Why Can't We Have Fine Posts Like This Here?If anyone here is a true, loyal shareholder, in mu opinion, they will probably appreciate this summary and the poster's additional comments at the end. It ain't rocket science to have a good bullboard, it is a shame a few posters disrupt the flow when it's not about name-calling others or put downs, or put downs of management from their lazy-boy chairs.
Here is a very nice summary and thanks to that poster at reddit.com for such a fine effort and post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/POETTechnologiesInc/comments/s3jnrb/jan_13_needham_conference_summary/
Jan 13 Needham Conference Summary
Good evening all. I finally have some time to watch today's conference and noted down points I find important or made strong impressions. Hopefully, this gives you a good overview of what happened, in case you did not have a chance to watch it yourself.
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Currently deploying and going through qualification of 100G/200G engines with partners, for both CWDM and LR4 applications.
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Established assembly capability in Singapore, coming online next month. Tools being assembled this month.
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Suresh spent time explaining POET's advantages in cost and performance (even at extremely low power, POET's engines can still produce clear signals).
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Conventional silicon photonics have very little presence in CWDM and FR4, which is where POET comes in and have significant advantage.
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SPX is scaling up, this quarter POET is going through Beta qualifications of the Beta builds.
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Some customers already started doing module design with Alpha samples. For the ones waiting for the Beta to begin work, they will begin designing their module and go through their own development cycle. Early customers that co-engineer and co-design will have products out the gate faster.
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Suresh talked about the 3 tiers of customers that Vivek mentioned in his interview.
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POET has extremely robust DML platform, no one else in the world has what POET has (ie the ability to flipchip these tiny lasers at wafer scale while preserving performance etc). Suresh believe POET will have an extremely strong 400G offering that no one can compete against in terms of cost/scale.
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SPX takes care of 100G/200G optical engines world wide, 400G inside China. POET takes care of 400G outside of China and other product verticals.
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POET has assembly capability in Singapore now, which also allows them to work on new products, yield enhancement activities, etc; in parallel with current products being assembled and ramped at SPX.
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The host sympathizes immediately with Suresh when the topic of supply chain issues come up. One of POET's subcontractors' equipments broke and due to supply chain issues, they couldn't get it fixed for weeks, thus impacting POET's own timeline.
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Seeing production slowdown in Germany, which makes critical production tools for assembly that POET needs.
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Throughout the pandemic, hiring for SPX and POET China has been very difficult, where interviews have to be slotted at odd hours. Given POET's size, it was very challenging but they managed to get through it.
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The selling of POET's products is engineer-to-engineer, there is no conventional sales channel unless POET becomes a module maker.
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2 years of cash available, burn rate $1M a month. Product inventory is mainly handled by SPX, which Sanan handles both Capex and OpEx, so the process of assembling inventory and selling them won't affect POET's cash burn rate. Additional capital will be needed when POET builds a spectrometer to incorporate into the OI platform, or become a module maker (this isn't their plan per my observation, just responding to an example Suresh came up earlier)
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POET believes it is better to be on the Nasdaq and save the capital raise for a later date. The host agrees with this, noting that such a move would give the stock a lift and make capital raise less expensive. The subcommittee seems to have recommended this option, concluding that the biggest obstacle to POET's capital market prospects is being on the Venture Exchange/OTC.
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The Nasdaq uplisting is just mechanic at this point, we will be on the Nasdaq in Q1.
My observations:
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Suresh spent quite some time explaining the OI platform in a fairly technical manner, the host Alex definitely has some difficulty parsing all the info. I believe when the audience aren't technical leaders (ie: when not at something like OFC), Suresh and co. should try to make analogies and avoid very technical terms/explanations.
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I see that the host has done 0 homework on POET before hand, which is normal. Management should be prepared to present to this type of audience the most and this is a good conference to learn from.
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Point 9 is important because we know POET is engaging with the NA T1 partner on 400G applications (400G FR4 engines). Any product sales will go straight to POET there instead of being fulfilled by SPX.
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Point 11, 12, I am currently in Asia and seeing the supply chain issues first hand. No one is safe, as everyone is hoarding inventories in addition to meeting existing demands from customers. Many shareholders seem to think POET's the only company in the world to have supply chain issues, which surprises me, maybe buy a subscription to a financial news source like TheFT to learn more.
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Point 13, credit is where credit's due, the POET team has worked hard. If they slacked even just a little, the puzzle would've come crumbling down.
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Point 16, while I don't like to go on the Nasdaq without some kind of hard news (successful qualifications or contracts/POs/design wins), the subcommittee has recommended getting off the OTC first, which I agree. This whole thing has been hanging around for too long and we need to end this saga. Thankfully, we will finally be on the Nasdaq, where subsequent news can allow buyers to come in easily.
And with that, have a good night everyone. Imo it was a good conference to catch up on some of the progress POET's made, and getting important updates regarding just about everything: tech, production, financial, so on.
goobar-rocco