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Ladies and gentlemen, greetings, and welcome to the Lightwave Logic 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.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for Lightwave Logic's first quarter 2026 financial results and business update call. I'm joined on today's call by Lightwave Logic's President and Chief Executive Officer, Yves LeMaitre. 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 13, 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 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 Yves.

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 challenge, 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 solution.

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 M&A activity in the sector, photonics is recognized as a critical technology for the next generation of AI networking architectures. We believe that Lightwave Logic 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 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 time for 2028 analysis highlighted approximately $24 billion in combined addressable markets across AI, data center and telecom application with a serviceable addressable market or SAM estimated at approximately $1 billion-$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. The scale and urgency of AI-driven infrastructure demands 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 TAM alone in 2028 has expanded from approximately $17 billion to approximately $47 billion, right? Driven by a substantial increase in projected deployments of 1.6Tb and 3.2Tb transceivers and co-packaged optics operating at 200 Gbps and beyond per lane. In addition, the demand for high-speed coherent or coherent-lite pluggable transceivers is now fast-growing with DCI or scale-across intercampus connections. As a result of these industry dynamics, our estimated serviceable addressable market has also expanded meaningfully from approximately $1 billion-$2.5 billion previously to an estimated range of approximately $2 billion-$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 scale-across 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 photonics 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 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 customer, 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% share in 2021 to an estimated 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 improve power efficiency. Second, silicon photonics provides a pathway towards co-packaged optics and advanced optical interconnect architectures, which are becoming increasingly important as conventional electrical interconnect solution 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, GlobalFoundries, Credo, and others are making significant investment in silicon photonics capabilities, optical integration technologies, and co-packaged 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. 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 transcends 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, GlobalFoundries through the GDSFactory ecosystem, and Silterra with Luceda 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 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 strategy. 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 into full devices.

Over the past year, Lightwave Logic 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 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. 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 telco-related stress testing when combined with our proprietary encapsulation approaches, validating projected long-term thermal stability and environmental robustness. Our data indicates excellent resistance to critical degradation mechanisms such as loss of poling 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. 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 advantages. Very high electro-optic efficiency, ultra-high bandwidth, lower drive voltage, compact device footprints, and the potential for significantly reduced power consumption. Polymer materials can be processed using scalable semiconductor manufacturing techniques and integrating with existing silicon photonics platform.

Lightwave Logic'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 U.S. 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 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, Lightwave Logic 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&D investments increased to $3.5 million as we continued advancing device performance, reliability validation, and integration activities, while G&A 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 the execution of our strategic roadmap and long-term growth objectives. Since the end of the first quarter of 2026, we have used up the shelves 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 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&A session. Ryan.

Thanks, Yves. 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 CPO, and TFLN may struggle because it is too big. Does this change the competitive landscape, and does TFLN remain a major competitor today?

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. 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.

Polariton was a partner on several projects. Did the Marvell acquisition of Polariton interrupt any of these projects, and do you expect that they'll all be pursued?

Well, as you know, this acquisition just closed, 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 for picking a leader in plasmonics solution. We envision plasmonics to become a critical technology beyond 400 G. 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.

Could you confirm that polymers are compatible with each segment of the AI scale up, scale out, and scale across?

Yes, 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, and DCI pluggable solution that are pushing the modulator bandwidth requirements.

What is the status of the in-house polymer manufacturing equipment, personnel, and the readiness of a redundant manufacturing source?

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.

The last question, what's the status and progress of the back end of line PDKs, including ALD encapsulation and testing readiness at foundry partners?

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.

Thanks, Yves. 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. Also a reminder that the annual shareholder meeting will be held virtually next Thursday, May 21st at 10:00 A.M. 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.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference call of Lightwave Logic has now concluded. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

Greetings, and welcome to the Lightwave Logic's Q4 and Full Year 2025 Financial Results and Business Update Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Ryan Coleman with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for Lightwave Logic's Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results and Business Update Call. I'm joined on today's call by Lightwave Logic's President and Chief Executive Officer, Yves LeMaitre. 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, March 5, 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 10-Q. As always, Lightwave Logic assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. And lastly, you are cautioned that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of replay listening or transcript reading. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Yves.

Thank you, Ryan. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Let me start with a note of appreciation to our shareholders. Thank you for your continued confidence and long-term commitment. We are building something transformative that requires patience and conviction. To our employees and partners, 2025 was a year of real execution. The progress we made in material science, reliability engineering, foundry integration and customer advancement reflects extraordinary discipline and focus. We are building the company in the right way. 2025 was not a promotional and marketing year. It was an execution year. We moved aggressively from research validation towards structure commercialization. Our Perkinamine electro-optic polymer platform continued to demonstrate high-speed bandwidth, low drive voltage, compact device footprint and compatibility with the silicon photonics and semiconductor ecosystem. The importance of this last point is often underestimated. Our belief is that tomorrow's winning photonic technologies for AI networking must fully integrate within the semiconductor foundry, packaging and testing infrastructure. So we strengthened our reliability data sets, most notably around the challenges faced by previous generation of polymers, primarily temperature stability and photo-oxidation. We advanced our back-end of line process integration with novel solutions for electro-optic polymer deposition and encapsulation that are fully aligned with the semiconductor fab infrastructure, tools and processes. We deepened our engagement with foundry ecosystem with multiple committed programs by major foundries to add or improve their PDK related to front-end silicon photonics chip design and manufacturing. This was especially important for Lightwave Logic to enable new customer design wins for customers who have already selected their preferred foundry. Our design win cycle matured meaningfully. We have now 3 programs advanced to Stage 3, prototype to final product in 2025, and we recently added a fourth Fortune Global 500 customer to that list in 2026. Approximately 15 additional engagements are progressing through Stage 1 and Stage 2, and we are hopeful that some of our recent success with new foundries will help accelerate the transition to Stage 3. We are not trying to [ invent ] a market. We are well positioned inside the market that is scaling rapidly. But before we dive into an update of our customer engagements and the market, I'd like to briefly review our select financial results. Now for the full year 2025, revenue was approximately $237,000, primarily from licensing and nonrecurring engineering compared to $96,000 in 2024. Net loss was approximately $20.3 million or a loss of $0.16 per share, an improvement from $22.5 million or a loss of $0.19 per share in 2024. Our R&D investment was approximately $11.5 million compared to $16.8 million in the prior year, and our G&A expense was approximately $9.5 million compared to $6.4 million in the prior year. In December of 2025, we completed a public offering, raising approximately $32.8 million in net proceeds through the issuance of 11.6 million shares of common stock. The transaction strengthens our balance sheet and contributed to our year-end cash position of approximately $69 million, roughly double the $34.9 million we had at the end of third quarter. In January of 2026, we exercised the over-allotment portion of the offering, adding another $4.9 million in cash. So based on our operating plan, we believe we are funded beyond December of 2027. We are managing capital deliberately. Every dollar is allocated towards commercialization readiness. Now let's move to the customers. The customers' programs deepened in 2025. Stage 3 engagements currently involve primarily wafer level tape-outs, followed by chip processing and testing with possibly iterative design optimization. This is where real technical programs conversion into commercial agreements begins. We are supporting customers inside foundry environments, not just in isolated R&D settings. Regarding specific customer updates, one of our Tier 1 customers is focused initially on 1.6 terabit per second transceivers operating at 200G per lane. In January, we launched a full wafer tape-out with them at a new silicon photonics foundry and expect chips to come back in Q2 2026 for processing and testing. Another Tier 1 customer is seeking a next-generation material suitable for CPO packaging that can operate at higher temperature to enable new packaging processes. We launched this program in 2025, and it is a key priority for our chemistry design team in 2026. In parallel, we're also planning a foundry run over the next few months with that customer to validate the custom modulator chip design required for CPO. Our third and most recently announced Tier 1 customer will design and build silicon photonic chips with embedded modulators at a state-of-the-art silicon photonics foundry, where it will be the first implementation of EO polymer modulators. Finally, our long-time customer and partner, Polariton continues their steady path to bringing Plasmonics to commercialization. Plasmonics is an exciting new technology that has the potential to accelerate the path to 800 gigabits per second modulation. Our focus there is to support their prototyping efforts and device packaging reliability programs. We have made excellent progress in 2025 in terms of customer acquisition, and our goal is to continue that in 2026. As previously disclosed, 2026 revenue is expected to be driven primarily by material supply and NRE activity. Volume production and licensing revenues are not anticipated until 2027 at the earliest. That time line is deliberate. Qualification cycles in this industry are rigorous as they should be, given the performance and reliability requirements of these applications. We are taking a disciplined approach, working through the necessary validation and integration steps to ensure long-term success. Our focus is on building durable, repeatable revenue streams supported by qualification and design wins, not pursuing short-term or opportunistic revenue. Let's step back to the industry context. According to LightCounting Research in 2018, the share of silicon photonics in the optical transceiver market was 10%. It jumped to 33% in 2024 and for the first time, is expected to be the dominant technology in 2026. Silicon photonics is winning the integration platform battle for hyperscale and AI networking. Why? Because of CMOS compatibility, including for advanced packaging, because of providing a scalable foundry infrastructure, because it is aligned with the ecosystem, because of the supply chain maturity and the cost efficiency. Alternative technologies such as [ 35 ] materials or lithium niobate remain relevant, but the ecosystem center of gravity and momentum are clearly with silicon photonics. Our strategy is simple. We enhance silicon photonics. We do not compete against it. Electro-optic polymers allow silicon photonics to reach higher bandwidth with lower power per bit. This is precisely what AI infrastructure requires. As you know, at Lightwave Logic, we operate as a fabless material and IP platform. Scale comes first to foundries for the front-end silicon photonics chip production. Throughout 2025, we worked diligently at expanding the number of foundries that are able to process the modulator structures required for electro-optic polymer reference design. This was a gating factor in enabling customers already committed to certain foundries. Earlier this week, SilTerra, a pioneer in silicon photonics foundry services, announced the availability of a high-speed modulator platform based on EO polymer through the process design kit, or PDK, from Luceda Photonics. SilTerra, Lightwave Logic and Luceda Photonics successfully completed a wafer tape-out earlier in 2026. Device characterization and performance validation are expected in mid-2026. With SilTerra, GlobalFoundries and 2 other unnamed partners, we now have agreement in place with 4 major foundries with wafer runs either underway or scheduled for the first half of 2026. An additional 3 foundries are under consideration, and we intend to onboard them as our process engineering resources become available. Regarding our back-end processes currently performed in Denver, Colorado, we initiated a production ramp-up program in 2025, focused on supporting multiple wafer size and improving yield, cycle time and equipment efficiency. We are also identifying industrial partners to potentially outsource this portion of the manufacturing process for future high-volume production. This is a result of manufacturing discipline. We are preparing for scalable integration, not boutique deployments. Now let's talk about the market. According to LightCounting's January 2026 report, Ethernet optical transceivers of 100G and above and CPO reached approximately $16.5 billion in revenue in 2025. The market is projected to reach approximately $26 billion in 2026. This corresponds to a 60% growth rate for both '25 and '26. AI clusters are expected to consume roughly 80% of Ethernet transceivers and CPO through 2031. This is not incremental growth. This is a structural shift in terms of infrastructure expansion. The speed road map is also accelerating. 1.6 terabit per second transceivers revenue are expected to reach USD 1 billion in 2026 and 3.2 terabits per second optics volume production will begin in 2028. CPO or co-packaged optics is also moving into early deployment. NVIDIA has announced its first CPO products last year with InfiniBand products entering the market in the first half of 2026 and Ethernet in the second half of 2026. Vendors are now targeting approximately 5 picojoules per bit at 200G per lane. Power efficiency is becoming the gating constraint. Shrinking size is now critical, in particular for CPO. The ability to easily incorporate photonics materials into semiconductor packages is a must. This is exactly where polymer-enabled modulation matters. Growth might moderate beyond '26 and '27, but the base level of optical demand remains structurally higher than pre-AI cycle. This is a multiyear expansion. As a result, our Perkinamine polymer ramp strategy is disciplined. 2026 focuses on expanded qualification test, material supply scaling, yield and performance improvement, materials characterization data set expansion. If design wins conversion to production occurs, 2027 would represent the earliest meaningful volume phase. So to prepare, we are scaling polymer synthesis capacity, strengthening our process controls, enhancing our supply chain readiness and refining our production economics. We are preparing for scale responsibly. Technology alone does not create durable companies, operational discipline does. So in 2025, we maintain effective internal controls, we strengthened our IP protection, we built deeper systems integration expertise. We are building the company infrastructure required to support long-term licensing and material supply at scale. Our 2026 priorities are clear: number one, advance Stage 3 programs towards qualification milestones and Stage 4; number two, convert technical engagements into structured commercial agreements; number three, broaden and strengthen the electro-optic polymer-ready silicon foundry ecosystem; number four, continue performance optimization at 200G, 400G per lane and beyond; number five, prepare operationally for a 2027 production ramp transition. Execution, conversion, scale readiness. AI infrastructure is not slowing. Bandwidth requirements are not slowing. Power constraints are tightening. Silicon photonics is scaling and it needs better modulators. This is where Lightwave Logic fits. 2025 strengthened our foundation, 2026 is about disciplined execution. We remain confident in the AI opportunity before us and committed to building long-term shareholder value. Let me turn the call back to Ryan to moderate our Q&A session.

Thanks, Yves. When we announced this call, we invited investors to submit their questions ahead of time. We'd like to thank those investors who took the time to do so, and we appreciate your continued engagement on these calls. Our first question is, company presentations for nearly the past 12 months have indicated that the back end of line process is ready for transfer to a foundry. What specific milestones remain to complete the technology transfer and is transfer dependent on PIC completion with Stage 3 partners and progression to Stage 4? Also, has Lightwave Logic achieved acceptable yields with its wafer scale pulling and encapsulation of modulators?

Yes. Thanks, Ryan. Good question. As I indicated earlier, we intend to proceed with our back end of line process and capacity expansion in Denver to support prototyping and final product qualification. We're also continuing process development in Denver to match the semiconductor industry road map, including migration to, for instance, large or larger wafer sizes. In parallel, we intend in 2026 to bring 1 or 2 external foundry partners to bring high-volume manufacturing scale to our back-end of line process.

And our second question, are you able to provide guidance on production volume requirements for 2026? And can you comfortably meet that requirement?

Yes, we are planning for success. So we have made aggressive assumptions related to our ability to win share in 2027 and 2028 in order to determine the volume production of Perkinamine as well as the floor capacity, the number of technicians and the production equipment that will be required at our facility in Englewood, Colorado, close to Denver. My experience in the AI data center market shows that immediately after closing a design win, the ability to ramp-up production is so critical. So you do not want to be caught flat-footed when the time comes for a significant increase of polymer production. We have a good model of yield capacity and equipment required to achieve our production target in 2027.

And our next question, can shareholders expect to see an EOP modulator-based pluggable transceiver prototype completed this year?

Well, obviously, our customers are working diligently at bringing silicon photonics PICs to the market in the form of photonics engines for transceivers or CPO. We participate to these programs of suppliers of materials and PDK, but we do not control the full transceiver program. So we will continue to update you on our progress towards Stage 4 throughout 2026.

And regarding the products we are working on with Tier 1 partners, when a product is finalized or rolled out, do we expect to see joint press releases? Or how can shareholders expect to be updated regarding their progression?

Well, as we did hopefully today, I mean, we will provide visibility to our shareholders on our progress through quarterly financial and business update calls like the one today. Now when it comes to endorsement of Lightwave Logic by customers, it is in the hand of our customers, and they will decide if and when to issue press release or public announcement.

And our last question, regarding the SilTerra announcement, what specific performance metrics will be validated for the mid-2026 device characterization? Were there any limitations or yield constraints identified during the early 2026 tape-out? And can you talk about the announcement and how it fits into your broader foundry strategy?

Yes. Thanks for that question. I mean this tape-out is a really important milestone that will validate both a number of key design and performance parameters for 200G and 400G modulators, but it will also confirm or help confirm optimal foundry process and equipment capabilities. And most of the test results for this specific tape-out at SilTerra are expected by mid-2026.

Thanks, Yves, and thank you again to everyone who sent questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to our operator to conclude this conference call.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.