Dr. Michael
Lebby to Host Fireside Chat with Benzinga All-Access Hosts
at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time
Today
ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Dec. 4, 2023
/PRNewswire/ -- Lightwave Logic, Inc. (NASDAQ: LWLG), a
technology platform company leveraging its proprietary
electro-optic (EO) polymers to transmit data at higher speeds with
less power in a small form factor, today issued a letter to
shareholders from its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr.
Michael Lebby.
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
2023 has been a transformational year for Lightwave Logic,
underscored by the first commercial material supply and license
agreement for our electro-optic polymer materials and ongoing
efforts to build on this commercialization momentum. Throughout the
year we focused on industry awareness efforts, evangelizing the
benefits of our platform at leading industry events globally. We
received the "2023 Most Innovative Product – Hybrid PIC/Optical
Integration Platform Award at this year's ECOC Exhibition Industry.
We are engaging with a variety of companies to discuss product
design, device prototype sampling, and material supply and
licensing agreements. Operationally, we completed the expansion of
our new laboratory production facilities and added key team members
to enable our anticipated growth. Supporting these efforts, we
continued to fortify our intellectual property position with new
patent issuances and patent applications.
Commercialization of EO Polymer Materials
We signed a four (4) year material supply and license agreement
for Perkinamine® in May 2023 with a
company designing and providing polymer based photonic devices and
photonic integrated circuits (PICs). We believe this agreement
demonstrates tangible commercial progress for electro-optic
polymers as well as market acceptance. We made significant progress
throughout the year, with delivery of material to support our
licensee.
Per the terms of the non-exclusive material supply and license
agreement, the licensee shall pay Lightwave Logic a running royalty
with a minimum royalty paid on an annual basis over the term of the
License Agreement. Revenue will be generated from royalties from
the licensee's sale of licensed products.
In addition to this first licensee, we continue to receive
strong interest from other potential customers in our innovative
device platform and licensing our technologies. We are working hard
to close additional commercial agreements by year end, but since,
these are long deliberate processes, we can't guarantee that we
will do so. We are presently working with a wide spectrum of
companies including multinational tier-1 corporations which
manufacture data communications network equipment. Several tier-1
manufacturers have also requested to meet and test our polymer
modulators, while fiber optic transceiver companies have expressed
interest in learning how to implement our polymer modulators into
their ongoing 800G transceiver development programs. Also of note,
we are planning to implement our PIC designs using commercial
semiconductor foundries for multi-channel polymer modulator
engines, including 4 channel solutions for 800G. We believe these
constructive discussions are positioning us to capitalize on our
momentum with additional licensees as we continue to build
excitement around our technology.
Facility & Team in Place to Support
Commercialization
During the year we aligned operations with our commercial
business plans with a significant laboratory expansion to support
volume scale of our EO chromophore materials and new commercial
activity. We completed new laboratory production facilities,
expanding the corporate facility in Englewood, Colorado by nearly 10,000 square
feet for a total of approximately 23,500 square feet. The
renovations and installation of new laboratory and engineering
facilities expands the size of our facility by over 65%, enabling
commercial device testing and evaluation, product reliability
testing, high speed optical characterization, SEM analysis and the
expansion of our chemical synthesis production line. The facilities
are being utilized to provide Perkinamine® chromophore materials
for polymer based photonic devices and PICs, and the multiple
requests for our prototypes.
To support our commercialization advancement, we added several
new key team members in 2023. At the staff level, these new team
members included organic chemists as well as additional photonics
design, packaging, reliability engineers, and finance personnel to
further enhance our in-house capabilities.
At the Board level, the Board of Directors appointed respected
industry executive Laila Partridge
to the Board. Laila brings a 30+ year track record of executing
transactions in the technology space. Her knowledge of both the
fiber optic communications markets as well as non-communications
markets (such as artificial intelligence, consumer, display,
sensing, medical, biotech, etc.) will help us hone business
strategies for growing our electro-optic polymer business.
Fortifying Our Intellectual Property Portfolio
We continued to fortify our intellectual property portfolio in
2023 with two new U.S. patents issued and one patent allowed, and
expected to be issued in the near future. In addition, we had a
further six patent applications published, outlining new
inventions to further improve our technology offering. One
notable patent issuance was for continued advanced chemical
structural design and process that enhances the overall efficiency
of poling non-linear organic optical chromophores while
simultaneously improving thermal and photostability above what is
already an acceptable performance. Finally, we received a patent
for a cutting-edge design technique, enhancing the performance of
polymer modulators through the use of an innovative polymer
cladding design that is amenable for high-volume foundry
fabrication when integrated with silicon photonics. This allows our
proprietary polymers to perform more effectively and to be
fabricated by silicon foundries in a high-volume manufacturing
environment.
Taken together, these new patents showcase the depth of our
achievements to the industry and position us for ubiquity. We
continue to file patents to strengthen our position in the areas of
organic chemistry, polymer device fabrication and design, and
polymer device packaging.
Groundbreaking Results & Performance Metrics
Beyond patents for our technology, we also made several
incredible achievements from a performance perspective. Our latest
commercial-class EO polymer material achieved breakthrough
performance metrics at 1310 nanometers (nm), a wavelength popular
in hyperscale datacenter applications. The achievement of these
results at the 1310nm bandwidth positions us well for potential
near-term licensing opportunities in datacenter applications. We
also achieved record optical modulator performance using our latest
Perkinamine® Series 5 material at extremely low cryogenic
temperatures, delivering the potential to revolutionize
applications in supercomputers, quantum circuits and advanced
computing systems.
Commercial Outreach & Business Development
Throughout the year we continued to maintain industry thought
leadership through speaking at key industry conferences worldwide.
We recently participated in an industry panel discussion at the
Optica Photonic-Enabled Cloud Computing Industry Summit, focusing
on bringing world leading companies together in the supply chain to
discuss the innovations and deployment of optics in data center
applications and beyond. Earlier in the year, we also presented and
participated in industry panels at the Photonics Spectra Conference
and Laser Focus World Executive Forum events – further building
thought leadership. Notably, we were again invited to co-chair the
Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC) International Conference – with
prominent positions at impactful industry events such as these
representing a key driver of the accelerating interest for our
technology that we have seen this year.
These industry conferences not only provide an opportunity to
evangelize the benefits of our platform to industry leaders, but
also serve as forums to hold constructive meetings with decision
makers at our target customer companies. At these meetings we
receive insight on where end-users are heading and what performance
they are looking for from polymer modulator technologies, and we
have received multiple requests for prototypes and licensing
inquiries as a result.
Market Positioning with Artificial Intelligence
During 2023, we positioned ourselves to show value for internet
and optical network operators in the growing artificial
intelligence (AI) markets. We have seen that our technology
platform dovetails perfectly with the increased generation of
information and data that needs to be communicated using fiber
optic interconnects and datacenters in general. We all are
aware that AI has been integrated deeper within our daily
activities with applications to make us more efficient and possibly
smarter. The impact on the internet is huge, and the internet is
based on an optical network that utilizes data centers to route and
switch traffic or information to and from destinations.
Data centers are being upgraded today in a fashion that the
industry has not seen before. The expected demands of increased
traffic, information, and data driven by AI is changing the way the
internet is being operated. AI is now creating new and interesting
market opportunities to upgrade the internet. Three of these are
important today: density, speed, and low power and these are very
well aligned with our high performance electro-optic polymers.
We are designing high performance polymer modulator optical engines
to support the rise and growth of AI as it generates more
information that will travel through the internet and optical
networks.
Today's Benzinga All-Access Interview
I will be hosting a fireside chat today with the hosts of the
Benzinga All-Access show to discuss this shareholder letter, recent
milestone achievements and potential near-term catalysts. Webcast
details are shown below.
Benzinga All-Access Show
Date: Monday, December 4, 2023
Presentation Time: 11:30 a.m. Eastern time
Webcast:
https://youtube.com/live/CEZ51a_HTpY?feature=share
I would encourage all of our shareholders to tune in for the
discussion. A live audio webcast and an archived replay will be
available using the webcast link above.
2024 Goals & Final Thoughts
In 2023, we validated our business plan with the initial
commercialization of our technology. Our progress was further
validated by positive discussions for potential future licensing
agreements with a variety of companies. Our technology continues to
be recognized for driving innovative change in our industry.
Looking ahead, with the team, technology, intellectual property
assets and operational capabilities in place to support our
commercialization at scale, we firmly believe that we are well
positioned for a future of electro-optic polymer ubiquity. As we
move through 2024, we expect continued momentum in our material
supply and license agreement program and product design platform
that will expand on an exciting new era of commercialization to
help to make our next-generation technologies truly ubiquitous in
the global internet infrastructure of the future. At no time in
history have I been more confident of Lightwave Logic's potential,
and I look forward to sharing exciting new milestones during the
balance of this year and in the next year to come.
Sincerely,
Dr. Michael Lebby
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
About Lightwave Logic, Inc.
Lightwave Logic, Inc.
(NASDAQ: LWLG) develops a platform leveraging its proprietary
engineered electro-optic (EO) polymers to transmit data at higher
speeds with less power in a small form factor. The company's
high-activity and high-stability organic polymers allow Lightwave
Logic to create next-generation photonic EO devices, which convert
data from electrical signals into optical signals, for applications
in data communications and telecommunications markets. For more
information, please visit the company's website
at lightwavelogic.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
The information posted in this
release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning
of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can
identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will,"
"should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates,"
"continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar
expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially
from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties
include, but are not limited to, lack of available funding; general
economic and business conditions; competition from third parties;
intellectual property rights of third parties; regulatory
constraints; changes in technology and methods of marketing; delays
in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs;
changes in customer order patterns; changes in product mix; success
in technological advances and delivering technological innovations;
shortages in components; production delays due to performance
quality issues with outsourced components; those events and factors
described by us in Item 1.A "Risk Factors" in our most recent Form
10-K and 10-Q; other risks to which our company is subject; other
factors beyond the company's control.
Investor Relations Contact:
Lucas A. Zimmerman
MZ Group - MZ North America
949-259-4987
LWLG@mzgroup.us
www.mzgroup.us
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SOURCE Lightwave Logic, Inc.