POET Technologies Inc. (POET)

AGM 2023

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Jun 30, 2023

The team has done remarkable things despite our limited resources. These first products are a validation of our talent, our work processes, the dedication to reimagining the way photonics can be applied. POET Technologies is in the midst of rapid commercialization with two primary products designed to disrupt the markets they address. They are POET Infinity and POET Starlight. POET Infinity is a first-of-its-kind 400G transmit chiplet that will be deployed in the optical transceiver market. That market is predicted to reach $14.3 billion within three years. What makes POET Infinity unique is its single chip design that contains all the key elements for an optical engine, the guts of an optical transceiver. Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, POET's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, explains. POET Infinity is unmatched by any other product in the optical transceiver market today. We have succeeded in integrating DMLs, or directly modulated lasers, and drivers within our chip-scale solution. We call it Infinity because it can go from 400 gig to 800 gig within the same package simply by adding another chiplet. You add two of those dual chiplet designs, and now you have a 1.6 terabit per second product, and we go up from there. The second disruptive product that Dr. Venkatesan's team has developed is POET Starlight. Similarly impressive, it is a light engine for the AI hardware market. With the buzz around AI, it's not a surprise that a frenzy of interest has surrounded hardware solutions. POET Starlight already has a lead customer that has placed an advanced purchase order. Why wouldn't they? POET Starlight is available at a cost that other suppliers have not been able to match. POET Starlight has built-in features that we believe will sustain our advantage now and into the future. It's designed to be the de facto light engine that powers optical data transmission in AI hardware. What everyone in this part of the AI hardware market needs is a low-cost light source, and we have it. When we talk about scale, the demand is going to be absolutely immense. AI solutions require processors, lots of them, and every processor sold will require a light source. POET Starlight and our other light engines and light sources can meet that demand. Both POET Infinity and POET Starlight demonstrate the hallmarks of the POET Optical Interposer. The company's platform technology is the foundation for all of its products. It's low cost, scalable, and powerful. POET Infinity and POET Starlight are only two products. Our legacy line, called POET One, includes our first products that will be manufactured this year. We already have a $3 million purchase order from Beijing FeiYunYi Technology, or BFYY, and they expect demand for our optical engines to reach $30 million over the next 3 years. We have another dozen or so products that we plan to debut in 2023. We are leapfrogging the competition and giving industry leaders a chance to accelerate their own roadmaps. These cutting-edge products are built to scale up in volume as photonics applications proliferate. Scale means increasing unit volume, which must at the same time lower cost, size, and power requirements. We engineered a technology that has the capacity to be mass-produced at a competitive price and with components that are recognized as best in class. We've done that, and people in several industries have noticed. Which industries? Light will increasingly be used in applications like sensing, automobile lidar, virtual reality systems, healthcare monitoring devices, datacom, high-performance computing, and consumer applications that haven't yet been invented. What all dominant applications in these markets need is small size, lower power consumption over existing solutions, and the ability to be produced in massive quantities at low cost. These are the essential features of POET's technology. Its products exist at the intersection of electronics and optics, turning electrons into photons for 10 times faster data transfer at 10 times lower power. What makes POET different is its ability to combine optics and electronics on a single chip produced at scale using wafer-level processing. Such capabilities allow Dr. Venkatesan and his team to build an important, highly successful company. Key executives include Dr. Mo Jinyu, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Asia operations. James Lee, Vice President and General Manager in Singapore. Raju Kankipati, Senior Vice President and General Manager of North America operations. Daniel Meerovich, Vice President of Product Engineering, and President and General Manager, Vivek Rajgarhia. We have assembled a highly experienced and phenomenal team of engineers who are drawn to the underlying value proposition of POET to change the industry we all care passionately about and leave a legacy of improvement. We define our process as the semiconductorization of photonics. We use the processes that have existed for decades, and rather than reinvent them, we apply proven semiconductor techniques to components that produce light to address the production pain points that have frustrated photonic solutions manufacturers for years. We build a better way to package or integrate different components into a single chip to improve network performance. This has been a team effort from our 50 or so engineers in North America and Asia. POET Technologies is headquartered in Toronto. The company's stock is publicly traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol POET, and on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol PTK. While its corporate activities are fulfilled in Canada's largest city, POET's engineering work takes place globally. Allentown is a noted photonics hub. It's even part of an area called Photonics Valley. Several of the company's engineers apply their skills to design and develop optical engines based upon the optical interposer platform. That work includes using die bonders to attach lasers onto the chips, and wire bonders to then connect the chips to printed circuit boards. Fiber array units are a key part of the design for POET's solution that builds next-level data center interconnects, and those light sources that you see here have propelled POET to the forefront of companies that supply hardware to AI developers. In Singapore, James Lee and his team work on new designs for Optical Interposer chips, including those 12 or more products Dr. Venkatesan expects to introduce in 2023. The Singapore unit is doing extraordinary work in bringing our Infinity chiplets to the market. Singapore has been an R&D center for us, but is increasingly moving into an operations role as interest in our products grow and our product portfolio expands. We also are founding members of the SHINE Centre at the National University of Singapore. Work there uncovers novel applications for our optical interposer. Not far from Singapore is Shenzhen, China, where POET opened a product design and development center in 2021. Dr. Mo Zhen Yu's team builds development and design validation of optical engines and applications, engineering, and development of customer evaluation boards. They support the efforts of the engineers at Super Photonics Xiamen, the joint venture formed with Sanan IC, a global leader in foundry services. Assembly of our products is done at Super Photonics Xiamen, or SPX as we call it. Presently, about 30 engineers work there, which will increase as we scale up. Equipment is in place for the mass production of our first products for customers like ADVA, BFYY, and Luxshare-Tech, plus several others who cannot yet be named because of sensitive non-disclosure agreements. We formed SPX three years ago to demonstrate that we have the manufacturing capability to fulfill customer orders. Sanan IC, our joint venture partner, pays for the equipment and for the operations expenses of SPX. POET provides the know-how to manufacture the optical engines based upon the POET Optical Interposer while retaining our intellectual property rights. SPX buys the optical interposer chips and wafers from POET for the optical engines and light sources that it manufactures and sells to its end customers. I must also mention that SPX has played a key role in providing the engineering talent and resources necessary to taking the POET optical engines from design to production. With SPX, POET can deliver at scale, and that's essential to engaging with any prospective client in a meaningful way. That engagement represents the beginning of a lengthy, yet exciting journey to a purchase order. POET's sales team, led by Raju Kankipati, works with interested customers on the testing of POET products. Once progress is made, a design-in phase takes place where POET's team builds a solution to the specifications of the customer. Once that first design-in phase is complete, samples are delivered for customer evaluation. What follows is a round of design augmentations and more sampling and testing. Once complete, a commitment is made to purchase POET's product, and the customer begins an industry qualification phase. The POET-enabled optical solutions are sold to the end customers in the data center and AI space. In most cases, POET, through SPX, sells its optical engines directly to the module makers who have existing customer relationships. Currently, these customers are not the largest module companies in the world, but are the more aggressive companies seeking to gain market share and to dominate the industry over the long term. Having moved multiple customers through the purchase journey, POET's next phase is a nonstop production ramp that keeps the team working tirelessly. The first products scheduled to come off the production line are the 100G CWDM4 optical transmit and receive engines that represent a cost savings of 25% to what is currently in the market. Impressive 100G LR4 engines will follow. The 400G and 800G receive engines are next. Then comes the first POET Infinity transmit chips and the LightBar solution for AI. POET Starlight is forecast to be in production in 2024. We've entered into markets that are valued in the billions of dollars. When you look at the projected growth for AI and photonics, it's exponential, and POET is well positioned to deliver unprecedented levels of innovation to all the industries we sell into. When I think back, this all began with a PowerPoint of the Optical Interposer. That was in 2017. A year later, we invented its first iteration, and in the 5 years since, we've evolved the concept into what will be 12 products introduced in 2023, 8 of which we've developed in just the past year. The flexibility and relative ease of design is what makes the POET Optical Interposer true platform technology. Instead of building a light source or transceiver engine from scratch, we have features built into the Optical Interposer that allow it to adapt to new and sometimes newly invented components. It's the components that make the application, but it's the optical interposer that allows them to work seamlessly together. As we developed the optical interposer, our goal was to put everything on a single chip. We call that chip scale. That allows us to turn the page from an R&D company to an operations company. In 2023, we became a commercial enterprise, one with enormous growth ahead and an exciting story of innovation and disruption that we continue to tell. The vision's always been the same, to build a company that is a global leader in photonics, and we're well on our path. Thank you all for spending the time to enjoy this video presentation. Good afternoon, shareholders and guests. Welcome to this 2023 virtual annual and special meeting of the shareholders of POET Technologies, Inc. My name is Kevin Barnes. I'm the VP Finance and Administration and Treasurer of the company. By holding this meeting virtually, we have allowed our geographically diverse shareholder base an equal opportunity to participate at this meeting. Now, as noted in your information circular, today's meeting is conducted virtually via the Lumi platform, which allows only registered shareholders to participate in the voting. Please note, if you have already voted, you do not need to vote on the resolutions as they're read. Now, the meeting today will be just about 2 hours long, where we will handle first the formal part of the meeting. This will be chaired by Peter Charbonneau. He is the Lead Director and Chair of the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee. It will be followed by another video presentation and an oral presentation, which will be followed finally with questions and answer session. Now, with us today, we have management and board representation, namely, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, Vivek Rajgarhia, Thomas Mika, myself, Kevin Barnes, and Raju Kankipati. Along with the chairs of the various committees, Peter Charbonneau, Glen Riley, and Chris Tsiofas. The agenda for this formal part of the meeting will cover the topics that you see before you. If you haven't already done so, we will be asking you to vote on the following agenda items. Specifically, setting the number of directors, election of directors, approval of the amended and restated bylaws, the appointment of auditors, the approval of an omnibus plan, and the migration of the stock options. At this point, I'd like to turn the meeting over to our Lead Director and Chair of the CGNC, Peter Charbonneau, to chair the formal part of the meeting. Peter. Thank you very much, Kevin. Welcome, everyone, to the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders of POET Technologies, Inc. As Kevin mentioned, my name is Peter Charbonneau. I'm the Lead Independent Director and Chair of the Corporate Governance Committee of POET Technologies, Inc. This meeting will now come to order. As noted in the notice of meeting and accompanying management information circular, this year's annual general and special meeting is available online using the Lumi Meeting platform, which allows registered shareholders or their proxy holders to vote in real time, as well as submit questions and comments to be read and addressed at the meeting. If you have a question or comment, please submit it through the Lumi Meeting platform by clicking on the message icon. I will now ask Thomas Mika, the Chief Financial Officer and Secretary of the company, to act as Secretary of the meeting. I wish to point out that only shareholders of the company or their appointees by proxy are allowed to move and second the adoption of resolutions and to vote at these meetings. To this end, shareholders who are in attendance or their proxy holders have been provided with an opportunity to electronically vote for, against, or withhold votes where applicable. The voting platform is now open for voting on all resolutions, should any shareholder choose to change his or her vote. The voting platform will allow you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait until conclusion of discussion on each resolution prior to casting your vote. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. Once discussions on all items of business is concluded, I will give you a minute to enter your votes and then declare voting closed at the end when all formal business items have been discussed and voted upon. There are several matters that must be dealt with at this meeting. In order to expedite these and leave more time for a presentation and questions after the formal meetings, I have arranged for certain persons to make and second the formal motions and will call on these persons as appropriate. The first item of business will be the appointment of a scrutineer to report on shareholders present in person and the number of shares represented in person and by proxy at this meeting. The chair recognizes David Labbe. Mr. Chairman, I move that Marissa Beintema of Computershare Investor Services Inc. be hereby appointed scrutineer of this meeting. Thank you, David. The chair recognizes Mr. Kevin Barnes. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Kevin. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none, I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the formal notice of meeting. In accordance with the notice and access rules under National Instrument 54-101, the company has made its proxy related materials, including the notice of meeting, available to shareholders using the notice and access method. As such, shareholders received a proxy form and/or voting instruction forms only. The notice of the meeting and the management information circular are and have been accessible from the company's website or from SEDAR. The proof of mailing of the proxy form has been filed with me by the secretary of the company. I direct that a copy of such proof of mailing be annexed to the minutes of the meeting as a schedule. I will now ask John Fairchild to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution dispensing with the reading of the formal notice of meeting. Mr. Fairchild. Hello, John? John seems- Can I- Kevin, can I ask you then to Sure. Make the motion. Sorry, guys. Can you hear me now? Go ahead, John. Mr. Chairman, I move that the reading of the notice of this meeting be dispensed with. Thank you, John. I now recognize Mr. Adrian Brijbassi. Adrian, are you on mute? Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Adrian. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none, I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the meeting attendance. The scrutineer has provided me with the preliminary report on shareholder attendance, represented at this meeting. The scrutineer reports that there are present at this meeting, by person or by proxy, 365 shareholders holding 10,001,293 share votes, common shares, which represent 25.02% of the total issued and outstanding shares available to vote. Accordingly, I declare that the requisite quorum of shareholders is present and that the meeting is duly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. I direct that the scrutineer's final report on attendance be annexed to the minutes of the meeting. The next item of business is the reading of the minutes of the previous shareholder meeting. The last meeting of shareholders of the company was the annual and special meeting held on October 25, 2022. The minutes of such meeting were filed in the minute book and are available for inspection. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution dispensing with the reading of the minutes, and that the minutes be taken as read and verified as correct. The chair recognizes Mr. Kevin Barnes. Mr. Chairman, I move that the reading of the minutes of the last meeting of shareholders be dispensed with and the minutes be taken as read and verified as correct. Thank you, Kevin. The chair recognizes Mr. Mike White. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Mike. Are there any questions or comments? Assuming none, hearing no questions or comments, I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the presentation of financial statements. I now present to the meeting the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, 2022, together with the auditor's report thereon. Copies of such statements were filed on SEDAR, posted on the company's website, and mailed to those shareholders who had requested a copy. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution dispensing with the reading of the auditor's report. The chair recognizes Mr. John Fairchild. Mr. Chairman, I move that the reading of the auditor's report be dispensed with. Thank you, John. The chair recognizes Mr. Adrian Brijbassi. Sorry, guys. One moment. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Adrian. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none, I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the consideration of a resolution concerning the number of directors of the company. In accordance with the Ontario Business Corporations Act, pursuant to which the company is incorporated, the shareholders of a company may, by resolution, empower the board of directors of the company to set from time to time, by directors' resolution, the size of the board of directors within the minimum and maximum number of directors set forth in the articles of the company, as more particularly described in the circular in respect of this meeting. The resolution must be approved by a majority of the votes cast by shareholders in respect of this resolution. The full text of the resolution is set out in the circular and is defined in the circular as the director number resolution. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of the director number resolution as set out in full in the circular. The chair recognizes Mr. Mike White. Mr. Chairman, I so move. Thank you, Mike. The chair recognizes Mr. David Lave. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, David. Are there any questions or comments? If you are entitled and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not done so already, please do so now. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. We'll just provide a moment for people to cast their vote. I now declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the election of directors of the company. It is now in order to proceed with the election of directors to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders, or until their successors are elected or appointed. The number of directors to be elected at this meeting has been set at seven. Will someone please nominate those persons whose names appear as nominee directors in the management information circular of the company? The chair recognizes Mr. David Lobby. Mr. Chairman, I nominate Suresh Venkatesan, Michal Lipson, Glen Riley, Theresa Lan Ende, Jean-Louis Malinge, Peter Charbonneau, Chris Tsiofas as directors of the company to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders, or until their successors are elected or appointed. Thank you, David. The company's bylaws provide that in addition to any other applicable requirements for a director nomination to be made by a shareholder, the nominating shareholder must have given timely notice thereof in proper written form to the corporate secretary of the corporation at the principal executive offices of the corporation not less than 30 days prior to the date of the annual meeting of shareholders. No nominations were received from a nominating shareholder. 7 persons have been nominated to fill the 7 directors position. Since no notices of further nominations have been received by the company, I would now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution approving the election of the 7 nominees. The chair recognizes Mr. Mike Wharton. Mr. Chairman, I move for the election of the seven nominees whose names have been read as directors of the company for the ensuing year to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected or appointed. Thank you, Mike. The chair recognizes Mr. Tom Mika. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Tom. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none. If you are entitled and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not done so already, please do so now. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. I'll pause for a moment to provide people some time to cast their votes. I now declare those seven persons nominated to have been duly elected as directors of the company to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. The next item of business is to consider and if thought fit, to pass a resolution to approve the adoption of an amended and restated bylaw number 1 of the company, which amendments concern certain corporate governance updates consistent with issuer best practices, as more particularly described in the circular. The adoption of the amended and restated bylaw number 1 must be approved by a majority of votes cast for such resolution. The full text of the resolution is set out in the circular and is denoted in the circular as the bylaw resolution. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of the bylaw resolution as set out in the full circular. The chair recognizes Mr. Thomas Mika. Mr. Chairman, I so move. Thank you, Thomas. The chair recognizes Mr. Adrian Brijbassi. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Adrian. Are there any questions or comments? If you are entitled and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not done so already, please do so now. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. Provide a moment for those people to vote. I now declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors and the authorization of the directors to fix the remuneration of such auditors. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of a resolution appointing Davidson & Company LLP as the auditors of the company until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders, or until its successors is appointed and authorizing the directors to fix their remuneration during this period. The chair recognizes Mr. Kevin Barnes. Mr. Chairman, I so move. Thank you, Kevin, and the chair now recognizes Mr. John Fairchild. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, John. Are there any questions or comments? If you are entitled and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not already done so, please do so now. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. Take a moment, those who wish to vote, to do so now. I now declare that Davidson & Company LLP has been duly appointed auditors of the company to hold office until the next annual meeting of the shareholders, and that the directors have been duly authorized to fix their remuneration. The next item of business is considered, and if thought fit, to pass a resolution to approve and authorize, among other things, the adoption of an Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan, as more particularly described in the circular. In accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Omnibus Incentive Plan must be approved by a majority of votes cast for such resolution, excluding 216,909 shares held by insiders of the company and their associates and affiliates who would be considered eligible participants in such a plan, if adopted. The full text of the resolution and the terms of the omnibus plans are as more particularly described in the circular. The resolution approving the omnibus plan is defined in the circular as the Omnibus Plan Resolution. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the adoption of the Omnibus Plan Resolution as set out in the full circular. The chair recognizes Mr. David Labbe. Mr. Chairman, I so move. Thank you, David. The chair now recognizes Mr. Mike White. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Mike. Are there any questions or comments? If you are eligible and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not already done so, please do so now. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. Now, just take a moment to allow any of you who wish to vote now to please do so. I now declare the motion fully carried. As the Omnibus Plan Resolution has now been approved, the next item of business is to consider, and if thought fit, to pass a resolution to approve and authorize the migration of existing, currently outstanding options granted under, and currently governed by, the Fixed Stock Option Plan of the company, last approved by the shareholders on October 7, 2021, to now be governed by the Omnibus Incentive Plan, as more particularly described in the circular. In accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange, the migration of the existing options must be approved by a majority of cast votes for such resolution, excluding the 227,154 shares held by holders of the options subject to this option migration and their associates and affiliates. The particulars of the option migration is set out in the circular, and the resolution in respect of the migration is defined in the circular as the Option Migration Resolution. If the Option Migration Resolution is approved upon formal implementation of the migration of the board of directors of the company, there will no longer be any outstanding awards under the Fixed Stock Option Plan of the company, and such plan is expected to be terminated. I will now ask someone to move and someone to second the approval of the Option Migration Resolution, as more particularly described in the circular. The chair recognizes Mr. David Labbe. Mr. Chairman, I so move. Thank you, David. The chair now recognizes Mr. Mike White. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none. If you are eligible and intend to cast a vote on this resolution and have not already done so, please do so now. If you have already voted, you do not need to do so again. Again, we'll just take a moment to provide a minute for people to vote. I now declare the motion carried. As the Omnibus Plan Resolution has been approved by the shareholders, as described in the circular, the resolution to adopt and approve the amended stock option plan is hereby withdrawn and will no longer be tabled and considered at this meeting. At this point, all registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders should have submitted their votes on the motions brought forth at this meeting. If you have not already voted, please complete the electronic ballot on Lumi now. Just pausing for anyone to make any last-minute votes. Voting has now been closed on all items of business. I direct that the final tabulation of the voting results will be included in the meeting minutes, and that the final voting results be included in a report on voting results, which will be posted on SEDAR under the company issuer profile in due course following today's meeting. The formal business of the meeting is concluded. Upon the termination of formal business of the meeting, our Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, will be providing updates on the affairs of the business and the company and will be pleased to answer any questions from shareholders. Before the meeting is terminated, is there any additional formal business to be considered? As there is no additional business, I will now ask that someone move that the formal part of this meeting be terminated and that someone second the motion. The chair recognizes Mr. John Fairchild. Mr. Chairman, I move that the meeting be terminated. Thank you, John. The chair recognizes Mr. Mike White. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Thank you, Mike. Are there any questions or comments? Hearing none, I declare this meeting to be terminated. As we move into the informal part of the meeting, we are pleased to present to you a short video presenting the company's path providing critical AI solutions. Following the video presentation, Dr. Suresh Venkatesan will address all present here today. His address will be followed by a question and answer session. If you have a question or a comment, please submit it through the Lumi meeting platform by clicking on the messaging icon. Please reserve all your questions until the conclusion of the presentation. Please enjoy the video. POET's entry into the AI market is a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right solution. Like everything else we do, that solution is based on our optical interposer. Dr. Suresh Venkatesan is POET's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He spearheaded the creation of the POET Optical Interposer. Much of the development of optical engines based upon the optical interposer takes place here in the company's lab in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a well-known hub for photonic solutions manufacturing. The optical interposer was designed to solve the bottlenecks of data transmission, giving networking suppliers for the data center and telecom industries the desired bandwidth and cost savings to introduce next generation technology. Along the way, artificial intelligence became a thing, a very big thing. The AI market really came to us in the sense that our platform technology is ideally suited to what AI developers need and want. When we began working on the Optical Interposer in 2017, AI was still a nascent technology. We saw a chance to enter the market with our photonics products, and we seized that opportunity with our light sources, LightBar and POET Starlight, a unique light engine that we're co-developing with our lead customer. That lead customer is Celestial AI, a startup from Silicon Valley. It has ambitious plans to become a major player in the escalating AI sector. POET is key to Celestial AI achieving its goals. POET's light engines power AI chips for companies that are pioneering light-based computer architectures that surpass electronic-based chips and speed, while at the same time using less power and generating less heat. Our team has worked closely with Celestial AI to define a low-cost packaging solution that is up to 75% less expensive than competing options. Just as importantly, it is highly scalable for the volumes that Celestial AI is projecting. For the manufacturers of AI devices to maximize the potential of the technology, they need hardware that can deliver speed, performance, scale, and low cost. At POET, we tick each of those boxes. We passively attach at wafer scale, high-powered continuous wave or CW lasers on our optical interposer. The lasers are among the known good best-of-breed components that POET incorporates into its products. Industry heavyweight Lumentum is among the leading laser suppliers whose products POET uses. POET's engineers then attach the lasers to the optical interposer at wafer scale, which enables the use of single laser chips and eliminates the need for laser arrays that can be cost prohibitive for high volume applications. There is an elegance to the design that has garnered attention and praise. We showed our POET O-band LightBar at OFC 2023, which is an annual gathering of leaders in the semiconductor and optoelectronics world. The reaction was awe. That's because we managed to do what other companies many times our size have tried for years. By drastically reducing the bill of materials on a single microchip, we can design more powerful products, and that really is a breakthrough. POET's powerful AI products start with its light sources. They feature DFB, or distributed feedback, lasers that help to create chip-to-chip communications that drive performance. From the light sources, POET builds light engines called LightBars that are designed to meet the needs of AI. Senior Vice President and General Manager of North America Operations, Raju Kankipati, explains. This is a demo of our light sources, which use our O-band LightBar. These products are desirable because they offer uncompromising performance, with excellent side mode suppression ratio and power uniformity across wavelengths. The engines are scalable from 4 channels to 8 channels and beyond. The lasers are passively attached, which enables wafer-scale assembly and brings down the overall cost. Our interposer platform can also monolithically integrate other passive elements like splitters and combiners. As a demo platform, we showcase our O-band light engine on an evaluation board and use a splitter to look at the optical spectrum and the output power. We get over 40 milliwatts of output power across all 4 channels and can increase this power output using higher power lasers. The POET Starlight product set is being co-developed with Celestial AI. Customer sampling is scheduled to begin in 2024. POET is already working on a new line of light engines, knowing that the AI industry is going to demand more innovation and ongoing development. We are able to relatively quickly design and build new products that are customized for our clients. With an industry like AI, where the chip market alone is projected to reach $260 billion in the next seven years, that ability to create and improve is what's attracting customers to us. It's why we believe POET will be a significant player in the AI industry for a very long time. Hi. Good day, everybody. Good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever you are in the world. I am Dr. Suresh Venkatesan. I'm the Chairman and CEO of POET Technologies, and I want to provide you with a short update on the company and what we've achieved over the past year. Let's see if I can get this working. Have you used ChatGPT lately? Questions like this signal the increasing presence of AI in our tech-heavy world. AI, generative AI, artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. Do you know what the biggest challenge with AI is today? It's power, energy. I was at a conference on this topic the other day. Apparently, the power required to program the 175 billion parameters in ChatGPT runs over a gigawatt. Just by contrast, the human brain consumes 25 watts of power for similar operations. That is quite a chasm to cross. One way to begin to address the power challenge is to convert data transmission to optics. Data communications over optical fiber using light as the carrier dominates because it's 10 times faster, uses 10 times less power, and produces much less heat than electrons flowing through copper. Nothing else can do what photonics can do to increase bandwidth and speed while reducing latency and power consumption. What does POET do? POET makes optical modules that enables optical data transmission. This is fundamental to scaling the presence of AI. Others make optical modules as well. POET has developed unique intellectual property that allows us to make these modules better, cheaper, lower power, and larger scale than anyone else. More than cost or bill of materials, it is the scale where POET shines. By scale, we mean the number of units that can be economically produced. POET has semiconductorized photonics packaging and put it squarely on the same trajectory as semiconductors. Semiconductorization of photonics using POET's proprietary optical interposer provides unprecedented scale and economies for the rapidly growing AI and optical communications market. In fact, it's our belief that it's not possible to address these markets that need hundreds of millions or billions of these devices any other way. Integration is the key. Semiconductorization is the key. We believe we have pioneered this art of semiconductorization of photonics packaging. That means terrific potential in a large, growing, and increasingly relevant market in AI and co-packaged optics. We have come a long way over the past year with many accomplishments under our belt. We serve a very large market worth $billions, particularly in data communications and AI. We're squarely in the supply chain for AI hardware. We have a super unique and patented technology that provides us with a source of sustained competitive differentiation across a number of market verticals, including AI and high-performance computing. We have an exciting product roadmap born out of six years of technology and product development. We have partnered with some of the largest optical companies in the world, like Lumentum, Broadcom, MACOM. We have a pipeline of customers across the world and design wins that could total more than $150 million of revenue over a three-year period. We have a majority stake in a manufacturing joint venture that could alone have an asset value of over $200 million over the next two to three years. The prime motivator for optics and data communications on AI is power and latency. Light, as we have mentioned, is 10x faster and 10x lower power and has ruled the roost when it comes to long-distance data communications. In fact, Photonics 1.0 was driven by submarine communications. Long-distance communications use optics as the medium for that communication to occur. However, as bandwidth, meaning the amount of information that is communicated per second, keeps increasing, the distance over which this data is communicated with light has become shorter and shorter. Photonics 2.0 data centers, key driver for optics. Optics is now in data centers used for communications when distances exceed about five meters. With AI, the bandwidth and power crunch is so severe that there is now a need to utilize optics as a means to communicate data even between individual components, like graphics and memory. The volume and scale of these AI applications quickly trumps the more conventional data center applications. The greater the need, the greater we feel POET solutions in the space will begin to gain favor. AI is the killer app for Photonics 3.0. The market for POET solutions spans the more traditional data centers and data communications, which includes, of course, enterprise and telecom applications, and the new and emerging market around AI-driven needs for optics. In fact, we believe the AI-driven needs are going to trump the more conventional data center interconnects that has really been the prime driver for the past decade. Both of these markets are large and growing. They exceed $12 billion in TAM by 2025. The inflection point for growth in these markets begins next year, and POET is well-poised with both solutions and customer access this year. We're well positioned to intercept this market at the right time with our differentiated solutions. The key challenges in photonics, especially when it comes to very large scale in terms of volume, is really the ability to build millions, billions of these devices. Conventional photonics packaging technology simply will not fit the bill. I mean, those solutions have been designed and have been developed and honed over 30 years. They were first designed for single-channel applications. They were designed for quad applications, where the base technology was scaled through engineering. Today, the applications demand 8 channels, 16 channels. They demand hundreds of millions of units a year, not millions of units a year. There comes a point where these conventional technologies simply cannot fit the bill. It's absolutely possible to engineer in prototype quantities, but try to scale that with good economies and economics. That's where POET comes in. Our vision has always been wafer-scale integration of known good die components that address the pinch points of volume, size, cost, power consumption. These are the areas where we believe our technology ticks the boxes consistently. That is the beauty of what POET has invented, which is the optical interposer. The optical interposer enables what we call wafer-level chip-scale packaging. In the world today in semiconductors, wafer-level chip-scale packaging is the norm. You look at your cell phone, you look at these devices that are in high-performance computing. They're all built with wafer-level chip-scale packaging, where discrete electronics die are put together into a chip-scale package. TSMC would call it CoWoS. Intel calls it EMIB. But basically, it's wafer-level chip-scale packaging. We're the first company in the world to adapt wafer-level chip-scale packaging to photonics. Now instead of just integrating electronic die, we're able to mix and match photonics and electronics die on a wafer scale packaging platform. That's what we call the POET Optical Interposer, and we've been successfully deploying these interposer-based solutions into a number of products after basically having developed the platform initially. The benefits to customers are, of course, in cost, size, scale, and power consumption. We believe, especially as you go forward in high frequency data communications, the RF performance benefits of an optical interposer result ultimately in lower power consumption. Of course, there's the big conversion of copper to optics. That is a big piece of that too. More importantly with the optical interposer is that our customers who adopt interposer-based engine solutions can lower their CapEx bill by a factor of 10 because we do all the integration onto the optical engine. That has cut both ways for us, right? On the one hand, new and upcoming module makers that have not invested in that CapEx really love it because they take advantage of this huge reduction in CapEx from their perspective to adopt our solutions. On the flip side, bigger, larger, well-established module makers that have already invested in warehouses of capital and warehouses of people, it's a little bit more difficult for them to switch, right, and adopt a solution that largely eliminates a lot of their value, which is putting it together by buying an integrated solution from POET. That has cut us both ways. It's learning for us as we go forward in our progress, right? I think what is clear is the value proposition that the technology has overall. That's the platform, the technology that we've developed, which also provides versatility for a number of multiple applications. From a manufacturing standpoint, we've established a joint venture. We worked with Sanan IC in 2019. It was important for POET to ensure that there was a high volume manufacturing path for its optical engine solutions. As a small company, we leveraged other people's money in this context. We created a joint venture. POET has not invested a dime in creating this joint venture manufacturing capability. Not a dime. We've provided know-how, no IP, and we've leveraged that know-how to create a manufacturing asset, a clean room, equipment, people. That's what's required to ultimately scale up the technology. As a small company, we've been able to leverage Sanan. Sanan is the world's largest provider of compound semiconductors in terms of LEDs. They recently launched a $3.2 billion joint venture with STMicroelectronics to do silicon carbide chips. These guys know manufacturing. They want this joint venture to be successful, and they've been investing into it. This joint venture now takes our optical interposers and converts them into optical engines through wafer level assembly techniques. These optical engines are then sold to optical module makers and in some cases back to POET, where POET makes the end module. A word on Super Photonics. It's a latent value that we have created in this company that we believe doesn't get enough recognition for what we've been able to deliver. It was a joint venture. We formed it in 2020, between POET and Sanan IC, just as COVID was breaking out. Its mission is to assemble, test, package, and sell optical engines based completely on POET's optical interposer technology. We formed the company in 2019. It's a Chinese company. It was independently valued at $50 million at formation. For POET, it enables a fab-like manufacturing model with no investment by POET. We spend all our cash on R&D. Somebody else is enabling us to scale it into manufacturing. If POET ourselves, we had to set up that manufacturing entity, we would have had to raise so much more money to be able to create this capability. We didn't. We created a joint venture. We got a partner involved, and they have now invested $10 million and change. They're committed to investing another $15 million to scale this up over the next 6 months. We employ 38 employees. They've been able to take our technology prototypes that we've developed in Singapore and demonstrate scale and yield and capability that is truly impressive. In fact, I was there, what, six weeks ago? First time ever. Since we formed the joint venture, as China has now opened up and we're able to travel freely with our own visas. Terrific stuff. The goal for the Super Photonics joint venture is to IPO in China in 2026-2027. We currently own an 80% equity stake in this joint venture. At the time of IPO, we would probably be closer to 50%. Even today, there is strong interest from China-based PE firms in owning a piece of Super Photonics. Valuations for photonics in China are huge. Valuations for photonics in China for innovative technology is even bigger. Once that innovative technology starts turning revenue, that valuation skyrockets. We believe that this joint venture could be worth over $200 million in the next couple to three years, as soon as Super Photonics start generating revenue in amount, which we think will be in a couple of years. I mean, that is just absolute latent value that we have created. Our ability to capture that value is to be able to sell our equity stake in that joint venture that provides a non-dilutive source of financing for the company to do other things, more R&D, more products. We think that we're sitting on really great value. I commend Vivek and team for their efforts in being able to set this up, and for the overall POET organization to support creating what we believe is a very high-value capability for the company going forward. Our line of optical engines, this is what they look like. If you guys have seen semiconductor chips, you will know what I'm talking about. These are photonics sub-assemblies. They look like semiconductor chips. On the left are our 800G receivers as well as transmitters. We announced just 2 weeks ago that we are starting to sample our alphas of a 400G, 800G scalable transmitter. First of a kind in the industry. First company to use DML lasers and generate 400G, 800G capability. In fact, when we presented the data to Lumentum, they acknowledged that we are the first company that they have sold these DMLs to, that have actually transformed these DMLs into a working product for them. We did prototypes at the OFC. We are doing samples now 6 months later, well on track with our roadmap to be able to take this into production early next year. On the extreme right-hand side, you see our product. This is specifically for ADVA. Again, first of its kind in the world. A full chip-on-board implementation of a 16-lane architecture that fits inside of a QSFP-DD form factor. It's a 16-lane product. ADVA didn't have any other path to making this. We were the only choice. They're actively architecting this. They have a customer base that is keenly awaiting this product to be made available to them. We're stoked. In this particular case, we made this product line happen through our innovation. These products are now ready and basically awaiting ADVA to have their module design completed so that they can take it into production. There's obviously a lot of motivation on their part to do that, given the uniqueness of this solution in the market. We're also the first company to do wafer-level remote laser solutions for co-packaged optics and AI. Our product release plans for 2023 and 2024. We have come a long way. About a year ago, we were demonstrating 100G products. One year later, we're demonstrating 800 gigabit products, sampling 800 gigabits today. We've released our 100G receiver as well as transmitters, and we have three additional variants on the 100G. One is what we call POET1 or the fully integrated single-chip TX RX solution. This is going to be a product that we're going to take into the telecom market in China with our customer BFYY and their end customers, the likes of China Mobile. That will be released at the end of Q3. We also have LR4 products, not just the one we did for ADVA, but conventional LR4, that there are at least four customers that we're sampling today. Again, will be released in Q3. We completed our beta for our 200G products. That'll be released in Q3 as well. 400G receivers have been released, 800G receivers and transmitters end of the year. You can count the number of products we're going to be releasing this year. It is insane. It's possible because of our interposer technology, the platform approach, the fact that we use known good components, and the moment we've been able to ally with some of the top optical component suppliers, we've been able to demonstrate the value that the engine provides in this context, which is converting a DML laser into an engine. With good RF, right? Enhanced capability. What POET would like to do is to be able to generate modules for 800G, which is critical not just for data communications. Custom modules in 800G are also used extensively in AI. On the other side, we have a set of remote light source products that we are still developing. I think our goal is to be able to really expand our portfolio in this space. With key investments that we want to be able to make, where we believe that we have the ability to really make a very meaningful contribution in this growing market of artificial intelligence. Not just because we might have extremely differentiated DML-based 800 gigabit modules, but also very differentiated remote light source. We've been really busy as a company. Year to date in 2023, we've announced key engagements with customers. ADVA, Luxshare. Luxshare is a billion-dollar company. They sell primarily to Apple and others, and they've got a business and an access to the hyperscale market. We're designed in already with their 800 gigabit solutions with our receivers. In fact, we've gotten initial POs. These are sample quantity POs, which is common early in the development where we provide engines for them to be able to develop their modules. BFYY, our first foray into telecom. Exposure to a really large market there, which are the mobile players, the big mobile players in the telecom space in China. The POET Infinity product line. We announced our engagement with Celestial AI with this new class of products for their applications. We've received a purchase order from them for supplying product next year. We also announced some product announcements around the lines of Infinity, announced the availability of these products, sampling of 800G. It has been a busy year. We expect that as we release more products over the next couple of quarters, to be able to announce additional customers, additional engagements. We do believe that we can keep up with what needs to be done in terms of gaining traction and gaining engagement around this platform. We have 11 current projects with seven key customers. Just these projects represent a combined $150 million of revenue potential over three years. Just these products. Nothing new. We do expect something new. We've got another bunch of products that we're planning to release over the course of the next couple of months, and we do believe that when those products are released, there will be more take-up, more engagements. Based on what our customers tell us about these products and when they intend to ramp, and their potential forecast for these products, we estimate that for POET and Super Photonics, this can be a cumulative $150 million of revenue potential. If they're successful, we're going to be successful too. It's important for us to project and plan because we need to have the manufacturing capability to be able to deliver this. That's where Super Photonics comes in, and that's where the additional investments from Sanan are going to be placed. Today, our technology and business strategy is fundamentally centered around building interposers and optical engines and providing expertise to end customers or module makers to provide finished modules. While we believe that this is a reasonable model for the legacy, if you will, or 100 gigs or 200 gigs or 400 gigs. Especially in the AI segment, we think we have to transcend beyond the optical engine and create optical modules. The future for POET is to actually create optical modules. We believe we can do that because a big portion of the optical module is already factored into the engine. We've integrated TIAs, we've integrated drivers. We've got very good RF capability on the interposer. We've got all the photonics components on the interposer. We create effectively everything except the DSP. Our intent is to add a third set of capabilities for design and development of these optical modules. We're already doing it for AI. It's a critical requirement for AI. Our intent in AI is clearly to have optical modules generated. It doesn't mean that we're not going to sell engines to module makers. I think in the advanced technology, specifically for AI, our intent would be to create optical modules. It enables the sale of our leading-edge products directly to the end customer without having to go through this middleman and this long process of getting designed in, and the iterations associated with more development to be done along the way. Reduces time to market, eliminates qualification cycles. We think it's the right thing to do. It requires some investment, and we're looking at an alternate joint venture capability that allows us to potentially fund this activity. Again, raising money with some non-dilutive financing here. In 2020, when we created the joint venture in China was in fashion. We were complimented for having done that. Today, I read the boards and, of course, everybody barfs on the fact that we have manufacturing in China. It is important to understand that it is a very large market. It is, in fact, the largest market for optics, 100-400 gigabits per second. We recognize that things have changed. There are geopolitical issues. There is likely to be more and more constraints in high-end, in AI, in AI solutions. We intend to create an alternate joint venture outside of China and follow what we would call a China plus one strategy, which a lot of customers require or demand, where we have a foot in China to support the Chinese market with China components. We have the ability to be able to manufacture outside of China as well. We're actively seeking, as I said, an additional JV partner to provide a source of independent financing for this. This is critical to POET's future, and we believe we can be very successful in this endeavor. I'm sorry, my ability to move the slides is somewhat delayed. We've done a fair bit on the investor outreach front. Our goal was to increase awareness of POET to audiences likely to invest with a focus on the U.S. We've taken various steps to do that, some popular, some not so popular. The results speak for themselves. We've had 300% growth in monthly website visits from December to June. 100% month-over-month visit growth from May. 3-to-1 U.S. visitors to Canadian visitors, which was a big thing, right? We wanted to get more presence in the U.S. Our Nasdaq volumes are finally higher than TSX Venture and has been up since December. We will continue to track and adapt, of course. Not everything that we do works beautifully. We have a path, we have a vision. We want to get something done. As with everything else, you have to tack and adapt. We are. The results speak for themselves, and we will continue to drive this going forward. In summary, we've created an innovative, patented optoelectronic integration platform technology. We believe we're the only known technology that can meet the vectors of volume, size, cost, power for future photonics products, especially in large, high-growth markets, including datacom, telecom, and AI hardware. We are partnered with some of the leading companies in the optical communication supply chain. We're engaged with several key customers now that allows us to demonstrate the technical acceptance of our solution. We are, after all, doing something that has not been done before. We are, after all, creating products that are first of its kind in the industry, and there's some degree of healthy skepticism about whether we can actually do it. That skepticism first is, can it be done technically? It's, can it actually meet specs? It's, can you actually scale this in volume? We're going through that process. Super Photonics is critical to enable market acceptance of our optical engine products. We're doing that today. They're ramping up. We have a revenue pipeline on customer engagements that provide $150 million of 3-year estimated revenues based on their projections to us, of course. There's no guarantees. They know their business, they know their customers, and they believe that they can represent to us what it would mean to us with this engagement. We expect revenue to begin in 2024, but of course, we will have production orders this year. We already do for the first half of next year, $3 million from BFYY. We expect POs this year as well. In fact, Super Photonics does have POs, but like I said, these are quantities that enable our customers to design their modules in. Although our engines are ready, we can't ramp into production till our customer, so in this case, Super Photonics' customer, can ramp their solution. In some cases, there have been some delays because they have never used optical engines before, and so it's a learning process for them as well. We kind of go through that. There are changes to our roadmap, sometimes out of our control. Our products are ready and available in sampling and providing to the customers, and then we just have to work through the process of getting them designed in. I think the light's at the end of the tunnel, we can see it. We work with these customers, and we do believe over the next couple of quarters that we should, or Super Photonics should be able to start their ramp. Right? Most significantly, we've created a significant value capture potential with Super Photonics in terms of its asset appreciation and what that can mean to POET in terms of non-dilutive financing to the company. We need it, right? We need the financing to be able to keep our roadmap, to drive our leadership, in a sense, in the AI space, to really take advantage of our existing position and grow it. We think that this is a very critical piece of how that can happen in the long term. With that, let me close, and I thank you for your time. I thank you for your attention. I thank you for your support. Go POET. Kevin, I think I hand it over to you at this point. All right. I'll jump in, I think, Suresh, with some questions from the group. Go POET indeed. Tell us what your objectives were with the ATM or at-the-market financing that was announced this morning. Oh, sorry. I think I might have been on mute. Can you repeat that? Because it just didn't come through clearly on my end. Sure. Tell us what your objectives were with the ATM or the at-the-market financing that was announced this morning? The ATM or at-the-market program, it gives POET management the flexibility to raise capital in small amounts over the course of the next year. I think there's a lot of misunderstandings associated with the mechanics of how ATM works, so I will shortly ask Tom to maybe step in and paint some color and provide some guidance there. As the ATM itself, it's the least costly method for the company to raise capital in the public markets. Low commissions compared to public offerings, no warrants attached. You're basically selling shares at market price. No discounts. The ATM programs have been common among issuers in the United States for several years and have become much more popular now recently in Canada. We believe that an ATM is an essential part of a financing strategy of a high-growth, technology-based company. The mechanics of the ATM is, I guess, misunderstood. Perhaps, Tom, you might want to take a few minutes to explain how the mechanics work. Sure. I'd be happy to, Suresh. Thank you. What I want to emphasize first is that this is not a $30 million financing that we're doing today or any time in the near future. It's very much misunderstood as being that. It's a facility that allows us, the company, to sell shares at the market price. It's a heavily regulated transaction, so we have to be cautious about whether our intervention or our sale of shares into that market moves the market at all. We're intending, over the course of the next 12 months, to take advantage of high volume days in which we believe we can sell POET shares at a reasonable and appropriate price. The way that that happens is there were two investment banks that were named in the prospectus. One is Craig-Hallum in the United States, who many of you know follows us through Richard Shannon, their analyst in the optics area. In Canada, Cormark, that has been an investment bank for us for a couple of transactions, few transactions over the past couple of years. I have access to a particular trader at each of those desks, and we convene early in the morning and see what the market activity is going to be, project what we think the market activity may be during the week, and we determine at that time whether or not we're going to be selling any shares into the market. We are totally in control of the price at which we sell shares and the number of shares that we sell. Having that kind of facility around allows us to raise capital in the public market, as Suresh said, at the lowest cost. It's a 3% commission rather than a 7% commission, and there are no warrants, and it's at the market, so we're not really competing against others who want to buy or sell our shares. It's important to remember that this is a facility that we have that we're completely in control of. It's been very common, as Suresh said, in the United States for a long time among most issuers. In Canada, because they've relaxed the rules somewhat over the last two years, it's becoming more common, and I think you'll see it in many other issuers up in Canada. We're going to be looking at both markets over time, and as I said, we have to be very cautious about not moving the market in any way, and I'm sure that the regulators will be watching that over the course of the next 12 months. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Suresh, on giving us some background on that. Following on the same topic, how does the company plan to fund itself for the next 6 to 12 months while ramping production? And does the company need or plan to raise additional capital before the end of 2023 beyond what you've already mentioned? Yeah. At current stage, we're continuously evaluating the capital required to operate the business and execute on our ongoing strategic initiatives. As part of this process, we're actively considering several potential alternative non-dilutive means of bringing in additional capital. As mentioned in the presentation, we believe that our equity in SPX is a valuable asset that is not obvious in our financial statements. We have been approached by private equity companies interested in owning a piece of that operation, which both JV partners believe is a good prospect for an IPO in China. Once SPX begins to generate revenue, we expect its value to increase exponentially. In addition, in connection with our plan to sell modules, we believe that there are good opportunities to form additional joint ventures. If we were to create a new JV for module production, we would expect to structure it in a way to both provide capital to POET and also to allow us to consolidate its results in our financial statements. Okay. Moving on to a question on some of our early adopters, our early customers. When do we expect to be in production or have received initial orders from ADVA and FiberTop for some of the POET legacy that they are contracting? As I said, I think initial orders, we've had it, we've delivered it. The SPX has rather. I think the key thing is how quickly can they complete their module design. It's gone through some iterations. These are companies not used to working with optical engines. In the case of ADVA, like I said, 16 channels in a QSFP-DD, never been done before. They're going through some learning curves on their end, right? Our designs are complete, the product's ready, but we believe they're close, and they do have an end market that they can sell into. Their customers are waiting, so there's motivation and vested interest on the part of them to finish their module design. We expect that this happens over the course of this quarter, honestly. I think now that we have the ability to travel to China, and I believe Raju is there next week, we're going to be able to get much better engagement with them and hasten their development in the case of FiberTop, for example. ADVA, they're engaged. We've got weekly meetings. It's hard to project and predict exactly when they're going to ramp. You know what I mean? This has been our challenge as well, and that our product's ready. We will release it at the end of this coming quarter in Q3, but does that mean it ramps immediately? Probably not, but it's not very far. For sure, it's not a question of if and when, but rather when. The opportunity is there. The value potential is there. We need our customer, in a sense, to begin their ramp, which we do expect to happen in 2024. Like I said, initial production will start at the end of this year, but really the meaningful production will be in 2024. That's largely given their schedule, right? It's hard for us to really push that on our end aggressively. I think the best we can do is to release the product and have it available and work with them closely, which is what the team's doing, to enable their design to be completed. Okay. Terrific. On to a couple of questions or back to the stock price as a topic. Two questions on that. What strategy is being employed to attract new institutional investors, and what gives you the confidence it will be effective? Look, over the past 18 months, I think it's about the time we moved to the Nasdaq or about the time Russia invaded Ukraine, whichever way you look at it. We have participated in nine Wall Street-focused conferences targeted at institutional retail investors in the U.S. We remain engaged with and distributed all announced business developments with a sizable number of institutional investor targets, which are continuing to follow POET's progress. We've also stayed actively engaged with multiple sell-side research analysts, including our existing covering analysts such as Richard Shannon at Craig-Hallum, who initiated last year and has continued to provide POET with much broader exposure. He is highly recognized in the industry. He covers Lumentum and some of the larger companies, right? So he knows what he's talking about, and I think he's respected and recognized. Additionally, we have been driving increased visibility through participation and presentations at industry trade shows. I think just this week, we had a video that was actually in Chinese, created by Mo, that got a lot of inbound traction when it was published at the industry trade show there. This all contributes to elevated awareness, not just among customers, but also tech-oriented investors. Okay. What else is the company doing to increase the current share price? Look, as shareholders ourselves, we're always looking at new ways to support our stock price and attract new investors. Our top priority as a management team is to create shareholder value through continued execution on our business plan and begin generating a sustainable and growing revenue stream. To the extent that we are successful in capturing even a portion of the available market opportunity, we believe the stock price will ultimately reflect that value appropriately. To help further expand our investor outreach efforts, in January, we retained Stockhouse to help execute an advertising and marketing campaign that has seen increased interest through website visitation as well as expanded awareness via newsletters and digital marketing. In April, we engaged HE Capital Markets for distribution of our company's content on InvestorsHub and Wall Street Silver Services. We also continue to actively participate in Wall Street-focused events, conferences, speaking opportunities. The one thing I'd like to point out is that POET stock is up, what, over 40% year to date. Even over the past 12 months, we've kind of meaningfully outperformed a large majority of publicly traded micro-cap tech companies. It's not been an easy market, folks. There's still dissatisfaction, obviously. What we can do is manage what is in our control, and that is execute our roadmap, which we've been doing, and you've seen it. We've provided our roadmap, and we periodically give you updates, and we're on track. What do you think, then, Suresh, based on this activity, that POET's valuation should be now based on the progress that you've outlined and what we've made this year? I don't think it's my job to comment on valuation, so I don't think I'm going to answer that question. Okay. Let's have one here on when can we expect to see additional buying and/or exercising of warrants by insiders? Look, I think most of the warrants are done. There's probably a single tranche of warrants left in August. Yeah. Like I said, I don't control what other management members of the board do in POET. We're all independent folks. Yeah, I don't think there's a lot more warrants left, honestly, to be exercised than we'd like to keep it that way going forward, too. Okay. With the stock trading where it is today, how committed is management and the board to resisting a potential unsolicited buyout offer at an attractive valuation? Look, our interest is in building long-term shareholder value. I think we recognize and understand the value we bring, and we recognize and understand the value that is achievable. I don't think this is a concern that existing shareholders need to have. I think we all collectively are vested in doing what is necessary to drive shareholder value at valuations that we believe accurately represents what we offer in the industry, right? What we offer to this large and growing market, especially in AI. Okay. We have a question here about competitors, both. Well, let's go with NVIDIA. They're currently the kings of the AI market. How could POET enhance their offering? Look, I think NVIDIA are the kings of the AI market because they create highly parallel computing infrastructure with their GPUs. They tie it up with large amounts of memory and sell these DGX boxes at $30,000-$40,000 a pop. I think going forward, data center servers are going to incorporate NVIDIA graphics processors and so on and so forth. Yes, they're a graphics company. They are kings there. I think how POET helps is by providing the means to communicate either between graphics and memory or by providing the means to communicate between servers. Today, much of that is done either by 800G transceiver modules. They look like transceiver modules, but they're custom specifically for AI. They can take the form of photonic fabrics, and other such applications that there are other companies driving. The AI segment is kind of bifurcated, right? One is there's just a growth or a need for a lot of optics, and that is bifurcated into kind of transceiver-like form factors, which we play into, and then into photonic fabric like form factors with new companies and upcoming companies that, again, we play into by providing remote light sources. I think we're well-covered in terms of what we can do and are actively working to intercept this very large growth market over the next couple of years. Okay. Of the 11 current contracted projects that you stated having today, which one or two represent the largest near-term revenue opportunities? I guess this is specifically with our products and our customers. What are the remaining steps to convert these opportunities into revenue? Well, I think for most part, these are committed projects. I think we're going through the development phases in the case of companies like Celestial and their projected volumes to us. Those are products that are committed, and we have POs we have to deliver. The team's working on finishing up that design by the end of this year. We have a PO to deliver a certain number of those engines by the end of 2024 for a larger ramp next year. In most of those, except for one, I believe, which is still in evaluation by the customer, there are commitments to use the products they are designed in. It's not, to me, a question of if, then, it's a question of when. That, when depends less on POET's readiness and more on our customers' ability to convert that into a module design and then ultimately take it and be successful in the market. On balance, I think we're well positioned there with really good potential. Okay, regarding Ayar Labs, do you view them as a competitor or a potential partner? Neither. I view them as a customer, a potential customer. They are one of the companies that have a Photonic Fabric. They also require a remote light source, and we believe we have a good technical solution. There have been dialogues and discussions, and we hope at some point that we can convert that opportunity into a real engagement. Sticking with the products and the optical interposer, how far behind are competitors to what the optical interposer can do? I'm sorry. I think you have to repeat that question, please. How far behind are the competitors to the Optical Interposer and what it's able to deliver to the market? Look, I have yet to see. I've said this publicly before. I think the only company that had capability or at least a vision very similar to what POET was discussing and talking about was Rockley Photonics. They ultimately were not successful in creating these products and data communications. We've successfully sampled 800G receivers. We've come a long ways relative to what others thought they could do, but couldn't ultimately do it. Now, outside of them, I'm not seeing too many solutions. Sorry. No, that's good. Regarding the LightBar, have other companies tested the LightBar family of products, and how are those samples being received, and can we expect future announcements? Yeah. I think there's a little bit of ambiguity among the customer base, especially as it relates to co-packaged optics or remote lasers. It is a very custom market. It's kind of a wild west right now. There's no kind of standards. What Ayar Labs uses is something completely different. What Celestial AI wants is something completely different. What Lightmatter uses, something completely different. Lightelligence is completely different. They're all different, right? In a sense, it plays to our strength because we've got a platform. We have the ability to adopt these solutions. But it's also difficult because we keep sampling and talking to customers, and they change their requirements and needs. Sometimes it's 4 channels. It grows to 8, and then it's 12. Yeah, I think the good thing is we've got the right products and we've got the relationships and the engagement. We do believe that, as those requirements and needs develop and coalesce into something, we will have the solutions available for them. Today, our primary focus is to ensure a successful deployment on Celestial AI. Honestly, if they are half as successful as they think they're going to be and have represented in their forecast that I'm sure you can read up, you can see how lucrative just simply that is going to be for this company. Then you add one or two. I think the intent is really not to go. We're not here trying to get numbers in terms of customers. We're trying to get wins. Win with the winners, right? We think if we can just convert a couple of them, these are really, really large opportunities ahead of us. I've got one here on that I know the team is excited about this application with thin-film lithium niobate. Can you comment on that, and how is that progressing? It's a technology of the future. The important thing is that we have the ability to incorporate new and upcoming components onto our Interposer. Look, thin-film lithium niobate is not going to be ready for prime time in terms of commercial volumes for at least three years. I think it's something that we're engaged with, in this case, lithium niobate on insulator, and we're working with them in parallel. We've also got to focus on products that we know are imminently required. We are initiating our development programs around our 200 gig per lane EML-based solutions, that those are the most mature solutions for 200 gigabit per lane today. Lithium niobate will be there at some point, but I think we need to work with components that are ready today, and leverage them fast and rapidly, and not keep betting the farm on some future. I think we made that mistake a year and a half ago with waiting for a silicon photonics modulator to be available, and we lost a year on our roadmap, and I don't think we're ready to make that mistake again. No, certainly not. Lots going on with the company. I don't see any more questions, Suresh, so I'm just going to throw it back to you for some closing remarks. Yeah. Well, it's been an exciting year so far. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, for sure. We've had shareholders that have either expressed good satisfaction or dissatisfaction, that I'm hoping that we can all coalesce around the fact that we, over the past five years, have developed something that is new, that is unique. We're committed as a team to drive progress. We're committed as a team to ensure success. We do believe that we've got as a company the products to be able to leverage this new and rapidly growing area of AI, which is going to provide tremendous opportunity to everybody in photonics, including POET, right? The good thing is we're well positioned to capitalize on it because it kind of plays to our strengths. I'm kind of stoked about that, looking forward to the future. As always, thank you for your continued support. Very good. Thank you, Suresh. Really appreciate the comments that you made, and we appreciate the videos that were shown. I am sure the shareholders and participants and guests also appreciate what was disclosed and reported here today. We want to express our gratitude to everyone who's participated, and thank you to the Lumi platform for making this available to us today. Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of the meeting. We want to extend our gratitude to you for your continued support, and we look forward to joining with you again at future meetings. Please have yourselves a good, safe, and enjoyable Canada Day long weekend and July 4th long weekend. Thank you all.