Dr. Suresh Venkatesan reports

POET TECHNOLOGIES ESTABLISHES PHOTONICS DESIGN CAPABILITIES IN OTTAWA

Poet Technologies Inc. has entered into an agreement with highly respected firm MillView Photonics Inc. to establish a collaborative design centre in Ottawa, Ont., Canada.

MillView was established two years ago by Dr. Trevor J. Hall, professor at the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science as well as founding director of the Centre for Research in Photonics at the University of Ottawa. Along with his team, which includes Peng Liu, senior passive component designer, and Mihail Dumitrescu, senior active component designer, and is supported by doctoral and postdoctoral graduate engineers, MillView serves clients in photonics research, simulation, design and process development.

The agreement between the two companies brings together in one lab the MillView team, including Dr. Hall, additional staff from MillView and three PhD-level photonics engineers from Poet. The team is also supported by Dr. William Ring, Poet's senior vice-president, and additional Poet design engineering resources.

Dr. Hall, who is a graduate of Cambridge University, commented: "MillView Photonics was founded along the same model as Cambridge Consultants, where I worked on my return to Cambridge following PhD studies at University College London, U.K. Cambridge Consultants tapped into a vast reservoir of talent to solve real-world design and engineering challenges utilizing academic/industry partnerships. MillView is similarly situated to bring in the specific talent needed to address and solve a broad range of engineering challenges in photonics. We are all really gratified to be working as a team with Poet Technologies. Poet's unique Optical Interposer platform has tremendous market potential and we are all committed as one team to its success."

Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, Poet's chief executive officer, commented: "Poet's partnership with MillView rapidly expands our effort with experienced photonics engineering talent and substantial simulation and design capacity. In line with our stated strategy, we have assembled a team in one place dedicated to one goal -- the design and development of waveguides and filters for our Optical Interposer platform. In addition, this places Poet squarely in both a region and university where photonics design and development are vibrant and pervasive. The number of companies engaged in the photonics industry, and the quality of the engineering talent available, is extraordinary. We are very appreciative for the reception that Dr. Hall has extended to Poet that allows us to function as one team."

2019 TSX Venture 50

The company has been named to the 2019 TSX Venture 50 list, a ranking of the top performers on the TSX Venture Exchange over the past year. The TSX Venture 50 ranking comprises 10 companies from each of the five industry sectors represented on the TSX-V. Companies are selected based on three equally weighted criteria: market capitalization growth, share price appreciation and trading volume.

Thomas Mika, Poet's executive vice-president and chief financial officer, commented: "We are gratified to be recognized as one of the top technology companies on the TSX Venture Exchange for 2019. Last year was a transformational year for the company, highlighted by our first orders for our Poet Optical Interposer-based solutions from leading global communications companies targeting data communications applications. Additionally, we recently received an offer to purchase our DenseLight subsidiary as part of our plan to pursue a fab-light strategy with a less capital-intensive business model. In fact, today's announced collaboration agreement with MillView for combining design capabilities also furthers these efforts by leveraging key strategic partnerships to establish Poet as a world-class organization with leading optical products. We look forward to building on our growing momentum in 2019 as we realize the substantial commercial potential for Poet's technology."

Change to the board of directors

John O'Donnell has resigned from Poet's board of directors, effective Dec. 31, 2018, as part of his recent retirement from professional law practice. Mr. O'Donnell has served as the company's chief legal counsel, corporate secretary and director since 2012.

The company and the board sincerely thank Mr. O'Donnell for his dedicated service and contribution to Poet Technologies over the past seven years.

About Poet Technologies Inc.

Poet Technologies is a developer and manufacturer of optical light source products for the sensing and data communications markets. Integration of optics and electronics is fundamental to increasing functional scaling and lowering the cost of current photonic solutions. Poet believes that its approach to hybrid integration of devices, utilizing a novel dielectric platform and proven advanced wafer-level packaging techniques, enables substantial improvements in device cost, efficiency and performance. Optical engines based on this integrated approach have applications ranging from data centres to consumer products.

We seek Safe Harbor.