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or Name
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Poet Technologies Inc
Symbol PTK
Shares Issued 166,988,084
Close 2015-01-07 C$ 1.39
Market Cap C$ 232,113,437
Recent Sedar Documents

Poet Tech has 2015 cash balance of $12.5-million

2015-01-08 08:38 ET - News Release

Mr. Peter Copetti reports

POET TECHNOLOGIES ANNOUNCES OPERATIONAL, FINANCIAL POSITION, "LAB-TO-FAB" TRANSITION, AND MILESTONE UPDATES

Poet Technologies Inc. is providing key operational, financial position, lab-to-fab (lab to fabrication) transition and milestone updates.

Financial position

"Poet enters 2015 in excellent financial shape," noted Peter Copetti, co-chairman and interim chief executive officer. "Although we spent on outsourcing and capital equipment through 2014, we start the new year with a cash balance of approximately $12.5-million, a 350-per-cent increase from a year earlier. This is our strongest cash position as a company and will allow us to take advantage of opportunities in the following year to maximize shareholder value." In December, 2014, the company also signed a new lease extension with the University of Connecticut (UConn) for a one-year period which was prepaid at a significant discount. The new lease includes a possible further two-year extension and provides the company the flexibility to transition from lab to fab.

Mr. Copetti added: "Two thousand fourteen has been a great year for Poet, where our transition from lab to fab has begun with many industry non-disclosure agreement discussions that have been initiated through the work of Mr. Ajit Manocha, our co-chairman. Some of our milestones have had to evolve during 2014 because of industry relationship considerations and priorities. These evolving changes have made the updated milestones more significant to the market place. We enter 2015 with financial stability, significant industry relationships and milestones relevant to the industry collaborators. The company believes that we are in an excellent position to monetize our process technology."

Lab-to-fab transition: 100-nanometre and 40 nm scaling program update

Poet recently reported a contractual effort with a third party foundry to accelerate the transition from lab to fab of the Poet technology to a manufacturing status at the six-inch wafer scale. Significant progress has been made toward transfer of critical manufacturing steps to the third party foundry. This flow will both accelerate and improve quality of results for prototype fabrication and test supporting process flow and design enablement kit development. Efforts in the lab have been geared toward optimization of the self-aligned contacts for the HFET transistors, as well as on optimization of the vertical structure of the devices. Daniel DeSimone, chief technology officer, noted: "We have seen positive improvement in the key figures of merit we test for in our devices. We see further possible improvements and are continuing to work on device and process flow to achieve the highest possible performance."

In a parallel development at the UConn lab, a new additional sputter tool was received and accepted. The tool is nearing completion of internal qualification. Deployment of the new tool will drastically reduce prototype fabrication cycle times as well as improve the quality and process control of key films used in the process flow. These will be critical not only to current development, but also necessary for transfer to eventual manufacturing stages.

Milestone updates

PET Foundation Process Design Kit (PDK) targeting 40 nm

Sentaurus modelling (a Synopsys tool) has been performed with new fabrication innovations to achieve controlled scaled device operation. These modelling predictions are guiding and confirming the device prototype development and testing. The PDK milestone has been moved to first quarter 2015 so that the release incorporates the latest innovations currently being developed in the UConn Lab and in parallel with the third party foundry.

Third party foundry 40/100 nm transfer

This lab-to-fab effort requires bringing up critical layers manufacturing capability in the company's third party foundry which enables more complex test structures. Significant progress has been achieved toward the completion of this milestone. The company is very close to completing qualification runs for the flow in which the critical layers are performed at the company's third party foundry. This new flow will significantly accelerate completion and optimization of development on 100 and 40 nm foundation devices and associated proof-of-concept optical and electronic circuit structures.

CEO search update

Poet recently announced that Ajit Manocha, co-chairman, had been appointed to the corporate governance and nominating committee, subject to board approval, with the mandate to identify and consider candidates for the permanent chief executive officer role. Mr. Manocha noted: "Several high-quality candidates are being considered. We hope in the near term to identify Poet's permanent CEO who will continue the process technology development and help us close key industry partnership deals. We look forward to identifying the right successor."

In addition, over the next few months, the company intends to add directors, key executives and operational staff focusing on increasing Poet's presence in the United States.

We seek Safe Harbor.

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