News: Optoelectronics
3 April 2023
POET reports highlights of Q4/2022
For fourth-quarter 2022, POET Technologies Inc of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — designer and developer of the POET Optical Interposer, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and light sources for the data-center, telecom and artificial intelligence (AI) markets — has reported non-recurring engineering revenue (NRE) of $200,000 compared with $233,000 last quarter and $nil a year ago. In 2022, POET provided NRE contract services to multiple customers, one of which continued to contract services from the prior year. The revenue relates to unique projects that are being addressed utilizing the capabilities of the POET Optical Interposer.
Net loss has risen further, from $3.7m ($0.10 per share) a year ago and $4m ($0.11 per share) last quarter to $6.3m ($0.17 per share). This included R&D costs of $2.7m, up from $2m a year ago and $1.9m last quarter. The firm notes that fluctuations in R&D costs for a company of this size and this stage of growth is expected on a period-over-period basis as it transitions from technology development to product development.
Cash flow from operating activities was –$2.7m, compared with –$3.2m a year ago and –$2.5m last quarter.
During the quarter, POET:
- Completed a non-brokered private placement of 1,126,635 units of the corporation at a price of C$3.81 (US$2.78) per unit for gross proceeds of C$4,292,479 (US$3,184,332).
- Released to production four optical engine products, further advancing the firm’s commercialization goals. The products included transmit and receive optical engines for 100G CWDM4 as well as receive optical engines for 200G FR4 and 400G FR4.
- Developed multi-engine 100G CWDM4 and 100G LR4 chip-on-board solutions for lead customer ADVA Optical Networking SE. ADVA will use POET’s multi-engine transmit & receive chips in a pluggable solution that packs the functionality of four independent 100Gb/s interfaces into a single QSFP-DD housing that is scalable to high volume as well as higher data rates.
- Began sampling 400G FR4 and 800G 2xFR4 receive optical engines in partnership with Luxshare Technology Co Ltd., a global technology provider for data-communication facilities and enterprise-level products, to enable the sale of power-efficient and cost-optimized 400G and 800G transceiver solutions.
- Amended the terms of 1,764,720 common share purchase warrants with an expiry date of 11 February and an exercise price of C$11.50 to expire on 11 May at an exercise price of C$4.25. By 10 March, the firm had received US$5,475,102 from the exercise of 1,758,716 of these warrants.
- Demonstrated 800G optical engines and light source products at the Optical Fiber Communications (OFC 2023) Conference & Exhibition, where the firm also hosted meetings with potential customers, partners and media. Additionally, it introduced and showcased a live demonstration of ‘POET Infinity’, a new chiplet-based transmitter platform for 400G, 800G and 1.6T pluggable transceivers and co-packaged optics solutions.
- Entered into an agreement with Beijing FeiYunYi Technology Ltd (BFYY) to design optical engines for deployment of optical modules in the telecom market globally, beginning in China. Valued at up to $1m over a two-year period, the agreement includes NRE for POET and an initial purchase order for 10,000 units that will be used to sample customers. BFYY has forecasted optical engine purchases from POET’s joint venture Super Photonics Xiamen (SPX) at over $30m over a three-year period.
- Announced a collaboration with Vanguard Automation GmbH, the developer of 3D-nanoprinted Photonic Wire Bond and Micro-Lens technology and manufacturer of software-defined equipment for photonic integration and packaging, to enable the integration of Micro-Lenses on the Optical Interposer platform to maximize coupling efficiency while maintaining POET’s wafer-level passive assembly process.
- Several current and former directors holding warrants that expire on 3 April have exercised their warrants.
“The company’s effort during the fourth quarter has been well rewarded in the form of several pivotal announcements in early 2023,” notes chairman & CEO Dr Suresh Venkatesan. “In January, we released to production four optical engines, marking a significant commercialization milestone for both POET and Super Photonics. Having recently completed product design verification and reliability testing on these optical engines, we are now working closely with multiple customers on the internal qualifications for their end customers,” he adds.
“We were also pleased to announce POET’s optical engines enabling ADVA’s unique MicroMux Quattro pluggable device. The opportunity to work with ADVA serves to further validate the company’s optical engines. As additional evidence of our progress, in February we announced our partnership with Luxshare Technology, which is focused on leveraging POET’s highly integrated Infinity chiplet platform to expand its 400G and 800G pluggable transceiver solutions for the data-center market. Also notable was the signing of key supplier arrangements in the fourth quarter with Lumentum Holdings for its directly modulated lasers,” he adds.
“In conjunction with OFC, we also showcased our POET Infinity chiplet-based transmitter platform for 400G, 800G and 1.6T pluggable transceivers and co-packaged optics solutions. Our team was extremely pleased with the high level of interest and engagement at OFC, which we anticipate to lead to expanded product sampling and customer qualifications in the coming quarters,” continues Venkatesan. “POET is increasingly in a predominant position to become a leading optical engine supplier at advanced data rates, as we continue preparations to ramp volume production in second-half 2023,” he believes. “Additionally, we are making important advancements on our targeted products for AI-ML applications at an ideal time as market demand rapidly expands for new scalable, cost-effective solutions.”
POET and Vanguard Automation collaborate on solutions for co-packaged optics and AI–ML applications
POET to design optical engines for Beijing FeiYunYi’s 100G optical transceiver modules
POET to demo 800G optical engines and light source products at OFC
POET announces availability of 400G and 800G receive optical engines
POET completes amendment of warrant terms
POET collaborates with ADVA on highly integrated 4x100G solutions
Lumentum’s high-speed DMLs to be used in POET’s 400G FR4 transmit optical engines
POET unveils 800G & 1.6T optical engines for hyperscale data centers
