Yes, at the TD Cowen Aerospace and Defense Conference. It's my pleasure to introduce nLIGHT, a founder-led defense laser technology company with a uniquely vertically integrated U.S.-based platform. It's my pleasure to introduce the founder and CEO, Scott Keeney, and Vice President of Corporate Development and Head of Investor Relations, John Marchetti. They'll share more about the company. We'll leave a few minutes at the end if you have any questions you'd like to ask. Over to you. Good. Thanks. Good morning. And, Scott Keeney, founder of nLIGHT. I'm going to go through just a short overview and open it up for questions at the end. We are a high-power laser manufacturer. I started the company 25 years ago to focus on high-power semiconductor lasers that enable these markets, and we'll talk more about that, that are now applied to a broad range of applications, that we'll be talking about. So just a quick overview of the company, first of all. We are headquartered in the Pacific Northwest. The reason for that is because we're a semiconductor company, so we're near Intel's big fab. TSMC has a fab just down the street from us. I'll talk about that. And then we also have a site in Colorado. We're vertically integrated from the semiconductor chip all the way through to complete high-power laser subsystems. The best way to look at this is just a quick animation. This is a gallium arsenide semiconductor wafer, semiconductor chip. This is about a 5-millimeter semiconductor laser. That chip produces tens of watts of power, and there's a lot of technology that's embedded in that chip itself. And again, we have our fab where we produce the chip ourselves. We then package those chips into these single-emitter packages where that light then gets coupled into a 200-micron fiber. And this high-power semiconductor fiber-coupled semiconductor laser then is producing on the order of up to about 1 kW. Those then get put together into this assembly that gets coupled into a fiber, which is a fiber laser or a fiber amplifier. Each of these then produce on the order of 3 kW of power. They're then put together into this assembly. This is for a directed energy system where each of those fiber amplifiers then are coupled into an optical module, coherent beam-combining module that then gets coupled into a beam director that puts that light onto target. So this is our stack of technology from the chip converting electrons into photons all the way out to putting that energy on target. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. We're a dual-use company. We started the company in 2000 to do both, commercial, industrial, and defense applications. I will say back in 2000 on Sand Hill Road raising venture capital, no one really wanted to talk about defense. I was adamant that defense was very important. It's kind of nice to see that coming along. But we've been doing this for 25 years, and for quite a while, we were about 50/50 defense-industrial. Then the industrial-commercial market sort of took off, and, more recently, defense is the core market and is really driving our growth. And that growth is driven by our focus on priorities that align well with Department of War. These are the critical technology areas. There's six that Emil Michael put out in November, and these are the three that are the core focus for us: directed energy, sensing, and then advanced manufacturing. And our high-power lasers are critical for each of these, and I'll talk about each of these in turn. So, in directed energy, there's a wide range of different applications. So just high level, in directed energy, what you're doing is using high-power lasers to transfer energy, to damage, degrade, destroy various threats. Those range from lower power counter-drone to higher power, say, Group three drones, rockets, artillery rockets, artillery mortars, going all the way up to missiles. Then there's a number of more strategic applications for air-based and then also space applications. There's a broad range of different end applications in directed energy, but they're all about using that energy to degrade, damage, or destroy. Again, we are vertically integrated, and I think the point that I just want to emphasize here is that that the reason for that vertical integration is that the technology is evolving rapidly. Our vision was that the semiconductor laser initially was going to progress something like Moore's Law, and it's actually gone faster than Moore's Law. Through this stack, the technology is changing, and we have leading technology at each part of this stack. But then when you combine it together, that differentiation is that much greater. And just a quick primer on what we're doing. We're combining light together to put very high-power lasers on target. There's two ways to do that: spectrally combining or coherently combining. We do both, but for the higher power applications, we believe that, that the coherent combining is a is a better path. Spectral combining, you're basically taking multiple colors of light, as you can see in that cartoon, and combining it coherently. You're phasing up. The reason that coherent has significant benefits is, one, you're able to scale power to higher power levels, and we've got the highest power laser in the world now. Two, you're able to get a brighter source, and you can notionally see that on that spot. And then three, you're able to take that light and adjust it to compensate for atmospheric effects. So as you, you know, you can see in a hot day in the desert, light is degraded by thermal gradients, sort of mirage effect. And we're able to adjust for that and get more light on target. And so we do have the highest power laser in the world now at over 300 kW, and we're scaling to 1 MW right now. And there is more interest, and that interest is growing in those higher power lasers. But power is not sufficient, and I just want to dive a little bit deeper on this technology. And you'll hear about claims of different power levels for different lasers around the world. I chose one here in red that's a 100-kW laser that is out there, internationally. And it works, but it has certain limitations. It's not as bright. It doesn't adjust for the atmosphere. And power is insufficient. So that we have, you know, at the same 100-kW level, we're effectively a factor of two better. It's faster. It has longer range. And then we're scaling up the power. And we scale to 300 kW. The time, the dwell time on target goes down dramatically, and the distance also increases. So there's significant advantages. And this is the reason that the Pentagon is so focused on implementing coherent beam combination. So moving on from directed energy, just briefly talk about the next area that we serve, which is sensing. So this is a set of applications where instead of transferring energy, you're using a pulse laser to get information, range finding, LiDAR, things like that. We have a broad range of applications in this space that do that. And there's quite a diverse range of different things here. I think one point I'd like to start with here is this is not new. Generally, it's not new for us. We're in programs of record that we've been doing for over a decade. And we're deployed on various missiles that are ramping up rapidly right now. We're in space. We have space-qualified lasers for a range of applications, as you can see. And probably the one I'd want to highlight is the upper left, which is ISR. And what we're doing here is LiDAR. It's lasers that are complementing radar. And effectively, what the laser is doing is providing a higher resolution, higher fidelity, you know, image, data, and also doing it in a stealthy way. So there's very important applications in this space. And then finally, for, in the advanced manufacturing, what we're doing is laser additive manufacturing. And here what you're doing is using the laser to 3D print metal parts. So for hypersonics, for example, this is an example of a hypersonic precooler. Just to tear it apart here, you can see the guts of this thing. You can't make this with conventional machine tools. Laser additive manufacturing is the only way you can make these parts mission-critical for hypersonics, and also for various rocket engines. And so our lasers are core to the production of most of the key rocket engines that are being built today that are 3D-printed metal rocket engines. And here are just to quickly dive on the technology. Again, we are adjusting our beam to optimize this process from that very fine lattice structure. That's where we use our very focused, single-mode beam. And then on the bulk part on the right, you can see we expand it to go much faster. Most parts are a hybrid of the two, and we have a proprietary technology where we toggle between them. That's why we're providing this technology in a leading role in this space. So, those are the three main applications and a little bit about the stack of technology and who we are. That technology that we've built over 25 years has positioned us very well for these markets. And those markets, as you can understand, are growing very nicely. We've got a strong backlog, and we're continuing to grow. And as a semiconductor company, as you grow revenue, you get leverage, and you're seeing that in the financials. So that is an overview. Happy to go much deeper on any of these topics or other questions. Open it up. All right. We can move into Q&A. If anybody's got any questions, I can kick it off. Good. I've got one in the back here. Can you talk through the, obviously, the integrated package? [audio distortion] Great. Yeah. And the reason I chuckle is because, with lasers, we're talking about, you know, complex optics, and often we think about it as the core engineering discipline. Turns out heat is probably the most critical thing. So that facet of that semiconductor laser itself that I showed you is approaching the heat flux of the surface of the sun. And so getting heat and managing it is absolutely critical to everything we've done. So from that chip itself to the complete system, there was a host of things we're doing to get the heat out. And sort of ironically, too, one of the ways we're seeing significant improvement is various coolers that we're using. And the optimal coolers have various channels that are optimized for water or other approaches. And laser additive manufacturing is the way you make those too. So you're cooling the lasers with lasers that are printing those parts. So there's a broad range of different technologies, but the thermal issues are a critical piece of everything I talked about. Sorry. Scott, in your sensory area, what partners are you partnering with, [audio distortion] Yeah, it's a good question. I didn't share a slide that we had in our follow-on that we just last week around, you know, the various logos, right? I am comfortable saying, well, first of all, on the government side, we work with all the agencies and all the key services. That's pretty straightforward. But also we build subsystems. We're not a prime. We sell to primes, and we work with all of the primes. And in both sensing and in directed energy is the short answer. And I could put up logos, but there you go. Yeah. Okay. All right. I had a question about your recent capital raise. Yeah. I understand you've got a pretty healthy cash position. What precipitated the decision to raise? I think it was $175 million. Yeah. Total with greenshoe is $200 million. Yeah. So our balance sheet is over $250 million now. And we decided we had an important board meeting to talk about these opportunities and what's going on. And the reason that we felt it was important to have a very healthy balance sheet is really threefold. First and foremost, and these are in order priority, was these applications that we're talking about are ones that we have known for a long time. I mean, I've been working in directed energy for the better part of 30 years, and frankly, I've been in a position many times of telling people in the Pentagon that the technology wasn't quite there yet. We've been working on this technology. It is there. So the end application, say, in directed energy, is reasonably well known, and it's frankly pressing. There's some important threats that need to be addressed. What's changed is that the technology now has enabled these applications. You remember that plot I showed you, right? It's only in the last few years that that has occurred. So, we are in a position where we see that end market. We know what those applications are. We see the technology. And to wait for a program of record is not the right approach here. We are investing ahead of that program of record. So that's topic one, building out whether it be product development or building out, you know, new processes. We're doing that. Number two is continuing to invest in other CapEx and just, you know, various parts of our business. And then number three is M&A. It is something that we've done successfully in the past. We have a number of opportunities. There's not one that has that we're highlighting here, but we want to be in a position to do that. I'll highlight an example there. We went public. We raised capital for similar reasons. The year after we went public, we acquired a company, the Colorado site. It was roughly $35 million, which is, you know, not such a large number, but it was a fair chunk of our balance sheet, right? It was transformative for a whole host of reasons. That's what's led to, you know, significant growth. That's been a key part of our growth, and we want to be in a position to continue to do that. So those are the main reasons. [audio distortion] Yeah, good. I didn't cover that in this presentation. Other than additive manufacturing, by the way, is dual use. I highlighted the more defense space applications there, but that same technology I talked about is building parts for cars today. In fact, the fastest production car in the world is printed with our lasers. And there are other applications like that. So additive is one area where we do see growth in both defense and space and other industrial, commercial, and even some consumer products in that space. The other parts of let's call it the commercial side of our business. There's some areas that are interesting and growing. For example, we've got leading technology for some new medical applications going well. We're just not highlighting that 'cause that's not, that's not the core focus. It's not the core driver of our business. I will say, and to be, we're not covering it in this presentation, that growth that you saw in the charts in the industrial market, the single biggest driver of that growth was China. And we had a strong perspective on that opportunity. I had a history of doing a lot of business in China, had a perspective that I believed that lasers would be adopted rapidly in China, in 2000. And back then, you know, again, Sand Hill Road people thought I was crazy. It turned out it was true. China is the biggest market for industrial lasers today. So that was a good ride. And then in 2018, we went public. Same quarter. Xi Jinping changed the rules and effectively took over Power for Life. We made a decision to de-risk our business, and fairly public about that. So, not covering it in detail here, but that de-risking has been a process that we've been going through, very difficult process to go through. What we've seen subsequently is that the industrial markets, the larger markets are suffering from massive excess capacity from China, whether it be in lasers or lithium-ion batteries or solar or cars, you name it, right? That story is playing out across industrial, including lasers. Is that on the commercial side, are those applications generally lower power? Is that a percentage of the market because it's, [audio distortion] Well, your summary point is correct. It is generally I mean, the space and defense applications that I'm highlighting, yeah, are the most generally the most difficult applications, not across the board. I mean, we've done lasers for semiconductor capital equipment. And as you can imagine, right, those are some pretty complex processes. So we have a background in doing that kind of work, but largely, say, in metal cutting. Metal cutting is effectively directed energy at a centimeter, as opposed to kilometers. And when you're working at that distance, your beam doesn't need to have the same quality. It's what's known as a multi-mode beam. So that is relatively easier, not trivial, right? But yes, relatively easier, not necessarily lower power, but easier. I had one other question. You had a slide on vertical integration. I know that's important to your company. It's a differentiator. Do you have any examples or case studies of how that factored into a customer win or program execution? Yeah, it's a great question. Let me highlight that. I always like to have the image of it just so I can see if I can find it really quickly. There we go. So this is the stack of technology. And again, the reason for vertical integration in our strategy is because the technology's changing rapidly and, therefore to stitch together this stack, in theory, you can do it across companies with arm's length transactions. But as everybody knows, theory of the firm, that there's transaction costs in doing that, right? It's not straightforward. So I'll give you a real example of that. We acquired the it was called Nutronics, a company in Colorado that had technology on the far right of this. Their technology was around coherent beam combining and atmospheric correction, so a very particular aspect of this technology. And our thesis there was that was gonna be important, but even more importantly, that we had ideas on how to improve that. Before that, to go back to the question on our customers, we do work with primes that were doing it. And some of those primes, you know, were working on related technologies, and we're, we were working with them. And frankly, we were in a position of saying, you know, guys, here's what we think can happen here. But they were slow. And also, there's proprietary technology on their side, and there's proprietary technology on our side. And so in some sense, it's always challenging to fully share that. Once we acquired that company in Colorado, we had the teams together. And literally, that far right, if you will, came from the acquisition. It informed through the stack, but it informed all the way back to the chip itself. You can see up there, I say wavelength stabilization. Diving on a detail here, but we have a proprietary technology to allow us to, to lock wavelength on the chip itself. Turns out that's really important, for all kinds of downstream effects. So to come back to the thermal question, as temperature changes, the wavelength changes. And when the wavelength change, things don't work as well. So you need to lock that wavelength. And locking it on the chip itself then has benefits for reducing the thermal challenges to the right. And it also allows you to, say, turn on the laser right away too. It's another example. So these there's these subtle but can be really important linkages across here. There's sort of a systems engineering set of trades that are going on across this stack. That's a very specific example of that. All right. Maybe one last question for me. When you think over the next few years, what are some of the areas you're most excited about in terms of growth or improving margins? Yeah, I mean, I think I listed those three. I'm excited about all three. I will say that the additive is relatively smaller, so I'll hold that one. Sensing and directed energy have very important and therefore big markets. So those are the two general areas that I'm very excited about. And I've tried to give you all an overview of it. It does get a little challenging 'cause the specifics get classified, but I think you all can understand what's driving that. And maybe one high-level topic to leave you with is, you know, we've learned a lot from Ukraine, and there's important lessons there. But USINDOPACOM has a set of different challenges and arguably much bigger. And both directed energy and sensing are vital in that set of challenges. And Golden Dome, you know, effectively needs both. They need directed energy effectors and sensing to know what's going on, those two coming together in that space. Sorry, Matt. [audio distortion] [audio distortion] A lot of that CapEx, other things. Can you just talk through are there any core competency gaps that would be M&A placers or additional in addition to just, you know, normal CapEx for factories? And can you talk through how you prioritize those? Good. So we have a process we go through to structure our thinking on those topics. There's no sort of glaring gap across this. There are smaller tuck-in gaps. But there, it kind of goes into my priority one. One of the reasons for investing ahead also is due to lead times. So today, you're looking at about a 12-month lead time for some of these special optics and other things. And so we're certainly literally today, we're starting to place bets on some inventory in that space that could lead to also, do we vertically integrate there? And so we're assessing that. They're not first order, but even though they're second order, they can be the bottleneck to lead time. And so those are probably the key ones we're looking at right now. Yeah. I would also highlight we just recently announced that we put in a new facility or took space in Longmont to expand. And so a big piece of this raise is gonna go to kitting that facility out, getting into the areas where, you know, we're able to do concurrent system builds, things along those lines. So a good bit of that is to Scott's point where we've got a pretty good line of sight on where we see demand coming and really trying to get ahead of that and make sure that we can build a number of systems at the same time for folks. I will say that that has been very well received by the Pentagon, obviously, right? Yeah. Good. Well, I appreciate all taking the time. I think we've got various one-on-ones, but I'll be here today. Let me know if you have follow-up questions. Thank you.