Lightwave Logic Issues Shareholder Letter and Provides Corporate Update

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Jan 14, 2020, 08:31 ET

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Jan. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Lightwave Logic, Inc. (OTCQB: LWLG), a technology platform company leveraging its proprietary electro-optic polymers to transmit data at higher speeds with less power, today issued a letter to shareholders from its Chief Executive Officer, Michael Lebby.

Dear Fellow Shareholders,

2019 was a watershed year for our company as we continued to innovate, grow and move ever closer to validation from key industry players. As many are familiar, we are building a technology platform leveraging our proprietary electro-optic polymers designed to help scale existing internet infrastructure by transmitting data at higher speeds with less power, which is absolutely essential as the demand for data continues its exponential growth trajectory.

Throughout 2019, we experienced breakthroughs with our materials and devices, which are garnering a significant amount of attention from key industry players. On the materials front, early in the year we announced our internally engineered electro-optic polymer material, which more than doubled the electro-optic response than our previous material. This material will continue to be tested and shows great promise for future iterations of our technology. Later in the year, we also presented data on our material stability and reliability, showcasing improved thermal stability of our internally developed materials at 85 degrees Celsius. In 2018, we talked about a modulator device with a speed of 40 GHz that could support 50-400 Gbps applications, depending on modulation scheme and integration. As we moved through 2019, we significantly improved our capabilities, showing data that our modulators could exceed 80 GHz—which is faster than currently available commercial solutions—while also being capable of supporting industry-typical 100-800 Gbps applications. We continue to discuss prototype modulator specifications with potential customers, and to-date, the feedback has been very positive.

Technology & Customer Discussions
On the technology front, we continued to push our modulators to extreme speeds while maintaining data quality and our low-voltage characteristics. This unique capability, which is paramount to our competitive advantage, already exceeds what many thought was possible with currently available commercial technology solutions. As we move through 2020, our main focus is squarely focused upon refining the performance characteristics of our technology platform, primarily surrounding better signal quality and lower voltages. We firmly believe that these final steps on our next-generation modulators will position us favorably for testing, and ultimately, market acceptance as we push to deliver an enabling solution that the data communications and telecommunications markets are rapidly working to solve.

Today, we are currently working with leading integrated circuit (IC) vendors under NDA to validate our technology with their driver chips, with the goal of providing potential customers with prototypes that can be evaluated in their systems. Typically, a customer engagement process can be lengthy, but ultimately, very rewarding over the long-run. Having been actively engaged in the NDA process and prototype specification, testing and optimization, our next steps include more detailed discussions, performance feedback and further optimization towards an initial design-in. Due to confidentiality, we are unable to disclose details of our work with potential customers under NDA; although, we continue to introduce our technology to new potential customers such as silicon photonics foundries, component suppliers, high-speed module suppliers and networking equipment companies. Initial feedback has been very positive, and we plan to provide further announcements on this front as we are able.

As we move forward, we expect our multi-pronged business model to provide Lightwave Logic with the flexibility to drive sustainable revenues over the long-term. Among these options are potentially an asset-light technology licensing model, the production and sale of components, or via a technology transfer with certain strategic customers.

Our Continued Innovation
Our in-house chemistry team continues to create new materials, in addition to those we are using in current devices. As you may recall, in spring 2019, our team announced an internally engineered electro-optic polymer material for lower-power consumption communications. Initial tests have gone very well and the material continues to look promising for meeting our performance and reliability targets. More importantly, our prospective customers are highly encouraged by our ability to engineer electro-optic polymers with specifically desired properties optimized by application. Furthermore, our anticipated ability to engineer organic polymers to suit specific applications is a key differentiator compared to inorganic materials. Due to these expected capabilities, we have seen an uptick of interest from several new markets outside optical communications, including automotive LIDAR, display/scanning, AI accelerators and quantum optic applications. As a technology platform company, this capability is essential, and we will continue to innovate while aggressively building out our intellectual property portfolio with new technological achievements.

Enhanced Investor Relations Initiatives
In 2020, we are expanding our commitment to the capital markets and to Lightwave Logic shareholders through enhanced investor relations initiatives to increase market awareness of our successes. To spearhead these efforts alongside the executive team, we have engaged investor relations specialists MZ Group to lead a comprehensive, strategic investor relations and financial communications program across all key markets. Augmenting our operational achievements with a strong capital markets awareness campaign with MZ will elevate our institutional profile with the investment community, while driving growth and building long-term shareholder value.

MZ is completing a thorough revitalization of our investor presentation, which will we completed shortly and we encourage all investors to review it once it is posted on the website. We also plan to conduct a comprehensive revamp of our corporate website.

In 2020, we will expand our presence at key investment conferences and in non-deal roadshows with institutional investors worldwide. We will provide additional details on these initiatives as appropriate, and believe our increased interface with the capital markets will benefit all Lightwave Logic stakeholders.

Final Thoughts
Industry analysts and potential customers expect the next several years to bring continued growth in the global photonics components and fiber optic transceivers markets. We believe the breakthroughs we've experienced with our technology platform could not have come at a better time as we focus the year ahead on advancing and forging relationships with some of the largest players in the industry across every level of the value chain.

As we look ahead, we will continue to interact with key players in the industry, while focusing on the key milestones we believe are most important to our business. Among these milestones in the sales cycle are collecting more stability, reliability and performance data for our packaged modulators, continued innovation of our materials, delivering packaged prototypes to potential customers, gathering feedback from those potential customers, meeting specifications the customers require, and finally, design-in and sale of our devices.

In conclusion, our goal is to forever enable and revolutionize the data transmission landscape and the future of several industries. I am proud of our team's accomplishments in 2019 and excited about our continued execution into 2020. On behalf of the entire team at Lightwave Logic, we would like to thank our fellow shareholders for their continued support. Together, we look forward to creating sustainable, long-term value for our shareholders.

Sincerely,

Michael Lebby
Chief Executive Officer

About Lightwave Logic, Inc.
Lightwave Logic, Inc. (OTCQB: LWLG) is developing a platform leveraging its proprietary engineered electro-optic (EO) polymers to transmit data at higher speeds with less power. The Company's high-activity and high-stability organic polymers allow Lightwave Logic to create next-generation photonic EO devices, which convert data from electrical signals into optical signals, for applications in data communications and telecommunications markets. For more information, please visit the Company's website at lightwavelogic.com.

Safe Harbor Statement
The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, lack of available funding; general economic and business conditions; competition from third parties; intellectual property rights of third parties; regulatory constraints; changes in technology and methods of marketing; delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs; changes in customer order patterns; changes in product mix; success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations; shortages in components; production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components; those events and factors described by us in Item 1.A "Risk Factors" in our most recent Form 10-K; other risks to which our Company is subject; other factors beyond the Company's control.

Investor Relations Contact:
Greg Falesnik or Luke Zimmerman
MZ Group - MZ North America
949-385-6449
[email protected]
www.mzgroup.us

SOURCE Lightwave Logic, Inc.