Lightwave Logic Inc (LWLG)

[tedpeele]

X's bold claim, KCC's latest , 10Q Nuggets and Truth about where things stand:

While I've become increasingly skeptical as the company continues to consistently act like a company that is hiding things that aren't good, I try to remain objective: If there are truly new developments that are exciting I want to know. Antwerp, dinners, winks and smiles mean nothing to me. BUT - the 10Qs and 10Ks - filings and direct public statements DO mean something. So, let's take a look.


X's BOLD CLAIM ABOUT TIER1 FUNDING:

X excitedly resurrected an old narrative that the Tier1s were secretly so supportive of Lightwave that they were funding Lightwave's work with Foundries beginning back in 2021. I thought ECOC 2023 killed that theory for good when the feedback was that Tier1s FINALLY had started to at least pay attention to people like Lightwave for the first time.

But, good ol X tried to revive it yesterday when he said this about the 10Q:

Expenses smoking gun. "Research and development efforts; the rate at which we can, directly or through arrangements with original equipment manufacturers"
X. Wow, I like it and said so, the bulk of development is off the books and being covered by outside forces,, in other words we can not see that. Those are not Lighwave logic direct expenses.
Their engineers and expenses are being covered by the big guys,, the tier 1s.

This post got 24 thumbs up. Did anyone here bother to do DD on it? Well I did.


First here is the actual quote from this 10Q:

Our future expenditures and capital requirements will depend on numerous factors, including: the progress of our research and development efforts; the rate at which we can, directly or through arrangements with original equipment manufacturers, introduce and sell products incorporating our polymer materials technology; the costs of filing, prosecuting, defending and enforcing any patent claims and other intellectual property rights; market acceptance of our products and competing technological developments; and our ability to establish cooperative development, joint venture and licensing arrangements.

Notice how each point is separated by a semicolon? The 'arrangements' wasn't through Tier1 funding of R&D. Rather it was talking about how they can work together to sell products! R&D was separate and distinct from the mention of an 'arrangement'. did X not read the rest of the sentence? It almost seems like he intentionally is trying to revive the old narrative, no?

To kill this this idea totally, I ask - did X not realize this same language has been in past 10Qs? - in fact I found it all the way back in 2016 - YEARS BEFORE ANY FOUNDRY WORK!:

Our future expenditures and capital requirements will depend on numerous factors, including: the progress of our research and development efforts; the rate at which we can, directly or through arrangements with original equipment manufacturers, introduce and sell products incorporating our polymer materials technology; the costs of filing, prosecuting, defending and enforcing any patent claims and other intellectual property rights; market acceptance of our products and competing technological developments; and our ability to establish cooperative development, joint venture and licensing arrangements.

Here: https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001325964/000155335016002662/lwlg10q_0916v5ixbrl.htm

Let this put to rest once again the now totally debunked idea that ANY TIER1s or hyperscalers ever funded their work with foundries. Pure fabrication in the minds of dreamers.

Yet another reason I view X's postings the way I do...SO, will THIS post get 25 thumbs up for telling the truth?


KCC's latest, from the 'quiet' forum, with some answers from the 10Q:

KCC's near term expectations:

I’m not expecting any major news in the next 2 weeks. I just want an honest accounting of where we stand with the Tier 1s and what the timeframe is.

Seems like expectations always go from very high a few months out to very low a few weeks out...just saying.

KCC's questions:

I’m working on my list. Mostly revolve around device design and manufacturing readiness. The material is ready and there’s no questioning that. I’ll probably keep a couple questions for the Q&A and then save some for the lab tour....When is enough, enough?....My manufacturing readiness questions revolve around yields and process optimization.

I GOT NEWS FOR EVERYONE: THE COMPANY WON'T ANSWER ANYTHING THAT THEY HAVEN'T ALREADY ANSWERED OR PUT IN A FILING. When are people going to realize this? The company very carefully manages what they say and they only tell us what they want us to know. They don't want anyone to know how far away things really are. If they were close, they would want you to know because they need to enable LPC to continue to sell shares. This sounds cynical but this is the reality that has kept their doors open for the last 12+ years.

KCC's 'guess':

I’ve mentioned this previously but my guessthe additional reliability data request is that the end users want to see data across multiple foundry runs. Basically to prove the foundry is capable of providing consistent performance. For example, variations in all sorts of factors like cladding layer thickness, sidewall height/angle, polymer deposition uniformity, electrode spacing, blah blah blah…all can have an effect on performance. This leads to my question on device design. Are the designs “locked-in”? To me, I think so after reading the latest news on the 200G modulators operating at 1v. Hopefully this is a final and optimized design.

Guessing. What if that guess is wrong? And even if it is right - KCC points to many things that can go wrong.
Here's an answer straight from the 10Q, KCC:

Our partnership with silicon-based foundries will allow us to scale commercial volumes of electro-optic polymer modulator devices using large silicon wafers, and we are currently working to have our fabrication processes accepted into foundry PDKs (process development kits). These are the recipes that foundries use to manufacture devices in their fabrication plants.

Until it is in a PDK we can assume consistency, yields, scalability - SOMETHING IS STILL NOT SATISFACTORY TO EVEN THE FOUNDRIES THEMSELVES. But KCC wants to know what that is? Again, the company WILL NOT TELL US because they don't want us to know. They don't want to risk losing their funding.


KCC's worry:

There’s still time available to optimize processes and improve yields to supply near term SOM, but it won’t be long until there’s no room left for unoptimized manufacturing processes.

KCC's hope

At some point (soon, if not already), a transceiver maker would start a sampling process where they take the PICs, engineer them with the electronic components, package them up into a module, and test the modules. That would represent initial orders. Assuming they work as advertised, they start volume production and sales. And going back to your question, due to the advantages of this technology and how ‘easy’ it is to scale compared to competitors…the volumes have potential to scale up very quickly.

The PIC's that we hear are 'under construction'? Clues to the true status of construction can be found in the 10Q THE 10Q REFERENCES TO PROTOTYPE PRODUCTS ARE IMO A HUGE CLUE AS TO WHERE THEY STAND:
Look up the word "prototype". It is used 15 times. Every time it is used as though a prototype has been created already it is under the Polymer Stack section for waveguide modulators created in-house. This is the 'stand alone' modulator which is not the large market shareholders are looking at for ubiquity.

In EVERY OTHER PLACE where the 10Q talks about a prototype, it appears to be vaporware - anticipated only, when you read very carefully re their Polymer Plus and Polymer Slot and their work with foundries. It looks to me like they have NOT created a single prototype yet for those technologies...SO KCC's hope seems more like a dream still...and SOMETHING(S) - likely multiple difficult things, are still standing in the way of a damn simple prototype despite the company saying prototype-this, prototype-that for years now.



NUGGETS IN THE 10Q:

We have now received silicon wafers that range up to 200mm in diameter, which aligns well with foundry manufacturing. Using 200mm silicon wafers, we showed packaged polymer modulators operating with open (clean) eye diagrams at 100GBaud PAM4 (or 200Gbps PAM4) at voltage drive levels at 1V at the 2024 Optical Fiber Conference in San Diego, California in March 2024... We also showed polymer modulators with voltage drive levels that were below 1V. Driving voltage levels of around 1V is important as it allows our polymer modulators to be driven directly from CMOS ICs (as opposed to dedicated driver integrated circuit chips). This performance is ideal to enable 4 lanes at 200Gbps per lane pluggable transceivers that can operate at an aggregate data rate of 800Gbps.

Ok, this sounds pretty damn good. But I won't apologize for recognizing all the things the company doesn't tell us, and all the times it has been clear that they are much further away than they want us to know. I have ZERO reason to believe that is not still the case. If there is a good reason, let me know.

Since the invited talk at OFC 2024, a number of Tier 1 pluggable transceiver companies have both reviewed our technical results and viewed operating packaged polymer slot modulators at 200Gbps PAM4 with drive voltages at 1V

Good to see they put into a filing what they said at Antwerp. Even so, VIEWING and REVIEWED says nothing much of value, really.

NOTICE HOW COMPLICATED THE PIC PLATFORM IS, and who open-ended everything is:

Our Long-Term Device Development Goal - Multilane Polymer Photonic Integrated Circuit (P2IC™)
Our P2IC™ platform is positioned to address markets with aggregated data rates of 100 Gbps, 400 Gbps, 800 Gbps and beyond. Our P2IC™ platform will contain several photonic devices that may include, over and above polymer-based modulators, photonic devices such as lasers, multiplexers, demultiplexers, detectors, fiber couplers.

How much have they said about lasers, multiplexors, demultiplexers, detectors, and fiber couplers? Are those all working together properly?

We continue to develop our polymer materials and device designs to optimize additional metrics. We are now optimizing the device parameters for very low voltage operation.

Within sight?

Some of the things needed to achieve the scaling performance of polymers in integrated photonics platforms is within sight today
1. Increased r33 (which leads to very low Vpi in modulator devices) and we are currently optimizing our polymers for this. With Vpi levels of 1V or less will enable direct from associated electronics and potentially save network architects the cost of individual driver ICs.
2. Increase temperature stability so that the polymers can operate at broader temperature ranges effective, where we have made significant progress over the past few years.
3. Low optical loss in waveguides and active/passive devices for improved optical budget metrics which is currently an ongoing development program at our Company.
4. Higher levels of hermeticity for lower cost packaging of optical sub-assemblies within a transceiver module, where our advanced designs are being implemented into polymer-based packages that utilize atomic layer deposition (ALD) that is being developed in-house.

Scalability in terms of cost reduction and high volume manufacturing can be enhanced by:
1. Leverage of commercial silicon photonics manufacturing capacity through the use of silicon-based foundries. Our Polymer Plus™ platform seeks to be additive to standard silicon photonics circuits.
2. Reduction of optical packaging costs by integration at the chip level of multiple modulators and also with other optical devices. Our P2IC™ platform seeks to address device integration.

As we move forward to diligently meet our goals, we continue to work closely with our packaging and foundry partners for 112Gbaud prototypes, and we are advancing our reliability and characterization efforts to support our prototyping.

FOLKS, it really is just more of the same obfuscation. NOTHING NEW will come out of this ASM because if you have learned even ONE THING after all your time invested here surely it is the same thing I've learned - that the company will only tell us what they want us to know and all that really matters is what they have already publicly said...and all of that just leads to the reality that this is probably much further away from commercialization than they want us to know, and THAT IS WHY they don't answer questions that help us figure out how close they really are: Their survival depends on continued obfuscation year after year.