that transition. Now, turning to our ongoing armored vehicle program. We've been told by General Dynamics that Kopin's weapon sight program, developed under the SEP 4 upgrade, will continue as planned since our system reduces size, weight, power consumption while improving accuracy. We are progressing well against our PPAP milestones and continue to engage with General Dynamics on opportunities for the platform to be integrated into previous upgrade packages and into light armored vehicle programs as well. Now, I've said in the past, this year's focus is on returning the operation to cash break-even levels as a milestone of our transformation plan, and we've progressed well against that milestone in Q3.

We approach closer to this milestone by improving margins and closely scrutinizing R&D and SG&A spending, by continually focus on what we can control and deliver, and we expect to deliver solid margins and the growth our investors look for. We now have the contracts in place for solid revenue growth, and our goal remains to become a more predictable and profitable firm in the coming year. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Rich Sneider, to review our results in full, in further detail. Over to you, Rich.

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Thank you, Michael. Turning to our financial results, total revenues for Q3 2023 were $10.6 million versus $11.7 million for the prior year, a 10% decrease. Product revenues for the first quarter ended September 30th, 2023, were $5.5 million, compared with $8.3 million for the third quarter ending September 30, 2022. The decrease in product revenues was driven by a $1.7 million or 82% decrease in industrial revenues over the prior year, due to continued weakness in the Chinese 3D automated test market. Defense revenues decreased $800,000 or 14% year over year. Decrease relates to the conclusion of the current purchase order and beginning of the next purchase order.

Funded research and development revenues were $5.1 million for the third quarter of 2023, compared with $3.5 million for the third quarter of 2022, a 47% increase. The increase in funded R&D was due largely to a $1.9 million order related to a thermal weapon sight program. Cost of goods sold for the third quarter of 2023 was $5.4 million, or 99% of product revenues, compared with $8 million, or 97% for the third quarter of last year, essentially flat. R&D expenses in the third quarter of 2023 were $3.1 million, compared with $3.4 million during the third quarter of 2022, a 10% decrease year-over-year.

Funded R&D expense for Q3 2023 was $2.3 million, as compared to $1.8 million for Q3 2022, which was driven by higher funded R&D revenues. Internal R&D expense for Q3 2023 was $744,000, as compared to $1.6 million for the third quarter of 2022. This reflects the rationalization efforts Michael spoke about. SG&A expenses were $4.8 million for the third quarter of 2023, compared to $4.3 million in the third quarter of 2022.

The SG&A increases for the three months ended September 30th, 2023, as compared to the three months ended September 30th, 2022, were primarily due to an increase in legal expenses and non-cash stock compensation expenses of approximately $1.7 million for the third quarter of 2023, as compared to $500,000 for the third quarter of 2022. These increases were offset by a decrease in compensation and benefit costs of $1.3 million for the third quarter, as compared to $2 million for the third quarter of 2022. Other income was approximately $316,000 for the third quarter of 2023, compared with an expense of $2.1 million for the third quarter of 2022.

The third quarter of 2023, we had foreign currency losses of $14,000, as compared to a loss of $112,000 in Q3 2022. Also, in the third quarter of 2022, we recorded a non-cash mark-to-market impairment on an equity investment of $2 million. Turning to the bottom line, the net loss attributed to Kopin during the third quarter was approximately $2.5 million or $0.02 per share, compared with $6.1 million or $0.07 per share for the third quarter of 2022. As Michael mentioned in his opening remarks, when removing the litigation costs and non-cash items, we were very close to cash break even. Net cash used in operating activities for the nine months ended September 30th, 2023, was approximately $11.8 million.

Kopin's cash and marketable securities were approximately $21.7 million as of September 30th, 2023, as compared to $12.6 million at December 31st, 2022. We have no long-term debt. The amounts discussed above are based on our current estimates, and listeners should review our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30th, 2023, for any possible changes and, of course, any additional filings. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Michael for closing remarks.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Thanks, Rich. As evidenced in our third quarter results, our focus continues to be on strengthening our record order book, achieving higher on-time and full rates, cost controls, and making the strategic investments in products and people, which in the aggregate will improve cash flow and provide long-term sustainable profitability and growth. We've also been working very hard on our brand, external marketing, and website development efforts, and we are ecstatic to announce that we will have a new website to debut very shortly. Looking forward, we are very fortunate to have world-leading and market-making customers who are supporting Kopin during this transformational period. We have put tremendous focus on working with our customers to move up the value chain and gain more share of their system and spending.

Furthermore, we have carefully selected new strategic partners and customers to work with and are focused on new opportunities and projects which support our strategic plan. To this end, our opportunity pipeline has grown substantially in the past few quarters. We expect several new customers, partners, and project awards and announcements soon, which will add modestly to our order book, but more importantly, will fuel larger returns in the future as these new projects move into production. Perhaps the most culturally important transformation is that Kopin remains focused on invention and innovation, but with more focus on cost controls and return on investment. These new inventions discussed today will help drive our innovations that solve our customers' most difficult technical problems and serve as the bedrock of our business, which will fuel our long-term sustainable growth for our employees, our customers, and stakeholders.

Thank you everyone for your time today and for showing interest in Kopin. I'd like to thank our employees, customers, and stakeholders for their continued hard work and support and dedication. With that, operator, I'd like to offer some time to take some questions.

Operator

At this time, I'd like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause just for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Okay, your first question comes from the line of Glenn Mattson from Ladenburg. Your line is open.

Glenn Mattson
VP of Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the questions, guys, and congrats on the quarter, especially that strong book-to-bill.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Thanks, Glenn.

Glenn Mattson
VP of Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

So, curious, I guess, on the, just trying to think about how you expect it to kind of play out. I realize you have this strong $12.8 million thermal weapons order. I saw one of your customers announced a couple of days ago they got a large purchase order as well.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Mm-hmm.

Glenn Mattson
VP of Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

So I imagine that's where the follow-on order that you're talking about might come from. And you know, you mentioned that you may need to do some kind of retooling or whatever, the fab. So would that mean downtime in the equipment? Would there be, like, a hiccup in the revenue line and as you ramp that up? And if it... And you talked about it maybe in this quarter, but it sounds like it's gonna come at some time or another. Or just can you just flesh out how to best think about that better, Michael?

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Sure. So we are expecting additional orders for our thermal weapon sight program within the quarter. And if those orders are received, I believe that we'll have to take some time and reconfigure the fab, clean it, and make sure that the bays are operating at the highest levels to be able to extend that throughput. So that's what we're expecting, but we have not seen that follow-on orders yet.

Glenn Mattson
VP of Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay. And I guess... and so that downtime would lead to some modest, you know, obviously, it's a good problem to have, but maybe a little bit of a lumpiness in terms of the way the revenue comes through?

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

We think so. It's possible this quarter. We would have to do it this quarter to make sure that we're running at full optimization in January. But we wouldn't require any additional large capital expense for machinery. It would just be strictly downtime to move some things around and put in the additional jigs and test benches that we would need. But in the clean room, as you know, once you start moving things around, you wanna make sure that you do it and then clean it thoroughly. So that would just be downtime of the fab.

Glenn Mattson
VP of Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

Right. Right. Okay. Thanks for that color. And then, I just want to hear a little bit more about the new display architecture that you touched on. I think it's the first time we heard about it, where you use the sensors to kind of get feedback from the user to kind of balance out any whatever type of motion sickness or type or disruptions he's having when using, you know, an AR or VR device or whatever. So, it's an interesting approach. Can you just talk about how you came to kind of come at it from this angle? And, you know, I guess there's a lot of different people trying to skin this cat in different ways.

So, what makes you think that, you know, this is the best approach to go with? And, you know, just a little more history on how you got to this point and how long you think it will take to develop.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Sure. So I visited many consumer companies here in the United States, and just as many defense companies that are all struggling with the same phenomenon, which is the nausea that some of these systems create. And what I learned was that putting perfect displays in front of imperfect eyes, and by the way, my eyes are imperfect from my right to my left, so putting two perfect displays in front of my eyes actually makes me feel nauseous. So when we think about AR, we have to make sure that the technology adapts to the human and not force the human to adapt to the technology. And that's why it's not working, because essentially, the way that you view video, specifically, and the way I view video is very different.

That's what led us to believe that the display has to change, and the display architecture itself isn't going to change that much. When we looked at the overall system architecture, we realized that there were efficiencies to be made by adding sensors. If you look at my background, I spent a decade at Analog Devices running their high-performance sensing group. There was lots of ways that we could improve that. And also, some of the constraints that these devices have broken in consumer electronics, size, weight, power consumption, user adaptation, you know, those are things that are getting AR adoption rates right now. We took that challenge. We came up with what we call the Neural Display, which is an AI-powered display and a software-defined back plane, which, Glenn, we already have, by the way.

Many of our back planes are already software-defined. So we have this capability, and we think that we can solve the problems in the AR/VR marketplace by those sensor fusion activities that we're embarking upon now. We're developing some partner networks and partnerships to help us get there.

Glenn Mattson
VP of Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

Great. Thanks for the additional color.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

More on those later.

Glenn Mattson
VP of Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

I look forward to hearing more about it as it progresses. Thanks, guys.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

You bet. Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Dede from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Hi, Michael, Rich. Thanks for having me on. I'd

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Hey, Kevin.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

I'd like... Yeah, yeah. I'd just like to piggyback off Glenn's question, right? I get the Neural Display.

Appreciate the detail you've offered on it. Understand, your prepared remarks noted a patent. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, and maybe you could talk, given your analog device and sensor experience, and that sensor capability already or software capability already embedded in the backplane, maybe you can talk a little bit about including sensors, the timeline to prototypes, and when you think you might be able to get stuff into people's hands.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Great question. Thanks, Kevin. So I'll be focused on this in two ways to answer your question. Number one, the architecture itself is has been patented. We have five patents submitted currently. There's a sixth patent that we are submitting shortly, and we believe that those patents are going to be the foundation for where the Neural Display is going to come from. We've been working with one very large microdisplay company, and we're looking for support from them. We're trying to create an organization with those folks for the consumer market. We're also looking at go-to-market activities with the defense market and with a specific office in the U.S. Department of Defense to enable this technology as well.

Next year, we're looking at potential funding lines from not only our consumer companies and customers, we're also looking at potential funding from U.S. DOD applications, as well as potentially some congressional money that we've applied for. So that's where the money's going to come from to support this technology development, and when we see the money come in, we'll see how quickly we can get this in the hands of folks, specifically in the consumer marketplace, where we have tremendous demand currently.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay, maybe I need to take a different tack on the questioning line, Michael, so please excuse me.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Sure.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

How, obviously, you feel comfortable with the technology development, but how do you think we should look at timelines for you to get a display that incorporates your sensors and you might be able to serve as a physical, you know, physical evidence for customers?

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Yeah, I think we have a pretty targeted approach in that area. I'm going to defer the question for proof of concept samples until a few more NDAs get signed.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Thank you.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Yeah. I wish I could, I wish I could give you a better answer, Kevin, but, I'll, I'll defer for now.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Well, it's just incredibly exciting, and I don't know of anyone that's approaching, you know, to paraphrase Glenn, "Skinning the cat this way." So congratulations on that development.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Thank you.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Pretty strong sequential growth in research and development revenue, and up markedly from sort of the past five or six quarter trend, and I was wondering if you could talk to that a little bit. Is that multiple projects, a big lump in one particular project?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Yeah, Kevin, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, we delivered on a $1.9 million contract in the quarter, so it was a fairly substantial.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay. So I guess you met all your deliverable specifications, and you could recognize revenue. Does that mean that project's done?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Yes.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay. Can you give us a ballpark on, I guess, maybe other, sort of the span of different DoD development projects you have, that might go from LRIP to full production next year?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Well, I'm not sure I understand the question. It, I mean, FWS-I, F-35, all those were several years in development, in LRIP. You know, the... We're working on the color LED program, you know, that's already been two or three years in the making and so on and so forth. So these, they're fairly long development cycles.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

I will say, Kevin, just to add some color to that-

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

... I do expect our armored tank or our armored vehicle program to move through PPAP next year, and we expect orders next year that we wanna start shipping in terms of production. So once it gets out of PPAP, it basically goes into low rate initial production pretty much right away. So, we're expecting orders for that in 2024. I don't know if we'll be able to deliver in calendar 2024, but that's the goal.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

I mean, that's exactly where my next line of questioning was going, Michael. Would that be, I guess moving from PPAP to LRIP, is that an event you might press release?

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Indeed.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay, because-

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

You bet.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

If I remember the June call, you mentioned that you should have better insight into the development of that project later this year, which sort of thinking is now. Was there some delay there, or is it just bureaucracy?

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

So the SEP 4 upgrade has been effectively canceled, to my understanding. And General Dynamics has been gracious enough to speak with us and provide details of what their plans are, which I can't get into on this call. However, what I can say is we are continuing the PPAP process. They're very excited about the technology. We're talking about new platforms and old upgrades that we could potentially utilize this technology for, so we're all ahead full steam. So that's that was great news, and that's that was what I was worried about in the last call, is I wasn't sure what the SEP 4 upgrade schedule was going to look like, although I couldn't say anything. But I can now. So that was the reason for, I'd say, the lack of information on the last call.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Ah, okay. Okay.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Hope that helps.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple of more, if I may.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Sure.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

This transformation that you've been working so hard on, I would have thought would begin to show in product margin, but it's not so evident. And so maybe you could help me reset my expectations on timing.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Sure.

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Well, so Kevin, I think it's important to understand that, you know, we have multiple sources of revenue, and but we have limited resources, and so it's always a guns and butter, bad pun analogy. If you take our sources of revenue, product revenue and funded R&D, and you subtract cost of sales and funded R&D expense, our gross margins this year, year to date, is about $7.8 million, which is a 150% increase over the prior year. So, you know, that's how. We don't just look at the gross margin of the product, because in many respects, the fab is dual function. And so, you know, that's one of the things that's got to be done. We've got to manage both aspects of it.

They're all running through the same facility. We have an engineering group, so, you know, that's how we're looking at it. The overall absolute dollars has increased by 150% over the prior year to 9 months.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

I'll add to that, Kevin. It's an important question, and one of the things that we've been messaging is our old existing contracts that, where we're sole source and we're on firm fixed prices, those are either running out or ending, and we're replacing them with new contracts, with new pricing that is more advantageous for Kopin. And I think you'll see a gross margin lift there because we did have conversations with our customers around price increases due to inflation, due to scope creep, due to lots of different things that have happened over the course of the last few years. And, as we reported in these prepared remarks today, we did increase prices on several programs.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Past report, so thank you, gentlemen. The, the other thing I'm wondering, I guess, just from, sort of a cash use perspective, was that, you know, inventories are up, and I'm just looking sequentially, Rich. Inventories are up, contract assets are up, and I'm wondering if, you're, you're building in advance of the, the, FWS-I and the F-35, production.

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Yeah, so the contract assets are up. We completed, as you saw, funded R&D. Revenue was up in the quarter, we completed it, so that's associated with the receivables that we need to collect on those assets. But yeah, I mean, inventory is up because of the projected growth for next year.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay.

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

you know, the reality is lead times are still out there for many of the parts that we need, FPGAs and things like that. And so, you know, we're getting in what we can, when we can get it. Make sure we have smooth production.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay. You gave us an update on Abrams, an update on FWSI, an update on the F-35, but how about the Common Helmet-Mounted Display?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Yeah, I mean, the Elbit program just keeps rolling along.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay. Are those things what is contributing to your backlog? And how would you compare your backlog at the end of September versus the end of June?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

So it, it's a really interesting question. We have historically been very conservative and said that backlog, as our understanding of the definition, is that it is non-cancelable. And so to the extent that we have purchase orders, which historically we've allowed companies to either move to the right or, you know, frankly, never, we don't never take delivery, we don't include those in backlog. But if you look at our footnotes, which should be filed in our 10-K tomorrow, you, you'll see performance obligations are up, which is, you know, a proxy for backlog. But that, that number, technically, we have more orders than we're actually showing there.

But as I said, you know, we don't put things there that, you know, frankly, you know, someone, we might allow someone to cancel. So it's not exactly the right number.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Is that... You say they're up, that's up versus June versus not September 2022?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Yeah.

Kevin Dede
Managing Director, Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright

Okay. Well, thank you, gentlemen, for indulging me. Sorry if I pushed it too far, but I really appreciate you working with me on it. Thank you.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

No problem, Kevin. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Victor Santiago from Stifel. Your line is open.

Victor Santiago
Analyst, Stifel

Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on the quarter.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Thanks, Victor.

Victor Santiago
Analyst, Stifel

Just on the nice gross margin improvement, was there anything in particular that drove the sequential improvement, or is that just a function of your ongoing improved execution? And also, is that level sustainable on a go-forward basis, or could we see that fluctuate a bit in the near term?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

It's a function of price increase, and we have been able to drive raw materials costs down. It will fluctuate based on mix, because as Michael indicated, some products we're still rolling out, and we don't have the new prices associated with them yet. So, you know, we probably won't really achieve good stability until first quarter of next year. And then after that, we would expect to see progression, consistent progression quarter to quarter.

Victor Santiago
Analyst, Stifel

Got it. Thank you. And then, just I guess lastly, on the hoping to get your updated thoughts on the or updated thoughts on the timeline of the ongoing lawsuit. Are you guys still expecting similar elevated legal expenses in Q4 and then into Q1? And then also, is the trial still set for Q1?

Richard Sneider
Treasurer and CFO, Kopin Corporation

Yes, the trial is currently set for late January. There's a couple of events that will occur in the early part of December. And so we may see a slight elevation in expense in December, not to the level that we had in Q2, though. And then, you know, frankly, in 8 weeks-10 weeks, hopefully, we have a very positive answer.

Victor Santiago
Analyst, Stifel

Got it. Thank you. That's all I had. Thanks, guys.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Thanks, Victor.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back over to Michael Murray for any closing remarks.

Michael Murray
President and CEO, Kopin Corporation

Thank you, operator. To everyone that joined, thank you very much for your interest in Kopin. To our friends, family, investors, customers, happy holidays, and we look forward to our next call. Take care.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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