On Wednesday, Lightwave Logic (NASDAQ:LWLG) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

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Summary

Lightwave Logic Inc reported a revenue of $29,000 for Q1 2026, marking a 27% year-over-year increase, with a net loss of $6.3 million.

The company emphasized the importance of its electro optic polymer platform in addressing AI infrastructure challenges, highlighting growing market opportunities in AI and data center optical transceiver markets projected to reach $47 billion by 2028.

Key strategic initiatives include strengthening customer engagement, with four major customers at the prototyping stage, and expanding manufacturing capabilities in Denver to support high volume production.

The company is focusing on integrating its technology with the silicon photonics ecosystem, positioning itself as complementary to silicon photonics rather than a competitor.

Lightwave Logic Inc maintains a strong cash position with approximately $100 million, supporting its strategic initiatives and long-term growth plans.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings and welcome to Lightwave Logic Inc Q1 2026 financial results and Business Update Conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone requires operator assistance during the conference call, please signal the operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host for today, Ryan Coleman, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Ryan Coleman (Investor Relations)

Thank you Operator and good afternoon everyone. Thanks for joining us today for Lightwave Logic Inc first quarter 2026 financial results and Business Update Call. I'm joined on today's call by Lightwave Logic Inc President and Chief Executive Officer Eve Lumet. Please note that this call is in listen only mode for the duration of the call and that a replay will be posted to the company's website shortly after the call concludes. Some of the matters we'll discuss on this call, including statements and our business outlook, are forward looking and as such, this call speaks only as of today, May 13th, 2026. Such statements may be considered forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform act of 1995. The matters discussed on this call are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, and these risks and uncertainties could cause actual operating results to differ materially from those expressed in the call. A more detailed description of the risks our company faces is more fully described by the company under the caption risk factors included in our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. As always, Lightwave Logic Inc assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Lastly, you are cautioned that any time sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of replay listening or transcript reading. With that, I'll turn the call over to Eve.

Eve Lumet (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. We appreciate the continued support of our shareholders, partners, employees and everyone following Lightwave Logic as we advance our mission. During one of the most transformative periods in technology history, the world is currently experiencing a profound AI revolution. Artificial intelligence is no longer an emerging concept, it is becoming the foundational driver of innovation, productivity and global economic growth. From hyperscale data centers to edge computing and next generation AI factories, AI is reshaping how information is created, processed, transmitted and consumed. At the center of this transformation is a growing the need for dramatically faster, more efficient and scalable data movement. AI connectivity is becoming just as critical as computing power itself. As AI models grow exponentially in size and complexity, traditional electronic interconnects are approaching their physical limits and need to be replaced by photonic solutions. This is where the convergence of semiconductors and photonics becomes essential. The future of AI infrastructure will depend on technologies that can deliver higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, increased density and scalable manufacturing solutions, as demonstrated by major financial investments in several optical and semiconductor companies and the high MNA activity in the sector. Photonics is recognized as a critical technology for the next generation of AI networking architectures and we believe that Lightwave Logic Inc is uniquely positioned at the intersection of these two worlds. Our Perkinamine electro-optic polymer platform was designed precisely for this evolution. By combining the scalability of semiconductor manufacturing with the performance advantages of advanced photonics, we believe that Lightwave Logic Inc is positioned to help address some of the most important challenges facing AI infrastructure over the coming decade. Over the past year we have remained focused not only on advancing our technology, but also on strengthening execution across the company. We recognize the importance of credibility, transparency and disciplined operational progress. We have worked hard to restore confidence through measurable execution, technical advancement, stronger ecosystem engagement and a continued focus on commercial readiness. While we are satisfied with the meaningful progress we've made, we also recognize that our work continues. Our commitment remains clear to demonstrate steady and sustainable progress across the technical, commercial and operational dimensions of the business. First, let's take a look at our progress towards commercialization and revenue generation. Our primary target market keeps expanding rapidly. If we compare the updated market opportunity to what we presented about a year ago, the evolution is quite significant and we believe it reflects the extraordinary acceleration taking place across AI infrastructure and optical networking markets a year ago. Our TAM for 2028 analysis highlighted approximately 24 billion in combined addressable markets across AI, data center and telecom application with a serviceable addressable market (SAM) estimated at approximately $1 to $2.5 billion for electro-optic polymer modulators, depending on the level of integration. At that time, the industry was already recognizing the importance of photonics and high speed interconnects, but the scale and urgency of AI driven infrastructure demand had not yet fully emerged. Over the last 12 months, however, the market environment has evolved dramatically. Today, AI has clearly become the primary driver of networking infrastructure. The rapid scaling of large language models, AI clusters, XPU to XPU communications and co packaged optics architectures has materially increased projected bandwidth requirements across the industry. That acceleration is reflected directly in our updated TAM analysis. Our AI and data center combined optical transceiver time alone in 2028 has expanded from approximately 17 billion to approximately 47 billion, driven by a substantial increase in projected deployments of 1.6 terabit and 3.2 terabit transceivers and co package optics operating at 200 Gbps and beyond per lane. In addition, the demand for high speed coherent or coherent light pluggable transceivers is now fast growing with Data Center Interconnect (DCI) or scale across inter campus connections. As a result of these industry dynamics, our estimated serviceable addressable market has also expanded meaningfully from approximately 1 to 2.5 billion previously to an estimated range of approximately $2 to $4 billion today. Let's look in more detail at our progress on the customer front. We continue to see encouraging growth in customer engagement and market traction as industry participants increasingly evaluate novel materials to address the performance and power challenges associated with AI networking. In particular, the performance, size and manufacturing challenges of indium phosphide based EML transceivers for scale out and thin film lithium niobate modulators for scalocross continue to open new doors for electro-optic polymers following the recently announced acquisition of Polariton by Marvell, we now have four major customers, all Fortune 500 or Fortune Global 500 companies. At stage three or prototyping of our Design Win pipeline, we expect one or two additional tier one customers to reach stage three before the end of the third quarter of 2026. Today, one of the primary factors affecting the pace of new customer engagement and our progression to stage four or manufacturing is the exceptionally strong demand for silicon photonic wafers and devices. The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure has placed significant pressure on the limited number of foundries capable of supporting advanced silicon photonics manufacturing at scale. As a result, wafer tape out and fabrication cycle times are longer than normal. This is particularly true for emerging technologies such as electro-optic polymers where foundries must allocate specialized tools and engineering resources while balancing existing production commitments and capacity expansion. Despite these industry wide supply constraints, we continue to make steady progress with our customers. We expect to receive multiple device multiple devices from our foundry partners during the third and fourth quarter of 2026. In parallel, we are negotiating a new material supply and licensing agreement with one of our lead customer to support high volume production which is anticipated to begin in 2027. As a background to our increased success with customers, let me highlight a structural technology shift taking place in our industry today. The rapid emergence of silicon photonics as the preferred integration platform for optical interconnects over the past several years, the optical transceiver market has evolved from a specialized communication market into a foundational enabling technology for hyperscale cloud and AI. What we are seeing now is that silicon photonics is clearly winning the Integration Platform transition Industry forecasts project that the optical transceiver market could grow to more than $$70 billion by 2030 represent a very significant growth trajectory over the next several years. More importantly, silicon photonics is expected to become the dominant technology platform within that market, growing from approximately 23% market share in 2021 to an estimated greater than greater than 70% market share by 2030. There are several reasons driving this transition. First, silicon photonics enables higher levels of integration and scalability that align very well with the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. As AI clusters continue to scale, bandwidth requirements increase exponentially. The industry needs technology that can support very high volume manufacturing, tighter integration with electronic ICs and improved power efficiency. Second, silicon photonics provides a pathway towards CO package optics and advanced optical interconnect architectures which are becoming increasingly important as conventional electrical interconnect solutions based on copper encounter power density and bandwidth limitations. The level of strategic investment and acquisition activity we are seeing across the industry strongly validates this transition. Companies including AMD, Marvell, Samsung Global Foundries, CREDO and others are making significant investment in silicon photonics capabilities, optical integration technologies and co package optics platform. These are not isolated developments, they reflect a broad industry consensus that optical integration with silicon will be critical for the future. This trend is highly relevant to Lightwave Logic Inc. Our electro-optic polymer platform is not competing against silicon photonics. It is designed to enhance and enable silicon photonics. We believe our materials can provide meaningful performance advantage in areas such as speed, power efficiency, footprint reduction, manufacturability while remaining compatible with silicon photonics and semiconductor ecosystems. In many ways, the increasing adoption of silicon photonics strengthens the strategic relevance of our technology because it expands the overall market opportunity for high performance modulators. One of the most important developments for lightwave logic over the past several years has been the growing adoption and integration of our electro-optic polymer technology within the broader silicon photonics foundry ecosystem,. The industry recognizes that scalable deployment of optical interconnect technologies requires compatibility with established semiconductor manufacturing platforms, standardized process design kits and mature foundry workflows. As a result, our strategy has focused on embedding our polymer modulator technology directly into leading silicon photonics ecosystem through partnerships and PDK integrations with organizations such as Tower Semiconductor, Global Foundry, so the GDS factory ecosystem and Siltera with Duseda Photonics. These integrations are important because they enable designers and customers to access our technology at the foundry of their choice, accelerate development cycles and support future high volume manufacturing pathways. We believe this represents a significant validation of the compatibility and manufacturing of our platform within commercial silicon photonic infrastructure. In addition, our recent announcement regarding the advancement of PDK PDK 1.1 further demonstrates continued progress towards expanding functionality, improving design and supporting ultra high speed device architectures. Collectively, these developments reinforce our view that foundries will play a central role not only in scalable manufacturing, but also in enabling our long term IP licensing and commercialization strategies. We believe that the current capacity, equipment and process constraints experienced at various silicon foundries will gradually disappear over the next 12 months as major investments and entry of new players will balance supply and demand both for new design as well as for production requirements. One quick update on our progress in demonstrating the reliability of electro-optic polymers not just as a novel material but also when integrated integrated into full devices over the past year, Lightwave Logic Inc has continued to make significant technical progress in demonstrating the long term reliability and stability of our electro-optic polymer platform, an important milestone for commercial developed deployment within demanding data center, telecom and AI networking environments. Historically, reliability has been viewed as one of the primary technical challenges associated with organic materials and we believe our recent results demonstrate meaningful progress in addressing those industry concerns. As highlighted in our recent technical updates and press releases, our latest generation materials have successfully passed key tachycardia related stress testing when combined with our proprietary encapsulation approaches validating projected long term thermal stability and and environmental robustness. Our data indicates excellent resistance to critical degradation mechanisms such as loss of polling efficiency, chromophore decomposition and photooxidation under accelerated stress conditions including high temperature and high humidity environments such as 85 degrees Celsius, 85% relative humidity testing. In parallel, we continue advancing both chip level and device level reliability studies to validate long term operational stability under real world integration conditions. We believe our recent reliability results at the device level represent another important step towards commercial readiness. Now let's talk about intellectual property for a minute as we expect this topic to be highly relevant in the future. Electro optic polymers offer what we believe is a highly compelling alternative to traditional modulator materials such as indium phosphide or INP and thin film lithium niobate or TFLN. Electro optic polymers combine several important very high electro optic efficiency, ultra high bandwidth, lower drive voltage, compact device footprints and the potential for significantly reduced power consumption. In addition, polymer materials can be processed using scalable semiconductor manufacturing techniques and integrating with existing silicon photonics platform. Lightwave Logic Inc's intellectual property strategy is designed to build broad and defensible protection across the entire electro-optic polymer technology stack, extending well beyond individual materials to encompass device architectures, fabrication processes, integration methodologies and advanced packaging approaches. Our objective has been to create a comprehensive patent portfolio that supports long term commercialization, reinforces our strategic position within the silicon photonics ecosystem and enables multiple options for monetization including licensing and technology partnerships. Today, our portfolio includes both granted and pending US and international patents covering critical aspects of high performance electro optic, materials modulator and device engineering, semiconductor integration techniques, manufacturing scalability and packaging solution. We believe this broad IP foundation is particularly important as the industry moves towards more complex photonic electronic integration architectures where system level, know how and manufacturability becomes increasingly valuable. Compare competitive differentiators in addition, our recent announcement regarding our engagement with Michael Best further reinforces our commitment to strengthening and expanding our intellectual property position as we continue advancing our commercialization and licensing initiatives. Finally, let me summarize our financial Results for the first quarter of 2026, Lightwavelogic continued to maintain a strong financial position while increasing investments aligned with our technical development, commercialization activities and strategic growth initiatives. Revenue for the quarter was approximately $29,000, representing a 27% year over year increase. Net loss for the quarter was $6.3 million or $0.04 per share compared to a net loss of 4.7 million in the prior year period, while loss per share remained flat year over year. Importantly, our increased operating expenses reflect continued investment in research and development, customer engagement activities, foundry ecosystem, integration, intellectual property expansion and organizational capabilities necessary to support future commercialization efforts. R and D investments increased to $3.5 million as we continued advancing device performance, reliability, validation and integration activities while GNA expenses increased primarily due to strategic operational initiatives. We ended the quarter with a very strong cash position of approximately $75 million in cash and equivalents, providing substantial financial flexibility to support execution of our strategic roadmap and long term growth objectives. Since the end of the first quarter of 2026, we have used up the shelf put in place in August of 2024. As a result, our cash on hand as of May 11, 2026 is approximately $$100 million. In summary, we believe the opportunity in front of us is significant and we remain focused on building long term value for our shareholders while positioning Lightwave Logic Inc to play an important role in the future of AI networking and photonic integration. Now let me turn the call over to Ryan for our Q and A session.

Ryan Coleman (Investor Relations)

Ryan thanks Eve. When we announced this call, we invited investors to submit questions ahead of time. We'd like to thank the investors who continue to take the time to do so and we appreciate your continued engagement on these calls. Our first question Size is important for Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) and TFLN may struggle because it is too big. Does this change the competitive landscape and does TFLN remain a major competitor today?

Eve Lumet (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Well first, each one of the AI connectivity sub segments scale up, scale out and scale across can benefit from the characteristics of our Perkinamine materials for scale up and CPO in particular. Size is becoming a fundamental constraint due to the limited real estate available at the edge of the XPU or the switch ASIC for scale out, power speed and size are all critical and finally, scale across is pushing the limits of modulator bandwidth. Electro-optic polymers is one platform that can address all of these applications. Unlike other technologies such as Indium phosphide or TFLN, both having to deal with power size and high volume manufacturing challenges, Well, as you know, this acquisition just closed and we make it a rule of not commenting on the specifics of potential or existing customers under NDA. Let me say though, congratulations to Marvell on acquiring a leader in plasmonic solutions. We envision plasmonics to become a critical technology beyond 400 Gbps. What I can tell you about Marvell is just like any other customers, we will work very hard to deserve their business going forward and we are looking forward in engaging with them. Yes, As we discussed earlier, this is one of our main advantages due to the flexibility of the Perkinamine Electro Optic Polymer platform. As a matter of fact, recently the scale across market has been very active and we are following closely the roadmap for this coherent light, coherent and Data Center Interconnect (DCI) pluggable solution that are pushing the modulator bandwidth requirements. Well, this is a very active program here in Denver. We are setting up a new Perkinamine production line, commissioning new equipment and hiring process and production personnel to be ready to ramp production here in Denver. At this point in time we have not engaged in developing a redundant manufacturing infrastructure. Excellent question. We have not talked publicly about plans for expanding our capacity. Today we are performing in house back end of line, which is a deposition and encapsulation of the polymers. In Denver, we might go to High volume Manufacturing partners in the future. This is a topic we will address in future updates. What I can share at this point in time is that we are talking to multiple partners about this topic.

Ryan Coleman (Investor Relations)

Thanks, Eve. A brief marketing note before we conclude today's call. The company will be virtually attending the Needham Technology, Media and Consumer Conference tomorrow, May 14th,. Investors that are interested in meeting with the company should contact their Needham representative and also a reminder that the annual shareholder meeting will be held virtually next Thursday, May 21st, at 10:00am Mountain Time. Thank you all again for joining us today. We look forward to sharing our progress and discussing the exciting developments at the company that are underway.

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