On Thursday, Vuzix (NASDAQ:VUZI) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

This content is powered by Benzinga APIs. For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/.

Access the full call at https://event.choruscall.com/mediaframe/webcast.html?webcastid=y18QpYGD

Summary

Vuzix Corporation reported a 14% decline in total revenues for Q2 2026, with product sales accounting for $0.9 million and a gross loss of $0.6 million, showing a 15% improvement from the previous year.

The company is focusing on three growth pillars: enterprise smart glasses, OEM products and solutions, and waveguides, with AI driving new opportunities and improving software integration for enterprise smart glasses.

Vuzix is collaborating with major corporations like Amazon and an unnamed tier-one automotive manufacturer for OEM solutions, and progressing with defense projects including initial production for Collins Aerospace waveguide-based AR display systems.

R&D expenses increased by 20% to $3.1 million due to new product development, while sales and marketing expenses decreased by 11% to $1.2 million.

The company has $17.3 million in cash and no long-term debt, with plans to continue investing in its waveguide manufacturing capabilities in Rochester, New York.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Greetings and welcome to Vuzix Corporation's Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the call, please press star-0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I'd like to turn the call over to Ed McGregor, Director of Investor Relations at Vuzix.

Mr. McGregor, you may begin.

Ed McGregor, Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Welcome to the Vuzix Corporation Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results conference call. With us today are Vuzix CEO Paul Travers and our CFO, Grant Russell. Before I turn the call over to Paul, I would like to remind you that management's prepared remarks may contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements during the question-and-answer session.

The Company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by any forward-looking statements due to factors including general economic and business conditions, competition, changes in business strategy or development plans, our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, changes in legal and regulatory requirements, and other risks described in our SEC filings.

Any projections represent management's estimates as of today, August 13, 2026. Vuzix assumes no obligation to update them except as required by law. This afternoon the Company issued a press release announcing its 2Q 2026 financial results and filed its 10-Q with the SEC. Participants may wish to review those documents as we will provide a summary of the results on today's call. Today's call may include certain non-GAAP financial measures. When required, reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the Company's SEC filings.

I will now turn the call over to Vuzix CEO Paul Travers, who will give an overview of the Company's operating results and business outlook. Paul will then turn the call over to Grant Russell, Vuzix CFO, who will provide an overview of the Company's financial results. After that we will move on to the Q&A session. Paul.

Paul Travers, CEO

Thank you, Ed, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. With the first half of 2026 behind us, Vuzix is focused around our three core growth pillars: enterprise smart glasses, OEM products and solutions, and waveguides. They're connected by the technology, manufacturing capabilities, intellectual property, and customer relationships we have built over many years. The business opportunities in front of us look very different from a year ago. Across all three pillars, we are seeing expansion in both the number and quality of opportunities involving major enterprise customers, defense organizations, OEM partners, and technology companies.

AI is a game-changing driver as enterprises look for practical ways to bring AI-powered intelligence to their frontline workforce and into the physical workplace. These are not early stage discussions. A growing number of programs have cleared development and validation and are heading toward commercialization. As that work converts into production volumes, it has the potential to change both the size and the mix of Vuzix revenue. Two things in particular have changed to get us here.

Customer requirements have converged around optically see-through self-contained glasses, and the software work required to deploy a solution is getting easier as AI takes on much of the integration. I will come back to both of these. Let me begin with enterprise smart glasses. AI is profoundly changing the relationship between people and computers, and that is game-changing. For wearable smart glasses, AI will automate many tasks. But skilled tradespeople, technicians, and frontline workers operating in the physical world are not going away.

The opportunity is to dramatically augment those workers by connecting them directly to the intelligence and capabilities of AI. Put simply, AI does not eliminate the frontline worker. It makes connecting that worker to the digital world far more important and valuable. During COVID, remote support drove significant interest and sales in smart glasses, but it addressed a relatively narrow need created by temporary circumstances. AI enterprise smart glasses are fundamentally different from a basic remote support application, and we believe AI represents a lasting change in how people interact with computers and how work gets done.

The opportunities we are seeing today are tied to ongoing productivity, operational efficiency, and augmenting the frontline workforce—needs that will persist and grow as AI becomes more deeply embedded across the enterprise. Wearable smart glasses are a natural interface for making that connection, with AI that can see what the worker sees, understand what they are asking, and access relevant enterprise knowledge. The glasses can understand the task and provide real-time information or guidance while leaving the worker’s hands free.

Unlike a phone, tablet, or laptop, they stay with the worker and the task at hand throughout the day, turning smart glasses from primarily a communications tool into an always-available, AI-enabled productivity platform. It's worth a brief discussion on what customers are asking for in nearly every new program we are engaged in today. The customer wants optically see-through smart glasses. The worker sees the real world directly with information presented within their natural field of view rather than through a camera or on a screen off to the side.

And a growing number want that in a self-contained pair of glasses with no tethered compute unit. That is a demanding combination. The display has to be bright enough for real work environments, efficient enough to run a full shift on a battery, light enough to wear on your face, yet small enough that the product still looks and feels like eyewear. Those are exactly the constraints waveguide optics exist to solve, and they are a large part of why our optical and wearable system capabilities are being pulled into so many customer conversations at once.

There is one more change worth calling out. For years, the practical barrier to enterprise smart glasses was not mainly the hardware; it was the software. Every deployment needed custom integration into a customer's existing systems, and that work was slow, expensive, and scarce. AI is changing that. A great deal of the integration work that used to require a dedicated development team can now be done with AI doing much of the coding. We use AI this way in our own development, and we think it should meaningfully lower what it takes for an independent software vendor or even an end customer's own team to stand up a deployable solution.

That matters because the software effort has historically been one of the barriers sitting between customer interest and customer deployment. And as AI-enabled smart glasses can understand what the worker saw, said, and accomplished during the job, it can easily help automate much of the administrative work that follows—documenting the work performed, preparing service reports, identifying and ordering replacement parts, scheduling follow-up visits, updating enterprise systems, and even identifying additional work that may be required for frontline workers.

This is transformative and allows the worker to focus on the physical work while AI handles the digital work around it. Amazon is a good example of an innovation leader in this space. Its Reliability and Maintenance Engineering teams have been using Vuzix M400 smart glasses to support robotics, conveyors, and automation equipment within fulfillment centers for several years now. More recently, Amazon expanded its usage of Vuzix smart glasses to our next-generation Ultralight Pro smart glasses.

Amazon has developed their own AI-driven applications to support maintenance and other operational activities inside its AI data center infrastructure. We are seeing similar AI-driven interests across logistics, warehousing, manufacturing, and other frontline environments from other Fortune 500 companies looking to use AI both to assist workers while they perform their jobs and to automate the digital workflows surrounding that work. Our second pillar is OEM Products and Solutions.

Vuzix brings together optics, electronics, wearable product design, manufacturing experience, and real-world enterprise deployment knowledge. Our OEM products and solutions business is designed to take customers from product concept through design, engineering, qualification, and ultimately production. One example is the waveguide-based smart glasses platform we have been developing with a leading global automotive manufacturer. We've delivered the initial systems and worked through adjustments from there.

Feedback has been very positive, and discussions are proceeding around formal factory floor rollouts. These smart glasses were designed around a live manufacturing requirement, combining our enterprise wearable experience with our waveguide display technology. At the same time, development of Vuzix next-generation Ultralight Pro smart glasses continues. They were designed from the outset for enterprise and industrial users looking to bring AI into the hands-free workplace.

Its lightweight standalone waveguide-based design combines with a wide field-of-view camera that can provide AI with visual context. The high-performance audio with noise-canceling microphones and integrated speakers provide for natural voice interaction. The all-day wearability, safety certification, prescription support, and enterprise-grade performance all combine for the ultimate AI user experience. We continue to work with a growing list of prospective customers and partners around validating the platform before we complete the tooling.

Our approach to new products has also become more disciplined. Our development decisions are tied to identifiable customers, validated use cases, and commercial opportunities. Customer-driven OEM programs can take longer than launching a Vuzix-branded product ourselves, but they carry lower commercial risk because development is anchored to a defined customer requirement and real-world use case. This lets us invest behind demonstrated customer needs rather than anticipated demand while retaining the opportunity to turn successful programs into broader Vuzix platforms.

Our objective is to move more of these OEM programs into production programs while maintaining discipline around the capital we commit. Defense and Security Agency activity spans all three growth pillars and continues to build with more substantive engagements and clearer pathways from development towards production. Drones and unmanned systems have become core operational tools, while wearable displays and HUDs provide a natural interface for situational awareness, coordination, maintenance, medical information, and secure data delivery.

U.S.-based design and manufacturing of critical optical technologies is also becoming more relevant to defense customers and primes. Our Collins Aerospace program has moved from development into initial production for waveguide-based AR display systems supporting drone applications. In parallel, we are putting the required systems in place for the launch of a U.S. Government–funded next-generation waveguide development effort, including work aimed at larger fields of view and other performance improvements for future defense requirements.

Additionally, we're engaged with U.S. government security agencies around custom wearable solutions. One of these customer opportunities has progressed through the proposal stage, with the customer currently targeting a contracting decision later this year. Across these programs, customers care about manufacturability, supply chain security, and where critical technologies are produced. Vuzix's ability to design and manufacture advanced waveguides in the United States while also supporting complete wearable systems is an important differentiator.

Our third pillar is waveguides, which we continue to believe represents one of Vuzix's largest long-term opportunities. In many respects it is also the technology foundation underlying our other two pillars, Enterprise Smart Glasses and OEM Products and Solutions. The rapid evolution of AI has created a new level of interest and investment in AI-enabled smart glasses. As AI has become more capable of seeing, understanding, and interacting with the world around us, the value of an all-day wearable interface has become much more compelling.

This is driving new investments across the industry, including from companies that had previously set smart glasses aside, and at the same time is increasing the need for high-performance waveguide-based displays. And as I mentioned a moment ago, customers are converging on optically see-through displays in self-contained eyewear. That requirement leads directly to waveguides, because waveguide optics are the only practical approach we know of that delivers a true see-through image within the size, weight, and power budget of all-day glasses.

But optical performance alone is not enough. These waveguides must also be manufactured reliably at scale and at costs that make high-volume products possible. During the first half of 2026, we continued investing in Vuzix's Rochester, New York–based manufacturing and R&D facility to support more waveguide programs simultaneously, reduce changeover time, and increase throughput as programs move from development towards production. We invested approximately $1.2 million in fixed assets during the first six months, primarily for new waveguide manufacturing equipment.

Most of this investment is intended to create a more flexible environment where one line can support development while another supports production, or both can support production as volumes increase. On the materials side, our chemistry capabilities are focused on advanced high-index materials and replication processes intended to improve optical performance while preserving the scalability and cost advantage of nanoimprint manufacturing. As you all know, Quanta is an important partner of Vuzix.

Quanta brings high-volume end-product manufacturing capability and access to a broad customer ecosystem, while Vuzix brings waveguide design, optical engineering, manufacturing know-how, and intellectual property. Together, Quanta and Vuzix are working to become turnkey system solution providers for technology companies, eyewear brands, and platform providers of display-enabled AI smart glasses. Ultimately, the waveguide market will not be won by the best laboratory hero samples.

It will be won by companies that can combine optical performance with repeatability, yield, scale, and cost while supporting very large volume customers. That is the position Vuzix has spent years building towards. This industry has taken longer to arrive than any of us expected. That said, the pieces needed for long-term sustainable growth are now falling into place. Customers are converging on optically see-through self-contained glasses, and that is what we build.

We have the engine to manufacture the waveguides behind them—a base that takes years to stand up—and ours is running. And customers are now paying for OEM versions of what we have created in commercial programs as well as defense. Very few companies have stayed with this long enough to have all three. Our confidence today is not based on hope about the market. It is based on what customers are asking us for now. What is new is the pace. AI has given enterprise smart glasses a much broader purpose, and the software barrier that used to slow deployment is now coming down.

OEM programs are moving from validation into commercialization. Defense programs are moving towards production, and our waveguide line is scaling to support both. This is happening across all three pillars at once, with programs involving some of the world's largest and most sophisticated organizations. Waveguide design and manufacturing is clearly a cornerstone pillar of the Vuzix business, and we're investing in it accordingly—expanding our imprint capacity, reconfiguring our plant floor, adding metrology, and continuing to advance our materials and process capabilities.

We believe that progression has the potential to change Vuzix's financial performance as these programs convert—not only through higher revenue but through better utilization of the manufacturing and technology infrastructure we have already built. In other words, the opportunity is not simply to grow the top line. It is to begin demonstrating the operating leverage these three pillars are capable of delivering. Our focus is to execute and convert these customer programs into production.

At our annual meeting we noted that our waveguide capabilities have potential applications beyond smart glasses. Today we can be more specific that one of those areas is optical interconnect in AI data centers. We have received inbound interest in our planar waveguides as a way to move data optically within AI systems with greater bandwidth and lower energy per bit. This inbound interest has come from multiple corners of the AI data center ecosystem.

The underlying requirement is closely related to what we already do—moving light with precision through passive glass manufactured repeatably and at scale. We have been actively exploring this area, and we are encouraged by the possibilities for Vuzix in this new space. With that, I'll turn the call over to Grant for the financial overview. Grant.

Grant Russell, CFO

Thank you, Paul. As Ed mentioned, the 10-Q we filed this afternoon provides a detailed explanation of our quarterly and year-to-date financials. So we'll provide you with just some color on the key numbers for our second quarter ending June 30, 2026. Total revenues for the second quarter ending June 30, 2026 were $1.1 million versus $1.3 million in 2025, a decrease of 14%. Product sales were $0.9 million for Q2 2026 versus $1.0 million for Q2 2025, with the reduction primarily due to decreased unit sales of our M400 product and the lack of current-period sales of smart glasses that were discontinued at the end of 2025.

Engineering services and OEM product sales were $0.2 million versus $0.3 million, a decrease of 8%. The gross loss for Q2 2026 was $0.6 million as compared to a gross loss of $0.8 million in the prior year's quarter, an overall 15% improvement. R&D expense was $3.1 million for Q2 2026 versus $2.6 million in Q2 2025, up 20% primarily due to higher external new product development costs and increased personnel costs. Sales and marketing expense was $1.2 million versus $1.4 million in Q2 2025, a decrease of 11% primarily due to lower non-cash stock-based compensation.

Total G&A expenses for the second quarter ending June 30, 2026 were $2.7 million versus $2.8 million in Q2 2025, a decrease of 3%. The net loss attributable to common shareholders for our second quarter of 2026 was $7.7 million or $0.09 per share as compared to $7.7 million or $0.10 per share for Q2 of 2025. Now for some balance sheet and cash flow highlights. As of June 30, 2026, cash and cash equivalents were $17.3 million and our net working capital position was approximately $18 million.

The company continues to have no current or long-term debt obligations outstanding. For the three months ending June 30, 2026, net cash used in operating activities was $6.6 million as compared to $4.8 million in the prior year's period, an increase of $1.8 million year over year. For the three months ended June 30, 2026, cash used for investing activities on fixed assets and patents was $0.4 million versus $0.9 million in the comparable 2025 period.

For the three months ending June 30, 2026, cash provided by financing activities was $4.1 million versus $7.9 million in the comparable 2025 period, driven by ATM net proceeds in both periods. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to the operator.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum Group. Please proceed.

Ben, Analyst at Craig-Hallum Group

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. It's Ben for Christian here. My first question is on this expanded opportunity with optical interconnects. Can you give us a little bit more detail regarding the types of customers you guys have talked to and also any initial thoughts on the size of the opportunity?

Paul Travers, CEO

Hey Ben, thanks for the question, and it's a really good one. I mean, it's not difficult to take a look at who those players are these days. I can say a lot of it's been inbound to Vuzix. We've done some of our own outreach, but I really can't get into specifics on this call. What I can say is the interest is real. It's significantly engaged us on our part. We're spending a fair amount of time with it, and we're going to have a whole lot more to update for you on shortly.

Sorry, I just can't get further into it at this point.

Ben, Analyst at Craig-Hallum Group

No, no, that's all right. I get it. My second question here is, can you talk a little bit more about the relationship with Quanta and any more updates you can share there?

Paul Travers, CEO

Yes, actually we had some inbound questions, and that was actually one of the questions that was on the list. So this will be great—two birds with one stone. As everybody knows, we have a great working relationship with Quanta and at this point in time we're working on—we've built some early-generation smart glasses waveguides for smart glasses with them. We have some next-generation waveguides that we're working on with them right now. We fully expect that at the CES show, which is where they do a lot of announcing and showing of some of their latest stuff, they'll be shown.

These things are designed for the high-volume marketplace and they're focused on price points that the mass market and the broader markets could afford to play and pay on. So things are moving forward. The relationship is as strong as it's ever been and we're looking forward to sharing a whole lot more as these next-generation systems come out.

Ben, Analyst at Craig-Hallum Group

Great. And then just my last question. This will be on defense. You talked about Collins going into initial production. Can you help us kind of gauge that opportunity over the next year, and anything we should expect or any news we should be looking for there?

Paul Travers, CEO

We, in the second half here, we're fully expecting more production orders, I can tell you. We've also gotten follow-on design development work which we'll share more on here also. In the second quarter, the production side of the house, these guys have built this product for a very large segment of the U.S. defense base. And it's for drones and remote flying of drones and situational awareness at the same time because they're optically see-through.

And so they shared with us some very compelling numbers. But it's early in the game. 2027 should be a really good year for production as it rolls out with those guys. And you'll see more than one device coming from them. Sorry, I wish I had more granular and better, tighter answers for you on that. But quite frankly, they probably wouldn't be happy if I was sharing some of the inside stuff they shared with us.

Ben, Analyst at Craig-Hallum Group

No, I understand. That's all I got. I'll go back in the queue. Thanks, guys.

Paul Travers, CEO

Yeah, thanks, Ben.

OPERATOR

Thank you. That concludes today's Q&A session. I'd like to pass the call back over to Paul Travers for closing remarks.

Paul Travers, CEO

We've actually gotten a few other inbound Q&A stuff, so I thought Ed, if he could read the questions back, I can take a shot at giving some answers.

Ed McGregor, Director of Investor Relations

Sure, Paul, we have a few. The first question: Why has enterprise revenue been flat and what changes that?

Paul Travers, CEO

Yeah, so the enterprise demand for Vuzix these days is really splitting into kind of two paths. Where people need a glanceable monocular display, the right tool is the M400 and our newest LX1. They serve applications that are well defined. Today we have an installed base that are working with those products and we see people that were using M400s upgrading to LX1s. So we should see some nice momentum, knock on wood, with our LX1 as it acceptance it rolls into the market.

And with AI, we're seeing AI wrapped around the use, in particular around the LX1, for applications that are giving it really new markets and new opportunities that it's going to play in. So that's one of the paths, and at this point in time, those are our major products that we're offering into the marketplace. The other path, which I think I hope you guys have all heard, is where applications need information in the worker's natural field of view.

Customers are waiting for and designing apps around optically see-through systems that Vuzix is making that are in the EBT side of the business right now. They need self-contained products with the processors built in, and those products are inherently AI driven. They are designed for the AI user and users that enterprise today is trying to give capabilities to make their jobs happen faster and easier. The Ultralight Pro addresses that, as will another device that we're developing for one of our key OEM customers.

Both of these tracks are moving forward towards different products and different timelines. But with the momentum that's building around those, we expect that the flat nature of the transition that we're going through is going to start cranking up and showing growth here over the coming quarters.

Ed McGregor, Director of Investor Relations

Okay, Paul, and the second question we have is: Can you identify the automotive OEM you're working with and maybe discuss their rollout time frame? We kind of included this question because we get it so often from folks, so we thought we'd try to address it first.

Paul Travers, CEO

We cannot name who this customer is. I can tell you they are a tier one automotive manufacturer. If you don't know who this company is when you hear it, you've been living in a hole. So it's very obvious. They're a leading global manufacturer. We have delivered initial systems, we have gone back and forth with those systems, working with people on their plant floors, working with people in the actual applications. These are live, real applications that they're testing them on their plant floors with.

And the feedback has been really positive and discussions now have moved from, well, can you do this and can you change that to how are we going to get these things deployed and how do we get them into production programs? So the factory floor seems to like the product; at the same time the users seem to like them. I cannot put a time frame though on the customer's deployment discussions other than to say it's continuing to progress in a timely fashion, especially when you consider how large of a project this could be, but also the size of the company that we're working with.

Sorry, that's, I know, a bit vague, but it should be getting clearer here later in the second half of this year. That's it, folks. I would like to thank everybody again for following Vuzix and I really look forward here to the second half and going into next year with all of the great things that Vuzix has in the queue and sharing with everybody the progress that we're making. Exciting times. Thank you very much, everybody.

OPERATOR

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.