LightPath Technologies (LPTH) 第四财季及2026财年业绩电话会议：营收、利润率与积压订单激增

核心要点

• 2026财年营收增长93%至7170万美元，毛利率从27%扩大至36%。
• 第四财季营收同比增长73%，达到创纪录的2120万美元；毛利率达到39.4%；调整后EBITDA为210万美元，占营收的10%。
• 全年调整后EBITDA由亏转盈，从亏损510万美元改善至盈利420万美元，同比大幅改善930万美元。
• 截至6月30日，积压订单达1.109亿美元，同比增长197%。其中约8560万美元要求在12个月内交付。
• 组件和模组业务贡献了3190万美元，占2026财年营收的44%，同比增长281%，对毛利率扩张提供了支撑。
• LightPath在2026财年结束时拥有9320万美元现金，且实质上无债务。管理层计划在2027财年增加资本支出，以扩大Black Diamond玻璃及下游产品的产能。

核心财务业绩

第四财季运营支出包含200万美元与收购业绩承诺负债相关的非现金公允价值调整。全年来看，LightPath计入了1560万美元的业绩承诺重估费用，主要原因是G5 Infrared的业绩表现超出了收购时的假设。管理层表示，与G5相关的绝大部分费用现已计提完毕，最终的业绩承诺付款定于2027年1月进行。

业务与运营表现

组件、模组和摄像机占第四财季营收的43%及全年营收的44%，而2023财年该比例为23%。管理层将毛利率的提升归因于这种更高价值的产品组合，以及制造良率、吞吐量和生产费用吸收率的改善。

2026财年组件和模组营收增长281%至3190万美元。红外元件增长52%至2120万美元，可见光元件增长32%至1550万美元，工程服务业务基本持平，为310万美元。

管理层表示，多个项目正从验证阶段过渡到量产阶段。反无人机系统仍是积压订单的主要驱动力，同时对无人机光学器件和无人机主导组件的需求也在增长。两个反无人机项目正过渡到每月交付数十套系统的阶段。

LightPath的导引头摄像机正被设计整合入或在七个平台上进行评估，其中包括洛克希德·马丁的三个平台。陆军推迟了NGSRI拦截弹的进度安排，但管理层将其归因于时间节点问题，而非公司特有的风险。

该公司还在基于Black Diamond玻璃而非金属锗重新设计G5制冷型摄像机。由于探测器供应限制以及熔炼大尺寸玻璃所需的技术工作，该项目目前落后于计划进度，但管理层表示，迄今为止的测试表明其性能应至少与基于锗的摄像机相当。

LightPath于7月签署协议，以450万美元的价格将其中国子公司出售给当地管理层，分五年支付。预计该交易将减少约450万美元的年度第三方营收。前子公司将作为外部供应商继续为LightPath供货，从而减少对美欧商业客户的干扰。

剥离完成后，LightPath表示其自有的生产运营设施将全部位于中国境外，分布在奥兰多、普莱诺、哈德逊和里加。管理层预计，这种架构将增加参与国防和公共安全竞标的机会，因为这些竞标限制有中国业务运营的供应商参与。

管理层展望

管理层在2027财年的首要任务是增加产能、保持近期的毛利率增长成果并将积压订单转化为营收。公司未提供具体的营收或毛利率预测。

资本支出预计将超过2026财年的630万美元。计划中的投资包括在奥兰多和德克萨斯州增加Black Diamond玻璃熔炼产能、在达拉斯附近建设更大的设施，以及扩大美国和拉脱维亚工厂的光学加工、镀膜和组装产能。

财年末宣布的两笔总额为2400万美元的大订单计划于2027财年交付。管理层表示，这两笔订单均属于量产项目，交付期分布在多个月份，并有可能在未来年份续签。

风险与关注点

• 即便在收购Amorphous Materials之后，Black Diamond玻璃目前仍是公司最大的内部产能瓶颈。
• 探测器的交付周期已从大约6个月增加到10个月或更长时间，这促使LightPath更早地下单采购零部件并建立库存。
• 机械零件和电机也给集成系统带来了供应链压力。
• 连续第二年扩大生产规模将需要利用仍在建设中的产能，并依赖仍在招聘中的员工。
• 陆军在探索替代方案期间，将NGSRI项目推迟了数月。
• 边境巡逻队的资金已下发给主承包商，但尚未转化为LightPath的摄像机订单。

分析师问答要点

管理层表示，要求在12个月内交付的8560万美元积压订单主要由反无人机系统推动，无人机光学器件和组件的贡献日益增加。在当前订单簿中，边境巡逻队相关的业务依然有限。

关于中东和北非边境警卫塔项目的商业机会，管理层表示大多是对盟国的对外军事销售。LightPath作为副承包商参与其中，管理层指出单项机会通常对公司价值数千万美元，但同时也提醒称无法估计整体潜在市场规模。

关于金属锗的替代方案，管理层表示，Black Diamond玻璃的竞争窗口期可能比此前预期的更长。管理层提及潜在锗供应商宣布的新增产能有限，但并未明确说明该优势能持续多久。

管理层还表示，自6月30日达到1.109亿美元以来，积压订单一直在持续增长，不过由于存在出货和持续预订，7月份的订单不能简单地与季度末的数字直接相加。

业绩电话会议完整文字记录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Thank you for your continued patience. Your meeting will begin shortly. If at any time you need assistance, please press star zero and a member of our team will be happy to assist. Please stand by. Your meeting is about to begin.

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to LightPath Technologies' fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2026 earnings conference call. This conference is being recorded today, September 10, 2026, and the earnings press release accompanying this conference call was issued after the market closed today. I'd like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, the company will be making a number of forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations, various risks and uncertainties, and discussed in its periodic SEC filings. Although the company believes that the assumptions underlying these statements are reasonable, any of them could be proven to be inaccurate, and there can be no assurances that the projected results will be realized. In addition, references may be made to certain financial measures that are not in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. We refer to these as non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our SEC reports in certain areas of our press releases, which include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures and associated disclaimers. CEO Sam Rubin will begin today's call with a strategic overview of the business and recent developments for the company, while CFO Albert Miranda will then review financial results for the quarter and the fiscal year. Following the prepared remarks, there will be a formal question and answer session. I'd like to now turn the conference over to CEO Sam Rubin. Sam, the floor is yours.

Sam Rubin

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon to everyone, and welcome to LightPath Technologies' fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2026 financial results conference call. The last few calls I typically opened by talking about the strategy and how the strategy is working and where it's taking us. Tonight instead, I will let the numbers talk and let the fiscal year results do the talking. Fiscal 2026 is the first year in which the transformation we have been describing shows up cleanly in every line of the financial statements, not just the backlog.

Four numbers frames a year. Revenue grew 93% from $37 million to nearly $72 million. Gross margin expanded from 27% to 36%. Adjusted EBITDA moved from a $5.1 million loss to a $4.2 million profit, a swing of more than $9 million. And backlog finished at $110.9 million, up 197% from where we started the year. The fourth quarter was our best quarter in every one of those categories. Revenue of $21.2 million was a company record, our fourth consecutive quarter of sequential growth. Growth margin was 39.4%. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.1 million, or 10% of revenue, which was our fourth straight profitable quarter on that measure. Great results, which we expect will continue to grow and improve.

Now, I'd like to spend a moment on the quality of that margin, because it is the part that I am most pleased with. The 39.4% margin did not come from a one-time favorable contract or from raising prices. It did come from two things we did. First is the mix of products. Assemblies, modules, and cameras were 43% of the fourth quarter revenue and 44% of the full year, compared to 23% of the revenue in fiscal 2023. These products, which our strategy has really taken us towards, have both higher prices and higher margins, as a result of the significant value add compared to our legacy component business. Second is execution. The yield and throughput problems that dragged our component margins in the past are, well, in the past. And every one of our four product groups improved its margin year over year. The mixed improvement is a result of strategy. The margin improvement is the results of operation. We needed both, and this year we got both.

And while the backlog has not grown sequentially, shortly after we closed the quarter, we reported two large orders totaling $24 million and have been continuing to book and grow our backlog. So the backlog you will see for the quarter ending in about three weeks' time will show already some more growth. While we continue securing new customers, both by converting them to Black Diamond and by providing them with assemblies and systems, much of the orders coming now, like the two large orders I just mentioned from July, are for production. As many of the programs we have been working on move from qualification to production. We have said in the past that a design and qualification of a new program, whether it's a redesign to use Black Diamond or a new program altogether, can take up to two years. Much of the growth in our backlog and bookings recently that we are seeing is the result of such new programs beginning to move into production.

Two years ago, in late 2022, China imposed the first restrictions on export of germanium and gallium, and we began to see a growth in demand to Black Diamond and systems using Black Diamond glass. Now we are beginning to see the transition of some of those into production. A trend I expect will intensify, as most customers did not start their redesign and substitution effort until much after the initial export ban on germanium. To that end, I will provide now an update on some of our key programs we have in the pipeline and their status. As mentioned in recent calls, due to the good problem of experiencing exponential growth in all our sales fronts, I can't really cover all the large programs, so instead I will focus on ones where we had some changes or recent developments.

NGSRI, our three-year-old interceptor program with Lockheed Martin. As many have heard, the Army has pushed out the timeline by a few months in an effort to potentially explore other options. We do not see this as a risk to us, only a delay. We have seen this happen in multiple other programs where the Army wants to foster a truly competitive environment. Our confidence continues to be very high. And given that our Seeker is being designed and evaluated into multiple platforms now, we have little concern here. In the last few months, we have relocated the groups that works on that Seeker into a new building and have began investing in increasing capacity for building Seekers, knowing that any program that moves into production will need to scale very quickly. More broadly about seekers and missiles, our camera systems are now being designed into or actively evaluated in seven different platforms, three of which are with Lockheed Martin. The remainder are with primes, or as they're sometimes referred to recently, Neo Prime. times, newer companies entering the defense market. The full qualification of our low-cost seeker that was completed as a result of the NGSFI flight test, as expected, opened the door to many other opportunities. The same manufacturing facility in Texas will support all of those opportunities.

In Border Patrol or Border Tower, we have seen funding being released from DHS to the Primes. However, that has not yet translated into orders for cameras. What we have seen is a growth in demand for similar towers and cameras that end up installed outside the U.S., primarily in the Middle East. A few other programs. We have an unnamed airborne program which has completed qualification and we await the production order for LREP. The Apache program is looking like it might make a comeback soon with a renewed interest in that system. Drones, and in particular drone dominance programs, are generating significant demand, which we are addressing by starting to add automation to some of our processes for high-volume assemblies. And counter UAS programs continue to move along well, with two of the programs now transitioning to a cadence of deliveries of tens of systems a month.

In parallel to more design wins of our existing products, the teams have been working on designs and redesigns of additional products, all of which leverage our Black Diamond glass and make use of our supply chain resilience and having alternative materials instead of depending on germanium. On the camera front, we have been redesigning the last of the G5 cooled cameras to use Black Diamond instead of germanium. That program is progressing well technically, though behind schedule. However, all the results we have seen so far indicated the cameras will work at least as well as the germanium-based cameras. We have also been working on zoom lenses and zoom cameras in what is called long-wave infrared, often referred to as uncooled cameras. Here, too, we identified an area of the market in which we can leverage our position to provide products without supply chain constraints. An effort that has been ongoing for the last year is now coming to fruition. Our first orders for zoom lenses and complete uncooled zoom cameras to be delivered soon. Once those are fully production ready, we expect to see the need in the market translate into orders fairly quickly.

Let me now turn to the structural changes we have completed after year-end, which is the divestiture of our China operation. In July, we signed a definitive agreement to sell our China subsidiary to an entity owned by the local management team that has run the facility for us, for $4.5 million, payable in installments over five years. And that transaction is expected to close later this month. Financially it is a modest event. Roughly $4.5 million of annual third party revenue leaves our consolidated results. And the buyer continues to supply us a third party to supply us as a third-party vendor for our commercial customers in the U.S. and Europe. There is no disruption to those customers. Strategically, it is not modest at all. Six years ago, most of our manufacturing footprint was in China, and more than a third of our revenue came from China. As of this fall, LightPath now does everything, melts glass, coats optics, builds cameras and assembly exclusively outside of China, in Orlando, in Plano, Texas, in Hudson, New Hampshire, and in Riga, Latvia. We have no ownership, no facility, and no commercial activity in China. For a customer base that is now dominated by the defense primes and public safety agencies, that is no longer a nice-to-have talking point, but something that will now open up significant bid opportunities where that is a condition for participation. That connects directly to our regulatory backdrop.

Defense programs are required to move off optical glass and optical components sourced from covered nations before the end of the decade. What has changed over the last year is not the rule, it is the timing. Qualification cycles for an optical system run two to three years. So the sourcing decisions that determine who supplies those programs in 2029 and 2030 are being made now, in this fiscal year and in the next one. However, several executive orders around waivers for germanium and classification of material as critical and specific tariffs applied would likely pull that timeline even closer.

Now, to address that, let me talk about capacity a bit, because capacity is our single biggest operational theme going into fiscal 2027. When we acquired amorphous materials in January, we increased our Black Diamond melting capacity. Just as importantly, we unlocked large diameter melting, up to 10 inches and beyond, versus the 5 inches we could produce before. In optics, the further you need to see, the larger the optics need to be. Large diameter is what opens up long-range camera systems, large assemblies, and space-based missile detection and tracking. I told you in May that doubling the glass capacity was nowhere near enough. That is still true. Demand for glass is running ahead of supply even after the acquisition. So we are adding melting capacity in Orlando and Texas. We are moving the AML, the office operation, into a larger building near our Vizimim camera business in the Dallas area, and we're expanding downstream capacity in optical fabrication, coating, and assembly across the U.S. and Latvian sites, including adding shifts in all locations.

Al will talk about what that means for capital spending. The short version is that fiscal 2027 CapEx will be higher than fiscal 2026, and that is a deliberate choice made against a visible order book and pipeline. Before I hand it to Al, I'd like to discuss the balance sheet. In June, we raised $50 million in a primary offering alongside a secondary sale by North Fund Capital, who funded our acquisition of G5. We ended the fiscal year with $93.2 million of cash and effectively no debt. Some of that capital will be used to fund the capacity and working capital required to convert our growing backlog that has now grown over five consecutive quarters and continues to grow, and some will be to pursue accretive capability-adding acquisitions, such as the one similar to G5 and AML that have proven we can execute and integrate. With that now, I will turn the call over to Albert Miranda, CFO, to walk through the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2026 financial results. Albert.

Albert Miranda

Go ahead. Thank you, Sam. As always, I'll keep my review to a succinct highlight of the financials. Much of what we're discussing was also included in our press release issued earlier today, and will be included in the 10-K for the period. I encourage you to visit our Investor Relations webpage to access both documents.

In the fourth quarter, revenue increased 73% to $21.2 million, as compared to $12.2 million the same year ago. Sales of infrared components were $7.1 million, 34% of consolidated revenue. Visible components were $4.2 million, or 20% of consolidated revenue. Assemblies and modules were $9.1 million, or 43% of consolidated revenue. Engineering services were $0.8 million, or 4% of consolidated revenue. Gross profit increased 210% to $8.3 million, or 39.4% of revenue in the fourth quarter, as compared to $2.7 million, or 22% of revenue in the same year-ago quarter. Sam mentioned the reasons for our gross margin increase, in addition to better absorption and higher production volume, and we also had a quarter carried through a $0.5 million inventory reserve charge last year that didn't recur this year.

Operating expenses for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 were $12.6 million as compared to $7.2 million in the prior year period. Of the $5.4 million increase, $2 million relates to non-cash fair value adjustment to the acquisition earn-out liabilities, which are remeasured through operating expenses until fully settled. The increase is primarily related to G5 infrared, reflecting its strong performance against the earn-out targets. The final earn out amount was agreed to and accrued in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 to be paid in January 2027. The operating expense increase of $3.4 million is primarily comprised of increased selling, general and administrative expenses where the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 included the addition of AML operations, incentive compensation accruals, additions to the senior leadership team, higher sales and marketing investments, and continued information technology spend to meet customer security requirements. Net loss for the fourth quarter was $4.1 million, or $0.06 per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $7.1 million, or $0.16 per share in the same year ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $2.1 million, or 10% of revenue, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2 million in the year ago quarter. This is our fourth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. As I've said before, adjusted EBITDA is non-GAAP and not a perfect measure, but it is a better indicator of core operating performance, because it strips out the non-cash acquisition accounting that otherwise dominates our reported results.

For the fiscal year, revenue for 2026 increased 93% to $71.7 million as compared to $37.2 million in the fiscal 2025. Sales of infrared components were $21.2 million, or 30%, an increase of 52% year over year. Visible components were $15.5 million, or 22% of consolidated revenue, an increase of 32%. Assemblies and modules were $31.9 million, or 44% of consolidated revenue, an increase of 281%. Engineering services were $3.1 million, or 4% of consolidated revenue, roughly flat with the prior year. Operating expenses for fiscal 2026 were $45.5 million as compared to $22 million in the prior year. Of the $23.5 million increase, $14.1 million relates to the non-cash fair value adjustment to acquisition earn out liabilities, which I will discuss further in a minute. The remaining operating expense increase of $9.4 million reflects a full year of G5 infrared operating costs, the addition of AML operating costs, higher sales and marketing spend, information technology investments to meet heightened customer security standards, and increased personnel costs associated with filling executive roles and accruing for incentive compensation plans. In addition, new product development costs also increased, which management views as an important part of execution of our strategy, employing us to continue to grow our investments in new product developments.

I want to be direct about the earn-out accounting because it is the largest single line in our income statement this year and the least reflective of our operating performance. The $15.6 million charge in fiscal year '26 is a remeasurement of what G5's sellers earned. And it moved because G5 is outperforming the amount estimated at the time of acquisition, which per GAAP was largely weighted based on the stock's historical financials. It is not an ongoing operating cost, and the majority of it is behind us, as we've now accrued for the final G5 earn out to be paid in January 2027. There may be small adjustments in future quarters related to AML and VisiMed still to come. Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2026 was a profit of $4.2 million compared to a loss of $5.1 million in fiscal 2025. As Sam said, a swing of $9.3 million. A good indicator of where we're heading.

Backlog at June 30th was $110.9 million, up 197% from $37.4 million a year ago. Approximately $85.6 million of that is requested by customers for delivery within 12 months. And then I'll touch on CapEx, as Sam mentioned. It is an indicator of how we are managing growth. In fiscal year '26, we spent $6.3 million in CapEx, $4.4 million in Q4 alone. The last time we spent at that level was in calendar year 2023 when we expanded the Orlando facility and doubled the size of the manufacturing and the clean room. The fiscal '27 plan is larger and more ambitious. We will expand all of our locations to meet the backlog we have and the demand we foresee through fiscal '27 and into fiscal year '28. The plan is to get ahead of demand in some key areas like the production of Black Diamond glass.

With that in mind, let me close with the frame I would use if I were on your side of the call. Two years ago, this was a $32 million per year revenue business with negative adjusted EBITDA, $3.5 million of cash. This fiscal year, it is a $72 million revenue business with positive adjusted EBITDA, $93 million cash, no debt, and $111 million order book that continues to grow. The work in fiscal 2027 is to add capacity fast enough, hold the margin gains, convert the book. That is a straightforward execution mandate and it is fully funded. With that, I'll turn the call back to Sam for some closing remarks.

Sam Rubin

Thank you, Al, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. Fiscal 2026 was the year the pieces came together. A full year of G5, the addition of AML, a fortified balance sheet, a Western-aligned manufacturing base, and a set of programs that are moving from qualification into production. The upcoming fiscal 2027 will be a different kind of year. It is less about proving the thesis and more about scaling against it. Doubling a manufacturing business in 12 months is hard. Doing it twice in a row is harder, and it will require capacity we are still building and people we are still hiring. We are clear-eyed about it, but we are doing it with $93 million of cash, no debt, two domestic glass, and a lot of money. plants, the broadest portfolio of infrared materials available, and a customer base that increasingly cannot source what they or what they make from anyone else in acceptable terms.

With that in mind, I want to close, before we open for Q&A, by thanking the LightPath team. You, my team, delivered a record year while integrating two acquisitions, migrating infrastructure, and building capacity underneath a backlog that tripled. That is a great deal to ask of an organization our size, and you delivered it. With that in mind, I'll turn it back to the operator for Q&A. Operator.

Operator

Thank you, Sam. [Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Clarke Jeffries with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Unknown Speaker

Hello, thank you for taking the question. First question, just looking out to 2027, that $86 million that's sort of primed for delivery in 2027, wondering if we could get a sense of the major programs that are embedded there and those two large contracts in July, are they yet set for 2027 delivery. One follow-up.

Sam Rubin

Sure. So I'll answer the second part first. Yes, they're for 2027 delivery, the two large contracts that were in July. What's also nice about them or really encouraging about them, they're already production and both of them are a cadence of deliveries spread over months and therefore we expect them to be renewed in the years to come as kind of programs of record typically do. Secondly, in terms of the breakout of it, Al, I don't know if you have it by product group, but application-wise, counter UAS is still probably one of the biggest parts in there. Optics for drones and assemblies for drone dominance is a growing part in there. We don't have a lot of Border Patrol in there yet because the funding that has flown through to the pipe has not come its way to us. So I'd say primarily counting UAS right now is a very big driver.

Unknown Speaker

Perfect. And then just wondering if, Sam, you could give a little bit of additional context for G5 and the redesign timeline. Just any reasons for the delay and maybe just a right setting on, you know, the earliest contribution you'd expect from those redesigned products. Thank you.

Sam Rubin

Supply chains are stretched everywhere. And the redesign, while it doesn't require redesigning the entire camera, there's still mechanics and stuff. Some other lenses that need to be redesigned, and some changes. We're starting to feel the supply chain, especially on the detector side, impacting us across the board. Um so it really impacted that part is one. Um the second is um while amorphous are able to melt the glass in that size, it is the first time or, you know, one of the first times amorphous was melting that glass. And melting those kind of glass is not a plug and play recipe. I mean, even for us, from the moment we light and NRL materials, it took us three years until we started producing them. So there's quite a bit of fine-tuning that once you start melting it. We're lucky to have an incredible team as we do at Amorphis that is able to do that at a really record time. But there's still more effort than just saying, okay, we'll melt it, and that's it. Perfect. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Next question will come from Austin Moeller with Canaccord. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

分析师问答

Austin Moeller

Hi, good afternoon, Sam and Al. So just my first question on the Border Patrol cameras or the equivalent overseas. Are the overseas camera opportunities, are those foreign military sales to Middle East allies? Or is that the U.S. Air Force and the Army deploying those on bases? And what could the TAM look like compared to Border Patrol?

Sam Rubin

Those are mostly foreign military sales to allies. The Air Force and so on, those are mainly counter UAS systems, the different C-UAS systems. So I was talking about Border Patrol and towers along the borders of different Middle East or North African countries. Um, the term is a bit difficult to tell because I don't know that market well enough. We're one down, we're sub-prime there. But I would say that every deal like that that comes in usually is in the $tens of millions for us.

Austin Moeller

Okay. And I understand you've shipped spear cameras, at least initial prototypes to the Navy, and they installed them immediately. How many more spear cameras can be made available to the Navy in the next 12 months and installed remotely in Southeast Asia, just given this tanker war they're getting pulled?

Sam Rubin

By drones every day? Well, I can't speak for the Navy and uh about the um installation process or timelines. We did ship, I believe, the first camera, or maybe two, and I think we have another five cameras in dispatch before we get another order. Um and those. Those five are expected to ship really in the next few weeks. But beyond that, I really have no visibility into the process once we ship them until they make it onto the ship.

Operator

Okay, awesome. That's super helpful. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Richard Shannon with Craig Hallum. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Richard Shannon

Well, great. Thanks, Sam and Al. Let me ask a couple questions. Apologies for any ambient noise here in the loud area. Um, Sam, I wanted to follow up on NGSRI. You made some prepared remarks here about not seeing any risk in the contracting proposal, I think is the term used by the government to the Army for this. A little more detail as to why you don't think that's a risk here. I think that anyone who read this as I do the first time, it made it sound like they were dissatisfied in some manner with the current options here and you've expressed a lot of confidence in the solution you're supporting there. So, I would love to get a sense of why you think that's very low risk here, please.

Sam Rubin

Yes, so I'll refer here to an article that was published earlier this week. I can't remember the name of it. The person there described, I think, pretty accurately that there are tens of thousands of launchers deployed in the field of the old Stinger missile. These new missiles need to be reverse compatible with those launches. I'm not going to go into details of what the effort it takes to do that and what either Lockheed or Raytheon had to go through to do it. I will point out that this program has been in the works for three years already, or even more. This isn't something where even if you have a great missile, you can show up with it tomorrow morning and it will meet all the requirements and get in there. I view this more like the, you know, if you take an analogy the XM-30 or MX-30 tanks, sorry, I forget which the order of the letters are. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Army said, okay, there are two main targets, one is the military, on this. Same thing exactly, right? And we're going to open it up to see if by any chance anyone has someone else, something else to do our due diligence, probably. I think that the military organization as a whole, it seems that some of the neo-primes and new primes go off and often develop some solutions on their own dime, sort of if we build it, they will come. And it's doing their work properly, and I applaud them for that by saying, hey, before we stick to the same way we've been doing this for years, let's just check if someone happened to have developed something that fits the bill here and can do it. So I don't think this has come necessarily from being dissatisfied as much as it has come from the landscape is changing. Is on most systems out there that you see, even if there are two primes, it gets opened up again to an industry day or call for RFIs, to see if there's something else that anyone else developed. I just think that it's highly unlikely that someone has something that was developed here and that can fit the bill exactly in this short timeframe.

Richard Shannon

I mean, somebody would have to be well down the road in developing something right now if they were going to hit that April timeframe next year, right? And I mean, the community for building these sorts of things is pretty small. I imagine this is probably well known if it exists. So does that mean you don't think there's anyone out there that has that? Well, I wouldn't quite say that. I don't know all the players.

Sam Rubin

Out there and never say never, but I would say that both Lockheed and Raytheon are very, very experienced and really know what they're doing, and they've been working on this for three years. Everyone is welcome to reach their own conclusions. I don't want to jump to conclusions for other people.

Richard Shannon

Okay, that's fair enough. Thanks for that uh that perspective, Sam. Appreciate that. My second question is uh in your prepared remarks, you also talked about some um issues missile programs here, so I took good notes here about seven different platforms you're being evaluated for through with Lockheed Martin and some other ones. Maybe you could talk about some of these programs if you're able to, and maybe if you can convey either, average platform size or total TAM or something just to give us a sense here. It seems like missile programs can be pretty sizable like the NGSRI that you're already on. Maybe talk about the opportunity and kind of timeframe to when those might be decided. Thank you.

Sam Rubin

So, yes, definitely. I have to be a bit careful here. First of all, some of them, we don't know enough about the end program to relay that. We know what we're told, but we don't know enough about it. Others might be very early or in a stage where they really don't want us talking about them. But let's just say that there was a talk by one of the generals recently from the Army talking specifically about air defense being a very layered approach, where you have short-range interceptors, mid-range, long-range, and even recently there was a call for space-based interceptors. So the Army and the Department of War as a whole need an entire range of products and not one. And there isn't one fits it all. So there is a very big push right now on building up capacity and refilling the inventory of FAD and PAC-3, Patriot PAC-3. But, you know, there's probably an even bigger push at the next generation of all these interceptors. I would say we're in almost all different types of interceptors or or precision munition. When I say missiles, it's not only interceptors. Some of them are precision munition also. But I unfortunately don't have numbers really I can share at this point.

Richard Shannon

Okay. Yes, sir. Appreciate all that detail. Thank you, Tim.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Jon R. Hickman with Ladenburg-Thalmann. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jon Hickman

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I probably should know the answer to this, but could you explain to me what's a Zoom camera?

Sam Rubin

Yes, zoom camera means it can change its field of view. So like in your iPhone, you can zoom in and out of the picture, right, magnify it, as opposed to a fixed focus camera. So cameras and optics we make for the small drone, those usually cannot zoom. They have a fixed field of view, you see one area because you're really trying to trade off weight and size. But the larger platforms all have the ability to zoom in and out.

Jon Hickman

Okay. Okay. Um, and then I have one more question. In the past, you've indicated that you thought you had a multi-year kind of runway before there might be other solutions for germanium, you know, to replace germanium other than your Black Diamond glass. Um, how do you feel about that now?

Sam Rubin

I feel like we actually have more time than I thought. I recently um took a look at some of the announcements about germanium capacity. So you have on one hand, Umicore, the Belgium company that is considered the most promising in increasing capacity, and having a mine in Congo, they recently announced that what they're producing now is really only three to four tons of germanium a year, And what they expect to produce in a few years, and they're talking about four to five years, is, you know, it's more, but it's not definitely nowhere near solving all the problem. And then you look at some of the awards to companies in the U.S. that are either on the mining or refining, and each one of them is talking about single digits, tons of germanium. So I think we might have more time tonight for it.

Jon Hickman

Okay. And then just so my math is correct, reported a backlog of $110 million and then you reported these two big contracts for another $21 or $22 million. So, if you add that to your backlog and then subtract whatever our estimates are for Q1, That should be close to a backlog for Q1.

Sam Rubin

Well, except that we also ship product out and we're continuing to grow. So I wouldn't quite say it's guaranteed that that is a backlog. But, you know, it's definitely the backlog has been growing quite a bit since $110 million. So I think at the end of this quarter, we will have a very healthy backlog to report. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Nice quarter. Thank you. Thank you, John.

Operator

Thank you. We do have a follow-up from Richard Shannon with Craig Hallum. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Richard Shannon

Thanks, Sam and Al. Let me ask one more here. Sam, to follow up on the supply chain comments here, I'd love to get a sense of what are going to long pole in the tent here or the most difficult hurdles to overcome here for adding capacity across all the the elements of what you're trying to do here. It's kind of holistic or qualitatively and over what timeframe do we expect to see this capacity increase completely? Thank you.

Sam Rubin

Yeah, that's a great question. Adding capacity in a vertically integrated company is kind of like a whack-a-mole game, if you would, because you solve one problem and it pops up elsewhere. However, right now, by far, glass is our biggest capacity constraint. We're adding a lot. That's where spending on CapEx is coming from. A lot of it is around the glass. We will probably need to add even more. And we're adding it mainly for our systems, but also for some other customers or for subsystems. After the glass, the detectors are the long pole in the tent, which we don't have much control over. And the lead time on them has been growing from, I think, six months to 10 months, even more now. So you see that in our inventory where we are building up and preparing parts ahead of time and ordering them knowing that our vendors can't really react fast enough. After that, it really breaks down pretty quickly into many, many small things, mechanics. Motors have become a really big deal because of the in the components now it's the same pain everyone is feeling everywhere I think of making an integrated system. Great. Thank you, Shane.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session and today's event. Thank you for joining LightPath Technologies' fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2026 earnings conference call.

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