POET Technologies (Nasdaq: POET). A journey to become a large, multibillion, optoelectonic semiconductor company.

This is POET Technologies.

Recently listed on Nasdaq, production begins in 2H this year (aiming >340 million USD revenue by 2025), increasing institutional holding (0->2,6% in a very short period), increasing high-level staff (Arista, MACOM,...), rapidly growing customer list, critical acclaim on world leading conferences such as OFC, serving an immense and rapidly growing optoelectronic semiconductor market (artificial intelligence, biosensing, Lidar, datacom and 5G).

POET's business is "photonics", "optoelectronic integrated circuits" or "optoelectronic semiconductors", an innovative type of semiconductors.

History: we use semiconductors in phones, cars, laptops, .... These make use of electrons. "Electrons" represent signals "1/0" within the circuit.

Problem today: no conventional semiconductor made today can't meet the speed, energy and form factor requirements for important future markets such as computing (Ai), sensing (Lidar, biomedical) or communications (5G). Semiconductors using electrons are too slow and consume too much energy.

Solution: we'll use optoelectronic semiconductors. Experts have been looking to use light signals (photons) instead of electrons. Light requires less energy and is way faster. The modulator in the optoelectronic chip can split the light coming from a laser into different colors. Each color is passed through waveguides and detected as a 0 or a 1. This is much more efficient than conducting electrons.

So... the world is dreaming of communicating cars, fast 5G networks, artificial intelligence, robotics, space and biosensors, .... but there is no such world without photonics. It's simply not possible. You will inevitably have a high return on this investment because frankly there is no other way.

Why aren't we using these optoelectronic semiconductors everywhere today? It is because until recently (1) it was difficult to develop these superior optoelectronic semiconductors in large volumes and at low cost....... Everything must be done in active alignment, which requires a lot of labor which makes it more expensive than conventional chips. And (2) there were problems with, for example, conducting light signals (absorption, loss, reflection...).

Now POET comes into play.

(1) POET has unlocked the bottleneck in packaging optoelectronic semiconductors. POET has a unique wafer-scale assembly technique (100's at a time). Kind of 3D printing and assembling on a wafer. POET does what is called the "semiconductorization" of optoelectronics, i.e., making optoelectronic semiconductors, which are superior to conventional chips, in large volumes.

(2) POET has improved optoelectronic semiconductors. POET's patented Interposer TM platform is a work of art and will eventually become the de facto standard in the industry. The platform consists of different types of optoelectronic semiconductors, so it is a series of products with different structures depending on the vertical, but all based on the same technology (same layers and principles), and manufactured in large volumes. All of them are patented. The platform has insane features. The structure of the platform can be customized depending on the customer's needs. It has speed agnostic, athermal waveguides to guide the light. It has insane performance results (eye margins) and it is compatible with different types of materials, e.g. modulators (different types, can easily be a Lightwave Logic modulator in the future) or lasers (DML, EML), depending on the customer. POET can easily and very quickly integrate new materials. They just "flip-chip" everything on the chip. For example, POET is the 1st company doing this and creating a DML flip chipped optical engine. Everyone is still doing hand work, and POET is developing ultra-fast, top-notch products at the lowest cost (-40% cost and -40% power consumption compared to other "solutions"). Competition is suffering coupling loss and technical issues, while POET has zero alignment. There is no degradation in signal or power performance. Moreso, POET's chips have a very small form factor (4X smaller), and smaller is better. This is probably the smallest in the industry. They can put 4 chips where competition can put 1, so multiplying performance by 4 in the same space. The small form factor is also important in for example the biosensing vertical: a spectrophotometer is paired with POET's chip in a wearable or phone camera -> huge amounts of data can be processed and glucose, lactate, hydration,... can all be measured non-invasively from your wrist. Thanks to the small form factor it can be placed e.g. in a phone.

In an inflationary world, POET’s chips are deflationary. POET's chips reduce costs for every party involved: capex, bill of materials, assembly/labor, testing, energy, and so on.

POET serving 6 different, hot verticals: artificial intelligence, biosensing, Lidar, datacom and 5G. POET is mainly focused on Ai and datacom, but POET is also doing a feasability study on biosensing and POET is in talks with worlds largest wearable and mobile phone manufacturers in China and Korea. POET just announced they will supply Celestial Ai (with members of Broadcom and Koch in it) and has already lots of customers for the datacom vertical.

The global photonics market will grow to >$1.2T by 2030, almost a 7% annual CAGR. The world is changing. In 1995, people didn't know about the dot com bubble. In analogy, photonics is highly disruptive and I think this industry will eventually become well known. The need for photonics and POET's products is increasing.

POET is getting more attention from private investors and much more on the technical side. Major companies are 100% aware of POET's technology and are now validating it. Customer and partnership list is growing rapidly (30 active discussions, 6 customers lined up and 8 finalizing project plans).

POET's senior management is senior ex-MACOM and senior ex-GlobalFoundries. The most recent iteration of this company came around 2015, when Dr. Suresh Venkatesan joined the company as CEO. He was formerly the CTO of GlobalFoundries and his track record is public here. POET pivoted to the development of their current tech platform: the Optical Interposer. After 5 years and $60M spent, the platform is ready for commercialization. More and more high profile managers are accepted to the company such as Unde

POET was recently listed on the Nasdaq exchange to become investable for institutions. In the coming weeks and months, as POET goes into production and the funds do their own due diligence, we should see many more buy-ins. POET has a small float of 37M and is now 2.6% owned by institutions. Low float + high institutional holding = less shares available and only at the highest prices.

POET is aiming to generate at least 1 billion USD yearly revenue by 2028.

Production of first products starts in the next 6 months (2H 2022). These are 100G and 200G chips for datacom. These chips will be the first cash cow for the company because of the insane high demand for these speeds. Talking about datacom, POET has developed 400G and 800G, and will release 1.6T/s, 3.2T/s and 6.4T/s next year, which is insane, but because of the nature of POET's technology, it's all possible and already proven. POET easily can ramp up production because of the joint venture with SANAN Optoelectronics Co, China's biggest LED chip maker, and SANAN bought all the equipment. This team has already 40 employees. The joint venture may go public on the STAR board in the future. Half of these revenues belongs to POET.

POET is mentioned as a major player in most market reports lately, such as for example Yole and Databridge.

POET will present at IEEE. Poet is presenting on Thursday June 16th at 1:50 PM. Title: "A Wafer Scale Hybrid Integration Platform for Copackaged Photonics using a CMOS based Optical Interposer".

POET will present at the PIC conference 28-29 june this year and POET is a platinum sponsor.

POET has co-founded SHINE (Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next generation micro-Electronics center). They will present at June 30 2022 (keynote presentations: POET, SOITEC, Applied Materials, Stanford University, University of Tokio and invited talks: Continental Automatives, AMD Singapore,....). SHINE will support R&D projects with industry partners across the semiconductor technology value chain like Applied Materials (Corp Lab), SOITEC, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and POET Technologies. The R&D activities addresses state-of-the-art scientific translational problems that will bring both academic and industry researchers together. These activities range from innovative material engineering, targeted on semiconductor chip processing and machine-learning-enabled chip fault isolation technologies, over the 5-year horizon. Furthermore, SHINE will build the ecosystem and benefit the industry in Singapore, as it moves to a next-generation hybrid-integrated (flexible and rigid) microelectronics. This will enable Singapore to transform into a SMART Nation which empowers people to live meaningful and fulfilling lives, enabled seamlessly by technology offering exciting opportunities. Lastly, SHINE will continue to seek new collaborations to enrich the research work and find opportunities to translate technology for societal impact.

Available cash 25 million USD and no debt, with a burn rate 1M/month.

Risks: all risks mentioned in their 10-Qs, world war 3.

I think at this stage, the risk-reward profile is heavily skewed towards reward and remember, always buy when blood is in the streets. Timing is great.